Updated | Colombia’s FARC rebel group has invited the newly crowned, Colombian-born Miss Universe to take part in their peace negotiations with the government, according to a statement published on the group’s website.

FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People’s Army, is a guerilla group that has been in conflict with the Colombian government since launching an insurgency in 1964. It is classified as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and the European Union.

The group published a letter Friday on their website addressing Paulina Vega, who was crowned Miss Universe in Miami last month, inviting her to peace talks in Havana. Vega has reportedly said she would be willing to attend the Cuban negotiations, CNN reported Sunday.

“We read with interest about your desire to contribute with your good offices to peace and reconciliation of the Colombian people,” the letter reads. “We invite you to materialize your visit to update you about the development of the peace talks, the progress and the enormous contribution that you and the majorities who desire peace can make,” the group’s letter to Vega read.

It is unclear what FARC hopes Vega’s contribution to the talks would be, although FARC say they consider her views “a valuable contribution to peace.”

Vega, 22, is originally from Barranquilla on Colombia’s northern coast, and she is a model and a business administration student at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá.

Vega responded to Newsweek's request for comment Monday with a statement saying that she remained concerned about peace in her country and she would be willing to repond to any requests for help  -- if they came from Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

"Throughout my year as Miss Universe, I will travel the globe and I plan to act as an ambassador for my country, promoting Colombian culture and all of the opportunities that it has to offer," Vega's statement read. "That said, the main representative of Colombia is President Santos. If he and the Colombian government think I can be of any help, I remain ready and willing to assist in any and all areas that will help promote further peace, stability and progress."

The talks in Cuba are the latest in a series of stalled attempts to broker peace between the Marxist FARC and the Colombian government. Around 220,000 people have been killed in 50-year conflict between the group and the government, the BBC reports. A person was kidnapped every eight hours between 1996 and 2005, according to Ploughshares, a peace and security nongovernmental organization.  FARC claims it has “never kidnapped” and refer to the act of kidnapping as “financial detention.”

FARC’s activities are of particular interest to the United States. Around 60 percent of cocaine exported from Colombia to the U.S. is from FARC, according the the U.S. government. The Colombian government claims that FARC is involved in many aspects of cocaine production, from cultivating coca to trafficking abroad, which the group’s commanders deny. Reuters reports.

Vega’s invitation from FARC isn’t the first time an international beauty pageant has turned political. Last month, furor broke out over a selfie taken by Miss Israel, Doron Matalon, that featured Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, alongside contestants from Slovenia and Japan. Greige distanced herself from the photo, but the Miss Universe Organization defended it and said it was “unfortunate” that a photo of four contestants could be viewed in a negative light. 

Following a January ruling in a federal district court that found Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, some—but not all—of the state’s judges have begun to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite a last-minute order by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore not to do so.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange had requested the U.S. Supreme Court stay the federal ruling until the top court resolves the issue of same-sex marriage. Its decision is expected in June. But the Supreme Court denied the stay, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissenting. The federal ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Callie Granade, was set to take effect Monday morning.

Moore complicated matters by issuing a memo to Alabama probate judges late Sunday night arguing that “state courts are not bound by the judicial opinions of federal district or appeals courts on questions of federal constitutional law.” Only the U.S. Supreme Court can resolve disputes between state and federal courts, Moore wrote.

Legal scholars are somewhat divided about whether Moore’s interpretation of the law is correct.

In Bloomberg View, Noah Feldman, a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard, wrote that Moore’s interpretation is “dangerously wrong.” Feldman argues that when Alabama probate judges issue marriage licenses, they are executors, not arbiters, of the Constitution. “They aren’t parallel interpreters of the document: There’s no case or controversy before them,” he writes. “Refusal to comply with the federal court judgment would be illegitimate resistance.”

Florida State College of Law professor Wayne Logan, meanwhile, told The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog that Moore’s interpretation could hold water. “[A]s a formal matter a state court need not defer to the federal constitutional holding of a federal lower court,” he wrote.

Alabama’s probate judges are seemingly confused about whether they should issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. According to AL.com:

In Coffee County, Jefferson County, Chilton County and Madison County, probate judges said they will issue marriage licenses to all couples, gay and straight, on Monday morning.

Probate judges in other counties chose to follow the order issued late Sunday by Chief Justice Moore. Probate judges in Bibb County, Covington County, Cleburne County and Washington County decided not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Monday, but will still issue licenses to opposite-sex couples.

Moore is a controversial figure. A state panel removed him from his post in 2003 after he refused to comply with an order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state court building. He twice ran for governor, both times unsuccessfully, before winning reelection as chief justice in 2012.

He is also outspoken on homosexuality. “Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it,” he wrote in 2002.

While most kids were playing on swing sets or watching The Flintstones, Lori Nix spent her childhood traipsing through the woods looking for lawn chairs in trees and clothes hanging from branches. She grew up in 1970s Norton, Kansas, a small, rural town in the belly of Tornado Alley. Every winter brought snow and hailstorms. Summers meant infestations of grasshoppers, caterpillars and June bugs. Tornadoes were almost constant, as was the deluge of debris, cars and homes Mother Nature flung across the wide-open plains like cigarette butts.

When Nix was a teenager, her family moved to Topeka, where she passed her weekends watching dystopian staples of the 1960s and ’70s like Planet of the Apes, The Towering Inferno and Earthquake. Once, after a tornado, she and her friends went to investigate the damage. “I come across this kitchen stove. I open it up, and there’s the most beautiful honeybaked ham. Just golden brown. ’Cause the tornado hit right at 6 at night. It looked so good and tasty—three days later!”

Inspired by the extreme scenarios of her Midwest childhood (she once played in a pile of rotting potatoes from a potato truck crash), Nix, 45, is now an award-winning photographer. But unlike most photographers who go out into the world and shoot what they see, Nix builds her subjects from scratch, creating intricate, small-scale dioramas that she then photographs. Her decrepit library with moss growing on the walls has two majestic birch trees growing through the floor. A New York City subway car, rusted and half-filled with sand, sits in a desert with the Manhattan skyline in the distance. From her weather- and time-ravaged casino to her moss-encased space center, Nix creates worlds that let us imagine the harsh aftermath of natural and human disasters—and leave it up to us to figure out what happened and why.

The first word that comes to mind when I look at Nix’s rural and urban landscapes is postapocalyptic. “I would actually say post-mankind,” Nix corrects me. “But other people have assigned apocalyptic to it, so it always enters the conversation.”

“Climate change comes up a lot now,” adds Kathleen Gerber, 47, Nix’s girlfriend and collaborator.

“People assign whatever the latest disaster is,” says Nix, who was named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow in photography. “Now it could be a virus. We’ve been through SARS, H1N1, a megavirus.”

We are sitting in Nix and Gerber’s apartment-turned-studio in Brooklyn, where they have lived and worked for 15 years. All around us are remnants of the “post-mankind” world Nix creates. The place is so cluttered and fascinating that it feels as if we’re camped out inside one of her dioramas. Paintbrushes, tin cans, books and printouts are piled on a large table. Chunks of pink foam, which Nix and Gerber use to create many of their dollhouse-sized objets, are scattered everywhere. Bookshelves are crammed with books, boxes and miniature figurines. Plants line the window sills. Old dioramas, like a desert landscape and a faded pink interior that looks like Barbie’s Dream House gone awry, sit on shelves. On a second table is Nix’s newest diorama, an observatory. Random sections of the ceiling are painted light blue. A stuffed squirrel is mounted on one wall (Gerber gave it to Nix for her 40th birthday; they named it Flanders). Everything is covered in a thin film of dust.

“Let’s see if I can wake up for this,” Nix says as we clear off paperwork from a few stools and sit down to talk.

“Have you been interviewed often?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she replies. “It just depends on the time of day. It’s always better if I have a couple of beers in me.” She adjusts her glasses, crosses her legs and starts talking about how, as a young girl, she was often drawing and playing in the mud. “When you’re from the Midwest, your parents don’t always encourage you to go into the arts,” she says. Her mother worked for the Stetson hat company. Her father, a Caterpillar salesman, “wanted me to go into something that would provide me a living—a pharmacist or an accountant,” she says. “I was an accounting major for one semester of college, then switched to ceramics and nearly broke his heart! He said, ‘How are you gonna earn a living making pots?’”

A recreation of a libraryLori Nix

Nix studied photography, ceramics and art history at Truman State University, in Kirksville, Missouri. After graduating in 1993, she pursued her MFA in photography at Ohio University. Her first major show was in Chicago, where she stumbled into a Richard Misrach exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Misrach is best known for his monumental photographs of humans’ effects on the American landscape. “All these different images of man’s impact upon the desert: giant pits of dead cows, the salt sea, car test races in the desert,” Nix says. “I had a major epiphany. I thought, I want to do this!

“Kansas is beautiful to the eye of the beholder, but it’s really hard to make amazing work because it’s all the same: brown, yellow, brown, gray, brown. I’m not that type of photographer to go and photograph a space. I like to work with my hands.” So she started re-creating her childhood, one scene at a time.

Nix’s first series, Accidentally Kansas, which she began in 1997, reimagines blizzards, tornadoes, insect infestations and other unwieldy disasters. In “Flood,” houses float lifelessly in an ocean of muddy, trash-ridden water. In “Ice Storm,” two deer stand by the side of a frozen lake; beneath it, a car is submerged with its headlights beaming.

