Gay 'conversion therapy' enters the courtroom

FROM condemnation to the courts. Gay "conversion therapy", the controversial counselling for gay people who wish to change their sexuality, is now in the dock.

Last week, four men in New Jersey filed a civil suit under the state's Consumer Fraud Act against a counselling centre called Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing. The men claim that they spent thousands of dollars in therapy fees, only to be told that their continued same-sex attraction was "their own fault".

Meanwhile, advocates for the counselling are trying to block a new California state law that has banned its use with minors.

Helen Killaspy of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London says that there is no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. "'Treatments' of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish," she says.

"Sexuality is so hardwired that trying to convert somebody is set up for failure," says psychologist Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University, UK.

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Dublin unveils sixth austerity budget

DUBLIN: Bailed-out eurozone member Ireland on Wednesday launched its sixth austerity budget aimed at raising 3.5 billion euros via painful taxation hikes and public spending cuts.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan, unveiling his latest budget before parliament, said however that there were clear signs that the worst of the nation's financial crisis was over.

"There are manifest signs that the country is emerging from the worst of the crisis," Noonan told lawmakers.

He added: "The economy grew last year, will grow this year, and will grow again next year. The effort of the Irish people, despite the hardship, was leading to success."

Noonan revealed that the big-spending departments of health and social welfare would bear the brunt of the cuts.

Other austerity measures included higher levies on alcohol and cigarettes, and hikes for motor tax and capital gains tax.

In addition, he confirmed the introduction of a politically sensitive property levy, with an added "mansion tax" for houses valued over one million euros ($1.3 million).

And the minister also announced a 10-point tax reform plan to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises, a key driver of employment in Ireland.

However, Noonan repeated his pledge to keep corporation tax -- which is levied on company profits -- at a eurozone low of 12.5 percent, despite international pressure to raise it.

Debt-plagued Ireland was bailed out with an 85-billion-euro EU-IMF rescue package in November 2010 after it was devastated by the global financial crisis and a domestic property market meltdown.

As part of the rescue deal, Ireland agreed to painful austerity measures including spending cutbacks, state asset sales and tax hikes.

This week's budget is the latest aimed at bringing the deficit down to less than the EU ceiling of 3.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2015.

Dublin aims to reduce the deficit to 7.5 percent of GDP in 2013. This year, Noonan said it would come in at 8.2 percent, well within the 8.6-percent target set by the bailout programme.

Ireland has won praise as a "poster boy" of the eurozone crisis on how best to enact convincing reforms to make a return to the markets.

However, official figures released by the Central Statistics Office on Wednesday revealed that Ireland's unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 14.6 percent in November -- but had eased from 14.7 percent in October.

"The Irish financial crisis could be summarised in one word: debt, national debt and personal debt," Noonan said on Wednesday.

"The government is committed with dealing with both national and personal debt. Continuing to borrow large amounts to fund our day-to-day services is simply not sustainable."

He added: "The reality is that stable public finances are an essential prerequisite to long-term economic growth and job creation.

"We will only be able to successfully access the markets in the long-term if the markets believe we've a credible fiscal strategy and agree that our debt is sustainable."

On the eve of the budget, the Department of Finance announced weaker tax revenue growth in the second half of the year continued in November, with tax revenues now 171 million euro behind target for the first 11 months in 2012.

-AFP/ac

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RIP, rear-projection TV

CNET Senior Editor Scott Stein poses in front of a 92-inch Mitsubishi TV. It's one of the last of its kind.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

Rear-projection TV is dead, and there's little reason to think the technology will pull a Lazarus anytime soon.

On Monday Mitsubishi confirmed it has already ceased production of its last RPTVs, and told TWICE that inventory is almost gone.

"The decision to exit the category was based on lack of profitability in the big-screen TV business," according to Max Wasinger, executive VP at Mitsubishi Electric Video Sales America. "MEVSA will honor all product warranties. Consumer relations will continue to support consumers and dealers' product service related needs." He added that there are no plans for special closeout pricing to sell off remaining inventory.

