Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/301962149?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sunday, April 28, 2013
Obama jokes about radical 2nd term changes
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama joked Saturday about his plans for a radical second-term evolution from a "strapping young Muslim Socialist" to retiree golfer, all with a new hairstyle like first lady Michelle's.
Obama used this year's annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner to poke fun at himself and some of his political adversaries, asking if it was still possible to be brought down a peg after 4? years as commander-in-chief.
Entering to the rap track "All I Do Is Win" by DJ Khaled, Obama joked about how re-election would allow him to unleash a radical agenda. But then he showed a picture of himself golfing on a mock magazine cover of "Senior Leisure."
"I'm not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I used to be," the president remarked, and then recounted his recent 2-for-22 basketball shooting performance at the White House Easter Egg hunt.
But Obama's most dramatic shift for the next four years appeared to be aesthetic. He presented a montage of shots featuring him with bangs similar to those sometimes sported by his wife.
Obama closed by noting the nation's recent tragedies in Massachusetts and Texas, praising Americans of all stripes from first responders to local journalists for serving the public good.
Saturday night's banquet not far from the White House attracted the usual assortment of stars from Hollywood and beyond. Actors Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Claire Danes, who play government characters on series, were among the attendees, as was Korean entertainer Psy. Several Cabinet members, governors and members of Congress were present.
And despite coming at a somber time, nearly two weeks after the deadly Boston Marathon bombing and 10 days after a devastating fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, the president and political allies and rivals alike took the opportunity to enjoy some humor. Late-night talk-show host Conan O'Brien headlined the event.
Some of Obama's jokes came at his Republican rivals' expense. He asked that the GOP's minority outreach begin with him as a "trial run" and said he'd take his recent charm offensive with Republicans on the road, including to a book-burning event with Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson would have had better success getting Obama out of office if he simply offered the president $100 million to drop out of last year's race, Obama quipped.
And on the 2016 election, the president noted in self-referential irony that potential Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio wasn't qualified because he hasn't even served a full term in the Senate. Obama served less than four years of his six-year Senate term before he was elected president in 2008.
The gala also was an opportunity for six journalists, including Associated Press White House Correspondent Julie Pace, to be honored for their coverage of the presidency and national issues.
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza won the Aldo Beckman Award, which recognizes excellence in the coverage of the presidency.
Pace won the Merriman Smith Award for a print journalist for coverage on deadline.
ABC's Terry Moran was the winner of the broadcast Merriman Smith Award for deadline reporting.
Reporters Jim Morris, Chris Hamby and Ronnie Greene of the Center for Public Integrity won the Edgar A. Poe Award for coverage of issues of national significance.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-jokes-radical-2nd-term-changes-023742499.html
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Obama jokes about radical 2nd term changes
President Barack Obama speaks at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Barack Obama speaks at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Michael Douglas poses for a photo during the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Barack Obama talks with Michael Clemente, Executive Vice President of Fox News, the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Barack Obama looks to the podium during the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
First lady Michelle Obama, right, and late-night television host Conan O'Brien attend the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Saturday, April 27, 2013, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama joked Saturday about his plans for a radical second-term evolution from a "strapping young Muslim Socialist" to retiree golfer, all with a new hairstyle like first lady Michelle's.
Obama used this year's annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner to poke fun at himself and some of his political adversaries, asking if it was still possible to be brought down a peg after 4? years as commander-in-chief.
Entering to the rap track "All I Do Is Win" by DJ Khaled, Obama joked about how re-election would allow him to unleash a radical agenda. But then he showed a picture of himself golfing on a mock magazine cover of "Senior Leisure."
"I'm not the strapping young Muslim Socialist that I used to be," the president remarked, and then recounted his recent 2-for-22 basketball shooting performance at the White House Easter Egg hunt.
But Obama's most dramatic shift for the next four years appeared to be aesthetic. He presented a montage of shots featuring him with bangs similar to those sometimes sported by his wife.
Obama closed by noting the nation's recent tragedies in Massachusetts and Texas, praising Americans of all stripes from first responders to local journalists for serving the public good.
Saturday night's banquet not far from the White House attracted the usual assortment of stars from Hollywood and beyond. Actors Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Claire Danes, who play government characters on series, were among the attendees, as was Korean entertainer Psy. Several Cabinet members, governors and members of Congress were present.
And despite coming at a somber time, nearly two weeks after the deadly Boston Marathon bombing and 10 days after a devastating fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, the president and political allies and rivals alike took the opportunity to enjoy some humor. Late-night talk-show host Conan O'Brien headlined the event.
Some of Obama's jokes came at his Republican rivals' expense. He asked that the GOP's minority outreach begin with him as a "trial run" and said he'd take his recent charm offensive with Republicans on the road, including to a book-burning event with Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson would have had better success getting Obama out of office if he simply offered the president $100 million to drop out of last year's race, Obama quipped.
And on the 2016 election, the president noted in self-referential irony that potential Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio wasn't qualified because he hasn't even served a full term in the Senate. Obama served less than four years of his six-year Senate term before he was elected president in 2008.
The gala also was an opportunity for six journalists, including Associated Press White House Correspondent Julie Pace, to be honored for their coverage of the presidency and national issues.
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza won the Aldo Beckman Award, which recognizes excellence in the coverage of the presidency.
Pace won the Merriman Smith Award for a print journalist for coverage on deadline.
ABC's Terry Moran was the winner of the broadcast Merriman Smith Award for deadline reporting.
Reporters Jim Morris, Chris Hamby and Ronnie Greene of the Center for Public Integrity won the Edgar A. Poe Award for coverage of issues of national significance.
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Friday, April 26, 2013
African Union brings Sudan, rebels together for peace talks
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The African Union on Wednesday brought together for the first time for peace talks Sudan and insurgents fighting government troops in two states bordering South Sudan, in a conflict that has affected almost a million people.
Fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM-North, in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile around the time of South Sudan's secession from Khartoum in 2011.
The violence has displaced or severely affected more than 900,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Sudan previously refused to meet the SPLM-North, and accused South Sudan of backing the rebels, charges denied by Juba.
Khartoum altered its position after ties with South Sudan greatly improved last month with the signing of a deal to resume cross-border oil flows, the lifeline for both. Both sides also agreed to open 10 border crossings on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, an AU panel led by mediator Thabo Mbeki, a former South African president, met with Sudanese delegation chief Ibrahim Ghandour and the SPLM-North's leader, Yassir Arman, in Addis Ababa at the start of peace talks, diplomats attending the negotiations said.
