High court won't delay release of Calif inmates

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2006 file photo, Inmates are housed in three tier bunks, in what was once a multi-purpose recreation room, at the Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, Calif. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 prisoners by year's end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they're forced to open the prison gates. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2006 file photo, Inmates are housed in three tier bunks, in what was once a multi-purpose recreation room, at the Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, Calif. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 prisoners by year's end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they're forced to open the prison gates. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

FILE - In this undated file photo released by the California Department of Corrections, inmates sit in crowded conditions at the California Institute for Men in Chino, Calif. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 prisoners by year's end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they're forced to open the prison gates. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections, File)

FILE - In this undated file photo released by the California Department of Corrections, inmates sit in crowded conditions at California State Prison in Los Angeles. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013 paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 prisoners by year's end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they're forced to open the prison gates. (AP Photo/California Department of Corrections, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for the early release of nearly 10,000 California inmates by year's end despite warnings by Gov. Jerry Brown and other state officials that a public safety crisis looms if they're forced to open the prison gates.

The majority of justices refused Brown's emergency request to halt a lower court's directive for the early release of the prisoners to ease severe overcrowding at California's 33 adult prisons.

A panel of three federal judges previously ordered the state to cut its prison population by nearly 8 percent to roughly 110,000 inmates by Dec. 31 to avoid conditions amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

The panel, responding to decades of lawsuits filed by inmates, repeatedly ordered early releases after finding inmates were needlessly dying and suffering because of inadequate medical and mental health care caused by overcrowding.

Court-appointed experts reported that the prison system had a suicide rate that worsened last year to 24 per 100,000 inmates, far exceeding the national average of 16 suicides per 100,000 inmates in state prisons.

Brown appealed the latest decision of the panel and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel the early release order while considering his arguments that the state is making significant progress in improving conditions.

The governor also said he cannot further reduce the population without releasing dangerous felons.

"This ruling refusing to block the order doesn't bode well for their overall appeal," said inmate lawyer Don Specter, head of the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office.

Lawyers representing Brown argued in his July 22 appeal that releasing 10,000 more inmates will involve violent criminals and overwhelm the abilities of law enforcement and social services to monitor them.

"No data suggests that a sudden release of inmates with these characteristics can be done safely," the state said in its filing. "No state has ever done it."

The panel of judges and attorneys representing inmates have consistently rejected that argument. They say other states have marginally reduced inmate sentences without sparking an increase in crime.

The governor said the state has already transferred thousands of low-level and nonviolent offenders to county jails, which in turn have been forced into early release of many inmates to ease their own overcrowding issues/

The court rejected Brown's plea on Friday over the objections of Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. who all said they would have granted the state's request.

Scalia, in a dissent joined by Thomas, wrote that the previous order by the three-judge panel was a "terrible injunction" that threatens public safety. Scalia said the state's evidence shows it has made meaningful progress and that such reductions in the inmate population are no longer necessary.

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the state must cut its inmate population to deal with unconstitutional prison conditions caused by overcrowding.

They have said that further delay in reducing prison overcrowding will further the substandard delivery of medical and mental health care and, by extension, lead to more inmate deaths and injuries.

In recent years, the special panel of judges has accused Brown of attempting to delay and circumvent their orders. They threatened to cite the governor for contempt if he does not comply.

The judges waived all state laws in June as they ordered Brown to expand good-time credits leading to early release. They also directed the governor to take other steps, including sending more inmates to firefighting camps, paroling elderly felons, leasing cells at county jails and slowing the return of thousands of inmates now housed in private prisons in other states.

If those steps fail, the judges ordered the state to release enough inmates from a list of lower-risk offenders until it reaches the maximum allowed population.

In its latest filing with the Supreme Court, the state argued that no governor has the unilateral authority to take the steps ordered by the three-judge panel. They would require approval in the Legislature or "judicial pre-emption of California's core police powers," the administration wrote.

Brown has argued that prison conditions have substantially improved and that circumstances have changed since the federal courts' original order four years ago to reduce the prison population.

The state is spending $2 billion on new or expanded facilities for inmate medical and mental health treatment. That includes seven new centers for mental health treatment and the opening last June of an $839 million prison hospital in Stockton that will treat 1,722 inmates requiring long-term care.