“Growing up in the 1970s, you could be at a stoplight and see the kids acting up in the car in front of you. You’d see the parents turning around—” Nix waves her hand as if she’s telling the kids to shut up. “So the story [in “Ice Storm”] is, me, my brother, my sister, we’re in the station wagon fighting, and my dad turns around to beat on us, playfully of course. He turns back around, sees the deer in the road, swerves to miss the deer and off into the icy depths my family and I go.” She laughs. “It’s never happened, but that would be a perfect family tragedy.”

Nix’s later series, including Some Other Place, Lost and The City, came after she moved to New York. The scenes grow darker and spread to urban landscapes and man-made disasters. In “Uranium Extraction Plant,” a factory atop a tall cliff glows with an unsettling blue light. Down below, translucent deer drink neon-green water.

In “Treehouse,” a pack of dogs has gathered at the foot of a large tree. A ladder disappears up and into the leaves, where a light glows from inside what looks to be a treehouse. “I leave these narratives open-ended,” she says. “I let you decide. I think the kid is stuck up in the tree. Like, he’s terrified of the dogs, even though they all look like happy, nice little dogs.”

“They don’t look that nice to me,” I say, confessing my childhood fear of dogs.

“See? So you’re stuck up in the tree!” she says. “You’re sending out these paper planes to anyone—help! Help! Help!”

I look back at the photo of the dogs circling the treehouse and cringe. Nix is right: Help.

Inch-Long Skulls and Body Parts

“I always play these games: ‘What if,’” Nix says. “What if you knew in five minutes a nuclear bomb was going to fly through the air and detonate outside this apartment building? You can either go outside and be vaporized in an instant, or you can try to survive knowing that the next three months are going to be incredibly painful as your flesh falls off. So what do you do?”

This isn’t the first time Nix has asked me a sweeping question during our two hours together. Do you ever think about how your life would change if you actually won the lottery? Would you go out and buy an expensive apartment? How would you stay yourself? Why do you think we need to witness disaster?

“Human nature says we’ll try to survive,” Nix says, answering her own “what if” scenario. “But it would be easier to go outside.”

Gerber has been listening silently with a blank look on her face. “Oh!” Nix says, noticing. “You don’t like this, do you?”

Lori Nix works out of her studio in Brooklyn, N.Y.Shaminder Dulai for Newsweek

“Yeah, the apocalypse freaks me out,” Gerber says.

Both burst out laughing at the obvious irony that Gerber has spent nearly two decades steeped in Nix’s catastrophes.

Nix and Gerber met in 1996 and started collaborating a few years later. Gerber’s background is in glass blowing, sculpture, faux finishing and gilding. “I enjoy putting a patina on something and making it look like it’s been there for 30 years,” she says. The photo for their first joint effort, the diorama for “Ice Storm,” came out in 1999. Today, their dioramas have appeared in O magazine, New York, Wired and on the cover of Time, and served as the backdrop to original video content for Josh+Vince, a creative video agency launched by two former CollegeHumor guys. Nix and Gerber get excited when they talk about their commercial work, but as Nix puts it, “Every year my mom goes, ‘Lori what do you want for Christmas?’ I say, ‘More hours in the day and a trust fund.’”

Until she picks the winning lottery ticket, Nix has the capacity to produce just two new photographs a year. (It takes seven months to build a camera-ready diorama, and some take much longer.)

Nix gets her ideas on the subway or in the shower, but she won’t begin a new diorama without Gerber’s permission. “I love coming up with ideas and sourcing materials and starting, but after you’ve been at it for six months and you have to put in the details. It’s the little details that makes stuff come alive, but it’s also the most tedious, non-gratifying part of the work. It’s like slogging through mud.” That’s when Gerber comes in. After Nix builds the bones of the piece—structure, walls, furniture—and sets the color palette, “I go away and let Kathleen destroy it. She does the washes and the intense detail work that I just don’t have the patience for.”

Gerber starts handing me inch-long skulls and body parts. “These are made from bakeable clay,” she says. I recognize the items from Nix’s “Anatomy Classroom,” which looks exactly as it sounds, only add a layer of filth, smash the windows, throw some cracks on the walls and ceilings and cover the floor in rubble.

“For the anatomy classroom, we used all our friends’ problems,” says Gerber. Nix holds up a tiny uterus. “That’s my friend’s,” she says. “And my dad’s lack of hearing. And healthy lungs! I love the kidney. It’s one of my favorites.”

Almost everything inside the dioramas is hand-made. Gerber even crafted tiny plates of Chinese food so that Nix could photograph them to make the menu for the wall inside the diorama for “Chinese Take-Out.” “Our motto is ‘Work harder, not smarter.’ We probably could have grabbed the menus off of the Internet, but that’s just cheating.”

Nix wouldn’t comment on the subject of her forthcoming Guggenheim show, which is set to open in three or four years, but she did offer up three new ideas for her City series, which she began in 2005: a boxing gym loosely based on Gleason’s in Brooklyn, a massive cityscape and New York City as seen from a helicopter (or whatever’s left of it after Nix imposes her next disaster on steroids).

“I don’t want to do scenes with lots of people where it implies mass death,” she says. “It’s like being in New York City and people disappear overnight—” There is a loud crack as she slaps her hands together. “People were in the middle of their activities, and poof. I don’t know why they’re gone. That’s for you to figure out.”

Your TV may be listening in on your private conversations, according to technology giant Samsung, who has warned customers against saying too much in front of their Smart TV as they risk being recorded and the information shared with a third party.

The potential infringement on privacy has been compared to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, which describes life under the watchful eye of a totalitarian government.

Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984 pic.twitter.com/osywjYKV3W

— Parker Higgins (@xor) February 8, 2015

The company’s privacy statement informs customers that along with being able to hear how badly you want to watch the latest episode of Scandal, the voice-command feature can also tune into any conversation you have within the TVs vicinity.

“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party,” Samsung warns.

Samsung says the voice recognition feature, which allows you to control the TV with vocal prompts, provides a convenient service to their customers and the company have pointed out that it can be deactivated at any time.

Addressing the privacy concerns in a statement to The Daily Beast last week, the company said: "Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously. In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use.”

Professor Mike Jackson, a cyber security expert at Birmingham City University’s Business School, suggest that the audio data might be used for security purposes. “Perhaps the government would like to access the information the television collects so that it can better identify dissident individuals and use it as a tool to combat terrorism,” he said in a statement released by the university.

He also warned of the negative effects of storing this data: “It’s important to remember here how much information Sony lost to hackers. Could we see this happening again?” Sony Pictures was hit by a major cyber-attack in December in which hackers, protesting the controversial film The Interview for its depiction of North Korean president Kim Jong-un, released thousands of the company’s confidential documents to the public.

Jackson also questioned who else might gain access to the data under Samsung’s policy. “Given that our words are being transmitted out of our homes do we trust them to keep them private?”

Candid Wueest, principle threat researcher at the UK-based Symantec Security Response corporation says that this kind of technology will increasingly be used in the future.

“I do not believe Samsung is collecting data for spying purposes, but they do gather information that is sensitive to you, and that information is stored somewhere,” Wueest said, adding that consumers have to trust that their information is safeguarded properly, and there is a lot of room for error. “There is a possibility that others could hack into the information,” he said.  

Although the type of technology that Samsung uses is intended to improve user experience, Wueest sees the amount of information that we are sharing as a concern: “This is just the beginning. We will see more IOT (Internet Of Things) devices,” Wueest said, referring to the increasing presence of devices that connect to the internet in our homes.

According to Jennifer Duffourg, group manager of Security Response Corporate Communications at Symantec, “Security is an afterthought for many manufacturers with IOT devices.”

“A multitude of things could happen with our private information,” she said. “People need to prepare for [the collection of private information], and they need to understand what they are agreeing to. And manufacturers also need to make sure they are securing the data of their customers properly.”

Samsung was not available for comment. 

The security reasons given for the postponement of the Nigerian presidential election are “flimsy”, according to Washington’s former top diplomat to the country.

The vote - originally set for 14 February - was delayed by the electoral commission to 28 March on the advice of the country’s security services. They said that a six-week military operation against the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, which is to be carried out in the north east of the country, was scheduled to begin on the same day as the election, leaving an inadequate security presence for voters in the rest of the country.

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 - points out that the decision will allow the ruling party more time to counter the opposition’s momentum.

“Postponing elections - in light of the excuse for postponing them, which in my view is pretty flimsy - sets back the democratic process,” said Campbell. “It buys [the ruling party] more time, they can try to regain momentum, on and on it goes.”

A number of Nigerian commentators have also criticised the decision to postpone the vote, expressing their anger that the security forces had become involved in the democratic process.

The election will pit incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) against ex-general Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progessives Congress (APC). The latter party has accused the former of manoeuvring the election delay to their benefit.

Nigerian lawyer in Lagos, Femi Falana, wrote an article in which he described the decision as “a coup against the constitution by the security chiefs” who he believed had committed “treason”.

"As far as the law is concerned, the armed forces have nothing to do with the elections," he added.

Boko Haram have waged an insurgency against authorities in the west African nation’s northern regions since 2009. Ryan Cummings, chief security analyst for Africa at security consultancy Red24, said that the opposition leader Buhari has capitalised on the “lacklustre response by the Nigerian government” towards the radical group during Jonathan’s term and so the postponement may reverse Bhari’s momentum.