Mitsubishi and Samsung were the last manufacturers of the big, usually boxy televisions, and Samsung exited the market in 2008. As the only manufacturer of RPTVs left, Mitsubishi seems to have held on as long it could, but eventually the popularity--and profit margins, slim as they might be--of flat-panel LCD and plasma TVs won the day.

A look back at the big black box

A typical DLP seen from the side.

Rear-projection has been around for decades. RCA made one in 1947, but the 1970s saw the first mass-market examples. Up until the early 2000's, the predominant RPTV technology was cathode-ray tube (CRT), where a mini-projector housed in the bottom of the box lit up a the screen from behind via a mirror. They offered large screens but fuzzy video quality compared to traditional tube TVs.

Over the years they got a lot better. The best CRT-based models from the likes of Pioneer Elite and Hitachi Ultravision were the darlings of videophiles and calibrators, and often required special attention because the three tubes had to be manually converged. They had video quality that could rival and in many ways surpass today's best flat panels.

Hubris? Epson builds a printer into an RPTV.

(Credit:
Epson)

Ten years ago, around the time I first started reviewing TVs myself, those tubes began to give way to light engines based on bulbs and fixed-pixel chips utilizing DLP, LCD and LCoS technology. The chips improved light output and resolution and, more importantly, allowed the cabinets of large-screen rear-projectors to get slimmer and lighter; some could even hang on the wall.

Since plasma and LCD TVs remained relatively expensive, the mid-2000's were the heyday of rear-projection, with numerous manufacturers competing for share and innovations in design, technology and reliability happening yearly. RPTVs were the first with 1080p resolution and 3D, and were available in sizes from 40 up to more than 90 inches.

Here's a few of the products and trends I most remember from that period.

Memorable trends and products from RPTV's heyday

Growing bigger and less popular

Since the late 2000's RPTVs have faded into obscurity. As flat panels have gotten larger and cheaper, RPTVs have had to almost comically large, yet still remain less expensive for the most part than similarly-sized LCDs and plasmas.

Competition is fierce among TV makers, and RPTV has been on life support for awhile. Last year Mitsubishi had about a 1% share in the North American TV market, and relied on size rather than volume in its bid to remain on sales floors. It abandoned LCD in 2010.

The smallest TV in Mitsubishi's 2012 lineup measured 73 inches diagonal. The company's cheapest 2012 RPTV, the 73-inch WD-73C12, costs around $1100. The cheapest comparable flat-panel I've seen is Vizio's 70-inch E701i-A3 at $1700. A $600 difference isn't chump change, but many TV buyers are probably willing to pay it to avoid getting a rear-projector.

The bulkiness of RPTVs also makes them more difficult manufacturers and retailers to ship, inventory and/or display. I remember walking into my local Best Buy a couple of years ago and realizing that the wall of Mitsubishi's at the back of the store was gone, replaced by LCDs and plasmas.

A user-replaceable lamp for a DLP TV.

Then there's the spectre of bulb replacement. Most DLPs run on user-replaceable lamps (about $40 and up) that fade and eventually fail after a few thousand hours of TV watching. The time-frame varies quite a bit, however. My father-in-law, who still loves the Samsung DLP I told him to buy in 2007, has never had to replace his bulb after more than five years of heavy use. Others report the bulb going in a year or less.

In terms of picture quality, a modern DLP-based RPTV can actually hold up pretty well against the cheap big-screen flat panels in its class, with good light output, decent viewing angles (at least compared to LCD) and acceptable screen uniformity. Black levels are relatively light, but all told my father-in-law's DLP still looks pretty good.

Check out Geoff Morrison's excellent Rear projection vs. LCD vs. plasma for more on how the TV technologies stack up.

What's next? Plasma?

The moment a technology category goes extinct (HD DVD, anyone?) seems a good time to wonder what dinosaur is next take a meteorite of progress to the dome. I hate to say it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's plasma TV.

When Panasonic, Samsung and/or LG stop making plasma TVs, I'll be a lot more miffed than I am today at the passing of RPTV. But the writing is on the wall. Global plasma TV sales were down 20% year-over-year in the third quarter this year. Meanwhile Panasonic, which unlike the other two has bet big on plasma, experienced a 30% decline during the same period, and along with other Japanese companies is facing serious financial problems.