Ghandour and Arman were later set to meet directly for the first time, diplomats said.
No quick breakthrough is expected as both sides harbor deep mistrust and even hostility. Diplomats see the fact that talks actually take place as success and hope both will agree to allow the United Nations to deliver badly needed aid via Sudan to rebel-held territories in both states.
In an opening statement to the AU panel and Sudan's delegation, the SPLM-North said it was "looking forward to fruitful negotiations" to address the humanitarian crisis and find a solution for the conflict in both states.
Rebels in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states sided with South Sudan during the civil war with Khartoum, which ended with a peace deal in 2005. They were left on the Sudanese side of the border after southern secession and complain of marginalization.
"We see clearly that this negotiation represents a new historical opportunity to realize a just peace and peaceful democratic change that will lead to building a strong new Sudanese state on the basis of equal citizenship," SPLM-North leaders said in the statement sent to the media.
The rebels also demanded the release of 600 people they said were held by Sudanese authorities as political prisoners.
The SPLM is part of a an alliance with three rebel groups in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, scene of a separate insurgency, which seeks to topple President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
(Editing by Ulf Laessing and Peter Cooney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/african-union-brings-sudan-rebels-together-peace-talks-235321452.html
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Among the many planets detected orbiting other stars (exoplanets) over the last twenty years, a little less than three hundred periodically pass in front of their star. This is what astronomers call a planetary transit. Exoplanets that "transit" their stars are key objects for the study of other planetary systems, because they are the only planets beyond our solar system that can be studied in detail, both in terms of their physical parameters (mass, radius, orbital parameters) and their atmospheric properties (thermal structure, dynamics, composition).
The University of Liege (ULg) is deeply involved in this exciting research topic, notably through its TRAPPIST[1] robotic telescope installed in 2010 in one of the best astronomical sites of the world, the La Silla European Southern Observatory in the Chilean Atacama desert. One of the scientific objectives of this telescope is the detection and study of exoplanets via the accurate measurement of their transits. In just three years, it has fully demonstrated its great potential in this area. Indeed, TRAPPIST participated in the detection of thirty planets, representing ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date. This important contribution is the result of the excellent expertise of the Liege astronomers, and their active collaboration with other international teams of "planet hunters," including the Swiss team of Professor Didier Queloz, co-discoverer of the first exoplanet in 1995.
Among the thirty exoplanets co-detected by TRAPPIST, most are gas giants similar to Jupiter, but in much closer orbits. "With the intense radiation that they undergo from their star, these planets are real gold mines for the study of other worlds," says Micha?l Gillon, Principal Investigator of the TRAPPIST exoplanets program. "Indeed, it makes possible a number of measurements that give us access to valuable information on their atmospheric properties. " TRAPPIST also detected the transit of a planet twice smaller than Jupiter orbiting a nearby star much less massive than the Sun. "The name of this small planet is GJ3470b" continues Micha?l Gillon, "and it has a mass and a size comparable to those of Uranus and Neptune, suggesting a composition rich in water ice. The detection of this planet much smaller than Jupiter is very exciting, not only for its own study, but also because it demonstrates that by focusing on even less massive stars, TRAPPIST should be able to detect rocky planets similar in size and mass to Earth. Our current projects go in that direction. "
Probably dreaming of other Earths too, TRAPPIST continues to observe the gorgeous Chilean sky night after night, to the delight of Liege astronomers that analyze its valuable data thirteen thousand kilometers away ...
[1] TRAPPIST stands for TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Li?ge.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- M. Gillon, D. R. Anderson, A. Collier-Cameron, A. P. Doyle, A. Fumel, C. Hellier, E. Jehin, M. Lendl, P. F. L. Maxted, J. Montalban, F. Pepe, D. Pollacco, D. Queloz, D. Segransan, A. M. S. Smith, B. Smalley, J. Southworth, A. H. M. J. Triaud, S. Udry, R. G. West. WASP-64b and WASP-72b: two new transiting highly irradiated giant planets. Astronomy and Astrophysic, 2013 [link]
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/4DOSGoWcq2k/130425103237.htm
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Red River crest prediction lowered in Fargo, ND
FARGO, N.D. (AP) ? Officials in Fargo, N.D., say they may scale back flood protection efforts as the National Weather Service has lowered the Red River crest prediction.
The National Weather Service's updated forecast showed Wednesday that the river is likely to crest late next week between 38 and 40 feet, down a couple of feet from earlier predictions.
Forecasters say an ideal melt cycle and lack of significant precipitation lead to the improved forecast.
The river overflows its banks at 18 feet, but most structures in Fargo are protected without additional measures to about 38 feet. If it reaches 38 feet, Fargo would need to build dikes for 117 homes.
Fargo officials say there's still work to be done, but the number of sandbags needed could drop from 1.8 million to about 400,000.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/red-river-crest-prediction-lowered-fargo-nd-194536156.html
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Apple to dole out $100B to shareholders
In this Monday April 1, 2013 photo, a man leaves an Apple store with an iPhone and an iPad in his hands in central Beijing, China. Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone and iPad, reports quarterly financial results after the market closes on Tuesday. April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
In this Monday April 1, 2013 photo, a man leaves an Apple store with an iPhone and an iPad in his hands in central Beijing, China. Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone and iPad, reports quarterly financial results after the market closes on Tuesday. April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Apple is opening the doors to its bank vault, saying it will distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. At the same time, the company said revenue for the current quarter could fall from the year before, which would be the first decline in many years.
Apple CEO Tim Cook also suggested that the company won't release any new products until the fall, contrary to expectations that there would be a new iPhone and iPads out this summer.
Apple Inc. on Tuesday said it will expand its share buyback program to $60 billion ? the largest buyback authorization in history. It is also raising its dividend by 15 percent from $2.65 to $3.05 per share. That equates to a dividend yield of 3 percent at current stock prices. The average yield for the 20 largest dividend-paying companies in the U.S. is 3.1 percent, according to Standard & Poor's.
Investors have been clamoring for Apple to give them access to its cash hoard, which ended March at an unprecedented $145 billion. Apple's tight grip on its cash, along with the lack of ground-breaking new products has been blamed for the steep decline in its stock price over the winter.
News of the cash bonanza coincided with the company's release of a poor quarterly outlook for the three-month period that ends in June.
Apple released its fiscal second quarter earnings after the stock market closed Tuesday. The company's stock initially rose 5 percent to $425 in extended trading, then retreated $2.63, or 0.7 percent, to $403.50 as the CEO talked about new products arriving in the fall.
