Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/190164720?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Giffords will resign from Congress (Politico)
A little more than a year after a would-be assassin fired a bullet into her brain from close range, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will resign her House seat this week, bringing a brief but promising political career to a close ? at least for now.
But in a video message released Sunday afternoon, the 41-year-old Democrat said she?ll be back, although it?s not clear if that means a return to Capitol Hill.
Continue Reading?I have more work to do on my recovery so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week,? she said. ?I?m getting better every day. My spirit is high. I will return, and we will work together for Arizona and this great country.?
A longtime Giffords political adviser told POLITICO that her husband, former Navy Capt. Mark Kelly; her chief of staff, Pia Carusone; and aide Ron Barber, who was wounded in the rampage, will not be candidates for her seat this year.
Giffords?s decision sets up a special election for Arizona?s closely contested Tucson-based district, which she narrowly won a third term to represent in November 2010 ? just two months before a gunman?s bullets shattered the calm of a Jan. 8, 2011, ?Congress on Your Corner? constituent-service event, killing six people, including Judge John Roll, Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman and 9-year-old Christina Green.
Her resignation ends, at least temporarily, the political chapter of a tale of tragedy and human perseverance that gripped the nation for more than a year. From political insiders to the completely apolitical, Americans watched with a mix of horror and awe as they learned details of the devastating rampage, the heroic acts of the bystanders who subdued the gunman and the life-saving efforts of intern Daniel Hernandez, who cradled Giffords until emergency medical professionals could rush her to the hospital.
After doctors performed brain surgery to keep her alive, a national audience tuned in to see Barack Obama deliver what many still believe is the finest and most unifying speech of his presidency at a University of Arizona memorial service for those who were killed. ?Gabby opened her eyes,? Obama announced. It was unclear at that moment, as it is to this day, the extent to which Giffords will recover.
On Sunday, the president said in a statement, ?Gabby?s cheerful presence will be missed in Washington. But she will remain an inspiration to all whose lives she touched ? myself included. And I?m confident that we haven?t seen the last of this extraordinary American.?
There have been milestones, too. The first reports that she could speak appeared in February last year as Giffords began her long recovery at a hospital in Houston. In April, news media captured images of her ascending the stairs to an airplane so she could travel to the planned launch of a space shuttle mission commanded by her husband. In August, she went to the House floor to cast her only vote since the shooting ? in support of a debt-limit increase. And in recent weeks, even as those close to her said she hadn?t made a decision about whether to run for another term, Giffords showed renewed speech proficiency.
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Most Barbour pardons fail notice test: attorney general (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? More than three-quarters of the prisoners and ex-convicts pardoned by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour in his final days in office did not meet the public notice requirements of the state's constitution, Mississippi's attorney general said Thursday.
"The attorney general's updated review of the 203 purported pardons (on the list as published by the secretary of state) shows that 156 have not met the publication requirements of the state constitution," Attorney General Jim Hood said in an e-mailed statement.
Barbour sparked controversy with the pardons, most of which were granted on his final day in office last week. Among those on the list were four convicted murderers and an armed robber who had worked at the governor's mansion on prison work release.
Hood last week sought and received an injunction against those and others on the clemency list on the grounds that their pardons had not met a state constitutional requirement that a notice be published in the community where the crimes were committed. A hearing on the injunctions is scheduled for Monday.
In his statement on Thursday evening, Hood said that of the individuals on the secretary of state's list of those pardoned by Barbour, 116 had insufficient advance publication and 40 had no published notice at all.
Hood is still investigating whether 26 others on the pardon list met the public notice requirement, he said.
(Reporting By Dan Burns; editing by Cynthia Johnston and Dan Whitcomb)
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Congress withdraws anti-piracy measures
SAN ANTONIO?? Lawmakers on Friday indefinitely postponed anti-piracy legislation that pits Hollywood against Silicon Valley, two days after major Internet companies staged an online protest by blacking out parts of prominent websites.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid postponed a showdown vote in his chamber on the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA for short, that had been scheduled for January 24.
Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, followed suit, saying his panel would delay action on similar legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, until there is wider agreement on the legislation.
"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy," Smith told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products," Smith said in a statement.
The bills are aimed at curbing access to overseas websites that traffic in pirated content and counterfeit products, such as movies and music. But support for the legislation has eroded in recent days because of fears that legitimate websites could end up in legal jeopardy.
