Around the United States, millions of football fans are looking to find out everything from their favorite player’s height to the best Super Bowl snack. Most of them turn to Google, and every January the search giant sees a massive uptick in football-related searches.

“Deflate Gate” was the most searched phrase of the season, but Patriots hometown fans are losing when it comes to search: Google determined the top states searching were Washington (home of the Seahawks), Montana, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota and Wyoming.

On 16 January 1991, Colonel Steven Kleinman, a senior intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force, flew to Saudi Arabia to interrogate an Iraqi combat engineer captured just before the launch of Operation Desert Storm. Kleinman’s task was to find out the location of land mines surrounding a U.S. Army base. Hours later, he had a detailed map of the hidden mines.

“I don’t know now – nor did I then – what methods, strategies, or ploys ultimately proved successful in obtaining the Iraqi officer’s cooperation,” says Kleinman. “I was successful, but that was, at best, only a matter of pure luck. What if I hadn’t been lucky that day? Answer: hundreds of dead soldiers.”

Kleinman, who became director of the Air Force Combat Interrogation Course the following year, had always rejected the use of psychological or physical coercion in his interrogations. However, he also recognised that his self-taught strategies of seeking cooperation and trust from detainees were fallible, and this particularly high-risk interrogation proved a turning point. When he returned from Iraq, he resolved to help develop evidence-based interrogation techniques to replace traditional methods. “I realised that too much was at stake to be muddling through yet another war in this fashion.”

Public debate over the United States’s use of torture was recently stoked by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,000-page report on “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA in the years following the 9/11 attacks. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who commissioned the report, responded to its criticism on Twitter with the hashtag #ReadTheReport. Not many people have done so, partly because of its length and disturbing content, partly because most people already have entrenched political or moral convictions regarding the justification of torture.

Many of the arguments employed by critics of torture are founded in human rights. Kleinman represents a military contingent whose objection to torture is professional – they believe it is ineffective and have been collaborating with psychologists to prove this in clinical trials.

For the past five years, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), run by the FBI in cooperation with the CIA and Department of Defence, has been at the forefront of developing techniques that rely not on physical or psychological pressure but on rapport-building and empathy. This model, commonly known as the “soft” approach and broadly based on incentive rather than intimidation, has been used in countries like Norway and the UK for some time in the fields of law enforcement and intelligence gathering.

On 30 December, in the wake of the “torture report” media frenzy, Senator Feinstein announced she would soon be proposing a bill of legislation to reform interrogation practices in the United States. Coinciding with the recent publication of Guantanamo inmate Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s harrowing memoir, the bill is timely. Still locked in his cell, Slahi has reignited the debate on America’s detention of people from whom years of traditional interrogation has elicited little or zero information.

One of the instigators of the HIG project is Mark Fallon, former chief of counter intelligence operations for Europe and the Middle East in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). He has always believed that torture does not work, and that its portrayal in popular culture is dangerously misleading. “The ‘Hollywood version’ of interrogation is that you’re looking for a confession, but you’re not – you’re looking for information. The Bourne or Bond character can resist torture himself, then tortures the ‘bad guy’ and gets to the ticking bomb just in time while we finish our popcorn and feel good about ourselves. That character is a fiction.”

One of the main criticisms of torture is that vital information is often missed during interrogation because the interrogator is focused on obtaining a particular “confession”. This pre-conceived fixation can blind the interrogator to other leads, and compromise his or her judgment. Fallon says the public’s idea of torture as a necessary evil must change: “We think because we torture someone and get a confession that torture works. But that confession might be false – which is much more dangerous than no confession. Torture has made us less safe.”

Steven Kleinman received an award in 2007 for his work in researching interrogation in WW2. Steven Kleinman

In 2003, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations he had evidence of links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. This information had come from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a suspected member of al-Qaida whose “evidence” was obtained under torture and later found to be false. According to the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, al-Libi later said he made the statement after being kept in a tiny, metal box for 17 hours and punched repeatedly, because he thought it was what his interrogators wanted to hear. The report also rebuts the claims of top CIA officials that information obtained under torture from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Back in the U.S., around 30% of the more than 290 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence have been found to involve some form of false confession.

In 2002, Fallon became one of the instigators of the HIG project when he realised – like Kleinman – that his professional objections to the coercive interrogation methods he had seen in Guantanamo Bay were not founded in any concrete research. He collaborated with Dr Robert Fein, a national security and forensic psychologist, who chaired the Intelligence Science Board’s Study on Educing Information from 2004 to 2009. The study was an effort to examine what was known scientifically and systematically about interrogation, and while its first report was published during George W Bush’s time in office, it was not until 2009 that the HIG became possible, when Barack Obama signed an executive order to end torture and created a government task force to refine interrogation methods.

The psychologist leading the HIG’s research team, Professor Christian Meissner of Iowa State University, says the interrogation techniques now being developed are in line with his own personal and professional ethics, but are also empirically proven to get the best results. Alongside clinical research on volunteers, his team works with interrogators in police training centres. According to Meissner, initially sceptical old-school detectives “began to see the merits of the science-based methods; they started to be our advocates”. One major American metropolitan police department is one such convert.

Critics of the HIG-style interrogation claim that it is time-consuming and makes impossible demands of the interrogator. Meissner concedes that the process of building trust between interrogator and detainee is lengthy, and that an effective “soft” interrogator must be talented, combining high emotional intelligence with language skills and cultural knowledge to minimise barriers. “A great interrogator is like an actor,” he says. HIG proponents are adamant that fewer, better interrogators are crucial to transforming the traditional world of interrogation, where “anyone can punch a guy”, as one off-record source drily put it.

In a traditionally male domain, Kleinman notes that women often make the best interrogators. “The female interrogators I worked with were exceptional. They weren’t so ego-driven, they didn’t always have to be right, they had a great ability to empathise – there is no more vital quality than to be able to empathise. They also had the advantage of surprise, especially in the Middle East where [detainees] don’t expect to speak to a woman.”

Some critics of the HIG, such as Jeffrey Addicott, the Director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary’s University School of Law, Texas, point to its operational limitations. “The HIG can only deal with the ‘good guy’ approach. This approach has merits but all involved realise that it is time consuming. As such, in the case of a ‘ticking time bomb’ detainee, this approach is not going to work.” Defenders, however, argue that the “ticking time bomb” is in fact a highly improbable scenario, and that it is counterproductive to design an interrogation system around it. Fallon is particularly dismissive: “Look at how long the CIA took keeping detainees in isolation for days and even weeks without ever interrogating them. So much for timely interrogation.”

One of the perception problems of the HIG is that its research is muddied by a political agenda, because the board members include representatives from human rights organisations, as well as government. Meissner says he has been entirely free in the direction of his research, and this is confirmed by Raha Wala, a senior counsel at Human Rights First, which sits on the HIG board: “We have no role in commenting on research proposals. Our role is to amplify the message that rapport-based interrogation methods are not only the most humane but the most effective way to get intelligence.”

The HIG, while unique in the ambition and breadth of its work, is now arriving at techniques long used in countries like the UK. Ray Bull, a professor of criminal investigation and forensic psychology at the University of Derby, explains that the British police and judiciary have been keen to improve interrogation techniques ever since the torture and forced confessions of IRA suspects in 1970s Northern Ireland came to light. He believes that the horror of torture happening to “one’s own” meant reform was a more pressing concern in Britain than in the U.S., where “enhanced interrogation techniques” play out far away from the public’s imagination.

British reform included a law introduced in 1986 requiring all police interviews to be recorded. These tapes were then analysed and, in 1992, the Association of Chief Police Officers asked 12 senior detectives to come up with an improved model of interrogation. Bull was one of the scientists who advised them on what became known as the PEACE model (Prepare, Engage, Account, Clarify and Evaluation), which was founded on getting suspects “to choose to tell the truth”. This model was tested in 2012 by Bull and Dr David Walsh, who listened to over 100 interviews of varied style and found a strong correlation between the supply of accurate information and use of the PEACE method. Bull suspects that the higher rate of false confession in the U.S. might be due to the fact that many states do not call for mandatory interview recording, making it easier for police to employ bullying tactics and more difficult for lawyers to argue their clients’ confessions were coerced.

The embracing of soft interrogation techniques in the U.S. could be an important cue for global political change. Meissner defines the key strength of empathy-based interrogation as: “Seeing ‘the subject’ as an individual and finding out what motivates him . . . If we treat people like human beings rather than ‘subjects’ we elicit better results.” Those who extend this theory to politics believe there should be a similar approach to both foreign and domestic policy, an attempt to relate to the similarities and common interests between citizens and states rather than treating them as “other”. In that light, Senator Feinstein and her bill become ever more significant.

Moroccan Arab-language newspaper Al-Watan al-An has published images of French President François Hollande retouched to look like Adolf Hitler, sporting a swastika armband with the headline “the French are reopening Hitler’s concentration camps to exterminate Muslims”.

The controversial image was on the cover of Al-Watan al-An was dated yesterday, only two days after the 70th anniversary of Holocaust Day, which marks the allied liberation of the largest Nazi concentration camp in 1945 in Auschwitz, Poland, where over a million Jews, Poles and allied prisoners of war were exterminated by the Nazi regime.

Commenting on the images, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Abderrahim Ariri was not apologetic, and insisted the photomontage of the French head of state was meant to highlight the French government’s bias towards protecting its Jewish citizens and neglecting the security of French muslims.