The shares are still down 40 percent from a peak of $705.07 hit on Sept. 21, when the iPhone 5 went on sale.
"The decline in Apple's stock price over the last couple of quarters has been very frustrating for all of us ... but we'll continue to do what we do best," CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call with analysts after the release of the results. But he reinforced that the company's job is not to boost its stock price in the short term.
"The most important objective for Apple will always be creating innovative products," he added.
Apple's results beat the consensus estimate of analysts who follow the company, though it posted its first profit decline in ten years.
Net income was $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per share, down 18 percent from $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per share, in the same period a year ago.
Revenue was $43.6 billion, up 11 percent from last year's $39.2 billion.
Analysts were expecting earnings of $9.97 per share on revenue of $42.3 billion, according to FactSet.
For the quarter that just started, Apple said it expects sales of $33.5 billion to $35.5 billion. In the same quarter last year, sales were $35 billion. Wall Street was expecting sales of $38 billion.
The June quarter is generally a weak one for Apple, since consumers tend to wait for the next iPhone, which the company usually releases in the fall. But a year-over-year decline is a signal that Apple is failing to capitalize on the continued growth of smartphone sales. Sales are tapering off in U.S. and other mature markets, and not many consumers in India and China can afford iPhones.
"Our fiscal 2012 results were incredibly strong and that's making comparisons very difficult this year," said Cook.
Apple shipped 37.4 million iPhones in the latest quarter, up 7 percent from a year ago. That confounded expectations that shipments might fall, but it was still a weak number compared to many previous quarters, when shipments doubled year over year. The average wholesale price of an iPhone also fell to $613 as Apple cut the price of its oldest model, the iPhone 4, to appeal to buyers in developing countries.
Apple started paying a dividend last summer and has been buying back a modest number of shares, enough to balance the dilution created by its employee stock option program but not to make a dent in its cash pile. The company says it's now expanding the buybacks, which started in October and are set to run till the end of 2015, from $10 billion to $60 billion. It's raising the quarterly dividend starting with the payment due May 16.
The company has faced continued pressure from Wall Street over the use of its cash, which earns less than 1 percent in interest. Investors reason that if the company has no better use for the money, it should be handing it over to shareholders. The company had said it was considering ways to use the money, and this year engaged in a public debate with a hedge fund manager who wanted it to institute a new class of shares to attract dividend-loving investors.
Paradoxically, cash-flush Apple will be borrowing money to support the buybacks and dividends. That's because two-thirds of its cash resides in overseas accounts. It doesn't bring the money into the U.S. because it prefers not to pay U.S. corporate income taxes on it. Instead, it will be using cash from U.S.-derived revenue and U.S. accounts, plus borrowed money.
Apple is effectively betting that the U.S. federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent ? one of the highest in the world ? will come down in the future, or that there will be a tax repatriation amnesty period, as there was in 2004.
When a company starts doling out its cash to shareholders, it's usually a sign that its growth is stalling and it's finding it hard to identify good ways to invest in its own business. But Apple is still growing fast by the standards of large companies, and its cash pile-up is a reflection of the extraordinary success of the iPhone.
Compared to its earnings, Apple's stock price is low. In buying Apple stock, investors are paying $9.20 for every dollar of Apple's annual net income. By comparison, they're willing to pay $24 for every dollar of Google's profit.
That suggests investors have concluded Apple will never again launch a revolutionary product like the iPhone or iPad. The commitment to bigger buybacks may reinforce that impression, said David Tan, a Georgetown University assistant professor of strategy who focuses on technology.
"How are we going to read into what this move says about Apple's long-term prospects?" Tan said. "Does this mean this is all that Apple has left to offer or is this just something temporary while we wait for the next big thing from the company?"
Investors have grown increasingly frustrated with Apple. The company has only been releasing updates to its existing line of mobile devices and computers since Cook became CEO 20 months ago instead of blazing technological trails as it did with the iPod's 2001 unveiling, the iPhone's 2007 debut and the iPad's introduction in 2010, said Lauren Balter, an analyst for Oracle Investment Research. At the same time, Samsung Electronics has been gaining market share with larger smartphone screens and other features while Google Inc. is creating a buzz with its own Nexus tablets. Google is also expanding into "wearable computing" with Internet-connected glasses that are expected to go on sale late this year or early next year.
"The market is tired of the same old thing at Apple," Balter said. "Investors are looking for innovation. The reality is that people are looking at other products now and they are looking at other cool features from competitors."
Apple is rumored to be working on a "smart" watch and a revolutionary TV set, but it hasn't confirmed that. On Tuesday's call, Cook sounded slightly more open to making an iPhone with a larger screen, saying merely that Apple would not ship a phone with a larger screen as long as that meant tradeoffs in other measures of screen quality, like brightness.
Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross said now that Apple has laid out plans for its cash hoard, investor focus will shift back to Apple's upcoming products.
"What I am hoping is now that we have gotten through this, people will start focusing a little bit more on the fundamentals," Cross said. "And I think the fundamentals this quarter showed that demand remains strong for their products. I don't think the Apple brand has been diminished at all, based on the numbers we have seen."
___
AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this report from San Francisco.
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Father of alleged Boston Marathon bombers: 'I want ... - World News
By Adrienne Mong and F. Brinley Bruton, NBC News
MAKHACHKALA, Russia -?The father of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers said he was struggling to believe his sons were behind the twin blasts that killed three and injured more than 170.
?I?m planning to find the truth, justice,? said Anzor Tsarnaev during an interview at his home in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan. "I want facts, proof that this is all original because otherwise, anything could be set up."
Tsarnaev?s son Tamerlan, 26, died following a gunbattle with police four days after the bombings. His brother Dzhokhar, 19, was captured on Friday and has been charged with using weapons of mass destruction.?
The mother of the Boston bombing suspects, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, tells the that prior to the attacks the FBI had been watching her oldest son when they were in the United States.
The case in the United States was clearly taking a toll on?Tsarnaev?s wife Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, who told NBC News' U.K. partner ITN News?that she "wanted to die."
The FBI had been watching her oldest son when they were in the United States, she told Channel 4.
"They were monitoring him and I know that because I used to talk to them," she said. "They used to come to our house, like two, three times. And then my son Tamerlan used to tell me that he used to talk to them too, because they called me once and they wanted his number.
"At such moments I used to get really worried because, you know, my kids and I?m their mother,??Tsarnaeva told Channel 4 News, which is also NBC News' partner.
