Millennials are in the mix at boomer-friendly Desert Trip

By SANDY COHEN, AP Entertainment Writer

INDIO, Calif. (AP) — The Desert Trip music festival is not just for baby boomers.

The performers' average age is 72 — Paul McCartney and Neil Young are set to take the stage Saturday — and there may be a lot of gray hair in the audience, but millennials are in the mix as well.

Nineteen-year-old McKenna Haner said she was "raised on the Beatles" so she came to the festival to see McCartney.

"I'm a Beatles fanatic," she said.

Haner and her friend Seven Pappanastos, 17, said they were acutely aware they were among the youngest in the crowd. They didn't mind, but said the older concertgoers are "very aggressive."

"They act like, 'We're older. We deserve this,'" she said.

Pappanastos said attending the show came with a cost — beyond the $199 single-day ticket price.

"I got invited to three parties this weekend," he said. "All their parents are out of town here."

Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones kicked off the festival Friday night. Mick Jagger told the audience that, despite the legendary lineup of septuagenarians (including Roger Waters and the Who on Sunday), he wasn't going to "do a bunch of age jokes."

Then the 73-year-old Rolling Stones front man referred to the three-day event as "the Palm Springs retirement home for genteel English musicians."

The Desert Trip festival is being held at Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, home to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival each spring. But where Coachella is aimed at millennials, Desert Trip targets more affluent baby boomers who grew up with the festival's featured rockers.

"You guys are going to have a rocking, wild weekend in Palm Springs," Jagger said, adding coyly, "We're looking forward to seeing the dinosaur park."

(There actually is a dinosaur exhibit in nearby Cabazon, California.)

The Stones brought literal and figurative fireworks to the stage for their two-hour set. Jagger was his inimitably energetic self, skipping and shuffling across the stage and chatting warmly with the crowd.

The hit-packed performance included "Wild Horses," ''Miss You," ''Gimme Shelter," ''Midnight Rambler" and "Sympathy for the Devil." They even covered the Beatles' "Come Together." When the band closed with "Satisfaction," pyrotechnics lit up the desert sky.

Bob Dylan kicked off the festival just after sundown with an 80-minute performance. Wearing a black suit with a white hat, the 75-year-old rocker took the stage without fanfare and sat behind the piano. He did not address the audience or say anything between songs.

Backed by a five-piece band, he performed selections from throughout his catalog, including "Tangled Up in Blue," ''Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Make You Feel My Love." Dylan occasionally crept out from behind the piano to sing at a microphone center stage, pulling a harmonica from his pocket to play. He closed with "Masters of War" and silently left the stage.

The festival repeats next weekend.

Texas man survives tumble into trash compactor

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (AP) — Fire officials in Texas say a man who apparently was sleeping in a dumpster survived when he and the trash in the bin were dumped into a trash truck, compacted and then hauled to a transfer station.

Workers at the transfer station in Wichita Falls saw the man tumble Friday from the truck into a large garbage pit.

Emergency responders had to lower a basket into the pit to retrieve the unidentified man, who appeared to be conscious when rescued and was taken to a hospital for evaluation. Officials say the man is in his 60s.

Had workers not seen him fall into the pit, he could have been placed in another compactor before being loaded onto a truck and hauled to a landfill.

Mayfield and No. 20 Sooners hold on for 45-40 win over Texas

By STEPHEN HAWKINS, AP Sports Writer

DALLAS (AP) — Baker Mayfield first donned the giant gold cowboy hat — awarded to the winner of the Red River rivalry — then ran around the field with the Oklahoma Sooners flag.

The Oklahoma quarterback who grew up in the Austin area also made three long sprints down the field during the game. Those were to the end zone to celebrate touchdown passes to Dede Westbrook as the 20th-ranked Sooners held on to win 45-40 over the beleaguered Texas Longhorns on Saturday in the annual game Mayfield knows so much about.

"It's special to me. Very special," Mayfield said. "I've been waiting a long time to actually come away with a win against these guys."

Westbrook set a single-game Sooners record with 232 yards receiving on 10 catches, including three TDs longer than 40 yards .

"He's got track-type speed," Mayfield said.

After their 71-yard scoring hookup in the second quarter, the longest TD pass ever by the Sooners (3-2, 2-0 Big 12) against Texas, Mayfield sprinted along the Oklahoma sideline, then toward the middle of the field to acknowledge crimson-clad fans on the opposite side of the stadium before going to the end zone to meet up with Westbrook. They celebrated again after TDs of 47 and 42 yards in the third quarter.

"You just look at the plays we gave up," Charlie Strong said, the embattled third-year Texas coach who has taken over calling the defensive plays. "You can't give up home runs thrown over your head."

