Obama: Policy in leaks investigations under review

FILE - In this May 15, 2013 file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this May 15, 2013 file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement official, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama said Thursday that the Justice Department will review the policy under which it obtains journalists' records in investigations of the leak of government secrets.

Obama acknowledged he is "troubled by the possibility that leaks investigations may chill the investigative journalism" that he says holds government accountable and said he has expressed his concerns to Attorney General Eric Holder. But he said his administration would continue to try to find the government employees who are responsible for leaks.

In recent weeks, the administration has acknowledged secretly seizing portions of two months of phone records from The Associated Press and reading the e-mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen in separate investigations about the publication of government secrets.

The president said the government has to strike the right balance between security and an open society. He said Holder will meet with representatives of media organizations and report back to him by July 12.

Obama re-stated his support for a media shield law that he said would "guard against government overreach." Such a law would require a federal judge to sign off before investigators could have a look at the records of journalists.

"Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law," Obama said.

The seizure of the AP phone records is part of an investigation into who leaked information to AP reporters for a May 7, 2012, story that disclosed details of a foiled plot in Yemen to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner, around the anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.

Rosen's emails were seized, with a judge's approval, as part of the prosecution of Stephen Kim, a State Department adviser who is accused of leaking secret information about North Korea.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has called the Justice Department's actions in the AP case "unconstitutional" and he has protested what he termed a massive and unprecedented intrusion into how news organizations go about gathering the news.

Pruitt said the seizure already has had a chilling effect on newsgathering.

Following the president's speech, AP spokeswoman Erin Madigan said, "We recognize that the guidelines need improvement and support a review under the right conditions."

The Justice Department is guided by policy that first was written 40 years ago after the excesses of the Watergate era. Investigators are not supposed to consider a subpoena for journalists' phone records unless "all reasonable attempts" have been made to get the same information from other sources, the rules say.

News organizations are supposed to get advance warning so that they can fight a subpoena in court, except if the notification could compromise the investigation. AP received no advance warning.

The attorney general also must personally approve the subpoena before it is issued. In the AP case, Holder had been interviewed by the FBI as part of its effort to find out who had improperly disclosed the information, so he stepped aside to avoid a conflict of interest and left the decision to Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Obama offered no apologies for his administration's aggressive pursuit of leakers. The six prosecutions since he took office in 2009 is more than in all other presidencies combined.

"As commander in chief, I believe we must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field. To do so, we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-23-Obama-Leaks%20Investigations/id-0fcc92f8b3f145c5bde107b467b7def9

lamar odom perfect game jon jones vs rashad evans results rashad evans jon jones chuck colson death meteor showers 2012

Gold Gains on China Demand, Hopes of US Stimulus Continuing

Gold edged higher on Wednesday due to strong Chinese demand and after Federal Reserve officials allayed investor concerns that the U.S. central bank will soon exit its bullion-friendly bond purchases.

Gold has been pressured in recent weeks by fears the Fed could scale back or halt its monthly $85 billion bond purchases that have buoyed bullion's appeal as a hedge against inflation.

The metal had fallen for eight sessions out of the last nine as of Tuesday and is down nearly 18 percent for the year.

(Read More: Dr Doom: US Government Can Take Away Your Gold)

Spot gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,377.7 an ounce by 0314 GMT, but remains not far off a two-year low of $1,321.35 reached during a sell-off last month.

Spot silver gained 0.5 percent to $22.49 an ounce, regaining more ground after dropping to 2-1/2-year lows earlier this week.

"Chinese buying is mainly pushing up gold prices," said a trader in Tokyo, adding that bullion could go up to $1,385.

Shanghai gold prices fell slightly on Wednesday but were still more than $30 higher than spot gold, indicating that demand in China - the world's No. 2 consumer after India - was strong because it would be cheaper for Chinese buyers to purchase gold from overseas.

(Read More: What the Silver Chart Is Telling You About Gold)

U.S. gold was little changed at $1,376.4 an ounce.

Bernanke Eyed

Investors are eyeing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony in Congress about the state of the U.S. economy later in the day for clues to his stance on ending the monetary stimulus this year. The Federal Open Market Committee also releases the minutes of its April 30-May 1 meeting on Wednesday.

(Read More: Can Bernanke Rein in Those Dollar Bulls?)

New York Fed President William Dudley and St. Louis Fed chief James Bullard, who will both vote at the central bank's next scheduled meeting on June 18-19, made clear further economic progress was needed before they would support curtailing bond purchases.

Some officials are calling for an early end to the monetary easing given recent gains in the U.S. jobs sector.

(Read More: Bernanke Expected to Deliver Dovish Message)

"We would suggest that Bernanke will hint at some sort of pullback, in which case, we could see a pickup in volatility and lower gold prices heading into the balance of the week," said Edward Meir, a metals analyst at brokerage INTL FCStone.

Persistent outflows from exchange-traded funds as well as technical charts suggest gold may have more downside pressure. Holdings of the largest gold-backed exchange-traded-fund, New York's SPDR Gold Trust, fell 0.8 percent on Tuesday to 1,023.08 tons, the lowest in more than four years.

(Poll: Would You Rather Own Silver or Gold?)

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100756266

grammy red carpet grammy award winners the band perry grammy awards whitney houston autopsy dobie gray bruce springsteen

M-B Financial customers pay loans from their cars - Automotive News

Kanzleiter: Mercedes customers can use the app to get account information and to get a payoff quote.

Article Tools

Related Links

Related Topics

Jim Henry
Automotive News
May 22, 2013 - 12:01 am ET

Mercedes-Benz Financial Services customers can now make payments, manage their accounts or contact a dealer directly from their cars using the Mercedes-Benz mbrace2 in-car infotainment system, the company said this week.

Customers already use mobile devices to perform about 20 percent of their account-management activities, the company said. Since it launched a mobile phone app in 2009, customers have made more than $150 million in payments via mobile channels, the company said. But until now customers couldn't access their accounts directly from their cars except by using their cell phone.

"Now is the third step," said Michael Kanzleiter, senior manager for marketing at Mercedes-Benz Financial.

"After providing these services on our Web site, then we expanded to mobile channels and now this is the third step, being introduced in the vehicle as part of mbrace2," Kanzleiter said.

The company launched in-car access to its "My MBFS" app this month but didn't announce it until this week after it was sure there were no bugs in the system. To prevent distracted driving, the in-car feature is disabled when the car is moving.

Besides making a payment, Kanzleiter said customers can use the app to get account information and to get a payoff quote. Getting a payoff quote is often a sign that a customer is in the market for another vehicle, so dealerships are notified if one of their customers asks for a payoff quote, he said.

