COLORADO FIRE: cnn

(CNN) -- It was like a scene from a big-budget Hollywood disaster movie -- a Godzilla of a fire roaring down the mountain

straight toward Brandon Hanson's Colorado Springs neighborhood.

Winds gusting at 65 mph pushed the fire over a ridge and sent it roaring into the city. Suddenly, a blaze in the mountains threatened to consume homes and businesses and change lives.

Hanson, 29, snapped a photo from his driveway of the thick plumes of smoke, some spiking as high as 20,000 feet, and sent it in to CNN iReport.

He'd just moved to Colorado Springs in April with his wife, Maria. Now their new house, their new life, was in peril.

"It's a lot worse than we thought," he ran in and told Maria.

Hanson packed up his Nissan Rogue. Paperwork, passports, pictures. And baby things for Xavier, their 1-month-old son.

Every hotel room in Colorado Springs was already occupied, so he kept driving south on Interstate 25 to Pueblo.

Wednesday, the Waldo Canyon Fire had doubled in size and was only 5% contained.

The Hansons scoured through photos posted on online news sites trying see their house. Maria drew an arrow on a photograph showing their neighborhood, flames devouring houses everywhere.

"Our home," it said in white lettering. They still could not tell if they had been spared.

The fire, fueled by high winds and hot, arid weather conditions, could be raging for some time to come. All the Hansons can do now is wait.

They are not alone. The fire has forced about 36,000 people to evacuate their homes.

One of them, Mindy Levinson, was forced to leave her apartment Tuesday, accompanied by her young son. She regrets she didn't take photos and other mementos.

"It was like Armageddon. You couldn't see anything but dark smoke and glowing red all around you," Levinson told CNN's "AC360."

Levinson said she doesn't believe her apartment has been affected.

The curtain of flame was moving so fast that some people just had minutes to leave. At moments like that, you realize what's important. What to keep with you.

For Scott Deed, it was the red, white and blue fluttering outside his house.

"This flag is my son's. I lost him in Iraq. I want to make sure I take that down," he told CNN

Patrick Sobecki, 18, didn't have much time to think about what to take with him.

He had been sleeping after taking Percocet to dull the pain of having all four wisdom teeth pulled Tuesday morning.

"That's just one more thing I am having to deal with in the middle of all this," he said.

When his parents roused him from slumber, Sobecki grabbed his MacBook Pro laptop and a World War I book published in 1920. His grandfather gave it to him.

The family fled the Peregrine neighborhood in northwest Colorado Springs on a two-lane road that quickly turned into a parking lot. About 7,000 people were trying to get out the same way.

Sobecki said it took two hours to travel four miles. They found refuge at a friend's house on the east side of town, away from the fire.

Sobecki was born and raised in Colorado Springs, and he'd seen fires before. But none like this. None that blazed into the city.

He thought about Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's words that it looked like nothing short of a full-scale military invasion.

"That is Colorado Springs, the city I was born and raised in, the city that is at war with nature," Sobecki said.

Wednesday, Sobecki's family, like the Hansons, checked online sites and Facebook, anxious to know what happened to their homes.

Mark Galley wondered whether he would see his house again in the Mount Shadows neighborhood. He wondered what had happened to his neighbors.

It was raining ash, and the smoke blanket hung so heavy Galley couldn't even see across the street.

It was surreal, he told CNN

It was scary.

Becky Schormann made a pile at the front door of things to take with her.

But she couldn't take everything. The fishing boat parked under her deck. The antique dishes from her grandparents. Her antique doll collection -- save one, the oldest one she owned.

"I keep telling myself it's going to be OK," she said.

For Russ Wolfe, it's going to take a long time for it to be OK.

Wolfe founded the Flying W Ranch more than 60 years ago, building it into a regional tourist draw. It served chuckwagon suppers and provided Western-style entertainment.

Wednesday, Wolfe had nothing left.

"With much sadness we have to report that the Flying W Ranch as well as several homes in the Mountain Shadows area has in fact been burned to the ground," the website said. "We ask that in this sad time that you remember the Flying W and the Wolfe family who has owned and operated the Flying W Ranch since 1953.

