“Usually, a blood clot in this area would be a very concerning issue,” said Dr. Nrupen Baxi, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.
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He added, “The recovery time from a craniotomy is usually a few weeks.”
A statement from the Mayo Clinic Hospital said that the senator was recovering well and in good spirits at home, and that tissue pathology reports would come back in several days.
But many questions have been left unanswered, including whether Mr. McCain had symptoms that prompted doctors to look for the clot. In June, his somewhat confused questioning of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, led to concerns about his mental status, which he later jokingly dismissed by saying he had stayed up too late watching baseball the night before.
“Usually, a blood clot like this is discovered when patients have symptoms, whether it’s a seizure or headaches or weakness or speech difficulties,” Dr. Baxi said. “Generally, it’s not found on a routine physical because doctors would not know to look for it.”
The cause of the clot has not been disclosed. The possibilities include a fall or a blow to the head, a stroke or certain brain changes associated with aging. Mr. McCain is 80.
He also has a history of melanoma, an aggressive skin cancer that can spread to the brain and cause bleeding. That cancer history could have prompted Mr. McCain’s doctors to scan his brain even in the absence of symptoms, some doctors said. The pending pathology reports are expected to help explain what caused the bleeding.
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The clot could have been in one of several locations: between the skull and the dura, the membrane that covers the brain; between the dura and surface of the brain; or inside the brain itself.
Dr. David J. Langer, the chairman of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said a likely diagnosis was a subdural hematoma, a collection of blood between the dura and the brain.
“You would hope it’s a subdural, a relatively benign process,” Dr. Langer said. “It’s common in the elderly, especially if they’re on blood thinners. It can occur from relatively minor head injuries. The elderly brain loses volume, and as it retracts, the bridging veins from the brain to the dura are under increasing tension, and minor trauma can cause them to ooze or leak.”
The senator’s staff has not disclosed whether he takes a blood thinner.
Such hematomas can develop over weeks and months with subtle symptoms if they press on the brain, or even no symptoms, and removing them is usually an elective procedure, not an emergency, he said.
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He said the operation is relatively straightforward. Hematomas often have an oily consistency and are easily drained once the skull is opened. The piece of skull that is removed for the procedure is then put back in place and fastened with titanium plates.
“He would be able to return to being a senator in a relatively short period of time with no ill effects,” Dr. Langer said. “This is an assumption. But it sounds like something not life-threatening or even a career-threatening problem.”
Dr. Philip E. Stieg, the chairman of neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and the neurosurgeon in chief at NewYork-Presbyterian, said it seemed a good sign that Mr. McCain was able to go home so quickly.
“I think the one possibility that’s of concern is that melanomas are known to go to the brain and they can bleed,” Dr. Stieg said. “They’ll have to wait for the pathology to come back. The good news is that five centimeters is a sizable blood clot, but in the frontal lobe, it should be well tolerated and hopefully he won’t have any neurologic deficits.”
Mr. Agalarov, 61, also worked on a project with a future president, Donald J. Trump. Last week, the Russian developer and his crooner son and heir, Emin, were thrust into the swirl of speculation about whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
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Their names popped up in emails about arranging a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, but the president and his son have both insisted that nothing of value was provided.
“This is obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin,” wrote Rob Goldstone, a music producer and publicist working for Emin.
While there is no indication beyond what was said in the emails that the Agalarovs were serving as a conduit between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, wealthy and well-connected businessmen are often called on to do the bidding of the Russian government.
Kremlin analysts stress that its red, crenelated walls conceal not a well-oiled machine but a hornet’s nest of interests and influences competing to dominate an Erector Set of ad hoc policies and sudden opportunities, many of them highly lucrative.
When it comes to exploiting those opportunities, the Kremlin often ignores its own bureaucrats, diplomats and other agents in favor of someone it thinks will get the job done — a charmed group whose members rise and fall in status along with their usefulness to Mr. Putin and his top aides.
In that context, analysts find it entirely plausible that the Kremlin would tap Mr. Agalarov, a construction tycoon with a web of contacts to Mr. Trump, as a way to pass information to the Trump presidential campaign.