The state also has boosted hiring and salaries for all types of medical and mental health professionals.

The judges want the population reduced to 137 percent of the designed capacity in the state's 33 adult prisons by the end of the year The state has already reduced the population by 46,000 inmates since 2006.

More than half of the decrease that has occurred so far is due to a two-year-old state law ? known as realignment ? that is sentencing offenders convicted of crimes considered non-violent, non-serious and non-sexual to county jails instead of state prisons.

___ AP Writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-08-02-Supreme%20Court-California%20Prisons/id-d1657a92528443d4a583a0a33ec69af8

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The next MMO to be announced: Sony reveals EverQuest Next

Sony Online Entertainment has revealed EverQuest Next. And, um? it looks rather impressive.

Not too much in the way of details yet, but the big thing with the action-y MMO is that the entire world is made of voxels, and this means that everything is destructible. Destroy bridges to send big foes tumbling to their doom. Blast through the ground to find procedurally-generated caverns. Smash down walls to create your own paths through areas. Etc.

There?s a lot more to it than that (a separate Landmark program/world which lets you build items, for instance, and that?ll be out towards the end of the year) but that?s the big stuff, and I?ll wait until I see it before filling you full of details. Nonetheless, I?d highly recommend you take a look at the official site to get a glimpse of the possibilities.

It?s early days yet, mind ? I suspect there?s still a lot of work to go before even the closed beta is open to the public. Speaking of the beta test, you can actually sign-up now.

Loads of screenshots below and videos.

Read more on RPGReporter.

RELATED ARTICLES

Source: http://www.incgamers.com/2013/08/the-next-mmo-to-be-announced-sony-reveals-everquest-next

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Nintendo needs moregames like 'Pikmin 3' for the Wii U, and it needs them now

Video games

Yannick LeJacq NBC News

2 hours ago

Nintendo

"Pikmin 3" is by far the best game released so far for Nintendo's struggling Wii U console, which raises the question: why isn't the company focusing on making more games like it?

When you think of Nintendo, the first images that jump to your mind are probably fairly predictable: Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, maybe even Zelda or Link, that guy with a sword that's always trying to save the princess.

What about Pikmin??

That's what I thought. While the series has been around for more than a decade (debuting in 2001 with the original "Pikmin" for the then-current generation GameCube console), it's remained one of Nintendo's best-kept secrets ? never possessing the star power of "Super Mario Bros." or the cultural ubiquity of "Super Smash Bros." And to the uninitiated that only know Nintendo as the company that makes "Mario Kart" games, that's a shame, because, well, "Pikmin 3" is one of the best video games I've played in years.

"Pikmin 3" begins with the three astronauts you control being marooned on a mysterious planet during a space expedition they were conducting in search of food for their home planet. As you begin to explore your new Earth-like surroundings, you encounter a series of brightly colored bug-eyed sprites (the titular Pikmin) that look like a cross between Wall-E and the little coal-puffs from "Spirited Away." These ridiculously, almost painfully, adorable critters become the main tools in your arsenal to find food.

Navigating the hazardous terrain of each gorgeously-realized level in the game's single-player campaign requires tactful use of the Pikmin to do everything from building bridges and tearing down walls to slaying gigantic spiders. Need to break through a wall of ice? Try hurling a group of the heft Rock Pikmin at it. Want to conduct an electrical charge to light up a room and scare away bats? Send Yellow Pikmin into the high-voltage zone. Just don't send either of them into the water; that's what the Blue Pikmin are for. And unlike other real-time strategy games like "StarCraft" or "Command & Conquer," your commander in "Pikmin 3" is literally in the trenches next to the foot soldiers, deftly (or, in my case, clumsily) aiming the different-colored Pikmin at enemies or pieces of fruit.

Nintendo

Combat is "Pikmin 3" is frenetic and disorganized, adding to the tension that makes it such a good strategy game.

The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind when trying to describe "Pikmin's" gameplay, which helps explain what makes this game feel unique and comfortably familiar at the same time. Like any good Pixar movie, it artfully balances equal parts of joyfulness and pathos to tell its story. The cutesiness of the Pikmin can seem sugary to a fault at first, but the game's central objective ? gathering food for survival ? jolts every puzzle with emotional urgency. And for what appears to be a children's game at first glance, "Pikmin 3" is hard.