“We can't deny that the postponement does not work in favour of the PDP. By extending the vote by six weeks and with the possibility that the government could score a decisive victory or at least make some significant inroads against Boko Haram, an issue which may have debilitated the PDP at the polls, could actually give them momentum going into them,” he adds.

However, the PDP have countered any suggestion that the delay will influence the final outcome of the poll. "We're talking about just a six-week postponement to ensure the election is done credibly. There's no way it can affect the outcome of the election," PDP spokesman Olisa Metuh told Reuters. "It confers no advantage whatsoever on the PDP."

The national security adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki has said that the vote on 28 March could be postponed again if it has to be if further security concerns are present. Campbell argues that the idea the Nigerian military can in six weeks defeat an insurgency that has waged for years “stretches credulity”.

He also warned of the there is a  possibility of unrest across Nigeria if there is a further delay to the vote next month. “If things remain calm now they would not necessarily remain calm in the face of another postponement. I think there would be hell to pay,” he asserted.

Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau today released a new video in which he pledged to defeat the regional coalition currently battling their insurgency. Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and France are working in conjunction to tackle the group as it continues to carry out cross-border attacks in the towns of Niger and Cameroon.

"Your alliance will not achieve anything. Amass all your weapons and face us. We welcome you," he said. "We never rose up to fight Africa. We rose up to fight the world.”

The Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker estimates that the terror group have killed up to 10,404 people since January 2014. In its four-year-long insurgency, which seeks to create an Islamic caliphate in similar vein to that of the Islamic State, the group have captured territory equal to the size of Belgium.

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

Greece will most likely leave the European Union, leaving the country without essentials such as oil and medical supplies and compounding the misery caused by austerity, an adviser to the European Commission has said.

According to Andrew Lilico, the chairman of European Economics, ongoing negotiations between the new Greek government and the Troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) will lead to an eventual Greek exit from the euro, and then the European Union.

However, such an exit would likely serve as a wake-up call to other Eurozone countries, Lilico said. “Things will be very miserable in Greece when they leave, so other countries will see this and decide they don’t want to go through the same.”

The only scenario in which the Eurozone would break down following a Greek exit would be if Greece was economically successful after leaving, he added. “The more plausible threat is if they left the euro and things went well for them, then other countries such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, would want the same.”

However, that is unlikely to be the case, Lilico added, as if they left “the Greeks will run out of oil, medical supplies, all sorts of things. Other countries would then swing back to the mainstream parties. There would be a bit of a crisis for a few days, it would have a number of political consequences.”

British prime minister David Cameron held a meeting of the COBRA emergency committee in Downing Street today to discuss contingency plans for a Greek exit as the crisis escalated. Bookies Paddy Power now have odds of a ‘Grexit’ by 2018 at 5/4, while the Greek debt crisis has seen shares sliding across Europe.

The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, was sticking to his guns today, pushing for a bridge loan to tide the country over until a restructured debt settlement can be reached.

But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Greeks should not expect the Eurozone to accept the latest terms proposed by the Greek government.

With both sides hardening their stance, they are playing “a game of political chicken”, according to Professor John Ryan, an expert on the Eurozone crisis from the University of Cambridge.

But he was more sceptical about the possibility of a Grexit: “There are no legal mechanisms to get rid of a member of the Eurozone. This month is crucial to finding out where this leads. Are we going to get debt restructuring? Germany and other Eurozone countries say no. Syriza have been elected on the basis of getting that debt relief. We have a situation where both sides are negotiating and are not coming to any middle ground. The only way towards Greece leaving the Euro is if Greece default on their debts.

If Greece did leave he added, others may follow. “The markets won’t accept only Greece leaving. It will create a lot more difficulties than the European Central bank and the German finance ministry have forecast.”

“There is a possibility but not a high possibility of a Eurozone breakup. If Greece leaves the euro we could see one or two other countries decoupling.”

Every writer hopes one of his books makes it into the movies. Forty years ago, James Grady got lucky with his very first, Six Days of the Condor, which was turned into the hit Watergate zeitgeist film (albeit shortened to Three Days of the Condor) starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max Von Sydow. Decades later, the book not only remains the platinum standard for Washington-based spy thrillers, but a kind of cultural meme for paranoia.

"Shit, it's starting to feel like Three Days of the Condor, you know?"Breaking Bad’s Hank says to Walt on a 2011 episode, one of many such references over the years. The 1974 book is still in print. The movie pops up frequently on cable.

Now, exactly 40 years after the release of the movie, Grady is back with Last Days of the Condor. Yes, the Redford character, a researcher in a secret CIA unit, is on the run again—albeit wheezing a bit in middle age. He should be on the cover of AARP. Unlike the first time around, however, his innocence is long gone. He’s seen CIA guys go rogue.

So, too, Grady. Even as a 21-year-old Senate intern in 1972, the Montana native had sensed there were clandestine undercurrents to Watergate. Two years later, he went home and wrote Condor “on nights and weekends while working state government jobs,” he says. As much as he had a precocious sense of the secret world that emerged during Watergate, as well as revelations about CIA assassinations and the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, he knew nothing about how to get a book published.

“I sent it through the mail” to W.W. Norton in New York, he says, “and it got picked out of the slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. “The publisher paid me the huge sum of $1,000 and percentages of what they sold it to the movies for. My first movie payment was six times what my dad made in a year as a movie theater manager.”

Grady seemed like a Cassandra with his book, which presaged the rise of the still half-hidden national security state. Now everybody seems hip to conspiracies—maybe too much so. The revelations of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, not to mention such post-9/11 shockers about CIA ghost flights, black sites, torture and the manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, has completed the end of innocence that began with Vietnam. When we catch up to Condor in 2015, he’s living in a whole new world.

“Essentially, I took the iconic young and naive character I created for the Watergate era, shimmered him ahead through the movie and book characterizations into a baby boomer era hero now confronting the post-Snowden world of spies,” Grady says. “Prior to Snowden, few ‘ordinary’ citizens of the world realized just how pervasive the intelligence apparatuses of major countries are in everyone's lives. Such thinking used to be ‘kook’ talk. Now it's common belief and comedian's punch lines.”

And much, much more. A few years ago I called up Grady, an old pal from the shadow world of Washington espionage writers, and informed him that, according to a Soviet defector’s forthcoming memoir, Condor had inspired the Cold War–era, Soviet KGB to launch a secret program modeled on Redford’s CIA job as Grady invented it: To sift through books and movies for new and deadly tricks that Langley might want to appropriate.

“It stunned the hell out of me,” Grady recalled as we revisited that conversation over the weekend. But that was nothing compared to years earlier, when he heard on the news that Iranian assassin had carried out a mission near Washington, D.C., that seemed taken from another scene in Condor.

It was 1980, five years after the movie came out. The year before, Islamic revolutionaries had toppled the CIA-backed Shah of Iran, but things were far from settled. Western-based exiles were scheming to get back into power, and one of the key plotters, Ali Akbar Tabatabai, lived in Bethesda, Maryland, a Washington suburb. On July 22, David Belfield, an American Muslim convert, appeared on Tabatabai’s doorstep dressed in a mailman’s uniform—just like Grady had dreamed up for an assassination attempt on the Redford character in Condor. Unlike in the book and movie, however, Tabatabai fell for the ruse. He opened the door. Belfield pumped three shots into him and fled through Canada to Iran, where he remains today.

“It was right out of my book,” Grady says. “Very weird.”  It gnawed at him so much that he finally found a way years later to reach Belfield (who now calls himself  Dawud Salahuddin) by phone so he could ask him where he got the mailman idea.

Salahuddin wasn’t sure, he told Grady. It might have been the book or movie, but “he said he may have gotten the idea from a friend...” who had seen the movie.

Then came the news of the KGB’s fiction-combing project in 2011, likewise inspired by Condor. It blew Grady’s mind.

“Here we have reality aping fiction, which apes reality, which apes fiction,” he said. “It really closes the loop.”

New loops may open in Last Days of the Condor. It’s not giving away much to say that Grady, now 65, has invented new and novel ways for the bad guys to try and rub out his hero. Does he worry that he’ll inspire yet another assassin, maybe this time from Al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Russians?

“Yes,” he says. “But if I tell a good and 'true to itself' story, I'm equally as likely to tell our good guys what tactics and strategies to watch out for.”

He hopes. Last time, it didn’t go so well.

Jeff Stein is Newsweek’s national security correspondent in Washington, D.C. He can be reached more or less confidentially via encrypted email at spytalk[at]hushmail.com.

The president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, has said he is in talks with the Russian government to let its military use the island nation’s sea and airports. He made the announcement in an interview with Russia’s state owned news agency Itar-Tass today, having previously denied earlier reports that Cyprus had agreed a deal to lease its facilities with the Russian armed forces.

According to Tass, the island nation has agreed to to increase the two countries’ cooperation in the “area of defence” and Anastasiades is preparing to visit Moscow later this month to sign off around 10 joint undertakings between the two countries.

"Discussions about additional capabilities which can be delivered by Russia in the case of a humanitarian operation or an emergency situation are underway,” Anastasiades said, while his defence minister Ioannis Kasoulidis highlighted that there were no plans to have Russian troops stationed in Cyprus, also home to a strategically important British RAF base.