Mayfield lost to Texas as a freshman at Texas Tech in 2013 before transferring to Oklahoma, where he sat out a year before losing as the Sooners starter last October. This time, he completed 22 of 31 passes for 390 yards and overcame two interceptions in the first quarter, and a fumble in the final minute that his big right tackle Bobby Evans recovered.

Samaje Perine added 214 yards and two touchdowns rushing on 35 carries as Oklahoma piled up 672 total yards in the highest-scoring game in the history of the rivalry.

Texas (2-3, 0-2) led after two long TD passes by freshman quarterback Shane Buechele in the first 4 1/2 minutes after halftime. But Oklahoma went ahead for good when a Mayfield 4-yard TD run made it 28-27.

While Oklahoma had four turnovers, Texas only turned those into three points.

"Very fortunate to lose the turnover battle the way we did and still win," Sooners coach Bob Stoops said.

TAKEAWAYS

Oklahoma: While far from perfect, the Sooners are off to a good start in their pursuit of a 10th Big 12 title. The Sooners are also on the way to overcoming the disappointment of those two early non-conference losses that quickly eliminated any realistic chance of returning to the College Football Playoff for the second year in a row. Mayfield and Westbrook have developed quite a connection (five TDs, all of at least 40 yards, in two Big 12 games).

Texas: A loss increases the heat on Strong after the Longhorns gave up more than 40 points for the fourth time this season, and more than 500 yards for the third consecutive game. But the Longhorns need to keep taking shots down the field with Buechele, who had TD passes of 63 yards (to Devin Duvernay) and 45 yards (to Dorian Leonard ) in the second half.

WILD ENDING

After D'onta Foreman's 22-yard TD run for the Longhorns with 1:45 left, they almost got a huge break when Mayfield fumbled while being sacked on third down, but Oklahoma recovered and punted. Texas had a final wild play, completing several laterals and going forward at least 20 yards before eventually losing 9 — after a final declined penalty for an illegal forward pass. Foreman finished with 159 yards rushing and two touchdowns.

POLL IMPLICATIONS

A more lopsided score for Oklahoma probably would have caught the attention of more voters , especially those who might not have tuned into for the less than must-see Red River game matching 2-2 teams. If not for all the miscues, the Sooners likely would have had a bigger margin. They may jump a spot or two, but are still a long way from the No. 3 spot they had to start the season.

FIRST PICKS

The Texas defense had its first two interceptions of the season, both by Dylan Haines in the first quarter. One was on a ball through the arms of receiver Mark Andrews; the other came when Haines was the only player in the vicinity of the pass after the intended receiver got knocked down in the middle of the field without a penalty being called.

UP NEXT

Oklahoma: The Sooners are home next Saturday for another 11 a.m. kickoff, against Kansas State.

Texas: The Longhorns are home for the first time since Sept. 10 when they host Iowa State next Saturday.

Republicans Abandon Trump Over Lewd Video

eading Republicans abandoned their support of Donald Trump Saturday, with many of them of them calling for him to leave the presidential race against Hillary Clinton and allow Mike Pence to stand in as their nominee, a day after a video revealed Trump's lewd and predatory sexual pursuits 11 years ago.

A score of GOP senators and House members issued statements expressing their disgust with the revelations -- which capture Trump on a hot microphone telling "Access Hollywood's" Billy Bush he could "do anything" to women because of his celebrity.

"Grab them by the p---y," Trump says. "You can do anything."

STUDY: HOSPITAL RANKINGS MAY RELY ON FAULTY DATA; U.S. NEWS RESPONDS

Summary: “The October 2016 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 

features the article ‘Consumer Rankings and Health Care: Toward Validation and Transparency,’ by 

Bala Hota, MD, MPH, and co-authors, Rush University Medical Center (RUMC), Chicago.” according to 

a press release on EurekAlert. “After RUMC received a lower than expected ranking for patient safety 

in the 2015-16 U.S. News & World Report’s (USNWR) ‘Best Hospitals’ rankings, the authors compared 

the data that USNWR used for their hospital to their own internal data. The authors found that the 

USNWR data showed many more patient safety events, such as pressure ulcers, almost all of which 

had actually been present at the patient’s admission. Suspecting a broader problem, Hota et al. 

analyzed data on a sample of hospitals and found that RUMC was not the only organization with 

discrepancies in data. False-positive event rates were common among high-transfer and high-volume 

hospitals. The authors conclude more transparency and validation is needed for consumer-based 

benchmarking methods. In response to these findings and concerns raised by others, USNWR made 

changes to its methodology and data sources in 2016. In an accompanying editorial, ‘The Quality 

Measurement Crisis: An Urgent Need for Methodological Standards and Transparency,’ David M. 