"If you have made an online reservation or a deposit your money will be refunded at a later date when we have had a chance to gather our thoughts," the website said. "We ask that you pray for all the families within the area and assure you we will rebuild."

It will be another good, clean family show, Wolfe said.

Jenny Stafford, whose husband is deployed, fled her Colorado Springs home with her two young children and her cat Tuesday afternoon.

"It was like nothing we have ever seen before in our life," she told CNN. "We turned back to look, the flames were coming over the hill. Everything looked like it was on fire, smoke everywhere."

Meanwhile, the temperatures soared again Wednesday and the air was acrid with the smell of everything burning.

Filmmaker Joshua Keffer closed his windows, even though he has no air conditioning, and kept working at home. People were still trying to go on with life, as though that were possible.

Keffer was someone who marveled at the visual, in awe of the images of the angry fire.

"It was stunning to look at," he said.

Especially at night, when the embers glowed hot orange against the blackness of the sky.

But the truth quickly marred the images and tore Keffer apart.

It wasn't just trees anymore. It was homes. It wasn't a fire somewhere out there anymore. The flames were among the people, in their city.

Farmers suffer as soaring temperatures worsen drought in Midwest

A severe drought is spreading across the Midwest this summer, resulting in some of the worst conditions in decades and leaving more than a thousand counties designated as natural disaster areas, authorities said.

Farmers in the region are suffering, with pastures for livestock and fields of crops becoming increasingly parched during June, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Many areas in the southern Midwest are reporting the poorest conditions for June since 1988.

The farmers' difficulties come amid a record-setting level of hot, dry weather across the nation.

As of Tuesday, about 61% of the contiguous United States (excluding Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico) was experiencing drought conditions, the highest percentage in the 12-year record of the US Drough Monitor.

Unusually high temperatures and little rainfall over the past week have led to "widespread deterioration and expansion of dryness and drought" in the Midwest, northwestern Ohio Valley and southern Great Plains, the drought monitor said.

That has left 1,016 counties in 26 states termed as natural disaster areas, the Department of Agriculture said this week.

A county is generally qualified as a natural disaster area if it has suffered severe drought for eight consecutive weeks. Farmers are then eligible for low interest emergency loans from the Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency.

The past 12 months have been the warmest the United States has experienced since records began in 1895, the climatic data center said.

CNN

The world's highest recorded air temperatures
1. El Azizia, Libya (136 degrees Fahrenheit)
2. Death Valley, California (134)
3. Ghadames, Libya (131)
3. Kebili, Tunisia (131)
5. Timbuktu, Mali (130)
5. Araouane, Mali (130)
7. Tirat Tsvi, Israel (129)
8. Ahwaz, Iran (128)
8. Agha Jari, Iran (128)
10. Wadi Halfa, Sudan (127)

Highest recorded air temperature (by continent)
Africa: El Azizia, Libya (136)
North America: Death Valley, California (134)
Asia: Tirat Tsvi, Israel (129)
Australia: Cloncurry, Queensland (128*)
Europe: Seville, Spain (122)
South America: Rivadavia, Argentina (120)
Antarctica: Vanda Station, Scott Coast (59)

First 2012 Olympics contests kick off

cnn

The Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympics may not be until Friday, but for some athletes, the Games begin Wednesday.

British women take to the soccer field against New Zealand in Cardiff, Wales, the first of six women's soccer games around Britain Wednesday. Women from the United States, France, Japan, Canada, Brazil, Cameroon, South Africa, Sweden, Colombia and North Korea are all in action on what Games organizers are calling "Day -2."

Organizers got good news Wednesday morning, as border staff who had been planning to go on strike Thursday over job cuts called off the plan.

London drivers, meanwhile, got bad news, as traffic restrictions went into effect. They're banned from special "Olympics Lanes" reserved for athletes and officials, and face a £130 ($200) fine for using them

The city's transportation agency, Transport for London, reported moderate traffic problems Wednesday morning as the rules went into effect.

While Britain's wettest June in more than a century may have

cast a cloud over preparations for the Games, forecasters say the weather is now set to brighten.

More than 10,000 athletes from 205 countries are assembling in London for Friday's Opening Ceremony.

Every country will have at least one female athlete after Saudia Arabia included two women in its team

for the first time, setting an important precedent for women's rights in the kingdom.

