Category Archives: Post Human

Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture

Back in the early years of the new millennium, Scarlett Johansson seemed to have a lane: She starred with Thora Birch in Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowess teen-angst classic Ghost World, with Bill Murray in Sofia Coppolas ennui-soaked classic Lost in Translation, and in the ensemble cast of Paul Weitzs In Good Company. She was a character actor whose existential angst seemed to be in constant combat with the way men saw her, a lead who never overshadowed or overwhelmed the film. And she did not appear to be the kind of actor who would, ten years later, be playing a killer cyborg, right on the heels of playing a drug mule turned superhuman, right on the heels of playing a killer alien.

Johansson has had one of the stranger career shifts of any major female actor in recent memory. Shes gone from indie darling to mainstream action star, and in relatively little time; at just 32, shes already had more phases than some performers double her age. But if you go through her filmography, the transition actually begins to make sense and if you subtly shift the focus of how were considering her, you discover that it isnt that unusual at all.

After debuting, at the age of 9, in North, Johansson steadily picked up steam until she blew up in her late teens, becoming a go-to ingnue for directors like Robert Redford, the Coen brothers, Coppola, Brian De Palma, Christopher Nolan, and Woody Allen, who cast her three times between 2005 and 2008. In the bulk of these films (excepting Redfords The Horse Whisperer), Johansson plays an attractive young woman who motivates the male lead in some way, and though her performances received plenty of critical praise, they tended to blur together in retrospect. Of all her work from this period, Lost in Translation truly stands out not coincidentally, the product of a female director as does Match Point, the peak example of the type of role she was being given in those days.

Aside from the period pieces that most young female actors find themselves in at some point in their early careers, Johanssons first major step in a different direction came with Michael Bays sci-fi flop The Island in 2005. Along with Nolans The Prestige in 2006, The Island indicated a glossier direction, away from the more human intrigues of the films that shed been known for up to that point. That period also coincided with her Allen collaborations, and the contrast between the two worlds, though not uncommon for a marketable actor, indicated that Johansson hadnt yet quite settled on the direction she would go in. However, they did suggest that she had an interest in physicality and spectacle that hadnt been shown before.

The shift began in earnest in 2008, when Johansson starred in the now-forgotten Frank Miller adaptation The Spirit, an attempt to capitalize on the success of Sin City. While that movie turned out to be a disaster, it functioned as a sort of dry run for the role that would change her career: Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, whom she first played in 2010s Iron Man 2. The part was Johanssons decisive leap into the blockbuster world: Unlike other tentpole action films, the Marvel movies tend to transform their actors, due both to the number of times they reprise those roles and the enormous visibility of the films. But the strangest thing about Johanssons experience is that the roles that came next would offer an indirect commentary on those that came before.

Since Iron Man 2, Johansson has played the Black Widow in four more movies. And aside from Marvel, shes made ten other films. Only two of these, Don Jon and Chef, feel like roles that she wouldve played before Iron Man 2. Two more Hitchcock and Hail, Caesar! saw her appear only briefly, and another two were voice roles. Excluding Ghost in the Shell, which just had a ghastly opening weekend, the trio of films that remain makes up her most successful work to date, and the most effective exploration of Johanssons singularity as an actor: Under the Skin, Her, and Lucy.

All three of these movies are very different, but they have a shared gene that makes Johansson feel so natural in them. Jonathan Glazers Under the Skin is an enigmatic exploration of identity and human desire, with Johansson playing an alien who seduces, kidnaps, and then kills men. In Spike Jonzes Her, Johansson never actually appears onscreen, voicing the operating system that Joaquin Phoenixs Theodore Twombly falls in love with. And in Lucy, Johansson turns the typical story of an American woman abroad who runs afoul of a criminal element into a strange riff on the action hero, in which Johanssons character essentially becomes God.

In none of these films does Johansson play a regular person. Instead, with a savvy awareness of her own distinct physicality, Johansson and her directors riff on the nature of personhood, taking advantage of her power as a screen presence to isolate certain elements and call attention to their removal. In Under the Skin, its humanity; in Her, its the body; and in Lucy, its the limitations of natural law. These films explore and subvert the concept of what a woman on film can be, and especially how a beautiful woman appears to a male viewer; in that sense, they can almost be read as a direct response not a refutation, necessarily, but a reaction to or progression from the work of her earlier career. And it doesnt seem like a coincidence that, while Johanssons more conventional performances in Don Jon and Chef were well-received, neither came to define her career like these other films did.

With these films, Johansson has become our leading avatar for characters exploring the line between human and nonhuman. Although far less effective than Under the Skin, Her, and Lucy, Ghost in the Shell is no different, placing Johansson in the place of a robot with a human mind a metaphor for an actor inhabiting a role. While the evolution of her career appears to be unique in comparison to most other major female actors the closest analogues might be Angelina Jolie and Keira Knightley, who also successfully turned themselves from ingnues into action heroines it actually feels quite common when you consider her next to men, who often make this kind of transition. (See: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling.)

Of course, most men arent given the same imperative to explore the way the world interacts with their bodies and selves nor do they tend to do it with the kind of ingenuity and experimentalism that Johansson has. And with her next film, Rough Night, being a comedy, we could soon get a reminder that there isnt any one lane Johansson wants to work in. If her characters tend to explore the edges of what it means to be human, than she seems interested in exploring the edges of what it means to be a movie star.

