Violence hits China's west ahead of anniversary

BEIJING (AP) ? Violent incidents have spread this week in a tense minority region of western China, just days before the anniversary of a bloody clash between minority Uighurs and the ethnic Han majority that left almost 200 dead and resulted in a major security clampdown.

China's communist authorities have labeled some of the incidents ? including one which left 35 people dead ? as terrorist attacks, and President Xi Jinping has ordered that they be promptly dealt with to safeguard overall social stability, state media reported.

The latest violent incidents were reported in southern Xinjiang's Hotan area. In one, more than 100 knife-wielding people mounted motorbikes in an attempt to storm the police station for Karakax county, the state-run Global Times reported.

Another was an attack mob in the township of Hanairike on Friday afternoon, according to the news portal of the Xinjiang regional government. It said the mob was armed, but did not say with what sort of weapons.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported a "violent attack" Friday afternoon on a pedestrian street in downtown Hotan city. No casualties were reported for any of the incidents, which state media say were quickly brought under control. The government's news portal, Tianshan Net, said there was no civilian casualty in Hanairike.

An exiled Uighur activist disputed those accounts. Instead, Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said there were several protests in the Hotan area against what Uighurs see as China's suppressive policies in Xinjiang.

"It's a crisis of survival," said Dilxax Raxit, who called for international observers to be sent to the region to help curb excessive violence against Uighurs by the Chinese government. He said 48 people have been arrested.

It has not been possible to independently verify the reports because of tight controls over information in the region.

The incidents on Friday in Xinjiang came after what the government described as attacks on police and other government buildings on Wednesday in eastern Xinjiang's Turpan prefecture's Lukqun township killed 35 people.

That was one of the bloodiest incidents since the July 5, 2009, unrest in the region's capital city, Urumqi, killed nearly 200.

Xinjiang (shihn-jeeahng) is home to a large population of minority Muslim Uighurs (WEE'-gurs) in a region that borders Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has been the scene of numerous violent acts in recent years.

Critics often attribute the violence in Xinjiang to what they say is Beijing's oppressive and discriminatory ethnicity policies. Many Uighurs complain that authorities impose tight restrictions on their religious and cultural life.

The Chinese government says that it has invested billions of dollars in modernizing the oil- and gas-rich region and that it treats all ethnic groups equally.

Calls to local government agencies were either unanswered or returned with the answer that they were unauthorized to speak.

State-run media reported that the incident Wednesday started when knife-wielding assailants targeted police stations, a government building and a construction site ? all symbols of Han authority in the region.

Photos released in state media show scorched police cars and government buildings and victims lying on the ground, presumably dead.

Dilxat Raxit also disputed that account, saying the violence started when police forcefully raided homes at night. It was impossible to independently confirm the conflicting accounts.

Xinhua said 11 assailants were shot dead, and that two police officers were among the 24 people they killed.

"This is a terrorist attack, there's no question about that," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Friday at a regular news briefing. "As to who masterminded it, local people are still investigating."

State news reports did not identify the ethnicity of the attackers, nor say what may have caused the conflict in the Turkic-speaking region. The reports said police captured four injured assailants.

The Global Times newspaper said Saturday that police had stepped up security measures, deploying more forces to public areas, governmental institutes and compounds for police and military police. It said a suspect was captured Friday afternoon in Urumqi.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/violence-hits-chinas-west-ahead-anniversary-044148211.html

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Women are learning how to stand up to danger; see an expert in ...

Originally published June 28, 2013 at 12:00 PM | Page modified June 28, 2013 at 2:37 PM

WE'VE ALL been there.

The dark parking lot at night. Keys poking from a fist as we walk briskly ? maybe even run ? to our car, chased in our minds by the strange man we've conjured.

Or the noise in the apartment that catches our breath as we imagine an intruder making his way to our bedroom.

The metallic taste. The wave of dread. The pounding in our chests.

We've all been there. Many of us are stuck there, our lives made small by an endless narrative of imagined horrors that will most likely never happen to us.

We read about brutal crimes against women ? rapes, murders, attacks ? and they become part of us, a low-grade infection that is so pervasive and persistent that it starts to feel normal.

We alter our routines. Stay home at night. Obsess about the locks. Put off the trip we've dreamed of.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

"As women, we're conditioned to be afraid," says Py Bateman, a former karate instructor who developed one of the nation's original self-defense-training classes for women, first through Seattle's Feminist Karate Union, which she founded, and later through Alternatives to Fear.

"A good way to look at fear is you take the precautions that make sense ? the precautions that don't limit your life," she says. "If you feel confident that you could do something if somebody got through those precautions, you can relax and live your life."

Bateman knows of what she speaks. In 1984, when she was 37 years old, she famously fought off a knife-wielding attacker who tried to cut her throat inside her Madison Park home. She fought him for more than 30 minutes, trying one thing after another until he was scared off by the arrival of her friend.

Remarkably, the only scars Bateman seems to bear today from the attack are physical ones, including the thin white line on the pad of her left thumb where the knife landed when she put her hand to her throat to protect it.

Bateman says she knew her attacker wanted to kill her. But she'd imagined such an attack ? and always pictured herself victorious.

"It was an interesting experience," she says calmly over a late breakfast at her favorite North Seattle restaurant. "I still live in that house."

AT FIRST GLANCE, Bateman seems an unlikely pioneer for women's self-defense. At age 66 and standing all of 5 feet 2, she grew up at a time when conventional wisdom held that women who fought back against their attackers would only get hurt worse.

Bateman became active in feminist politics while attending the University of Washington and took up karate when she was 22, quickly earning a black belt. At a friend's suggestion, she developed a women's self-defense course in 1971, when there were only one or two other programs in the country. The women's movement was in full swing by then, rape was becoming talked about more openly, and women were increasingly participating in sports, including martial arts.

But it was Ted Bundy, the serial killer who preyed on young women in Washington and Oregon in the 1970s, who gave the movement momentum, Bateman says.

"After Ted Bundy, I was swamped with women wanting self-defense training and karate training." Soon she was teaching 17 classes a week. "What was really important about Ted Bundy is that he would abandon a potential victim if she just said no."

Researchers in the 1980s became interested in the subject of self-defense, enabling Bateman to teach techniques that were proven to work.

