July 31, 2013.

U.S. Spy Program Lifts Veil in Court

The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle which continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen, getting-up time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed----naked, for a member of the OUter Party received only three thousand clothing coupons annually, and a suit of pajamas was six hundred----seized a dingy singlet and a pair of shorts that were lying across a chair. The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had swelled with the effort of the cough, and the varicose ulcer had started itching.

The Justice Department acknowledged for the first time in a terrorism prosecution that it needs to tell defendants when sweeping government surveillance is used to build a criminal case against them.

"Thirty to forty group!" yapped a piercing female voice. "Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to forties!"

The about-face, contained in a Tuesday court filing, marks another way in which the Obama administration is adjusting to revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about and Internet surveillance by the NSA. The revelations forced the government to acknowledge publicly aspects of its widespread collection of Internet and phone records, giving critics of such surveillance more legal ammunition to challenge the programs.

Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym shoes, had already appeared.

The filing suggest a new potential avenue for legal challenges to the surveillance programs.

July 30, 2013.

Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy

He could not remember what had happened, but he knew in his dream that in some way the lives of his mother and his sister had been sacrificed to his own. It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristic dream scenery, are a continuation of one's intellectual life, and in which one becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is awake. The thing that now suddenly struck Winston was that his mother's death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, or deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking.

FT. MEADE, Md.----A military judge has acquitted Private First Class Bradley Manning of the most serious charge against him----that he aided U.S. enemies----but found him guilty on most of the other lesser charges related to his leaks of documents to Wikileaks.

Suddenly he was standing on short springy turf, on a summer evening when the slanting rays of the sun gilded the ground. The landscape that he was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pasture, with a foot track wandering across it and a molehole here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field the boughs of the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves just stirring in dense masses like women's hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight, there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace were swimming in the pools under the willow trees.

The acquittal of Pfc. Manning on the most serious charge against him affirmed arguments by his lawyers and supporters that leaking documents to the news media or Internet doesn't equate to acting in concert with American foes like al Qaeda.

The girl with dark hair was coming toward him across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him; indeed, he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time. Winston woke up with the word "Shakespeare" on his lips.

But the verdict on that charge came as a setback for the Obama administration, which has been seeking a clear-cut victory in its campaign to discourage the disclosure of government secrets through an aggressive series of leak prosecutions.

July 29, 2013.

Crackdown in Egypt Fans U.S. Fears

III

Winston was dreaming of his mother.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration increasingly fears that Egypt's military, ignoring American appeals, is deepening a crackdown that could spark a sustained period of instability and lead members of the country's Muslim Brotherhood to take up arms.

He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old when his mother had disappeared. She was a tall, statuesque, rather silent woman with slow movements and magnificent fair hair. His father he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin, dressed always in neat dark clothes (Winston remembered especially the very thin soles of his father's shoes) and wearing spectacles. The two of them must evidently have been swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the Fifties.

In a series of private messages in recent days, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other American officials warned Egyptian military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that his clampdown on the Brotherhood risked driving the Islamist group back underground, say U.S. officials involved in the discussions.

At that moment his mother was sitting in some place deep down beneath him, with his young sister in her arms. He did not remember his sister at all, except as a tiny, feeble baby, always silent, with large, watchful eyes. Both of them were looking up at him. They were down in some subterranean place----the bottom of a well, for instance, or a very deep grave----but it was a place which, already far below him, was itself moving downwards. They were in the saloon of a sinking ship, looking up at him through the darkening water. There was still air in the saloon, they could still see him and he them, but all the while they were sinking down, down into the green waters which in another moment must hide them from sight forever. He was out in the light and air while they were being sucked down to death, and they were down there because he was up here. He knew it and they knew it, and he could see the knowledge in their faces. There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive, and that this was part of the unavoidable order of things.

Despite those exhortations, Gen. Sisi called for massive demonstrations on Friday, which precipitated the deadliest single incident in the more than two years since Egypt's revolution. The U.S. also had sent messages urging calm to Brotherhood leaders, but officials said the group, like the military, showed little sign of backing down.

