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There's always been one guy in every precinct who has been so haunted by a case that they either knew who did it and couldn't prove it, or the guy walked, and it just gets inside the cop to the point [that] when they retire, they're sneaking out all the legal boxes with all the case files, all the transcripts, the interviews and everything. And they're going to continue working on it in their basement, have a six-pack of beer and start making odd calls like they're still cops. They can't let go of this thing — this thing can't let go of them.

It's different for every cop in a world of 20 years of mayhem, they each pick one case that got to them. It's rarely the goriest case; it's rarely about a body count. It's about some element of this crime that spoke to them — identification with the aggressor, identification with the victim. ...

The point is all these obsessed cops with their single case. ... They all reminded me of [Moby Dick's] Ahab ... they're looking for their whales. They're looking for their whites.

On moving to Harlem

When I was with my soon-to-be wife Lorraine Adams, the novelist, we were sitting there one day when we decided we were going to ultimately live together and it just came out, "Where do you want to live?" It just came out of her mouth, "Harlem." Now, my experience with Harlem, even though my grandmother had been born there in the turn of the 20th century, my experience with Harlem for the last 15 years before that was going up there with the crime scene unit or the night watch to process a dead body on the sidewalk, so I had a very narrow view of Harlem. I'd just go up there for death. So when she said [that] I just thought, "Gulp, OK."

Here's this big-deal writer, this macho writer of Clockers and Freedomland, and all of a sudden his mate says, "Harlem," and he has to swallow a golf ball. Then I realized, she, Lorraine had been to Iran, Afghanistan, she's been to Pakistan seven times, always on her own, and now she's with a guy, this big-shot street guy and I was just too embarrassed to say, "No," So I said, "OK." ...

So we rent a house, I go up there, it's the first day, I'm bracing [myself] and I can't get close to my house because there are movie trailers because they're shooting an episode of Sesame Street in the house across the street. So that was my first day in Harlem.

On what happens when there's a public outcry against police

My thoughts go to two places: One is that when cops are attacked, they close ranks. I'm not talking about the blue wall of silence, but I think what happens is "us versus them." I'm talking about incidents which the cops — like [in] Ferguson where an unarmed man was shot, when they get under attack with the media, they just close ranks. It's like buffalo when they see lions out there. ...

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The other thing is that I think there are certain sub-climates of cop culture in [cities] like Cleveland ... or Ferguson or, as many cops have told me, Staten Island, [N.Y.] [It's] an island unto itself ... where I think the cops are insulated and have their own culture and they've always been this way. ... When cops feel isolated, when cops feel like there's nothing attacking their infallibility because of the culture and the politicians around them, they kind of feel like they're in a world of their own — that they're the sheriffs and what they do is what they do.

On his pen name, Harry Brandt

First of all, I picked the name Brandt in honor of my former agent Carl Brandt who had represented me from the time I was 22 till the time I was 40. He had died the year before — I was just giving him a little shout out by choosing his name. The reason why I picked the pen name was because what I intended to do in this book was slicker, tighter, faster, more the surface of what's happening, more propelled by the mystery at its core and [it] didn't have any social resonance.

I mean, [in] my earlier books I was always inspired by a crime that spoke to a larger issue in the culture: the Susan Smith kidnappings, the gentrification of the Lower East Side, the impact of crack on a community. ... This time I just wanted to write about people; I wanted to focus on the characters, not the social impact of the story. ... It was going to be different from my other books and I wanted to signal that. ...

Read an excerpt of The Whites

All of a sudden I realized it's another damn book by me, there's no separation, there's no genre, there's no nothing, except another book. And, at that time, it was too late to withdraw the pen name. And so I'm living with it, but if I had to do it all over again — if I had a crystal ball four years ago — I would've had it under my own name.

Updated at 2:10 p.m. ET

The Federal Aviation Administration has released long-awaited draft rules on the operation of pilotless drones, opening the nation's airspace to the commercial possibilities of the burgeoning technology, but not without restrictions.

In short, the proposed rules that have been a decade in the making would limit drones weighing no more than 55 lbs to flying no more than 100 mph at an altitude no higher than 500 feet. The FAA would ban their use at night and near airports. And, they could only be operated by someone with a certification who keeps the vehicle "in line of sight" at all times.

The FAA also will require anyone using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for commercial purposes to obtain a special pilot certification to operate them.

"We ... want to capture the potential of unmanned aircraft and we have been working to develop the framework for the safe integration of this technology into our airspace," Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said during a teleconference with journalists about the new proposed rules.