Interest in women's self-defense intensified in 1993 when Seattle punk-rock singer Mia Zapata was raped, beaten and killed, and again in 2009 after a mentally ill man with a knife climbed through a window of a house in South Park and raped and slashed the two women living there, killing Teresa Butz. In response to the South Park attacks, singer Brandi Carlile created the Fight the Fear Campaign, financed through her Looking Out Foundation, to extend the reach of self-defense training.

Now, all sorts of classes are taught all over the city. The best ones train women to avoid and react to violence, replacing ceaseless fear with skills, and a deep awareness of what's around them.

Bateman knows that most attacks are usually preceded by a predictable dance in which boundaries are tested. Recognize the warning signs and you have an opportunity to shut things down before there's a need to get physical or resort to a weapon.

She and other instructors are quick to note that many women survive attacks with no training at all. And not every woman is afraid. Some women come to their confidence organically and use it to hone their awareness of their surroundings. They walk confidently, look people in the eye and stick up for themselves.

As it happens, all of that can be taught, and the horror fantasies re-imagined.

In his book, "The Gift of Fear," Gavin de Becker describes real fear as a brief signal, "a mere servant of intuition."

"If one feels fear of all people all the time, there is no signal reserved for the times when it's really needed," he writes. "When you honor accurate intuitive signals you need not be wary, for you will come to trust that you'll be notified if there is something worthy of your attention."

FOR MOST women, self-defense can start with simply finding the right words.

"You're too close. Go away."

Those are the words that Melinda Johnson, head instructor at Seattle Kajukenbo, suggests using if someone makes you uncomfortable, say, by sitting too close on a bus.

"Go away." Clean. Simple.

If that strikes you as rude, well, now we're getting to the interesting part.

Johnson, who holds a fifth-degree black belt in kajukenbo and a black belt in aikido, says women need to risk offending to stay safe.

And they need to be able to roll with the anger that might accompany a rebuff. Decent men might be embarrassed, but they'd leave you alone upon hearing the word "no." Guys to be wary of don't hear "no," and if they do, they don't like it.

Those of us who have a hard time saying no might as well strap a target on our backs.

Most attackers will start with the violation of a boundary: standing too close, or insisting on helping after you've said no.

"If they proceed, they're making it clear that they're not going to respect your wishes," she says. "Trust your instinct."

But first you have to think you're worth protecting.

Johnson is gearing up to offer free self-defense classes this fall through Fight the Fear. Executive director of the organization, she taught two rounds of classes to vulnerable and underserved populations after the South Park attacks. This year, the classes will be offered to all women.

The classes, she says, "give everyone the chance to have the epiphany that says, 'I can defend myself. I can be strong. I do have choices.' "

JOANNE FACTOR had her epiphany after starting karate in 1992 at the Feminist Karate Union in Seattle's International District.

Mastering something difficult infused Factor with greater confidence.

At 54, she has a black belt and exudes a calm energy that belies her fierceness. When she stands up, it's a bit of a shock to see that she's barely 5 feet tall.

In the early days, many of the women taking self-defense had been attacked in some way. But clients who take classes through Factor's company, Strategic Living, are mostly women interested in learning to protect themselves before going off to college or to travel. Others just want to move more freely around their city.

For those women, self-defense goes beyond owning a weapon to deal with lethal threats. They want tools that address the majority of issues women deal with.

Learning how to recognize when someone is viewing them as a target, and how certain actions or inactions can make it more likely that they'll be targeted creates a mindset that gives permission to be direct and say "no" without apology.

Like the student who was picking out peaches at the market when a man crowded up behind her. The student put her hands on her hips and turned, striking the man in the ribs before saying in a loud voice, "Oh, you're so close."

The man moved along without comment, Factor says, and the student watched him do the same thing to two other women.

"You don't have to be sorry and make yourself small for a jackass," Factor says.

WENDY DAVID, 58, became interested in self-defense when she was stalked as a teenager. She's blind, and the stalker would walk up to her in a school corridor or locker room, put his arm around her and fondle her. Once, on a deserted sidewalk, he tried to steer her into his car.

"Any time I would hear someone walk toward me, I'd have this terrible fear reaction," she says. "I started feeling afraid to go out. I was angry because I was very independent and wanted to go."

David moved out of town, and looked for a self-defense class that would be useful to her.

In 1994, she teamed up with colleagues at the Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta, who noticed that clients with visual impairments were living restricted lives even though they had access to transportation. Turns out the issue wasn't mobility. It was vulnerability.

The team published the techniques as a book, "Safe Without Sight," in 1998, and about 400 blind people have since been trained under the program, David says.

Because so much of women's fears involve things happening in the dark, the techniques translated for sighted women as well, she says.

In 2003, David started working with colleagues Ann Cotton and Tracy Simpson on Taking Charge, self-defense for women veterans at the Women's Trauma and Recovery Center. The center is based at the VA Puget Sound in Seattle, where David, a clinical associate professor at the UW, is a staff psychologist.

Women "want to be liked, we want to be nice and not hurt people," David says. Combine that with military obedience, where soldiers are drilled on respecting the chain of command, even when the superior may be the abuser, and you end up with a lot of victims.

Their traumas become movies that play over and over in their minds, she says, and the women often become reclusive.

Over 12 weeks, the women are taught to stick up for themselves. When someone cuts in line, they learn to say, "Excuse me. You're out of line. Would you mind stepping back?" They practice saying "no" in the mirror. When they're ready, they work up to exercises where they are grabbed, touched and called names.

David gives the women a chance to rescript their trauma, and re-enact it with the outcome they would want. The new scripts are videotaped for the women to watch. The new movie replaces the old.

"I get letters from women saying the class has changed their lives. One woman couldn't go to her mailbox. She called on the last day of class saying she wouldn't be in class because she was driving to Las Vegas to see her son."

"People realize they have power. They can be safe. They can take care of themselves."

JENNIFER HOPPER is on the phone ? happy to talk, she says, grateful that people were helped by starting a self-defense program to honor Teresa Butz, her partner who was murdered in the South Park assaults. The attacker cut Hopper's throat, too, and probably would have killed her had Butz not managed to throw a bedside table through a window, giving Hopper a chance to run out the door.

Weeks later, "a lot of people wanted to help. I knew everyone was scared, and I wanted everyone else to be OK," she says. Soon, Fight the Fear was up and running.

But Hopper isn't ready to go there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The brutality of the attacks took its toll, she says. For 18 months, she didn't feel strong enough to exercise or consciously close her eyes to sleep.