And with medals to be handed out in 26 different sports, there's always the chance of a shock upset or the emergence of a shining new talent to captivate the crowds.

Much of the cost of staging the Olympic and Paralympic Games has been met by British taxpayers, with the government overseeing £9.3 billion ($14.5 billion) of spending from the public purse.

ccording to its figures, the Games are currently under budget

by some £476 million ($738 million).

London's Metropolitan Police Service, known as the Met, is undertaking what it says is its biggest-ever peacetime operation, running for 66 days across 1,000 venues, including sporting and cultural events, and making use of up to 9,500 police officers on the busiest days.

The government is deploying 18,200 troops -- many more than planned after private security contractor G4S announced it could not provide the $10,400 guards for which it had been contracted.

The Ministry of Defence is guarding the games with two warships, Typhoon jet fighters, Puma helicopters, and, perhaps most controversially, surface-to-air missiles placed on apartment buildings near the stadium, despite objections from residents.

July average tops U.S. temperature record 

The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States.

The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said.

In addition, the seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said. U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895.

And the past 12 months have been the warmest of any such period on record, topping a mark set between July 2011 and this past June. Every U.S. state except Washington experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, NOAA reported.

The high temperatures have contributed to a "rapid expansion" of  drough

across the central United States, NOAA found. Dozens of cities and towns already have seen the mercury hit record

levels this summer, and three states -- Nebraska, Kansas and Arkansas -- saw record dry conditions between May and July.

That's battered American farmers' corn and soybean crops, driven farmers to sell or slaughter cattle they can't feed and spurred the U.S. Department of Agriculture to designate more than half of all U.S. counties as disaster zones.

Mars rover set to zap rock, analyze chemicals

- Martian rock N165, it's your time to shine, or glow, or whatever occurs when a hard substance gets zapped by a laser beam.

From about 10 feet away, the Mars rover Curiosity's ChemCam was to take aim Saturday night at the hapless three-inch rock.

"We are going to hit it with 14 millijoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds," Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory told reporters.

A millijoule is 1/1000th of a joule, which is way too complicated to explain here. Suffice to say, it should get the job done.

ChemCam, short for Chemistry and Camera, will analyze the resulting glowing, ionized gas in an effort to identify chemical elements in the rock.

Scientists say it will be the first time such a powerful laser has been used on another planet. The laser works in conjunction with a telescope.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Friday that Curiosity's first driving destination will be Glenelg, about 1,300 feet from the rover's landing site.

"We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars," said project scientist John Grotzinger. "That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration."

The mobile science lab touched down on Mars early on August 6 and has been beaming back images of the surface of Gale Crater ever since.

The rover's primary target is Mount Sharp, a peak about 8 kilometers (5 miles) away. But moving about a football field a day, with lengthy stops, it could take nearly a year to reach the slopes at the base of the mountain.

My Take: The Mother Teresa you don’t know

Fifteen years may be less than an instant in celestial time, but here on earth it's a lot of news cycles.

Mother Teresa departed this Earth on September 5, 1997. What more can we say about the woman who became synonymous with love for the "poorest of the poor," picking up a Nobel and tweaking the conscience of millions? What do we know about her now that we didn't know then?

A lot, it turns out.

Here's a quick Blessed Mother Teresa primer, emphasizing the stuff that you probably don’t know, some of which we only learned recently.

1. She was born a rich girl.

Born in 1910, Mother Teresa came from money – at least by the standards of her native Skopje, Macedonia. Her parents were so well-off that there was a local saying "as generous as the Bojaxhius." (Her last name was Bojaxhiu; her given first name was Agnes.)

Agnes was cultured and well-educated: She wrote poetry and played the mandolin. Her family took in orphans and she tagged along as her mother went out to tend to the destitute. All of this challenges the notion of pre-saints as nasty, or no better than average, until God flicks a switch (think Paul, pre-Damascus).

In Agnes’ case, if God flicked a switch, he had clearly laid the circuitry carefully beforehand.

2. For a long time, it was hardly obvious that Teresa would end up who she became.

She emigrated to India to become a nun at age 18, but worked as a teacher another 17 years before receiving a series of startling visions and locutions (verbal communications) from Jesus. The experience, wrote her confessor at the time, was "continual, deep and violent."