“This is a small part of what the French President deserves,” Ariri told Moroccan French-language weekly TelQuel.

“The government of France cannot ensure the security of Muslim citizens in France, in the same way that they do for the Jewish community,” he added.

François? What are you doing on this Moroccan magazine cover? http://t.co/19orUpZD9opic.twitter.com/U859Yf7i3z

— Worldcrunch (@worldcrunch) January 30, 2015

“Plenty of Islamic places of worship are attacked daily, without this alerting the French authorities,” Arriri said, referring to the recent rise in anti-Muslim hate crime across France perceived as a trend of revenge attacks following the death of 17 people in Paris at the hands of three Islamist gunmen earlier this month.

French independent Muslim rights watchdog, National Observatory Against Islamophobia reported last week that in the two weeks following the Islamist attacks in Paris, 128 “anti-Muslim acts” had been recorded across France - higher than the number of incidents in 2014.

“The left as well as the right, in France have been trying to outdo each other in who can deal a bigger blow to the Muslim community ever since the terrorist attacks,” Arriri said.

“France is slowly shaping its state to deprive Muslims of their rights, their homes and jobs, if things continue as they are,” the editor said.

In a separate interview about yesterday’s controversial cover with France’s main public broadcaster France TV, the editor of Al-Watan al-An said the images were meant to “ring alarm bells” with the “French and Moroccan political elite” about the anti-Muslim effect their response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks is having.

France has a Muslim population of approximately 4 million, as well as the biggest jewish population in Europe, with 550,000 Jews currently residing in the country.

In 2014 anti-semitic crime in France doubled from the year before, as 851 instances of Jewish hate crime were recorded, prompting the French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve to call for the fight against anti-semitism to become a “national cause” after a Jewish couple were robbed and one of them was raped in their Parisian home in December.

One of the heads of the most powerful mafia gang in Italy has been found living in his attic in Rome, nearly three weeks after police first visited his home to seize him. The arrest is part of a larger crackdown on mafia operations in the country.

Domenico Antonio Mollica, 47, of the powerful ‘Ndrangheta organisation, revealed his hiding place on Thursday when the fire brigade began to tear down the attic where he was squatting. The police first called on Mollica on January 9, arresting suspected ‘Ndrangheta gang members Placido Scriva and Domenico Morabito.

Mollica, however, was not found until yesterday when police, who were convinced the leader of the ‘Ndrangheta gang was hiding somewhere in the house, went back to investigate the grounds with fire officials.

The mob leader eventually surrendered himself after investigators found an unusual draft and began tearing down the attic, according to local reports. His hiding place turned out to be located above a built-in wardrobe that was accessed by a rope and a small hole in the ceiling.

Police found bedding and a picture of the Madonna of Polsi, a Calabrian sanctuary where the ‘Ndrangheta bosses annually meet, when searching the attic.

The arrests are part of a broader crackdown on mafia operations  that has seen Italian police arrested 163 suspected 'Ndrangheta members this week. The operation is an attempt to curb the trade in cocaine, of which ‘Ndrangheta is the biggest importer.

A study in 2014 estimated that‘Ndrangheta had a turnover of €53 billion - more than McDonald’s and Deutsche Bank put together.

Italy’s chief anti-mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti, described the mob scoop as a "historic" step in a press conference held in Bologna.

“'Ndrangheta is the biggest mafia threat in Italy, and to a certain extent in the world,” said Newsweek’s Italian correspondent Nick Farrell, adding that although the arrests are significant in number, it is not front page news for Italians. “The mafia is everywhere, it always has been and always will be.”

“It’s always in the papers, so people think that’s just the way things are in Italy,” he added.

'Ndrangheta gained much of its power in the past decade, overthrowing the Sicilian Cosa Nostra gang and Naples Camorra and becoming the country’s most powerful crime organization. 

It’s 10 minutes before I'm going to Skype with the Backstreet Boys, and my 29-year-old self is anxiously pondering a dilemma my 10-year-old self—a BSB superfan—couldn't possibly have imagined: which wall of my tiny, cluttered New York City apartment do I feel most comfortable letting one of the most successful boy bands in history look at over my shoulder?

Still a household name some 20 years after their first single, the Backstreet Boys — A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson and Brian Littrell — have recorded a dozen albums, and sold more than 130 million of them worldwide. They've packed amphitheaters and broken records and danced shirtless in fake rain. Their eponymous first album was released nearly two decades ago; the most recent, In a World Like This, came out in 2013. Now, coming off the domestic leg of their 20th anniversary tour, BSB are headed to the silver screen with Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of, a documentary debuting in theaters and on iTunes and video-on-demand January 30.

In the weeks leading up to my anticipated BSB sit-down (busted down to a Skype chat by Winter Disappointment Juno), the cadre of PR reps coordinating things kept referring to the band as "the boys"— When can I meet the boys? How much time do I need with the boys? — and so the first few minutes of Show 'Em What You're Made Of are like waking up from a 15-year coma. Two of the "boys," Dorough and Richardson, are over 40 now. All of them are married; four have kids. In the documentary's opening scene, McLean lags behind the others during a hike in the woods. "It's just going to take me a minute," he grumbles as the guys crack jokes at his expense. "This is really shitty on my knees."

Which isn't to say that the Backstreet Boys are old, just...mature, almost the antithesis of today's coiffed and tattooed teen heartthrobs, the One Directions and Justin Biebers who are themselves the pink slime of boy bands past. Gone are the colored ski goggles, ill-advised hats and oversized hockey jerseys of BSB yore, replaced by demure button-downs and slightly less ill-advised haberdashery. In a scene filmed at the London house where the group wrote In a World Like This, Littrell carefully brings Carter a cup of hot tea. Later, he wears an apron while preparing breakfast for the group. During one rehearsal, Richardson takes to the piano wearing—gasp—cargo shorts.

"We were trying to go at this [movie] from a raw, uncensored perspective," Richardson tells me during our interview (after I’ve settled on the bookshelf with the brainiest titles as background). "We were not trying to make some fluffy promotional piece."

Somewhat surprisingly, they succeeded. While BSB's early fame is undeniable — cut to footage of girls passing out at packed stadium concerts and scream-crying as they press against the band's tour bus — Show 'Em What You're Made Of is as much about the group's inevitable comedown as it is about their former dominance. After the runaway success of 1999's Millennium (singles include "I Want It That Way" and "Larger Than Life"), BSB released Black and Blue in 2000 (singles include the criminally underrated "The Call"), a compilation album in 2001 and Never Gone in 2005. Then a fight over McLean's drug abuse led to a rift between him and Richardson. In 2006, Richardson announced he was leaving the band. McLean, Dorough, Littrell and Carter put out two albums and went on three tours as a foursome, but BSB wasn't the same, and wouldn't be until Richardson officially rejoined in 2012. (Both McLean and Carter credit Richardson with helping them recover from drug problems, and throughout the movie and our interview, he comes across as the group's voice of reason.)

"If you're going to do a real documentary, you have to ignore the cameras," McLean says when I ask whether the guys had a discussion about how much BSB reality they'd share on-screen. "We've aired our dirty laundry over the last 22 years, from me going to rehab to Brian's surgery [Littrell had open-heart surgery in 1998], but there's a lot that our fans don’t know.”

Carter adds,"We wanted to give our fans another side of us they’ve never seen before."

Some of that side is hard to watch if you are a fan. In addition to McLean's struggle with addiction,Show 'Em What You're Made Of touches on Carter's fight against drug abuse and his estrangement from his parents, as well as the group's fraud and theft suits against BSB founder/manager (and later *NSync creator) Lou Pearlman (who would eventually be convicted for perpetrating a $300 million Ponzi scheme). Midway through the film, a tense argument over Littrell's current ability to perform at concerts — he has what he calls "vocal tension dysphonia," which tightens the muscles around the vocal chords — is aired in full. (Watching Carter and Littrell yell "Shut the fuck up" at each other across a conference room is another thing 10 year-old me wouldn't have been able to imagine.)

But there's levity, too. Early in the documentary, the guys reflect on a high school performance where they were almost booed off the stage after their PA blew out (with Glee-worthy aplomb, they recover by singing a cappella). And in a later scene, they pop into a ballet class at Carter's former dance school, where the assembled teen girls prove too young to know the "Thriller"-esque choreography from "Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)." Unfazed, BSB walks them through it.  

When the 2013 tour footage starts rolling, the Backstreet Boys look surprisingly non-ridiculous for a group of adult men performing routines they popularized over a decade ago. Despite Littrell's vocal trouble, BSB still sounds great, and their dancing is sharp, a stark contrast to *NSync's brief and visibly effortful reunion at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. "We had literally a month to put this tour together, and about 19 days of dance rehearsals," Dorough tells me.

In a way, the Backstreet Boys faded into that good pop culture night inconspicuously. Sure, McLean and Carter struggled with addiction (statistically speaking, it would have been suspect if one of the group members hadn't). But there was no major BSB flameout, and the reassembled group could have probably lived off royalties and cameos until Medicare kicked in. That the group is bothering to still perform — their tour hits Europe, China, Australia and beyond this year — is impressive. That they're recording new music seems almost inconceivable. "Why not just hang it up?" I want to ask, at the risk of offending my top middle school crushes. "One of you could do Broadway. Another could attempt space travel." Surely there’s a BSB opportunity in reality television.