Rather than setting up an arbitrary series of levels players can peruse at their own pace, the game sets all of its challenges against the emotionless face of a clock. You have from sun-up to sundown to find enough food for the next day, and any Pikmin that perish in-between are up to you to replace by harvesting more flora and fauna.

Nintendo

Now there's a face that pretty much anybody can love.

The manual labor invested in making each day of "Pikmin 3's" campaign successful sets it apart from pretty much any other strategy game I can remember playing recently, as the simply beauty of the game's animations and the ruthless difficulty of its mechanics make you for more emotionally invested in keeping your troops alive than, say, a match of "StarCraft 2" ever does. But there's something else that's equally important that sets "Pikmin 3" apart from other placeholders of the real-time strategy genre: it's coming out exclusively for the Wii U console.

Nintendo

Each level in "Pikmin 3" requires tactful use of the different-colored critters to successfully navigate hazardous terrain. The game's excellent multiplayer matches are all the more challenging because it requires two players to remain organized and efficient while using the same pool of resources.

As I've reported many, many, times now, Nintendo's new-ish console hasn't been doing the company much good. Less than a year on the market, the Wii U's sales took a particularly sharp nose-dive this past fiscal quarter. Nintendo itself has now admitted that it is to blame for the persistently weak Wii U sales, and even suggested that it needs some new franchises to throw into its predictable mix of games.

A brand new Nintendo franchise sounds intriguing. But after playing "Pikmin 3," I'm not so sure if churning one out simply for the sake of making something new is such a good idea. As Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter told me back in April, the company already has plenty of IP. What's important is what Nintendo chooses to do with it. "Pikmin 3" may not be "new" in the sense that Nintendo fans have been able to toss around these adorable little creatures since the early 2000s. But it's new in the sense that the "Pikmin" series is still evolving, still growing and improving over time, whereas every new "Super Mario Bros." game is basically the one before it with slightly better graphics. Simply put: I could leave gaming behind content with the fact that I never got the chance to play the next Mario game that Nintendo will inevitably release. Not so with Pikmin.

I don't know if "Pikmin 3" is enough on its own to convince curious gamers to invest in a Wii U. But it's the first game that made me truly appreciate the new console. As one video game writer put it to me on Twitter recently: "I want to want a Wii U." Well, "Pikmin 3" is a start.?

Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered technology and games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email at: Yannick.LeJacq@nbcuni.com.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663301/s/2f7e05f1/sc/1/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Cnintendo0Eneeds0Emore0Egames0Epikmin0E30Ewii0Eu0Eit0Eneeds0E6C10A831875/story01.htm

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U.S. declares new push to defuse Egyptian crisis

By Tom Perry and Michael Georgy

CAIRO (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it would work with other nations to resolve Egypt's crisis peacefully, injecting new energy into a push to end a bloody standoff since the overthrow of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

A day after saying the army had restored democracy by removing Mursi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Egyptian authorities to give demonstrators the space to protest in peace - a warning against dispersing pro-Mursi sit-ins.

"We will work very, very hard together with others, in order to bring parties together to find a peaceful resolution that grows the democracy and respects the rights of everybody," Kerry said before a meeting United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed in London.

The meeting appeared to signal a new diplomatic effort to end the crisis in which more than 300 people have been killed. The army removed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood from power on July 3 in response to mass protests against his rule.

With the European Union already mediating, the new push will rely on the United Arab Emirates to work with the army-backed interim government and Qatar, which supported the Mursi administration, to liaise with the Brotherhood.

Analysts say civilian members of the interim cabinet are trying to promote a political solution despite resistance from security services that want to crack down on the Brotherhood, encouraged by an outpouring of public anger at the movement.

Mohamed ElBaradei, vice president in the new administration, said he was lobbying for talks with the Brotherhood, while others advocated crushing it.

"People are very angry with me because I am saying, 'Let's take time, let's talk to them'. The mood right now is, 'Let's crush them, let's not talk to them'," he said. "I hope the Brotherhood understands that time is not on their side. I'm holding the fort, but I can't hold it for very long."