“In a sense, almost no one is a direct agent of the Kremlin, but almost anyone can become one if the need arises,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Aleksei A. Navalny, the leading opposition figure in Russia and an anticorruption campaigner, says he has no doubt that the Agalarovs would do the bidding of the Kremlin if asked.
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In a blog post, Mr. Navalny refers to Yuri Chaika, the Russian state prosecutor — a position equivalent to the United States attorney general — whom Mr. Goldstone identified in his emails as the source of the information on offer at the Trump Tower meeting. Mr. Chaika, a staunch Putin loyalist, has been in that position since 2006.
Photo
Shortly before the Miss Universe pageant in 2013, President Vladimir V. Putin presented Mr. Agalarov with the Order of Honor, one of Russia’s highest civilian awards. Credit
Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
In the view of Mr. Navalny, a bitter opponent of Mr. Putin, it makes perfect sense that information passed from the Kremlin through Mr. Chaika and Mr. Agalarov to Mr. Trump, as the security services could easily have used such a trusted channel to reach out to the Trump campaign.
That is no more than informed speculation, yet there are deep connections among the men. After Mr. Navalny released a documentary in 2015 accusing Mr. Chaika of corruption, for example, Mr. Agalarov rose to his defense. Writing in the newspaper Kommersant, he said the film mixed fact and fiction and echoed the work of Joseph Goebbels, the chief Nazi propagandist.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with the younger Mr. Trump, and her former husband both worked in the prosecutor’s office of the Moscow region, the district surrounding the capital, and would have been under Mr. Chaika’s overall umbrella.
Ms. Veselnitskaya has done some legal work connected to real estate for Mr. Agalarov’s company in Russia, according to media interviews given by the family lawyer in the United States, Scott Balber.
Mr. Trump entered this circle with the 2013 Miss Universe contest, carried out with the help of lower-level bureaucrats and Mr. Agalarov, who paid $20 million to bring the pageant to his family’s Moscow concert pavilion, Crocus City Hall.
It would be natural for the Kremlin, aware of that relationship, to reach down to that level to try to get something done with the Trump campaign, analysts said.
“If you are a business person, you are supposed to do something that the Kremlin asks you; you are otherwise free to pursue your own interests. That is how Russia works,” said Mrs. Schulmann, noting that most would be eager to respond to any such call as an expression of loyalty.
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In this particular case, the Kremlin has denied any involvement, saying it was not in touch with Mr. Agalarov and did not even know the lawyer, Ms. Veselnitskaya. It is unclear precisely what was discussed at the meeting with members of the Trump team. Participants have said that it dealt largely with an American law called the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists those suspected of human rights abuses in Russia, and a ban on the adoption of Russian children, and that nothing of significance was given to the campaign.
Mr. Agalarov, in a Russian radio interview, called the story around the meeting — that it was about information damaging to Hillary Clinton — a “fabrication.”
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The Crocus Group did not respond to a request to interview Mr. Agalarov.
For Mr. Agalarov, the involvement in the Trump administration’s Russia scandal is at best an unwelcome diversion in a career of steady if not always spectacular success.
He was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union, where he studied computer engineering and was a member of the Baku City Committee of the Communist Party.
He went to Moscow to study, and even before the collapse of the Soviet Union began trying to fill pent-up Russian demand for Western goods, especially computers.
What started as a modest trading company grew into a business organizing trade fairs that eventually mushroomed into the Crocus Group, a real estate empire that encompasses mammoth shopping malls, a chain of hypermarkets, an exposition center, restaurants, luxury housing developments and other enterprises.
Forbes magazine puts Mr. Agalarov 51st on its list of the richest Russians, with a fortune estimated at $1.7 billion.
“He is not the biggest retail guy, but Crocus City Mall was the first luxury mall to appear in Moscow,” said Darrell Stanaford, a 20-year veteran of the Russian real estate world as the former managing director in Moscow for the CBRE Group, a Los Angeles-based commercial real estate firm. “He likes the glitz. It is high-end luxury, so that is why he becomes such a good matchup for Trump.”
Photo
Mr. Agalarov with his son, Emin, at a party in Moscow in 2011. Credit
Mikhail Metzel/Associated Press
Mr. Agalarov keeps a modest footprint on social media, mostly by standing next to his photogenic son: on their luxury Moscow golf course development, for example, or posing with Robert De Niro at the opening of one of the two Nobu restaurants in Moscow where they are partners.