An agent told her that they "saw whatever (Tamerlan) was reading," and asked if she thought he would get involved with a radical?organization,?Tsarnaeva said. "I said no, no," she added.
When NBC News spoke to?Tsarnaeva, who says she began to practice a "pure" form of Islam around four years ago in the United States, she became visibly angry at the suggestion that Tamerlan may have visited a Salafist mosque. Salafist?Sunnis believe in a very strict interpretation of the Koran.
When asked why her sons were at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Tsarnaeva told Channel 4?that they were athletes and liked watching the marathon.?
"Last year they went too, and I went last year," she said.
?What happened was a terrible thing," she said. ?"But I know that my kids have nothing to do with this. I know it. I am mother. I know my kids."
In an emotional interview with NBC News, the father of the two brothers suspected of setting off two bombs at the Boston Marathon insisted his son Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an innocent child and brother Tamerlan a gifted boxer who was "very religious" and homesick. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.
For his part, the suspects' father described his sons as ?wonderful children.?
?They are gentle, like girls, they as soft in their character ? soft,? Tsarnaev said.
He called Dzhokhar ?an innocent angel.?
The couple say they moved Dagestan over a year ago after?Tsarnaev became sick.?
The surviving suspect is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chechen origin. He made his initial court appearance on Monday?at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was listed in serious condition.
Dzhokhar was assigned three federal public defenders.?The charges could carry the death penalty.
Related:
'Did you hear about the Boston explosion? I did that'
Marathon bombing survivor Ryan McMahon: 'I want my Boston back'
Full coverage of the Boston Marathon tragedy
This story was originally published on Tue Apr 23, 2013 7:34 AM EDT
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ZTE licenses Microsoft's Android-related patents
Just last week Microsoft added Foxconn's parent company to its growing list of licensees for patents it asserts are key to Android, and now ZTE has inked a deal with Ballmer and Co. as well. Now that the pact is in place, Microsoft says it's struck patent accords with roughly 20 hardware makers, and that 60 percent of phones sold with Google's open source OS are covered by such licenses. With HTC and LG already paying Redmond royalties for devices using Android, that leaves the likes of Google, Motorola and Huawei as the odd manufacturers out. If Motorola has its way, however, that won't change.
Filed under: Mobile, Microsoft, Google
Source: Reuters
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Wife: American in Iraqi prison is on hunger strike
BAGHDAD (AP) ? In Baghdad's maximum-security Karkh prison, Shawki Omar is triply damned, his supporters say.
He's a Sunni prisoner in a Shiite-dominated jail. A foreigner in a country where outsiders are blamed for fueling an insurgency. And to top it off, an American in a nation struggling with the bloody legacy of the U.S.-led invasion.
"He is discriminated against on three different levels there," Omar's wife, Sandra, said in an interview. She said Shawki ? a naturalized American citizen of Jordanian-Palestinian descent who was apprehended by U.S.-led forces in Baghdad nearly a decade ago on suspicion of fomenting jihad ? had been beaten and denied medication.
In emails and phone calls from her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, Sandra Omar said that her 51-year-old husband shared a poorly heated shipping container with a dozen other inmates. She said he and other Sunni prisoners were denied care packages, refused exercise and repeatedly beaten. She said Omar had been on some form of hunger strike for more than two months to protest his condition.
The U.S. government claimed that Omar was unlikely to be tortured when it handed him to the Iraqi justice system, whose prisons are notorious for rights abuses. But Omar says he was brutalized soon after he was turned over. American officials say they are aware of Shawki's allegations and of his hunger strike. In a statement, it said it had raised the issue of abuse with Iraqi officials and that they were investigating.
"We are in regular contact with him and the prison authorities concerning his health," the statement said.
Omar's case is unique in one way: He was the first known American to be slated for trial in Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein courts. He is also one of only five American citizens in Iraqi custody. But his allegations of mistreatment are far from unusual. Erin Evers, a Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch, said she knew of similar claims, and that they were symptomatic of a shaky criminal justice system shot through with corruption.
"It's one of the biggest problems in Iraq today," she said, noting that the Sunni protest movement, which has threatened the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has prisoners' rights at the heart of its demands.
Iraqi officials deny mistreating their American prisoner; Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said the allegations were "absolutely not true." But Omar's Iraqi lawyer, Zeina Ahmad, told The Associated Press that when she saw her client late last year his feet had been so badly beaten they had swelled up and turned blue.
Omar's path to U.S. citizenship began when the Kuwaiti-born Jordanian visited South Dakota more than three decades ago. In 1982, he met Sandra, a student at the Pierre School of Practical Nursing in Pierre, South Dakota. The couple married the following year, moving around the country as their family grew.
Sandra Omar, who was put in touch with The Associated Press though the London-based prisoners' advocacy group CagePrisoners, said she grew up "firmly Christian." When the two wed, she still held on to the hope that Shawki would convert.
"It didn't turn out that way," she said.
Instead, she converted to Islam, eventually moving to Jordan in 1995 in a bid to familiarize the couple's children with the Arabic language and Muslim culture. Shawki Omar, who had become increasingly devout, took a second wife ? a Jordanian ? and brought the entire family to Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to get his eldest son into university there. He then took a third wife ? an Iraqi. The family left as the U.S.-led invasion was looming, but Sandra said that Shawki returned to the country after the war.
What happens next is in dispute.
In a statement, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Gardner alleged that Omar was an al-Qaida emissary whose second marriage had made him a member of terror kingpin Abu Musab Zarqawi's extended family. Gardner said that multinational forces had arrested four Jordanian jihadists and an Iraqi insurgent at Omar's home in October 2004. Under questioning, the general said, the arrested jihadists accused Omar of trying to organize the kidnapping of foreigners in Baghdad.
Sandra Omar said the allegations are bogus, suggesting that the information had been squeezed out of Omar's alleged associates under duress.
"This is the kind of faulty intelligence you get when you torture people," she said of the allegations.
From U.S. detention, Omar sent a series of desperate-sounding letters to his wife and son, saying he was being kept in solitary confinement and would be refusing food until he saw a lawyer.
"The last time I checked my passport I thought I was an American citizen," he wrote in a letter dated March 2005. He went on to demand that his family do something ? anything ? to prevent his transfer to Iraqi custody.
"Sue everyone," he wrote in another letter, dated April 2005.
Omar's family did sue, sparking a case that went to the Supreme Court and drew in the AP and other media organizations, all of which challenged the government's contention that people detained on battlefield ? such as Omar ? had no access to the U.S. justice system.