"We are connected from all of our Web services," Kanzleiter said. "If you request a payoff, this information goes to the relevant dealer."

You can reach Jim Henry at autonews@crain.com.

Source: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130522/FINANCE_AND_INSURANCE/130529973/m-b-financial-customers-pay-loans-from-their-cars

game of thrones season 2 dierks bentley kenny chesney academy of country music awards brad paisley zac brown band aubrey

Vintage Airplane Wedding

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

Source: weddinggawker.com --- Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Bride & groom FLEW AWAY from their mountain ceremony in a vintage plane! I love this unique Wedding! ...

Source: http://weddinggawker.com/post/2013/05/22/41422/

kevin kolb sarah shahi rutgers dharun ravi george clooney arrested ravi leigh

Beyonce Posts New Blue Ivy Photo, Still Mum on Pregnancy

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/beyonce-posts-new-blue-ivy-photo-still-mum-on-pregnancy/

bill nye Hurricane Isaac 2012 Snooki Baby terrell owens terrell owens neil armstrong little league world series

Two miniature spider species discovered in Giant Panda Sanctuaries of China

May 22, 2013 ? Two new minute spider species have been discovered from the Sichuan and Chongqing, China. The tiny new spiders are both less than 2 mm in length, with Trogloneta yuensis being as little as 1.01 mm and Mysmena wawuensis measured to be the even tinier 0.75 mm, which classes it among the smallest spiders known. The two species described in the open access journal Zookeys both have a bizarre body shape with disproportionately big spherical posterior body.

The family Mysmenidae to which the new species belong is composed of minute eight-eyed spiders. There are a relatively small number of these spiders recognized worldwide despite scientists expect that many new species are still awaiting discovery. Mysmenidae are one of the least studied groups among orb-weaving spiders which is believed to be due to their small size.

Being extremely minute, up to 2 mm in total and having cryptic lifestyle these creatures become rather hard to find. The spiders live in moist leaf litter, and their obscure places such as moss and even caves and they prefer very humid habitats. Spiders from this family are believed to widely throughout the tropical and subtropical regions.

The two new species found in China are considered endemic to their type localities in the Sichuan and Chongqing. The region of Wawu Mt. National Forest Park, where Mysmena wawuensis was discovered is also remarkable for holding a small population of wild giant panda of about 10 individuals. A recent survey shows that 1206 individuals of giant panda are currently living in Sichuan, which makes the region remarkable with about 76% of the whole wild panda population in China being concentrated there attesting for the great biodiversity of the province.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Pensoft Publishers. The original story is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Yucheng Lin, Shuqiang Li. Two new species of the genera Mysmena and Trogloneta (Mysmenidae, Araneae) from Southwestern China. ZooKeys, 2013; 303: 33 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.303.4808

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/47O0qqYMNWQ/130522095813.htm

photo of whitney houston in casket carrot top george huguely whitney houston casket photo match play championship the national enquirer marie colvin

In the Hamptons, catering to the rich (and their dogs) is good business

By Beth Pinsker

EAST HAMPTON, New York (Reuters) - Judging by early demand for everything from doggie daycare to Ferrari rentals and fine art, rich Americans are going to make this a strong summer in one of their favorite playgrounds - the beach towns on the eastern end of Long Island collectively known as the Hamptons.

With stock prices surging, home prices recovering, and borrowing costs low, there is a renewed sense of confidence among the wealthy and the merely well off. It may not be conspicuous consumption of "The Great Gatsby" kind but it could be the best season since the financial crisis slammed the U.S. economy in 2008.

It is "new" money coming in that is making the difference, since the "old" money in the Hamptons never really stopped flowing, at least in terms of the ultra-wealthy spending on things like food, wine and household staff.

But discretionary spending did slow down over the past few years, so it's making a noticeable comeback now for vendors like Mark Humphrey, who has owned a gallery on Main Street in Southampton for more than 30 years.

"We had a good winter, and that just never happens. We are usually barely open," he says.

Last summer, he had a lot of browsers, but they rarely opened up their wallets. Suddenly over the past few months, he has been contacted by some of those window shoppers who were finally ready to buy, and he has sold 10 paintings at $5,000 to $10,000 since December.

It is a similar story for American Bull Rentals, which is for the first time expanding into the Hamptons with its rentals of mechanical bulls to bring the rodeo experience to house parties and fundraisers.

"I have a sliding scale, and for Hamptons calls, whatever amount I tell them, they say 'whatever, send the contract,'" says Mike Marrazzo, owner of Prestige Excursions, based in Bellmore, New York, which operates the service.

While rentals in other areas might run $1,400, he's getting $2,800 to $3,000 for his Hamptons bookings.

So far in 2013, luxury spending is correlating highly to the stock market. Both the latest study from the American Affluence Research Center and American Express's Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America, found that spending on second homes, vacation travel, dining in restaurants and new luxury cars is increasing.

BRING YOUR OWN STAFF

In the Hamptons, second homes can range from a cottage in East Hampton for $1.4 million to an 11,760-square foot mansion in Sagaponack for $13.5 million, with seven bedrooms, 10.5 baths, a swimming pool, tennis court, outdoor kitchen and lower-level entertainment center.

There are about 1,200 active sales listings right now. The Corcoran Market Report for the Hamptons for the first quarter of 2013 showed that the number of sales was up 20 percent over last year but average sale prices were down nearly 10 percent, because there haven't been a lot of high-priced sales so far this year. The next report comes out in July.

Prices may be hotting up. With locals whispering about Jennifer Lopez scouting properties in the area - and the New York Post reporting that she dropped $10 million on an estate in Water Mill - the summer season is just getting going.

As for rentals, there are still some available, but owners are not negotiating and they are going fast, says real estate agent Tom Friedman.

Friedman says his busy season started early this year - he usually doesn't get calls about summer rentals until mid-January, but this year they started in November, right after Hurricane Sandy, which largely spared Hamptons beaches. It didn't trickle off until mid-April, and now he's getting last-minute callers. They don't mess around with seeing dozens of places and looking for bargains, but instead jump on whatever is available - whether it is $20,000 per month for a small cottage or $550,000 for a beach-front estate.