Note

I'll be in a cabin up north for a few days. I am unsure if I'll have internet, but the retypes will be done regardless, maybe posted a day after. I'll transcribe via phone if I can.

July 28, 2013.

Protests in Egypt Turn Violent

He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

CAIRO----At least 74 people were killed and 748 injured in early morning fighting between police and supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, the Ministry of Health said, as Egypt's political divisions edged toward prolonged conflict.

Now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably; someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, what he had been writing----and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.

Saturday morning's violence was the deadliest single crackdown in the more than two years since Egypt's first revolution. The killings mark a dangerous escalation in a conflict that has already badly damaged Egypt's ideological divide, and many appeared to be digging in for a prolonged showdown between supporters of Egypt's ousted president and security forces.

He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved.

"We are protesting and we will not give up," said Mourad Mohammed Ali, a former spokesman for Mr. Morsi's office and a leader in the Brotherhood. "We will continue fighting to get our freedom."

July 27, 2013.

'King of Beers,' Fizzling in U.S., Sets Goal of World Domination

The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.

ZIYANG, China----Little of the Western world has infiltrated this dusty city in China's rural hinterland, where red lanterns hand from lampposts and restaurants serve pig tail and duck neck. But Americans would recognize a beer increasingly making the rounds here: Budweiser, which flows from a state-of-the-art brewery built below a hilltop pagoda.

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:

Advertisements for the 137-year-old brand from St. Louis, Mo., drape the windows of a banquet hall, trumpeting the year of the snake. The walls, floors and stairs of a karaoke bar are blanketed with Budweiser's red bow tie and gold crown symbols. On a narrow back street, three hot pot restaurants serve the beer. "It's brewed in Ziyang. I'm very proud of that," says Li Mei, manager at the "Very Hot Hot Pot."

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone----to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:

From  the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink----greetings!

From soda to sneakers to cigarettes, a host of American brands have managed to become dominant across the world. But now, after watching the so-called King of Beers falter badly for years, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV BUD +0.46% is trying to go where no beer maker has even come close before----creating the world's first big global beer brand.

July 26, 2013.

Measuring Mario Draghi's Promises 1 Year On

Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished. Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure for ever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back at him:

WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

One year ago, ECB President Mario Draghi uttered two short sentences that changed the course of Europe's debt crisis, and propelled a once-reluctant central bank more deeply into its role as guardian of the euro.

He took a twenty-five-cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet----everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed----no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

"Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough," said Mr. Draghi on July 26, 2012, in a speech to bankers in London.

The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past----for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapor. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and our of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?

The vast majority of euro zone crisis observers consider Mr. Draghi's comment, backed up sixe weeks later with a conditional bond-purchase program called the OMT (which stands for Outright Monetary Transactions), an unqualified success. Spanish and Italian bond yields have stayed relatively low without the ECB even needed to use the facility. "It's really very hard not to state that the OMT has been probably the most successful monetary policy measure undertaken in recent time," Mr. Draghi said last month.

July 25, 2013.

Death Toll From Spanish Train Crash Hits 77

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.

MADRID----Investigators are looking at excess speed on a tight curve as a possible cause of Wednesday's train derailment that killed at least 77 and injured 140 in Spain's worst train tragedy in some four decades, government officials said.

Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling. The telescreen----perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate----crashed into "Oceania, 'tis for thee." You were supposed to stand to attention. However, in his present position he was invisible.

The train carrying 218 passengers crashed and broke up a couple of miles from the station in the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela, with some cars overturning and one being tossed up on a 15-foot embankment. At least one engine caught fire.

"Oceania, 'tis for thee" gave way to lighter music. Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at present.

The train derailed on a line operated by state train company Renfe that had been inaugurated about two years ago to connect the region to Madrid. The train was of a type that uses conventional track on some parts of the route and high-speed track on others.

July 24, 2013.