The entertainment industry wants legislation to protect its movies and music from counterfeiters, but technology companies are concerned the laws would undermine Internet freedoms, be difficult to enforce and encourage frivolous lawsuits.
On Wednesday protests blanketed the Internet, turning Wikipedia and other popular websites dark for 24 hours. Google, Facebook, Twitter and others protested the proposed legislation but did not shut down.
In a brief statement, Reid said there was no reason why concerns about the legislation cannot be resolved. He offered no new date for the vote.
Reid's action comes a day after a senior Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the measure lacked the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the 100-member Senate.
A handful of senators who had co-sponsored the legislation dropped their support after Wednesday's protests started.
Reid expressed hope on Friday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who has been shepherding the bill through Congress, could help resolve differences in the legislation.
"I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks," Reid said.
Leahy said in a statement that he was committed to addressing online piracy and hoped other members of Congress would work with him to get a bill signed into law this year.
"But the day will come when the Senators who forced this move will look back and realize they made a knee-jerk reaction to a monumental problem," he said.
"Criminals who do nothing but peddle in counterfeit products and stolen American content are smugly watching how the United States Senate decided it was not even worth debating how to stop the overseas criminals from draining our economy," Leahy said.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and Comcast/NBC Universal. Microsoft publicly opposes SOPA in its current form, while Comcast/NBC Universal is listed as a supporter of SOPA on the House Judiciary Committee website.)
More on SOPA and PIPA from msnbc.com:
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46072484/ns/technology_and_science-security/
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Friday, January 20, 2012
The Smart Way to Play God with Earth's Limited Land
Features |
Energy & Sustainability
Can humans grow enough food, produce enough energy and still preserve some of the last refuges of other species--both plant and animal--on the planet?
?| January 20, 2012?|
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Mark Lynas's book, The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans.?
The vast majority of the planet?s ice-free land surface ? 83 per cent according to one study (pdf)?? is now influenced by humans in some way or another. Where I live, in the British Isles, no part of the landscape is totally unaltered by people. The Lake District, for example, if left ungrazed by sheep, would revert to dense woodland on all but the highest peaks. Throughout the entire United Kingdom, the only species that have survived into the modern era are those that are able to coexist with human domination of the land: others, from beavers to wolves, have been extirpated entirely.
Human impacts on land may be much greater than is obvious at first sight. Roads, for example, appear to directly affect only a relatively small strip of land, but they also cut ecosystems in half, altering the survival prospects of species living on either side of them. With an estimated 1 million animals killed every day on America?s road network, the effect of this constant removal of predators and prey is felt over much wider areas.?A seminal 2002 study of the ecological effects of a busy four-lane highway in Massachusetts found impacts ? varying from wetland drainage to noise ? across a broad 600-metre corridor. The consequent nationwide effects over the United States? entire 6.2-million-kilometre road network can only be guessed at.
Whilst busy paved roads are a recent phenomenon, general human transformation of the land surface has been accelerating for millennia. The Roman empire deforested large areas around the Mediterranean, contributing to soil erosion and declining fertility. The European continent?s landscape changed dramatically between ad 500, when it was still four-fifths covered by swamp and woodland, and ad 1300, when half of this natural land had already been converted to agriculture. This transformative process fluctuated in lockstep with human population growth: when the Black Death killed a third of Europe?s population in the early fifteenth century, forests stopped their decline and began to regrow. To this day, many of Germany?s most valued ?natural? woodlands owe their existence to the depopulation wrought by the medieval plague.
With so little of the Earth?s land still pristine and unaffected by humans, the idea of the ?wilderness? has less and less meaning in the modern world. Indeed, if pollution and climate change are taken into account, no part of the planet?s surface is any longer truly wild. This does not mean that we must gloomily accept the continuing diminution of semi-wild areas and the erosion of the vital ecosystem services they provide. It does mean though that we need to challenge some orthodoxies that are no longer useful in this new era of near-total human planetary dominance. ?Getting close to nature? or going ?back to the land? will generally not be good for the environment, however psychologically fulfilling these objectives may be to individuals seeking escape from industrial living. Instead, we need to intensify agriculture and other human land uses in existing areas as much as possible, and encourage as an environmental boon the growth of the world?s major cities that already successfully concentrate today?s enormous human population onto only a tiny proportion of the world?s land. The most positive trend of all in allowing us to minimise our impact on the planet?s surface is one more often bemoaned than celebrated: urbanisation.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=137b136b22acec22d5f509e73d6756fe
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IKEA flatpacks its way through downturn (AP)
ZAVENTEM, Belgium ? It takes Mikael Ohlsson five minutes ? and the help of one other person ? to assemble IKEA's Ektorp sofa.