That price probably includes a driveway, but in the Hamptons, there is daycare for your Bentley instead so it doesn't get damaged by the salt air. Good luck finding a space, though. The Bridgehampton Motoring Club, which has slots for 45 vehicles at two locations, is at capacity for now, says co-owner Adam Bellin,

The same goes for renting a Ferrari 458 Italia over the coming Memorial Day weekend for around $2,500 a day from Imagine Lifestyles Luxury Rentals, which services the northeast. The company is sold out of their entire fleet of Ferraris, Bentleys, Porsches and BMWs for the weekend. "We're definitely up this year. People are spending money, and demand is outweighing supply," says co-CEO Ryan Safady, who is based in Pennsauken, New Jersey

Also at capacity: doggie daycares and domestic services. "Memorial Day is busier than usual for us," says April Cullum, manager of the Hampton Pet Club, which has daytime care and overnight "hotel-like" accommodations for up to 35 dogs. She has her usual standing reservations that she's had for the past few years - dog owners who have an annual party and send the dogs out for the night, weekend Hamptonites who board their pets during the week - but also a whole influx of new dogs.

Hampton Domestics owner Vincent Minuto is turning away callers. New summer folk, he says, should bring their own help with them.

The rich are also spending on others. Lavish benefits are a hallmark of the Hamptons social scene, and so far things are going phenomenally well, according to Ruth Appelhof, executive director of Guild Hall in East Hampton, the area's chief arts venue. Overall, her fundraising is up 56 percent since 2009, and the big rise has come in the last year.

In March, a fundraiser honoring the retirement of the chairman of the board of trustees, Melville "Mickey" Straus, raised $2.5 million in one evening, when previous spring fundraisers only made about $500,000. "Mickey wanted to make sure we paid off the mortgage before he left," says Appelhof, noting the special draw of the event. Guild Hall was able to use $1.5 million to close out the balance of a $17 million renovation that it had been fundraising for since 2001, years ahead of schedule.

"We're feeling flush these days, but that's not to say we don't struggle every day to fundraise to keep our programs going," Appelhof says.

(Follow us @ReutersMoney or at http://www.reuters.com/finance/personal-finance; Editing by Lauren Young, Martin Howell and Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hamptons-catering-rich-dogs-good-business-051746552.html

maryland lottery grand jury ozzie guillen fidel castro darvish george zimmerman website edmund fitzgerald uss enterprise

The common thread in the Obama adminstration scandals (Powerlineblog)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/307362710?client_source=feed&format=rss

windows 8 logo anguilla gone with the wind checkers imbibe msg network ray j

Xbox OneGuide brings HDMI in/out, overlays for live TV

Today Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, and confirmed rumors that its new game console is ready to take over as the heart of your home theater. The new box features HDMI in and out for passthrough with your cable or satellite box. It's even able to control connected devices with Kinect 2.0-detected voice and gesture commands thanks to IR blasters and HDMI-CEC. On stage, executives showed off the Xbox OneGuide, demonstrating a way to pull up information including trending programming or fantasy sports stats while watching live TV. There's also a live TV show for Halo in the works, and Microsoft brought NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on stage to talk about integration with the number one pro sports league. There's no word on exactly which cable, telco or satellite TV systems this will integrate with, but Microsoft's PR states it "is committed to bringing live TV through various solutions to all the markets where Xbox One will be available" and mentions HDMI is required for the feature to work. It's supposed to be available at launch in the US, with "global scale" anticipated over time.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/r5nwXHfunR8/

pietrus cheney tori spelling marion barber marion barber syracuse ohio state

divorce, happiness, grief, loss, suffering, meditation, life purpose ...

divorce, happiness, grief, loss, suffering, meditation, life purpose, new perspective, self-improvement, coaching skills,.

Like this:

Like Loading...

About Sue Rosenbloom, M.A., C.T.

Thanatologist: Loss and Grief Specialist My Blog is for educational purposes only. I am not a licensed professional counselor - Bachelor of Arts in Human Studies - Marylhurst University (2007)- Certificate in Thanatology - Hood College (2008) Master of Arts in Thanatology - Hood College (2009) Certificate in Thanatology - Association for Death Education and Counseling (2011). * Hospice, Alzheimer's and Senior's Advocate * Crisis First Responder Team Member for Trauma Intervention Program, Inc. (TIP) * Hospice and Bereavement Support Group Co-Facilitator Volunteer for Providence/St. Vincent's Hospice and Bereavement Service * Creative Writer This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://griefrevelations.com/2013/05/20/divorce-happiness-grief-loss-suffering-meditation-life-purpose-new-perspective-self-improvement-coaching-skills/

jimmie johnson juan pablo montoya crash chardon high school shooting mark martin cleveland news daytona race the cutting edge

Ron Chernow receives biography award

NEW YORK (AP) ? Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow was honored by his peers this weekend and in turn shared a few tips about his craft.

Chernow, 64, received the BIO award from the Biographers International Organization, a nonprofit established in 2010. During a lunchtime gathering Saturday at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, Chernow spoke about some of his most famous subjects, from John D. Rockefeller to George Washington, and how their public reputations often concealed a far more interesting private person.

"Once upon a time, biography was a very formal, straight-laced affair," said Chernow, a Pulitzer winner in 2011 for his Washington biography. "But nowadays we all expect the enterprising biographer to ferret out that hidden self."

The BIO award is given for making a "major contribution" to the field of biography. Previous winners include Robert Caro and Arnold Rampersad.

A former business journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal and other publications, Chernow said he learned a humbling lesson while researching "Titan," his 1998 biography of Rockefeller. Going through the oil baron's papers, Chernow had expected to unearth "sordid tales of collusion with the railroads, the bribing of entire state legislatures, the coercion of small retailers." Instead, he found only thousands and thousands of "cryptic little business letters" that avoided proper names and specifics of any kind, as if Rockefeller feared what he wrote would end up in the hands of "a prosecuting attorney or a Senate investigative committee."

Back home, he expressed his dismay to his wife, Valerie, who in response was "not only smiling. She was beaming."

"I said to her indignantly, 'What are you smiling about?'" he remembered. "And she said to me ... 'You were looking for a typical business tycoon, and what you've been given instead is a true original.' The lady, as always, was absolutely right. I was frankly pursuing a cliche. I was looking for this cartoon, whereas fate had handed me something much rarer and infinitely more interesting."

Chernow's advice: Prepare to change your mind. He confided that while working on "The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance," he had been charmed by Thomas W. Lamont, the suave counterpart to the volatile J.P. Morgan. A partner at J.P. Morgan & Co., and an adviser to presidential administrations of both parties, Lamont was regarded as a Wall Street liberal and an enlightened patron of the arts. Chernow said Lamont, a master of reinvention, had another, more troubling side: friend to fascists in Italy.

"By slow and subtle steps, he was being turned into a shameless apologist for Mussolini," said Chernow, who won the National Book Award in 1990 for "The House of Morgan."

Chernow, currently working on a book about Ulysses Grant, said the biographer was ideally a match for even the most evasive subject. Washington's austere facade, a facade that Washington himself had ably constructed, was upended by the letters and journals of close aides that documented their leader's seething temper. Correspondence between George Washington and Mary Ball Washington revealed that the father of his country was also an exasperated son.