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An investigation is underway after two human thigh bones were found displayed prominently on the pavement outside a north London pub.

Dan Gardner told the Islington Gazette he had noticed the bones as he headed back from his local The Crown in Cloudesley Square, Barnsbury on Sunday afternoon.

The 44-year-old said: I tried to ignore it, telling myself they were animal bones.

Eventually, Gardner called the police.

They reckoned the bones were femurs. It certainly made for an interesting Sunday.

Its just odd, as whoever laid the bones there clearly wanted them to be found. The bag was open and it was in broad daylight with people walking about.

A Met Police spokesman said the force had been advised by a specialist that the bones appeared to be human and are not believed to be ancient.

He added: It is also too early at this stage of enquiries to confirm if the discovery is suspicious or not. No arrests have been made.

Femur bones are both the longest and strongest bones in the human body, extending from the hip to the knee.

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Human Thigh Bones Found Dumped Outside North London Pub - Huffington Post UK

A viral Facebook entry about child sex trafficking posted by a concerned Southern California mom, Diandra Toyos, has reached tens of thousands of people through shares, likes and comments. Unfortunately it is a misinformed and ultimately harmful depiction of what this crime is about and how it happens in the United States.

In her post, Toyos relays the story of her familys recent outing to Ikea, which was interrupted when two men followed her, her mother and her children through the store, despite their efforts to elude their pursuers. This was a terrifying incident and it reminds all of us of the need to be cognizant of our surroundings.

The problem is that Toyos framed herself and her family as targets of human traffickers in the post. There are zero indicators of human trafficking in Toyos story. Zero.

I wish I could say the post nonetheless will help make us all better safe and vigilant than sorry. In fact, I find that it so misrepresents the dangers, warning signs and risks associated with sex trafficking that its readers and likers may now try to protect kids by watching for the wrong things in the wrong places. They may miss real sex trafficking as it happens; they may miss the opportunity to extend a lifeline to child who needs their help. What people dont understand about sex trafficking can prove lethal to kids.

I'm a professional in the anti-trafficking field, and I have encountered thousands of child sex-trafficking cases in the United States. I have never seen, read or heard about a real sex-trafficking situation in which a child was abducted by traffickers in broad daylight at a busy store under a mother's watchful eye. Its just not the way it works.

Traffickers tend to coerce their victims because hauling them off is too risky. Their tactics generally arent the kind that leave physical bruises. Victims are recruited, manipulated, made dependent. The psychological and emotional ties they establish are highly effective. Trafficked children are unlikely to attempt escape.They often won't snitch on their traffickers even if law enforcement approaches them.

Among common patterns of sex-trafficking recruitment and control: Parents or foster care parents selling their children. Or runaway, homeless youth, many of whom identify as LGBTQ, picked up at bus stops by traffickers who exploit their hunger and need for shelter. Or a young girl who falls in love with a man who says he loves her too, then pimps her out.

And while child sex trafficking can happen to anyone, children of color, children with a past history of sex abuse, children who come from broken or unstable homes, children who face poverty, and children with disabilities are especially vulnerable.

The most pernicious part of the viral Facebook post is its comments section. As sex-trafficking survivors and anti-trafficking advocates myself included tried to correct the misconceptions in it, and tried to alert the public to the harms caused by misunderstandings and sensationalism, we were met with anger and outrage.

Sound bite quotes and statistics were thrown back at me in an attempt to highlight my ignorance on the subject. Human trafficking happens everywhere, I was reminded. Its in our own backyards. These are the exact phrases my colleagues and the anti-trafficking movement publicized years ago to raise awareness. We never imagined theyd be used to challenge our own expertise and in defense of efforts that threaten victims.

Worse, as the stalking story was praised by commenters, heart-breaking and accurate trafficking narratives, offered by survivors, got hijacked and undermined. Attempts to inform were interpreted as attacks on protective parents. Online, the truth was ridiculed, invalidated, silenced, shut down. All of this from people who claimed to care about child sex trafficking.

The public imagination too easily aligns with the kind of abduction fears portrayed in the Facebook post and in the comments that followed. Before you post such a tale, or like it or add a comment, do your homework. Think critically about what effect such narratives and responses may have on those most at-risk, on survivors and on real attempts to educate people and fight this terrible crime.

If you want to protect your children, listen to the messages of those who know this crime best. Pay attention to statistical reports, seek out the interest groups who are working on this issue, look at the evidence presented by survivors. Dont let the understandable sympathy engendered by a scary story blind you to what sex trafficking is really about.

There are scores of people dedicated to keeping children safe, healthy and protected from the horrific reality of sex trafficking in our country. We care about victims and survivors. And we know what we're talking about.

Lara Powers has been working to eradicate child sex trafficking for half a decade. She lives in Washington.

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Why a mom's Facebook warning about human traffickers hurts sex-trafficked kids - Los Angeles Times

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will consider whether corporations may be sued in U.S. courts for complicity in human rights violations abroad.

At issue is the 1789 Alien Tort Statute, which has been revived by human rights activists as a way to seek compensation for atrocities committed overseas.