Why Retailers Don't Know Who Sews Their Clothing

Winston had never been able to feel sure----even after this morning's flash of the eyes it was still impossible to be sure----whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding between them more important than affection or partisanship. "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness," he had said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way or another it would come true.

DHAKA, Bangladesh----On two floors of an olive green building with insufficient emergency exits and a too narrow fire escape, women in Saifur Rahman's factory sew fleece sweatshirts for European shoppers.

The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:

Yet the global brands whose clothes he makes don't always know about him, Mr. Rahman says. Often, he says, they believe their clothes were made at bigger factories----ones they have vetted for safety----located miles away.

"Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash----"

Mr. Rahman gets the work because sometimes the original factories decide to subcontract it out. Maybe they have taken on too many orders, or fear missing a deadline.

July 23, 2013.

As Banks Retreat, Hedge Funds Smell Profit

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother----it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak----"child hero" was the phrase generally used----had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.

School Specialty Inc., a distributor of classroom supplies, borrowed $64 million from a private investment fun last year after it couldn't get a loan from a bank. Its financial problems persisted, and in January, it sought bankruptcy protection.

The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again.

Most of the company's creditors lost money and its shareholders were wiped out. But its last-ditch lender, Bayside Capital, had its loan repaid in full, plus 12.5% interest. It also stands to collect $23.7 million "early-payment" fee that would vault its profit above 30% which has prompted a bankruptcy-court challenge by other creditors.

Years ago----how long was it? Seven years it must be----he had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed; "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." It was said very quietly, almost casually----a statement, not a command. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance. He could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O'Brien for the first time; nor could he remember when he had first identified the voice as O'Brien's. But at any rate the identification existed. It was O'Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark.

Private investment funds, facing diminished returns in some other areas, have piled into the business of lending to struggling companies, part of a so-called shadow-lending system that operates under different rules than commercial banks. Hedge funds D.E. Shaw Group and Oaktree Capital Management, for example, recently set up funds to lend to small and midsize businesses, including distressed ones.

July 22, 2013.

Apple Tests Larger Screens for iPhones, iPads

Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamored to be taken to see it. He took his leave of Mrs. Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs. Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.

TAIPEI----Apple Inc. AAPL +0.46% and its Asian suppliers are testing larger screens for iPhones and tablets, officials at the company's suppliers say.

"Goldstein!" bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman's grayish face.

In recent months, Apple has asked for prototype smartphone screens larger than 4 inches and has also asked for screen designs for a new tablet device measuring slightly less than 13 inches diagonally, they said. The current iPhone 5 has a four-inch screen, while the iPad has a 9.7-inch screen. The iPad Mini, a stripped-down version of its tablet computer, has a 7.9-inch screen.

Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Whether the designs will make their way to market is unclear. The Cupertino, Calif., company routinely tests different designs for its products as it refines them during development. The company also changed its offerings of the iPhone and iPod last year to include larger screens, while adding a variant of the iPad with a smaller display.

July 21, 2013.

A Buffet Fortune Fades in Brooklyn

"They do get noisy," she said. "They're disappointed because they couldn't go to see the hanging, that's what it is. I'm too busy to take them, and Tom won't be back from work in time."

As early investors with Warren Buffet, Donald and Mildred Othmer quietly amassed a fortune that they believed would sustain their favorite charities for generations.

"Why can't we go and see the hanging?" roared the boy in his huge voice.

Among those organizations: Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., for which the Othmers created a $135 million endowment in the 1990s, "to be held in perpetuity," according to their wills.

"Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!" chanted the little girl, still capering round.

Less than 20 years later, much of their gift is gone. And the hospital's owners have been cleared by state regulators to close the money-losing nonprofit, which has sparked protests because the 155-year-old facility was one of Brooklyn's largest private employers.

July 20, 2013.

Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts

"You're a traitor!" yelled the boy. "You're a thought-criminal! You're a Eurasian spay! I'll shoot, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt mines!"

PORT TALBOT, Wales----When the telltale rash appeared behind Aleshia Jenkin's ears, her grandmother knew exactly what caused it: a decision she'd made 15 years earlier.

Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting "Traitor!" and "Thought-criminal!", the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

Ms. Jenkins was an infant in 1998, when this region of southwest Wales was a hotbed of resistance to a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. Many here refused the vaccine for their children after a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, suggested it might cause autism and a local newspaper heavily covered the fears. Resistance continued even after the autism link was disproved.

Mrs. Parsons's eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back again. In the better light of the living room he noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.

The bill was now come due.

July 19, 2013.

Detroiters Respond to Record Bankruptcy

There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children charged into the living room. Mrs. Parsons brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.

DETROIT----Some residents and businesses responded with a dose of optimism in the wake of the city's bankruptcy filing on Thursday.

"Up with your hands!" yelled a savage voice.

Just a few steps away from the city hall room where Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr was outlining the Chapter 9 filing, Roy Ferguson, 64 years old, a pastor from a church in nearby Dearborn Heights, said he wasn't too concerned about the city going bankrupt.

A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was meancing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, gray shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanor, that it was not altogether a game.

"This is not a good thing, but with desperate situation of Detroit, hopefully this will be a way out," he said as he worked on a stand that will offer barbecued ribs this weekend. "Hopefully, it will mean a turnaround. We need it."

July 18, 2013.

U.S. Seen Losing to China as World Leader

Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms----one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, saving campaigns, and voluntary activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Center every evening for the past four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.

SHANGHAI----People in the U.S. and China view each other with increasing suspicion, and many others around the world see the U.S. losing its place to China as the leading economic and political power, a new public opinion poll shows.

"Have you got a spanner?" said Winston, fiddling with the nut on the angle joint.

According to a survey of around 38,000 people in 39 countries released on Thursday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, majorities or pluralities in 23 of the nations surveyed said China either has replaced or eventually will oust the U.S. as the world's top superpower. The Chinese don't question their nation's eventual dominance, but Americans are split on the question, the poll found.

"A spanner," said Mrs. Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. "I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children----"

The Pew survey is the latest indication that the global impact of China's economic expansion over the past three decades and the 2008 U.S. economic stumble are reordering perceptions about China----the world's most populous nation----and the U.S.----its biggest economy.

July 17, 2013.

Smartphone Upgrades Slow as 'Wow" Factor Fades

"It's the children," said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door. "They haven't been out today. And of course----"

Fewer people are upgrading their smartphones----a trend that could make it harder for companies from AT&T Inc. T +0.56% to Apple Inc. AAPL +-0.01% to keep up the pace of revenue growth.

She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen sink was nearly full to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always liable to start him coughing. Mrs. Parsons looked on helplessly.

The rates at which American cellphone users have traded in their devices for more advanced models have declined over the last few years, according to analysts at UBS UBSN.VX =1.31% AG. They turned negative last year, when about 68 million people upgraded their phones in the U.S., down more than 9% from a year earlier.

"Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment," she said. He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with his hands, Tom is."

UBS predicts upgrades will fall again this year. AT&T and T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS -0.08% have introduced plans in recent days to make it easier for subscribers to trade up to new phones if they are willing to give up the usual carrier subsidies. But it remains to be seen whether customers will bite.

July 16, 2013.

Guantanamo Detainee Begs to Be Charged as Legal Limbo Worsens

It was Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a neighbor on the same floor. ("Mrs." was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party----you were supposed to call everyone "comrade"----but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window pane for two years.

After 11 years of detention at Guantanamo Bay, suspected terrorist Sufiyan Barhoumi has decided to plead guilty to war crimes, throw himself on the mercy of the court and serve whatever sentence a U.S. military commission deems just.

"Of course it's only because Tom isn't home," said Mrs. Parsons vaguely.

There's just one problem: The Pentagon refuses to charge him.

The Parson's flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as thought the place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta----hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out----lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which----one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how----was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.

The standoff illustrates the legal quagmire surrounding the offshore prison----even as President Barack Obama renew his long-stymied quest to close it.

July 15, 2013.

China Slump Ripples Across the World

II

As he put his hand to the doorknob Winston saw that he had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. IT was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet.