"Being physical in any way, shape or form that resembles a fight ? I couldn't fathom it," she says. "I don't believe that any modicum of self-defense could have changed that night."

Hopper says she's learning to look at things differently. She talks herself down when panic takes over. Has begun thinking of her attacker as a troubled person. Has learned to sleep soundly.

"Learning how to deal with my thoughts is the key to the castle," she says. "I'm doing what's best for me so I can have the best life."

She lives with her mother now in a condominium high above the street and hopes some day she will be able to help other victims.

There's no bitterness in her voice. Just hope that a joyful life awaits her.

Like Bateman's before her, Hopper's story offers an important, inspiring lesson: She survived the worst thing any of us could imagine. All those parking-lot journeys. The bumps in the night. All tentacles attached to the same nightmare: the rapist, standing over your bed with a knife.

Yet here she is, talking on the phone, moving forward, going out with friends, and crying when she needs to.

It's amazing what we can survive.

Susan Kelleher is a Pacific NW staff writer. Erika Schultz is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

Source: http://seattletimes.com/html/pacificnw/2021217854_pacificpmartialarts30.html?syndication=rss

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Plastic shell for low-cost Apple iPhone leaks in green - A leaked picture shows...

• Plastic shell for low-cost Apple iPhone leaks in green - A leaked picture shows off what is supposedly the plastic shell for the low-cost version of the Apple iPhone; the shell is green and is similar in color to one of the plastic rubber bumpers that is available for the iPhone. The leak comes from a gentleman who has connections to some of the factory workers in China... http://ow.ly/2xYNYx

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Reeder for iPhone goes free for now, gets Google Reader alternatives soon

Silvio Rizzi made the iPad and Mac versions of Reeder free to use in the wake of Google's plans to shut down Google Reader, but he left the iPhone app at its usual $3 price -- and its fate in the air. Existing users can now rest easy, as Rizzi has pledged ongoing support for the smaller screen. The current edition of Reeder for iPhone is now free to use, and an already-submitted 3.2 update will bring support for alternative news services like Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler and Fever. Anyone using the iPad and Mac editions will have to be patient, however. Both apps will eventually get the additional news sources, but Rizzi is taking down the existing releases on July 1st to minimize confusion while he works on updates.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Google

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Insight: From remote Mauritania, hacker fights for Islam worldwide

By Elise Knutsen

DAKAR (Reuters) - In Nouakchott, a dusty city wedged between the Atlantic ocean and western dunes of the Sahara, a young hip-hop fan coordinates a diverse group of hackers targeting websites worldwide in the name of Islam.

Logging on to his computer, he greets his Facebook followers with a "good morning all" in English before posting links to 746 websites they have hacked in the last 48 hours along with his digital calling card: a half-skull, half-cyborg Guy Fawkes mask.

He calls himself Mauritania Attacker, after the remote Islamic republic in west Africa from which he leads a youthful group scattered across the Maghreb, southeast Asia and the West.

As jihadists battle regional governments from the deserts of southern Algeria to the scrubland of north Nigeria, Mauritania Attacker says the hacking collective which he founded, AnonGhost, is fighting for Islam using peaceful means.

"We're not extremists," he said, via a Facebook account which a cyber security expert identified as his. "AnonGhost is a team that hacks for a cause. We defend the dignity of Muslims."

During a series of conversations via Facebook, the 23-year-old spoke of his love of house music and hip hop, and the aims of his collective, whose targets have included U.S. and British small businesses and the oil industry.

He represents a new generation of Western-style Islamists who promote religious conservatism and traditional values, and oppose those they see as backing Zionism and Western hegemony.

In April, AnonGhost launched a cyber attack dubbed OpIsrael that disrupted access to several Israeli government websites, attracting the attention of security experts worldwide.

"AnonGhost is considered one of the most active groups of hacktivists of the first quarter of 2013," said Pierluigi Paganini, security analyst and editor of Cyber Defense magazine.

An online archive of hacked Web sites, Hack DB, lists more than 10,400 domains AnonGhost defaced in the past seven months.

Mauritania, a poor desert nation straddling the Arab Maghreb and black sub-Saharan Africa, is an unlikely hacker base. It has 3.5 million inhabitants spread across an area the size of France and Germany, and only 3 percent of them have Internet access.

Much of the population lives in the capital Nouakchott, which has boomed from a town of less than 10,000 people 40 years ago to a sprawling, ramshackle city of a million inhabitants. In its suburbs, tin and cinderblock shanties battle the Sahara's encroaching dunes and desert nomads stop to water their camels.

In the past six months experts have noted an increase in hacking activity from Mauritania and neighboring countries. In part, that reflects Mauritania Attacker's role in connecting pockets of hackers, said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware.

"This one figure, Mauritania Attacker, is kind a figure who brings many of these groups together," Herberger told Reuters.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY, ANCIENT MISSION

Mauritania Attacker says his activities are split between cyber cafes and his home, punctuated by the five daily Muslim prayers.

Well-educated, he speaks French and Arabic among other languages and updates his social media accounts regularly with details of the latest defacements and email hacks. He would not say how he made a living.

His cyber threats are often accented with smiley faces and programmer slang, and he posts links to dancefloor hits and amusing Youtube videos. But his message is a centuries-old Islamist call for return to religious purity.

"Today Islam is divisive and corrupt," he said in an online exchange. "We have abandoned the Koran."

Mauritanian Attacker aims to promote "correct Islam" by striking at servers hosted by countries they see as hostile to sharia law. "There is no Islam without sharia," he said.

Mauritania is renowned for its strict Islamic law. The sale of alcohol is forbidden and it is one of only a handful of states where homosexuality and atheism are punished by death.

The quality of Mauritania's religious scholars and koranic schools, or madrassas, attract students from around the world. Mauritanians have risen to prominent positions in regional jihadist groups, including al Qaeda's north African branch AQIM.

As hackers from the region organize into groups, the Maghreb is emerging as a haven for hacktivism as it lacks the laws and means to prosecute cyber criminals, Herberger said.

"There's a great degree of anonymity and there's a great degree of implied impunity," he said.

Security sources in Nouakchott said they were not aware of the activities of Mauritania Attacker.

He says he supports Islamists in Mauritania but opposes his government's support for the West, which sees the country as one of its main allies in its fight against al Qaeda in the region.

With tech-savy young Muslims in the Maghreb chafing under repressive regimes, analysts anticipate a rise in hacktivism.

