Microsoft announces ‘Xbox One’, due out worldwide later this year

The next-gen console war is on.

Putting an end to weeks months years of rumor and speculation, Microsoft formally pulled the wraps off its Xbox 360 successor during a media gala at its Redmond HQ on Wednesday. It’s called the Xbox One, and according to the company, it’s an “all-in-one home entertainment system” aimed squarely at taking over your living room. No specific release date or price was announced, though it will be available worldwide later this year.

”What if a single device could provide all your entertainment, what if it could turn on your TV and talk to all the devices in your living room?,” said Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s president of interactive entertainment.

Headlining the new system’s expansive feature set is its ability to support live television. A redesigned Kinect camera — one comes packed with every console — lets users control their television with verbal and gesture commands, including the ability to start up the system simply by saying ‘Xbox On.’ A built-in guide will display local TV listings and can also be navigated with voice commands.

Consumers will be able to switch instantly between games, TV, music, movies and other kinds of entertainment options, while a PC-Like ‘Snap Mode’ will let users run multiple programs alongside one another. A redesigned traditional game controller was also demonstrated.

The system boasts plenty of potent tech under the hood, including an 8-core CPU, 8GB of system memory, and a 500GB hard drive. That hard drive will also function as a game DVR to save and upload game video and content, though it’s unclear if it will also be used to record television.

Confirming countless rumors, the system will go head to head with Sony by packing a Blu-ray drive. According to Wired, the Xbox One will also feature pass-through HDMI, which allows users to hook up a cable box or satellite directly to the system.

Unfortunately, the new system architecture is bad news for Xbox 360 owners. The Xbox One will NOT be backwards compatible with the current console, Microsoft’s Marc Whitten told The Verge.

The company also announced plans to beef up its industry-leading Xbox Live online service, increasing the number of servers from the Xbox 360’s 15,000 to over 300,000 for Xbox One. User content will, unsurprisingly, be stored in the cloud.

Of course, the system will also play video games. Microsoft announced a handful of titles, including four EA titles (‘FIFA 14,’ ‘Madden 25’, ‘NBA Live’ and ‘UFC’), ‘Forza’ 5’, a new franchise called ‘Quantum Break’ and Activision’s blockbuster-to-be, ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’. An impressive 15 exclusive games are planned for the system’s first year, 8 of which will be brand new franchises.

And while a new ‘Halo’ video game has yet to be revealed, the company did announce a live-action Halo television series, to be executive produced by none other than Steven Spielberg.

Microsoft’s new machine will go head to head with Sony’s recently announced PlayStation 4 later this year — and the game industry could use the excitement.

The game industry has undergone a massive transformation since the 2005 launch of the Xbox 360. The rise of more affordable gaming options, particularly in the mobile space, has publishers scrambling. Gamers have been less and less willing to fork over $60 per game, as evidenced by steady declines in retail software sales. Nintendo’s Wii U, launched in November of last year, has thus far failed to catch on with gamers in North America. Microsoft and Sony are under a great deal of pressure to convince consumers that investing in dedicated gaming consoles is still a worthwhile spend.

Many gaming insiders believe there’s still plenty of life left in the home console market, however.

“I believe that console gaming is going to explode on the scene of consumer electronics with this next generation of consoles,” former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello wrote in a lengthy screed on Kotaku.

“We think that investor confidence is well-placed, and expect the next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony to impress and delight consumers,” wrote Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities in a client note last Friday.

Though Nintendo’s Wii shot out of the gate to take a commanding sales lead in the last console generation, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 proved to have far more staying power. It’s ruled consoles sales charts for the past two years, giving the company pole position in the next-gen console war.

Both Microsoft and Sony will have a chance to prove their cases in just a few weeks during the game industry’s annual E3 trade show in Los Angeles.

Witnesses describe deadly Oklahoma tornado: ‘All you could hear were screams’

The hell he saw was harrowing, but it’s the sounds at Plaza Towers Elementary that Stuart Earnest Jr. says will haunt him forever.

“All you could hear were screams,” Earnest said. “The people screaming for help. And the people trying to help were also screaming.”

Plaza Towers, a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school, took a direct hit when a titanic tornado chewed a deadly and destructive 20-mile path through Newcastle, Moore and parts of southern Oklahoma City for 40 minutes Monday afternoon.