Omar scored one important victory ? the Supreme Court ruled that he and others like him were allowed to challenge his detention in American court. But he lost the bigger legal battle. On July 8, 2011, a lower court accepted U.S. government assurances that Omar was unlikely to face torture while in Iraqi custody. A week later, Omar was under Baghdad's control.
Things at Karkh prison have gotten worse since, Sandra Omar said.
She said the facility was rife with sectarian discrimination and that Omar has been prevented from getting blood pressure medication sent to him by his family.
Both she and Ahmad, Omar's Iraqi lawyer, said he had been on a hunger strike for more than two months, although neither went into detail regarding what the strike entailed. Ibrahim, the deputy justice minister, did not specifically address the hunger strike issue, but insisted that Omar was in good health.
Omar's former U.S. lawyer, University of Chicago Law School assistant professor Aziz Huq, said the abuse allegations were no surprise.
"You would have to be extravagantly optimistic, in engaging in these handovers, to think that you're not exposing these people to substantial risk of abuse," he said.
___
Satter reported from London.
___
Online:
CagePrisoners: http://www.cageprisoners.com
Raphael Satter can be reached at: http://raphae.li/twitter
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wife-american-iraqi-prison-hunger-strike-093122960.html
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Scientists map all possible drug-like chemical compounds: Library of millions of small, carbon-based molecules chemists might synthesize
Apr. 22, 2013 ? Drug developers may have a new tool to search for more effective medications and new materials.
It's a computer algorithm that can model and catalogue the entire set of lightweight, carbon-containing molecules that chemists could feasibly create in a lab.
The small-molecule universe has more than 10^60 (that's 1 with 60 zeroes after it) chemical structures. Duke chemist David Beratan said that many of the world's problems have molecular solutions in this chemical space, whether it???s a cure for disease or a new material to capture sunlight.
But, he said, "The small-molecule universe is astronomical in size. When we search it for new molecular solutions, we are lost. We don't know which way to look."
To give synthetic chemists better directions in their molecular search, Beratan and his colleagues -- Duke chemist Weitao Yang, postdoctoral associates Aaron Virshup and Julia Contreras-Garcia, and University of Pittsburgh chemist Peter Wipf -- designed a new computer algorithm to map the small-molecule universe.
The map, developed with a National Institutes of Health P50 Center grant, tells scientists where the unexplored regions of the chemical space are and how to build structures to get there. A paper describing the algorithm and map appeared online in April in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The map helps chemists because they do not yet have the tools, time or money to synthesize all 10^60 compounds in the small-molecule universe. Synthetic chemists can only make a few hundred or a few thousand molecules at a time, so they have to carefully choose which compounds to build, Beratan said.
The scientists already have a digital library describing about a billion molecules found in the small-molecule universe, and they have synthesized about 100 million compounds over the course of human history, Beratan said. But these molecules are similar in structure and come from the same regions of the small-molecule universe.
It's the unexplored regions that could hold molecular solutions to some of the world's most vexing challenges, Beratan said.
To add diversity and explore new regions to the chemical space, Aaron Virshup developed a computer algorithm that built a virtual library of 9 million molecules with compounds representing every region of the small-molecule universe.
"The idea was to start with a simple molecule and make random changes, so you add a carbon, change a double bond to a single bond, add a nitrogen. By doing that over and over again, you can get to any molecule you can think of," Virshup said.
He programed the new algorithm to make small, random chemical changes to the structure of benzene and then to catalogue the new molecules it created based on where they fit into the map of the small-molecule universe. The challenge, Virshup said, came in identifying which new chemical compounds chemists could actually create in a lab.
Virshup sent his early drafts of the algorithm's newly constructed molecules to synthetic chemists who scribbled on them in red ink to show whether they were synthetically unstable or unrealistic. He then turned the criticisms into rules the algorithm had to follow so it would not make those types of compounds again.
"The rules kept us from getting lost in the chemical space," he said.
After ten iterations, the algorithm finally produced 9 million synthesizable molecules representing every region of the small-molecule universe, and it produced a map showing the regions of the chemical space where scientists have not yet synthesized any compounds.
"With the map, we can tell chemists, if you can synthesize a new molecule in this region of space, you have made a new type of compound," Virshup said. "It's an intellectual property issue. If you're in the blank spaces on our small molecule map, you're guaranteed to make something that isn't patented yet," he said.
The team has made the source code for the algorithm available online. The researchers said they hope scientists will use it to immediately start mining the unexplored regions of the small molecule universe for new chemical compounds.
The research was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (P50-GM067082).
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University. The original article was written by Ashley Yeager.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Aaron M Virshup, Julia Contreras-Garc?a, Peter Wipf, Weitao Yang, David N. Beratan. Stochastic voyages into uncharted chemical space produce a representative library of all possible drug-like compounds.. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2013; : 130402114828001 DOI: 10.1021/ja401184g
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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/59XGfriSyDc/130422154945.htm
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Anger at loss of ?flourishing and beautiful? tree in Warren Street ...
By News Reporters
A healthy tree on Warren Street was cut down to prevent its roots damaging a building.
Residents living near the junction of Warren Street and Cleveland Street in Fitzrovia are angry about the loss of a healthy tree which was cut down by Camden Council because its roots were potentially a threat to a nearby building.
A note was posted on the tree in March saying it had become necessary to remove the tree. It was then cut down in April.
The tree was apparently removed because its roots were causing subsidence to a nearby building. Camden Council told local residents the tree will be replaced by one with a smaller root system.?
Fitzrovia News understands that the tree was removed?to prevent a possible insurance claim from owners of the building behind where the tree was growing.
Councillor Tulip Siddiq, Camden?s Cabinet Member for Culture and Communities, said: ?The tree was removed as it was causing tree root damage to a building nearby, and we intend to plant a replacement tree with a smaller root system. The Council only ever removes trees if they are dangerous, dying or due to tree root damage claims and this is always a last resort.?
However, residents living nearby say the the reasons for removing the tree are spurious.
All that?s left of a healthy tree after concerns about root damage to nearby building.
Rebecca Hossack, who lives in Warren Street and had paid for the tree to be planted many years ago as part of a project she initiated to green Fitzrovia,?said: ?It is a great shame that this flourishing and beautiful tree, that brought a splash of softening greenery to west end of Warren Street, has been obliterated by the council just ? it would appear ? to assuage the routine anxieties of an insurance company.