I wouldn't be surprised if
CES next month saw significantly fewer plasma TV introductions from all three makers than 2012 did. If I had to put money down, I wouldn't bet on plasma surviving another three years. RPTV is just the latest TV technology to go, but it certainly won't be the last.

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Scientific Results From Challenger Deep

Jane J. Lee

The spotlight is shining once again on the deepest ecosystems in the ocean—Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (map) and the New Britain Trench near Papua New Guinea. At a presentation today at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco, attendees got a glimpse into these mysterious ecosystems nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) down, the former visited by filmmaker James Cameron during a historic dive earlier this year.

Watch a video interview with Cameron on exploring deep-sea trenches.

Microbiologist Douglas Bartlett with the University of California, San Diego described crustaceans called amphipods—oceanic cousins to pill bugs—that were collected from the New Britain Trench and grow to enormous sizes five miles (eight kilometers) down. Normally less than an inch (one to two centimeters) long in other deep-sea areas, the amphipods collected on the expedition measured 7 inches (17 centimeters). (Related: "Deep-Sea, Shrimp-like Creatures Survive by Eating Wood.")

Bartlett also noted that sea cucumbers, some of which may be new species, dominated many of the areas the team sampled in the New Britain Trench. The expedition visited this area before the dive to Challenger Deep.

Marine geologist Patricia Fryer with the University of Hawaii described some of the deepest seeps yet discovered. These seeps, where water heated by chemical reactions in the rocks percolates up through the seafloor and into the ocean, could offer hints of how life originated on Earth.

And astrobiologist Kevin Hand with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, spoke about how life in these stygian ecosystems, powered by chemical reactions, could parallel the evolution of life on other planets.

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John McAfee Seeks Asylum, Thanks God for 'Sanity'

Eccentric software tycoon John McAfee, wanted for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor, has made his escape from Belize to Guatemala, where he told ABC News he will be seeking asylum.

"Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity," McAfee said. "I chose Guatemala carefully."

McAfee, 67, has been on the run from police in the Central American country of Belize since the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull. Investigators said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of the former developer, who was found shot in the head in his house on the resort island of San Pedro, but that they wanted to question him.

McAfee has been hiding from police ever since – a tactic his new lawyer, Telesforo Guerra, says was necessary.

"You don't have to believe what the police say," Guerra told ABC News. "Even though they say he is not a suspect they were trying to capture him." Guerra is Guatemala's former Attorney General, and, says McAfee, the uncle of McAfee's 20-year-old girlfriend, Samantha.

McAfee says the government raided his beachfront home and threatened Samantha's family.

"Fifteen armed soldiers come in and personally kidnap my housekeeper, threaten Sam's father with torture and haul away half a million dollars of my s___," claimed McAfee. "If they're not after me, then why all these raids? There've been eight raids!"

Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images

John McAfee Interview: Software Millionaire on the Run Watch Video

John McAfee: Software Millionaire Not Officially a Suspect Watch Video

Anti-Virus Pioneer John McAfee Hiding in Belize: Police Watch Video

McAfee will hold a press conference at 3 p.m. Eastern Time in Guatemala City to announce his asylum bid. He has offered to answer questions from Belizean law enforcement over the phone, and denies any involvement in Faull's death.

For three weeks, McAfee has been on the run, blogging about his flight, flinging accusations at the Belize government and demanding the release of several friends who have been arrested. He zipped around in speedboats and vans, dyed his hair and beard black and said he'd been sleeping in a bug-infested bed.

Over the weekend, a post on his blog claimed that he had been detained on the Belizean/Mexico border.

On Monday, a follow-up post said that the "John McAfee" taken into custody was actually a "double" who was carrying a North Korean passport with McAfee's name.

That post claimed that McAfee had already escaped Belize and was on the run with Samantha and two reporters from Vice Magazine.

McAfee did not reveal his location in that post, and a spokesperson for Belize's National Security Ministry, Raphael Martinez, told ABC News on Monday that no one by McAfee's name was ever detained at the border and that Belizean security officials believed McAfee was still in their country.