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Mr. Trump pops up from time to time. On his Inauguration Day, both Agalarovs posted old pictures of themselves with him, along with effusive praise for their old friend.
Aside from the 2013 Miss Universe contest, it is not known what business ties, if any, the Agalarovs have with Mr. Trump, or with any other American companies. They clearly have an affinity for the United States, however, naming one chain of shopping malls “Vegas” and another luxury residential complex “Manhattan.”
In November 2013, after the buzz of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow had subsided, Mr. Trump met privately with a group of elite Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia’s state-owned Sberbank at one of the Nobu restaurants in Moscow.
The elder Mr. Agalarov had been talking with Mr. Trump about building a Trump Tower in Moscow as part of a $3 billion real estate project involving hotels, a shopping center and office space.
Sberbank was ready to make it happen. About a week after the meeting, the bank announced a “strategic cooperation agreement” with the Crocus Group to finance about 70 percent of the ambitious project, including, potentially, a building bearing the Trump name.
“It was one of the 14 buildings that we planned to build here,” Mr. Agalarov’s son Emin said in a March interview with Forbes, adding that if Mr. Trump “hadn’t run for president, we would probably be in the construction phase today.”
The Sberbank financing — reported at the time as the biggest real estate development loan the bank had made — was another measure of the Agalarovs’ increasingly close connections to the centers of power in Russia.
In another indication, the Crocus Group was written into a 2014 bilateral treaty with the government of Kyrgyzstan to help that country integrate into Russia’s regional alliance, the Eurasian Economic Union.
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In that deal, worth $127 million, the Crocus Group was designated the “single supplier” of services to integrate the two countries’ bureaucracies and reinforce the new customs common border, by, for example, building new border posts.
By naming the company in an international treaty, the Russian government avoided opening the work to competitive bidding, ensuring that the Crocus Group won the contract, Edil Baisalov, a former Kyrgyz presidential chief of staff, said in a telephone interview.
In Kyrgyzstan, he said, the apparent giveaway to Kremlin-connected insiders became known as “Crocusgate.”
Mr. Agalarov mentions occasionally how difficult it is to earn money on public works, telling the newspaper Vedomosti in 2015 that he had to buy a larger Gulfstream jet to make the cross-continental trek to Vladivostok to check on progress at the Far Eastern Federal University. On that project, he said, he spent more than $100 million of his own money because the official plans skipped significant costs like roads and landscaping. He won some of it back in court.
Statements about losing money are all part of the game, analysts said, noting that construction costs on Russian infrastructure routinely run 30 percent higher than for comparable projects in Europe.
“It is showing the wounds that he got in the service of the motherland,” said Ms. Schulmann, the political scientist. “You see how indifferent I am to profit when I do a service for the Kremlin. I have to make sacrifices.”
Mr. Agalarov, however, was more candid than most when asked whether it is altruism that leads him to respond when the Kremlin calls. In the interview with Vedomosti, he said, “There are things that you cannot turn down.”
Agency creative executives think the trend toward creating video ads shorter than traditional formats like the 30-second spot is making it harder to tell a proper story or make an emotional connection with viewers, and that some of the pressure coming from Silicon Valley and social media platforms to truncate ads is hampering creativity, according to a report in Business Insider
Other issues cited with super-short video ads suggest that they don’t easily fit easily into existing ad space and also make pricing difficult (a six-second spot being just one-fifth the length of a 30-second spot, for example).
Creative executives added that production costs aren’t much cheaper for shorter ads. Overall, there is a sense that major digital platforms like Facebook and Snapchat are dictating ad length to the advertising industry and forcing it to experiment « on clients’ dime, » Jeff Stamp, deputy chief creative officer for GreyNY, told Business Insider.
Dive Insight:
The frustration of creative executives with the trend toward super-short video ads is the latest indicator that agencies continue to face challenges in adjusting to the demands of digital marketing, and especially changing norms from what has been a steady comfort zone since the early days of TV — in this case, the standard 30- and 60-second video spots. Agencies likely feel particularly torn about the issue, as there is increasing pressure to create more emotionally-resonant, authentic-feeling marketing, which might be more difficult to do under ever-tighter time constraints.