?Whatever the council says, this was unnecessary. I am sick of small lollypop trees being planted all over London. This was a beautiful flowing tree with a bird?s nest in it. Totally healthy,? said Ms Hossack.
Other residents agreed.?Sophie Pandit told Fitzrovia News: ?I am very upset by the loss of the tree, not least because it was situated opposite our flat and I took great pleasure in looking out on it, but also because there seems to be a lack of transparency about the reason for its removal. It was the sole tree on the western end of Warren Street. Its loss will be keenly felt.?
The tree was well established and local people said it greatly enhanced that end of the street. The only other tree is on the corner of Fitzroy Street, about 150 metres away.
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NTSB probes safety testing of Boeing 787 batteries
FILE - In this Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013 photo provided by the Japan Transport Safety Board shows the distorted main lithium-ion battery, left, and an undamaged auxiliary battery of the All Nippon Airways' Boeing 787 which made an emergency landing on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013 at Takamatsu airport in Takamatsu, western Japan. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing officials were scheduled to testify at a two-day hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board beginning Tuesday April 23, 2013. The board is asking how problems with the aircraft's lithium-ion battery system that led to a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another escaped the notice of regulators and company officials who certified the plane's safety. (AP Photo/Japan Transport Safety Board, File) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES
FILE - In this Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013 photo provided by the Japan Transport Safety Board shows the distorted main lithium-ion battery, left, and an undamaged auxiliary battery of the All Nippon Airways' Boeing 787 which made an emergency landing on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013 at Takamatsu airport in Takamatsu, western Japan. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing officials were scheduled to testify at a two-day hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board beginning Tuesday April 23, 2013. The board is asking how problems with the aircraft's lithium-ion battery system that led to a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another escaped the notice of regulators and company officials who certified the plane's safety. (AP Photo/Japan Transport Safety Board, File) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES
WASHINGTON (AP) ? As airlines prepare to begin flying Boeing's beleaguered 787 Dreamliners again, federal investigators are looking at how regulators and the company tested and approved the plane's cutting-edge battery system, and whether the government cedes too much authority to aircraft makers for safety testing.
Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing officials were scheduled to testify at a two-day hearing of the National Transportation Safety Board beginning Tuesday. The board is asking how problems with the aircraft's lithium-ion battery system that led to a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another escaped the notice of regulators and company officials who certified the plane's safety.
To save manpower, the FAA designates employees at aircraft makers to oversee the safety testing of new planes. Every item that is part of an airplane, down to its nuts and bolts, must be certified as safe before the FAA approves that type of plane as safe for flight. Boeing won FAA safety certification for the 787 in August 2011.
"In a way, the designee system is admitting the FAA doesn't have the manpower to do what is required, and also that they may not have the expertise," said John Goglia, a former NTSB board member and aviation safety expert.
The FAA has used designated company employees to oversee and validate some safety testing for more than two decades, a practice critics complain has inherent conflicts of interest. The agency significantly expanded its use of designees in recent years under pressure from manufacturers, who complained it was taking the agency too long to approve new planes because they didn't have enough staff.
"If industry had to wait for government employees to be available to do the testing" and to develop enough technical knowledge to assess new aviation technologies, "we would just never get any products certified," Goglia said.
The 787, Boeing's newest and most technologically-advanced plane, is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. It has long been known that lithium batteries are more susceptible than conventional nickel-cadmium batteries to extreme, uncontrolled temperature increases and fires that are very different to put out. But lithium batteries weigh less, store more energy and recharge faster than conventional batteries, making them attractive to airlines.
Boeing did some of the safety testing on the 787 battery system, but much of the testing was done by a subcontractor, Thales of France, which made the 787's electrical system, and by battery maker GS Yuasa of Japan, according to a previously released NTSB report. The testing concluded there was no chance that short-circuiting would lead to a fire, and the odds of a smoking battery were one in every 10 million flight hours.
Instead, there were two battery failures when the entire 787 fleet had clocked less than 52,000 flight hours. The first was on Jan. 7 aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport shortly after landing following an overseas flight. Firefighters reported two small flames and dense clouds of white smoke streaming from the battery. It took over an hour before they declared the incident under control.
Nine days later a smoking battery aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 led to an emergency landing in Japan. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all U.S.-registered 787s grounded the same day, and aviation authorities in other countries swiftly followed suit.
The NTSB, which is investigating the Boston incident, hasn't yet determined the root cause of the fire and may never be able to do so. The insides of the battery were severely charred, leaving few clues for investigators.
Boeing has since developed and tested a revamped version of the battery system, with changes designed to prevent a fire or to contain one should it occur. FAA officials approved the revamped batteries last week and agreed to lift the grounding order. The company has been working furiously to install the new system on the 50 Dreamliners in service worldwide. Boeing has orders for 840 of the planes from airlines around the globe.
What the NTSB uncovers regarding the FAA's safety certification program could have important implications for the agency's ability to handle other technology challenges, including the transition to a new air traffic control system and the introduction of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace, said Jim Hall, a former safety board chairman.
"It's important to know that the government has oversight capability," Hall said. "Our aviation safety, which is unparalleled at the moment in the world, has been built on having active oversight by the FAA."
___
Online:
National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
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Monday, April 22, 2013
Bombing suspect under heavy guard
BOSTON (AP) ? Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday ? apparently in no shape to be interrogated ? as investigators tried to establish the motive for the deadly attack and the scope of the plot.
People across the Boston area breathed easier the morning after Tsarnaev, 19, was pulled, wounded and bloody, from a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard. The capture came at the end of a tense day that began with his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, dying in a gunbattle with police.
There was no immediate word on when Tsarnaev might be charged and what those charges would be. The twin bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180.
The most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.
President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers ? ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area ? had help from others. The president urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.
U.S. officials said an elite interrogation team would question the Massachusetts college student without reading him his Miranda rights, something that is allowed on a limited basis when the public may be in immediate danger, such as instances in which bombs are planted and ready to go off.
The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern about that possibility. Executive Director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.
The federal public defender's office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged. Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, said he should have a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Saturday afternoon that Tsarnaev was in serious but stable condition and was probably unable to communicate. Tsarnaev was at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where 11 victims of the bombing were still being treated.
"I, and I think all of the law enforcement officials, are hoping for a host of reasons the suspect survives," the governor said after a ceremony at Fenway Park to honor the victims and survivors of the attack. "We have a million questions, and those questions need to be answered."
The all-day manhunt Friday brought the Boston area to a near standstill and put people on edge across the metropolitan area.