Under the rules, these aircraft could inspect utility towers, antennas, bridges power lines and pipelines in hilly or mountainous terrain," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said, adding that wildlife conservation, search and rescue, movie making and aerial photographs for real estate purposes were also among the opportunities that could be opened up by the new regulations.

In a statement, the White House called drones "a potentially transformative technology in diverse fields such as agriculture, law enforcement, coastal security, military training, search and rescue, first responder medical support, critical infrastructure inspection, and many others."

The statement says that the proposed rules ensure "that the Federal Government's use of UAS takes into account ... important concerns and in service of them, promotes better accountability and transparent use of this technology."

FAA Drone Rules

Reuters, quoting industry experts, calls the new rules "relatively benign."

Even so, the news agency says, "the rule was unlikely to help Amazon.com in its quest to deliver packages with unmanned drones, since its approach requires an FAA-certified small drone pilot to fly the aircraft and keep it line of sight at all times — factors not envisioned in the online retailer's plan."

The draft regulations must still undergo public comment and revision before being officially adopted.

Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, says in a statement that the proposal represents "an important step in restricting how the government uses this powerful surveillance technology."

But, Guliani says, it "falls short of fully protecting the privacy of Americans.

"For example, the proposal allows the use of data gathered by domestic drones for any 'authorized purpose,' which is not defined, leaving the door open to inappropriate drone use by federal agencies," she says.

FAA

drones

Parallels

Libya Today: 2 Governments, Many Militias, Infinite Chaos

The headquarters of the National Oil Corporation in Tripoli are gleaming, the floors marble, the offices decked out with black leather chairs and fake flowers. It seems far from the fighting going on over oil terminals around the country.

But the man in charge looks at production and knows the future is bleak.

"We cannot produce. We are losing 80 percent of our production," says Mustapha Sanallah, the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation.

He looks like a typical executive, decked out in a suit and glasses. But beneath his calm veneer, he's worried.

"Now we have two problems: low production and low price," he says.

At the current rate, he expects that the country won't even earn 10 percent of the budget money Libya had in 2012, before militias started taking oil infrastructure hostage.

"If there is security in Libya, we can resume production within a few days," Sanallah says.

If there's one thing that has a chance of keeping Libya from totally falling apart, it's oil. It provides nearly all the country's revenue. It's what militias are fighting over. And it's the prize coveted by the two rival governments — one in Tripoli, the other in Libya's east — that claim to be running the country.

The Tripoli faction is seen as Islamist, the eastern government as anti-Islamist — but the fighting is mainly over turf and resources like oil, rather than ideology.

The international community has recognized the eastern government, but it opposes what it sees as the east's divisive attempt to set up a rival national oil company and take control of the industry, something Sanallah says is impossible anyway.

"We are still the NOC [National Oil Company]; the legal NOC is here. I am the chairman of NOC," he says. "[The east] nominated a new chairman of NOC, but there's no staff, there's no people, there's no hardware, there's no software."

International mediators are trying to keep the oil company independent of either side, but oil fields are under attack. One tanker was bombed, and another one was threatened.

Sanallah says he wants to keep oil out of the fight.

"I hope so. I hope so," he says — but he doesn't sound convinced.

His employees are fighting fires at major oil terminals, and with no real security forces, it only takes a few gunmen to shut things down or hold them hostage.

"I think the message was clear to the oil company: There is no security, good security. Otherwise a few people cannot control the vein of the blood of Libya," he says.

And with the terminals closing, Libya's battered economy is taking even more blows because foreign oil companies are pulling out. Libya is only producing about 330,000 barrels a day, increasing the economic burden.

"When you are closing the terminals, it means you cannot produce oil, and if you cannot produce oil, then you cannot produce gas. So we are making up the gas by importing diesel. This is another burden on the shoulders of NOC," he says.

Again, oil is basically what pays for any central Libyan government. How much? "All — 90 to 95 percent. There is no revenue but oil," he says.

If negotiations don't end the fighting, Sanallah says, the country will collapse. A functioning oil industry could be all that stands between Libya as a nation, and Libya as a failed state.

Libya

oil

Lonely Planet named Singapore its top country destination for 2015. An island known as a little red dot on the world map, Singapore has less than 5.5 million people.

But when it comes to tourism, Singapore punches above its weight, with nearly 14 million tourists visiting the island in the first eleven months of 2014. And as a result of a long-term plan by the Singapore government, many of them come for the food.