Chernow came to know Washington, body and soul. He explained that Washington had just one tooth, a lower left bicuspid, by the time he became president and that the bicuspid fell during his second term. The tooth was gone but not forgotten. Washington's dentist kept it inside a glass charm that was attached to his watch chain. Centuries later, Chernow was allowed to see the tiny relic at the New York Academy of Medicine.

"In the final analysis," Chernow said, "as Washington's tooth shows, there are few, if any secrets carried to the grave. In the end, the truth always will out."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ron-chernow-receives-biography-award-151547971.html

katy perry part of me video photoshop cs6 beta cate blanchett nfl news tebow jets romney etch a sketch jeb bush

How Cheap Genetic Testing Complicates Cancer Screening For Us ...

Sometimes, more medical information is a bad thing. The influential United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against most women getting genetic screenings for their susceptibility to breast cancer. Why? Because the tests are imperfect: for every woman who gets tested for genes associated with onset breast cancer, even more will falsely test positive, leading spooked patients into needless surgery or psychological trauma. Super cheap genetic testing from enterprising health startups, such as 23andMe, have complicated cancer detection for us all by increasing the accessibility of imperfect medical information.

After discovering a mutated BRCA1 gene, known to increase breast cancer 60 to 80%, actress Angelina Jolie?s underwent a radical preventive double mastectomy. Her brave confession in the New York Times brought much needed attention to breast cancer awareness, but it?s dangerous in the hands of a statistically illiterate population.

For instance, as New York Times statistical guru, Nate Silver, once reminded me, while breast cancer mammograms are 75% accurate, a woman who tests positive only has about a 10% chance of actually getting cancer. Since the vast majority of women don?t have cancer, there are far more women who will falsely test positive (here is a helpful blog post with the numbers worked out). Most importantly, surveys reveal that many people don?t understand the math behind false positives in cancer testing, and may make uninformed decisions as a result.

The same math holds true for the mutated BRCA1/2 gene of Jolie?s confession: researchers estimate that a tiny 0.11 to 0.12 of women have the faulty gene. ?I believe in doing genetic testing for BRCA1/2 with appropriate counseling,? writes University of Southern California?s David Agus, one of Steve Jobs? cancer doctors, The answers are not simple in this case and require experienced professionals to discuss with the patient.?

Traditionally hundreds, if thousands of dollars to test, a cottage industry of cheap genetic testing has sprung up. 23andMe, one of the most popular, offers the service for as little at $99, and has even dared to weigh in on the BRCA controversy on the company blog.

Citing a new study that found no negative emotional consequences from patients after learning about their BRCA1 mutation, the 23andMe blog concludes, ?The findings are important given that a frequent criticism of direct-to-consumer testing is based on the assumption that it causes either serious emotional distress or triggers deleterious actions on the part of consumers,? wrote the blog.

?Given the absence of evidence for serious emotional distress or inappropriate actions in this subset of mutation-positive customers who agreed to be interviewed for this study, broader screening of Ashkenazi Jewish women for these three BRCA mutations should be considered.?

Sometimes, however, voluntary surveys don?t tell the whole story. Time, in their cover story on Jolie?s decision, recounts the tale of one woman who likely had unnecessary preventative surgery after learning about a genetic defect. ??She freaked out and had a bilateral mastectomy,? said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who worried that this patient?s particular mutation was not as troubling as she worried it was.

Interestingly, TIME?s author, Kate Pickart, argues the financial costs of genetic testing has stall mass run on genetic tests. Even a new provision under the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) only mandates 100% insurance coverage for patients with a family history of genetic flaws.

But, at just $99 (and probably far less in the future), financial barriers are crumbling. This isn?t to say that genetic screening is bad, it just complicates things for the rest of us, especially those who don?t understand statistics. The more women get tested, the more false positives exist, the less confident patients and physicians become in a course of action.

Maybe our only hope out of this cheaper testing spiral is technology that makes detection more accurate and more predictive. One promising solution is a new bra that constantly monitors deep tissue for cancerous signs (below)

So, perhaps, before long, we will innovate our way out of this dilemma.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/19/how-cheap-genetic-testing-complicates-cancer-screening-for-us-all/

man of steel gucci mane Chicago sinkhole Panda Express illuminati illuminati ricin

Syrian Army, Hezbollah bear down on rebels in strategic Qusayr

Funnels of dirty gray smoke erupted silently from the center of Qusayr, followed seconds later by the ground-shaking thump of exploding artillery shells as the Syrian Army and Hezbollah pressed on today with a grueling offensive to capture the strategic Syrian rebel-held town.

From Lebanon's northern border in the Bekaa Valley, five miles to the south, Qusayr appeared in the dusty haze as a thin slash of white buildings amid a landscape of green orchards and fields. But the bucolic rural scene belies a bloody battle underway for Qusayr, with some 2,000 Syrian rebel fighters and as many as 30,000 civilians hunkered down in the ruins of the town, surrounded by a cordon of elite Syrian Army troops and battle-hardened fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

"If Qusayr is captured by the Syrian army then the war will be 70 percent over," says Abu Ali, a local businessman and Hezbollah supporter from the Shiite Lebanese town of Hermel, eight miles south of the border.

Although an exaggeration, Abu Ali's assertion illustrates the strategic significance of Qusayr. The town lies between Lebanon's northern border and Homs, Syria's third largest city and adjacent to the key highway linking the capital Damascus to the Mediterranean Coast port of Tartous.

RECOMMENDED: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.

The Syrian armed opposition took over Qusayr in February 2012, turning the town into an important transit point for arms and militants flowing from Lebanon to Homs, as well as a base from which to undermine regime control of the highway.

In recent weeks, President Bashar al-Assad's regime has focused on retaking Qusayr and strengthening its grip on the corridor linking Damascus to Tartous and the adjacent coastal mountains that are home to Syria's Alawite community, the Shiite splinter sect that forms the backbone of the Assad regime.

Syrian Army troops backed by Hezbollah fighters pushed eastward from a string of villages that, although located just inside Syria, are populated by Lebanese Shiites. Fierce battles broke out as the regime forces accompanied by Hezbollah fighters gradually seized a number of small villages populated mainly by Sunni supporters of the opposition. Retreating rebel forces struck back by firing Katyusha rockets at Shiite-populated Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon's northern Bekaa Valley.

By last week, the Syrian Army and Hezbollah had also seized some villages to the north of Qusayr, effectively surrounding the town.