Doubts have been expressed about how genuine the Russian military’s ‘humanitarian’ motives in Cyprus are. Last September at a NATO summit Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s insisted that Russia’s presence in Ukraine was of a humanitarian nature.

Cyprus and Russia have close economic ties. According to Global Financial Integrity, Cyprus is both the largest source and destination of foreign direct investment, while report by the Moscow Times last month estimated that Russian-related business made up around 10% of the Cypriot economy.

“Cypriot-Russian relations have been progressing a while,” Elizabeth Quintana, a military air power and technology expert for the British defence and security think tank Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) says.

Cyprus is currently a key base for RAF’s operations in Iraq. It is a refuelling stop for British operations in the Middle East and the RAF have had six Tornado GR4 aircraft stationed on the island since September in order to carry out air strikes against the Islamic State. “The RAF base in Cyprus is sandwiched between two prospective airbases for Russian planes to use,” Quintana also points out, with the nearest of these airstrips being a mere 50km away from RAF facilities.  

“Based on Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Moscow’s definition of ‘humanitarian’ is dubious. If there is an intention to build forces in Cyprus it must be taken more seriously by NATO and by the RAF,” she adds.

“It is part of a broader project to destabilize NATO. We have already seen the Russians talking to the new Greek government, trying to woo NATO members Hungary and Romania. It is trying hard to find cracks, but so far politically the alliance is holding together,” Quintana says, although she admits Russia’s influence in Cyprus is marginally greater than in mainland Europe.

“They can use the influence they have in Cypriot banks as a means to try and coerce the Cypriot government to review political and military affiliations it has in place,” she says.

A recent report by the New York Times branded Cyprus “a favourite tax haven” for Russian business, as well as for German and Latin entrepreneurs, with around 273,000 companies registered in a country where the population is only 839,000.

John Herbst, a Eurasia expert at the Atlantic Council and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, says that Russia’s approach toward Cyprus ought to be of great concern to NATO and the EU.

“There is no reason to consider this arrangement with Cyprus humanitarian,” Herbst says. “The Kremlin has used a humanitarian cover to pursue geopolitical and even aggressive objectives.”

“The prospective deal with Cyprus is part of a Kremlin move to enhance its military posture in Europe and to develop closer relations with select EU states. These closer relations will give Moscow an ally in influencing EU decisions,” Herbst adds.

Cyprus is an EU member, however it is crucially not a member of NATO, unlike neighbouring Greece and Turkey who are both members. 

International banking giant HSBC came under fire today as it emerged the private Swiss arm of the company allowed thousands of customers to engage in tax evasion schemes and money laundering linked to terrorism and arms trafficking in the biggest banking leak in history.

The enormous cache of account data was initially leaked to the French government in late 2007 by Franco-Italian whistleblower Hervé Falciani, a former IT employee at the bank. In 2014 the papers were obtained by French newspaper Le Monde, who launched an investigation in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and more than 50 other media outlets around the world.

The documents expose the details of around 7,500 Italian, 7,000 British, 6,000 French, 4,600 Belgian, 300 Danish and 80 Finish clients who held accounts within the branch, many of which were undeclared to the taxman. The 30,000 accounts in question hold almost $120 billion in assets.

Among the celebrities who held accounts with the private Swiss branch are singers David Bowie, Phil Collins and Tina Turner, supermodel Elle MacPherson and sport stars Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher and Diego Forlan. King Mohamed VI of Morocco and King Abdullah II of Jordan also held accounts, though none of the above have been accused of any offenses.

According to the ICIJ’s ‘Swiss Leaks’ findings, until 2006 the banking giant managed accounts containing tens of millions of dollars for Saudi Arabian businessmen suspected of donating money to Osama Bin Laden in 2001 and even opened accounts for a U.S. crystal meth gang and a convicted drug dealer.

The ICIJ said: “HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channelled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for third world dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws.”

While off-shore accounts are not illegal, deliberately hiding money from the authorities is considered a criminal offence in most countries. By contrast, Switzerland treats tax evasion as a law infringement punishable by a fine or additional taxation deemed appropriate by tax authorities.

Belgian publication Le Soir revealed that such accounts deprived the country’s economy of around €6 billion in revenue, while wealthy Danes concealed more than 4.8 billion kroner ($730 million) according to The Local Denmark.

In November 2014 France placed HSBC under formal investigation, and accused the bank of “money laundering the proceeds of tax evasion”, The Local France reported. French authorities currently have around 60 cases open against people on Falciani’s list. According to investigators, just 0.2% of French offshore account holders declared they had them.

As well as France, Belgium, Argentina and the U.S. have all launched criminal investigations into the bank’s practices, however the UK is yet to take legal action.

The bank has acknowledged it is accountable for past compliance and control failures and said it is "co-operating with relevant authorities".

Belgium may issue an international arrest warrant for some of the bank’s directors on the grounds that they are not co-operating in a money-laundering investigation.

The leader of Spanish left-wing party Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, met with Falciani today and appointed him to draft a report - a “kind of political programme” - detailing measures to combat fraud and tax evasion using government legislation and regulation, according to online Spanish newspaper El Diario.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is still scheduled for March 3, a spokesman for John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House said on Monday.

A source close to Netanyahu’s office had said Israeli officials were considering amending the format of the speech to perhaps have the prime minister speak in a closed session of Congress or in smaller meetings with lawmakers.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined comment on that report.

The invitation has caused consternation in Israel and the United States, largely because it is viewed as Netanyahu, a hawk on Iran, working with the Republicans to thumb their noses at Democratic President Barack Obama’s approach to nuclear negotiations with Iran.

WASHINGTON/DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama made clear he was some way from a decision on whether to arm Ukraine in its conflict against Russian-backed rebels, saying on Monday he still hoped for a diplomatic solution.

”The measure by which I make these decisions is: ‘Is it more likely to be effective than not?’" Obama said at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who opposes providing Ukraine with weapons to fight separatists in its east.

Russia had violated a September peace deal by sending more tanks and artillery into eastern Ukraine, Obama said, adding that he and Merkel had agreed sanctions must stay for now and Moscow’s isolation would worsen if it continued on its current course.

Merkel is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday with French President Francois Hollande, and European Union ministers held off tightening sanctions on Monday to give the talks a chance.

Merkel and Obama have come under fire from U.S. foreign policy hawks in the Republican-controlled Congress who want weapons sent to the Ukraine army.

The U.S. Senate and House unanimously passed legislation in December that authorized sending arms for Kiev. Obama signed the measure into law but it gave him leeway over whether or when to implement it.

Congressional aides said on Monday lawmakers were working on legislation that would commit Obama to providing arms.

”The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we’re sending them blankets and meals,” Sen. John McCain said at a security conference in Munich at the weekend. “Blankets don’t do well against Russian tanks.”

Nine Ukrainian troops were killed in a 24-hour period over Sunday and seven civilians also died, Kiev said on Monday, with fighting particularly intense around the town of Debaltseve, a major rail and road junction northeast of the city of Donetsk.

But Merkel made clear in Munich her opposition to arming Kiev. “I understand the debate but I believe that more weapons will not lead to the progress Ukraine needs. I really doubt that,” she said.

KREMLIN REJECTS ULTIMATUM TALK

A Russian speaker who grew up in East Germany, Merkel has taken the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution, speaking with Putin by phone dozens of times over the past year and meeting him in Russia, Australia and Italy in recent months.

Last week, Merkel and Hollande met Putin in Moscow and followed this up with a conference call on Sunday also including Poroshenko. But so far no breakthrough has emerged in the nearly year-long conflict that has claimed over 5,000 lives.

On Monday, European Union foreign ministers approved visa bans and asset freezes on more Ukrainian separatists and Russians. But they will wait at least until Feb. 16 before imposing the measures to give peace efforts more time, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

”The principle of these sanctions remains but the implementation will depend on results on the ground,” he said. “We will see by Monday and see how the meeting in Minsk went.”

Sanctions imposed in stages by the EU and United States since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine last March have badly hurt the Russian economy, adding to problems created by the plunging price of oil, the country’s main export.

Moscow warned on Monday that Putin will not be spoken to in the language of ultimatums. Asked about media speculation Merkel had issued him an ultimatum at talks on arranging a summit on Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Govorit Moskva radio: “Nobody has ever talked to the president in the tone of an ultimatum - and could not do so even if they wanted to.”

OBAMA’S OPTIONS

Obama has to decide whether to supply weapons, impose tougher sanctions on Russia in the hope of forcing Putin to compromise, or throw his full weight behind the revised German-French peace initiative.

He said his decision would not rest on a specific point.

”Can we be certain that any lethal aid that we provide Ukraine is used properly, doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, does not lead to over-aggressive actions that can’t be sustained by the Ukrainians? What kinds of reactions does it prompt, not simply from the separatists but from the Russians? Those are all issues that have to be considered,” he said at the White House.

Some of his top advisers, including Ashton Carter, his choice for new defense secretary, increasingly favor providing items like anti-tank weapons, small arms and ammunition.

National security adviser Susan Rice said arms supplies were under consideration but signaled caution, and stressed the need to maintain unity with European allies.

Such a step would be taken only “in close consultation and in coordination with our partners, whose unity on this issue with us thus far has been a core element of our strength in responding to Russia’s aggression”, she said.

In late 2014, fishery regulators announced that for the second consecutive year, there would be no shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine this winter. The culprit? Principally, warming ocean waters caused by global climate change.