Stepping away from agency opinion, some video marketers might push back against the viewpoints in the Business Insider report. Super-short spots are valued in for being a snappy way to immediately draw interest and encourage further engagement on platforms like Snapchat, where users can swipe up on ads to access more robust, longer-form content. Creative execs’ complaints about digital platforms dictating ad length might also discount actual consumer viewing habits, especially as mobile commands more attention and plays a greater role in marketing.
« Super short videos have disrupted the world of video marketing and will continue to play a pivotal role throughout 2017, » Jaclyn Rose, digital marketing lead at G2 Crowd, previously told Marketing Dive. « The 10-seconds-or-less video format has capitalized on today’s increasingly short attention spans. It’s the hook, the foot-in-the-door, the branding and awareness play that will turn video viewers into interested buyers. »
We all set SEO goals for ourselves. And if someone asks us outright, we’ll all say that our dream is to be on the first page of Google results. Those of us who are being honest with ourselves know that it takes time and money to make that happen. As most legitimate marketers will tell you, the best SEO hack is, of course, having great content. The next layer is solid keyword research and a targeted PPC campaign. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you’re following the same types of best practices that you would with any other type of content. Provide a variety of video content, make sure that it’s high-quality, and provide value to your audience.
HONOLULU — The three victims killed in a fire at a Honolulu high-rise apartment that was not equipped with sprinklers have been identified, family members and sources said on Saturday.
Officials said two women and a man died, all residents of the 26th floor, died in the blaze, CBS affiliate KGMB reports.
Pearl City Community Church Pastor Phil Reller told The Honolulu Star-Advertiser that police confirmed that two of the three victims killed in the blaze Friday are his mother and brother.
Britt Reller, right, died in the Honolulu fire on July 14, 2017.
Reller told the newspaper he received a call from his brother, Britt Reller, 54, saying he had been taking a shower when he smelled the smoke. He rushed out but was unable to get to their 85-year-old mother, Melba Jeannine Dilley. He had crawled under a bed and wasn’t heard from again, his brother told the newspaper.
Britt Reller had worked as an in-flight manager for Hawaiian Airlines for two years. In an emailed statement to The Associated Press on Saturday, Robin Sparling, vice president of in-flight services at the airline, said Reller « was a talented manager and caring co-worker and we will miss him terribly. Our hearts are with Britt’s brother, Phil, and his entire family. »
Some residents of the Marco Polo condo were allowed to return home Saturday morning. The fire roared through more than a dozen units on high floors, trapping tenants who couldn’t safely evacuate and sending black, billowing smoke into the Honolulu skyline.
Saturday
3 killed after fire breaks out in Hawaii high-rise with no sprinklers
At least three people were killed and at least 16 others were injured in a high-rise fire in Honolulu Friday night. The blaze began on the 26th f…
Nearly 100 firefighters fought the massive highrise fire — one of the biggest in recent history in Hawaii — as it raged for five hours before being declared under control. It was extinguished by midnight. The fire started on the 26th floor. With the elevators down, firefighters were using human chains to get equipment to crews on high floors.
Five people, including a firefighter, were also transported to the hospital in serious condition. The Honolulu Fire Department said the firefighter was treated for heat exhaustion and has since been released.
Paramedics also treated more than a dozen tenants at the scene for smoke inhalation.
One photo shows the burnt entranceway to an apartment where a three-tiered table stands among the ashes and charred debris. Support beams can be seen sticking out through sunken, burnt-out walls in the entranceway. What appears to be a fire hose is shown on the floor in a large puddle of water. Another photo from a nearby apartment shows a sooty door with a large hole above the doorknob.
Evacuated residents look up at Marco Polo apartment building after a fire broke out in it in Honolulu, Hawaii, July 14, 2017.
Karen Hastings was in her 31st-floor Honolulu apartment when she smelled smoke. She ran out to her balcony, looked down and saw flames five floors below her.
« The fire just blew up and went flying right out the windows, » the 71-year-old Hastings said of the first moments of the high-rise blaze. « And that was like a horror movie. Except it wasn’t a horror movie. It was for real. »
The fearsome flames drove her and a neighbor to run down 14 floors until they found a safe stairwell to get some air, Hastings said.