"We blocked all the area around Qusayr to stop trouble coming to Lebanon," says Abu Khalil, a veteran Hezbollah fighter, justifying the militant Shiite group's assistance to Syrian troops.

COMING OUT INTO THE OPEN

Hezbollah's presence in Syria has steadily grown over the past year. Its leadership initially denied dispatching fighters into Syria to assist the Assad regime, but it has become impossible to hide its assistance as the number of fighters killed or wounded in action rises, nor stop the fervent chatter within Shiite circles in Lebanon.

"It is legitimate for Hezbollah to be fighting in Qusayr because they are still defending us here in Lebanon," says Rakkan Jafaar, the mayor of Sahlet al-My, a small village on the border beside Qasr. "The people in Qusayr used to joke about how they would come here and take our homes. If Qusayr is taken, the situation should improve for us here."

Syrian opposition sources claimed that more than 20 Hezbollah men were killed yesterday and more than 60 were wounded. Rebel fighters in touch with comrades on the ground in Qusayr insisted the number was even higher.

"We ambushed a Hezbollah unit on the edge of Qusayr and killed 40 of them and many more were wounded. We chopped them to pieces," says Abu Omar, a Lebanese Sunni volunteer fighter with the rebel Farouq Brigade, laughing as he made chopping motions with his hand.

He added that, having had a year to prepare, the rebel forces in Qusayr ? a mix of local "brigades" all fighting under the banner of the powerful Farouq Brigade ? were confident that they could hold out against the Syrian Army and Hezbollah. Hezbollah and rebel sources both say that defensive tunnel networks have been dug and numerous booby traps prepared in Qusayr.

"Qusayr will never fall. We are a very strong force," Abu Omar says.

He says that the rebels seized a substantial number of weapons from an air base just north of Qusayr that was overrun a few weeks ago. Today, thick clouds of black smoke billowed from the direction of that air base as Syrian troops fought to retake the facility.

HEZBOLLAH FUNERALS

There was little disguising the state of tension and activity in the northern Bekaa Valley Monday as the fighting raged a few miles to the north. At Maqneh, a Shiite village on the main highway running from Baalbek in the central Bekaa to the border, Hezbollah men had partially blocked the road with concrete blocks festooned with yellow party flags. A combatant in a full camouflage uniform, tan military boots, and a pair of sunglasses guided traffic along a detour. From further up the road came the sound of drums and a brass band, followed minutes later by the crackle of automatic rifle fire indicating that a funeral for a slain militant was underway.

A few miles north of Maqneh, at Rasm al-Hadeth, another funeral was being held. One fighter stood on the side of the road, a rifle slung around his neck as others directed traffic. In the late afternoon, Hezbollah vehicles ? SUVs with tinted windows and no number plates ? gathered at a junction in Baalbek. Men jumping out, brandishing AK-47 rifles. Shortly afterward, bursts of machine gun fire echoed across the town and its magnificent Roman temples as yet another fighter was laid to rest.

Closer to the border, ambulances, lights flashing and sirens blaring, weaved through traffic and potholes while flanked front and back by more Hezbollah vehicles.

The battle in Qusayr is Hezbollah's first major combat action since the end of the month-long war against Israel in 2006. Although the organization is dedicated to the confrontation against Israel, its cadres are now in Syria battling fellow Arab Muslims, albeit Sunnis. Meanwhile, Israeli jets penetrate Lebanese airspace on a daily basis. Two weeks ago they bombed suspected Hezbollah arms stockpiles outside Damascus in two separate sorties. Neither Hezbollah nor regime forces retaliated.

Syria is the lynchpin connecting Hezbollah by land to its patron Iran, serving as a conduit for the flow of arms and granting the Shiite group strategic depth. The collapse of the Assad regime would represent a serious blow to Iran and Hezbollah, leaving them isolated on opposite ends of the Middle East.

Hezbollah's rapidly expanding role in Syria is regarded as part of a strategic decision undertaken by the party, Damascus, and Tehran to safeguard the Assad regime at all costs. To soothe any misgivings among Hezbollah's rank and file, the party's leadership has crafted a narrative that the West and Israel are using militant Sunni jihadists to oust the Assad regime and weaken the "resistance front" of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah for the benefit of the Jewish state.

It is a rationale that has been absorbed by the Hezbollah combatants. Asked how he felt to be fighting Arab Muslims today, having not fought Israeli troops for nearly seven years, Abu Khalil shook his head.

"No, we are fighting Israelis in Syria," he says. "Only they are wearing a dishdash and carrying the Quran. But it is the same Western and Israeli project that wants to weaken the resistance."

RECOMMENDED: Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.

Related stories

Read this story at csmonitor.com

Become a part of the Monitor community

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-army-hezbollah-bear-down-rebels-strategic-qusayr-171700307.html

jambalaya taylor swift and zac efron basketball wives manny ramirez easter 2012 jeremy lin espn sassafras

SoftMaker FreeOffice

Unless you live in Germany, where SoftMaker has a long-established and respected presence, you may never have heard of SoftMaker FreeOffice or its commercial big brother SoftMaker Office 2012. But SoftMaker's compact, powerful, and sleek application suite feels right at home in the English-speaking world, and the price of FreeOffice?free, as in FreeOffice?makes it especially attractive. Compared to its main freeware rival, LibreOffice, Softmaker FreeOffice can't compete on advanced features, but I prefer the FreeOffice interface, and FreeOffice is the only free office suite that displays documents as I want them displayed. More about that in a moment, but first I'll cover some basics about the suite as a whole.

FreeOffice Basics
SoftMaker gives away FreeOffice partly as an advertisement for its commercial suite. FreeOffice consists of the three basic office apps: TextMaker, a word-processor; PlanMaker, a spreadsheet app; and SoftMaker Presentations. The $79.95 commercial suite adds a programming language similar to Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications; a $99.95 Professional version adds an Outlook 2013 work-alike. All three apps in the free version do an impressive job of importing Microsoft Office document.

Unlike LibreOffice, FreeOffice can open password-protected Microsoft Office documents if you know the password, and this feature alone is a good reason for installing FreeOffice on a USB stick so you can open your password-protected documents on someone else's computer. (The standard installation includes a Start Menu item that installs a "portable" version on a thumb drive.) Like LibreOffice, FreeOffice opens legacy WordPerfect documents?a major plus for law and government offices that typically have thousands of files in WordPerfect format.

I was pleasantly surprised by FreeOffice's speed. Complicated Microsoft Office documents that opened with painful slowness in LibreOffice opened instantly in FreeOffice ?including multipage worksheets and a 400-page Word document. All basic formatting features imported perfectly, but you can't expect perfection with advanced features. For example, when I used PlanMaker to open an Excel worksheet that uses Excel's fancy conditional formatting to color-code data, PlanMaker warned me that some conditional formatting would be lost?and indeed it was. Any formatting lost on import into FreeOffice will be lost forever if you save the file after editing, so make sure you know what you're doing when saving an imported Office file. (LibreOffice does a better job with Excel's conditional formatting and other graphic features.)