State officials have adjusted the number of casualties a few times since the tragedy. Tuesday morning, Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer at the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner’s Office, said that the death toll had been reduced to 24 for now, including 9 children. Seven of those children died at the school.

Elliott said believed the deaths had been double counted earlier, leading to an inaccurate death toll of nearly 50. “It could conceivably rise,” Elliott said.

KFOR reported that at least 233 people were injured by the storm.

”Not to be pessimistic… but we think the death toll will continue to climb as we find more bodies,” Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb said on CNN Tuesday morning.

Mother Nature was showing no mercy to Moore on Tuesday. Drenching rains and lightning had moved into the area by 9 a.m. Forecasters weren’t predicting tornadoes, but said hail and damaging winds were possible through late afternoon.

President Barack Obama said FEMA officials and staff were on the ground in the area, and that the federal government would help with the disaster response. ”The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground there for them, beside them, as long as it takes for their homes and schools to rebuild, businesses and hospitals to reopen, the parents to console, the first responders to comfort and of course frightened children who will need our continued love and attention,” Obama said Tuesday morning at a press conference.

Classes were still in session at Plaza Towers when the twister, estimated to be packing winds of 200 mph or greater, crushed nearly every corner of the school. Teachers’ cars were thrown into the building, and the playground no longer exists.

“I can only hope those little kids killed didn’t suffer,” said Earnest, one of many who rushed to the school to help survivors.

With several students still unaccounted for, rescuers worked overnight digging through the rubble.

“I just hope they find her,” Shannon Galarneau said of her 10-year-old niece, a Plaza Towers student who was missing as of early Tuesday morning. “You just feel helpless.”

The girl’s younger sister, also a student at the school, suffered cuts to her head and bruises on her back. The 8-year-old was still wearing her hospital bracelet while asleep on her grandmother’s shoulder in the front seat of a pickup truck just after midnight.

“She said it was probably the scariest day of her life,” Galarneau said.

The child was among more than 230 reportedly injured by the tornado, which some estimated to be greater than a mile wide at times. Its path was nearly identical to the one taken by a record-breaking May 1999 tornado that devastated the area.

Galarneau and her husband could see the twister a mile and a half from their front porch and scrambled to hide.

“It barreled down fast,” said Galarneau, who found refuge in a utility closet.

President Barack Obama declared several Oklahoma counties disaster areas and pledged to support the area’s rescue and recovery. The funnel’s fury crumbled homes for several blocks around the school and in other parts of Moore. Missing street signs and other landmarks made some neighborhoods unrecognizable even to locals.

“It is a barren wasteland,” Galarneau said. “Everything is leveled.”

Allen and JoAnn Anderson huddled under quilts and pillows in their bathtub with their Yorkie, Magand, and cat, Meow, when the tornado came down their street.

“It was like standing in the middle of a train track and having the train go right over you,” said Allen, 63.

They emerged from the tub 15 minutes later to find their brick house gone and cars badly damaged.

“There’s no house. It’s just a pile of rubble,” Allen said.

The couple checked into a motel with their pets late Monday. Chunks of attic insulation were still stuck in JoAnn’s sandy-blond hair, and her legs were partially caked in dried mud.

“It could be worse,” JoAnn said. “We’re alive.”

By Jason Sickles and Liz Goodwin

In tornado’s wake, worried parents seek out kids

The parents and guardians stood in the muddy grass outside a suburban Oklahoma City church, listening as someone with a bullhorn called out the names of children who were being dropped off — survivors of a deadly tornado that barreled through their community.

For many families, the ordeal ended in bear hugs and tears of joy as loved ones reunited. Others were left to wait in the darkness, hoping for good news while fearing the worst.

At least seven children are among the 24 reported dead so far in Moore, the Oklahoma City suburb ravaged by Monday’s tornado that packed winds of up to 200 mph. The twister reduced one elementary school to a heaping mound of rubble and heavily damaged another while also flattening block after block of homes. Officials earlier said more than 50 people had died, including 20 children. The medical examiner’s office revised that death toll Tuesday morning, saying some victims were maybe counted twice in the initial confusion after the storm.