However, a photo posted by Vice Magazine on Monday with their article, "We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers," apparently had been taken on an iPhone 4S and had location information embedded in it which revealed the exact coordinates where the photo was taken - in the Rio Dulce National Park in Guatemala – as reported by Wired.com.

A subsequent blog post on McAfee's site confirmed that the photo had mistakenly revealed his location, and said that Monday was "chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters."

"We made it to safety in spite of this handicap," the post reads. "I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected."

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Today on New Scientist: 4 December 2012

'Magnetic highway' found at solar system's edge

NASA's Voyager 1 has detected a zone where charged particles can race along magnetic field lines linking the solar system with interstellar space

Back-to-basics money shot shows a cent's battle scars

The euro has taken a bit of a battering of late - and not just in the financial markets. See how a 1-cent coin looks through a powerful microscope

Battling nature in your backyard

Your yard is the new frontier as wildlife returns to the suburbs. In Nature Wars, Jim Sterba calls for a shift from conservation to culling to win back territory

Why words are as painful as sticks and stones

Rejection and heartbreak can have effects every bit as physical as cuts and bruises, and understanding why could change your life

How to create stunning paintings using physics alone

Attention, Pollock wannabes - watch different colours of paint interact to produce abstract images thanks to fluid dynamics

2012 Flash Fiction shortlist: S3xD0ll

From scores of science-inspired stories, our judge has narrowed down a fantastic shortlist. Story two of five: S3xD0ll by Kevlin Henney

Green shoots are growing in oil-rich Texas

Texas has a reputation as the fossil fuel and climate change denial capital of the US, but George Marshall found that things are quietly changing

Heavy hydrogen excess hints at Martian vapour loss

NASA's Curiosity rover has found an unusually high proportion of heavy hydrogen in the Martian soil that may help pin down how Mars lost its atmosphere

Curiosity finds carbon - but is it from Mars?

The NASA rover's first chemical analysis of Martian soil has revealed a carbon compound of uncertain origins

Leech cocoon preserves 200-million-year-old fossil

Move over amber. When it comes to preserving soft-bodied animals through the ages, there's a newcomer in town: fossilised leech "cocoons"

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Fugitive McAfee seeks asylum in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY: American Internet pioneer John McAfee, wanted for questioning over the murder of his neighbor last month in Belize, is seeking political asylum in Guatemala, his lawyer said Tuesday.

McAfee, 67, amassed huge wealth as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in the 1990s, designing the hugely popular anti-virus software that bears his name and remains a leading industry product to this day.

In a plotline worthy of a Hollywood thriller, the multi-millionaire went on the run from his home on the idyllic Belize paradise island of Ambergris Caye hours after neighbour Gregory Faull was murdered on November 11.

With his 20-year-old girlfriend Sam Vanegas in tow, he managed to cross the border into Guatemala over the weekend and has secured the services of star lawyer Telesforo Guerra, a former Guatemalan attorney general.

"I have to manage his political asylum," Guerra told AFP after meeting McAfee early Tuesday at a hotel in Guatemala City.

McAfee "is persecuted in Belize, persecuted politically because he stopped financing the government. They accuse him of a common crime. So what I have to obtain is an authorization of asylum," the lawyer said.

Asked whether McAfee fears being assassinated, Guerra said: "Yes, he fears for his life, because after having helped and supported the current government in Belize, they now want more and more money, which they pocket and don't invest."

McAfee, who maintains his innocence, has left a confusing and often contradictory trail of information about his life on the run on his blog, whoismcafee.com.

"It was not easy to exit Belize and required many supporters in many countries," he wrote on Tuesday.

"I am in Guatemala and will be meeting with Guatemalan officials this morning. If all goes well I will do a press conference tomorrow (Wednesday)," he added.

Before fleeing south into Guatemala, he put out a false report saying he had been captured near the northern Mexican border and claimed to have sent a "double" with a North Korean passport to Mexico as another decoy.