Hacking is a way for young people to express religious and political views without being censored, says Aaron Zelin, fellow at the Washington Institute.

"These societies are relatively closed in terms of people's ability to openly discuss topics that are taboo," he said.

For disillusioned youth in countries like Mauritania, where General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz seized power in a 2008 coup before winning elections the next year, hacking has become "a way of expressing their distaste with status quo," Zelin said.

JURY OUT ON GROUP'S REACH

AnonGhost's global reach is its greatest weapon, but it has yet to stage a major attack on a Western economic target.

Most of AnonGhost's campaigns have simply defaced Web sites, ranging from kosher dieting sites to American weapon aficionado blogs, with messages about Islam and anti-Zionism.

It has attacked servers, often hosting small business websites, located in the United States, Brazil, France, Israel and Germany among others.

Mauritania Attacker and the AnonGhost crew say these countries have "betrayed Muslims" by supporting Israel and by participating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"We are the new generation of Muslims and we are not stupid," read a message posted on the Web site of a party supply business in Italy. "We represent Islam. We fight together. We stand together. We die together."

The team has also leaked email credentials, some belonging to government workers from the United States and elsewhere.

As part of a June 20 operation against the oil industry, carried out alongside the international hacking network Anonymous, Mauritania Attacker released what he said were the email addresses and passwords for employees of Total.

A spokesperson for the French oil major did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One security expert said AnonGhost's attacks exploited "well-known vulnerabilities in configurations of servers" in target countries rather than going after high-profile companies.

Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware, remains unconvinced AnonGhost has the technical skills to wage full-scale cyber terrorism by harming operational capabilities of companies or government agencies.

"The jury is still out," he said, but cautioned against underestimating the emerging group. "You're never quite sure what they're going to do on the offensive, so they have to be right only once and you have to be right always."

(Additional reporting by Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott; editing by Daniel Flynn and Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-remote-mauritania-hacker-fights-islam-worldwide-124331431.html

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Propellant-free briquettes burn hotter and cleaner than normal charcoal

If you like cooking outdoors on a grill but don’t like the chemical aftertaste in your food, you’ll be interested in the Afire Koko Coconut Charcoal from Williams-Sonoma. ?Afire makes this charcoal from renewable coconut shells (left overs from other coconut uses) with no added propellants or other?chemicals, fillers, glues, or nitrates. ?The hole in [...]

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Ecuador heats rhetoric as Obama downplays Snowden

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) ? President Barack Obama tried to cool the international frenzy over Edward Snowden on Thursday as Ecuador stepped up its defiance and said it was preemptively rejecting millions in trade benefits that it could lose by taking in the fugitive from his limbo in a Moscow airport.

The country seen as likeliest to shelter the National Security Agency leaker seemed determined to prove it could handle any repercussions, with three of its highest officials calling an early-morning news conference to "unilaterally and irrevocably renounce" $23 million a year in lowered tariffs on products such as roses, shrimp and frozen vegetables.

Fernando Alvarado, the secretary of communications for leftist President Rafael Correa, sarcastically suggested the U.S. use the money to train government employees to respect human rights.

Obama, meanwhile, sought to downplay the international chase for the man he called "a 29-year-old hacker" and lower the temperature of an issue that has raised tensions between the U.S. and uneasy partners Russia and China. Obama said in Senegal that the damage to U.S. national security has already been done and his top focus now is making sure it can't happen again.

"I'm not going to have one case with a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly be elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited so he can face the justice system," Obama said at a joint news conference with Senegal's President Macky Sall.

While the Ecuadorean government appeared angry over U.S. threats of punishment if it accepts Snowden, there were also mixed signals about how eager it was to grant asylum. For days, officials here have been blasting the U.S. and praising Snowden's leaks of NSA eavesdropping secrets as a blow for global human rights.

But they also have repeatedly insisted that they are nowhere close to making a decision on whether Snowden can leave Moscow, where he is believed to be holed up in an airport transit zone, for refuge in this oil-rich South American nation.

"It's a complex situation, we don't know how it'll be resolved," Correa told a news conference Thursday in his first public comments on the case aside from a handful of postings on Twitter.

The Ecuadorean leader said that in order for Snowden's asylum application to be processed, he would have to be in Ecuador or inside an Ecuadorean Embassy, "and he isn't." Another country would have to permit Snowden to transit its territory for that requirement to be met, Correa said.

WikiLeaks, which has been aiding Snowden, announced earlier he was en route to Ecuador and had received a travel document. On Wednesday, the Univision television network displayed an unsigned letter of safe passage for him.

Officials on Thursday acknowledged that the Ecuadorean Embassy in London had issued a June 22 letter of safe passage for Snowden that calls on other countries to allow him to travel to asylum in Ecuador. But Ecuador's secretary of political management, Betty Tola, said the letter was invalid because it was issued without the approval of the government in the capital, Quito.

She also threatened legal action against whoever leaked the document, which she said "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."

"This demonstrates a total lack of coordination in the department of foreign affairs," said Santiago Basabe, a professor of political science at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito. "It's no small question to issue a document of safe passage or a diplomatic document for someone like Snowden without this decision being taken directly by the foreign minister or president."

The renunciation of trade benefits was a dramatic but mostly symbolic threat. The U.S Congress was widely expected to let the benefits lapse in coming weeks, for reasons unrelated to the Snowden case. And if they continued, it appeared highly unlikely that the Ecuadorean government would be able to unilaterally cancel tariff benefits that went directly to their country's exporters.

Behind Ecuador's mixed messages, some analysts saw not confusion but internal divisions in the Ecuadorean government.

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank focused on Latin America, said many in Washington believed that Correa, a leftist elected to a third term in February, had been telegraphing a desire to moderate and take a softer tack toward the United States and private business.

Harder-core leftists led by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino may be seeking to maintain a tough line, he said, a division expressing itself in confusing messages.

"I think there really are different factions within the government on this," Shifter said. "Correa wants to become more moderate. That has been the signal that has been communicated in Washington."

Embarrassment for the Obama administration over the surveillance revelations continued as the British newspaper The Guardian reported that it allowed the National Security Agency for more than two years to collect records detailing email and Internet use by Americans. The story cited documents showing that under the program a federal judge could approve a bulk collection order for Internet metadata every 90 days.

A senior Obama administration confirmed the program and said it ended in 2011, according to The Guardian. The records were first collected during the Bush administration and involved "communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States."