She later recalled it as a dramatic dialogue taking up pages: Jesus calls her "my little one" and demands that she "carry Me into the holes of the poor. I want Indian nuns … who would be my fire of love among the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children." She hesitates. He asks impatiently, "Is your generosity gone cold?"

It had not. After two years spent convincing her local bishop, she was released from her previous vows and founded her Missionaries of Charity.

3. She changed our view of the poor.

"There are plenty of nuns to look after the rich and well-to-do people, but for my very poor, there are absolutely none," Teresa wrote, describing communication she got from Jesus.

That seems a bit exaggerated. But Teresa redefined the concept of "working with the poor" in the modern age. For poor she substituted "poorest of the poor," a new category with a corresponding moral imperative. She understood the word "with" as obliterating the line between benefactor and beneficiary, plunging her nuns deeply into the world of the slums.

As for "working," Teresa combined case-by-case spontaneity with an organizational genius. In Calcutta she developed institutions – schools for poor children, homes for pregnant homeless women, orphans and lepers, and hostels for the dying – that became a template for her ministries the world over.

4. She was a marketing guru.

"Billions know about her compassion," says evangelical megapastor Rick Warren. "But what is not so well known (were) leadership skills, evident in the multiplication of what she did to other parts of the planet."

Teresa instinctively leveraged her growing renown, cultivating a United Nations of world leaders and donors and paving the way for the Missionaries. Four decades after her solo start in India, her order was in over 100 countries, making her one of the church's truly great founders. "If there are poor on the moon, we will go there, too," she joked – sort of.

5. She cultivated her celebrity.

Teresa was famous first in India, then worldwide, partly through the efforts of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge and partly due to another gift. "The way she spoke to journalists showed her to be as deft a manipulator as any high-powered American public relations expert,” noted Irish rocker/philanthropist Bob Geldof.

That that gift seemed to be unconscious did not make it any less effective. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she became part of a Mt. Rushmore of greatest-generation religious icons – including Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham and the (relatively youthful) Dalai Lama – that has no successor generation.

Of them, Teresa attained the purest pop-culture status, capped by her touching friendship with then-Princess Diana of England. When the two died within a week of one another (Diana in a car wreck, Teresa by heart attack), a T-shirt immediately popped up showing both with halos.

6. Teresa had a long, dark night of the soul.

In 2007, a cache of newly released private letters introduced a startling unknown side to Teresa: a 39-year period, coinciding almost exactly with her Missionaries career, during which Jesus, previously so present, seemed utterly absent to her, in prayer and even in the Eucharist.

"The silence and the emptiness is so great," she wrote, "that I look and do not see– the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak."

Critics like the late Christopher Hitchens said the correspondence proved Teresa was just a "confused old lady." But the letters were issued by her postulator, the Vatican-appointed advocate for her sainthood.

Her church regarded her perseverance in the absence of a sense of divine response as perhaps her most heroic act of faith. Both her torment and underlying faith were evident in another letter: "If I ever become a Saint – I will surely be one of 'darkness,'" she wrote. "I will continually be absent from Heaven – to (light) the light of those in darkness on earth."

7. She’s not a saint yet – not officially.

Not as recognized by her own Roman Catholicism, where validation of sanctity is a multi-step process.

A year after Teresa's death, the Vatican waived a five-year-delay to allow her "cause" to begin early. In 2002, it announced her "heroic virtue," and in the same year credited her with the disappearance of a tumor affecting an Indian woman who had prayed to her.

This first miracle led to her beatification, for which 250,000 people flocked to Rome. But canonization awaits a second miracle. Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, her advocate, says reports of her "supernatural favors" to believers currently total 4,200. He is currently investigating a case in Colombia.

Of course, the church freely admits that saints are saints before it recognizes them, and many Catholics fervently believe Teresa is one. So do others, including Rick Warren, who defines a saint as "a true hero" who "sacrifice(s) for the benefit of others." Suzie van Houte, left in infancy with Mother Teresa and now an Episcopalian living in Washington state, says simply: "A saint is a person who's gone out of her way."

