Tuesday, January 31, 2012

New study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age

ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2012) ? A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century.

According to the new study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self- perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to CU-Boulder Professor Gifford Miller, who led the study. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, combined with ice and sediment core data from the poles and Iceland and from sea ice climate model simulations, said Miller.

While scientific estimates regarding the onset of the Little Ice Age range from the 13th century to the 16th century, there is little consensus, said Miller. There is evidence the Little Ice Age affected places as far away as South America and China, although it was particularly evident in northern Europe. Advancing glaciers in mountain valleys destroyed towns, and famous paintings from the period depict people ice skating on the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, waterways that were ice-free in winter before and after the Little Ice Age.

"The dominant way scientists have defined the Little Ice Age is by the expansion of big valley glaciers in the Alps and in Norway," said Miller. "But the time it took for European glaciers to advance far enough to demolish villages would have been long after the onset of the cold period," said Miller, a fellow at CU's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Most scientists think the Little Ice Age was caused either by decreased summer solar radiation, erupting volcanoes that cooled the planet by ejecting shiny aerosol particles that reflected sunlight back into space, or a combination of both, said Miller.

The new study suggests that the onset of the Little Ice Age was caused by an unusual, 50-year-long episode of four massive tropical volcanic eruptions. Climate models used in the new study showed that the persistence of cold summers following the eruptions is best explained by a sea ice-ocean feedback system originating in the North Atlantic Ocean.

"This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Miller. "We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time. If the climate system is hit again and again by cold conditions over a relatively short period -- in this case, from volcanic eruptions -- there appears to be a cumulative cooling effect."

A paper on the subject is being published Jan. 31 in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The paper was authored by scientists and students from CU-Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of Iceland, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Icelandic Science Foundation.

As part of the study, Miller and his colleagues radiocarbon-dated roughly 150 samples of dead plant material with roots intact collected from beneath receding ice margins of ice caps on Baffin Island. There was a large cluster of "kill dates" between A.D. 1275 and 1300, indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event.

Both low-lying and higher altitude plants all died at roughly the same time, indicating the onset of the Little Ice Age on Baffin Island -- the fifth largest island in the world -- was abrupt. The team saw a second spike in plant kill dates at about A.D. 1450, indicating the quick onset of a second major cooling event.

To broaden the study, the team analyzed sediment cores from a glacial lake linked to the 367-square-mile Langj?kull ice cap in the central highlands of Iceland that reaches nearly a mile high. The annual layers in the cores -- which can be reliably dated by using tephra deposits from known historic volcanic eruptions on Iceland going back more than 1,000 years -- suddenly became thicker in the late 13th century and again in the 15th century due to increased erosion caused by the expansion of the ice cap as the climate cooled, he said.

"That showed us the signal we got from Baffin Island was not just a local signal, it was a North Atlantic signal," said Miller. "This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the 13th century." Average summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere did not return to those of the Middle Ages until the 20th century, and the temperatures of the Middle Ages are now exceeded in many areas, he said.

The team used the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model to test the effects of volcanic cooling on Arctic sea ice extent and mass. The model, which simulated various sea ice conditions from about A.D. 1150-1700, showed several large, closely spaced eruptions could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to trigger Arctic sea ice growth.

The models showed sustained cooling from volcanoes would have sent some of the expanding Arctic sea ice down along the eastern coast of Greenland until it eventually melted in the North Atlantic. Since sea ice contains almost no salt, when it melted the surface water became less dense, preventing it from mixing with deeper North Atlantic water. This weakened heat transport back to the Arctic and creating a self-sustaining feedback system on the sea ice long after the effects of the volcanic aerosols subsided, he said.

"Our simulations showed that the volcanic eruptions may have had a profound cooling effect," says NCAR scientist Bette Otto-Bliesner, a co-author of the study. "The eruptions could have triggered a chain reaction, affecting sea ice and ocean currents in a way that lowered temperatures for centuries."

The researchers set the solar radiation at a constant level in the climate models, and Miller said the Little Ice Age likely would have occurred without decreased summer solar radiation at the time. "Estimates of the sun's variability over time are getting smaller, it's now thought by some scientists to have varied little more in the last millennia than during a standard 11-year solar cycle," he said.

One of the primary questions pertaining to the Little Ice Age is how unusual the warming of Earth is today, he said. A previous study led by Miller in 2008 on Baffin Island indicated temperatures today are the warmest in at least 2,000 years.