Most federal appeals courts that have considered the issue have said the law allows suits against corporations as well as individuals. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York threw out the case at issue, filed by those who alleged that policies of the Arab Bank fostered terrorism in the Mideast.

Victims of attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories said a New York branch of the bank distributed millions of dollars to terrorists and their families over a 10-year period.

[Supreme Court limits lawsuits alleging atrocities abroad]

The Supreme Court tried to address the corporate liability issue once before. But in a 2013 decision involving a petroleum company, the court instead said the case could be decided on other grounds. It said the allegations in the case did not have a close enough connection to the United States.

The current case is different, said attorneys for approximately 6,000 people who were injured or are survivors of those killed in attacks that occurred from January 1995 to July 2005.

This contact with the United States is no fleeting detail, they wrote. Rather, it was a key aspect of the scheme. The U.S. dollar is the preferred currency for transferring money among terrorist front groups and paying the families of martyrs in locations such as the West Bank and Gaza.

They allege that accounts at the Jordanian-based bank served as paymasters for Hamas and other groups, including paying the families of those killed in suicide attacks.

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS), passed by the first Congress, is short but ambiguous, according to the courts that have considered it. It reads: The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.

The bank had urged the justices not to accept the case. The courts previous decision dictates the outcome, the bank said.

The court would quickly discover that there is no need to reach the question of corporate liability because petitioners ATS claims do not have a sufficient nexus to the United States to be litigated in U.S. courts, the bank said. Everything about this case is fundamentally foreign it involves foreign plaintiffs suing foreign defendants for injuries that occurred on foreign soil as part of a long-running conflict between foreign parties.

The court will hear the case in the term that begins in October.

Justices wont revive ballot-selfie prohibition

The court without comment decided not to review a lower courts decision striking down New Hampshires prohibition on voters taking photos of their completed ballots.

[Is a ballot selfie free speech or threat?]

The states ballot-selfie ban was found to be an unconstitutional restraint on free speech by a district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.

About two dozen states have laws prohibiting voters from sharing photos of themselves with their ballots. But they differ in degree, and many are being challenged.

The states say the bans protect voter secrecy and combat fraud by, for instance, keeping those who would sell their votes from providing evidence that they had voted a certain way.

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Supreme Court to weigh corporations' liability in human rights violations abroad - Washington Post

DURANGO Curled up in a den on an acorn-rich hillside, a hibernating bear and her three fuzzy cubs face increasingly perilous conditions.

People in homes 200 yards below constantly tempt them with food this 180-pound sow knows well how to navigate garbage-scented urban smorgasbords in late summer if acorns and berries vanish. But state policy requires extermination of bears repeatedly caught eating garbage. Record numbers are dying. And the dozing bears also feel warmer temperatures near their rocky den that shorten hibernation.

Now, near the top of the hill, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife research team with a tranquilizer dart on a 6-foot jab poleis creeping toward them.

This den visit is one of the last in a six-year study of black bears in Colorado that challenges core assumptions state wildlife managers have relied on for decades. Rising conflicts with people motivated the CPW study, which will be published this year. Seldom have scientists tracked and monitored so many bears so closely, even analyzing fur to verify what bears ate.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The findings are expected to change human efforts to control bears.

CPW researchers concluded that increasing bear-human conflicts do not mean the bear population is growing but that bears are adapting to take advantage of urban expansion. This will compel a rethinking of Colorados current approach of boosting bear hunting based on the number of conflicts reported in an area. If bears arent multiplying, heavy hunting could hurt the species.

The researchers also found that bears who eat garbage do not become addicted. This clashes with the current belief that has justified a two-strikes policy of euthanizing food-conditioned bears. CPWs team determined that bears use human food when necessary to boost their weight so they can reproduce but switch back to natural berries and acorns when possible.

CPW tracking established that rising temperatures around dens and urban development in bear habitat significantly shorten hibernation which means more time for bears to clash with people.

And Colorados bear population could decline if current trends and practices continue. In southwestern Colorado around Durango, where researchers studied 617 bears starting in 2011, the female bear population decreased by 60 percent.

We could see a ratcheting down of the bear population, said CPW biologist Heather Johnson, leader of the research, who used radio collars and monitored movements of 40 bears at a time.

Human development is really expanding, she said. Theres shrinking safe space for these wild bears to be.

Colorado officials quickly could end their policy of euthanizing bears in response to the findings, Colorado State University conservation biologist Barry Noon said. However, he said, the key driver of bear populations is going to be the carrying capacity of the environment. And that is going to be related to soil moisture and plant productivity which is directly related to the climate. You cannot change policy overnight on accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, rising temperatures and changes in precipitation. We will want to be addressing these ultimate factors that are driving wildlife populations.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Crew members know B268 as a bear who stays moreor lesswild, a 5-year-old who gorges on chokecherries, serviceberries and acorns despite living within sight of loaded, green, 50-gallon trash cans sitting near homes at the edge of Durango (pop. 20,000).

She is surrounded. Shes got this one ridgeline. Theres houses all around, and shes behaving for the most part the way we want a bear to behave, Johnson says. She has hopscotched around this landscape trying to be a natural bear as best as she can.

They also know B268 has not been moving since November.