The report said that eventually the NSA was allowed to "analyze communications metadata associated with United States persons and persons believed to be in the United States," according to a 2007 Justice Department memo marked secret.

The U.S. administration was expected to decide by Monday what export privileges to grant Ecuador under the Generalized System of Preferences, a program meant to spur development and growth in poorer countries.

Although the deadline was set long before the Snowden affair, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Thursday that Ecuador's application to add a handful of products such as artichokes and cut flowers ? the latter a major industry here ? would not be decided immediately but would remain pending. That gives the U.S. additional leverage over Ecuador while Snowden's fate remains uncertain.

More broadly, a larger trade pact allowing reduced tariffs on more than $5 billion in annual exports to the U.S. is up for congressional renewal before July 21. While approval of the Andean Trade Preference Act has long been seen as doubtful in Washington, Ecuador has been lobbying strongly for its renewal.

On Wednesday, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pledged to lead an effort to block extension of U.S. tariff benefits if Ecuador grants asylum to Snowden, who turned 30 last week. Nearly half of Ecuador's billions a year in foreign trade depends on the United States.

The Obama administration said Thursday that accepting Snowden would damage the overall relationship between the two countries and analysts said it was almost certain that granting the leaker asylum would lead the U.S. to cut roughly $30 million a year in military and law enforcement assistance.

Granting asylum to Snowden would cause "great difficulties in our bilateral relationship," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. "If they take that step, that would have very negative repercussions."

Alvarado, the communications minister, said his country rejects economic "blackmail" in the form of threats against the trade measures.

"The preferences were authorized for Andean countries as compensation for the fight against drugs, but soon became a new instrument of pressure," he said. "As a result, Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces these preferences."

Alvarado did not explicitly mention the separate effort to win trade benefits under the presidential order.

He did suggest, however, how the U.S. could use the money saved from Ecuadorean tariffs to train government employees to respect citizens' rights.

"Ecuador offers the United States $23 million a year in economic aid, an amount similar to what we were receiving under the tariff benefits, with the purpose of providing human rights training that will contribute to avoid violations of people's privacy, that degrade humanity," he said.

___

Pace reported from Dakar, Senegal. Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Peter Orsi in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Michael Weissenstein on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mweissenstein

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-heats-rhetoric-obama-downplays-snowden-194838354.html

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TC's Picks From TechStars NY Summer 2013 Class

We're here at the TechStars 2013 Summer class Demo Day, and the graduates are nothing short of delightful, from a service that helps church congregations make donations to a Fitbit for cars to a service that helps expecting moms plan for baby's arrival. The TechStars accelerator is one of the nation's biggest and most notable tech startup programs, and the NY-based class should make Silicon Alley proud. So without any further ado, here are TechCrunch's picks from the 2013 Summer class:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ExYJE8IOVI8/

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Digg adds reader to its iOS app, offers instant Google Reader import

There's more than a few enterprises that have an eye on filling the void in the RSS market left by Google's curious withdrawal. Digg is one of those hoping to woo Mountain View's refugees and has updated its iOS app to incorporate its experimental new service, which offers direct imports from Google Reader. It's available from the App Store right now, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that there are other, ahem, AOL-sanctioned, alternatives.

Filed under: Internet, Apple, Google

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Via: The Next Web

Source: App Store

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/27/digg-reader-ios-app/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Adobe Acquires Conversational Marketing Platform Neolane For $600M In Cash To Bolster Its Marketing Cloud

Adobe today announced that it has acquired Neolane, a conversational marketing company with an annual revenue of just under $60 million, in a transaction that’s worth $600 million in cash. Neolane was founded in 2001 and is currently headquartered in Paris, France, with offices around Europe, North America and Asia. The company’s customers include the likes of Accor Hotels, Alcatel-Lucent, IKEA, Samsung, Sony and Dior. For Adobe, which is putting quite a few resources into its Marketing Cloud, this acquisition adds a new piece to its feature lineup. Adobe does offer Adobe Social, which provides a number of social media-tracking and analysis tools. Neolane’s feature lineup, however, is far larger and includes tools like handling leads, marketing resource management, high-volume email marketing campaigns and a real-time offer recommendation engine for personalized, one-to-one messages.?Neolane, Adobe says, will become the sixth solution in the Marketing Cloud, joining its existing Analytics,?Target,?Social, Experience?Manager?and Media?Optimizer?offerings. Last year, Neolane raised a $27 million funding round led by?Battery Ventures?with participation by?Auriga Partners and XAnge Private Equity. ?The?acquisition?of?Neolane?brings critical?cross-channel?campaign?managementcapabilities?to the?Adobe Marketing?Cloud,??said?Brad?Rencher,?senior?vice?presidentand?general?manager?of Adobe?s?Digital?Marketing?business in a canned statement today. ?Adobe?has long?been the trusted?partner?to?creative?professionals?and?we?are?now?extending?our?lead?in?the digital marketing?space?with?the?addition?of?Neolane. From?campaign?creation?through planning, execution?and?optimization,?Adobe?technology?is?driving?the?entire?marketing?process.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/P82IKZm66XY/

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Paula Deen Canned By Target, Novo Nordisk; Cookbooks Flying Off Shelves

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/paula-deen-canned-by-target-novo-nordisk-cookbooks-flying-off-sh/

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Celebration of special education work (From Daily Echo)

Celebration of special education work

11:53am Thursday 27th June 2013 in News

SOUTHAMPTON is to be recognised for its ground-breaking work in improving outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their families.

Southampton City Council and NHS Southampton City PCT were awarded ?pathfinder? status by the Government in 2011, placing the city among the first in the country to start delivering reforms aimed at improving services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) from birth through to age 25.

The SEND Pathfinder team will be holding a stakeholder event on Tuesday, July 2, from 1pm, at the Eastpoint Centre to celebrate the achievements of the city?s highly-regarded programme ahead of the national roll-out of new legislation next year.

Representatives from the Department for Education and the Council for Disabled Children will be delivering presentations at the event.

Southampton City Council?s Cabinet member for children?s services, Cllr Sarah Bogle, will also be attending alongside other councillors and senior managers, colleagues from the health service and the voluntary sector as well as parents and service users.

Recognition of Southampton?s work has included being asked to take on a regional and national ?champion? role to support other local authorities as they prepare for the implementation of the new legislation.

Cllr Bogle said: ?Southampton is leading the way nationally on innovative approaches to supporting young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

?We need to treat every child as an individual and make sure our services meet their needs and those of their families.?

