National / International News

He can't do a "Jedi mind meld" with Republicans, Obama said. To which fans of Star Trek and Star Wars immediately said he was mixing metaphors.

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Friday's deadline for President Obama to issue a sequestration order is neither the beginning nor the end of this year's budget battles in Washington. Here are five key moments over the next seven months, and what's at stake in each.

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The much-discussed sequestration went into effect today, which means dramatic across-the-board cuts for a number of industries in the country -- including defense, health care and education. How much will this affect our economy?

"We will see in the coming months that everything will have this layer of uncertainty around it," said The Wall Street Journal's Sudeep Reddy. "We have other problems from the last fight -- from the fiscal cliff -- with payroll taxes having gone up, it's going to really muddy all of our understanding of the economy. But the sequester will hurt the economy -- there's really no way of getting around that."

"It's hard to tell where our economy is. We've had some good data, we've had some bad data. So it's not as if we have perfect knowledge of where we are in terms of coming out of this recession, so that we can tell where we're going to go," said The Guardian's Heidi Moore. "So this could go on for months. Where this would put us -- we're not on such a good path already. We're probably going to be stagnating for the next few months whether or not the sequester happens."

Listen to the full audio for more analysis of the sequester. And here are Reddy's and Moore's longreads picks for the weekend:

Sudeep Reddy suggests:

• Ninety-nine percent of the species to inhabit Earth have gone extinct. Ross Andersen looks at what could happen to humans.
• As sequestration arrives, the Hamilton Project offers 15 smarter budget-cutting ideas from across the political spectrum.
• ProPublica's Charles Ornstein on end-of-life care.

Heidi Moore writes: "In honor of the sequester and my recent obsession with "House of Cards," the great political drama on Netflix, my best reads this week are all about the culture of Washington. The more you read (and see) about the way political operatives work, the more clear the reasons become for these manufactured crises: in Washington, it is better to be talked about than not talked about."

• Marin Cogan has a brilliant piece -- full of not-safe-for-work language -- in The New Republic about the sexual politics of reporting in Washington. It's titled, winningly, "House of Cads." The story is direct, full of horror stories of awkward come-ons -- comparing professional women to porn stars, for instance -- but it also illuminates the byways of power and how it's exercised in the nation's capital, bringing to mind stories like the ones behind Claude Chabrol's "A Girl Cut in Two." The best quote in the story comes from Atlantic editor Garance Franke-Rutka: “I think journalism schools should have workshops for young female reporters on managing old men who have no game and think, because you’re listening to them intently and probing what they think and feel, that you’re romantically interested, rather than conducting an interview.”

• My second favorite read this week has to do with the fascinating dustup between veteran millionaire journalist Bob Woodward and White House economic adviser Gene Sperling. They sparred over the sequester, and Woodward soon made the rounds of TV talk shows saying that a private email exchange with Sperling left him threatened. This struck many reporters, including me, as very dubious -- nasty fights are the coin of the realm when it comes to political communications directors, who take great joy in comparing notes on the abuse they heap on reporters, and vice versa. Moreover, Woodward is as powerful, if not more so, than Sperling: the Watergate scandal and the book and movie of All the President's Men mean that Woodward's name will live in the top pages of history, where Sperling's name will be best known to political operators.  What makes the whole thing really fascinating, however, is the actual email exchange that was released by the White House. Sperling comes off as conciliatory, and even a bit timid. That led to a hilarious tweet from Huffington Post political writer Paul Blumenthal: "I'm old enough to remember when the White House would out your CIA agent wife in retaliation instead sending obsequious e-mails."

• And finally, the last read of the week is this life-affirming story in the New York Times about a man who found a baby in the subway. It's the most beautiful thing you'll read this week, and maybe this year.

The zip code you live in can have a big impact on your economic destiny. That notion is at the heart of a number of local and federal anti-poverty initiatives --  called "residential mobility" programs. They help low-income families move from neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, struggling schools, and few economic opportunities to middle class places where schools are often better -- and, at least in theory, the opportunities are better too. But while there may be an economic pay off in an "opportunity area" down the road, in the short term a move to a very different kind of neighborhood involves a lot of adjustments, and many are not easy.  

Some adjustments are welcome, of course. Take squirrels. If you have lived in a middle class neighborhood for most of your life, you might take them, and their scampering, for granted. But when Valerie Love and her 12-year-old daughter, Jada, recently moved to Albany Park on the north side of Chicago, squirrels were the first things they noticed.

Jada remembers how her mom began throwing jelly beans to the squirrels.

"They was coming out from every direction," Love laughs.

Their old neighborhood, says Jada, had a different kind of wildlife.  

"It had bugs," she says.

While working on some home improvements -- like putting up a closet door-- they tell me about some of the other differences between their old neighborhood and their new one. In the old neighborhood, shooting deaths were not uncommon, and many buildings had been abandoned. Love says it "looked like somebody took a grenade and blew up half the blocks."
 
Their new neighborhood is, Jada says, "peaceful and clean." Her mom adds, "there's no gangs hanging on the corner."

Squirrels, peacefulness ... these new experiences are welcome for Jada and her mother.  Love is also proud of her shiny, new kitchen, which she says the landlord used as a big selling point. "He said it's a European-style kitchen, microwave over the stove and a stainless steel refrigerator," says Love.