Egypt is more polarized than at any time since the downfall of autocratic president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, complicating mediation efforts in a pivotal Arab state fraught with unrest.

The Brotherhood, decrying what it sees as a coup against the country's first freely-elected head of state, escalated its protest campaign by announcing two new sit-ins and three marches to sensitive security facilities.

Its supporters clashed with police during a protest near a complex of television studios outside Cairo. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. State media reported army helicopters overhead and said two policemen were wounded by birdshot in what it described as an attempt to storm the complex.

The Brotherhood said the security forces had fired tear gas on peaceful protesters. Seven Mursi supporters were also injured, security sources said.

State TV reported that the Interior Ministry would impose a cordon around two large pro-Mursi Cairo sit-ins within 48 hours and that the police did not want to break them up by force.

Following the deaths of around 80 Mursi supporters on Saturday when security forces opened fire near one of the sit-ins, government pledges of action have raised concerns of more casualties. By pushing back any move to break up the sit-ins, the government has given the mediation effort a chance.

With the United States supplying Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year and the United Arab Emirates having pledged $3 billion to the new administration, the countries may be able to help force a compromise with Qatar's help.

In London, Sheikh Abdullah said a peaceful resolution required "inclusive dialogue".

The government has drawn up a transition plan envisaging parliamentary elections that will start in about six months.

But the Brotherhood protests are threatening to rob the government of a semblance of normality it needs to revive an economy which is in deep in crisis.

SISI SEES NEED FOR POLITICAL SOLUTION

Mursi has been in detention since he was deposed and is facing a judicial inquiry into accusations of murder and conspiring with the Palestinian group Hamas.

The authorities have also rounded up many other Brotherhood leaders accused of inciting violence, feeding international fears of a plan to uproot a group that was suppressed for decades until Mubarak's overthrow. The government accuses Mursi's supporters of taking up arms, alleging they engage in terrorism.

ElBaradei, former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, outlined ideas for a political deal that might include a pardon for Mursi and guarantees that the Brotherhood would have a place in political life. He said army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi understood the need for a political solution.

"But of course he has a responsibility to protect the country in terms of security. And the army is on the edge."

He said dialogue was the way to end the Brotherhood sit-ins. The government has promised to deal with protests it sees as a threat to national security. "I do not want to see any more bloodshed. Nobody wants that," ElBaradei said.

"They need to cooperate," he added, in reference to the Brotherhood. "But they need of course to feel secure, they need immunity, they need to feel that they are not excluded. It's things we are willing to provide."

He added that Sisi, who has gained enormous popularity since deposing Mursi, was not thinking of running for president.

"WE'RE NOT TERRORISTS"

The biggest sit-in is in northeast Cairo, where several thousand Mursi supporters have been camped out for more than a month in a protest that at times swells to tens of thousands.

"We are here with our wives and children. We don't want violence," said Ali el-Shishtawi, a government employee at the sit-in. "We're not afraid. We're not terrorists like they say."

Amnesty International issued a report saying Mursi supporters had tortured some of their political rivals, saying anti-Brotherhood protesters had reported being been captured, stabbed, beaten and subject to electric shocks.

It said eight bodies had arrived at the morgue in Cairo bearing signs of torture, five of which had been found near pro-Mursi sit-ins, and called for an investigation.

The new government gained a U.S. seal of approval late on Thursday when Kerry said the army had been "restoring democracy" when it toppled Mursi - Washington's strongest endorsement yet for the new leadership.

"The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descent into chaos, into violence," Kerry told GEO TV in Pakistan. "And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment - so far."

Washington's efforts to avoid calling Mursi's overthrow a "military coup" has left it open to charges of sending mixed messages about events in Egypt, long a bulwark of U.S. Middle East policy.

Mohamed Ali Bishr, a senior Brotherhood leader, said the movement was disappointed by Kerry's statement. "The United States is a country that speaks of democracy and human rights and they say something like that. I hope that they rethink their position and correct it," he told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick and Noah Browning in Cairo and Lesley Wroughton in London; editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-gives-seal-approval-egypts-leaders-111611555.html

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Did Raven-Symone come out on Twitter?

Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic

Did Raven Symone come out on Twitter??The 'Cosby Star' tweeted 'I can finally get married!'