Source: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10512158.Celebration_of_special_education_work/

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A Father's Genetic Quest Pays Off

Hugh Rienhoff prepared his daughter?s DNA for sequencing at home using second-hand equipment. Image: Colston Rienhoff

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  Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...

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Hugh Rienhoff says that his nine-year-old daughter, Bea, is ?a fire cracker?, ?a tomboy? and ?a very sassy, impudent girl?. But in a forthcoming research paper, he uses rather different terms, describing her hypertelorism (wide spacing between the eyes) and bifid uvula (a cleft in the tissue that hangs from the back of the palate). Both are probably features of a genetic syndrome that Rienhoff has obsessed over since soon after Bea?s birth in 2003. Unable to put on much muscle mass, Bea wears braces on her skinny legs to steady her on her curled feet. She is otherwise healthy, but Rienhoff has long worried that his daughter?s condition might come with serious heart problems.

Rienhoff, a biotech entrepreneur in San Carlos, California, who had trained as a clinical geneticist in the 1980s, went from doctor to doctor looking for a diagnosis. He bought lab equipment so that he could study his daughter?s DNA himself ? and in the process, he became a symbol for the do-it-yourself biology movement, and a trailblazer in using DNA technologies to diagnose a rare disease (see Nature 449, 773?776; 2007).

?Talk about personal genomics,? says Gary?Schroth, a research and development director at the genome-sequencing company Illumina in San Diego, California, who has helped Rienhoff in his search for clues. ?It doesn?t get any more personal than trying to figure out what?s wrong with your own kid.?

Now nearly a decade into his quest, Rienhoff has arrived at an answer. Through the partial-genome sequencing of his entire family, he and a group of collaborators have found a mutation in the gene that encodes transforming growth factor-?3 (TGF-?3). Genes in the TGF-? pathway control embryogenesis, cell differentiation and cell death, and mutations in several related genes have been associated with Marfan syndrome and Loeys?Dietz syndrome, both of which have symptomatic overlap with Bea?s condition. The mutation, which has not been connected to any disease before, seems to be responsible for Bea?s clinical features, according to a paper to be published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

Hal Dietz, a clinician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, where Rienhoff trained as a geneticist, isn?t surprised that the genetic culprit is in this pathway. ?The overwhelming early hypothesis was that this was related,? says Dietz, who co-discovered Loeys?Dietz syndrome in 2005.

Rienhoff had long been tapping experts such as Dietz for assistance. In 2005, an examination at Johns Hopkins revealed Bea?s bifid uvula. This feature, combined with others, suggested Loeys?Dietz syndrome, which is caused by mutations in TGF-? receptors. But physicians found none of the known mutations after sequencing these genes individually. This was a relief: Loeys?Dietz is associated with devastating cardiovascular complications and an average life span of 26 years.

In 2008, Jay Flatley, chief executive of Illumina, offered Rienhoff the chance to sequence Bea?s transcriptome ? all of the RNA expressed by a sample of her cells ? along with those of her parents and her two brothers. After drilling into the data, Rienhoff and his collaborators found that Bea had inherited from each parent a defective-looking copy of CPNE1, a poorly studied gene that seems to encode a membrane protein. It looked like the answer.

But questions remained. The gene did not have obvious connections to Bea?s features, and publicly available genome data suggests that the CPNE1 mutations are present in about 1?in?1,000?people ? an indication that there should be many more people like Bea.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/ScientificAmerican-News/~3/Zo4CABY21Ho/article.cfm

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First transiting planets in a star cluster discovered

June 26, 2013 ? All stars begin their lives in groups. Most stars, including our Sun, are born in small, benign groups that quickly fall apart. Others form in huge, dense swarms that survive for billions of years as stellar clusters. Within such rich and dense clusters, stars jostle for room with thousands of neighbors while strong radiation and harsh stellar winds scour interstellar space, stripping planet-forming materials from nearby stars.

It would thus seem an unlikely place to find alien worlds. Yet 3,000 light-years from Earth, in the star cluster NGC 6811, astronomers have found two planets smaller than Neptune orbiting Sun-like stars. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, shows that planets can develop even in crowded clusters jam-packed with stars.

"Old clusters represent a stellar environment much different than the birthplace of the Sun and other planet-hosting field stars," says lead author Soren Meibom of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "And we thought maybe planets couldn't easily form and survive in the stressful environments of dense clusters, in part because for a long time we couldn't find them."

The two new alien worlds appeared in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Kepler hunts for planets that transit, or cross in front of, their host stars. During a transit, the star dims by an amount that depends on the size of the planet, allowing the size to be determined. Kepler-66b and Kepler-67b are both less than three times the size of Earth, or about three-fourths the size of Neptune (mini-Neptunes).

Of the more than 850 known planets beyond our solar system, only four -- all similar to or greater than Jupiter in mass -- were found in clusters. Kepler-66b and -67b are the smallest planets to be found in a star cluster, and the first cluster planets seen to transit their host stars, which enables the measurement of their sizes.

Meibom and his colleagues have measured the age of NGC 6811 to be one billion years. Kepler-66b and Kepler-67b therefore join a small group of planets with precisely determined ages, distances, and sizes.

Considering the number of stars observed by Kepler in NGC 6811, the detection of two such planets implies that the frequency and properties of planets in open clusters are consistent with those of planets around field stars (stars not within a cluster or association) in the Milky Way galaxy.

"These planets are cosmic extremophiles," says Meibom. "Finding them shows that small planets can form and survive for at least a billion years, even in a chaotic and hostile environment."

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/5eF7JMT5IhA/130626162816.htm

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Today's Phones and Tablets Will Die Out Like the PC

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128820/Today_s_Phones_and_Tablets_Will_Die_Out_Like_the_PC

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A Fantastic Photo of the F-35 Refueling

Here's a fantastic photo of the F-35 receiving mid-air fuel from a Boeing KC-10, taken on June 19 in Patuxent River, Maryland. It looks so tiny (and so close) to that massive tanker. [Image courtesy of Lockheed Martin]

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/V0nRJkG_BxM/a-fantastic-photo-of-the-f-35-refueling-588286646

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Apple and BlackBerry continue to play cruel tricks on hedge funds

Apple BlackBerry Stock Analysis

One of the most popular trading ideas among tech funds is to short BlackBerry ? more than 30% of its stock was sold short recently. And another very popular idea has been going long Apple, of course. As we all know, those two trading strategies went tragically awry last winter, when Apple?s share price plummeted from $700 to $400 and BlackBerry?s stock spiked from $6 to $18. This helped demolish the performances of many of the best known tech funds on Wall Street in the fourth quarter last year and the first quarter in 2013. But that?s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that the weird winter trends seemed to have reversed in the spring and many funds flocked back to shorting BlackBerry shares and going long Apple?. only to see a counter-reversal taking place.