The break came around nightfall when a homeowner in Watertown saw blood on his boat, pulled back the tarp and saw a bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding inside, police said. After an exchange of gunfire, he was seized and taken away in an ambulance.
Raucous celebrations erupted in and around Boston, with chants of "USA! USA!" Residents flooded the streets in relief four days after the two pressure-cooker bombs packed with nails and other shrapnel went off.
Michael Spellman said he bought tickets to Saturday's Red Sox game at Fenway Park to help send a message to the bombers.
"They're not going to stop us from doing things we love to do," he said, sitting a few rows behind home plate. "We're not going to live in fear."
During the long night of violence leading up to the capture, the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman and took part in a furious shootout and car chase in which they hurled explosives at police from a large homemade arsenal, authorities said.
"We're in a gunfight, a serious gunfight. Rounds are going and then all of the sudden they see something being thrown at them and there's a huge explosion," Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said Saturday of the melee.
The chief said one of the explosives was the same type used during the Boston Marathon attack, and authorities later recovered a pressure cooker lid that had embedded in a car down the street. He said the suspects also tossed two grenades before Tamerlan ran out of ammunition and police tackled him.
But while handcuffing him, officers had to dive out of the way as Dzhokhar drove the carjacked Mercedes at them, Deveau said. The sport utility vehicle dragged Tamerlan's body down the block, he said. Police initially tracked the escaped suspect by a blood trail he left behind a house after abandoning the Mercedes, negotiating his surrender hours later after an area resident saw blood and found the suspect huddled in his boat.
Chechnya, where the Tsarnaev family has roots, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.
Investigators have not offered a motive for the Boston attack. But in interviews with officials and those who knew the Tsarnaevs, a picture has emerged of the older one as someone embittered toward the U.S., increasingly vehement in his Muslim faith and influential over his younger brother.
The Russian FSB intelligence service told the FBI in 2011 about information that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam, two law enforcement officials said Saturday.
According to an FBI news release, a foreign government said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev appeared to be strong believer and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the U.S. for travel to the Russian region to join unspecified underground groups.
The FBI did not name the foreign government, but the two officials said it was Russia. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly.
The FBI said that in response, it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and relatives, and did not find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity. The bureau said it looked into such things as his telephone and online activity, his travels and his associations with others.
An uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers said he had a falling-out with Tamerlan over the man's increased commitment to Islam.
Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., said Tamerlan told him in a 2009 phone conversation that he had chosen "God's business" over work or school. Tsarni said he then contacted a family friend who told him Tsarnaev had been influenced by a recent convert to Islam.
Tsarni said his relationship with his nephew basically ended after that call.
As for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, "he's been absolutely wasted by his older brother. I mean, he used him. He used him for whatever he's done," Tsarni said.
Albrecht Ammon, a downstairs-apartment neighbor of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Cambridge, said in an interview that the older brother had strong political views about the United States. Ammon quoted Tsarnaev as saying that the U.S. uses the Bible as "an excuse for invading other countries."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said. He was married with a young daughter. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
As of Saturday, more than 50 victims of the bombing remained hospitalized, three in critical condition.
___
Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie and Steve Peoples in Boston; Mike Hill in Watertown, Mass.; Colleen Long in New York; Pete Yost in Washington; Eric Tucker in Montgomery Village, Md.; and AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen in Boston contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bomb-suspect-hospitalized-under-heavy-guard-181337320.html
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Group kicks off planting of ancient tree clones
In this photograph taken April 18, 2013, Jake Milarch holds coastal redwood clones developed in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive lab in Copemish, Mich. Milarch and other members of the nonprofit group hope to plant millions of redwood clones to reforest the planet and fight climate change. (AP Photo/John Flesher)
In this photograph taken April 18, 2013, Jake Milarch holds coastal redwood clones developed in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive lab in Copemish, Mich. Milarch and other members of the nonprofit group hope to plant millions of redwood clones to reforest the planet and fight climate change. (AP Photo/John Flesher)
In this photo taken April 18, 2013 shows clones of coastal redwood trees in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive laboratory in Copemish, Mich. The nonprofit group hopes to plant millions of genetic copies of ancient redwoods around the world. (AP Photo/John Flesher)
This October 2011, photo provided by Archangel Ancient Tree Archive shows an unidentified person standing beside a coastal redwood tree near Crescent City, Calif., that is among dozens the group has cloned. The group hopes to plant thousands of genetic copies of the trees around the world. (AP Photo/Courtesy Archangel Ancient Tree Archive)
COPEMISH, Mich. (AP) ? A team led by a nurseryman from northern Michigan and his sons has raced against time for two decades, snipping branches from some of the world's biggest and most durable trees with plans to produce clones that could restore ancient forests and help fight climate change.
Now comes the most ambitious phase of the quest: getting the new trees into the ground.
Ceremonial plantings of two dozen clones from California's mighty coastal redwoods will take place Monday in seven nations: Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany and the U.S.
Although measuring just 18-inches tall, the laboratory-produced trees are genetic duplicates of three giants that were cut down in northern California more than a century ago. Remarkably, shoots still emerge from the stumps, including one known as the Fieldbrook Stump near McKinleyville, which measures 35 feet in diameter. It's believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tree was about 40 stories high before it was felled.
"This is a first step toward mass production," said David Milarch, co-founder of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a nonprofit group spearheading the project. "We need to reforest the planet; it's imperative. To do that, it just makes sense to use the largest, oldest, most iconic trees that ever lived."
Milarch and his sons Jared and Jake, who have a family-owned nursery in the village of Copemish, Mich., became concerned about the condition of the world's forests in the 1990s. They began crisscrossing the U.S. in search of "champion" trees that have lived hundreds or even thousands of years, convinced that superior genes enabled them to outlast others of their species. Scientific opinion varies on whether that's true, with skeptics saying the survivors may simply have been lucky.
The Archangel leaders say they're out to prove the doubters wrong. They've developed several methods of producing genetic copies from cuttings, including placing branch tips less than an inch long in baby food jars containing nutrients and hormones. The specimens are cultivated in labs until large enough to be planted.
In recent years, they have focused on towering sequoias and redwoods, considering them best suited to absorb massive volumes of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas primarily responsible for climate change.
"If we get enough of these trees out there, we'll make a difference," said Jared Milarch, the group's executive director.
Archangel has an inventory of several thousand clones in various stages of growth that were taken from more than 70 redwoods and giant sequoias. NASA engineer Steve Craft, who helped arrange for David Milarch to address an agency gathering, said research shows that those species hold much more carbon than other varieties.