Did Raven-Symone just come out as a lesbian on Twitter?

The "Cosby Show" star, 27, took to the social networking site to share her excitement about the June Supreme Court that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and recent Minnesota and Rhode Island laws allowing gay marriage.

PHOTOS: CELEBS COME OUT

"I can finally get married! Yay government!" she wrote. "So proud of you."

Symone explained her statement further to E! News, clarifying that she isn't currently engaged ? just thrilled for couples who have the option.

PHOTOS: GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN NEW YORK CITY

"I am very happy that gay marriage is opening up around the country and is being accepted," Symone said. "I was excited to hear today that more states legalized gay marriage. I, however, am not currently getting married, but it is great to know I can now, should I wish to."

Rumors about Symone's sexual orientation began swirling last year, sparked by a report that she was living with openly gay "America's Next Top Model" contestant AzMarie Livingston.

"I'm living my PERSONAL life the way I'm happiest," Symone responded at the time. "I'm not one, in my 25 year career to disclose who I'm dating. And I shall not start now."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nydnrss/gossip/~3/qVgfrDqig54/story01.htm

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Google Earth used to track kelp forests

Citizen scientists are using Google Earth to track disappearing ?underwater forests? along the coastline of Gabriola Island.

Help the Kelp ? a volunteer organization of citizen scientists ? has been carefully plotting beds of bull kelp on Google Earth this summer to help track the trend of disappearing marine habitat.

Volunteers say the number of bull kelp seems to have dropped at an alarming rate around the Gulf Islands, jeopardizing an ecosystem used by small sea creatures, fish and birds. They want to know why and help reverse the phenomena.

The group? will look at public education and kelp restoration work this fall.

?This isn?t something that has been studied well so the goal is to explore it through citizen science,? said Michael Mehta, a member of Help the Kelp. ?It?s like bird counts except we not only want to count and measure the kelp, but intervene and find out what went wrong with the ecosystem.?

Efforts to address dwindling kelp started in 2009, as Gabriola residents started to take note of fewer canopies in coastal waters. Old timers recalled kelp so thick in the 1950s they couldn?t row through it, said Victor Anthony, a founding member of Help the Kelp.

Kelp is much more sparse now, he said.

Other Gulf Islands have also noticed the change ? a concern because kelp, like forests, produces oxygen for the planet and absorbs carbon dioxide, kelp advocates say.

Hornby Island has started kelp restoration and Mayne Island has been mapping kelp beds along its coastline. Gabriola Islanders will take the health of kelp beds into their own hands this fall, when they plan to start ?planting? spores.

New maps on Google Earth will help them track the success of restoration. They also plan to hand maps out to tug boat operators and logging companies so they can avoid large kelp canopies. Log booms may have been mowing down kelp, with dead zones found near Harmac Mill in Nanaimo.

?This isn?t any different than a group of people wanting to save old growth trees,? Anthony said. ?This is an ecosystem and when something changes this dramatically ... we need to bring attention to it.?

Source: http://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/217804611.html

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Numbers don't add up for papal Mass crowd count

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? If measured in spirit, there is hardly a soul who would question the success of Pope Francis' Mass on giant Copacabana beach last weekend. The count when it comes to the flesh-and-blood numbers of faithful who actually attended is an entirely different matter.

The Vatican said an historic 3.7 million people were at the Sunday event, an eye-popping number that would have made it the second largest papal Mass ever. But number crunchers were splashing cold water on those jubilant estimates Friday, saying the real figure was not even half as big.

The problem was, the count released by Vatican and Brazilian officials was a guesstimate that statisticians say grossly inflated the crowd figures. The research director of Datafolha, one of Brazil's top polling and statistic firms, said that based on the size of the crowd area and reasonable density estimates, he would put Sunday's turnout at between 1.2 million and 1.5 million people.

Vatican officials and organizers of World Youth Day, an event held every three years that draws young Catholics from across the globe, weren't bashful about telling the press how many people turned out to see Francis.

"It's an old, old story that organizations, whether political radicals or the Vatican, always over-guesstimate the size of turnout, they want their event to look as good as possible," said Clark McPhail, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Illinois who has studied crowd counts for four decades.