As the numbers pile up showing China's sizzling growth cooling down, industries world-wide----from German paper-cutter makers to Indonesian palm-oil exporters----are confronting an altered landscape of winners and losers.

He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colorless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside.

The ones that benefited the most from China's rise are now being hurt. Others, aiming at China's 1.3 billion consumers, are faring better.

"Oh, comrade," she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, "I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and----"

Growth in China, the world's second-biggest economy after the U.S., has been slowing since 2007's peak, but that slowdown has accelerated recently.

July 14, 2013.

Jury Acquits Zimmerman of All Charges

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried scrawl:

they'll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother----

SANFORD, Fla. ----A jury acquitted George Zimmerman on Saturday night of all charges in the death of Trayvon Martin, bringing to an end a case that set off nationwide protests and searing debates over racial justice and self-defense laws.

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down his pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at his door.

Mr. Zimmerman, a 29-year-old former neighborhood-watch volunteer who is Hispanic, fatally shot the 17-year-old, who was unarmed and black, in a gated community here last year. The defendant faced a second-degree murder charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and the lesser charge of manslaughter, which carries a maximum 30-year sentence.

Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily toward the door.

As the verdict was read, Mr. Zimmerman appeared stoic, while family members were visibly tense. When the not-guilty verdict was pronounced, his family members embraced. Courtroom police removed Mr. Zimmerman's ankle bracelet, and he flashed a smile.

July 13, 2013.

Elf Electric Pedal Car: When 1 Horsepower Is Enough

He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary; but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.

ROB COTTER, A FORMER performance engineer and top-gun tuner with Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and BMV, BMV.XE =0.53% knows how to go fast Now he wants to make a go at going slow.

But he did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, it made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed----would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper----the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for year, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

Mr. Cotter is the founder and CEO of the Durham, N.C.-based Organic Transit, which makes the Elf; an ovoid, semi-enclosed, solar-chargeable, plug-in, bike-lane-legal, electric pedal car. Got that? With a 1-hp (740-watt) electric motor in the rear wheel hub and a lithium battery pack, or two, snugged into the center frame rail aft of the front wheels----and a plastic canopy to keep the weather off drivers----the Elf proposes a solution for urban commuters who want to leave the car at home but can't quite hack the rigors of a conventional bicycle.

It was always at night----the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

"We're creating our own consumer product category," said Mr. Cotter, whose operation in a downtown storefront in the former tobacco capital is bustling. The company has 1,500 orders in hand----more than enough to reach profitability, said Mr. Cotter, a TED talker who Kickstarted much of the original funding----and soon the company's retinue of bike gurus and production staff (including some volunteers) will be moving to larger quarters downtown. Prices just went up: the Elf costs $4,995, more if you want the backup battery, the continuously variable transmission rear hub or the better solar panels.

July 12, 2013.

Misgivings Over Coup Spread in Egypt

That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any sequel. All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others besides himself were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the rumors of vast underground conspiracies were true after all----perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it, some days not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory walls----once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the hands which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition. It was all guesswork: very likely he had imagined everything. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again. The idea of following up their momentary contact hardly crossed his mind. It would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it. For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged and equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.

CAIRO----Beyond the partisan rancor that has engulfed Egypt since the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, class of Egyptians is emerging to support the deposed leader despite disaffection with his performance and their lack of affinity to Islamist thinking.

Winston roused himself and sat up straighter. He let out a belch. The gin was rising from his stomach.

Many of these Egyptians reluctantly voted for Mr. Morsi last summer to keep out a rival affiliated with the former regime, yet still decry the military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood-backed leader because they say it usurped the democratic process.

His eyes refocused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals----

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

over and over again, filling half a page.

It is unclear how widespread this group is, because it isn't vocal, but evidence from interviews, political observers and activity on Egypt's vibrant social-media scene suggests it is significant and that its members could sway the planned coming elections.

July 11, 2013.