At St. Andrews United Methodist Church, parents stared into the distance as they waited, some holding the hands of young children who were missing siblings.

Tonya Sharp and Deanna Wallace sat at a table in the church’s gymnasium waiting for their teenage daughters. As Sharp and Wallace spoke, a line of students walked in.

Wallace spotted her 16-year-old daughter, who came quickly her way and jumped into her mother’s arms, pushing her several steps backward in the process. But Sharp didn’t see her daughter, a 17-year-old who has epilepsy. She worried her daughter hadn’t taken her medicine.

”I don’t know where she’s at,” Sharp said. Later, she went to speak to officials who helped her register so she could be notified as soon as her daughter was found.

Shelli Smith had to walk miles to find her children. She was reunited with her 14-year-old daughter, Tiauna, around 5 p.m. Monday, but hadn’t yet seen her 16-year-old son, TJ, since he left for school that morning.

TJ’s phone had died, but he borrowed a classmate’s phone to tell his mother where he was. However, Smith couldn’t get to him due to the roadblocks. So she parked her car and started walking.

It took her three hours, but a little after sunset, she found him. She grabbed her son and squeezed him in a tight hug that lasted for several seconds before letting go. TJ hugged his sister, and then hugged his mom again.

The family had a long walk back to their car and then home, but she said she didn’t mind.

”I was trying to get him and they wouldn’t let me,” she said, adding later: ”I was like, ’You know what? I’m going to get my son.’”

Renee Lee summed up the struggle for many parents with multiple children — find the ones who they hadn’t yet seen, while calming the younger ones they had with them.

Lee is the mother of two daughters Sydney Walker, 16, and Hannah Lee, 8. When the storm came, she tried to pick Sydney up from school. Sydney told her on the phone that they wouldn’t let her come in. While Lee and her younger daughter waited in their home, which wasn’t hit, Sydney was safe in the room at a local high school.

Lee said she believed Sydney wasn’t hurt and seemed resigned to the severe weather outbreaks.

”There’s been so many of them, it doesn’t even faze me,” she said. ”You just do what you gotta do. It’s part of living here.”

By NOMAAN MERCHANT

Good Morning

Massive tornado rips through Moore, Oklahoma; 51 killed, more feared dead

A devastating, mile-wide tornado touched down near Oklahoma City on Monday, killing at least 51 people and decimating homes, businesses and a pair of elementary schools in the suburb of Moore.

According to the state’s medical examiner, the death toll was expected to rise.

The schools—Plaza Towers Elementary and Briarwood Elementary—were leveled by the tornado. It was unclear how many children were in them at the time the twister hit, but according to KFOR-TV, at least seven children died at Plaza Towers, and as many as two dozen more were feared to be trapped inside the rubble. An Associated Press photographer saw rescue workers pull several children out alive. A makeshift triage center was set up in the school’s parking lot.

”This is war-zone terrible,” Jon Welsh, a helicopter pilot for KFOR who lives in Moore, said while surveying the damage from the air. ”This school is completely gone.”

Emergency officials urged people to remain off the roads so rescue workers and first responders could reach people potentially trapped in rubble, as the National Guard was called in to help in the search for victims.

Three people were killed at a 7-Eleven in the path of the storm, CBS’ KWTV reported, including a man, woman and baby who took cover in a freezer but didn’t survive. KFOR reported a fourth person was killed there.

The funnel cloud could be seen for miles, creating a debris field several miles wide. According to the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., the tornado was on the ground for approximately 40 minutes, and a tornado warning was in effect for 16 minutes before the twister developed.

Weather officials estimated the strength of the tornado to be an F4 or F5 on the Fujita Scale, the highest rating a tornado can achieve. The National Weather Service said the tornado’s preliminary classification was an F4, with winds up to 200 mph.

On May 3, 1999, a tornado outbreak near Oklahoma City produced 14 tornadoes—including an F5 in Moore—killing 36 people and injuring 295 others. A host on KFOR called Monday’s storm ”the worst tornado damage-wise in the history of the world.”

The devastated area covered 30 square miles. Communication was snarled as landlines and cellphone towers were knocked down. A water treatment plant in Oklahoma City was also damaged.

President Barack Obama directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to prepare to get ”all available assistance” to the disaster-hit area, the White House said.