The building is vast and wave-shaped, and it has several sections. The blaze was mostly confined to a single section. Only the units immediately above it and to the side of it were evacuated, while many residents stayed inside.
The blaze was still burning about four hours after it broke out as the sun set, but it was down to mostly embers by then, official said. A Red Cross shelter was set up at a nearby school where about 50 residents had gathered late in the evening.
When the blaze was still going, a number of people were trapped in their units, told to stay put because they couldn’t be evacuated safely, KGMB reports. A special team of firefighters was going door to door to check on tenants and help them escape.
Karen Hastings (L), who was evacuated from the floors where the fire broke out at Marco Polo apartment building, talks with another resident, in Honolulu, Hawaii, July 14, 2017.
« There were multiple reports of occupants trapped by the smoke and flames, » said Fire Capt. David Jenkins. « Many occupants were instructed to shelter in place until emergency personnel could escort them to safety. Emergency responders assisted dozens of occupants down stairwells to exit the building. »
Most evacuations went calmly and smoothly, security guard Leonard Rosa said. The fire department said Saturday morning most residents will be allowed to return home, but the 26th to 28th floors will remain closed because of extensive fire, water and smoke damage to about a dozen apartment units.
Cory La Roe, who is from Florida and stationed in Hawaii with the Air Force, works night shifts and was asleep when sirens woke him at about 2:15 p.m. « First thing, I was kind of disoriented and confused about what was going on, so I looked out my window and saw people running away from the building, looking back toward it. »
La Roe said he didn’t hear any verbal announcements, and there were no flashing fire alarm lights in the building. But « after I saw people running out and went out to the hallway, I knew it was a fire alarm, » he said.
He didn’t realize that the building didn’t have a sprinkler system and was surprised that was the case.
« That’s one thing that I wasn’t aware of prior to moving in, » La Roe said. « It was definitely shocking for me to know that there weren’t any sprinklers installed in the building. »
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the city needs to look at passing a law requiring older buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers.
No one from the building said they remembered recent fire drills. But Anna Viggiano, who lives on the 6th floor, said there were some after a 2013 fire that broke out two floors above her. Since then, she doesn’t hesitate to evacuate when she hears the alarm, Viggiano said.
« It was scary, » she said. « It was terrifying. »
DOYLESTOWN, Pa. — Hours after finding a fourth body buried in a farm here, authorities charged two men Friday with multiple counts of homicide in what authorities said were marijuana deals that turned murderous.
The disappearances of four men, ages 19 to 22, in recent days rattled this wealthy region north of Philadelphia that is better known for antiquing than for homicide. The disturbing case gained some clarity Friday, with officials describing a violent collision of guns, drugs, mental illness, and money — while acknowledging that the motivations for the slayings remain unclear.
The two men charged with homicide, Cosmo Dinardo and Sean Kratz, both 20, were denied bail in preliminary arraignments Friday afternoon, shortly after Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub emotionally announced that all four of the young men who went missing last week had been found buried on a farm owned by Dinardo’s parents in Solebury Township.
Authorities described a scenario that was repeated three times in early July: The young men were lured to the farm with the promise of marijuana deals, they were shot — one was also run over with a backhoe — and then they were buried on the private property in holes dug with the backhoe. Three of the bodies were put in a large tank, set ablaze, and then dumped into a deep grave, authorities said.
Weintraub emphasized that law enforcement officials were not making any moral judgments about the slain men in outlining the marijuana deals police say were used to draw them in. He said officials instead were focused on bringing the assailants to justice and getting remains of the dead to their families.
“They’ve done nothing to deserve this horrible, unspeakable tragedy that has been set upon them,” Weintraub said of the families at a news conference Friday, adding that they handled the uncertainty with dignity and courage.
Dinardo had already been in custody, held on $5 million bail on a stolen-car charge after he’d become a person of interest in the disappearances. That charge emanated from him allegedly trying to sell a car belonging to one of the victims. Dinardo confessed his involvement on Thursday, implicated Kratz, and gave information about the location of the fourth victim, police say.