CNN

A dangerous new world of drones

A decade ago, the United States had a virtual monopoly on drones. Not anymore. According to data compiled by the New America Foundation, more than 70 countries now own some type of drone, though just a small number of those nations possess armed drone aircraft. The explosion in drone technology promises to change the way nations conduct war and threatens to begin a new arms race as governments scramble to counterbalance their adversaries. Peter Bergen Late last month, China announced that it would use surveillance drones to monitor a group of uninhabited islands in the South China Sea that are controlled by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan. In August 2010, Iran unveiled what it claimed was its first armed drone. And on Tuesday, the country's military chief, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, disclosed details of a new long-range drone that he said can fly 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), which puts Tel Aviv easily in range. Study: Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians But without an international framework governing the use of drone attacks, the United States is setting a dangerous precedent for other nations with its aggressive and secretive drone programs in Pakistan and Yemen, which are aimed at suspected members of al Qaeda and their allies. There has been virtually no substantive public discussion about drone attacks among policymakers at the international level. Peter Bergen, Jennifer Rowland Just as the U.S. government justifies its drone strikes with the argument that it is at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates, one could imagine that India in the not too distant future might launch such attacks against suspected terrorists in Kashmir, or China might strike Uighur separatists in western China, or Iran might attack Baluchi nationalists along its border with Pakistan. This moment may almost be here. China took the United States by surprise in November 2010 at the Zhuhai Air Show, where it unveiled 25 drone models, some of which were outfitted with the capability to fire missiles. It remains unclear just how many of China's drones are operational and how many of them are still in development, but China is intent on catching up with the United States' rapidly expanding drone arsenal. Drones in ActionObama reflects on drone warfare use'Drones completely counterproductive'Barack Obama's 'lethal presidency' When President George W. Bush declared a "War on Terror" 11 years ago, the Pentagon had fewer than 50 drones. Now, it has around 7,500. As Bush embarked on that war, the United States had never used armed drones in combat. The first U.S. armed drone attack, which appears to be the first such strike ever, took place in mid-November 2001 and killed the military commander of al Qaeda, Mohammed Atef, in Afghanistan. Since then, the CIA has used drones equipped with bombs and missiles hundreds of times to target suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen. CNN Radio: Drone debate -- who can you trust? Only the United States, United Kingdom and Israel are known to have launched drone strikes against their adversaries, although other members of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, such as Australia, have "borrowed" drones from Israel for use in the war there. Drone technology is proliferating rapidly. A 2011 study estimated that there were around 680 active drone development programs run by governments, companies and research institutes around the world, compared with just 195 in 2005. In 2010, U.S.-based General Atomics received export licenses to sellunarmed versions of the Predator drone to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. And in March, the U.S. government agreed to arm Italy's six Reaper drones but rejected a request from Turkey to purchase armed Predator drones. An official in Turkey's Defense Ministry said in July that Turkey planned to arm its own domestically produced drone, the Anka. Israel is the world's largest exporter of drones and drone technology, and the state-owned Israeli Aerospace Industries has sold to countries as varied as Nigeria, Russia and Mexico. Building drones, particularly armed drones, takes sophisticated technology and specific weaponry, but governments are increasingly willing to invest the necessary time and money to either buy or develop them, as armed drones are increasingly seen as an integral part of modern warfare. Sweden, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and France are working on a joint project through state-owned aeronautical companies and are in the final stages of developing an advanced armed drone prototype called the Dassault nEURon, from which the France plans to derive armed drones for its air force. And Pakistani authorities have long tried to persuade the United States to give them armed Predator drones, while India owns an armed Israeli drone designed to detect and destroy enemy radar, though it does not yet have drones capable of striking other targets. The Teal Group, a defense consulting firm in Virginia, estimated in June that the global market for the research, development and procurement of armed drones will just about double in the next decade, from $6.6 billion to $11.4 billion. News: Drones expected to hunt for suspects in Libya attack States are not alone in their quest for drones. Insurgent groups, too, are moving to acquire this technology. Last year, Libyan opposition forces trying to overthrow the dictator Moammar Gadhafi bought asophisticated surveillance drone from a Canadian company for which they paid in the low six figures. You can even buy your own tiny drone on Amazon for $250. (And for an extra $3.99, you can get next-day shipping.) As drone technology becomes more widely accessible, it is only a matter of time before well-financed drug cartels acquire them. And you can imagine a day in the not too distant future where armed drones are used to settle personal vendettas. Given the relatively low costs of drones -- already far cheaper than the costs of a fighter jet and of training a fighter jet pilot -- armed drones will play a key role in future conflicts. Opinion: When are drone killings illegal? While the drone industry thrives and more companies, research institutes and nations jump on board the drone bandwagon, the United States is setting a powerful international norm about the use of armed drones, which it uses for pre-emptive attacks against presumed terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen. It is these kinds of drone strikes that are controversial; the use of drones in a conventional war is not much different than a manned aircraft that drops bombs or fires missiles. According to figures compiled by the New America Foundation, drone attacks aimed at suspected militants are estimated to have killed between 1,900 and 3,200 people in Pakistan over the past eight years. While there has been considerable discussion of the legality of such strikes in a number of U.S. law schools, there has been almost no substantive public discussion about drone attacks among policymakers at the international level. The time has come for some kind of international convention on the legal framework surrounding the uses of such weapons, which promise to shape the warfare of the future as much as tanks and bombers did during the 20th century.