Internet users tracked a photo from a magazine on Monday to Guatemala, but McAfee initially claimed to have encrypted it to throw police off the scent.

"I apologize for all of the misdirections over the past few days," McAfee, who is travelling with two reporters from Vice magazine, wrote on Tuesday.

"Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at Vice headquarters," he said.

"We made it to safety in spite of this handicap. I had to cancel numerous interviews with the press yesterday because of this and I apologize to all of those affected."

Vice magazine put out an article Tuesday with a photo showing Guerra and McAfee having breakfast and claiming that Sam, McAfee's partner on the lam, was actually the lawyer's niece.

"I have known Samantha for a year and a half. She is a remarkable young woman. I love her very much and we are getting married," McAfee is quoted as telling Guerra.

"Unfortunately you will have a potential criminal in the family. My apologies for that, and I will do the best I can to make it up to you," he added, reportedly prompting an amused response from Guerra.

Police say Faull, a 52-year-old Florida expatriate, was discovered by his housekeeper with a 9-mm slug in his head lying in a pool of his own blood.

Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow has described McAfee as "bonkers," saying he is only wanted for questioning as a "person of interest" in the case and urging him to give himself up.

Prior to his murder, Faull had led neighbours in writing a letter to the mayor complaining that McAfee's "vicious" dogs and aggressive security guards were scaring tourists and residents alike.

McAfee shot dead four of his dogs before fleeing, claiming they had been poisoned, possibly by Faull.

Police said the dogs were exhumed last week and ballistics experts are seeing if the slugs match up with the one found in Faull's head.

McAfee decamped to Belize in 2009 after losing an estimated $96 million of his $100 million fortune due to bad investments and the financial crisis.

According to profiles in The New York Times and tech magazine Wired, his lifestyle became increasingly extreme as he descended into a drug-fuelled existence centred on young prostitutes.

McAfee was briefly incarcerated in April after police found him living with a 17-year-old girl and discovered an arsenal of seven pump-action shotguns, one single-action shotgun, and two 9-mm pistols.

- AFP/fa

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Massive day-one update won't be bundled in Wii U until 2013

The
Wii U's massive update that runs after booting the hardware won't be bundled in the console for at least a few months.

Speaking to Gamasutra in an interview published today, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the out-of-the-box update will be pushed out over the Web for the next few months. After that, Nintendo will install it in its
Wii U hardware before shipping consoles to store shelves.

When the Wii U launched last month, gamers were surprised to find that they needed to download a massive update delivering many of the features -- online services and Wii backwards compatibility, among others -- that were expected to be available without any such patch. Although debate rages over the size of the update, it takes about an hour or more, depending on connection speeds, to fully download onto the device.

"Nintendo developers want to make sure that the very best product is available to consumers," Fils-Aime said in the interview. "That creates a dynamic where our developers are working on elements until the very last point possible. That's why the system update was required on Day One - and this is quite similar to what's happened with other consumer electronic products."

Fils-Aime's boss, Nintendo chief executive Satoru Iwata, had a bit of a different take on the update. In an interview with IGN last week, Iwata apologized for the update, saying it's not something he would have liked to have seen happen.

"Personally I think that users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box," Iwata told IGN in an interview published last week. "So I feel very sorry for the fact that purchasers of Wii U have to experience a network update which takes such a long time, and that there are the services which were not available at the hardware's launch."

The Wii U's most conspicuous omission was TVii, a feature allowing owners to interact with their television programming from the GamePad. That feature is expected to launch this month.

Despite that and the long update, Nintendo isn't having any trouble selling its Wii U. In an interview with CNET last week, Fils-Aime said that the console is selling out as soon as it hits store shelves.

"Wii U is essentially sold out of retail and we are doing our best to continually replenish stock," Fils-Aime said. "Retailers are also doing their best to get the product to store shelves. But as soon as product hits retail, they're selling out immediately."

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Pictures We Love: Best of November

Photograph by Qais Usyan, AFP/Getty Images

The family of a five-year-old Afghan girl, victim of an alleged rape by a 22-year-old man, sits at her hospital bedside in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, on November 12. News agencies reported that the assailant, a neighbor, was later detained by police.

(Read about the continued struggle of women in Afghanistan in National Geographic magazine.)

Why We Love It

"The perspective and stark lighting reinforce how small and defenseless this little girl is—her body engulfed by the bed and blankets, with only her feet showing. The bedframe appears to trap her and her family, just as they are trapped in this cycle of violence."—Monica Corcoran, senior photo editor

"This image has a symbolic quality. The light draws our attention immediately to the girl. We see, however, nothing to identify her. It could be any girl who is lying there. Her family at her bedside and their facial expressions indicate that rape affects not only the victim. Overall, this image shows the universality of human suffering."—Amina El Banayosy, photo intern

Published December 4, 2012

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Alaska Serial Killer Buried Murder Kits Across US

Israel Keyes, the Alaskan man whoconfessed to seven murders before killing himself in a jail cell, told police that he traveled the country to find victims and buried caches of weapons, money and tools for disposing of bodies to use in future crimes.

The FBI also released an ominous list of 35 trips Keyes made around the U.S., Mexico and Canada over the last eight years.

Keyes, 34, the owner of an Anchorage construction company, was in jail charged with the February murder of Samantha Koenig, 18. While in jail he had been confessing to at least seven other killings in Washington, New York and Vermont. He was found dead in his Alaska jail cell on Sunday in an apparent suicide.

Investigators are now piecing together a deadly puzzle that is uncovering a macabre lifestyle of Keyes traveling to kill simply because he "liked to do it," prosecutors said.

"In a series of interviews with law enforcement, Keyes described significant planning and preparation for his murders, reflecting a meticulous and organized approach to the crimes," the Anchorage FBI office said in a statement.

The FBI has released a timeline of Keyes' travels that showed nearly three dozen trips between 2004 and 2012. The destinations of the trips are vague, described only by U.S. region in most cases, but span the entire country, including Hawaii. There are also trips to Canada and Mexico listed.

"Keyes also admitted traveling to various locations to leave supplies he planned to use in a future crime. Keyes buried caches throughout the United States," the FBI said.

Missing Alaska Barista Had Past Restraining Order Watch Video

Authorities have already recovered two caches, one in Alaska and one in New York, that contained money, weapons and items for disposing of bodies. Keyes indicated that there were other supply boxes buried across the country.

He funded his travel with the proceeds from bank robberies, authorities said.

"Investigators believe that Keyes did not know any of his victims prior to their abductions," the FBI said. "He described several remote locations that he frequented to look for victims--parks, campgrounds, trailheads, cemeteries, boating areas, etc."

Keyes told authorities that his victims received little if any media attention when they disappeared. Authorities said that "based on his own research," Keyes said that one of his victims had been recovered, but the death was ruled accidental. Investigators said they have not identified the victim or location of that alleged crime.

Before his death, Keyes indicated that, in addition to Koenig and a Vermont couple, he killed four people in Washington State and one person in New York, but did not give the victims' names, authorities said.

"It was not unusual for Keyes to fly into an airport, rent a car, and drive hundreds of miles to his final destination," the FBI said.

That is precisely what Keyes did in the murder of Bill and Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vt., last year. He flew from Alaska to Chicago in June 2011. He rented a car in Chicago and drove to Vermont where he spent three days looking for his next victims and planning the slaying.

"When [Keyes] left Alaska, he left with the specific purpose of kidnapping and murdering someone," Chittenden County State Attorney T. J. Donovan said at the press conference. "He was specifically looking for a house that had an attached garage, no car in the driveway, no children, no dog."

The Curriers, unfortunately, fit all of Keyes' criteria. He spent three days in Vermont before striking. He even took out a three-day fishing license and fished before the slayings.

Keyes abducted the couple from their home and murdered them in an abandoned barn he had located before breaking into the Curriers' home. After binding the couple with plastic cuffs, the beat the husband with a shovel and then shot him. The wife was raped and strangled.

"By all accounts, [the Curriers] were friendly, peaceful, good people who encountered a force of pure evil acting at random," an investigator said at today's news conference. Authorities called the ongoing investigation a "huge case, national in scope."

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