Show 'Em What You're Made Of answers those questions for me. The Backstreet Boys are determined to remain a band, to keep performing and recording, to stay — indefinitely — "the boys.""We don't have a record deal," Carter says, laughing to the camera early in the movie. "It's awesome. It's like starting all over again."

Backstreet's back, alright.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State militants struck at Kurdish forces southwest of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, while bombs in Baghdad and Samarra killed at least 21 people.

Islamic State has frequently battled Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militias further south and west, but attacks in and around Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk have been less frequent.

Oil rose above $49 a barrel on Friday because of the violence in the oil-rich region.

Police in Kirkuk province said the militants launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish fighters in four districts.

Militants later detonated a car bomb at a hotel in Kirkuk city center and clashed with peshmerga forces.

A peshmerga officer told Reuters his forces had recaptured the district of Mariam Bek but said clashes were ongoing in Tal al-Ward, Maktab Khalid and Mullah Abdullah.

Kurdish military sources said the peshmerga had repelled dawn attacks by Islamic State at different points along a more than 1,000 km frontline, including Khazer, west of Arbil, and Makhmur, further south.

"Maybe they are afraid the fight for Mosul has started so they are trying to show they can operate close to Arbil or Kirkuk," Roj Nuri Shaways, Iraq's deputy prime minister and a peshmerga commander, told Reuters.

Senior Kurdish official Hemin Hawrami said on Twitter 45 militants and seven Kurdish "martyrs" were killed around Kirkuk. Medical sources said senior commander Brigadier Sherko Fatih was among the dead.

At least seven other Kurdish fighters were killed by a suicide bomb at a checkpoint near the eastern town of Jalawla, 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Kirkuk, peshmerga and medical sources said.

More than 800 peshmerga have been killed in combat since Islamic State overran their defenses in northern Iraq last summer, prompting U.S.-led air strikes.

The Kurds have now regained most of the ground they lost, but commanders complain they remain ill-equipped compared with Islamic State militants, who plundered Iraqi arms depots when they overran Mosul in June.

Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State was inadequate and said U.S. policy would at best contain the resilient and carefully structured group.

Security sources said at least 18 people were killed by two bombs in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharqi shopping district on Friday.

Three civilians were later killed and at least 10 wounded in northwestern Baghdad when mortars landed in residential neighborhoods, police and medics said.

Further north in the holy city of Samarra, suicide bombers targeted a security checkpoint in the city center, police said, killing three members of the police and Shi'ite militias.

Police and militias later clashed on Samarra's western outskirts following another explosion there.

Samarra is symbolic for Iraqis. In February 2006 Sunni militants blew up a shrine, triggering revenge attacks by Shi'ites which tipped Iraq into years of sectarian violence.

Updated | Mitt Romney announced Friday that he will not seek the Republican Party’s nomination for president. The news first started circulating before a call Romney had scheduled with supporters to begin at 11 a.m. EST.

Shortly after the call, an account for Romney published what appears to be a transcript of Romney’s remarks on Medium, a free online publishing platform that also hosted an early release of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week.

“After putting considerable thought into making another run for president, I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee,” he said, according to the transcript. “I am convinced that we could win the nomination, but fully realize it would have been difficult test and a hard fight.”

Romney emailed supporters on Thursday night to say he would offer “an update” on a potential run during the Friday conference call, according to Bloomberg. The transcript says that wife Ann Romney, donors and state politicians took part in the call. Romney also indicated that he was calling from New York City.

News of the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee’s interest in running a third time began building earlier this month, when he reportedly told donors he was considering another run. That came less than four weeks after former Florida governor Jeb Bush announced on Facebook that he would “actively explore the possibility of running” for president.

Romney and Bush met privately last week in Utah. Representatives for the former governors confirmed the meeting to Reuters, but did not provide details on what the two discussed.

“It looks like Romney was eager to run. He thought maybe the world would open up for him, but it didn’t,” says Robert Erikson, a professor of political science at Columbia University and an American elections expert. “He had a lot of opposition from the right in his party.”

“Mitt Romney has been a leader in our party for many years,” Bush wrote on Facebook Friday, following the news that Romney would not run. “There are few people who have worked harder to elect Republicans across the country than he has. Though I’m sure today’s decision was not easy, I know that Mitt Romney will never stop advocating for renewing America’s promise through upward mobility, encouraging free enterprise and strengthening our national defense.”

Bush continued, “Mitt is a patriot, and I join many in hoping his days of serving our nation and our party are not over. I look forward to working with him to ensure all Americans have a chance to rise up.”

In the transcript of the call, Romney avoided endorsing Bush or any other potential candidate. “I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee,” he said.

The Alfalfa Club in Washington, D.C., an exclusive social organization, is inducting Romney as a member tomorrow, The New York Times reports. Jeb Bush is also a member, according to NNDB.

Romney and his wife had previously said he would not run again. “Done. Done. Done,” Ann Romney told the Los Angeles Times in October last year.

“You can’t imagine how hard it is for Ann and me to step aside, especially knowing of your support and the support of so many people across the country. But we believe it is for the best of the Party and the nation,” Romney said during the call, adding that it is “unlikely” that he will change his mind.

This was the third time that Romney has posted on Medium. In October, he published a letter to his wife, who was then inaugurating the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases. In July, he wrote about a family vacation.

I’ve decided it is best to give other leaders in the Party the opportunity to become our next nominee https://t.co/56pcErahDB

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 30, 2015

On July 21, 2014, at around 11 p.m., a woman in San Bernardino, California, called 911 to report that she had been shot. The victim, later identified as 26-year-old Michelle Miers, told dispatchers she had been attacked in her apartment but did not provide an address.

Because Miers made the emergency call from her cellphone, law enforcement was unable to pinpoint her location, as is possible with the use of a landline. Instead, police were forced to rely on the location of the cell tower her phone had connected to, placing her within a one-block radius.

After 20 minutes of searching, police deduced she was in an apartment complex, where they eventually spotted a shattered sliding-glass door. Miers was inside, covered in blood. She was immediately taken to a local hospital, but succumbed to her wounds shortly after arrival.

San Bernardino police said at the time that if they had known Miers’s exact location, they could have brought her to the hospital 25 minutes earlier. Whether this could have saved her life is unknown. But it is known that her story is not unique.

Americans dial 911 nearly 240 million times a year, and 70 percent of the calls are made on cellphones—a percentage that is only expected to rise as cellphones become more ubiquitous and landlines obsolete. Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, carriers were required to provide emergency services personnel only with a cellphone’s horizontal location (x and y coordinates on a flat map) within 300 meters.

Based on those regulations, a 2013 study cited by the FCC estimated that about 10,120 Americans die each year because the location data that wireless providers transmit to emergency responders are insufficiently precise.

On Thursday morning, the FCC addressed that problem, voting 5-0 to improve the indoor location of wireless 911 calls over the course of five years. After two years, the regulations require companies like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless to provide horizontal-location information to within 50 meters of a caller, and vertical information (like what floor of a building someone is in) to within three meters, for 67 percent of emergency calls. After five years, that level of accuracy would be required for 80 percent of emergency calls.

Though first responders overwhelmingly support these new regulations, wireless service providers are full of objections. In filings sent to the FCC before the vote, AT&T said the changes would “waste scarce resources,” while Sprint said the standards were “not achievable using current technology.”

In an interview with Mother Jones, Don Brittingham, vice president of national security and public safety policy at Verizon, said, “Instead of putting a lot of money and time and effort into a set of solutions that may not actually help, we would like to see more focus on things that provide some long-term benefits.”

Civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, New America’s Open Technology Institute and the Consumer Federation of America are also not fans of the new FCC policy, but for very different reasons. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for instance, argues that the plan lacks any mention of privacy safeguards.

“Without more specific guidelines...carriers could use E911 regulations as an excuse to ubiquitously track the precise locations of all of their customers, both indoors and outdoors, all the time,” writes EFF staff technologist Jeremy Gillula.

He continues, “[O]rganizations like the NSA and DEA will likely demand access to that data, using the flimsy reasoning that such information is ‘only metadata.’ There’s also the risk that state or local police might try to get this data without a warrant. A malicious hacker or a foreign government can already extract your location from the current system without your carrier’s knowledge or consent.”

And these worries are not unfounded. Law enforcement agencies sometimes use “stingrays”—devices that mimic cellphone towers—to collect everything from cell users’ locations to their call logs, and sometimes do so without a warrant, according to documents that for years were shrouded in secrecy. In fact, recently revealed FBI policy states that the technology can be used without a warrant whenever the phone is in a public place.

While all can agree that every second counts in an emergency situation, objections from wireless service providers and civil liberties groups alike have raised questions as to whether the FCC’s efforts are feasible or worth the potential costs. The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.

Islamist militant group Boko Haram are believed to have surrounded the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri and are regrouping for a large-scale offensive before the presidential election on February 14, according to eyewitnesses and analysts, triggering fears of a massacre in the city of two million.

The group launched an audacious offensive on the city last week to coincide with the visit of U.S. secretary of state John Kerry to the capital, Lagos, to meet with both presidential candidates, incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and opposition leader Muhammadu Buhari.