The 106-acre Orr Family Farm was completely destroyed, killing between 75 and 100 horses, KFOR reported.

Families of potential victims were directed by the Red Cross to a website—safeandwell.org—for information about survivors.

Another, smaller tornado was spotted on the ground west of Meeker, Okla., north of Shawnee, on Monday.

The Oklahoma House of Representatives canceled its afternoon sessions so lawmakers and staffers could take shelter, the AP said.

The tornadoes came a day after powerful storms ripped through the center of the country, spawning at least a dozen tornadoes, killing two people and causing extensive damage from Georgia to Minnesota.

By Dylan Stableford

Nurses who treated bomb suspect reveal struggle

The 29-year-old trauma nurse was on-call at home, unwinding in front of a “Friends’’ television marathon on a Friday night. She had been ministering to patients horribly injured in the Boston Marathon bombings and craved a distraction. But she couldn’t resist flipping to the news, and as she did, police surrounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, cowering and bloody inside a parked pleasure boat.

Then her smartphone rang.

A nursing supervisor told the young woman to hurry into work. She didn’t know it yet, but within hours, she would be one of Tsarnaev’s bedside nurses, soothing the accused terrorist’s pain and healing his wounds — just as she had done for some of his victims.

As she raced to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, that possibility unfolded in her mind. She replayed a conversation she had had with her husband earlier in the week. She wasn’t sure she could nurse a terrorist, she had told him. “You have to do it,’’ she recalled him saying. “You have to do it so we can get answers.’’

At the hospital, the head nurse sent her to prepare Tsarnaev’s room, ushering her into a confidential fellowship of nine trauma nurses. They were required to show identification and let police search their purses at up to four separate checkpoints to reach Tsarnaev’s heavily guarded room in an intensive care unit where all of the beds but his were eerily empty.

While Boston residents celebrated upon watching Tsarnaev’s capture at about 8:45 p.m. on April 19, the trauma nurses could not exhale. For them — and for the hospital, which also treated 24 bombing victims, some on the same floor — an extraordinarily draining six days were just beginning.

All of the nurses asked by supervisors to care for Tsarnaev agreed, the hospital said. The Globe interviewed seven of them, and all said that the ethical bedrock of their profession requires them to treat patients regardless of their personal history. They are sometimes called upon to nurse drunk drivers, prisoners, gang members, but this assignment was the ultimate test of Florence Nightingale’s founding ideals.

One of the nurses, who agreed to be identified by her middle name, Marie, arrived on her regular unit about 7 a.m. Saturday. “Don’t put down your bag yet,’’ the nurse in charge said. Marie burst into tears.

She had been locked down at home with her children the previous day during the manhunt for the suspect, and she was already tense. “You don’t have to do this,’’ her supervisor said. “I did it because I’m a nurse and I don’t get to pick and choose my patients,’’ Marie said.

From then on, supervisors called the trauma nurses assigned to Tsarnaev ahead of time so that they could prepare themselves mentally.

The nurses said they were proud of the care they provided the suspected bomber, whose condition steadily improved, and of their role in preparing him to face justice. Tsarnaev is now at the Federal Medical Center Devens at Fort Devens, a former Army post.

Still, many felt ambivalent, especially between shifts. The nurses, who were interviewed in groups at the hospital, did not want to be identified — although some agreed to use middle names. They are afraid of the reaction from some members of the public, particularly after the disruptive protests at a Worcester funeral home that arranged the burial of Tsarnaev’s brother. A few are surprised they feel guilty for doing a good job.

Some drew an emotional line when caring for Tsarnaev that they normally don’t with other patients. One nurse, who usually talks to patients about current events to create a rapport, stuck to medical questions.

While moving Tsarnaev one day, another nurse, Irene, reflexively said: I am really sorry “hon.’’ It’s the sort of thing nurses say dozens of times a day to other patients, but it felt weird with an alleged terrorist, she said.

Afterward she and Marie made a pact. They would alert each other if either used an endearment, so they could stop.

“You see a hurt 19-year-old and you can’t help but feel sorry for him,’’ said Marie, who like other nurses referred to him as a boy. Yet, she said, she “would not be upset if he got the death penalty. There is no way to reconcile the two different feelings.’’