Stung by Falling Prices, Mining Companies Take Ax to CEO Pay

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as thought the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs were too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremendous murmur that sounded like "My Savior!" she extended her arms toward the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

SYDNEY----As cutbacks across the mining sector intensify, company operations in Australia, Brazil and other resource-rich countries are taking aim at a new target: pay packets awarded to their top brass.

At the moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant "B-B! . . . B-B! . . . B-B!" over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first "b" and the second----a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this subhuman chanting of "B-B! . . . B-B!" always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression in his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened----if, indeed, it did happen.

Falling commodity prices and soaring costs of producing raw materials such as coal and gold are shackling resources firms that had, until recently, been riding high on what Australian policy makers described as a once-in-a-century mining boom. Over the past year, companies have been forced to make deep cuts, slashing jobs and spending on exploration for new mineral deposits, right through to dumping free coffee machines and barbecues for staff.

Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew----yes, he knew!----that O'Brien was thinking the same thing himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. "I am with you," O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. "I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!" And then the flash of intelligence was gone, and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as everybody else's.

Now, the ax is falling on wages of company management and directors, in a move that underscores how an industry that at its peak was paying truck drivers sometimes as much as US$200,000 a year is adjusting to weaker demand from China.

July 10, 2013

Egyptian Prosecutors Order Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood Leaders

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out "Swine! Swine! Swine!" and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ectasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.

CAIRO----Egyptian prosecutors moved Wednesday to arrest leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood for inciting the violence early Monday morning that led to a shootout between protestors and Egypt's military.

It was even possible, at moments to, switch one's hatred this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one's head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweep supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.

The prosecutors ordered that Mohammed Badie, the Brotherhood's leader or "General Guide," be brought in for questioning along with nine other leaders from the Brotherhood's executive office.

The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheepface melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his submachine gun roaring and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sight of relief form everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black mustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The move escalates authorities' crackdown on the Brotherhood, after Egypt's military ousted President Mohammed Morsi last week after millions of Egyptians protested against what they said was his increasingly autocratic rule.

July 9, 2013.

Blows to Health-Care Law Pile Up, Cutting It's Sweep

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters; perhaps even----so it was occasionally rumored----in some hiding place in Oceania itself.

The big expansion of health insurance envisioned under the 2010 Affordable Care Act is now looking less sweeping.

Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard----a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness  in the long thin nose near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, a the voice, too, had a sheeplike quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attach upon the doctrines of the Party----an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed----and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein's specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army----row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull, rhythmic tramp of the soldiers' boots formed the background to Goldstein's bleating voice.

The latest indication that the coverage net won't be as wide as initially expected came this week when the Obama administration delayed for a year a requirement that larger employers off health insurance to workers or pay a penalty. The move means businesses with 50 or more employees that don't currently offer coverage ----such as some retailers and restaurants----can continue on that track without penalty until 2015.

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheeplike face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne; besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day, and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were----in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. But one knew of such things only through vague rumors. Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

While the unexpected move received attention, it is at least the third time that a development since the law's passage has potentially limited the expansion of insurance.

July 8, 2013.

Egypt Clashes Leave Dozens Dead

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the center of the hall, opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the middle rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He did not know her by name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably----since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner----she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. she was a bold-looking girl of about twenty-seven with thick dark hair, a freckled face and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times around the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once when they passed in the corridor she had given him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.

CAIRO----At least 42 people were killed and 332 were injured in a gunfight between soldiers and supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi that sharply raised the temperature in the brewing Egyptian secularists and Islamists.

The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming----in some indefinable way, curiously civilized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuff-box. Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between O'Brien's urbane manner and his prize-fighter's physique. Much more it was because of a secretly held belief----or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope----that O'Brien's political orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he ahd the appearance of being a person that you could talk to, if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess; indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien glanced at his wristwatch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a couple of places away. A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.

In statements issued immediately after Monday's attack, the Muslim Brotherhood, which backed Mr. Morsi, said soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on pro-Morsi protestors as they performed the dawn prayer outside the Republican Guard Club in Cairo. The group called the killings a "massacre" and called on its followers to launch an "uprising" against "those who stole the revolution"----a thinly veiled reference to Egypt's military.