The attack was countered by the Nigerian military but the group are now reportedly regrouping in a bid to capture the Borno State capital before the general election begins in two weeks, Nigerian security sources told local African media outlet Sahara Reporters. The militants have stepped up attacks in an attempt to destabilize the country during the presidential campaign.

John Campbell, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and editor of the Nigeria Security Tracker - a tool which monitors violence in the West African country - says that Boko Haram’s territorial gains in Borno State appear to show an encirclement of Maiduguri, a city where 200,000 have sought refuge from attacks carried out by the militants in the surrounding area.

“In terms of the encirclement of Maiduguri, we try to track the villages that Boko Haram occupies around Maiduguri and indeed it looks like a noose,” he said.

Analysts believe that it’s unlikely the group would try and capture and hold the city as the group’s manpower is limited and its ability to hold on to large swathes of populous territory remains in doubt.

This inability to capture the entire city will force the group to focus on particular targets within the city, such as its airport or authorities, says Campbell.

“The airport of Maiduguri is important. It’s both a civilian airport and a military base. It’s the international airport and the loss of this airport would be a severe blow to the federal government [based in Abuja]. Hence, I would not be surprised if the focus of a Boko Haram attack would be limited to the airport.”

However, Washington’s former diplomat in the country also warned that a massacre of civilians by the group is “certainly possible”, with likely targets being associated with the Nigerian government. The militants would face greater resistance than in smaller towns such as Chibok and Baga, where Boko Haram fighters reportedly killed over 2,000 people in a massacre that sparked international condemnation.

“The people I think would be the prime targets [of a Boko Haram offensive] would be officials, police, maybe teachers in secular schools, people like that.”

Residents of the city of two million told Associated Press this week that Boko Haram already controls three roads leading to areas it holds while the radical Islamists were attacking a fourth road that leads to the northern city of Kano.

Campbell confirmed that the road to Kano, from Damaturu, was the only road not yet taken by the group and this would be a likely target of theirs.

The group has continued to take towns and villages around Maiduguri such as Baga. Analysts say that the group has continued its expansion on the outskirts of the city of two million people.

When asked about the encirclement of the city, Manji Cheto, analyst at political risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence, said: “At this point, it is a credible assertion to make partly because what we have seen is a slow expansion of the group’s sphere of operations from the remote northeast expanding westwards.”

“If you track the movement of the group you can see a very clear expansion. So yes, I think there is some credibility to it,” she added.

Boko Haram continues to wage an insurgency against symbols of authority in the country’s northeastern regions of Yobe, Adamawa and Borno, that remain under a state of emergency.

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker estimates that the terror group have killed up to 10,404 people since January 2014.

The Hunt for Boko Haram, an in-depth ebook on the terrorists tearing Nigeria apart by Alex Perry, is available now from Newsweek Insights.

On January 22, U.S. and Cuban diplomats concluded the first round of talks to implement President Barack Obama's and President Raúl Castro's decision to normalize bilateral relations. A second round of talks is scheduled for February.

Much of the first round was devoted to the mechanics of re-establishing full diplomatic relations and setting out the long agenda of other issues the two sides want to discuss.

A number these are issues of mutual interest on which the United States and Cuba have already built some level of cooperation over the years—migration, counter-narcotics, counterterrorism, law enforcement, Coast Guard search and rescue, disaster preparedness and environmental protection, to name the most prominent.

But on many other issues, Cuba and the United States have sharply different views and interests. As the two sides embark on what promises to be a long series of meetings to carry the normalization process forward, the guide below offers a capsule sketch of the issues in conflict that will comprise the toughest part of the negotiating agenda.

The list is lop-sided, mostly involving programs and policies that are vestiges of the old U.S. policy of hostility. For its part, Cuba doesn't have any sanctions against the United States that it can offer as quid pro quos. There are, however, a number of things that Washington will be seeking from Havana.

Normalizing Diplomatic Relations

Presidents Obama and Castro have already agreed on this, and only an exchange of diplomatic notes is required to formalize it. Obama's nominee to be ambassador to Havana will need Senate confirmation, however.

Marco Rubio, R-Florida, has sworn to block the nominee and will probably have the support of Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, another member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

But even if Rubio and Menendez keep the nomination bottled up, they can't prevent Obama from re-establishing full diplomatic relations with Cuba. Article II of the Constitution vests that power exclusively with the president. For their part, Cuban diplomats have said that normal diplomatic relations are incompatible with Cuba's inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, so even the reestablishment of diplomatic relations is not yet a done deal.

The Terrorism List

Obama has ordered Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba's inclusion on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. He will almost certainly conclude that Cuba should be removed, since there is no reasonable basis for its designation.

But removing a country from the list requires notification of Congress, which will give Republican critics another opportunity to blast Obama's policy. Nevertheless, they won't have the votes to block Cuba's removal, since they would need to override a presidential veto.

Removal of Cuba from the list is important symbolically, but it won't have much practical effect. All the sanctions applied to countries on the list are already included in the Cuban embargo. The financial sanctions that have made it so difficult for Havana to conduct business abroad will not end with removal from the list.

The Embargo

Obama punched a number of holes in the embargo, but the core of it remains intact. U.S. companies cannot invest in Cuba, nor do business with state enterprises except to sell food or medicine. Cuban businesses cannot sell anything to the United States.

Obama relaxed regulations governing educational travel, but tourist travel is still banned. To lift the embargo in its entirety will require legislative changes to the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), which prohibits sales of goods to Cuba by the subsidiaries of U.S. corporations abroad; the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton), which wrote the embargo into law; and the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which bans tourist travel.

With Republicans in control of Congress, the embargo is not likely to go away any time soon.

Property Claims

The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission ratified 5,911 property claims by U.S. corporations and citizens for $1.85 billion in losses suffered when Cuba nationalized all U.S. property on the island. With accumulated interest, the total claims stand at over $7 billion today.

In addition, Cuban exiles who became naturalized U.S. citizens are eligible for compensation for lost property under the Helms-Burton law. The State Department estimates there could be as many as 200,000 such claims, totaling "tens of billions of dollars."

Cuba acknowledges the legitimacy of U.S. claims, but rejects compensation for Cubans who fled the island. Moreover, Cuba has asserted counter-claims of $181 billion for the damage done by the U.S. embargo and the CIA’s secret war in the 1960s.

Cuba does not have the resources to pay even a fraction of U.S. claims, let alone Cuban-American claims, and Washington would never agree to Cuba’s enormous counter-claim. A compromise could conceivably be built around debt-equity swaps or giving claimants preferential terms for future investments.

Cuban Membership in International Financial Institutions

The Helms Burton law requires the United States to vote against Cuban membership in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. To become a member of the World Bank, a country must first join the IMF, which requires approval by a supermajority of 85 percent of the vote by existing members.

Since the United States holds 17 percent of the voting stock, U.S. opposition effectively bars Cuba from both the IMF and the Bank. Although Cuba has not applied for membership, the economic restructuring underway would benefit significantly from IMF and Bank financial support. Resolving this issue will require amending or repealing Helms-Burton.

U.S. Democracy Promotion Programs

The United States continues to spend between $15 million and $20 million annually on covert democracy promotion programs designed to strengthen Cuban civil society and promote opposition. Cuba reportedly sought an end to these programs during the secret negotiations, but Washington refused.

These programs could be refocused to promote more authentic cultural and educational exchanges that operate openly. Such a reform was contemplated shortly after Alan Gross was arrested in 2009, but the White House backed down in the face of congressional opposition.

The latest request for proposals from the Department of State suggests that the programs' confrontational approach has not changed. That could threaten progress toward normalization. "Our U.S. counterparts should not plan on developing relations with Cuban society as if there were no sovereign government in Cuba," Raúl Castro warned in a speech after the talks concluded.

Photographs: Cuba's Antique Cars

Because of the embargo, Cuba is home to thousands of old U.S. cars that could never be replaced. slideshow

The Cuban Medical Professionals Parole Program

This program, designed during George W. Bush's presidency, offers Cuban health workers serving abroad on humanitarian missions a fast track to U.S. residency if they defect. Each year, more than a thousand Cubans take advantage of it.

Cuba asked the United States to end the program to facilitate cooperation rebuilding Haiti's health care system after the 2010 earthquake. Washington refused and cooperation fizzled. More recently, Washington and Havana have been cooperating on the fight against Ebola, but the Medical Professionals Parole Program remains an obstacle to sustained U.S.-Cuban cooperation in the field of public health.

It doesn't make sense for Washington to praise Cuba's humanitarian health programs on the one hand while trying to subvert them on the other. Cuban diplomats raised this issue in the January talks, but as of now, Washington has no plans to review the program.

TV and Radio Martí

The United States government still spends millions of dollars annually broadcasting TV and Radio Martí to Cuba, even though the television signal is effectively jammed and the radio has a diminishing audience. Cuba objects to the broadcasts as a violation of international law.

A recent report by the State Department Inspector General found serious management deficiencies and low employee morale at the stations. The programs continue to be funded more as pork barrel legislation than as effective instruments of foreign policy. Years ago, Cuba offered to carry PBS and CNN news broadcasts on its domestic television if TV and Radio Martí were halted. Could a similar deal be struck now?

The Cuban Adjustment Act

This 1966 law allows Cuban immigrants who are in the United States for a year to "adjust" their status to that of legal permanent residents—a privilege no other immigrant group enjoys. Since the 1990s, the Attorney General has routinely paroled into the United States any Cuban who reaches U.S. territory, making them eligible for residence under the act.