Other co-authors on the paper include CU-Boulder's Yafang Zhong, Darren Larsen, Kurt Refsnider, Scott Lehman and Chance Anderson, NCAR's Marika Holland and David Bailey, the University of Iceland's ?slaug Geirsd?ttir, Helgi Bjornsson and Darren Larsen, UC-Irvine's John Southon and the University of Edinburgh's Thorvaldur Thordarson. Larsen is doctoral student jointly at CU-Boulder and the University of Iceland.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Gifford H Miller, John R. Southon, Chance Anderson, Helgi Bj?rnsson, Thorvaldur Thordarson, Aslaug Geirsdottir, Yafang Zhong, Darren J Larsen, Bette L Otto-Bliesner, Marika M Holland, David Anthony Bailey, Kurt A. Refsnider, Scott J. Lehman. Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks. Geophysical Research Letters, 2012; DOI: 10.1029/2011GL050168

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/i9ZZ4UQzagM/120130131503.htm

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Gazans break(dance)ing boundaries

Camps Breakerz crew made a video in January 2012 called "Breakdance Revolution In Gaza" that shows them making moves across the Gaza Strip.

By Yara Borgal, NBC News

GAZA STRIP, Israel ? In Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Islamic fundamentalism controls every aspect of daily life in the city that has been under an Israeli-imposed siege since June 2007, a group of eight young men from the Nuseirat refugee camp are breaking boundaries by break dancing.

The Camps Breakerz took their moves out onto the rundown streets of Gaza for the first time this month, even though members have been practicing together since 2005.

The dancers released a video on YouTube?that shows them doing elaborate dance moves ? from spinning head stands to arms stands and flips in ?I heart Gaza? t-shirts all over Gaza.?

"When I danced in the street I felt free for the first time in my life. I challenged the conservative society and mainly I challenged the Israeli siege," said Mohammed al-Ghrize, otherwise known as ?Funk,? who brought together the Camps Breakerz crew.


Challenging strict code
Ghrize, a 25-year-old who works as a nurse, was introduced to the world of break dancing at the age of 16 when he lived with his family in Saudi Arabia. Since returning to his homeland in Gaza, he searched for others who shared his passion for dancing. "It took me two years to persuade seven people to establish a break dancing crew, two of which are my own brothers," he said.

Over the past five years Hamas has imposed a strict code of conduct in Gaza, forcing residents to follow strict Islamic law.? The laws have restricted women from social activities like riding on the backs of motorbikes and smoking traditional shisha pipes in public spaces.?They?have?even restricted men from working in women?s hair salons ? believing that men cutting women?s hair is immodest.

In a new attempt by the fundamentalist militant Muslim group to crack down on behavior it sees as contrary to its conservative interpretation of Islam, Hamas banned Gaza youth from participating in the Palestinian version of "American Idol."? Their reasoning was because Muslims can only sing and dance to the sound of drums ? not any modern instruments.

"Because I know it's very hard for our conservative society to accept our Westernized hobby, we introduced break dancing as a kind of sport," Ghrize explained. ?We even managed to convince Hamas to regard break dancing as a sport by performing in their sports events and dancing only to the beats of the drums.?

The group understands that in a society struggling under the ongoing Israeli blockade, break dancing can be viewed as a waste of time and seen as lacking respect for the Gazan reality. The Nuseirat refugee camp where Ghrize lives is home to 66,000 refugees, even though it was initially built to accommodate 16,000 people. And conditions are grim: According to the U.N. 90 percent of the water there is ?unfit for human consumption.?

So for the members of the group, dancing is a welcome distraction.??

"We regard our activities as another form of resistance against the occupation; all of our sketches are inspired by our people's tragedies, especially children. Break dancing for us is a way of expressing our freedom.?

Ghrize studied nursing and works at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. ?All members of our crew are very well-educated,? he said.?

At the end of video the crew recently released, the dancers names, nicknames, ages, job and special moves are listed. They range from ?Chino,? a 22-year-old cook whose specialty is ?style break beat,? to ?Dark,? a 26-year-old teacher whose specialty is ?combos,? to ?Fox,? a 15-year-old student who likes ?power moves.?

One of the many obstacles the Camps Breakerz faced was finding a place to train, especially after the Nuseirat refugee camp?s community center was destroyed by an Israeli raid during the war on Gaza in 2008.

"We have a dream," Ghrize said, "that one day we will have our own center where we can teach children to break dance and give them a stage to express their feelings."

The Camps Breakerz hope to go to the U.S., where break dancing originated, to meet other break dancers who will help them grow, excel and become an internationally recognized group. They want to eventually be able to compete internationally among the best break dancers in the world.

"I wish I lived in a free liberal country where I can practice the thing I love most without any political or fundamentalist boundaries."

Related link:?Gaza youths find escape in free running?
?

Source: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10272998-gazans-breakdanceing-boundaries

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House mice serenade mates with 'bird' song

Most people are familiar with the telltale squeak of a mouse scurrying out of their pantry, but scientists have long known that these aren?t the only noises house mice make. During courtship, the rodents also communicate in the ultrasonic frequency range, which sits beyond human hearing. Now, new research shows that these mating vocalizations are more than just your typical squeaks ? they?re songs, not unlike those you?d expect to hear from courting birds.