McPhail first chuckled when he heard the Vatican's crowd estimate in an area of Copacabana beach and adjoining streets that encompassed about 497,000 square meters (594,400 square yards).

By the Vatican's count, the crowd density throughout the entire area would have been 7.4 people per square meter, which wouldn't allow for movement of any kind, let alone the jumping, arm waving, singing and dancing seen at the papal events. Video and photos of the crowd also showed that while it was packed close to the gigantic altar built on Copacabana beach, the faithful thinned out along the 4-kilometer long beach.

A big crowd estimate would surely be a boon to the pontiff's supporters, who would argue that the multitudes gave him a popular mandate to battle entrenched Vatican officials who don't look kindly upon Francis' drive to reform the church's opaque and scandal-ridden bureaucracy.

The bloated crowd figure also provided cover for city officials in Rio, where logistical problems seen during the papal visit brought into question the city's ability to host 2014 World Cup group stage and championship matches, not to mention the 2016 Olympics.

Those attending the papal events complained about the city's woeful public transport system, a lack of affordable hotel rooms, the need for public toilets and a local services industry not able to meet demands for things as simple as lunch. A miraculously high crowd count would make all that more understandable and give local officials breathing room.

Perhaps not by coincidence, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes was the first to float last weekend that 3 million faithful attended a Saturday night prayer vigil with Pope Francis, and that even more were expected for the Sunday Mass.

"We got that number from the organizers of the event and the mayor repeated it. How they arrived at that number, you'll have to ask them," said Nara Franco, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said in an email on Friday that the Vatican also received the 3.7 million figure from local church organizers of the World Youth Day.

When asked, those organizers acknowledged that the figure of who attended the pope's Mass wasn't built upon anything resembling a scientific crowd count.

"We came up with the number based on previous events held at Copacabana beach, like New Years, Carnival and concerts," said Carol Castro, a Youth Day spokeswoman. "We then looked at the videos of the pope's Mass and estimated the size based on estimates of those previous events."

The international press ran with the official estimates.

But Brazilian experts say crowd counts in the country, like in many nations, are wildly inaccurate.

"Nobody will be able to tell you how they came up with there being 3.7 million people attending the Mass because it's impossible," said Alessandro Janoni, research director for Datafolha. "The crowd wasn't even using the entire beach. It's simply impossible."

Datafolha did not make an official estimate for the Sunday Mass.

But based on Datafolha's crowd count earlier in the papal visit, which examined the size of Copacabana beach and the surrounding streets a crowd could spill into, Janoni said there were a maximum of 1.5 million people, no more, at the Mass. The firm estimated a crowd density of three people per square meter in the 497,000 square meters where people gathered on Copacabana beach, a high-end estimate given what McPhail and other researchers say is a good rule of thumb of two people per square meter in a packed event.

Datafolha officially estimated one of the pontiff's crowds, a Thursday meeting with young Catholics on Copacabana beach, at 865,000. The Vatican's estimate was 1.2 million for that event.

A 2007 concert by the rock group the Rolling Stones drew what authorities at that time estimated to be 1.5 million people to the same beach, but the crowd visually covered only about a third of the beach's length, bringing that number into doubt. Sunday's Mass stretched down almost the entire length of Copacabana.

If the church's estimate for Sunday's Mass had held, it would have only been bested by a 1995 Mass given only by Pope John Paul II in Manila, Philippines, for a World Youth Day event there. But the Datafolha estimate knocks Rio's event below the 2 million who turned out in Rome in 2000 for a Youth Day Mass and also a 1979 Mass in Krakow, John Paul's Polish hometown, during his first visit as pope.

Janoni and his team at Datafolha have deflated crowd estimates at other big events in Brazil, to the chagrin of organizers.

Those in charge of Sao Paulo's Gay Pride parade in recent years claimed it drew upward of 4 million people, making it the world's largest. Datafolha put the count during the event this June at 220,000.

An annual "March for Jesus" in Sao Paulo held by Pentecostal evangelical churches has billed itself as the "largest Christian event in the world" for many years, claiming well over 1 million people turn out for the event. Datafolha focused its attention on the June event this year and put the crowd at 200,000.

___

Follow Bradley Brooks: www.twitter.com/bradleybrooks

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/numbers-dont-add-papal-mass-crowd-count-223003120.html

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