Maine in particular is feeling this climate pinch: The water temperature in the Gulf of Maine increased eight times faster that the rest of the world’s oceans in recent years, according to a 2014 study by Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

As a result, while the shrimp fishery is the first to close in New England primarily as a result of our changing climate, it is unlikely to be the last. Some of the Gulf of Maine’s depleted stocks of groundfish, particularly Gulf of Maine cod, have been slow to rebuild from overfishing in the 1980s and 1990s in part as a result of warming water. Lobster has been disappearing from its traditional habitat in southern New England.

Meanwhile, the iconic lobster industry in Maine has experienced record landings in recent years, but more and more of the catch is coming from areas further down the coast toward Canada. And a phenomenon that scientists dubbed an “ocean heat wave” in the spring of 2012 led to an early molt and migration of lobsters that caused a supply glut and subsequent price collapse.

The message here is clear: climate change is taking dollars and jobs away from New England’s fishing communities.

Scientists, fishery managers and industry members recognize the necessity of better understanding this phenomenon, and numerous research projects are already underway. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Rutgers University have partnered to analyze data from oceanographic and fisheries-dependent studies. Their project, OceanAdapt, has confirmed that fish species off the northeast United States are collectively moving to higher latitudes and deeper water in search of the cooler temperatures they require to survive.

Of course, fishermen are the ones who know their ocean the best. So in order to get their perspective on what they are experiencing on the water, the Center for American Progress (CAP) commissioned a poll of participants in the groundfishery as well as the lobster fisheries in Maine and Massachusetts.

The CAP poll shows that majorities of all these fishermen and women believe climate change poses a significant risk to their industry, as warming waters lead to lower profits and lower catch limits. Respondents are deeply concerned these impacts could force them from the fishery or result in the disappearance of traditional markets for their product.

This perspective is consistent with the findings of the “Risky Business” report released last June by a bipartisan committee co-chaired by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer. I was involved as a member of this project’s “Risk Committee,” which found that the American economy faces significant and diverse economic threats from the effects of climate change— rising seas, increased damage from storm surge, and more frequent bouts of extreme heat—all of which will have measurable impacts on our nation.

Each geographic region analyzed by the project faces distinct and significant economic risks. Here in the northeast, projections are already showing that temperature increases in Gulf of Maine waters will restrict habitat for commercially vital species such as cod and lobster. In addition, sea levels are likely to rise by two to four feet in Boston by the end of the century threatening to swamp coastal infrastructure, including the wharves and fish houses critical to sustaining our fishing industry.

These numbers fail to reflect the potential for dramatic “storm surge” events, in which higher sea levels combine with more intense weather activity to increase flooding and storm damage. The Risky Business research finds that these kinds of impacts, combined, could increase annual property losses along the northeast coast from $11 billion to $22 billion—a two- to four-fold increase from current levels.

As vigorous policy debates continue in Washington, the economic impact of addressing climate change and transitioning to a lower carbon economy is understandably a key issue—and one that is not the domain of one side versus the other. Here in New England’s fishing communities, there is serious and legitimate concern for the fishing jobs that will be lost if we don’t act to rein in the emissions warming and acidifying our waters and causing sea levels to rise.

The loss of Maine’s $5 million shrimp fishery should serve as a warning. A similar blow to our $300 million lobster fishery must be avoided at all costs. That will require honest, fact-based discussion and a genuine bipartisan commitment to solutions.

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and three terms in the U.S. Senate, including 12 years as the top Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard.

In his February 4 piece, “The Fraternity No Longer Belongs on the American College Campus,” Alexander Nazaryan recklessly capitalizes on overblown, negative stereotypes of fraternities to imply that Greek life is the catalyst for all the troubles facing campus life today.

The author couldn’t be more off base. Unfortunately, his radical view of fraternity life adds to the litany of media coverage in recent months that seeks to tear down an institution that I believe is as important on college campuses as any extracurricular activity, including athletics, student government and even the hallowed student newspaper.

The author’s piece is flawed for several reasons. But his most egregious error is his apparent insistence that—because a handful of fraternity members are accused of improper behavior—all fraternities and fraternity members are bad. Specifically, the author suggests that the very real challenge of sexual assault on campus must be laid at the feet of all fraternity men.

The reality is, fraternities are taking the lead on educating students about sexual assault prevention and awareness. Not only do fraternities provide training each year to their members around the country, the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), which represents 74 fraternities, has formed a commission of educators, lawyers, researchers and other leaders to provide additional recommendations for addressing and eliminating sexual assault on campus.

I believe our effort, along with the effort of many others dedicated to campus life, is paying off. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Studies, rape and sexual assault on campus has actually declined significantly since 1997.

According to the study, an average of nine out of every 1,000 students in 1997 was a victim of rape or sexual assault. By 2013, that number had dropped to 4.3 per 1,000 students. Likewise, the study showed that women ages 18 to 24 not at college were actually 1.2 times more likely to be victims of rape or sexual assault.

Now, in my opinion, no number other than zero is good enough. This is why I formed the NIC Commission on Sexual Assault, which will meet throughout the spring and summer to tackle this very important issue. At the same time, I feel obliged to tell the true story of fraternity.

Each year hundreds of thousands of men find their home away from home through the fraternity experience. Fraternity members are good men who become better students, better campus leaders and better friends through the fraternity experience. Additionally, fraternities raise and donate tens of millions of dollars to charity and volunteer millions of hours in their communities every year. On average, fraternity men have higher grade point averages and graduate at higher rates than their non-fraternity peers.

Yet, no one seems to pay attention to any of this. So let me share a few examples. At the University of Alabama-Hunstville, members of Phi Kappa Psi have spent months building “tiny homes” as shelter for homeless in the area. The fraternity has partnered with other organizations to help power the homes with solar energy, and to provide support and training to those who live there in order to help them find jobs.

In Mississippi last month, members of Alpha Phi Alpha joined with the American Red Cross in Columbia, Mississippi, and committed to volunteering and raising money for disaster relief in an area that is often struck by tornadoes. And at the University of Utah, the men of Beta Theta Pi have been helping lead the conversation on the campus about sexual assault, and are partnered with the Rape Recovery Center on campus to hold forums on campus for students and specialists.

I am personally offended by the vitriolic attacks of fraternity detractors who prefer knee-jerk reactions to finding real solutions for the challenges facing today’s college campuses. Rather than sniping at an easy target, I believe we would be better served if people spent their time more productively looking for answers to these daunting challenges.

For our part, that’s what the NIC and its member fraternities intend to do.

Peter Smithhisler is president and CEO of the North-American Interfraternity Conference, a trade organization representing 74 national and international men’s fraternities.

The American Civil Liberties Union early Monday withdrew an emergency motion filed late last month in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that blocked the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from collecting all copies of the committee’s full, unredacted report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program.”

The move came after the Department of Justice (DOJ) responded to the motion on Friday night, promising that the Obama administration would not destroy or return to Senator Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, copies of the report without permission from the judge in the ACLU’s lawsuit.

“The government can now assure the court that it will preserve the status quo either until the issue of whether the Full Report is a congressional document or an agency record is resolved, or until it obtains leave of court to alter the status quo,” the Friday brief reads.

Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, explained in a statement, “We now have the on-the-record commitment we sought from the CIA and other agencies that they refused to provide before we filed our emergency motion. Although the CIA is still fighting to prevent the American public from seeing the full torture report, this dispute is for the court to decide. Senator Burr’s extraordinary attempt to interfere with the court’s jurisdiction over the torture report fails.”

Last year, the committee, then headed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, distributed copies of the 6,900-page report to the White House and various federal agencies. Earlier this year, Burr demanded that all copies be returned.

“I consider the report to be a highly classified and committee sensitive document,” Burr wrote in a January 14 letter to President Barack Obama. “I request that all copies of the full and final report in possession of the Executive Branch be returned immediately to the Committee.”

What the committee publicly released last year is a 500-page summary of the report, which describes the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program” as brutal and ineffective. The report also said the agency lied to Congress about the effectiveness of its methods. (The CIA has long denied these allegations.)

In its brief, the DOJ echoed Burr’s sentiment about the sensitive nature of the full document: “[The] Committee as a whole made a determination not to publicly release the Full Report…. The ACLU points to no communication from the full committee that contradicts that clearly articulated intent…. Although the ACLU invites the Court to take sides in this legislative dispute, the Court should resist undoing through litigation what the full SSCI decided through the political process.”

The brief leans toward nondisclosure, but as long as all copies of the full report are not returned to Congress it is covered by the Freedom of Information Act and therefore could possibly be released to the public. 

Editor’s note: The photojournalist who produced this story is not being identified because of reporting restrictions and security concerns.

Yemen was once known for its rich culture and kind people, but today it is infamous for its instability. After the bloody revolution of 2011, Yemenis looked for something to cling to, and many found hope for stability in the Houthis. Once a small group in the highlands seeking to revive their religious and cultural practices, the Houthis--beaten down by the Yemeni government in six wars between 2004 and 2009--waited and rose up when public demand for security finally gave them the backing they needed to act.

By the end of 2014, not only did they have the loyalties of much of Yemen’s north, but they had invaded the capital and held the acting government hostage as well.