Crouching in snow and ice on the hillside 50 yards from her den, CPW crew members speakin low voices, saying they expect to see perhaps two cubs. Heading into hibernation, B268weighed 220 pounds, relatively robust. Crew members whisper that they expectB268 will be, like most bears in the study, an easy, groggy target for their tranquilizer dart.

She might growl a bit, then slump into a deep torpor at the back of her cave with any cubs, the researchers say. They easily could take measurements, inject ID chips at the backs of any cubs necks and slip off B268s collar to get data it held showing her precise locations every hour this past year.

But, as the crew scrambles, rustling through dry oaks and peeking into the den, B268 catches wind. She stirs, as if from a bad dream. Johnson and fellow CPW biologist David Lewis see she had given birth to three cubs, now crawling against her furry belly, hungry for more of her milk.

Johnson and Lewis are further surprised to see B268s den has two openings. So much for the easy entrapment. Lewis realizes he has only seconds. He dives forward with the pole. He pushes the tranquilizer into B268s left shoulder.

She awakens. Lewis and Johnson stand steady at the front of the den. B268 bolts out the back. She climbs on top of the rocks over the den where, bristling in the sunlight against the blue sky, she jerks her head right and left, looking around. Then B268 bounds away, nearly toppling CPW technician Emily Gelzer.

Bear! she shouts.

B268 runs uphill, claws churning snow and ice, toward cliffs. She runs about 100 yards, leaving her cubs behind in the den, writhing in still-warm dirt.

The researchers watch, worrying theyll lose B268.

Meanwhile, the cubs, about 7 weeks old, begin shivering.

Johnson improvises, lifting the cubs out of the den and having crew members and observers hold them inside their down coats as she and Lewis look for B268. The cubs squirm and growl, tumbling over one another, squinting in the sunlight, batting the air with tiny claws.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

For decades, Colorado wildlife managers have been trying to control bears, aiming for peaceful coexistence with people.

But theyve lacked and still lack key information: the overall number of bears statewide. Now as Colorados 5.54 million human population expands toward a projected 10 million, rising bear-human conflicts present practical and ethical conundrums. The number of bear-human conflicts, more than 1,200 in 2015, is growing more than twice as fast as the human population by about 4 percent a year.

Theres evidence suggesting that bears, like other large carnivores once common in the West, could be aced out in the future.

Two decades ago, before Colorados population boom, state wildlife managers counted about 600 bear deaths a year, according to data reviewed by The Denver Post. The number of bear deaths surged to more than 2,000 in 2014. Vehicle kill increasing numbers of bears. Scared cubs sometimes mistake power poles for trees and are electrocuted as they scramble from danger.

For our agency, it is a huge issue. It is only going to get worse a lot worse, Johnson said. If bears are denning less, theyre active longer. Theyre interacting with people more. Its going to change the numbers of interactions people have with bears. We should expect our rate of interactions with bears to really increase.

CPW officials say they lack info because counting bears, often elusive in remote areas, can be costly. No statewide population survey has been done. CPW leaders have estimated 17,000 bears, based on collection of hair-snag samples and extrapolations. Theyve said the estimate isnt reliable, that bear-counting methods have changed and that, with no consistent counting, state wildlife managers dont really know whether the bear population is increasing or decreasing.

Yet Colorado officials have allowed increased hunting, issuing 17,000 bear-hunting licenses in 2014, up from 10,000 in 1997.

The CPW researchers determined that, at least in southwestern Colorado, bear-human conflicts cannot be taken as proof of a growing bear population. Johnson said computer plots show conflicts happen because bears wander into cities looking for food when natural foods arent available during dry years, which with climate change is expected to happen more often.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Bears are changing their behavior, shifting to forage inside cities when necessary, then shifting back to natural food when that is available, Johnson said. Monitoring data show 80 percent of bears entered Durango during dry summers and feasted without becoming addicted. About 15 percent continued to forage regularly but not exclusively in Durango. Bears can smell food from more than a mile away. Johnson said they have long memories and quickly adapt to obtain food without getting caught.

They recognize risks of foraging in cities, but also benefits, she said.

During the study, CPW officials worked with Durango officials to put bear-proof trash cans at homes in some neighborhoods. They found that this reduced bear-human conflicts. In areas without bear-proof cans, conflicts increased sharply.

This research will go a long way towards taking the guessing game out of how to better manage black bears and reduce conflict, said U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Stewart Breck, who has focused on carnivore ecology and behavior. The question is whether or not people will listen.

Beyond foraging, CPW researchers focused on hibernation. They determined that bears hibernate seven days less for every 1.8-degree temperature increase at their dens. In addition, for every 10 percent increase in overlap of foraging terrain with urban development, hibernation decreased by three days.

As the average temperatures in this state increase, Johnson said, we should expect our bears will sleep less.

That means bears probably will be more active, leading to more potential encounters with people.