The challenge is to find places to put the trees, people to nurture them and money to continue the project, Jared Milarch said. The group is funded through donations and doesn't charge for its clones.
"A lot of trees will be planted by a lot of groups on Arbor Day, but 90 percent of them will die," David Milarch said. "It's a feel-good thing. You can't plant trees and walk away and expect them to take care of themselves."
The recipients of Archangel redwoods have pledged to care for them properly, he said. The first planting of about 250 took place in December on a ranch near Port Orford, Ore. Others will be planted during Earth Day observances Monday at the College of Marin in Kentwood, Calif., and in parks and private estates in the other six countries.
"I know the trees will thrive here," said Tom Burke, landscape manager at the College of Marin. "We've had redwoods in this area since God planted them."
___
Online: http://www.ancienttreearchive.org
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Imagine Yourself as the Audience's Equal to Speak More Confidently
Whether you're addressing a huge auditorium or just speaking up in a meeting, most of us are at least a little uncomfortable with public speaking. If you need a quick confidence boost, just imagine yourself as the audience's equal.
Geoffrey James at Inc. shares this tip:
If you're speaking with a CEO, imagine yourself as a CEO. If you're speaking to engineers, imagine yourself as an engineer. Find and focus on the commonalities between yourself and your audience. If you're not a supplicant you won't sound like one.
This is all about confidence. We're more comfortable talking to our friends than we are to CEOs. You can't pretend to know anything about engineering if you're talking to engineers, but you can put yourself in a frame of mind where they are peers or friends, not "different." Even if it's all in your head, it should help you talk to your audience more comfortably, as friends, rather than speaker to listener.
How to Sound Confident (Even if You're Not) | Inc.
Photo by hxdbzxy (Shutterstock).
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Sunday, April 21, 2013
Watch A Drone Visit College Football To Give Coaches Better Perspective
University of Tennessee coach Butch Jones wanted to get an eagle-eye view of his players but apparently didn’t have the resources to spend it on the kinds of expensive, cable-suspended Skycam equipment used by broadcasters. Instead, he sent up a drone, in what appears to be the first?– or one of the first — uses of unmanned aerial vehicles in college football. A Vine (above) showing the coaches warming up the drone for practice immediately started making the rounds on sports blogs. According to Outside magazine, military drone technology was quickly adopted by the entertainment industry, and is becoming more pervasive for aerial footage. “Even at upwards of $5,000 per day, a drone runs a fraction of the cost of a helicopter rental,” explains Joe Spring. A number of policymakers are proposing moratoriums on low-surveillance drones, until privacy laws can catch up to the quickly evolving technology. But flying cameras are completely legit for sports. Interestingly, Coach Jones credits the experiment to a Google-style mass-innovation approach to management: “It’s a number of guys. It’s our support staff, it’s [Sports Technology Coordinator] Joe Harrington. It’s everyone just always trying to make the program better each and every day. That’s the culture that we’re building here. It doesn’t matter if it’s our secretaries, our equipment staff, our training staff, or our cooks. How can we make Tennessee football better each and every day?”Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/40W1Efqumv8/
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Bleak Canada first-quarter earnings outlook may mask market upside
By John Tilak
TORONTO (Reuters) - Corporate Canada looks set to post lackluster first-quarter results, but lowered expectations and a sharp selloff earlier this week may set the stage for near-term share price gains.
Earnings beats and any optimistic outlooks are now more likely to provide a boost when some of the biggest companies start reporting next week.
"It's the magic of low expectations," said CIBC World Markets senior economist Peter Buchanan. "Commodity markets aren't that great, and developments in the domestic economy haven't been wonderful, but the bar (for earnings) is not set very high."
Telecommunications company Rogers Communications Inc
Analysts expect earnings from companies in the Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> to show only a 0.2 percent rise from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimates.
"The forecasts seem to be more dire than the reality," said Serge Pepin, vice president of investment strategy at BMO Asset Management Canada. "We're going into the earnings season with this thought that things won't be as good."
TSX LAGS U.S. RALLY
Results that top the very modest expectations could prove to be a much-needed catalyst for languishing Canadian stocks, market strategists said. The TSX composite is down more than 3 percent so far this year, compared with a gain of more than 8 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx>.
Toronto stocks have lagged as earnings expectations have fallen about 5 percent for TSX components in the last three months, compared with a 3 percent decline for S&P 500 companies, data from StarMine showed.
The sector expected to show the biggest earnings decline is energy, which accounts for about 25 percent of the value of the Canadian index. Prices for the country's heavy crude oil slumped in the first three months of this year, and analysts now expect energy companies to report a profit drop of more than 7 percent.
However, Elvis Picardo, strategist and vice president of research at Global Securities in Vancouver, said most investors would pay more attention to companies' outlooks than to first-quarter results.
"That's usually the case, but more so this time," he said.
The most vulnerable segment in this regard may be gold producers, which have had a disastrous run this year. While first-quarter numbers will not reflect a recent dramatic selloff in gold, including a record one-day drop, it could start to show up in projections.
Still, the materials sector, home to gold companies, is trading at a huge discount to historical levels, said Craig Fehr, Canadian market strategist at Edward Jones in St. Louis.
"Valuations are attractive, and they are already pricing in expectations for some earnings disappointment," he said.
Indeed, the TSX composite index as a whole is trading about 13 times one-year forward earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data. That is also below historical levels.
BRIGHT SPOTS
The strongest growth in the quarter is likely to come from the healthcare sector, where earnings are expected to climb 15.5 percent, according to StarMine.
Another bright spot is the industrials space, which includes Canadian Pacific Railway
But the picture is more mixed for financial stocks, which make up almost a third of the index. Earnings are seen rising just 3.5 percent as the Canadian economy slows and housing market cools.
"Financials are not going to provide the same lift that they did in the fourth quarter, but that's more due to the weakness in the nonbanking sectors than in the banks themselves," said CIBC's Buchanan, who sees weakness in real estate investment trusts and insurers.
Longer-term, analysts said the Canadian market's prospects hinged on the global economy, which effectively sets the price for much of the country's resource exports.
But with an unsteady U.S. recovery, as well as mixed signals out of recession-hit Europe and higher-growth China, relief is far from certain.
"The beacon of hope," said Global's Picardo, "is that the global economy does a little better than expected and the TSX will do well."
(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Lisa Von Ahn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bleak-canada-first-quarter-earnings-outlook-may-mask-145836676--finance.html
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