Weintraub and other officials talked about the grueling search on the farm, conducted in sweltering conditions and amid drenching downpours over the course of several days. The search went on 24 hours a day, often with family members at the scene, waiting for what would be an awful discovery.
“Our boys get to go home to their families,” Weintraub said. “That was always our first priority.”
In the affidavit charging Dinardo, detectives delivered a chilling and baffling narrative of violence. Dinardo told police that on July 5 he agreed to sell four pounds of marijuana for $8,000 to Jimi Patrick, 19, who recently finished his freshman year at Loyola University in Baltimore. Dinardo picked Patrick up at his home and drove him to the farm, which is just a few miles west of the tourist town of New Hope, Pa.
But Patrick only had $800, the affidavit states. Dinardo then offered to sell Patrick a shotgun for that amount.
“Dinardo took Patrick to a remote part of the property and gave him a shotgun. Dinardo then shot and killed Patrick with a .22 caliber rifle,” the affidavit states — without offering a further explanation of why the deal ended with his death.
Dinardo then buried Patrick’s body six feet deep using a backhoe on the farm.
Two days later, Dinardo said he and Kratz, of Philadelphia, decided to rob Dean Finocchiaro during a drug deal. Dinardo told police he gave Kratz his mother’s Smith and Wesson .357 handgun for the robbery. Police say Dinardo said he had promised to sell marijuana to Finocchiaro, 19. They met at Finocchiaro’s home and then went to the farm.
While on his parents’ property, Dinardo told police, Kratz shot Finocchiaro near a barn. The two men then placed his remains in a metal tank that Dinardo called “the pig roaster,” police wrote.
Police say Kratz, who Dinardo described as his cousin, gave a similar account but said it was Dinardo who killed Finocchiaro.
According to the police affidavit, Dinardo said he also had a deal in place that night to sell marijuana to Thomas Meo, 21. At the time Dinardo met up with him, Meo and his good friend Mark Sturgis, 22, were in Meo’s Nissan Maxima, police say.
Dinardo then brought the two other men to his farm, where Kratz was waiting. Police said both Dinardo and Kratz described Dinardo shooting Meo in the back and also shooting at Sturgis, who tried to flee. According to the police affidavit, Dinardo said he felled Sturgis but ran out of ammunition; he then drove a backhoe over Meo’s body.
Police say Dinardo then used the backhoe to place their bodies in the tank with Finocchiaro’s. Dinardo then poured gasoline into the tank and lit it, police say, returning a day later to bury their remains in a hole he dug with the backhole.
Weintraub said that while Dinardo attempted to burn the bodies of those three men, “I don’t believe that was successful.”
Investigators found the metal tank containing the remains about 12 feet below the surface. But they did not immediately find Patrick’s remains.
Dinardo’s attorney said Thursday that his client confessed to his role in the killings in exchange for being spared a death sentence. On Friday, Weintraub offered more detail about that agreement, saying that without it, authorities might never have located Patrick’s body, which Dinardo described to police as in a location far from the other mass grave but still on the family farm.
“I can tell you, I’ve been there, we’d still be looking for Jimi Patrick had we not made this agreement,” Weintraub said.
On Saturday, a woman who answered the phone at a number listed for Patrick’s family declined to talk, instead asking a reporter to share a biography of him they had released earlier this week.
There was no immediate word on whether Weintraub’s office would try to seek a death sentence for Kratz. When Gregg Shore, one of the assistant district attorneys, spoke briefly with reporters after Dinardo and Kratz were arraigned Friday, he not address that.
Bucks County District Attorney’s Office photos of the missing men. Top row: Dean Finocchiaro, 18, left, and Tom Meo, 21. Bottom row: Jimi Patrick, 19, left, and Mark Sturgis, 22. (Bucks County District Attorney’s Office via Reuters)
Kratz and Dinardo face a long list of charges that include abusing corpses and conspiring to commit criminal homicide.
Both suspects appeared separately by video link for their arraignments in a small courtroom in Buckingham presided over by Magisterial District Judge Maggie Snow. Dinardo, in the county jail, wore a red jumpsuit; Kratz, in a blue jumpsuit, spoke from a lockup at the county’s Justice Center. The judge ordered them held in separate facilities.