Some nurses said they felt no sympathy for Tsarnaev.

He and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are believed to have planted two bombs that killed three people and injured 265 as spectators cheered runners to the end of the world-renowned race. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shoot-out with police in Watertown on the night of April 18. With the brother still on the run the next morning, Governor Deval Patrick asked metropolitan Boston residents to hunker down indoors and businesses to close.

When police arrested Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a backyard in Watertown, he was bleeding from gunshot wounds. An ambulance rushed him to Beth Israel Deaconess because it was the closest Level 1 trauma center, Boston Emergency Medical Services said in a statement.

As the ambulance pulled up outside the emergency department on the hospital’s west campus, surrounded by police vehicles, the Norden family watched from a fifth-floor ICU, where Paul Norden, whose right leg had been blown off by one of the bombs, was recovering. Initially, his mother was upset. “I thought, why does he have to come here, where so many of the people who were hurt are,’’ Liz Norden said in an interview.

The hospital anticipated the victims’ families would be distraught, and a number complained about Tsarnaev’s presence on the sixth floor, just down the hall from some of the injured. Liz Norden spoke to a nurse, and a hospital social worker called her at about 3 a.m. to explain that Tsarnaev would not be near her son, but one floor above. Later, one of Paul Norden’s doctors talked with her about the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians that required them to do their best to save any patient’s life, including Tsarnaev’s.

Soon, however, Paul Norden was moved to a sixth-floor trauma unit, where hundreds of get-well cards from American schoolchildren still cover the walls. It was unsettling to walk by the heavily guarded ICU on the way to and from her son’s room, Liz Norden said, but caregivers were exceptionally kind to her family and the medical care was above reproach.

During their shifts, the nurses would have monitored Tsarnaev’s breathing, heart rate, and neurological status every one to two hours. They would have checked his wounds for signs of infection, asked about his pain, and administered medications — all standard ICU care.

Privacy laws prevented the nurses from discussing Tsarnaev’s specific medical treatment during the interviews.

The nurses chatted with FBI agents about baseball (some of the agents were New Yorkers and avid Yankees fans), restaurants, and vacations. The agents, who grew jumpy when monitors tracking Tsarnaev’s vital signs beeped loudly, were stationed in his room, while Boston and State Police guarded the perimeter.

When the nurses left the unit after their 12-hour shifts, they said, they did not talk to anyone about their day — not even spouses. They shielded themselves from news reports — and often from acquaintances and friends — because they did not want to hear the outrage against Tsarnaev and were afraid of unwelcome curiosity about their work.

“When you’re in the room, it’s just a patient. You’re here to . . . make sure they’re feeling better,’’ said Michele, a 29-year-old nurse who cared for Tsarnaev the first night. “When you step away, you take it in. I am compassionate, that’s what we do. But should I be? The rest of the world hates him right now. The emotions are like one big salad, all tossed around.’’

During the week, social workers held special counseling sessions for the trauma nurses, which all nine nurses attended. “They carried this tremendous weight and responsibility,’’ said Barbara Sarnoff Lee, the hospital’s director of social work and patient and family engagement. “They heard messages from law enforcement and the world: You need to keep this person alive. We need information. We need justice.’’

Beth Israel Deaconess chief executive Dr. Kevin Tabb said that while the unwelcome experience of caring for a suspected terrorist is new to American caregivers, it is more common in Israel. Tabb worked for more than a decade at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Nurse Julie Benbenishty, director of trauma at the Israeli hospital, said terrorists are not separated from other patients there, even if they are victims.

“Many of the support staff, the cleaners, and families of other patients will say, ‘Why are you giving him pain medication?’ They might be angry at us for turning him and washing him and for doing what we are really supposed to do,’’ she said. “After about a half-hour, I don’t see him as a terrorist anymore.’’

In Israel, she said, caregivers are open about their role, perhaps because they are more toughened to the criticism.

Here, the Beth Israel Deaconess trauma nurses are worried “people are not going to understand what we did,’’ said one. Another wondered, “If any of these people knew what I did [that] weekend, would they hate me, or would they thank me?’’