The Cuban government has long complained that this encourages illegal departures from the island and human trafficking. The Attorney General has the authority under the law to refuse to parole illegal Cuban immigrants into the country, thereby denying them the benefits of the Cuban Adjustment Act, but no president thus far has been willing to change existing policy because the status quo enjoys broad support among Cuban Americans.

The Obama administration does not intend to change the law or its interpretation for fear of touching off a migration crisis.

Cuban Trademarks

A number of famous Cuban trademarks, including Havana Club rum and Cohiba cigars, have been appropriated by U.S. companies after a 1998 law prohibited Cuba from renewing its trademark rights. Cuba has sought to safeguard its trademarks in the courts, without success.

As U.S.-Cuban trade expands, U.S. brands will want protection in the Cuban market, an issue which has been largely moot until now. If there is to be a cease-fire in the trademark war, it will have to be mutual.

Cuban Visitors to the United States

Since Cuba abolished the"tarjeta blanca" exit permit required to travel abroad, Cuban visitors to the United States have jumped by almost 100 percent to 33,000 in the past year. But Cuban scholars coming to attend professional meetings in the United States still run afoul of a 1985 presidential proclamation issued by Ronald Reagan that bars visas for employees of the Cuban government or Communist Party. George W. Bush invoked this proclamation to deny all Cuban academic visits as a matter of policy.

The Obama administration has been more lenient, but it still denies visas to prominent Cuban academics for no obvious reason, even though the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) prohibits denials on political grounds. Obama could solve this problem by simply withdrawing the Reagan-era proclamation.

There are ample grounds in section 212(a) of the INA for denying visas to applicants who may pose an actual threat to U.S. security because of involvement in terrorism, crime, or intelligence activities.

Guantánamo Bay Naval Station

Established by the United States in 1903 following the Spanish-American War, the base at Guantánamo has long been a thorn in the side of Cuban nationalists. Cuba claims it as sovereign territory and wants the United States out. Washington insists on the validity of a 1934 treaty leasing the base to the United States in perpetuity.

Since the 1990s, U.S. military forces on the base and the local Cuban military have had a cooperative working relationship that Raúl Castro once described as a model for relations between the two governments. Disposition of the base is low on the agenda of both governments, and nothing is likely to change until Obama is able to close the detention center.

Fugitives

The Obama administration has said that it will seek the extradition of some 70 U.S. fugitives currently living in Cuba, including high profile political exiles like Joanne Chesimard, a.k.a. Assata Shakur, who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper.

Cuba has been willing to return common criminals who have sought shelter on the island, but it has consistently refused to return anyone granted political asylum. The Foreign Ministry reiterated that position shortly after the two presidents announced the normalization of diplomatic relations.

Moreover, Cuba has a long list of Cuban Americans guilty of violent attacks on the island who Washington refuses to extradite, foremost among them Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of a series of hotel bombings in Havana in the 1990s and the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976.

Law enforcement cooperation in pursuit of common criminals is likely to improve, but on the issue of returning fugitives who have been given political asylum, neither side is likely to give any ground.

Human Rights and Democracy

In his speech to the nation, Obama promised to continue the U.S. commitment to democracy and human rights in Cuba. Speaking to the National Assembly, Castro noted that Cuba had "profound differences" with the United States on these issues but was nevertheless willing to discuss them.

Havana continues to regard questions of democracy and human rights as internal matters and sees foreign demands as infringements on its national sovereignty. Nevertheless, Castro was willing to negotiate the release of 53 political prisoners, expanded Internet access and cooperation with the International Red Cross and UN as part of his agreement with Obama.

Although there may be some glacial progress from conversations around democracy and human rights, for the most part, the two sides will continue to disagree.

The unfinished agenda of issues in conflict is long and daunting, requiring tough negotiations, not only between Washington and Havana, but between the White House and Capitol Hill. Many of these issues will linger unresolved beyond the two years remaining in Obama's presidency.

But by changing the frame of U.S. policy from one of hostility and regime change to one of engagement and coexistence, Obama has already made more progress than all ten of his predecessors.

William M. LeoGrande is professor of Government at American University and coauthor with Peter Kornbluh of the recent book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

The new left-wing government in Athens opened negotiations on its bailout package with European partners on Friday by flatly rejecting the expected extension of the program and the international inspectors overseeing it.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis met Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the euro zone finance ministers' group, in Athens for what both described as "constructive" discussions on the new government's aims.

But the hour-long meeting appeared to do nothing to bridge the gap between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' government and European partners who have insisted that Greece must respect its obligations under the 240-billion-euro bailout.

The meeting with Dijsselbloem was the first in a series for Varoufakis, who travels to London,Paris and Rome next week as the government looks to build support.

Tsipras, who makes his first foreign visit as prime minister to Cyprus on Monday, will also be inRome on Tuesday for meetings with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, one of the leading voices in Europe against strict budget austerity.

But he said Greece had no intention of cooperating with a mission from the "troika" of European and International Monetary Fund lenders and would not be seeking an extension to a Feb. 28 deadline with euro zone lenders.

"This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people," he told reporters after the meeting. "Our first action as a government will not be to reject the rationale of questioning this program through a request to extend it."

Dijsselbloem said a decision on the deadline would be reached before the end of February but rejected Greece's push for a special conference on debt, saying a conference already existed in the form of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers.

Varoufakis gave no indication of what Greece, which must be under a EU/IMF bailout program to ensure its banks have continued access to ECB funding, would do if it cannot reach an agreement by the deadline.

Athens is waiting on a final bailout tranche of 7.2 billion euros ($8.13 billion) and has been shut out of international bond markets faces but faces around 10 billion euros in debt repayments this summer.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble repeated a message hammered home by Berlinsince the new Greek government's arrival, saying German generosity had already been stretched to its limit and that it could not accept blackmail.

Tsipras' government has taken office showing it has no intention of softening its opposition to the bailout program, halting privatizations, reinstating hundreds of laid-off public sector workers and increasing low-income pensions.

Varoufakis said he had assured Dijsselbloem that Athens planned to implement reforms to make the economy more competitive and have balanced budgets but that it would not accept a "self-fed crisis" of deflation and non-viable debt.

In turn, Dijsselbloem said he had told the new government to respect the terms of the existing agreement between Greece and the euro zone and warned against taking unilateral steps, saying it was important not to reverse progress made so far.

He said euro zone partners were ready to continue supporting Greece until it can begin borrowing on the markets again "provided that Greece fully complies with the requirements and objectives of the program".

The alleged assassination of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko at the hands of Russian intelligence is part of a larger policy brought forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin of “liquidating” defectors from Russia’s security services, according to New York-based thinktank the Institute for Modern Russia (IMR).

“As one former KGB officer, Oleg Kalugin, put it: ‘The KGB has a rule: never forgive, never forget’,” says Olga Khvostunova, a researcher for the IMR says.

“So you have a pattern here - Russian intelligence services will go after dissidents and kill them only if these dissidents are viewed as defectors, traitors, enemies, who pose a serious threat to the regime's security,” she adds.

According to Khvostunova, the KGB’s post-Soviet successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as Russia’s military (GRU) and foreign intelligence services (SVR) have reintroduced the same historic treatment of defectors since former KGB officer Putin became Russian president in 2000.

“The real threat is posed to former KGB, SVR, GRU or other intelligence officers who decide to defect,” she says.

“After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia's foreign intelligence service suffered a blow, funding decreased dramatically. Some analysts point out that during that time the practice of political assassinations abroad stopped. However, with Vladimir Putin's rise to power, special services bloomed and prospered,” she adds.

Litvinenko, who died from polonium poisoning in London in 2006 after defecting to British intelligence from the FSB, is currently the subject of a public enquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen, after mounting evidence that Russian intelligence agents had been behind the Russian’s killing.

“For decades Russian special services have been denying any participation in murdering or facilitating deaths of ‘defectors’, ‘traitors’, or ‘enemies of the country’ abroad, Some of the most publicised cases in the last 70 years would be the poisoning of a Ukrainian political activist and nationalist Stepan Bandera [in 1959] and the murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov [in 1978]. One can also remember assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1941,” Khvostunova says.

Under “the new regime”, the assassinations of Litvinenko and that of former Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev who was killed in a car bombing in Qatar in 2004 have been the most high profile, according to IMR, while there have also been further linked killings.

“In the Qatar operation, involvement of SVR and GRU was revealed; two Russian agents were arrested, and Putin had to personally interfere to get them back to Russia,” Khvostunova says, adding that six more Chechen supporters of Yandarbiev’s were subsequently killed across Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan in “a demonstration of force by the Kremlin”.

Meanwhile IMR has recorded two “mysterious deaths associated with the Litvinenko case”, namely Times of London reporter Daniel McGrory, who reported on the Litvinenko investigation and Paul Joyal, Litvinenko’s personal friend both of whom died unexpectedly in 2007.

While the IMR, which was formed by Pavel Khodorkovsky, son of exiled Putin-critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, does not consider Russians without ties to intelligence in grave danger, Khvostunova admits “exceptions are possible”. 

“For example, in 2009 former Chechen rebel Umar Israilov, 27, was shot dead in Vienna, where he lived in exile. Earlier he filed a case to European Court of Human Rights claiming that he had been abducted and tortured by Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov.” Kadyrov is a member of Putin’s United Russia party.