In early 2012,  the only shouts one would hear around Sana'a were those calling for friends across the street; someone yelling up to the third floor of a gingerbread-style tower home for the key to be thrown down; the clamor of children playing in the narrow alleyways; and tourists, while rare, eliciting cries of, "Where are you from? Hello! I love you!" loudly around every corner.

Two Yemeni men visit a graveyard and memorial of war martyrs in Sa'ada, Yemen. Seen as a threat to regime stability, the Yemeni government waged a series of brutal wars on the Houthis in their stronghold, the Sa'ada province of Yemen. Though their leader, Hussein al Houthi, was killed in the first war, the Houthis rallied back and subsequent wars devastated Sa'ada city and rural villages, but supporters declared them a victory.NewsweekA year later, “The Scream” took to Sana'a's streets.

“The Scream” is the Houthis calling card (the phrase is translated from al Sarkha in Arabic), proclaiming, "Death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, victory to Islam." It is usually more of a clarion call than a threat, especially when followed by a large smile and belly-laugh by the screamer.

First shouted by Hussein al Houthi in the ancient Grand Mosque of Sana'a in 2004, it was “The Scream” that started the multiple wars of the Yemeni government against the Houthis. Despite the acerbic words, adherents tend to claim it is to call attention to governments of the West, never to harm individuals. The Houthis have never attacked anything of Western interest, and in fact have a common enemy with America–Al-Qaeda.

“We do not really want death to anyone,” said Ali al Bukhayti , the former spokesperson and official media face of the Houthis, during an interview last September. “The slogan is simply against the interference of those governments.”

Yemeni men visit the pilgrimage site in the mountains of Marran, where the former leader Hussein al Houthi was killed.Newsweek

In January 2013, the Houthis held their first mass gathering in years. Despite participating in the revolution, they had not gathered in such large numbers close to the capital. Tens of thousands of men, and about a thousand women, flooded a barren stretch of land outside the capital, gathering supposedly for the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. The dusty mountain landscape was littered with thousands of green flags, posters with the words of "The Scream" and murals dozens of feet high were painted on a mountainside proclaiming, “Welcome to followers of the prophet Muhammad.”  

This gathering, which would be held annually every year since, was no simple religious celebration. On a jumbo screen at the front of the crowd, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al Houthi spoke not only of the day of celebration, but of politics as well and painted his vision of the way forward after Yemen’s revolution.

Standing atop a mountain above the crowd, “Death to America” echoed across the plain. For the first time, it seemed intimidating.

Tents sit knotted together at a protest camp outside Sana'a, on September 8, 2014. Thousands of tribesmen from Yemen's hinterlands joined the Houthis for their "People's Revolution" to oust those they labeled as corrupt leaders and to bring back fuel subsidies. The result was a complete Houthi takeover of Sana'a.NewsweekThroughout 2013 and 2014, the Houthis gradually gained ground in Sana’a and Yemen’s north, holding gatherings where green banners proudly proclaimed each loyalist area. “They are destroying the Old City with these slogans. All the flags are really unnecessary, it’s like they are marking their territory,” said Mohammad Abdo, a resident of Sana’a, while visiting Old City at the end of January.

In essence what the Houthis call for are things that all Yemenis crave: government accountability, the end to corruption, regular utilities, fair fuel prices, job opportunities for ordinary Yemenis and the end of Western influence.

Many Yemenis believe the Houthis are right in pushing out Western influence and decision making, and blame U.S. interference for allowing former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to avoid prosecution or exile for crimes against his people during the Arab Spring uprising. Under a deal he was allowed to step down and still remain in the country.

The presidency was essentially handed over in a one-man election, mandated by the Gulf Cooperation Council as Yemen’s first step in transition, to Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who many Yemenis regard as a puppet of the United States. Mohammad Ali,  a young merchant from Old Sana’a who participated in the Arab Spring, reiterated these beliefs: “The United States supported the Gulf Plan, which seemed like a good idea at the time. But they gave Saleh an easy way out, and our political process is not moving forward. The promises were ink on paper only.” Though the Arab Spring protests gathered thousands of Yemenis to remove Saleh, he still commands the allegiance of thousands more, including the membership of his political party, Moatamer, the largest in the country.

Young Yemeni men take a break from farming their fields in the Salafi-majority area of Dammaj. Salafis -- of the Sunni sect of Islam -- have long clashed with the Houthis, who follow the Zaydi path, a derivative of Shiite theology. In early 2014, the Houthis destroyed the two major schools of Sunni thought in Saada, Dar al Hadith in Dammaj and its sister school in Kitaf, claiming they were feeder schools for Al-Qaeda.NewsweekThe Houthi vision, created by their founder, Hussein al Houthi (who was killed in a 2004 war against the Yemeni government), was picked up and strengthened by their current leader, Hussein’s brother Abdul Malik, and is epitomized in their stronghold in the northernmost province of Sa’ada.

Supporters claim that Sa’ada, the birthplace of the Houthi movement, is now one of the most peaceful and well-run areas in all of Yemen. Residents have nearly 24-hour electricity and consistent water supplies; and the sound of gunfire is almost non-existent and the old city of Sa’ada, which was reduced to rubble less than a decade ago but is now almost completely rebuilt in traditional mud-brick tower house style.

Sa’ada residents proudly described their safe city during a visit in March 2014. “We never even hear gunfire from our house. Can you say this about your city?” said one woman who asked not to be identified. During an anti-government protest last year in Sa’ada, a tribesman in attendance realized I was American. He paused in shock, grinned for a moment and offered me a free flag to wave and said, “Welcome, we love you Americans!”

A Yemeni man lies in Moaiyed Hospital after being shot by state security forces at a Houthi protest camp in Sana'a, September 9, 2014.Newsweek

The Houthis' boldest move came in September 2014, when after months of protesting against the removal of fuel subsidies Houthi fighters swept into Sana’a. Most brigades of the armed forces all but stepped aside.

One Houthi fighter from outside Sana’a stood proudly after the takeover in a room at Moaiyed Hospital, his normally white thobe stained with blood, and his right arm bound in a cast. “I believe in the aims of Ansar Allah [the Houthis]. They get rid of the corrupt and fight for the people,” said the man, who didn’t want to give his name. “See, my arm is bound, but my trigger finger still works.”

The Houthis replaced soldiers by the hundreds at checkpoints around Sana’a and began dressing in military garb. The green flags usually reserved for holidays went up around the city, declaring their dominance.

A Yemeni man supporting the Houthis and dressed in state military gear keeps watch over a victory gathering in central Sana'a, September 23, 2014.NewsweekMonths later, the normally bustling streets of central Sana’a were completely empty on February 6, as the Houthis were in the midst of deciding how to move forward. Houthi supporters cut off the streets and when asked for a reason why, relaxed-looking gunmen on every corner give a similar answer: “They are building the government.”

Later that day power was cut, and fireworks lit up every corner of the sky in Sana’a with the announcement the Houthis would form a new parliament and government council to run the country.

What this means for Yemen is yet to be seen. Though the international community worries about their intense opposition to Western interference in Yemeni politics, officials are more focused on the possibility of flaring sectarian tensions in the country, where sectarianism has historically never been a problem. Increasing attacks and rhetoric from Al-Qaeda has laid fertile ground for sectarianism to grow.

Yemeni women squeeze their way through a narrow doorway into a closed stadium, reserved only for women for a religious and political rally put on by the Houthis. While women are kept strictly separate at public gatherings, this allows them to gather in the thousands at such events, rather than being restricted to the home.Newsweek

The rise of the Houthis came about through a series of tribal, class and border conflicts coming to a head when the common Yemeni needed a strong leader with a clear vision. It’s too soon to know for how long they will hold power, and if they are able to provide security on the streets, consistent service, and a strong state with a way forward that the Yemenis who brought them to power demand. If Yemen descends further into chaos, it is possible they will fall out of favor, just as the many powerful parties before them.

The remains of the Salafi-Sunni religious school on the plains of Kitaf. The school was suspected of training Salafi militants, who would go on to join Al-Qaeda. After warning the students to leave, Houthi militias fought those who remained and flattened the school. As the Houthis attempt to establish their own government in Yemen, many have questioned if they're using fear of militants to control public opinion and project their status as saviors and bringers of peace.NewsweekThousands of Yemeni men gathered in central Sana'a on September 23, 2014 for a victory speech and celebration following their successful takeover of Sana'a and dispersal of tribal leaders.NewsweekA mural depicting paradise is seen on a wall in Sana'a after the Houthi takeover, September 21, 2014.NewsweekMohammad al Khatib holds his baby brother, Abdul Malik, at their home in Sana'a on September 16, 2014. Their father, Wasim al Khatib, was unarmed when he was killed at a Houthi protest by government troops a week after his youngest son was born.NewsweekYemeni tribesmen supporting the Houthis chew qat, a mild stimulant leaf used my the majority of Yemenis daily. While tribesmen camped outside Sana'a brought their personal weapons, as is customary throughout Yemen, all Houthi protests within the city limits were completely without arms.NewsweekKamal, a prominent youth activist, poses for a portrait in his home on January 31, 2015 in Sana'a, Yemen. Kamal and a number of other youth were beaten by thugs, thought to be Houthi supporters, during anti-Houthi protests.NewsweekYemeni men working security guard doors to a stadium packed with Houthi supporters for the start of a three-day political conference on January 30, 2015 in Sana'a.NewsweekThousands of Yemenis return to Sana'a after a gathering for the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Some citizens drove hundreds of miles from Yemen's rural areas to gather and hear their leader speak in Heziez. The events took on a political as much as a religious tone as the Houthis demanded more of their government and rallied around their leadership.NewsweekYemeni boys raise their hands to answer a question in class. Their classroom in the Houthi-controlled area of Sa'ada is better supplied than most schools in Sana'a.NewsweekA young girl visits the martyrs cemetery in Marran. The graves are dedicated to the men who died protecting the Houthi leader, Hussein al Houthi.NewsweekA Houthi supporter looks over shells of missiles left from the last war in Sa'ada, on March 27, 2014. The Yemeni government, accompanied by the Saudis, adopted a scorched earth policy, flattening entire areas. Missiles bearing the name of the United States armed forces still lay on the mountain slopes in Marran.Newsweek

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When a series of big U.S. companies last year moved to reincorporate abroad in inversion deals, some Republican lawmakers and tax policy critics blamed the high U.S. corporate tax rate. Lowering it, they said, would keep companies from fleeing the country.