[More from BGR: iOS 7 might be more innovative than we think]

This is why most tech-oriented?hedge funds have been underperforming the S&P and Nasdaq so badly over the past year: handset/tablet industry share price trends have become demonically difficult to pin down.

[More from BGR: Microsoft?s Windows 8.1 preview now available as free download]

Apple?s scary tumble from $700 seemed to culminate in a panicky dive to $385 in mid-April. Then the share price reversed and rebounded sharply to $450. Smooth riding to the new product announcements in late summer and the rebuilding of Wall Street confidence seemed to be in the cards, following the playbook of so many earlier summers. Except now Apple?s stock is diving below $400 again, even with new phone announcements and possible iTV and iWatch debuts coming up.

The widely anticipated sentiment turn did not stick ? possibly because many analysts are still cutting their iPhone volume estimates as cheap Android devices continue their triumphant run in Latin America,?Middle East?and Asia.

BlackBerry?s stock presents a mirror image. The share price spiked to $18 in January and drifted down to around $12.50 in March. The consensus was that?the decline would continue as Z10 hype dissipated and other smartphone launches would steal Q10?s thunder. But the share price started staging surprise bounces even as shorting grew more intense. Now BackBerry is back at $15 and Wall Street analysts are scrambling to raise their BlackBerry 10 volume estimates ahead of Friday?s quarterly report. If BlackBerry delivers more than 3.5 million units of the new device sales, the report may trigger a short squeeze driving the share price back to $18.

The number of funds that nailed the recent whiplashes is likely minuscule. That would have required predicting the shocking Apple stock reversal last September and then realizing that the April revival, though sharp, would last less than three weeks. These are incredibly tough calls to make, particularly since handset sector names are no longer?correlating well?with Nasdaq. Hedge fund performance numbers for the second quarter this year is going to be?fairly fascinating reading.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apple-blackberry-continue-play-cruel-tricks-hedge-funds-172012839.html

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Texas abortion fight turns personal, pits Gov. Perry against Democratic filibuster star Davis (Star Tribune)

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NEC MultiSync PA271W

Designed for graphics professionals, photographers, and anyone who requires accurate color and grayscale performance, the NEC PA271W is a high-end desktop monitor that uses the latest panel and processing technologies to deliver the goods. Featuring a 14-bit LUT (lookup table), wide gamut P-IPS (professional in-plane switching) technology, a high res (2,560-by- 1,440) panel, and a wealth of settings, this 27-inch monitor doesn't come cheap, and it's not nearly as svelte as the latest crop of LED backlit monitors. However, if performance is a priority, the PA271W should be on your short list of professional grade monitors.

Design and Features
The PA271W uses CCFL (cold cathode florescent lamp) backlighting rather than the more popular LED backlighting, which accounts for it bulky frame. The matte black cabinet is 3.3 inches thick and weighs 21.2 pounds without its stand. The stand weighs 8.8 pounds and offers every adjustment you'll ever need, including height, swivel, tilt, and pivot. As with the NEC MultiSync PA301W , this model supports auto-rotation, which changes the image orientation when the panel is pivoted. It also has VESA compliant mounting holes if you want to hang it on a wall.

The screen is framed by thin black bezels. The bottom and right side bezels have buttons that are used to navigate the extensive settings menus. Pressing any button activates an on-screen labeling system that makes it easy to tweak settings without having to remember what each button does. If you pivot the panel for portrait mode viewing the on-screen labels will rotate as well.

Around back are two dual-link DVI ports, a DisplayPort input, two upstream USB ports, and two downstream USB ports. An HDMI port would be welcome here. The two upstream USB ports allow you to use the monitor's DisplaySync Pro feature (a virtual KVM switch) to control two different computers with a single keyboard and mouse. A single downstream USB port is mounted on the right side of the cabinet.

As with the NEC PA301W and NEC MultiSync PA241W models, the PA271W offers a boatload of image adjustments. In addition to brightness, contrast, Eco mode, and color temperature controls there are nine picture presets (sRGB, Adobe RGB, eciRGB, DCI, REC-Bt709, High Bright, Full, DICOM, Programmable), and each preset has its own adjustment menu that allows you to change things like, white balance, color gamut, gamma, black level, and uniformity. There's also a 6-axis adjust option that lets you adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness levels of each individual color. Other advanced settings include ambient light compensation, Metamerism (helps match white point when using the monitor side by side with a standard gamut display), and Color Vision EMU (simulates human vision deficiencies and is used to evaluate how people with vision deficiencies perceive colors).

The Tile Matrix feature lets you display one image across multiple monitors (up to 25) but you'll need a distribution amplifier (not included) to send the video signal to each monitor. There are several PIP (picture in picture) modes available with various size and position settings. You can even have the PIP image automatically rotate when the panel is pivoted. As with many MultiSync models, the PA271W has a built-in meter that tracks the monitor's carbon footprint and energy usage.

Performance
The PA271W aced the DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test, displaying every shade of gray cleanly from dark to light with no noticeable clipping or compression. Color accuracy was also quite good but not perfect; as shown on the CIE chart below, reds, greens, and blues were all very close to their ideal CIE coordinates but not spot-on (the closer each dot is to its corresponding box, the more accurate the color). That said, colors appeared evenly saturated and uniform on the Color Scales and Full Screen Color tests and there was no evidence of tinting in the grayscale.

The IPS panel delivered outstanding viewing angle performance. Color quality was unaffected when viewed from a side or bottom angle and the picture remained bright. Small text on the Scaled Fonts test (5.3 points) was crisp and easy to read.

The panel's 7-millisecond (black-to-white) pixel response did an adequate job of handling fast motion video. But this monitor isn't the best choice for gamers as it lacks speakers and HDMI inputs. Still, video looked smooth, and image clarity was outstanding.

The PA271W used 82 watts of power in regular mode, 77 watts in ECO mode 1, and 50 watts in ECO mode 2. The latter was a bit too dark for typical office lighting but ECO 1 looked fine. These numbers can't compete with monitors that use LED backlighting, such as the HP Pavilion 27xi (22 watts) and the Dell UltraSharp U2713HM (32 watts).