LibreOffice comes in versions for Windows, Linux, and OS X, with tablet versions coming later this year. FreeOffice runs on Windows only, but the commercial SoftMaker Office runs on Windows, Linux, and Android, and an older 2010 version runs on Windows Mobile and even the ancient Windows CE mobile platform?the only full-featured office suites for mobile Windows platforms.

FreeOffice's interface looks a lot like Microsoft Office 2003, with the traditional top-line menu and toolbars, and with bright and clear icons that make it easy to find what you're looking for. One icon I was glad to see was a PDF icon that saves the current document in PDF format without long detours to the menu, as in other major suites. The only major annoyance is the lack of a "live" word count, forcing you to click a button on a "Statistics" toolbar to see how many words are in your document.

Making Text With TextMaker
TextMaker impressed me most with its document-viewing options. In addition to the usual page view, which shows headers, page numbers, footers, and top and bottom margins, TextMaker has a "continuous" view, which displays only the main content of the page, without headers and footers, and with page breaks indicated only by a faint line across the page. This is the view I prefer to work in, because it shows me how my text will look on the page, but doesn't break up the text at the top and bottom of every page?and TextMaker is one of very few word-processors that offer it. (The others are Microsoft Word for Windows?not the version for OS X?and Corel WordPerfect.) LibreOffice doesn't have a "continuous" view, only a web view, which doesn't show the actual margins and font that your document will have when it prints, and that's too little formatting for me to feel comfortable with.

TextMaker offers most of the advanced features you'll find in Word, but with some significant exceptions. You can insert footnotes or endnotes, but not both, as you can in Word. If you want to create cross-references, or use mail-merge to create form letters, you'll need to buy the commercial SoftMaker Office, not the free version. The free version has limited graphic capabilities compared to the commercial version?for example, you can't apply shadows, and graphic shapes are limited to printing with 300 dpi resolution. None of these restrictions will affect anyone who creates basic documents, but advanced students and scientists may want to look elsewhere.

Spreadsheets and Presentations
PlanMaker opened my sample Excel worksheets smoothly, but this is an app best suited for basic data manipulations. You won't find anything like Excel's zero-effort pivot tables that reorganize your views of your data with a few clicks, but you do get filtering options for tables, which accomplishes the same thing with a bit more effort. Conditional formatting has to be built by hand, without the gallery of elegant color-coding and other graphic features that Excel and LibreOffice. Charting is adequate but not dazzling.

SoftMaker Presentations gives you enough features to get basic presentations built, and does a good job of importing uncomplex PowerPoint files, but look elsewhere if you want to put together a presentation that's visually memorable instead of something that looks as if was left over from the last millennium.

Fast and Free
Don't be misled by my focus on the limits of FreeOffice. This suite is fast, effective, and, overall, extremely well-designed. For the vast majority of users, FreeOffice does everything you need in an office suite, and does it more quickly and intuitively than LibreOffice, though LibreOffice is, overall, more powerful and up-to-date. If you want the state-of-the-art, you'll choose Microsoft Office, but SoftMaker FreeOffice has plenty to offer for anyone who wants solidly functional apps and doesn't want to pay for them.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/uIjO-xCI3Vw/0,2817,2419014,00.asp

hilary duff michigan state michigan state andrew luck pro day josh johnson kim kardashian flour matt forte

What Games Are: Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Xbox?

With Xbox 360 having started well but ended in a very confused state, I worry that Microsoft is about to carry over much of its baggage to the new console. Will the company make the same mistake of not listening to the market that it has often made in recent years? Will it continue to believe that there is a burgeoning market for an everything box? Or will it refocus on what matters?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EsqSi43GSG4/

Sally Ride Ichiro minka kelly James Holmes court Rupert Sanders bachelorette penn state

White House accuses Republicans of 'fishing expeditions'

By Tabassum Zakaria and Alina Selyukh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Sunday accused Republicans of conducting political "fishing expeditions," while Republican lawmakers showed no let up in attacking President Barack Obama's administration for a culture of what they called cover-up and "intimidation."

With controversies on three fronts - the Internal Revenue Service, the administration's explanation of last year's Benghazi attack and the Justice Department's seizure of the Associated Press' phone records - White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pushed back against suggestions that Obama was under a cloud of scandal.

"I think we've seen this playbook from Republicans before," Pfeiffer said on NBC's "Meet The Press."

"What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped-up hearings and false allegations. We're not going to let that happen."

Republicans are pressing for investigations and congressional hearings and have kept up a stream of criticism of the White House over the three issues, forcing the administration to repeatedly defend its actions.

For the time-being, Obama appears to be weathering the storm. A CNN/ORC International poll released on Sunday showed 53 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama is doing his job, with 45 percent saying they disapprove.

More than six in 10 respondents said the president's statements about the IRS scandal are completely or mostly true, with 35 percent disagreeing. On the handling of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya last September, only 42 percent of respondents were satisfied, according to the telephone survey of 923 adults conducted on Friday and Saturday.

The White House has repeatedly expressed outrage about the conduct of the IRS in focusing on conservative political groups for additional scrutiny and Obama has said he first learned about it this month. Still, that has not dampened Republican criticism.

"There is a culture of intimidation throughout the administration. The IRS is just the most recent example," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on "Meet The Press."

Republican lawmakers said they still do not know who was responsible for the tax authority's targeting of conservative groups and want further investigation. The Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold hearings on it this week.

Senator Rob Portman, a Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said on ABC's "This Week" that a special counsel may be needed to investigate "because it has to be independent of the White House."

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller was fired last week and Obama has pledged new checks and safeguards to prevent anything similar from happening again.

"Given the trend line we're seeing here in so many different instances, it's an unfortunate culture I think in the administration that it's OK to cover these things up," Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, said on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

Pfeiffer acknowledged it was important to try to repair the damage caused by the IRS scandal.

"This was a breach of the public trust. And we have to work together to rebuild that trust. That's going to require Republicans to do this in a legitimate, serious governmental way and not play politics with it," he said on NBC.

Republicans are also aiming criticism at Sarah Hall Ingram, the official who previously ran the IRS' tax-exempt division during the time that an audit by the Treasury's inspector general said the targeting of conservative groups began. Since December 2010, Ingram has headed the IRS division handling the implementation of the Obama administration's healthcare reform.

The White House said it was important to wait until the facts were determined.