Shahian, MD, Elizabeth Mort, MD, MPH, and Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, reflect on the Hota et al. 

article to conclude, ‘Just as health care providers have ethical and moral responsibilities to the public 

they serve, rating organizations and journalists that grade providers have similar obligations–in their 

case, to ensure measure validity and methodological transparency.’ RUMC further explored the 

importance of rating organization’s validity and methodological transparency in the following essay, 

‘Hospital Rankings Have Room for Improvement.'” Study: Hospital rankings may rely on faulty 

data,” EurekAlert! Science News. In response, Ben Harder, head of the U.S. News and Word Report 

quality ranking efforts, posted a description of how “quality measurement is a journey,”

US News : Finland, U.S. to Deepen Military Ties Through Pact

US News

Finland, U.S. to Deepen Military Ties Through Pact

Friday, October 7, 2016 - 07:13

Finland and the United States have signed a bilateral defense cooperation pact pledging closer military collaboration at the time when the Nordic country is increasingly concerned over Russia's activities in the Baltic Sea region

Trending News : WikiLeaks Releases Private Clinton Speeches, Hacking Blamed on Russia

By MICHAEL BIESECKER, CHAD DAY and JEFF HORWITZ, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she favored "open trade and open borders" and said Wall Street executives were best-positioned to help reform the U.S. financial sector, according to transcripts of her private, paid speeches leaked Friday.

The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to influence the presidential election.

Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016 presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1 million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were thousands of Podesta's emails. It wasn't immediately clear who had hacked Podesta's emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of messages, some sent as recently as last month.

Among the emails was a compilation of excerpts from Clinton's paid speeches in 2013 and 2014. It appeared campaign staff had read all Clinton's speeches and identified passages that could be potentially problematic for the candidate if they were to become public.

One excerpt put Clinton squarely in the free-trade camp, a position she has retreated on significantly during the 2016 election. In a talk to a Brazilian bank in 2013, she said her "dream" is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" and asked her audience to think of what doubling American trade with Latin America "would mean for everybody in this room."

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has made opposition to trade deals a cornerstone of his campaign.

Podesta posted a series of tweets Friday night, calling the disclosures a Russian hack and raising questions about whether some of the documents could have been altered.

"I'm not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump," Podesta wrote. "Don't have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked."

Podesta's comments came just hours after U.S. officials publicly accused the Russian government of directing cyberattacks on political organizations and American citizens in an attempt to interfere with U.S. elections.

The joint statement from the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department cited disclosures of "alleged hacked emails" on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks as being "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."

The statement didn't refer by name to the affected political institutions, but federal authorities are investigating cyberattacks on the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement, "It's not hard to see why she fought so hard to keep her transcripts of speeches to Wall Street banks paying her millions of dollars secret."

The emails released Friday included exchanges between Podesta and other Clinton insiders, including campaign manager Robby Mook. Most were routine, including drafts of Clinton speeches, suggested talking points for campaign surrogates and suggested tweets to be sent out from Clinton's account.

The excerpts include quotes from an October 2013 speech at an event sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which Clinton conceded that presidential candidates need the financial backing of Wall Street to mount a competitive national campaign.

"Running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates have to go out and raise it," Clinton said. "New York is probably the leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken with our whole economy."

In the same speech, Clinton was also deferential to the New York finance industry, exhorting wealthy donors to use their political clout for patriotic rather than personal benefit. She also spoke of the need to include Wall Street perspectives in financial reform.

"The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry," Clinton said.

In an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council, Clinton said politicians must balance "both a public and a private position" while making deals. Clinton gave an example from the movie "Lincoln," and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making.

"It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be," Clinton said. "But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."

Clinton's speeches often touched on technology and privacy. In an April 2014 speech to JPMorgan, she denounced National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden for going abroad, saying, "if he really cared about raising some of these issues and stayed right here in the United States, there's a lot of whistleblower protections."

But she told her audience that her time in the public eye left her sympathetic to privacy concerns.

"As somebody who has had my privacy scrutinized and violated for decades, I'm all for privacy, believe me," she said.

Speaking on international affairs, Clinton's comments were largely in line with her positions as secretary of state, if sometimes more blunt.

"The Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on Earth over the course of the last 30 years," she told the Jewish United Fund at a 2013 dinner.

The speech transcripts were produced under an agreement Clinton routinely imposed on any organization that hired her to speak. The contracts, such as ones crafted by the Harry Walker Agency, required the organizations to hire, at their own expense, a stenographer who would provide the transcripts to Clinton and not keep copies for themselves.

In some cases, the contracts themselves were obtained by news organizations under public records laws because Clinton was being paid to speak by public universities or colleges.

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Source USNEWS.COM