The end result? Bears lost out, because even though human food helped them reproduce, fewer were able to survive. From 2011 to 2016, CPW researchers documented a drop in the female bear population to 84 from 200, mostly due to a dry year in 2012 that drove more bears into Durango. The population didnt bounce back.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Colorado Parks and Wildlife researcher Heather Johnson works on taking weight, measurements and vital signs on a sow black bear outside her den on Raider Ridge on March 6, 2017, in Durango. Johnson is heading up a six-year study to determine the influence of urban environments on black bear behavior and population trends.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Colorado Parks and Wildlife researcher Heather Johnson works on taking weight, measurements and vital signs on a sow black bear outside her den, on Raider Ridge on March 6, 2017, in Durango. Johnson is leading a six-year study to determine the influence of urban environments on black bear behavior and population trends.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Colorado Parks and Wildlife researcher Lyle Willmarth works on taking measurements on a sow black bear outside her den on Raider Ridge on March 6, 2017, in Durango. Willmarth is part of a team woking on a six-year study to determine the influence of urban environments on black bear behavior and population trends.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Colorado Parks and Wildlife researcher Lyle Willmarth works on taking off a tracking collar on a sow black bear outside her den on Raider Ridge on March 6, 2017, in Durango. Willmarth is part of a team woking on a six-year study to determine the influence of urban environments on black bear behavior and population trends.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

Colorado Parks and Wildlife researcher Heather Johnson looks at the paw pad of a sow black bear outside her den, on Raider Ridge on March 6, 2017, in Durango. Johnson, is heading up a six-year study to determine the influence of urban environments on black bear behavior and population trends.

As the tranquilizer takes effect, B268 collapses and tumbles down through snow. Johnson and Lewis scoot her onto a tarp. They put an orange cap over her eyes for protection. They take her pulse and haul her back to a ledge by the den.

They insert oxygen tubes in her nose, feeding her air as a precaution as they work over her body. They snip off fur for testing and remove the radio collar. Three months hibernating and the birth of her cubs dropped her weight to 180 pounds.

Over the past year, B268 survived mostly by crisscrossing the hillside above the city, but she also popped into neighborhoods and the citys water supply reservoir now and then. Tracking data show she avoided businesses, schools and government offices.

The cubs (B599, B600, B601), from this birthplace, likely will hang with their mother until 2018. Sows push cubs away as 2-year-olds when boars swing back for more breeding. The cubs two males and a female will wander up to 50 miles seeking sufficient berries and acorns, unless they become habitual city bears. A young bear must fight off older bears in establishing foraging areas.

Their mortality risk will be a lot lower in the wild than in town, Johnson said.

The cubs have a 50 percent chance of surviving one year.

The CPW team hoistsB268 back into her den, laying her on her right side the way she was when they interrupted her hibernation. Johnson strokes her fur and lifts her leg. And she tucksB599, B600 and B601 against B268sbelly.

Feeling the rising and falling of her breathing, the cubs settle, closing their eyes. B268 licks them and her eyes open slightly as the tranquilizer begins to wear off.

And now in the den, protected above the city, theyll be about as safe as bears can be into spring, Johnson says. Its definitely a lot safer than them being out there in the world.

RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

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A 6-year study of Colorado bears is upending assumptions about their encounters with humans - The Denver Post

Diandra Toyos was casually browsing for a new couch with her mother and three children at IKEA last week when she felt a suspicious set of eyes staring at her.

The mom from Covina, California, said a middle-aged man was circling the area, getting closer and closer to her 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, who were testing out the furniture.

This was someone who was clearly watching and following me and my children, Toyos told CBS News. I know to some a gut feeling doesnt mean anything, but that coupled with what we actually saw occurring was very unsettling.

Toyos says as she moved throughout the store, the man followed close behind. Then another man, who appeared to be in his 20s, joined in. He also appeared to be circling the family, occasionally picking up items and putting them down as he walked through the showrooms.

We had a gut feeling something was going on, but we hoped we were wrong and they would move on, Toyos said.

The family decided to take a 30-minute break on a couch in one of the stores display rooms. The problem, Toyos said: They sat down on a couch right across from us the entire time. As soon as Toyos stood up, she grabbed a store employee and thats when she says she lost them.

Something wasnt right. I am almost sure that we were the targets of human trafficking, Toyos claimed in a Facebook post detailing the creepy encounter.

The post went viral with more than 105,000 shares mostly from concerned parents.

Before leaving the store, Toyos stopped by IKEAs security desk to report the incident. Though IKEA has not yet returned CBS News request for comment, Toyos says officials at the store told her they would review the footage and take any necessary steps from there. She hasnt heard any updates since.

The Covina Police Department said they only heard about incident through social media.

I saw this when it came out, but I am not sure if we were notified by the woman, Gregg Peterson, public information officer for the department, told CBS News. It definitely appears to be a stretch to consider this a human trafficking issue, but that is just my opinion.

Human trafficking expert witnessDr. Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco agreed.

Anything is possible, Mehlman-Orozco told CBS News. Its just highly improbable.

If you look at evidence in cases of convicted human traffickers, kidnapping is very rare, Mehlman-Orozco explained.

In 2016, human trafficking activist group Polaris reported learning about 8,042 cases of human trafficking in the U.S. a 35 percent increase from the previous year. More than 31,650 total cases of human trafficking have been reported to theNational Human Trafficking Hotlinein the past decade.

Its clearly a growing threat, which Mehlman-Orozco believes should be addressed through fact-based education not viral posts on social media.

These types of stories perpetuate misinformation, which leads to people being misinformed about how human trafficking happens in real life, she said. Its not like a Hollywood movie. People arent coming up and kidnapping victims like in the movie Taken.

Human traffickers generally appear extremely kind and knowledgeable, Mehlman-Orozco said. They speak and act on par with whoever their target is, typically kids in their early teens.