Conclusion
With a list price of over $1,100 the NEC MultiSync PA271W isn't cheap, but as is usually the case, premium quality commands premium dollars. Its 27-inch P-IPS panel offers impressive performance and a generous feature set, and its extensive settings menu allows you to fine tune the panel to meet your specific imaging needs. These credentials make the PA271W an easy selection as our newest Editors' Choice for big-screen monitors. Granted, you can save close to $300 with the Dell UltraSharp 2713HM and get more input choices, but you won't get the outstanding grayscale performance that the PA271W offers, nor will you get such a plethora of picture settings, an internal KVM switch, and a screen that automatically rotates the image when you pivot the panel.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Ybj5GafU38A/0,2817,2421008,00.asp

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FCC listing exposes new Roku Streaming Stick remote with audio out

Roku introduced a new remote with audio out for its third-generation player, and an FCC filing reveals its Streaming Stick will get the same treatment soon. The new remote adds a headphone out and... that's it, since the Streaming Stick already used WiFi Direct for communication and control. Users shouldn't notice much difference however, in our review the batteries lasted for hours even with headphones plugged in. How does this revised unit align with Roku's plans to become the front end for your TV? We're not sure yet, but it appears the dongle is still a part of its plans.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/27/roku-streaming-stick-remote-audio-out/

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Gay rights supporters erupt in cheers over ruling

California's Proposition 8 plaintiffs, Kris Perry and Sandy Steir walk into the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. The Supreme Court is meeting to deliver opinions in two cases that could dramatically alter the rights of gay people across the United States. The justices are expected to decide their first-ever cases about gay marriage Wednesday in their last session before the court's summer break. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

California's Proposition 8 plaintiffs, Kris Perry and Sandy Steir walk into the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. The Supreme Court is meeting to deliver opinions in two cases that could dramatically alter the rights of gay people across the United States. The justices are expected to decide their first-ever cases about gay marriage Wednesday in their last session before the court's summer break. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Gay rights activist Bryce Romero, who works for the Human Rights Campaign, offers an enthusiastic high-five to visitors getting in line to enter the Supreme Court on a day when justices are expected to hand down major rulings on two gay marriage cases that could impact same-sex couples across the country, in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Casey Oakes, 26, of Monroe, N.J., left, Dan Choyce, 21, of Sicklerville, N.J., center left, Zach Wulderk, 19, of Hammonton, N.J., and his brother Dylan Wulderk, 22, right, wait for a ruling on same sex marriage at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Arriving at the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013, on a final day for decisions in two gay marriage cases are plaintiffs in the California Proposition 8 case. From left are, Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, plaintiffs Paul Katami, his partner Jeff Zarrillo, Sandy Stier and her partner Kris Perry, and Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

After delivering coffee to visitors to waiting to enter the Supreme Court, SCOTUS Blog interns check their smartphones for updates on the latest news as outside the court in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013, as the justices are expected to hand down major rulings on two gay marriage cases that could impact same-sex couples across the country. From left to right are Dan Stein, Max Mallory, and Andrew Hamm. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Supporters of same-sex marriage burst into cheers, wept openly and chanted "DOMA is Dead" outside the Supreme Court as word reached them that the justices had struck down the federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Some in the crowd hugged and others jumped up and down just after 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday when the decision was announced inside. Many were on their cell phones monitoring Twitter, news sites and blogs for the outcome. There were cheers as runners came down the steps with the ruling in hand and turned them over to reporters who quickly flipped through the pages.

Sarah Prager, 26, cried and shook, and hugged a stranger. Prager, who married her wife in Massachusetts in 2011, said she was in shock. "Oh that's so good. It's just really good," she said.

"I didn't expect DOMA to be struck down," Prager said through tears. She referred to the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Gay rights activists had argued that the law improperly denied same-sex spouses the federal benefits that heterosexual couples are granted, and the justices agreed.

Inside, the reaction was subdued.

Many of the spectators had stood in line for hours to get a seat in the packed courtroom, some even camping out overnight. Before the justices took the bench, the crowd was admonished to stay silent, and they kept quiet. As Justice Anthony Kennedy read through a summary of the decision, it became clear that the court was throwing out the federal law, and a few smiles broke out across the audience. One relieved-looking lawyer blinked back her tears.

Justice Antonin Scalia followed with his own scalding dissent, ridiculing justices in the majority for what he termed "self-aggrandizement" and demonization of anyone who opposed gay marriage as an "enemy of human decency." The other justices mostly stared ahead as he spoke.

As soon as Scalia finished, Chief Justice John Roberts announced that Scalia would be reading again, announcing the majority opinion in an unrelated case.

"I'm sorry about that ? but this is shorter," Scalia said quickly, to laughter throughout the room, before launching into a case involving a Massachusetts extortion conviction obviously of less intense interest to the crowd.

Lastly, Roberts read the court's second gay marriage decision, a narrow ruling overturning a California proposition that banned same-sex marriage. It allows the marriages to resume there but doesn't affect other states.

The expectant mood inside quickly deflated under the legalistic wording of the California decision. But when the plaintiffs in that case walked down the court's marble steps with their lawyer afterward they were met with chants of "Thank you" and "USA."

The crowd outside filled the sidewalk and spilled across the street. The vast majority were champions of gay marriage, though there was at least one person who held a sign in favor of traditional marriage. Much of the crowd waved American flags and rainbow flags and carried signs including "I (heart) my wife" and "Equality is an American value!" One man carried a closet door that towered above his head and said in part: "No more shut doors."

Lawyer David Boies, who joined with Ted Olson in urging the court to overturn Proposition 8, said outside the court that the country is closer to "true equality."

"Our plaintiffs now can go back to California and together with every other citizen of California marry the person they love," Boies told reporters.

Both couples who had challenged the law said it was a good day. Sandy Stier, who held hands with her partner Kris Perry, said she was thankful the justices will let them marry, "but that's not enough," she said, "It's got to go nationwide."

Paul Katami, another plaintiff in the case, stood before reporters outside the court and became choked up as he looked at his partner, Jeff Zarrillo.

"Today I finally get to look at the man that I love and finally say: Will you please marry me?"

The pair kissed.

___

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Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-06-26-Supreme-Court-Scene/id-d8103af08e4549df8655b7ef7f67b50c

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