Alexey Malashenko, scholar in residence at Moscow’s Carnegie Endowment Centre, while acknowledging Putin’s involvement in Litvinenko’s death, is more cautious about extrapolating too much from one case.

“The case of the liquidation in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko is a special case which could explained by his closeness to Berezovski - a man personally hated by Putin,” he says, referring to Litvinenko’s financial backer Boris Berezovski, who was found dead in his Berkshire home in 2013 after apparently committing suicide.

“Russia’s security services are preoccupied with the opposition working within Russia itself,” Malashenko says, voicing his scepticism that a large-scale campaign against former Russian agents is underway.

“But don’t forget that our Putin is unpredictable,” Malashenko added.

How big?

How big can the NFL grow? How many? How much? How large? How far? How often?

How many?

Last year, Super Bowl XLIX, a game that was basically over after the Denver Broncos’ first snap, drew 112.2 million viewers. That figure fails to include the countless throngs who viewed the contest at sports bars nationwide, but so what? Even without those eyeballs factored in, Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8 became the most watched event in the history of United States television. Of course, one wonders what the other two-thirds of America was doing that night. Clearly, the NFL still has work to do.

How much?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell earns $43 million per year, which is not bad for someone who cannot even go toe-to-toe with a TMZ reporter in a league-orchestrated press conference. NBC, which will televise Sunday’s game (6:30 p.m. kickoff EST), is charging $4.5 million per 30-second spot. As of Thursday night, the cheapest—cheapest—tickets on StubHub for this contest between the New England Patriots and defending champion Seahawks were on sale for $9,205. Only 20 tickets were available for less than $10,000.

How large?

In Super Bowl I, which at the time it was played (January 15, 1967) was not yet known by that name, the largest player on either the Green Bay Packers or Kansas City Chiefs weighed 260 pounds, In 1970, the NFL had one 300-pound player. In 1980, it had three. Currently, there are more than 500 300-pounders in the NFL, and all but one of the offensive line starters on the Pats and Seahawks are listed at above 300 pounds. The lone exception? Seattle’s J.R. Sweezy, who is listed at 298 which, at that size, is just the difference of being weighed before or after his fourth meal of the day.

How far?

Beginning in 2007, the NFL began staging an annual regular-season contest in London’s Wembley Stadium. From one game per annum the first six years, to a pair in 2012, to three per year the past two years (and a trio planned for 2015), the league is definitely attempting to establish a cleat-hold in the United Kingdom as a first step in a potential European expansion. Think of Wembley Stadium, which has consistently drawn 83,000 per game, as Normandy Beach and Goodell as General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The University of Phoenix Stadium, where the Super Bowl XLIX will be held on Sunday, is seen next to a canal in Glendale, Arizona January 29, 2015. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

“[NFL expansion in Europe] is not something that I think is 15 or 20 years away,” Goodell told the NFL Network last July. “It could be five or 10 years away.”

Which means that, to borrow from gridiron parlance, the league is already game-planning that move.

How often?

The NFL can now be watched from 1 p.m. Eastern time straight through to almost midnight every Sunday. Add a weekly London game that could kick off at 9:30 a.m. Thursday night football became a weekly staple on CBS this season, much to the chagrin of players and coaches who wonder aloud how playing two games in 96 hours squares with the league’s player-safety initiatives.

This season the New Orleans Saints played on Sunday night (on NBC) and then on Thursday night (on CBS). “Do you think it’s fair to play a night game and then turn around and travel and play on a Thursday?” asked Saints offensive tackle Zach Strief, who suffered a back injury in the latter game. “Being conscious of player safety, why would you do that?”

On Friday morning on CNBC, Joe Kernan asked NFL Media Executive Vice President Brian Rolapp if the next step is NFL on Wednesday nights. “The reality,” replied Rolapp, a rising young star in the league’s hierarchy, “is that you can only play football once a week.”

Oh?

The NFL would still prefer to expand to an 18-game season, while the National Football League Players Association is entrenched against it.

More consumers. More money. More adipose tissue (and more related injuries). More markets. More avenues of consumption. The NFL isn’t a sports league; it’s a fast-food franchise.

How much larger, in every sense of the word, can the NFL grow? Watching New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a man who perhaps aspires to be this country’s next president, hugging Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones as if he were an 8-year-old in his feety pajamas three weeks ago during a divisional playoff game, should have alerted you to two things: (1) the NFL’s capacity to evoke visceral reactions in Americans of all ages, tax brackets and ethnic backgrounds is unrivaled not just by any current sport, but by any contemporary religion and (2) because of No. 1, there are no current limits, domestically, to the league’s power.

Recording artist Katy Perry throws a football during the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show press conference.Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Katy Perry, who has more Twitter followers than anyone (64.2 million….here, then, is the true Miss Universe) on the planet, will perform at halftime. And yet it is a measure of the league’s insuperable popularity that it was a matter of contention as to whether Ms. Perry would pay the league for the privilege of performing this gig (Do you ever feel like a plastic bag...?). Perry has vowed that she did not pay the league for this marketing opportunity.

How much bigger? I ask this question because, while there are currently no chinks in the league’s armor that anyone seriously cares to address (as long as players continue to grow bigger and faster while wearing helmets, assertions such as the one that Rolapp made on Friday that the league “will continue to do its best to address player safety” are ridiculous; also, note how quickly “unnecessary roughness” flags are thrown when the victims are quarterbacks such as Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers as opposed to infantry types on the lines; the league will tell you that is because quarterbacks are unprotected, but it’s every bit as much about how they are its marquee stars. If you think Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch, whose punishing “Beast Mode” runs are predicated on him using his helmet and shoulder pads as battering rams, is laconic now, try talking to him after his 40th birthday....But I digress. The law of gravity states that what goes up, must come down.

Our Favorite Marshawn Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Empires fall. Ask any Caesar. I am writing this in my hometown, Phoenix, where a decade ago folks who earned $45,000 a year were buying homes that cost at least 10 times that because, well, the prices of homes never fall, do they? Phoenix is/was the epicenter of the subprime mortgage housing crisis. Only four years ago, two-thirds of all home mortgages in the Valley of the Sun were underwater, meaning that the cost of the mortgage was of more value than the market price of the home. Some 250,000 homes in this, the nation’s sixth-largest city have fallen more than 50 percent below their peak market value of just five years earlier.

And while a housing market is not identical to a pro sports league, there are enough similarities to warrant a question: Is this, a year in which game tickets are going for the price of a car (you do realize you can watch on television for free, and the beer will be cheaper and colder?), in which home viewers will probably see about 12 to 15 minutes of action over a four-plus hour telecast—and just as much time will be spent deliberating whether that was a fumble or if the ball broke the plane—and in which parking at University of Phoenix Stadium will cost $100 a car…is this the year in which the bubble finally bursts? Is this the year, to use a popular refrain you’ve heard on Sundays all year, after which we all finally say, “No more?”

Or is this just another year in which the answer to that question is, “No!More!”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to this year's game as Super Bowl XLVII. It is Super Bowl XLIX.

After four months of battle between ISIS and Kurdish fighters, the Kurds finally regained control of the town of Kobani in northern Syria. But the victory is bittersweet, as much of the town was destroyed during the time ISIS occupied it. Basic utilities such as running water and electricity are lacking, but those who remained in Kobani celebrated the victory regardless, passing around sweets, waving flags and dancing in the streets.

The streets are lined with hollow buildings, and some of the casualities are still evident. “We need to retrieve bodies from beneath the rubble and decide where to house civilians when they start to return,” Mohammed Sady, an official in charge of the rebuilding effort, told the Los Angeles Times. Though Sady is optimistic locals will return to Kobani, for now the town remains in ruins. 

Matthew M. Reed considers how the collapse in the oil price is affecting Iran—and its defense of its nuclear program.

What impact has the fall in global oil prices had on Iran?

The oil price collapse since June has had only a modest impact on Iran—so far.

But lower revenues have already forced President Hassan Rouhani to significantly reduce budget projections and even decrease Iran’s dependence on oil. More steps may lie ahead, depending on both the market and the results of Iran’s talks with the world’s six major powers on a nuclear deal.

In December, Rouhani presented a budget for 2015 based on an average oil price of $72 per barrel—down from about $100 per barrel in the 2014 budget. But oil has been trading below $50, and it may stay low. So the government has slashed the projected price again to $40 per barrel. Rouhani intends to reduce Iran’s dependence on oil from an average of 45 percent of all revenues to about 31.5 percent.

The imploding oil market comes at a time when Iran is already suffering serious economic challenges due to mismanagement, corruption and international sanctions. Inflation remains high even though it has halved to less than 20 percent over the past year.

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost half its value in 2012 amid tightened sanctions and has not recovered. The rial’s value climbed after Rouhani took office in August 2013, but it has since fallen again. By the end of 2014, it was trading on the unofficial “open market” for 35,000 per dollar, a modest improvement to the 40,000 per dollar rate at the end of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s term.

In early December, Iran raised bread prices slightly. More subsidy reform could be on the way to help cope with the shortfall in revenue.

Even when prices were high in recent years, sanctions did serious harm to Iran’s economy. But those same sanctions may defer some of the pain from falling prices. Iran’s oil revenues are currently held in customer countries and can only be used to pay for goods and services originating in those countries.