Its not happening overnight or as some people have described in a matter of seconds or minutes, she said. Ive seen them take as long as a year or two years before they lure their victim away. Its a long-term process.

First, they find someone vulnerable, usually from a homeless shelter, school or social media. Then they lure their victims through false promises, faux relationships, deception and coercion.

They build a trust with their victims to make it seem like theyre consenting participants, Mehlman-Orozco explained. They very much behave like a co-conspirator.

Mehlman-Orozco has conducted over 2,000 interviews with human traffickers and victims, and she says shes never heard of a situation where someone was trafficked or kidnapped from a public place like IKEA.

But that doesnt mean Toyos didnt have reason to be concerned.

In my initial post, I said thats what it felt like was happening to us, Toyos said. But Im not an expert (nor do I claim to be).

Toyos says she wanted to share her story as a warning for parents to keep a closeeye on their children.

I never claimed to know exactly what was going on, just that they were clearly watching and targeting my children for something, she said. I simply wanted to share an experience that shook me and reminded me to be aware and watch my children. I hoped by sharing it, my friends and family would do the same.

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Mom's warning about "human trafficking" at IKEA goes viral; what you need to know - CBS News

Johansson plays a cybernetic assassin in Rupert Sanders' moody and atmospheric Ghost In The Shell

It's possible that when we all die and are reborn as cyborgs or aliens, we'll look like Scarlett Johansson: white and bewildered, gamine-haired and supremely athletic, fierce on the outside and gentler within. The actor's recent list of post-human roles is impressive. She is an extraterrestrial seducer sucking men's souls in Under The Skin; a human-CPU-God hybrid in Lucy; a cybernetic assassin in Ghost In The Shell, which is our subject today. Mind you, even devoid of her physical self, she still embodies the voice of artificial intelligence, as in Her, in which she purrs her way into the consciousness of that world.

What inspired all of this? Her box office appeal (solid, but nothing spectacular) or her bodily presence (not really, in fact she possesses the shape of a Renaissance painting model)? We'll have time to mull that over in Ghost In The Shell, an entertaining, self-serious and somewhat derivative adaptation of hugely popular Japanese manga comics. The whitewashing uproar has subsided -- why is a Caucasian actress playing an iconic Asian cyborg superheroine? -- and yet the film unwittingly courts opposition argument by telling a story of identity theft and manufactured memory.

"You are what we all will become one day," intones a scientist played by Juliette Binoche as she looks at Johansson -- and we're tempted to take that prophecy as a sort of curse.

What we all will become is a cyborg with the "ghost" inside -- the human soul, that is, still valued as a superior quality even in a movie that relies less on human acting than on computerised imagery. Johansson is Major Mira, a fearless operative of Section 9 and finest prototype of human-machine hybridity. Her antiterrorism task force safeguards the dystopian city that has Japanese letterings though it looks like a zonked-out rendition of Hong Kong. Or maybe it just looks like Blade Runner with a 100-times bigger budget: the image in Ghost In The Shell is gorgeous, a cyberpunk cityscape of lurid holograms, iridescent freeways and shimmering neon fogs, all quivering under the nearly-endless rain and heavy skies. When the light is dim, the grey slabs of apartment blocks spell gloom.

The story involves cerebral hacking, memory wiping, brainwave streaming, and a "deep dive" into the downloaded consciousness of a geisha robot (seriously). But principally it's about Major's quest to find out about her past (she's in the same rut as Jason Bourne, with their purloined memory). This is a world where most people are "enhanced" and where a suspect terrorist (Michael Pitt) oozes a robo-grunge charisma of 1990s rock musicians. Major's signature move is to take off her clothes and do a vertiginous plunge into the mayhem in the near-nude -- only that she's not nude, her sexless shell exposing her ambivalent state of being, not a machine, not a human, and certainly not a woman.

Fans would find a lot to pick on -- and to cheer, I suppose. For average viewers, the pacing is quick and the stunning visuals keep you fascinated. For all the supposedly nerdy machinations of the plot, nothing is actually too complicated: the original comics Ghost In The Shell came out in 1989 and had all the cultish elements, but the narrative of an android in search of its inner humanity has since become a little too familiar, from Blade Runner all the way to AI: Artificial Intelligence, with detours in The Matrix and even in Johansson vehicles such as Lucy and Her.

That question of identity, of who Major actually is under the shell, is plain in itself. The film, however, perhaps adds new layers through the fact that it's an American film with purportedly Japanese (or international) influences. Skin colour and national characteristics are blithely mixed here -- you have the American corporate type, a French actress playing chief scientist, and Takeshi Kitano, one of Japan's most recognisable faces, playing the police chief (he's always fun to watch). Major's back story, once revealed, will only fuel the whitewashing debate should one care to pursue it to the end.

In a year when we'll soon see the reboot of Blade Runner, we can't help but wonder why the future is so glum. Here, Johansson has slipped into her shell with smile-less professionalism and inhabits the futuristic cityscape infested with cyborg yakuza with ease, and not with joy. There's no other way for director Rupert Sanders but to take the material very seriously and transform the geeky essence of the narrative into popular entertainment for a global audience. At that level, Ghost In The Shell doesn't disappoint; its appeal is moody and atmospheric, and the appearance of depth makes us feel less guilty. We only wish that Johansson would soon come back to Earth and play human. No more half-creature. That way the talk of humanity may seem fresher -- and real.