But a Reuters analysis of the taxes being paid by the six largest companies known to be doing inversions in late 2014 and early 2015 showed that, even before the deals, all were paying below the statutory U.S. federal corporate rate of 35 percent.

Most were well below it. The average effective tax rate for the six companies was 20.3 percent for 2011-2013, Reuters found, using an estimation method reviewed by tax experts that was based on public data for U.S. profits and U.S. taxes.

The Reuters analysis suggests that the surge in inversion transactions may not have had much to do with the statutory corporate income tax. Moreover, it shows Washington’s current debate over business tax reform may be too focused on the statutory rate, neglecting effective rates and the incentives that companies have to shift profits abroad.

The six companies analyzed were Medtronic Inc, Applied Materials Inc, Steris Corp, Mylan Inc, C&J Energy Services Inc and Burger King, which has been renamed Restaurant Brands International Inc.

All six have recently completed or are in the midst of completing inversion-type deals, despite a Treasury Department crackdown in September that slowed inversion deal-making.

Inversions have been around for three decades, but they became more common in recent years. Guided by tax lawyers and accountants, companies have done more than 50 such deals since the 1980s; about half of them just since 2008. 

The deals typically involve a U.S. company buying a smaller foreign rival, then taking on its nationality for tax purposes, while many core operations remain in the United States.

The six companies studied have themselves disclosed 2011-2013 effective tax rates averaging 27.8 percent, or 7.5 percentage points higher than the Reuters calculation.

The discrepancy with the Reuters figure is likely because the companies’ figures include not just U.S. federal taxes, but all taxes, including state, local and foreign. 

In a project for Reuters, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a tax policy think tank in Washington, looked at the six companies’ data somewhat differently, stripping out certain accounting adjustments, and found an average effective tax rate of 22.2 percent over the period.

Tax inversion deals are mainly driven by efforts to shift profits out of the U.S. and to access overseas earnings at little or no cost in U.S. tax, tax specialists said.

”The issue is much broader than the U.S. corporate tax rate being high,” said Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank.

To be sure, some other tax experts and activists say the statutory rate is the key, not only to inversions, but to broad U.S. business competitiveness around the world.

”You fix the rates, you fix it all,” said Grover Norquist, a Republican activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform, which advocates for lower taxes and smaller government.

NO DIRECT CONNECTION

A close look at of some of the six deals suggests no direct connection with the 35-percent U.S statutory rate.

For instance, Pittsburgh-based pharmaceuticals company Mylan is buying the non-U.S. generic drug business of Chicago’s Abbott Laboratories to create a combined company incorporated in the Netherlands and managed from Pennsylvania.

The Netherlands’ statutory rate is 25 percent. However, Mylan’s global effective tax rates, as disclosed in the company’s annual reports to investors, were 16.2 percent in 2013, 20.0 percent in 2012 and 17.7 percent in 2011.

ITEP pegged Mylan’s U.S.-specific effective tax rate at 20.5 percent on average for those same years, and the Reuters analysis found it to be 19.7 percent.

When Mylan announced the Abbott deal in July 2014, it said it expected it to bring many advantages and “to lower Mylan’s tax rate to approximately 20-21 percent in the first full year, and to the high teens thereafter.” A spokeswoman for Mylan declined to comment and referred questions to past statements.

In another deal, Steris Corp, based near Cleveland, is buying out the UK’s Synergy Health Plc, with the combined company to be managed from Ohio, but incorporated in Britain where the statutory corporate tax rate is 21 percent.

Reuters found a 2011-2013 U.S.-specific average tax rate for Steris of 17.2 percent; ITEP’s calculation came to 16.6 percent.

The company has disclosed global effective tax rates averaging 32.1 percent for the same period. A Steris spokesman said the company expects its effective tax rate beginning in 2016 to be about 25 percent. “This transaction is not being driven by tax rates,” he said.

HIGHEST RATE

The U.S. statutory rate is high. Tack on an average of state and local corporate rates and it’s 39.1 percent. No major country has a higher combined rate. The next highest are Japan at 37 percent and France at 34.4 percent.

But the U.S. tax code is uniquely complex. Big companies use elaborate strategies to exploit loopholes to cut their tax costs, which they say shareholders expect them to do.

The gap between the statutory rate and what companies really pay is hard to measure because their tax returns are, of course, confidential. Financial report data can furnish estimates of effective rates, but there is no standard way to do this. Even when measuring marginal effective tax rates, seen by tax experts as the best test of business investment decisions, it’s hard to know the true U.S. tax burdens of large corporations.

Most lawmakers agree inversions are a problem because they erode the U.S. corporate tax base. Corporations today only provide about 10 percent of U.S. government revenues, down from 30 percent in the 1950s.

In his 2016 budget last week, Democratic President Barack Obama proposed steps to curb inversions and what his administration sees as the incentives for doing them. The Republican-controlled Congress, however, is unlikely to agree with his proposed reforms, which may be dead-on-arrival.

One of Obama’s goals is tightening a rule that makes business interest tax-deductible and helps companies shift profits out of the United States via interest payments on loans from foreign affiliates. This is known as earnings stripping.

Another is ending the “deferral” rule that says companies don’t have to pay income tax on active overseas profits, as long as those profits don’t enter the United States. Companies have about $2.1 trillion in profits abroad. Some came from foreign ventures; some from earnings stripping, tax experts said.

The third target is abusive “transfer pricing.” This involves shifting profits out of the United States to lower-tax countries via cross-border, non-market-based payments among the worldwide affiliates of multinationals.

Cutting the 35-percent statutory rate would not change any of these rules. And no politically realistic U.S. rate cut would be likely to level the playing field with, say, Ireland, which has a 12.5 percent statutory rate and is a popular destination for U.S. companies doing inversions, let alone tax havens such as Bermuda, which charges no corporate income tax at all.

”Until we address earnings stripping and the transfer of intangible rights abroad, we’re always going to have this incentive for foreign companies to combine with U.S. companies and strip the U.S. corporate tax base,” said Rosenthal.

Over eight out of every 10 Americans think the measles vaccine is safe for healthy children, according to a national survey released on Monday.

Further, the recent Pew Research Center poll found no evidence of political dividing lines, with the majority of Democrats, Republicans and Independents all believing the measles vaccine to be safe. At 89 percent, Republicans had the highest majority of those who thought the vaccine to be safe, followed closely by Democrats (87 percent) and Independents (83 percent).

Overall, 83 percent of respondents said the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is safe for healthy children, while 9 percent said it’s unsafe. Seven percent of those asked said they didn’t know whether or not the vaccine is safe.

The survey asked specifically about the safety of the vaccine for healthy children; some children, including those who are too young to be vaccinated and kids with autoimmune disorders, cannot be safely inoculated.

The media and public debate over vaccine safety has exploded this year after a measles outbreak that began in a California Disney theme park has gone on to infect more people with measles in the first month of 2015 than the entirety of 2012.

Inevitably, vaccines have become politicized. Last week, with Kentucky senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul, a Republican, was photographed getting a hepatitis A booster shot after his comments that vaccines should be voluntary, thereby gaining back slight credibility with the near-majority of those who support vaccinations. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie also said it should be up to parents to decide if their children are vaccinated, but he also had to walk back his comments last week.

In the recent Pew poll, younger people and those with less education were the most likely groups to respond that the measles vaccine is unsafe. Fifteen percent of 18- to 29-year-olds asked think the vaccine is unsafe, compared with 4 percent of those 65 years old and older. Similarly, 14 percent of people with a high school education or less thought vaccines were unsafe, compared to just 5 percent of college graduates.

Some of the reasons cited by those who questioned the vaccine safety included the belief that it causes “autism and other problems” and mistrust of pharmaceutical companies.

The survey asked 1,003 adults their view on the measles vaccine between February 5 and 8, 2015.  

In a Mosul, Iraq, market, along with citrus, clothing and fish, locals can now purchase timepieces bearing the ISIS brand. The watches, which range in size from a dainty wristwatch to an oversized men’s sporting watch, are encased in glass at the market and sold right below traditional timepieces.

The black-and-white image seen on the terrorist group’s flag appears on the watch face. Its top line reads, “There is no God but God,” and inside the bottom white circle are the words “Muhammad is the messenger of God.” This phrase is a shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith that is sacred to Muslims.  