That food includes meals for about $5 that can be found in Singapore's famous hawker centers, sprawling compounds made up of about 100 stalls under one roof. That's where so-called auntie and uncle food vendors serve Singapore's famous street food, a mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indonesian dishes.

You can find many versions of chicken rice, considered one of Singapore's national dishes, which features steamed or blanched white bird meat. You can also find chili crab, a well-loved seafood dish stir-fried in a tomato and chili-based sauce, and rojak, fried dough that has been grilled over charcoal.

When the government of Singapore decided to make culinary training a centerpiece of its plan to turn the island into a world-class tourist destination, it invited the Culinary Institute of America to open its first international branch on the island. Four years ago, Managing Director Eve Felder moved to Singapore with her family to set up the program — around the same time that celebrity chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali also arrived.

Felder says the culinary institute's Singapore program features the same curriculum as its other branches in the U.S., which teach students to prepare classical cuisine in the European tradition. The basic techniques used in preparing world-class cuisine are the same whether you're making a beef bourguignon or a curry, she says.

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Food offerings including squid dough fritters at Hawker Center, Airport Road, Singapore. The island nation is famous for its street food, a mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indonesian dishes. Carole Zimmer hide caption

itoggle caption Carole Zimmer

Food offerings including squid dough fritters at Hawker Center, Airport Road, Singapore. The island nation is famous for its street food, a mix of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indonesian dishes.

Carole Zimmer

"Part of our being here is to professionalize and teach the whys of cooking, so it's not haphazard," Felder says." The whys are all the same. The difference is in the flavor profiles."

Those flavor profiles run the gamut from learning to prepare Asia's classic dishes to making pastry cream. One morning in January, 19 students wearing chef's aprons and tall white hats gather in the institute's pastry kitchen. Teacher Yvonne Ruperti lines up the ingredients for mixing pastry cream. "Pastry and baking" is part of the institute's 18-month course.

Student Yan Iskanear watches Ruperti closely as she mixes cornstarch, milk, butter, salt and vanilla. Iskanear, one of 200 applicants who vied for 33 places in the culinary institute's fall semester, says he's proud of his country's food.

"Singaporean cuisine is a mixture of so many cultures, so many traditions," Iskanear says, adding,"With the culinary institute here, we learn the trade, we learn the expertise and we use the Singaporean culture, the Singaporean food. And we elevate ourselves to be on a par with all the bigger culinary countries of the world."

Nathaniel Jodin, who graduated from the Culinary Institute's Singapore branch in 2013, says everybody on the island calls themselves a foodie: "They go around and eat. They critique the food."

Jodin is now head chef at GastroSmiths, a small restaurant in downtown Singapore that borrows from cuisines around the world to create its signature dishes, such as scallop seviche and a rib-eye rice bowl.

Jodin says his parents were not happy with his choice to become a chef rather than a doctor or lawyer, because they worried he wouldn't earn enough in the kitchen. "They were very concerned," he says. "And it's a very Asian culture kind of thing. They want you to get good jobs."

But these days, some of the best jobs in Singapore are in the restaurant industry, according to Ryan Clift, who owns the Tippling Club. "This is a career where you will never be unemployed for the rest of your life. It's a universal language. It's food. It's cooking, you know."

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A food vendor at Hawker Center, Airport Road, Singapore Carole Zimmer hide caption

itoggle caption Carole Zimmer

A food vendor at Hawker Center, Airport Road, Singapore

Carole Zimmer

Clift has been cooking since he was 13. He used to run a restaurant in Australia and opened the Tippling Club here in 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis, managing to stay in business by selling a lot of what he called "FU-the Subprime Cocktail" for $100 each — a drink that he says was big enough to share among several people.

Now, Clift prepares meals that consist of modernist gastronomy dishes, such as edible charcoal and peppers that look like hot coals. Some of those meals can cost $5,000 for a 32-course dinner that serves up to 12 people. He says at least 45 percent of his bookings each night are international guests who come for one reason: "They are flying here as gastro tourists, and they are coming here just to eat."

Felder of the Culinary Institute's Singapore branch says she hopes she is training students to attract more gastro tourists and to earn accolades from the passion they display in the kitchen.

The way Felder puts it, "We teach them how to make people's dreams come true. A kitchen is high pressure. It's hot. Your hands smell like shrimp or whatever. But you must do it with grace. It is grace under pressure."

Singapore hopes that grace under pressure and skills in the kitchen will help make it the gastronomic gateway to Asia.

gastro tourism

Singapore