Ghost In The Shell

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche.

Directed by Rupert Sanders.

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Scarlett does non-human, again - Bangkok Post

The State Department notified Congress on Wednesday that it supports selling F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain without requiring that the tiny island monarchy in the Persian Gulf first improve its human rights record.

The decision to proceed with the sale amounts to an abrupt reversal of an Obama administration decision. Last fall, the State Department informed Congress that it would pursue a $5billion sale of 19 Lockheed Martin F-16s and related equipment to Bahrain. But it included the precondition that Bahrain curb human rights abuses, amid a crackdown on dissidents among the Shiite majority protesting the countrys Sunni rulers.

The about-face reflects the Trump administrations determination to train its focus on countering Irans influence in the region. The Sunni leaders of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain consider the Shiite theocracy of Iran to be a regional threat to their existence. Bahrain has a unique position for U.S. national security, too, as the home of the Navys Fifth Fleet headquarters, responsible for keeping the shipping lanes open in the waterways traversed by oil tankers.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who met this month with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has said that the United States should give priority to its own strategic interests, part of the Trump administrations America First philosophy.

The State Department declined to confirm it has decided to drop the arms-sale leverage it had used to promote respect for human rights in Bahrain.

As a matter of policy, the department does not comment upon or confirm proposed U.S. defense sales or transfers until they have been formally notified to Congress, a State Department official said.

Human Rights Watch urged Congress to restore human rights as a precondition of sale.

At a moment when Bahrain is in the middle of an intensified crackdown, removing the conditions attached to the F-16 sale will validate hard-liners in the government who want to completely silence dissent and walk away from commitments on reform, said Sarah Margon, the Washington director of the advocacy group. Congress should use its authority to correct course and, unless the conditions remain, block the sale.

But in a statement released by his office Wednesday night, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there are better ways to get Bahrain to treat its own citizens with dignity than setting preconditions for arms sales.

This type of conditionality would be unprecedented and counterproductive to maintaining security cooperation and ultimately addressing human rights issues, he said in a statement. There are more effective ways to seek changes in partner policies than publicly conditioning weapons transfers in this manner.

The State Department notification kicks off a 40-day review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, although it could be shorter if everyone on the committee clears the sale, or longer if a member places a hold on it. That is followed by a 30-day review before the sale can moveforward.

Tillerson raised eyebrows this year when he did not appear in person for the unveiling of the annual Human Rights Report, as secretaries of state have traditionally done in a statement of American values. With the new administration just getting its footing in foreign policy, the report this year was largely the product of the State Department run by Tillersons predecessor, John F. Kerry.

The report cited several serious human rights problems, including arbitrary killings by government security forces and torture.

The State Departments notice to Congress came the same day that Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told a House committee that Iran poses a threat to U.S. interests and regional stability. In his prepared remarks, Votel cited Bahrain as an example of an ally that has strong military cooperation with the United States. He said concerns over Bahrains human rights abuses had slowed the F-16 sales and continued to strain the relationship.

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State Department drops human rights as condition for fighter jet sale to Bahrain - Washington Post

Are children really being snatched from their mothers at Ikea stores by sex traffickers undeterred by crowds, cameras and the siren song of Swedish meatballs?

No.

But if youve been on any social media in the past few days especially a mommy Facebook group all youre hearing about is a post by a southern California mom, Diandra Toyos, who says she and her three kids were stalked in Ikea by traffickers.

Her proof (such as it is) is that two men looked at her kids, sat down when they sat down, and looked at her kids some more. They also seemed to be following Diandra and her kids in a store where all the foot traffic flows in the same direction.

Nonetheless, Something was off, Toyos wrote in her original post. We knew it in our gut. I am almost sure that we were the targets of human trafficking.

In the aftermath of the post, some have claimed its a hoax. Toyos tells The Post that Im not 100 percent sure it was human trafficking. That was simply my gut feeling. There was clearly something going on and targeting my children, but I dont know for sure what.

Fine, if she felt uncomfortable with the men, she definitely should have moved away from them. But I take issue with her telling other moms, as she did on Facebook, that they need to be ultra-careful because this is happening all over.

Or, as I put it on my Free-Range Kids blog: Pointlessly terrified mom warns other moms to be pointlessly terrified.

Pointlessly terrified mom warns other moms to be pointlessly terrified.

How dare I make light of such a serious situation? After all, mothers are gushing thanks for the post: a great reminder that this kind of stuff can happen, wrote someone on Westchester Moms.

The praise is piling on Outstanding advice, Good information! just as it did last week, when a very similar post went viral by a mom who thought kidnappers were about to snatch her baby out of her arms as she waited in line at the grocery store. (But she stared them down. Who knew kidnappers are such cream puffs?)

My point is not to make fun of the folks freaking out. My point is to try to give us all a reality check: Come on two men are going to grab three kids, all under age 7, IN PUBLIC, in a camera-filled store, with the MOM and the GRANDMA right there, not to mention a zillion other fans of moderately priced furnishings?

Can we please take a deep breath and realize how insanely unlikely that is? How we dont need to be warned about this because NOTHING HAPPENED!