"This individual was not named in the inspector general's report. No one has suggested she's done anything wrong yet," Pfeiffer said on "Fox News Sunday."

"Before everyone in this town convicts this person in a court of public opinion with no evidence, let's actually get the facts and make decisions after that."

Bob Woodward, who investigated the Watergate scandal as a reporter at the Washington Post during Richard Nixon's presidency, said likening that to the current furors was not accurate.

"People are making comparisons to Watergate. This is not Watergate. But there are some people in the administration who have acted as if they want to be Nixonian," he said on NBC.

(Additional reporting by Paul Simao; editing by Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-accuses-republicans-fishing-expeditions-192253563.html

wall street journal us map Electoral Map concede Obama Acceptance Speech Prop 30 Election 2012

GOP Lawmakers Criticize IRS as Hearing Opens (WSJ)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/306466454?client_source=feed&format=rss

Rebel Wilson Patriots Day aubrey plaza boston marathon turbotax Catching Fire trailer Marfa Texas

The Most Stunning Way To Start a Fire Since Lightning

The simple form and function of a Zippo lighter has made it an incredibly iconic design. But it could soon be supplanted by Alessi if the Italian houseware manufacturer prices its new Sushi lighter to compete with the Zippo. That, or convince a Hollywood producer to have an action hero prominently use it in an upcoming blockbuster.

Designed by Rodrigo Torres, the pocketable Sushi comes in a small selection of colors reminiscent of how KitchenAid tints its appliances, and it's no coincidence. Alessi and Torres wanted to emphasize the lighter was designed for domestic use around the home, not as a tough-as-nails outdoor accessory. And in the process it looks like they turned a mundane candle accessory into an object that's more mesmerizing to look at than a flickering flame.

[Rodrigo Torres via Behance via Notcot]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-most-stunning-way-to-start-a-fire-since-lightning-508278334

varez ward solar storms uganda the parent trap invisible children kony 2012 space weather sunspots

Ex-OJ lawyer to testify in bid for new Vegas trial

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? O.J. Simpson's former lawyer has some explaining to do.

Miami attorney Yale Galanter is scheduled to testify Friday in Simpson's bid for a new trial.

Galanter, according to Simpson, advised the former football star that it was his legal right to retrieve personal items from two memorabilia dealers; told Simpson not to testify in the Las Vegas trial that eventually sent him to prison; failed to tell Simpson that prosecutors offered plea deals; and failed to raise the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Galanter hasn't been subpoenaed, so he isn't compelled to appear.

He is invited as a key state's witness in a hearing that, since Monday, has revolved around Galanter's promises, payments and performance in the 2008 trial that sent the 65-year-old former football hero to prison for nine to 33 years for armed robbery and kidnapping.

H. Leon Simon, the chief deputy Clark County district attorney handling the case, said he and Galanter have what amounts to a gentleman's agreement for Galanter to come to Las Vegas.

"I take him at his word," Simon said. "He has assured me he wants to come and testify, as an officer of the court."

Galanter faces some uncomfortable questions about his trial preparation, the nearly $700,000 he was paid but allegedly didn't share with the Las Vegas lawyer at his side and why he didn't try to block prosecutors from playing for the jury secret recordings that amounted to a soundtrack of Simpson and his five pals confronting two sports collectibles brokers and a middleman in a cramped casino hotel room.

Jim Barnett, owner of a Las Vegas home where Simpson stayed during trial in September 2008, said he asked Galanter why he wasn't hiring an expert to analyze the recording.

"He said, 'If you would give us $250,000, we would have it done. We don't have the money to analyze the tapes," Barnett testified.

Galanter later assured the trial judge that the tapes had been analyzed.

He also faces questions about what he knew about Simpson's plan, when he knew it, and whether he should have told what he knew to get Simpson off the hook.

"He's a vital witness," said veteran Las Vegas trial lawyer Dayvid Figler. "He has information that no one can share."

Galanter said this week that he wouldn't comment about the hearing until after he testifies.

Las Vegas attorney Michael Cristalli, who has provided television network analysis of the Simpson hearings, said he expected Galanter will say he did his best in Simpson's case.

"He'll say he provided effective representation of Mr. Simpson, that he examined every witness zealously, and that he prepared exhaustively," Cristalli said, "and that there's no evidence to the contrary."

Simpson still maintains that he didn't know anyone in the hotel room had guns, and that he had a right to the items he was after ? football mementos, awards, photos and personal items that he said were stolen from him while he was moving out of his Los Angeles home.

The move followed Simpson's "trial of the century" acquittal in the 1994 the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, and a 1997 civil judgment that ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the estates of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

"I talked to Yale about it two or three times," Simpson said during his testimony Wednesday. "The overall advice he was giving was, 'You have a right to get your stuff.'"

Key among Simpson's 19 claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and conflict of interest being considered by District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell is the allegation that Galanter should have provided witness testimony supporting Simpson's contention that he didn't know he was breaking the law.

Simpson says the two even talked about it over dinner the night before the ill-fated confrontation in September 2007, and that Galanter told him that if Simpson recovered the suit he wore the day he was acquitted in Los Angeles, Galanter would like to have it.

Bell has made no indication whether she plans an immediate ruling or will issue a written decision later.

The most damaging testimony about Galanter's performance came from three other lawyers involved in the case: Gabriel Grasso and Malcolm LaVergne, who represented Simpson, and Brent Bryson, who represented a Simpson co-defendant who also was convicted.

Each said Galanter seemed more interested in what he was paid and protecting himself from having to testify than in fully representing his client.

LaVergne, who argued with Galanter when both worked on Simpson's appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, testified Thursday that he believed Galanter's involvement shaped his trial strategy.

But stepping away from the case would have cost Galanter hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.

"Do you think Mr. Galanter made decisions based on a conflict of interest?" Simpson lawyer Patricia Palm asked.

"From what I know now, absolutely," LaVergne said. "There's no doubt about it."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-oj-lawyer-testify-bid-vegas-trial-074925050.html

Ariel Castro Filomena Tobias Raquel Pomplun the great gatsby the great gatsby stephen curry pga tour

Von Trier's hotly-awaited Nymphomaniac film gets December launch

CANNES (Reuters) - Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac", one of the most hotly anticipated movies of 2013 for its erotic content and all-star cast, will open in theatres on Christmas Day, the producers said on Thursday.

The provocative director, expelled from the Cannes film festival in 2011 for joking that he sympathized with Hitler, cast Charlotte Gainsbourg as the self-diagnosed nymphomaniac of the title, alongside rising Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf.

Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe also appear in a movie which, if the pre-release buildup is to be believed, could match Von Trier's ultra-violent "Antichrist" for shocking audiences.