Kratz, sounding subdued, said he didn’t yet have an attorney yet, and by Saturday morning no attorney was listed for him in court records. Kratz said he lived in Philadelphia with his mother, stepfather, sister, little brother and nephew.
Asked by the judge if he had anything else to say, Kratz said he’d been shot a few months ago and has trouble putting weight on one leg. The judge assured him his medical needs would be attended to. Dinardo had little to say other than, “Thank you, your honor.”
An attorney for Dinardo did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.
Dinardo had already been in custody after he was arrested and charged with trying to sell Meo’s Nissan Maxima for $500. Prosecutors have said that Dinardo suffers from an unspecified “severe mental illness,” noting that he had been confined to a mental health facility after an episode during which he fired a shotgun.
Officials said Friday that even with the confessions and two men behind bars, they were still not sure what motivated the killings.
“I’m not sure if we could ever answer that question,” Weintraub said.
Cosmo Dinardo seen being escorted to a police vehicle on Thursday after his apparent confession. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Berman reported from Washington. Magda Jean-Louis and Emma Ockerman contributed to this report, which has been updated since it was first published Friday.
Like many execs in digital media, I had one of those “wait what?” moments recently when I saw that marketing intelligence company WARC found that the percentage of marketing campaigns leading with TV on its list of most effective advertisers has “steadily increased.” The report also noted a “sharp fall” over the past year or so in social-led campaigns.
WARC didn’t disclose the data it used in its calculations, but I find the notion that advertisers are returning to TV to be far-fetched. To the contrary, the continuing narrative in 2017 is that advertisers are fleeing TV at an accelerated rate. eMarketer expects TV’s share of the advertising pie to shrink from 35.2% today to 30.8% by 2021. If anything, the phenomenon that WARC has noticed is a blip, for the following reasons:
TV has its own viewability problem. Bots are such a part of digital media that it’s common to see viewability rates in the 40–60% range. Meanwhile, how do you know that someone is viewing your TV ad? The answer is, you don’t. Personal experience shows that often people check their phones, leave the room and change the channel when a commercial comes on. A 2010 Nielsen study found 14% of viewers change channels during a commercial break and 20% of consumers change rooms during commercials. Considering the average primetime CPM for adults 18–49 was $47 in the 2016–17 season, that’s a lot of waste.
TV is no longer the dominant device in the living room. A 2016 eMarketer study found nearly 85% of viewers surf the web while watching TV. Biometric data found that 60% of the time a person is most highly engaged during a TV session is actually while he is doing a non-TV related activity, such as using a digital device or talking to someone else in the room.
Younger viewers are tuning out traditional TV in droves. If you’re trying to reach younger viewers, TV isn’t effective and is getting less effective by the day. A 2016 study by digital media firm Defy Media found that consumers 13–24 watch 12.1 hours a week of Internet-based video compared to 8.8 hours on Netflix and other subscription video services. That dwarfs the 8.2 hours a week they spend watching traditional TV. Some 30% of Millennials have also cut the cord, rejecting traditional phones and cable services, according to a 2016 survey from GfK MRI.
TV advertising is still far too wasteful. While the majority of digital advertising is bought and sold programmatically and uses reams of data to determine whether the target consumer is likely to be interested in the product, most TV inventory is still based on demographics. This is outdated thinking; it’s much more effective to target consumers who are interested in your product category and have bought that product in the past than viewers who just happen to be between the ages of 18–49. A decade ago, media sellers might have argued that video on TV was more effective than banner ads, but that video was now ubiquitous and a much better buy.
The caveat with this argument is that TV is changing. In a few years, most inventory will likely be bought and sold programmatically, the way that digital media is. That’s not the case in 2017 though. Some top advertiser may have had success with TV-led campaigns recently, but there are smarter ways to go about it.
We all set SEO goals for ourselves. And if someone asks us outright, we’ll all say that our dream is to be on the first page of Google results. Those of us who are being honest with ourselves know that it takes time and money to make that happen. As most legitimate marketers will tell you, the best SEO hack is, of course, having great content. The next layer is solid keyword research and a targeted PPC campaign. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you’re following the same types of best practices that you would with any other type of content. Provide a variety of video content, make sure that it’s high-quality, and provide value to your audience.