For more than two years, revenues have been piling up in banks overseas due to sanctions. By early 2015, they totaled tens of billions of dollars in China, India and other top Iranian customers. Iran may only be adding to these accounts more slowly now that it is selling oil for less.

Oil traders and industry sources report that Tehran is offering generous credit terms to customers so there is a delay between oil delivery and payment. If the pain of the price drop is delayed, it won’t be for much longer.

How is Iran’s shortfall in revenue impacting the debate over nuclear talks?

Falling oil prices have accelerated the debate in Iran linked to the nuclear file.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hard-liners in his corner seem to prioritize Iran’s nuclear program over reconnecting the economy to world markets. They argue that belt-tightening, improvements in self-sufficiency and acceptance of some hardship can allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program—without compromising its revolutionary values. Khamenei calls this his “Resistance Economy” program. The concept, however, remains a catchphrase more than a comprehensive set of policies.

Rouhani, on the other hand, has argued that Iran's economic prospects are directly tied to sanctions and its relationship with the outside world. “Our political life has shown we can't have sustainable growth while we are isolated,” he told a meeting of economists on January 4. To applause, he contended that Iran's foreign policy must serve its economy. Rouhani may not have dismissed Khamenei's Resistance Economy outright, but he surely hit a nerve.

The hard-liner response was immediate and fierce. Days after Rouhani’s speech, Judiciary Chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani insisted that“one must not tie economic issues to nuclear talks.” Connecting the issues and debating them provided “reassurance” to Iran’s enemies, Larijani warned.

The debate is far from over, but the price collapse is forcing leaders and politicians to pick sides. The supreme leader's allies in the media, judiciary and military have since warned Rouhani not to incite public opinion against the nuclear program.

What impact have falling oil prices had on Iran’s relations with its oil-rich Gulf neighbors and other OPEC members?

Iranian officials have blamed the price collapse on Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Rouhani and oil minister Bijan Zanganeh have claimed that the collapse is a political conspiracy. “Those that have planned to decrease the prices against other countries will regret this decision,” Rouhani warned in a televised speech on January 13. “If Iran suffers from the drop in oil prices, know that other oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will suffer more than Iran,” he added.

Other officials, like Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, have called on Saudi Arabia to cut production in order to lift prices.

To Riyadh, Iran’s complaints are just noise. Other cash-strapped oil producers also want Saudi Arabia to cut production and keep prices up for everyone else. The kingdom, however, has little confidence that it or OPEC can prop up prices for long.

Instead of gambling on production cuts, the Saudis want to let the market self-correct: They believe in Economics 101. This may take time, but other Gulf and OPEC producers, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, support this strategy. “We cannot continue to be protecting a certain price,” said UAE Energy Minister Suhail al Mazrouei on January 13.

Meanwhile, OPEC hawks like Iran and Venezuela can only watch from the sidelines. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro visited Tehran in early January to confer with Iranian leaders. “Our common enemies are using oil as a political weapon, and they definitely have a role in the sharp fall in oil price,” Khamenei reportedly said in a meeting with Maduro.

Saudi-Iranian relations were grim before the fall in oil prices. Some foreign policy analysts speculate about whether Saudi Arabia has a secondary agenda, namely slashing prices to hurt Iran. But Riyadh would most likely keep production steady even if it had friendly relations with Iran.

How resilient are Gulf economies compared to Iran?

The Gulf states are more dependent on oil revenues than Iran, but they stashed money away over the last half decade to tide them over during busts. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar are flush with savings, so they can endure lower prices for now. The situation is more challenging for Bahrain and Oman. Unlike Iran, the Gulf states have easy access to international finance and loans.

Some sober analysts have argued in Iran’s reformist media that the price collapse will starve the country's oil and gas industry of much needed continuous investment, doing lasting damage. But Iran did weather the last two price collapses in 1999 and 2009.

Matthew M. Reed is vice president of Foreign Reports, Inc., a Washington, D.C.–based consulting firm focused on oil and politics in the Middle East. Follow him on Twitter @matthewmreed

This article first appeared on the United States Institute of Peace’s The Iran Primer. 

A lack of effective multilateral coordination between European Union member states is leaving the bloc open to infiltration by terrorists, according to experts, as the bloc’s border forces are overwhelmed by the numbers of illegal migrants and refugees attempting to reach Europe.

The lack of a coherent strategy on border control between member states is leaving the EU vulnerable to exploitation by people smugglers, as militants are being sent to Europe using “any means at their disposal” with the aim of conducting terror attacks in retaliation for Western involvement in the U.S.-led coalition against groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

The claim comes after an anonymous ISIS member told BuzzFeed that a number of the terror group’s operatives were being smuggled into Europe via Turkey disguised as refugees from the conflict in Syria.

Professor Richard Whitman, an Associate Fellow of the Europe Programme at Chatham House, says that a lack of co-operation between states is leaving Europe vulnerable. “This [threat from terrorists] is clearly a transnational, transborder, multidimensional phenomena but this is an area where governments do not want to give up sovereignty,” he said.

“It’s obviously a vulnerability for Europeans because there is potential for information to slip between the cracks and between agencies in individual countries. The EU hasn’t yet developed an full internal security response to ISIS. There isn’t yet anything in place you could identify as a fully fledged strategy.”

European security expert and policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Francisco de Borja Lasheras agreed that the European Union “does not have very strong border controls” and it still does “not have the capacity to carry out significant border controls” despite the potent threat of terrorist infiltration.

While the EU could do more to coordinate and prevent its borders being breached, Whitman believes that smugglers will always capitalise on the weak spots of the EU - for example the border between Turkey and Greece - allowing terror groups to hide among those attempting to reach Europe illegally, such as refugees.

“Wherever you find people smugglers, they look at the point of maximum vulnerability and these countries are where you are likely to see people like ISIS seeking to piggyback on top of that,” he added.

According to the figures of the United Nation’s refugee agency, UNHCR, 1,622,839 Syrian refugees have made the journey from the war-torn country to Turkey from which many attempt to make the journey into EU member states, predominantly eastern Mediterranean countries such as Italy or Greece.

Once within the EU’s borders, refugees are able to move freely across the continent because of the Schengen agreement, which abolished passport and border control on the bloc’s internal borders.

The EU border agency, Frontex, seeks to support and coordinate the maritime security of member states in the Mediterranean region, to monitor and prevent those attempting to illegally cross borders crossings and reach the Schengen Area.

It revealed that, in 2013, an “an unprecedented number of migrants” - mainly Syrian refugees - arrived at the Greek islands from Turkey seeking refuge as well as large numbers travelling to Bulgaria from Turkey.

Frontex spokesperson Izabella Cooper confirmed that the agency does not know how many refugees are missed and actually manage to bypass its border management operations in coordination with national governments.

“These are the known unknowns, we know that we don’t know certain things,” said Cooper. “We need to work on empirical data, we cannot make an estimate [on how many refugees are missed].”

European police agency Europol has created an anti-terrorist unit that tracks how many people have travelled out of Europe to join groups in Iraq and Syria, estimating 5,000, but head of media, Soren Pedersen, could not confirm an estimate of terror suspects that have travelled into Europe from Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey.

It is this lack of coordination, or presence of a supranational body, that is leaving gaps in intelligence between member states and allowing those that enter the EU to go undetected, Whitman says.

“You haven’t got an effective transnational European organisation that has the resourcing, capability and, crucially, the political authority, to say this is how we’re going to counter this [threat],” he warns.

“Until you see some sort of collective agreement between the states, European policy is not going to be as effective as it should.”

When asked about jihadists seeking to enter the EU disguised as refugees, an Interpol spokesperson told Newsweek: “Foreign terrorist fighters entering or leaving conflict zones will attempt to use any means at their disposal to avoid detection whilst travelling.”

“Information provided to Interpol has enabled the organisation to identify primary travel routes used by foreign fighters, as well as the tactics, techniques and procedures used to attempt to conceal their movements,” they said.

Last November, the international crime agency revealed that European jihadists are increasingly using cruise ships to move in the opposite direction and reach launchpads, such as Turkey, as a means of reaching Syria and Iraq to join radical Islamic groups.

Amid global controversy over depictions of Muhammad, a multimillion-dollar biopic of the Prophet’s life is causing further controversy in the Muslim world. The Iranian film, premiering on Sunday, will be the most expensive production to be made in the country.

Mohammad, Messenger of God will be shown at the opening ceremony of the Tehran’s Fajr international film festival in Iran, an event that coincides with the 36th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

Director Majid Majidi spent five years on the $30m (£20m) state-sponsored film, which is the first of a planned trilogy and will depict Muhammad from birth to the age of 12.

Western depictions of the Prophet have been at the centre of controversy in recent weeks after 12 people died when Islamist gunmen attacked the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, citing their publication of cartoons of Muhammad. The magazine published another cartoon of the Prophet on its cover in response the following week, sparking protests across the Muslim world.

However, the film will avoid causing offence by not including shots of the Prophet’s face, with Majidi hiring Oscar-winning Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro for visual techniques that were deemed religiously respectful.

Although the Koran does not explicitly ban depictions of the Prophet, Islamic tradition prohibits the use of his image. However, the way in which Sunni and Shia Muslims choose to depict the Prophet differs slightly, meaning that Majidi’s film, produced in Shia Iran, is likely to become a bone of contention in the Middle East and beyond.