"December is a good month. Besides, what's more Christmassy than a film like this?" joked production company Zentropa's CEO Peter Aalbaek Jensen in a statement.

He added that Von Trier, 57, had just begun editing the second part of what will be a double bill, and promised impressive visual effects.

The film will premiere in Copenhagen in early December with a red carpet gala, and reach cinemas on December 25.

There had been intense speculation that the picture would be ready for this year's Cannes, where director Thierry Fremaux told Reuters Von Trier would be welcomed back in the future despite his ignominious exit two years ago.

It was the first such expulsion from the world's top film festival in 64 years, and an apology from the director, once a darling in Cannes and winner of the Palme d'Or award in 2000 for "Dancer in the Dark", proved too late.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/von-triers-hotly-awaited-nymphomaniac-film-gets-december-151625096.html

Denny Hamlin My Chemical Romance Olympus Has Fallen Arnold Palmer Invitational 2013 arnold palmer invitational Chinua Achebe The Croods

Oh, baby! Kimmel spoofs 'Bachelor' with toddlers

TV

Randee Dawn TODAY contributor

4 hours ago

While "Jimmy Kimmel Live" isn't necessarily known for its sweet approach to babies or children (Kimmel routinely exhorts parents to prank their kids and capture it on camera for yuks), on Thursday night he managed to blend a spoof of "The Bachelor/The Bachelorette" with a clutch of toddler actors that was, well, downright adorable.

In a spoof of the long-running ABC reality series "The Bachelor," Kimmel lent his voice to a "preview" of a "new" series, "The Baby Bachelor," in which Wesley, a very young man just looking for a play date has to choose between a collection of similarly youthful ladies. And they're just as much of a handful as their grown-up counterparts, as demonstrated by the lovely blonde who just can't stop crying. Wesley not only gives her a hug but a peck on the cheek, to no avail.

Women!

Then of course there's always one: 35-month-old Jesse is a "stay-at-home daughter" who is "looking for a sugar daddy."

Who will accept Wesley's offer of a dinosaur toy? Check out the video for all of the cute overload!

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/oh-baby-jimmy-kimmel-spoofs-bachelor-very-young-contestants-1C9965350

stacy keibler stacy keibler oscar red carpet daytona 500 start time ryan zimmerman oscars red carpet jennifer lopez wardrobe malfunction

Panasonic P51 breaks into the Indian phone market with a 5-inch screen and stylus (updated)

Although Panasonic's cellphones have traveled far from Japan, the company has left the hot Indian market relatively untapped -- until today, that is. The company is staking its first proper claim in the country with the launch of the P51. The Android 4.2-toting smartphone reflects the local market's taste for big-screened yet modest phones between its 5-inch, 720p LCD and quad-core 1.2GHz MediaTek processor, but comes across as a sort of Galaxy Note lite: Panasonic bundles both a capacitive stylus and a magnetic flip cover in the box. The remaining hardware is a slightly unusual mix of budget and premium components, with the so-so 1GB of RAM and 4GB of expandable storage buffered by an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.3-megapixel front camera and support for both HSPA+ and dual SIM cards. The P51 will be comparatively expensive for India at 26,900 rupees ($517) contract-free when it's available next week, but it should be a bargain next to its pen-packing Samsung counterpart.

Update: Panasonic is being a bit clever with its Indian foray -- we now know that the P51 shares a TCL-built design template with the Alcatel Scribe Easy, keeping the French phone's basic formula while upgrading the processor, camera and screen resolution. However, the P51 is definitely identical to the TCL Y900 in China.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

Via: FoneArena

Source: Panasonic

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/16/panasonic-p51/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

ncaa annette funicello joel osteen Accidental Racist Fallon Fox Chris Webber linda perry

New craters abound: Mars camera reveals hundreds of impacts each year

May 15, 2013 ? Taking before and after pictures of Martian terrain, researchers of the UA-led HiRISE imaging experiment have identified almost 250 fresh impact craters on the Red Planet. The results suggest Mars gets pummeled by space rocks less frequently than previously thought, as scientists relied on cratering rates of the moon for their estimates.

Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Researchers have identified 248 new impact sites on parts of the Martian surface in the past decade, using images from the spacecraft to determine when the craters appeared. The 200-per-year planetwide estimate is a calculation based on the number found in a systematic survey of a portion of the planet.

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, took pictures of the fresh craters at sites where before and after images had been taken. This combination provided a new way to make direct measurements of the impact rate on Mars and will lead to better age estimates of recent features on Mars, some of which may have been the result of climate change.

"It's exciting to find these new craters right after they form," said Ingrid Daubar of the UA, lead author of the paper published online this month by the journal Icarus. "It reminds you Mars is an active planet, and we can study processes that are happening today."

These asteroids or comet fragments typically are no more than 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters) in diameter. Space rocks too small to reach the ground on Earth cause craters on Mars because the Red Planet has a much thinner atmosphere.

HiRISE targeted places where dark spots had appeared during the time between images taken by the spacecraft's Context Camera, or CTX, or cameras on other orbiters. The new estimate of cratering rate is based on a portion of the 248 new craters detected. If comes from a systematic check of a dusty fraction of the planet with CTX since late 2006.

The impacts disturb the dust, creating noticeable blast zones. In this part of the research, 44 fresh impact sites were identified.

The meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February was about 10 times bigger than the objects that dug the fresh Martian craters.

Estimates of the rate at which new craters appear serve as scientists' best yardstick for estimating the ages of exposed landscape surfaces on Mars and other worlds.

Daubar and co-authors calculated a rate for how frequently new craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) in diameter are excavated. The rate is equivalent to an average of one each year on each area of the Martian surface roughly the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Earlier estimates pegged the cratering rate at three to 10 times more craters per year. They were based on studies of craters on the moon and the ages of lunar rocks collected during NASA's Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"Mars now has the best-known current rate of cratering in the solar system," said UA's HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen, a co-author on the paper.

MRO has been examining Mars with six instruments since 2006. Daubar is an imaging targeting specialist who has been on the HiRISE uplink operation s team from the very beginning. She is also a graduate student in the UA's department of planetary science and plans on graduating with her doctorate in spring 2014.

"There are five of us who help plan the images that HiRISE will take over a two-week cycle," she explained. "We work with science team members across the world to understand their science goals, help select the image targets and compile the commands for the spacecraft and the camera."

"The longevity of this mission is providing wonderful opportunities for investigating changes on Mars," said MRO Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/mFjMtBuwz-8/130515165025.htm

denver nuggets new jersey devils torn acl derrick rose injury st louis news correspondents dinner i am legend