After 33 years at the Swedish home-ware chain, the 54-year-old chief executive is an expert at configuring IKEA's famous flat-pack furniture.
But Ohlsson is not bragging about the fact that he can beat the assembly time the company itself advertises by some 10 minutes. What makes him proud is that the Ektorp can be flat-packed at all.
Seated on a "Blekinge white" example of the Ektorp in a cozily furnished exhibition room at an IKEA store in Zaventem, Belgium, Ohlsson recounts how, until recently, the popular couch also came packed in one of the company's biggest cardboard boxes ? a pain for customers to squeeze into their cars or carry up narrow staircases.
But then in 2010, IKEA's product designers came up with a way of breaking the Ektorp into different pieces. The results was a package half its former size, which the company claims took some 7,477 trucks off the roads and cut its yearly CO2 emissions by 4,700 tons. Savings in production and transport costs knocked euro100 ($128) off the price IKEA charges its customers, Ohlsson pointed out.
It's innovations like these, the CEO says, that make IKEA so successful even in the uncertain economic times that some of its biggest markets are facing.
On Friday, IKEA reported a 10.3 percent jump in net profit to euro2.97 billion ($3.81 billion) for the year ended Aug. 31, even though it cut prices by 2.6 percent. Revenue rose 6.9 percent to euro25.17 billion in the same period and Ohlsson says the sales pace has been accelerating since then ? even as stock markets around the world have taken a dive amid the worsening financial crisis in Europe.
"We are becoming a more natural choice when people are looking after their spending or are concerned about the future," says Ohlsson, his black trousers, black sweater and half-rimmed glasses all possessing the understatement of a Billy bookcase.
"A lot of people see that home is a very important place, maybe the most important place in their lives."
While sales have fallen in some Southern European countries like Greece, Ohlsson says IKEA has gained market share in all of them.
Over the past decade, the company expanded into big emerging markets like Russia and China, although 79 percent of its sales are still generated in Europe. In the next two or three years, IKEA wants to open stores in Serbia and Croatia and it has recently bought land in South Korea.
But the biggest opportunity may lie in India, a fast-growing country of around 1.2 billion people, that Ohlsson says IKEA has been eyeing "patiently but also impatiently" for years.
"The impatience is that of course there are a lot of people that are moving into the city, have better incomes and want to furnish their homes and that's why there is space for us," says Ohlsson. "And patient because we wanted FDI (foreign direct investment) legislation to change."
That change happened last week, when the Indian Commerce Ministry announced it would allow foreign companies that sell products under a single-brand name, such as IKEA, to own 100 percent of their stores there.
Ohlsson and his chief financial officer, Soeren Hansen, say the company is still studying the fine print, to make sure, for instance, that requirements to source a certain percentage of products locally won't interrupt its cherished value chain, where it controls design, production, storage and retail.
In contrast to other companies, which are under pressure to quickly produce new value for shareholders, IKEA can move more slowly. The retailer is not traded on the stock market, but is owned by a foundation controlled by the family of its octogenarian founder Ingvar Kamprad.
That structure not only protects IKEA from being split up or taken over, but, says Ohlsson, allows him to make investments in new markets or store upgrades that may not pay off for several years.
Throughout the conversation, the CEO stresses IKEA's eco-friendly policies and humble origins in a poor area of Sweden. In the Zaventem store on the outskirts of Brussels, solar panels on the roof provide up to 20 percent of the energy. The company owns several wind parks and one of its Berlin stores uses local wastewater to control internal temperatures.
IKEA has come a long way from its start in the Smaland region in Southern Sweden. Today it employs 131,000 people in 41 countries and its 287 stores drew in 655 million customers last year.
Ohlsson says he believes the urge to upgrade and become more comfortable does not seem to recede during an economic downturn. Asked whether IKEA's business was "recession-proof," Ohlsson laughs somewhat embarrassed.
"I wouldn't say it like that and it would not be humble to say it," he said.
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