cnn

JK Rowling's Harvard commencement address

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank-you very much.

CNN

SUPERSTORM SANDY CAUSES AT LEAST 6 US DEATHS AS IT SLAMS EAST COAST:

Though no longer a hurricane, "post-tropical" superstorm Sandy still packed a hurricane-sized punch as it slammed into the New Jersey coast Monday evening.

Sandy whipped torrents of water over the streets of Atlantic City, stretching for blocks inland and ripping up part of the vacation spot's fabled boardwalk. It spawned high winds and torrential rains from North Carolina to Maine and knocked out power to nearly 3 million customers across across 11 states and the District of Columbia.

And it was blamed for the first confirmed U.S. death Monday night, when a man was killed by a tree that fell on his house in the New York borough of Queens, said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the city's Fire Department.

The storm hit land near Atlantic City about 8 p.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center reported. It packed 80-mph winds at landfall, down from the 90 mph clocked earlier Monday.

Hurricane-force winds stretched from Cape Cod to the Virginia coast as it swept ashore, with its storm surge setting new high-water records for lower Manhattan and swamping beachfronts on both sides of Long Island Sound.

"I've been down here for about 16 years, and it's shocking what I'm looking at now. It's unbelievable," said Montgomery Dahm, owner of the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City, which stayed open as Sandy neared the Jersey Shore. "I mean, there's cars that are just completely underwater in some of the places I would never believe that there would be water."

Dahm's family cleared out of Atlantic City before the storm hit, but he says he stayed put to serve emergency personnel. At nightfall Monday, he said the water was lapping at the steps of his restaurant, where a generator was keeping the lights on.

The storm had already knocked down power lines and tree limbs while still 50 miles offshore and washed out a section of the boardwalk on the north end of town, Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford told CNN. He said there were still "too many people" who didn't heed instructions to evacuate, and he urged anyone still in town to "hunker down and try to wait this thing out."

"When Mother Nature sends her wrath your way, we're at her mercy, and so all we can do is stay prayerful and do the best that we can," Langford said.

In Seaside Heights, about 30 miles north of Atlantic City, Police Chief Thomas Boyd told CNN, "The whole north side of my town is totally under water."

Sandy's expected storm surge could raise water levels to 11 feet above normal high tide, already the highest of the month because of a full moon. And forecasters said Sandy was likely to collide with a cold front and spawn a superstorm that could generate flash floods and snowstorms.

"It could be bad," said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Steven Rattior, "or it could be devastation."

Mass transit shut down across the densely populated Northeast, landmarks stood empty and schools and government offices were closed. The National Grid, which provides power to millions of customers, said 60 million people could be affected before it's over.

By the time the storm hit land, it had been blamed for more than 2.8 million outages across the Northeast. About 220,000 of them were in the New York city area, where local utility Con Edison reported it had also cut power to customers in parts of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan to protect underground equipment as the storm waters rose.