But there are other adjustments involved in their recent move that have been hard and uncomfortable. Love shows me her bedroom, where she's taped plastic over the windows for extra insulation in the cold winter. When her landlord visited, she says, "He said he don't like the plastic over the windows." 

He didn't like the blanket either, with the face of a tiger, that she's hung over the doorway to the guest room. 

"He came here complaining about that. 'You got a rug over the door.' I said 'a blanket, sir, a blanket,'" she says.
 
It's an unspoken thing, but even after seven months in their new world, it's easy to feel judged by a landlord over decorating choices and by new neighbors.

"In the back yard, everybody has grills on the porch," says Love. "I don't socialize too much with the neighbors in the building."

She feels like an outsider.

Changing neighborhoods can change your life Helping poor families relocate to safer neighborhoods with better schools shown to improve mobility for children.

 

Jacqueline Williams also recently moved through a residential mobility program -- to a middle class neighborhood in Chicago's north side. It's called Edgewater, and like the area where Valerie and Jada Love live, Williams says it doesn't have a lot of other black residents.  

"The first tendency is to say, you know, I'm just going to keep to myself. But that's not going to feel good for you and you might have a lot that that community can benefit from," says Williams.
 
Williams says in some cases, she's faced outright discrimination. She says two landlords told her they wouldn't rent to tenants who had federal rent vouchers, and she's filed legal complaints against them. Williams says even though she feels like she sticks out -- for having subsidized rent, for being black- - she says she's trying to make connections in her new community.   

"I patronize the boutiques and the restaurant. I think the alderman or something put on this annual Halloween type of thing. And there wasn't that many African-Americans there. Now I can't say that I developed friends there, but we got to meet people," says Williams.

Tracey Robinson is a "mobility counselor" with a group called Housing Choice Partners in Chicago. She's helped Jackie Williams -- and people like her -- to move, and adjust to their new neighborhoods. Robinson goes down a mental list of some of the common challenges clients run in to. One woman couldn't get used to how quiet her new neighborhood was. Another was worried about leaving behind the friends and family from her old neighborhood, who helped out with babysitting. Though once she moved, she realized the trade-off was that in a safer neighborhood, her kids could do more stuff on their own.  
 
"Her grandchildren can actually ride the bus on their own now, and she's glad she made the move," says Robinson. "She don't have to worry."     

Robinson has first-hand experience with moving from a poor neighborhood to a middle class one. Her family went through a mobility program a few years ago and she still remembers the rocky beginnings.

"It was almost a month, we were getting the cold shoulder," says Robinson.
 
She decided to tackle the problem head on.  

"Finally, I went up to one of my neighbors and I introduced myself, and I just let her know if we had offended her in any way, accept our apology. And that's when she went to tell me about how the parking went," says Robinson.
 
I turns out there was an unspoken rule on her new block that everybody got one parking spot in front of their own house. The Robinsons had been parking in front of other people's homes.  

"If somebody had said 'You know what, welcome to the neighborhood, we kind of let everyone park in front of our house, blah blah blah', we would have ran with that. But, we -- we didn't know," she says.

Now, because they asked, the Robinsons do know. Tracey Robinson says it was a little thing, but it made it so much easier to feel comfortable. She's been friends with her neighbors ever since. 

A lasagne from the Flintshire company Creative Foods tests positive for horsemeat DNA, says its parent company Brakes.

Rory McIlroy walks off the course citing wisdom tooth pain after just eight holes of his second round at the Honda Classic.

Eight South African police officers are arrested over the death of a Mozambican man who was dragged through the streets behind a police vehicle.

A Russian former banker who fled to London after being accused of alleged fraud has been granted political asylum in the UK, the BBC learns.

Justice Minister David Ford says it is 'entirely inappropriate' for the DUP and SDLP to 'tack on' an attempt to ban private health clinics offering abortions in Northern Ireland to his criminal justice bill.

A Christian group advert banned from London's buses was like a "slap in the face" to gay charity Stonewall over an anti-bullying message, a court hears.

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule full of supplies for the International Space Station, has launched from Cape Canaveral.

Robert Lustig, a physician and anti-sugar crusader, found in a new study that countries where people have easy access to sugar are more likely to see a rise in diabetes. But skeptics say that sugar's not the only culprit.

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Four beef products sold by Bird's Eye, Taco Bell and catering supplier Brakes are found to contain horse DNA, the Food Standards Agency says.

Urooj Khan died last July, just one day after his $425,000 check from the Illinois lottery was cut. It wasn't until much later that it was determined there had been a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood. His remains, though, are too decomposed to detect any remaining poison.

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If we didn't have a pope and we didn't have a Super Bowl, we might never use these fancy numbers at all. Then again, maybe we would.

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If we didn't have a pope and we didn't have a Super Bowl, we might never use these fancy numbers at all. Then again, maybe we would.

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Angry crowds protest outside a hospital in the Indian capital, Delhi, after reports that a seven-year-old girl was sexually assaulted at school.

David Cameron insists the Conservatives can "win people back", amid criticism from some MPs after the party came third in the Eastleigh by-election.

What motivates collectors of art - is it fame, riches or a desire to share? Whatever it is, says historian Lisa Jardine, we owe them.

US Secretary of State John Kerry holds talks with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on the conflict in neighbouring Syria, amid differences on how best to support the opposition.