An ISIS fighter holds a weapon while another holds a flag in Mosul, Iraq.Reuters

Images of the watches were first seen in the West on social media, after jihadist sympathizers shared them among themselves. Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, a jihadist-threat watchdog, confirmed the watches are for sale in Mosul. Katz points out that ISIS has a history of branding various products, including coffee mugs and T-shirts, as part of its larger public relations strategy. But she tells Newsweek that “this is the first time we have seen [ISIS] watches.”

Mosul, the country’s second largest city, is one of ISIS’s primary strongholds in the Middle East. In a propaganda video released by the group in December 2014, British hostage John Cantlie, the group’s de facto newscaster, though against his will, refers to Mosul as the “absolute heartland of the caliphate” and an “ancient trading city.” As Cantlie walks through Mosul, he is seen passing a number of the black-and-white flags, as well as police cars and motorcycles with the ISIS logo imprinted on them.

ISIS hostage John Cantlie in Mosul. Rita Katz/SITE Intel Group

“When it comes to the watches, because it is in Mosul, the most important house for ISIS, it is not surprising that they’d sell these,” Katz explained. “They want the group to be as public as possible. This all goes into showing that the group is legit and accepted by people. Having products with the ISIS brand in a local market makes the people think it is part of the culture.”

Watches have played a curious role in ISIS activities since the group’s elusive leader made an appearance in a video. In the video, a man believed to be ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stands before a camera and gives a speech. On his wrist is a hefty wristwatch shining in the light.

A still image from a video of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with a closeup of his watch.Rita Katz/SITE Intel Group

Since the video appeared, both jihadist sympathizers and government officials have tried to determine the brand of al-Baghdadi’s watch. An official U.S. Department of State tweet implied the watch al-Baghdadi wore is a Rolex, though it tweeted a picture of an Omega watch superimposed on the original image.

.@abusulayman321 Nobody’s a bigger fan of the fruits of capitalism than so-called #ISIS Caliph, wearing Rolex pic.twitter.com/AVSUHwx7PI

— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) September 11, 2014

Some social media accounts claimed it was a watch made by Saudi Arabian company Alfajr, which produces watches that can be set with prayer reminders and keep track of Koran verses. Rolex, Omega and Alfajr did not return requests for comment, and none of the companies have publicly claimed to be the maker of al-Baghdadi’s timepiece. 

Regardless of the make, the new ISIS-branded watches point to a larger rift within the group’s ideology. “The group wants to live in Muhammad’s time,” Katz says, but “Muhammad did not have watches with logos.... But they don’t really care. They use for their advantage whatever works best for them.”

Beyoncé’s self-titled release was a surprise when it dropped, but Grammy voters’ preference for Beck’s rather austere Morning Phase, which took home Album of the Year at Sunday night’s awards show, was not.

Still, the outrage came fast and full of déjà vu. Before Beck had even had a moment to accept his award, Kanye West appeared onstage and motioned as if about to repeat his “I’ma let you finish” moment from 2009, then apparently thought better of the idea and returned to his seat.

West wasn’t joking, as viewers initially assumed. The interruption was again in Beyoncé’s honor, the rapper said after the show. Indeed, Beyoncé’s game-changing album was the critical pick to win and nearly topped the Village Voice 2013 Pazz & Jop poll despite being surprise-released less than two weeks before ballots were due.

“Beck needs to respect artistry, he should have given his award to Beyoncé,” West told E!. “At this point, we tired of it. What happens is, when you keep on diminishing art, and not respecting the craft, and smacking people in the face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration.”

The irony probably isn’t lost on Beck. The shape-shifting, 44-year-old slacker-rapper-turned-indie-hero, who came to prominence with the refrain “I’m a loser, baby / So why don’t you kill me?” and once exclaimed,“Mmm, tweak my nipple!” on the brilliant funk-pastiche record Midnite Vultures, has become the clean-shaven face of Grammy-approved respectability. Amusingly, on Monday The New York Times even dubbed the artist a “polite folk singer”:

pic.twitter.com/RfdlKPKyCU

— Mikael Wood (@mikaelwood) February 9, 2015

And not without reason: Morning Phase, though a fine if somewhat dour record, is Beck’s most conservative release in at least 12 years, if not ever, and one of the few that feels like an explicit throwback to an earlier Beck project (2002’s Sea Change). If nothing else, it fits squarely with the downcast soul of 22-year-old Sam Smith, the other big winner Sunday night. That’s not to mention the racial politics of the Grammys, which last year awarded the white rapper Macklemore prizes for Best Rap Album and Best New Artist over the more talented Kendrick Lamar. Beyoncé’s album speaks “of black family, womanist empowerment and black love,” NPR music writer Ann K. Powers noted in a comment on this year’s outcome. Its losing is "about identity and listeners being moved by what gives them insight into their own lives.

Photos: Glitz, Glamour and Music at the Grammy Awards

Musicians and celebrities tread the red carpet and celebrate tunes at the 57th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. slideshow

But rewarding conservatism over innovation is not new for the Grammys. Here, as many times before, the Album of the Year award feels like a consolation prize handed to an aging iconoclast musician who has mellowed substantially since being denied Grammys for more deserving releases. Consider Bob Dylan’s win 35 years into his career (Blood on the Tracks wasn’t even nominated), or Herbie Hancock’s 2008 victory (ditto Head Hunters). Of course, Kanye West did not garner a nod last year for the most provocative hip-hop album of 2013.

Remember: This is a prize that once ignored Nirvana’s Nevermind (no nomination) in favor of an Eric Clapton Unplugged release; even Prince, who presented Sunday’s award, was nominated but did not win for Purple Rain, his unimpeachable 1984 masterpiece. Beck himself has been snubbed twice: The wonderful, genre-bending Odelay lost to Celine Dion in 1997, while Midnite Vultures lost several years later in favor of what is commonly listed among Steely Dan’s worst albums.

Prince presents the Grammy for Album of the Year to Beck for “Morning Phase.” Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

We may as well steel ourselves now for next year’s ceremony, when Taylor Swift’s 1989 or D’Angelo’s Black Messiah—or both—could well lose out to something as crotchety as Bob Dylan’s Frank Sinatra tribute album. That’s how these things often go: The iconoclast becomes the status quo, snubbed becomes snubber. Album of the Year goes to comfort food, like U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2006 winner), and not bold statements, like U2’s Achtung Baby (1993 loser).

Beyoncé will win Album of the Year someday. Of course she will. But it won’t be two years from now, and probably won’t be five years, either. It will be later, when she is old by pop-star standards (read: over 40) and has settled into a victory lap as contented as Morning Phase. If Grammy history is any indication, it will be for an album that is not her best work. And who will run onstage in protest then?

Journalists in Libya face violent attacks, intimidation, kidnapping and death, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch on Monday.

Since the ouster and death of Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011 Libya has fallen into chaos, and its security situation has been sharply deteriorating since May 2014, as rival governments and associated militias battle for power and influence over the country.

The situation is becoming increasingly difficult to document with the threats that journalists face.  

The report details the dire and dangerous working conditions journalists have faced over the last two years in an environment in which the government and various armed groups have taken advantage of chaos to act with impunity. Journalists also face being taken to court for a raft of violations including defaming public officials.

“The failure by successive governments and interim authorities to protect journalists has wiped out much of the limited media freedom that existed following the 2011 uprising that ousted the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi,” reads the 54-page report, titled War on the Media: Journalists Under Attack in Libya.

It’s a stark difference from the early days after the fall of Qaddafi, when the media briefly flourished and, Human Rights Watch says, “Libyan journalists started to report to news, express opinions, and criticize politicians like never before.”

Between mid-2012 until November 2014, Human Rights Watch documented 91 cases of threats and attacks against journalists, including 14 women. These included 30 kidnappings or short-term detentions and an estimated eight killings. There were also 26 armed attacks against television and radio stations, including at the Tripoli offices of the Alassema TV station and the Al-Nabaa TV station.

Amara al-Khatabi, editor of the Tripoli-based al-Ummah newspaper is one of the journalists who has faced a trial over their reporting and charges of slander and libel. Al-Khabati was was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine in November 2014 for “insulting and slandering” public officials when he published a list of allegedly corrupt judges in 2012, according to the report. Tunisian journalists Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari, have been missing from Eastern Libya since September 2014 and their whereabouts remain unknown.

Libya currently occupies the bottom levels of the Reporters Without Borders annual World Press Freedom Index. The country ranks 137 out of 180 countries with a six-point decline from 2013.

Libya has long been a dangerous country for reporters. Its where photojournalists Chris Hondros, Tim Hetherington and Anton Hammerl both died in 2011 while on assignment. Journalist James Foley was also captured in Libya in 2011 before later being released. In 2012, Foley was kidnapped in Syria and in 2014 became the first Western hostage to be beheaded on camera by ISIS extremists.

Last week, Libya’s army claimed it had seized the port of Benghazi from extremist group Ansar al-Sharia, the latest in a string of properties it has taken back from the group, the Al-Qaeda offshoot in Libya. Experts estimate the army now controls around 90 percent of Benghazi after ousting the group.

In its report, Human Rights Watch  urged the Libyan government, House of Representatives and militia members to publicly condemn attacks on the media. But in an increasingly hostile environment, the report set a bleak tone.

“This is a very dangerous time to be a journalist in Libya,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. “Too many journalists in post-Qaddafi Libya face a situation where saying what you think can get you killed.”