The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

Military spokesmen told the Associated Press that gunmen opened fire on troops, killing at least five supporters of Mr. Morsi and one officer. The different accounts couldn't be reconciled.

July 7, 2013.

San Francisco Plane Crash: What Went Wrong

April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him. first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water. audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middleaged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms around him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself. all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a childs arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didn't oughter of showed it not in front of the kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody care what the proles say typical prole reaction they never----

The Asiana Airlines 020560.SE -0.58% pilots whose Boeing BA +1.27%  777crashed Satureday while landing at San Francisco International Airport were following a routine visual approach and didn't radio any onboard problems or declare an emergency before impact, according to preliminary reports.

Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But curious thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to writing it down. It was, he now realized because of this other incident that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.

Investigators will now focus on why the twin-engine jetliner----arriving on an overnight flight from Seoul and descending in good weather----slammed down hard on a portion of the airport hundreds of feet before the runway's normal touchdown point, according to industry and U.S. government safety experts. At the beginning, a probe is likely to delve into everything from possible engine problems to pilot mistakes to mechanical issues.

It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything was so nebulous could be said to happen.

One issue likely to come under early review is the overall experience and hand-flying skills on the pilots, who couldn't rely on an instrument-landing system as a backstop. Those navigation devices for the runway weren't operating Saturday, due to work under way to improve the strip. Since late June, all pilots landing at SFO----the moniker often used for the busy hub airport----have been warned that the approach aids are temporarily turned off.

July 6, 2013

Britain's Split Personality Over EU Ties

For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

LONDON----Some British businesses see the U.K.'s membership in the European Union as a profitable gateway to the world. Others complain it leads to cumbersome regulation that restrains growth.

For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say. For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up. Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, that blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has staked his political future on charting a risky path between the two views. On Friday, proposed legislation that would enshrine in law Mr. Cameron's promise to hold a referendum on whether to remain in the 28-member EU passed an early but symbolically important parliamentary hurdle.

Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was setting down. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops:

The heated debate taking place here about whether the U.K. should end its 40-year-long ties with Europe is placing the spotlight on how much Britain gains or loses from belonging to the EU.

July 5, 2013

Egypt Girds for Muslim Brotherhood Protests

But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past. He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that. He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ("dealing on the free marked," it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things such as shoelaces and razor blades which it was impossible to get hold of i any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his brief case. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession.

CAIRO----Egypt's army declared a state of emergency in Suez and southern Sinai on Friday ahead of mass protests to be staged by the Muslim Brotherhood, with the powerful organization's supporters set to demonstrate against the military's overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi and the arrests of its leaders.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was no illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off, The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speakwrite, which was of course impossible and then faltered for just a second. A tremore had gone through this bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984.

The Brotherhood has urged its supporters to protest peacefully. But seething anger within the Islamist movement's ranks and a sense that it faces the most serious threat to its survival in more than half a century have raised fears that the protests could turn violent. The Brotherhood has called the demonstrations "Rejection Friday."

He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.

The National Salvation front, a main opposition movement to Mr. Morsi also called for protests across Egypt to protect the revolution's demands, said their spokesman Khaled Dawoud.

July 4, 2013.

Adly Mansour Is Sworn In as Egypt's Interim President

Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-colored bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirite. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.

CAIRO----Adly Mansour, Egypt's new interim president, swore the oath of office in front of Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday morning, formalizing a whirlwind insurrection that brought millions of Egyptians onto the streets and overturned an Islamist president that only days ago had seemed immutable.

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTESS and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out onto the floor. With the next he was more successful. He went back to the living room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quatro-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.

Mr. Mansour swore his oath hours after Egyptian security forces moved briskly to arrest and detain hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood leaders----the powerful Islamist organization that has dominated Egyptian elections over the past two years.

For some reason the telescreen in the living room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do.

Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's ousted president, was reportedly in police custody on Thursday morning after he refused to step down from his post on the orders of Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi on Wednesday night.