Dont take my word for it. Take the word of David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. He says:

Child abduction rarely occurs in a crowded public venue like that, where help would be easy to muster. [Moreover] most sex-trafficking lures and abductions are of teenagers. Parents should spend their worry time on other perils.

So why dont they? The answer is in Diandras own warning. She wrote that shed recently read the story of yet another mom who said she and her kids had been targeted at (ironically!) Target. Im reading more and more about these experiences, and its terrifying.

People are posting scary stories on Facebook that make parents paranoid, to the point where THEY post scary posts, which inspires MORE paranoia and scary posts.

Thats exactly it: People are posting scary stories on Facebook that make parents paranoid, to the point where THEY post scary posts, which inspires MORE paranoia and scary posts, etc. etc.

Whats worse, the effect is resonating far beyond the Facebook comment section. It is changing parenting and childhood.

When we are warned over and over that our kids are in constant danger, even in the safest situations, we start to believe it.

From there its just a baby step to childhood on lockdown, never letting our kids walk to school, arresting the parents who let their kids play in the park, smashing the window of the car in front of the dry cleaners, because the mom left the child napping there for three minutes. We will not tolerate parents who trust their kids and trust the odds.

Instead, gripped by hysteria, we are giving our children a childhood unlike our own a childhood with no freedom at all simply because someone pressed share.

Lenore Skenazy is founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids, and a contributor at Reason.com.

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Get a grip, crazy moms: Your kids won't get kidnapped at Ikea - New York Post

Every fall, Fiona Marshall's home is besieged by legions of mice.

They drive me crazy ... trying to colonize our pantry, said Marshall, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

It would be easy to think of the furry little creatures as invaders. But Marshall knows that they are here only because of us. In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Marshall and her colleagues trace house mice to their origins 15,000 years ago, when they evolved alongside the first humans who built semi-permanenthomes.

This is a story about mice, and mice and humans have a really interesting history together, she said. But even more broadly ... it tells us about humans and our influenceon our environmentand our world.

According to Marshall, house mice are an important example of animal-human commensalism a relationship in which an animal benefits from humans without affecting them. At the end of the Ice Age, an ancient people called the Natufians settled in the Levant, where they builtthe world's first semi-permanent stone dwellings. Shortly after, mice evolved to take advantage of that new habitat. The emerging species,Mus musculus domesticus, benefitedfrom the scraps of food and protection from predators that human homes provided.

Without meaning to, humans had created a new ecological niche and nature swiftly filled it. Evolution hates a void.

[Neanderthal microbes reveal surprises about what they ate and whom they kissed]

It's one of the earliest cases of animals evolving to take advantage of environments changed by humans,Marshallsaid. And it's surprising becauseit happened before widespread agriculture, the event that scientists traditionally associate with the origins of domestication.

It shows that, even 15,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers were exerting enough influence on their environment to transform an animal species, Marshall said.

Marshall and lead author LiorWeissbrod, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa in Israel, are bothzooarcheologists. We'repeople who look at animal bones in order to be able to understand the human past in different ways, Marshall said.

Inspired by the work of Israeli scientist Eitan Tchernov, who arguedthat the presence of certain animal companions could be used to understandancient humans' lifestyles, Weissbrod set about examining 200,000 yearsof mouse fossils from the Levant. At the end of the Ice Age, he found, two closely related species of mouse were present: Mus macedonicus andMus musculus domesticus. The formerhasshort tails (which are harder for predators to latch onto) and lives in groves and shrub lands; the latter has a long tailand is adapted to live in human homes.

The relative dominance of each species sharply reflected the activity of the Levant's human population at the time. Before the rise of the Natufian culture, all the fossils Weissbrod found were M.macedonicus.Then, in the early Natufian period, the domesticus type took over. Later on, when archaeological records indicate the climate got drier and Natufians were forced to abandon their stone dwellings, macedonicus was resurgent. But as humans settled down, domesticus became dominant once more.

Archaeologists don't know how committed the Natufians were to the settled lifestyle. They were not farmers, so they probably had to travel at least part of the year in pursuit of food. Marshall said that some researchers believe that the Natufians' stone dwellings were like summer homes, utilized only a few months out of the year.

Butit appeared thatthese hunter-gatherers stayed put long enough to have an effect on the mouse communities nearby.

[Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians. Their bones tell a different story.]

It created a household ecology or villageecology, she said. That was a new world for a mouse to live in. ...It changes the food availability, the predatory pressures, everything about the environment.

Marshall and Weissbrod thought thatNatufian-mouse scenario could be a model for othercommensal relationships. But they wanted to test whether mouse bodies really do evolve in response to human migration. So Weissbrod looked to a modern seminomadic community, the Masai people of Kenya.

In times when this pastoralist community moved a lot, its rodentcompanions were mainly the short-tailed Acomys wilsoni the African counterpart of the Levant's Mus macedonicus. But if the tribe settled for more than a month or so, the demographics would shift, and the long-tailed, more commensal species Acomys ignitus dominated. This finding seemed to confirm Marshall and Weissbrod's theories about mobility and mouse evolution.

Living in one place was a really important factor affecting the beginnings of domestication, Marshall said, and it happened earlier than we thought.

Read more:

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Mice have been infesting homes ever since humans started building them - Washington Post