Although Majidi consulted both Sunni and Shia scholars before making the film, he has not managed to appease everyone. Egypt’s al-Azhar University, regarded as the foremost institution for studying Sunni theology, has been vocal about the film since its announcement in 2012. “We demand that Iran refrain from releasing the movie, so that an undistorted image of the Prophet can be preserved in the minds of Muslims. We call upon all film-makers to respect religions and prophets,” scholars from the Islamic Research Academy said in a statement. They have since requested the film not be shown in Iran.

Although Sunni and Shia Muslims both view Muhammad as the final prophet, Shia Iranians are seen as being more relaxed on religious depictions than Sunnis.

However, the question of who depicts whom best has led to a possible second Muhammad film being made in Qatar, an area largely occupied by Sunni Muslims, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The rival film by production company Alnoor Holdings boasts a $1bn (£660m) budget and has the Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne reportedly advising the project.

According to Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour, resident scholar at Islamic Centre of England, there’s no need for two films. “The depiction of Muhammad’s life in Sunni and Shia Islam is generally the same,” he says.

While Sunnis are very strict on the ban on religious images, Shia tradition is more relaxed, according to Bahmanpour. “Depicting Muhammad’s face is not allowed in either Sunni or Shia tradition, but images of any face is seen as wrong in Sunni Islam,” Bahmanpour said in reference to aniconism, the banning of imagery surrounding religious figures or living things.

For Shia tradition, not depicting Muhammad’s face in film may have more to do with how he appears on screen, according to Bahmanpour, who said that “depictions of Muhammad’s face are regarded as a disrespect if the movie doesn’t come out well”.

The “strong dollar” has been a mantra for the United States for decades. Recently, as the euro has fallen to an 11-year low against the dollar, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has once again been paying homage. “I have been consistent in saying, as my predecessors have said, that a strong dollar is good for the United States.”

Really? This week, a slew of blue chip U.S. companies–from Caterpillar to Procter & Gamble to DuPont–reported a sharp fall in earnings attributed in part to the rising U.S. dollar.

While a stronger dollar lowers the cost of imports, which is good for consumers, it hurts U.S. competitiveness. With U.S. companies ever more dependent on exports and overseas sales, a strong dollar means that each sale denominated in weaker currencies abroad returns less to the United States. Doug Oberhelmen, chief executive of Caterpillar, said the surging dollar “will not be good for U.S. manufacturing or the U.S. economy.”

For the Obama administration, which has heavily promoted the importance of U.S.-based manufacturing and has made much of the recent small uptick in manufacturing jobs in the United States, a statement like that should be setting off alarm bells.

And if that’s not enough, this week’s House and Senate hearings on U.S. trade policy should have done the trick. One after another, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle said it was crucial that the administration at least try to address currency issues in the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations.

Yet the U.S. Trade Representative, Mike Froman, repeatedly deferred, saying that currency was a Treasury responsibility. And Treasury’s only response so far has been to say that the surging dollar is just fine.

The United States has made this mistake before. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration whistled as the dollar soared to record levels against the Japanese yen, battering a U.S. manufacturing sector that was already facing an unprecedented competitive challenge from Japan.

It happened again in the early 2000s following China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. China had pegged the renminbi to the dollar in the mid-1990s (in part with U.S. encouragement), yet repeatedly refused to adjust the peg even as Chinese productivity soared and left the renminbi seriously undervalued. That currency peg was a major reason that the U.S. goods trade deficit with China rose from $80 billion in 2000 to more than $250 billion by 2007.

Again, the major losers were U.S.-based, internationally competitive manufacturing companies and their employees. The companies could respond (and did) by spreading their operations around the world; their employees had no such flexibility.

Currency values are largely determined by markets, of course, and Lew was correct in noting that the dollar’s surge is being driven by the relatively strong U.S. economy and weaknesses elsewhere in the world. But much as monetary authorities often try to tamp down an overly strong economy to prevent inflation, it makes sense for the United States to at least gently discourage the rising dollar rather than playing cheerleader.

Indeed, the danger now is that many countries will go in the other direction and leave the United States in an even worse position. For example Singapore, a free trade agreement partner, this week announced that it would seek to halt the appreciation of its local dollar and markets immediately drove it down sharply against the U.S. dollar. Other countries are likely to follow.

There are tools, if limited ones, to slow the dollar’s rise. Consistent U.S. government pressure on China over the past decade helped in persuading the Chinese to loosen the dollar peg and let the renminbi rise; indeed, with the recent rise in the dollar China has also lost some of its competitive edge in European and other markets.

Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute, in a recent Foreign Affairs article, called for more determined efforts to stop currency manipulation by U.S. trade partners, including countervailing intervention by the United States is cases where countries are aggressively intervening in markets to hold down their currencies.

Some, or all, of these would be inappropriate responses at the moment; much of the dollar’s recent rise has been driven not by government intervention but by European and Japanese efforts to use monetary policy to stimulate their flagging economies. The United States has done the same in the recent past, of course.

But clearly the worst thing to do is for the U.S. government to be actively encouraging currency movements that will undermine its own policy of rebuilding American manufacturing, increase protectionist sentiment in Congress and make it far more difficult to move forward with the TPP and other trade negotiations.

At the very least, it is past time for the government to stop talking about how a “strong dollar” is good for the United States.

Edward Alden is Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This article first appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

The self-proclaimed foreign minister for the pro-Russian separatist group the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), which is currently battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine, has announced plans to host a “summit of unrecognized states” such as Flanders, the Basque country and Texas in a video initially broadcast on the local pro-separatist channel Oplot TV earlier this week.

The DNR representative, Alexander Koffman, said he plans to host the summit in either February or March, inviting representatives from regions with separatist leanings around Europe such as Spain's Basque region, Belgium's Flanders region, Italy’s Venetian region and even the American state of Texas hoping to create a “League of New States”.

“We already have agreement from representatives of these states,” Koffman said, arguing the only reason such a meeting has not yet happened is out of fear the movements will make it easier for political opponents to attack them at once.

The interviewer took particular interest to the mention of Texas and asked Kauffman whether there were indeed “seeds of support for DNR in Texas”.

“They are more than seeds. The representative of Texan independence fully supports the Donetsk People’s Republic,” Kauffman responded, although he didn’t identify the representative.

“Our enemy is Nazism. Whether in Ukraine or globally,” he added.

Koffman also listed the Russian-backed separatist republic of Abkhazia - which announced its independence from Georgia in 1990 and was recognised by Russia in 2008 - as a partner, but omitted the newly formed state of Kosovo which has been backed by 108 countries but not Russia.

“My global goal is to even out the process of recognizing states,” Koffman said, before questioning why Kosovo would be considered separate from Serbia since its separation in 2008 and not the DNR.

“What does it mean that Kosovo is recognized? We operate in a very logical way. If France recognizes us and Britain does not, then we will do business with France.”

Asked how Russian politicians feel about the DNR’s aspirations for statehood, Koffman said “unfortunately there is no united line”.

“They maintain that Ukraine has to accept it first, but [Kiev’s] crimes that are going on are being documented and they will be dealt with in due time,” Koffman added, although he did not cite any specific crimes.

Asked about his own national identity, Koffman, who was born in the eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka told his interviewer he found it “difficult to explain”.

“I have twice rejected job opportunities to head banks in Kiev,” Koffman said. “I have turned down numerous opportunities in Moscow because I have my home, my land and my friends.”

Oplot TV, which broadcasts in Russian, has previously aired interviews with other separatist commanders. The increase in pro-separatist Russian-language media in eastern Ukraine has prompted Ukrainians to coin the term ‘information war’ when referring to the differing accounts of the conflict according to Ukrainian and Russian outlets, even prompting a recent video address by Ukrainian student activists in a bid to “show Russian students we are not child crucifiers”, as alleged in Russian media.

The Ukrainian government also assembled a Ministry of Information Politics, dubbed the ‘Ministry of Truth’ by critics, to deal with the increasing prevalence of Russian language media outlets working in Ukraine, intended to strengthen the pro-Russian narrative of the conflict in Ukraine.  

As football fans make the drive to Arizona’s University of Phoenix Stadium for the Super Bowl, they will see two 48- by 14-foot digital billboards featuring a couple of buff men in a locker room, holding footballs. The first ad is on the highway leading up to the arena, with the second directly next to the stadium in the parking area.

At first glance, the ad seemingly could be for many things: T-shirts, sports gear or, given the company’s name, Scruff, perhaps even shaving equipment. The ad, however, is a bit more risqué than that: Scruff is a dating app for gay men—athletic men in particular—that has 7 million users worldwide, and its message reads, “Play on our team.”

Scruff spent $3,500 for the billboards during Super Bowl week, and it appears likely to see an impressive return on the investment. About half a million people are expected to be exposed to the ads, and already Scruff has seen a 20 percent increase in new profile creations in the Phoenix area, compared with the same period last year, spokesman Daniel DeMello told Newsweek. Since the first of the year, the app has generated more than a million logins since in Arizona.

“While the oversized cultural statement is obviously an attempt to attract more members, it’s also a nod to brave athletes like Michael Sam and Kwame Harris, begging the question: What does ‘gay’ look like?” the company said in a statement.  

For some attending the Super Bowl, the ads may shift the focus to another team besides the Seahawks and the Patriots.