Sandy formed last week and swept across the Caribbean, where it had already claimed at least 67 lives, 51 of them in Haiti. Another two people were missing at sea off North Carolina after the crew of the HMS Bounty, a replica of the historic sailing ship, foundered in the storm, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

In New York, lower Manhattan's Battery Park recorded a 12.75-foot tide, breaking a record set in 1960 with Hurricane Donna. The city halted service on its bus and train lines, closing schools and ordering about 400,000 people out of their homes in low-lying areas of Manhattan and elsewhere.

On Fire Island, off Long Island, the water was already rising above promenades and docks on Monday afternoon, homeowner Karen Boss said.

Boss stayed on the island with her husband despite a mandatory evacuation order. She said they own several properties and a business there and had weathered previous storms.

"I'm concerned that it might come into the first floor," she said. "If that's the case, I'll just move into another house that's higher up."

And New York's skyscrapers were being battered with higher winds the taller they are: An 80-mph gust at ground level becomes a nearly 100-mph gust at 30 stories up. Far above West 57th Street, a crane snapped and dangled from the side of a luxury high-rise under construction; police closed part of the street and evacuated several nearby buildings, including the Parker Meridien hotel.

The New York Stock Exchange was ordered closed Monday and Tuesday -- the first such closure for weather since 1985, when Hurricane Gloria struck.

Based on pressure readings, it's likely to be the strongest storm to make landfall north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, CNN senior meteorologist Dave Hennen said.

The benchmark storm, the 1938 "Long Island Express" Hurricane, contained a low pressure reading of 946 millibars. Sandy had a minimum pressure of 943 millibars. Generally speaking, the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm.

In Sea Bright, New Jersey, Yvette Cafaro scrawled a plea on the plywood that covered her burger restaurant: "Be kind to us Sandy." The seaside area largely dodged last year's Hurricane Irene, but Cafaro was not optimistic that Sea Bright would be spared Sandy.

Meteorological data supported her view: Hours before landfall, storm surge for Sandy was higher than it had been for Irene after landfall.

Everything that we've been watching on the news looks like this one will really get us," she said. "We're definitely worried about it."

Its arrival, eight days before the U.S. presidential election, forced President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, to alter or cancel several campaign stops. Obama flew back to Washington from Florida, telling reporters at the White House that assets were in place for an effective response to the storm.

"The most important message I have for the public right now is please listen to what your state and local officials are saying," Obama said. "When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate."

And in Ohio, Romney asked supporters to drop off items and cash at his "victory centers" to be donated to victims of the storm.

"There are families in harm's way that will be hurt -- either in their possessions or perhaps in something more severe," Romney said.

By Monday afternoon, 23 states were under a warning or advisory for wind related to Sandy. Thousands of flights had been canceled, and hundreds of roads and highways were expected to flood. And according to a government model, Sandy's wind damage alone could cause more than $7 billion in economic loss.

Sandy was expected to weaken once it moves inland, but the center was expected to move slowly northward, meaning gusty winds and heavy rain would continue through Wednesday.

On the western side of the storm, the mountains of West Virginia expected up to 3 feet of snow and the mountains of southwestern Virginia to the Kentucky state line could see up to 2 feet. Twelve to 18 inches of snow were expected in the mountains near the North Carolina-Tennessee border.

"This is not a typical storm," said Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett. "Essentially, this is a hurricane wrapped in a 'nor'easter.'"

Gift guide: Tech toys and gadgets for kids

Buying gadgets for kids these days seems simple: Just get them something with a glowing screen and they'll be satisfied.

But there's more fun -- and educational -- stuff out there than phones, tablets and portable gaming devices.

In compiling these suggestions we've sought to emphasize tech gifts that are -- horrors! -- educational as well as fun. Here are chemistry sets, model rockets and little renewable-energy cars you build yourself. (OK, we threw a tablet in there, too.)

Some of these require assembly and would make fun parent-child projects, if you have time for that.

If you don't, we offer a portable speaker in the shape of a panda. Happy shopping!

1.  Tetris stackable LED lamp

2. Experimental fuel cell car science kit

3. Atari Flashback 4 retro gaming console

4. Chemistry sets

5.  Star Theater Pro

6.  Model rockets

7.  Starter telescope

8.  LittleBits Kit

9.  Nook HD tablet

10.  GoGroove portable speaker

Disney brings more oomph with New Fantasyland 

 When Walt Disney World's New Fantasyland opens Thursday in the Magic Kingdom, guests will be in for a slew of magical moments, and they'll have plenty of room to enjoy them. This portion of the park nearly doubled in size, making it the largest expansion in the park's 41-year history.