Even with spouses, the nurses felt reluctant to unburden themselves because of patient privacy rules. The 29-year-old who drove to the hospital Friday night said her husband guessed what was going on, but she warned him, “I can’t talk about it. I can’t say anything.”

The greatest source of solace turned out to be confiding in one another.

By Liz Kowalczyk

Teen’s invention could charge cellphone in 20 seconds

A California teen’s invention could potentially knock down cellphone-charging time to a superfast 20 seconds.

So far, the energy-storage device has powered only an LED light, but it has the potential to do much more.

The future certainly looks bright for 18-year-old Eesha Khare, who pocketed a $50,000 prize for the Young Scientist award from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Ariz., for her tiny and possibly revolutionary device.

Khare sees the device as potentially powering car batteries, cellphones or any electronics that could use a rechargeable battery.

“My cellphone always dies,” Khare explained to NBC San Francisco, when asked what inspired her invention.

The supercapacitor, she explains on CBS San Francisco, is “basically an energy source device that can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume.”

The Harvard-bound teen has caught the attention of Google, who has approached her about her device.

Regardless of what happens to the supercapacitor, we’re sure to hear more from the high school senior—at least according to Khare. “I’m going to be setting the world on fire,” she said.

By Claudine Zap

Myanmar leader making landmark White House visit

Former general Thein Sein on Monday becomes the first Myanmar president to be welcomed to the White House in almost 47 years, crowning a dramatic diplomatic rehabilitation for his nation after years of international isolation.

But activists are angry about President Barack Obama hosting Thein Sein, and lawmakers are wary. The Myanmar leader has led the shift from decades of direct military rule, but has stalled on some reform commitments and failed to stop bloody outbursts of ethnic violence.

Thein Sein previously served in a repressive junta, and his meetings at the White House and Congress would have been all-but-impossible before he took the helm of a nominally civilian government in 2011. His name was only deleted from a blacklist barring travel to the U.S. last September.

He arrived in Washington Saturday, six months after Obama made history with an unprecedented U.S. presidential visit to the country also known as Burma. The administration’s outreach to Myanmar’s generals has provided an important incentive for the military to loosen controls on citizens and reduce dependence on China.

Myanmar has been rewarded by relaxation of tough economic sanctions, and Thein Sein will be addressing U.S. businessmen keen to capitalize on the opening of one of Asia’s few untapped markets.

”President Thein Sein’s visit underscores President Obama’s commitment to supporting and assisting those governments that make the important decision to embrace reform,” the White House said in its announcement of Monday’s visit.

It will be the first by a Myanmar leader since a September 1966 visit by Ne Win, an independence hero-turned dictator, who began the nation’s descent from regional rice bowl to economic basket case. Thein Sein visited New York last September for the U.N. General Assembly but didn’t come to Washington.

The U.S. last month announced it is considering duty-free access for Myanmar to U.S. markets, and there could be progress Monday toward a bilateral trade and investment framework agreement.

The most significant outcome of Thein Sein’s trip could be a symbolic one. Obama is expected to use ”Myanmar” — the country name adopted by the junta in 1989 — when he meets Thein Sein. However, the U.S. will keep using ”Burma” in official documents.

Thein Sein will be accorded the protocol due to a foreign president, yet his Washington welcome will pale next to that granted last September to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who met Obama and was presented by Congress with the highest civilian award it can bestow.

Human rights activists and Myanmar campaigners have sharply criticized the administration for inviting Thein Sein, arguing it sends the wrong message and wastes leverage to press for further democratic change. The administration says it is important to signal U.S. support for his reform agenda, likely still opposed by military hardliners.

Ahead of the trip, Myanmar released at least 19 political prisoners in what has become a pattern for amnesties that coincide with high-profile international meetings as a way of highlighting the government’s benevolent policies. Right groups say at least 160 political detainees are still held.

The government has permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its notorious prisons for the first time in seven years. But hasn’t allowed adequate humanitarian access to conflict zones where tens of thousands have been displaced. Authorities have failed to stop, and may have abetted in some cases, an explosion in communal violence that has killed hundreds and led to segregation of Muslim communities.

The U.S. Campaign for Burma said Thein Sein’s trip follows a troubling downward trend in Myanmar, and that ”instead of honoring an abusive leader” the U.S. should tie its concessions to conditions.

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON