IT WAS a lovely idea: for the coronation of Queen Victoria on June 28th 1838, an entrepreneur thought a paper printed in golden-hued ink would make for a lucrative keepsake. The Sun (no relation to today’s tabloid of the same name) partnered with this businessman, Thomas de la Rue, a printer who also dabbled in making straw hats and paper bonnets. He had experimented with inks, and came up with a compound that gave enough of an appearance of gilding to do the trick.

The so-called “Golden Sun” was an astonishing hit. It went through 20 editions and sold an estimated 250,000 copies—an astonishing number at that time. The reverse of the new queen’s portrait was left unprinted, so it could be cut out and mounted; the September 1840 issue of Monthly Belle Assemblée noted that the portrait appeared in a museum its correspondent visited in St Omer, France, alongside more ancient artefacts. (De La Rue’s company survives to this day under that name, and prints banknotes and passports, among other things. It recently objected to the Home Office picking a French-Dutch firm to print post-Brexit passports.)

Even 180 years later, the newspaper still looks a treat. Prospero recently got a peek at a surviving copy at the St Bride Printing Library, a piece of late 19th-century printing history just off Fleet Street, London journalism’s ancestral home. The library’s manager, Bob Richardson (pictured below), keeps this copy of the Sun in the institution’s teaching collection both for the rarity of a newspaper printed in this hue, and as a cautionary tale. It made its printers violently ill.

It was common for printers to come down with ailments of all sorts. Before the professions of typesetters and pressmen split, most printers were jacks-of-all-trades, completing apprenticeships that required they learn every task in a printing office. This brought them in constant contact with lead, antimony, other heavy metals, and toxic ingredients and solvents.

The December 1879 issue of the Printers’ Circular noted as a miscellaneous item with little reflection on its importance:

In the course of a lecture on the “Effects of Occupations upon Health,” recently delivered at Leipsic [sic], by Dr Heubner, he drew attention to the frequency of lead poisoning among type founders, compositors, and pressmen…Type founders are poisoned by inhaling the fumes of the metal, while compositors and pressmen inhale minute particles of the same material. Fraught with still greater danger is, however, the frequent practice of compositors of bringing their type-stained hands in contact with their lips or keeping eatables in composing rooms, etc.

In the Circular’s April 1879 issue, under obituaries, the item appears: “A printer in Avoca, Iowa, has died of poison from holding type in his mouth.”

But De la Rue's golden hue was far worse for those men and women employed in its manufacture than lead had been. The impact would have been lost to history, save that Dr Gurney Turney wrote a letter in October 1838 in the London Medical Gazette about a 19-year-old patient, John Oakley. Oakley presented himself on July 17th with symptoms including “itching of the scrotum”, “inflamed sebaceous follicles” and pubic and head hair that had turned a “grass-green colour”. The boy had vomited a greenish fluid, his oesophagus was constricted and hot, and he had stomach pain. The doctor determined he was working in the printing office in which the “Golden Sun” was printed. Turney, his letter went on, had asked to visit the plant. There were no health-and-safety inspectors ticketing violators at the time, so the bosses happily let him in. 

De La Rue didn’t create an ink, as his gold-hued materials were too stiff to use directly for the relief printing method required. Instead, the papers were printed with a pale, tacky receiving medium like the sizing used by painters to prepare a canvas. Workers dusted on the golden-hued powder while the papers remained wet and brushed off the excess. The air must have been dense with the dust. A dozen workers told Turney of suffering Oakley’s symptoms and worse. The doctor was unable to get a sample of the powder, as its maker considered it proprietary.

His report was taken up in the mainstream press, and he received letters from more of those afflicted. In a later article in the Gazette, in February 1839, Turney wrote that he’d determined the ink was made from brass filings. One informant relayed a secondhand report that the men who created the brass filings “died off like rotten sheep” in its creation. Another noted that he was seized by pain and seizures, as were other workers. As many as 40 people had handled the gilding.


The lifespan of these workers after this is unknown. Oakley returned for a couple of visits after his initial treatment and appeared much improved (though still greenish) about 10 days later. But then he failed to reappear thereafter. No other reports survive, and printers of that day didn’t have long and happy lives in any case.

No worries for Mr Richardson or others who handle the “Golden Sun” today. The inert substance wedded to paper seems to pose no threat—no reports emerged of readers being poisoned by the paper, and collectors seem to have suffered no ills. But Mr Richardson is a bit chary nonetheless when he holds the newspaper—perhaps due to its age and fragility, or perhaps in memory of those poisoned printers.

Earlier this year, Dickinson told Comebackstage that "Napster destroyed the concept of music having any value, which is terrible. I think the guy [who started Napster] should be locked up, and maybe he has been — he deserves to be," he said. "It was an act of pure selfish destruction. And what he did was he used the enthusiasm of the audience… Because the audience is not guilty — they could get all this great music for free. Why wouldn't they do that? They didn't realize that what they were doing was destroying an entire culture… And it's hard to see where a whole generation of musicians is gonna come from now. People who are brilliant musicians don't get paid for doing amazing jobs."

Bruce said in a 2015 interview that streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music benefit established artists more than they do the aspiring ones who have yet to break through.

A powerful committee of MPs called on the British government to “get serious” and crack down on Kremlin-linked individuals using London as a base for corrupt assets.

The film’s opening sequence has a cheerful late-middle-aged man, Osamu (Lily Franky), strolling around a supermarket with a young boy, Shota (Jyo Kairi). Keeping an eye out for store detectives, and communicating with complicated hand signals, they nip past the checkout with a backpack of stolen goods, although their their ill-gotten gains appear to be less important to them than their father-son bonding. But are they father and son? The relationship between this Fagin and his Artful Dodger isn’t defined at first—they could easily be grandfather and grandson—and when they return to their tiny, cluttered inner-city bungalow, the family connections are just as obscure. 

Osamu’s wife—it seems—is Noboyu (Sakura Ando), who works in a launderette, and pockets any trinkets which her customers have left in their clothes. Their daughter may or may not be Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), who makes a living by wearing skimpy outfits in a peep-show booth. And there is Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), a grandmother who contributes to the household funds via various dodgy schemes of her own. On one level, they are a traditional nuclear family, albeit a nuclear family which scrapes by with minor cons and pilferings. But, for much of the film’s running time, it is hard to say how and if the characters are related. Noboyu articulates one of Mr Kore-Eda’s key themes: “Sometimes it’s better to choose your own family.”

The latest member of this ragtag clan is a little girl, Juri (Miyu Sasaki), whom Osamu and Shota spot one cold night on their way home from a shoplifting spree. Her parents are too busy fighting to look after her, so Osamu offers her a meal. Noboyu then notices bruises and scars on her arms, and so she lets the girl stay the night in their shack. Soon, with a new name and a new haircut, she has been absorbed into the family unit.

Even Osamu knows that this is morally questionable. After all, he has kidnapped a child, legally speaking, and is training her to shoplift. (“Only children who can’t study at home go to school,” is his slick excuse for neglecting the rest of her education.) But he and the rest of the family are also caring for the girl in a way that neither her parents nor society ever has. To quote Noboyu again: “Someone threw her away and we found her.”

It’s easy to imagine how the family would be portrayed in a newspaper report: a tribe of spongers and scammers made up of exploitative adults and vulnerable children. But Mr Kore-Eda enchants us with scenes of stealthy, affectionate comedy, and with the sheer gentleness of the actors’ nuanced performances. Slowly but surely, we come to understand and respect this outlaw bunch, just as we might warm to the families in “Only Fools and Horses” and “Shameless”. Cast out by the system, they have created their own idyllic if cramped Neverland of lost boys and girls.

When the inevitable crisis finally hits, it is heartbreaking. Sudden twists and revelations raise further questions about Osamu’s morality, but by then Mr Kore-Eda’s bittersweet, politically-charged tale has won us over just as surely as it won over Ms Blanchett and her fellow jurors. We know that whatever else the characters are, they are more than just shoplifters.

Fatal shootings by police officers that are recorded on video often get national media coverage, fueling calls for reform, as we saw last week in the shootings …

AT THE dawn of the republic, the Federalist Party advocated a strong national government with an energetic executive, while anti-Federalists worried that too much power at the centre would make for a monarchy, not a democracy. They wanted power to go to the peripheries. But “federalism” has since become synonymous with states’ rights. Devolving power from Washington, DC to states and localities has been a priority of the modern Republican Party. The current era is changing that. Donald Trump's administration is clamping down on states that are loosening marijuana laws or failing to cooperate with federal authorities to deport undocumented immigrants.

A Supreme Court decision on May 13th strikes a major blow for states’ rights. By a 7-2 vote in Murphy v National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the justices ruled that a 1992 statute banning sports betting is unconstitutional. The law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), was a bit of an odd duck. It wasn’t a ban on betting, per se, but a law prohibiting states that already banned betting from legalising it. So states where sport betting was legal in 1992—Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon—were at least partially exempted from the ban. New Jersey thumbed its nose at the law when it legalised sport gambling in 2012, a move that was promptly halted by lower courts. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, New Jersey said PASPA violated the rarely litigated 10th Amendment, the constitution’s textual hook for preserving state’s rights: “the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”.

A northern California couple charged with child abuse is now being accused of waterboarding and shooting crossbows and BB guns at their 10 children, according to prosecutors.

America’s federal structure rests on three pillars: a congress to enact laws, an executive to administer them, and a judiciary to settle disputes. While in practice these divisions have never been entirely clean, circumstances have become muddier with the rise of agencies like the SEC that have gained sweeping authority over American life. Their employees are largely removed from the electoral process, but nonetheless create rules, police them and arbitrate disputes. The SEC’s enforcement division traditionally brings cases to a federal court directly or in conjunction with the justice department. But it can also adjudicate matters itself using administrative law judges (ALJs) who work for the SEC. It was before one of these that Mr Lucia found himself in 2012. 

St. Philip Benizi Catholic Church and the nonprofit homeless assistance provider Illumination Foundation hope to begin operating a safe parking program in Fullerton.

DNA has become an invaluable instrument in the search for truth in the criminal justice system. The significant role of DNA in identifying suspects was most vividly displayed in the past weeks when…

WHEN a company goes bankrupt, recriminations tend to follow. Even so, the fury caused by the recent collapse of Carillion, a British contracting firm, is unusual. A report on the debacle by British MPs, which was released this month, savaged everyone from the firm’s executives to its regulators. But the MPs reserved special bile for the Big Four accounting firms—not just KPMG, which audited Carillion’s accounts for 19 years, but also its peers, Deloitte, EY and PwC, each of which extracted fees from the company, before and after its fall. The MPs have called for a review into the audit market and asked it to say whether the Big Four’s British arms should be broken up. The row is local, but concerns about the industry are global.

Critics of the auditors are right in two respects: that the industry matters, and that it needs reform (see article). It is in everyone’s interest that auditing works. If investors cannot trust financial statements, then companies’ cost of capital will rise, crimping growth and employment. It is also true that the industry has flaws. It is highly concentrated. The Big Four audit 98% of the companies listed on the S&P 500 and the FTSE 350 indexes. And auditors are paid not by investors, whom they serve, but by the company whose accounts they scrutinise. That raises questions about objectivity, especially since the Big Four earn nearly twice as much from consulting and other services as they do from auditing. Past reforms banned them from providing both an audit and certain consulting services to the same client, but conflicts of interest remain. In America non-audit fees charged to the same client amount to a quarter of audit fees; in Britain the figure is around a half.

A break-up, whether to separate the audit arms from the consulting businesses or to turn the Big Four into a Middling Eight, seems to offer a simple solution to these problems. It would at first affect only the British parts of the firms’ global networks, but the idea could spread.

Although a break-up might be justified as a last resort, it is premature. Investors have exaggerated expectations of auditors’ ability to detect fraud. Because audits rely on sampling, some skulduggery will inevitably slip through. There are also signs that the industry is improving. Many countries tightened the rules after a scandal in 2001 sank Enron, an energy-trading firm, and its auditor, Arthur Andersen. In America the number of accounts that are restated because of a material error has fallen sharply over the past decade. Break-up would bring unintended consequences. As the world economy shifts from making goods to selling services, auditing is becoming more complicated: scale and the multidisciplinary expertise of large firms count for more. Smaller firms risk being too reliant on a few large clients, which may cloud their judgment.

If you want radical fixes, there are better ways to correct the incentive problems at the core of the industry. You could sever the link between auditors and their clients by requiring securities regulators to pick firms’ auditors. Or you could introduce mandatory insurance of accounts, whereby companies must buy coverage for losses from accounting errors and the insurers would therefore appoint auditors to assess their risk.

One bean at a time

Such ideas have been floating around for years, but even these are too hasty. Instead regulators should sharpen tools that are already available in Europe. They could lower the cap on non-audit fees charged to an audit client from today’s generous level of 70% of the audit fee. Under rules introduced in 2016, British companies with the same auditor for ten years must re-tender; they are forced to rotate after 20. Such rules look draconian to American eyes, where the average auditor tenure for the first 21 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to have made disclosures this year is a cosy 66 years. New research finds that auditors are most likely to find misstatements early in their tenure; by the tenth year, the benefits of a fresh pair of eyes are lost. Academics also find that the Big Four’s fees rise with tenure. Even Britain’s 20-year limit is too long.

Auditors in many countries are already required to add flesh to the bare bones of the audit opinion. That is to be encouraged. Transparency over the main points of contention with management, and the size of revisions made to the accounts as a result of scrutiny, would cast light on auditors’ successes, not just their failures. And that in turn would help investors to assess auditors’ performance.

For years shareholders have waved through a company’s choice of auditor at annual general meetings. A bit more bolshiness could be salutary. Last month, for instance, over a third of investors in General Electric voted against the reappointment of KPMG, its auditor for 109 years. The case for breaking up the Big Four is unproven. But every so often, shareholders need to remind the quartet who their main customers are.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Shape up, not break up"

Much of the attention to the medical diagnostics firm accused of fraud has focused on CEO Elizabeth Holmes. But behind the scenes, another character played a central role.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said that it has charged Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes with fraud and forced the company’s founder to give up control of the company.

Charles Keating Jr., who died in 2014 at age 90, was a banker and financier who bought Lincoln Savings and Loan of Irvine, Calif., in 1984.

Navy SEAL, grandson of S&L financier, killed in Iraq

It became part of a financial and real-estate empire built by taking advantage of loose government restrictions on banking investments. He built the Valley's noted Phoenician resort and major residential developments such as Dobson Ranch in Mesa and Estrella Mountain Ranch in Goodyear.

By the end of the go-go 1980s, however, Keating's empire was crumbling.

In 1989, federal regulators seized control of the savings-and-loan company and Keating's other holdings, alleging that he looted the federally backed Lincoln Savings at taxpayer expense, sank money into risky ventures and cheated the company's investors.

Federal regulators filed a $1.1 billion civil racketeering and fraud lawsuit against Keating, accusing him of siphoning Lincoln's deposits to his family and into political campaigns.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized a record number of counterfeit goods last year and many are flooding into western Pennsylvania.

Whether it’s an apartment building, shopping center, or a mixed-use project, ostensibly well-intentioned residents regularly cite worsening traffic as the reason to stop new development. However, the most common methods communities push for to alleviate congestion make it worse, while the things that actually help usually face strong pushback.

The data in this interactive graphic comes primarily from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Multiple Cause of Death database, which is derived from death certificates from all 50 states and the District of Columbia and is widely considered the most comprehensive estimate of firearm deaths.

The state is taking steps to expand the criminal justice authority of Alaska Native tribes. Listen now

Philadelphia – October 18, 2017 – This week, University City District (UCD), a leader in entrepreneurial approaches to community revitalization, launched Just Spaces, an initiative designed to ensure that public spaces in University City are deeply inclusive and just. With support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, UCD will develop a tool to audit and improve public spaces in its district and throughout Philadelphia.

UCD creates and manages a variety of popular and dynamic public spaces throughout University City, including The Porch at 30th Street Station, Parklets, pedestrian plazas, and the forthcoming Trolley Portal Gardens. UCD will develop and deploy the ‘Just Spaces’ audit to assess its own network of public space projects, building on the notion that public spaces are forums to be experienced and negotiated across lines of race, class, gender, age, sexual preference, ethnicity and ability differences.

13. University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska

University of Alaska Fairbanks ranks among The 25 Most Affordable Online Bachelor’s Degrees in Criminal Justice Studies!
UAF enrolls 11,000 students and operates seven campuses across the state. The majority of UAF’s student body comprises undergraduate students, and the university offers small class sizes and individualized instruction. UAF offers a variety of online degrees and certificates, including an online bachelor’s of arts in justice program designed for students planning to pursue careers in Alaska or the Pacific Northwest.

Students learn how to address conflicts involving Native American, federal, and state issues. Learners are prepared to work with tribal and rural justice systems to foster restorative justice. The 120-credit curriculum includes courses in criminology, ethics and justice, principles of corrections, rural justice in Alaska, and juvenile delinquency. Elective options cover topics including gender and crime, police problems, and correctional counseling and rehabilitation. During a culminating experience, students choose to undertake an internship, participate in a seminar that explores critical issues relevant to the student’s intended occupation, or complete a research project.

Students take criminal justice classes online, without any on-campus requirements. In-state and out-of-state students pay the same tuition rate. Applicants must have a high school diploma or GED and at least a 2.5 GPA. Applicants must submit SAT or ACT scores. Transfer applicants must have at least 30 previous credits earned with a minimum 2.0 GPA.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is regionally accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU).

District attorneys from four California counties are meeting in Santa Barbara Friday to discuss and strategize for the Golden State Killer case.