"It gives guests another level of immersion," says Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. "We have technology to play with that Walt DIsney didn't have."

For instance, part of the expansion includes Beast's Castle, which sits atop Be Our Guest restaurant. During lunch hours, guests order at touch-screen kiosks and take radio-frequency devices to their tables. Once the pager is placed on the table, servers know exactly where to deliver the food. And voila, meals arrive within minutes via a glass-enclosed cart.

"Everything is fresh, made to order, and for lunch we are hoping for the bustling kind of energy like the movie scene (from 'Beauty and the Beast') in the dining room," says Lenny DeGeorge, Walt Disney World executive chef.

In the evening, the restaurant transforms into fancy table-service dining, inviting guests to feast upon French onion soup, mussels Provençal and charcuterie while sipping on French wines and beers. This is a first, since alcohol has never been served before in the Magic Kingdom.

In true Disney style, the decor inside and out is over the top. From the chandeliers to the walls to the terrazzo floor to the draperies, it's all true to the movie. Even suits of armor that whisper to passersby line the hallway. Guests then make their way into the grand ballroom, which has an entire wall of arched windows, complete with magical snowflakes falling upon the French countryside.

Faith Lee, from Lake Mary, Florida, appreciates the extreme theming. "I felt like a kid again entering (Be Our Guest restaurant)," she says. "It completely recreates the details of Beast's Castle to the most minute aspect."

Other areas of New Fantasyland involve similar attention to detail, completely immersing guests in the beloved Disney stories. The expansion, which has been in the works for more than three years, introduces two new areas ---- the Enchanted Forest, which focuses on Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, and Storybook Circus, an area inspired by the Disney animated feature "Dumbo.

Major focus on character time

Outside, to the far left of Beast's Castle is Maurice's Cottage, a provincial abode that houses an enchanted mirror. It spectacularly transforms into a portal whisking guests into the story of Beauty and the Beast. Once in the Beast's library, Enchanted Tales with Belle goes way beyond a typical meet and greet when Belle and friends invite guests to help act out the "tale as old as time."

Next door at Prince Eric's Castle, kids and adults alike will enjoy Under the Sea - Journey of the Little Mermaid (almost identical to the Disney California Adventure version). After walking through an interactive queue, guests board giant clamshells as animation and animatronics retell Ariel's story. Afterward in Ariel's Grotto, guests score one-on-one time with the redheaded mermaid herself as she poses for photos and signs autographs.

"For us, the Fantasyland expansion was more than we could have imagined," Lee says. "It was like being immersed in the stories of Belle and Ariel, not just visiting attractions."

Lee and her family were also impressed with Storybook Circus, which opened over the summer. This portion of the park includes a water play area, tame roller coaster and gift shop. The revamped Dumbo ride, with its new indoor queue lounge, is a crowd pleaser for parents who want to sit down for a bit and children who want to enjoy an elaborate playground. Guests receive a pager that virtually holds their place in line; it lights up when it's time to board the ride. Another option is to grab a FastPass and wait in a traditional line outdoors.

Overall, the new additions certainly have Disney fans aflutter, but will this translate to an influx of Orlando visitors?

Danielle Courtenay, chief marketing officer for Visit Orlando, thinks so.

"When any major new attraction opens in Orlando, there's always a positive impact in terms of increased awareness and interest in the destination," she says. "With New Fantasyland being the largest expansion in Magic Kingdom history, we are certainly optimistic that it will impact visitation for 2013 and beyond."

Coming soon

Princess Fairytale Hall is scheduled to open in 2013 in the former home of Snow White's Scary Adventures. Located in the Castle Courtyard in the center of Fantasyland, it will be a place for guests to meet Disney princess characters.

Come early 2014, the finishing touch will be a roller coaster, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, in the heart of it all. This family thrill ride will be an experience somewhere in between the tame Barnstormer, a re-themed "beginner's coaster," and the classic Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. With its patented train of vehicles that swing back and forth, the attraction will be the first of its kind.