?It seems as though house mice might provide a new model organism for the study of song in animals," lead researcher Dustin Penn, an evolutionary biologist at the Veterinary University of Vienna in Austria, said in a statement. "Who would have thought that?"

Over the last few years, Penn and his colleagues conducted a series of studies on the courtship vocalizations of house mice. In their initial research, published in the journal Animal Behavior in 2010, they caught wild male and female house mice and looked at the vocal nature of their courtship routines.

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They found that most of the male mice would start their ultrasonic calls the moment they caught the urine scent of a sexually mature female. When the researchers played these calls back to the females, they learned that the females could somehow tell the difference between the calls of their siblings and the calls of unrelated males ? the females showed little interest in the squeaks of their brothers.

More recently, the researchers began analyzing several audio parameters, including duration, pitch and frequency, of the mating calls of wild-caught house mice. To their surprise, they found that the squeaks are quite complex and contain several features seen in bird songs, such as variations in duration and frequency of call syllables (units of sounds separated by silence).

When they compared the songs with one another, they saw that the vocalizations contained signatures of individuality and kinship. They also found that the songs of siblings were more similar to one anther than the songs of unrelated males.

The researchers now plan to look at how song quality affects mate choice ? in some bird species, males with the most complex songs win all the females. Future studies will also focus on figuring out how related mice have such similar songs.

"The familial effects we found might be explained by imprinting (social learning), as with bird song, genetic differences, or both," they write in their most recent study, published in the January issue of the journal Physiology & Behavior.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46184222/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Sunday, January 29, 2012

80 percent of 'irreplaceable' habitats in Andes unprotected

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Hundreds of rare, endemic species in the Central Andes remain unprotected and are increasingly under threat from development and climate change, according to a Duke University-led international study.

"These species require unique ecological conditions and are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment or climate. Yet our analysis shows that region-wide, about 80 percent of the areas with high numbers of these species lack any protection," said Jennifer Swenson, assistant professor of the practice of geospatial analysis at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

The study, published today in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal BMC Ecology, identifies and maps the geographic ranges of hundreds of species of plants and animals ? including mammals, birds and amphibians ? that are found nowhere in the world outside the Andes-Amazon basin in Peru and Bolivia.

The threat to these species has become especially severe in recent years, Swenson said, as oil and gold mining, infrastructure projects, agriculture and other human activities encroach farther into the region's biologically rich landscapes.

"This is one of Earth's most rapidly changing areas," she said.

To conduct their study, Swenson and her colleagues collected more than 7,000 individual records of endemic species locations for 115 species of birds, 55 mammals, 177 amphibians and 435 plants. They combined these with satellite images and climate, topography and vegetation data to create models, detailed to one kilometer, that mapped endemic species distributions across the entire basin ? from the forested slopes and dry inter-mountain valleys of the Andes all the way to the low-lying Amazonian wetlands and savannas.

By overlaying this data with maps showing modern political boundaries in the Andes-Amazon basin, the researchers found that only about 20 percent of the areas with high numbers of endemic species or high levels of irreplaceability fell within national parks or protected areas, and that 226 rare endemic species lacked any national-level protection at all. Irreplaceability is a term used by conservationists to denote biodiversity hotspots where high numbers of endemic species with very small ranges live. These are often among the most vital ? and vulnerable ? habitats in a region.

"Interestingly, one of the areas we identified with the highest number of bird and mammal species and one of the highest levels of irreplaceability was an unprotected region surrounding the World Heritage Site of Machu Picchu, one of the most heavily visited tourist destinations in the region," Swenson noted.

As the effects of development and climate change continue to shrink or shift geographic ranges in coming decades, some species may literally be running out of ground, she said.

"Conservation strategies across the Andes urgently need revising," she said. "There is already evidence of species migrating upslope to keep up with climate change. We hope our data will help protect this incredibly unique region."

Bruce E. Young, director of species science at the nonprofit conservation organization NatureServe, was principal co-author of the study. Twenty additional collaborators from conservation agencies and organizations in Peru and Bolivia helped gather data.

###

Duke University: http://www.duke.edu

Thanks to Duke University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117154/___percent_of__irreplaceable__habitats_in_Andes_unprotected

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Obama administration reveals new ATF gun probe rules (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Obama administration on Friday revealed new reforms undertaken to improve how it conducts undercover gun trafficking investigations in the wake of a botched operation in which scores of weapons disappeared.

The reforms require additional oversight of undercover operations, including those that involve more than 50 firearms, and, in most cases, ends the practice of paying gun dealers to serve as confidential informants.

Additionally, a new review committee has been established to monitor sensitive undercover cases or those that would have a "significant regional or national impact," according to the Justice Department.

The details were revealed just before Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Thursday before members of the House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the bungled operation known as "Fast and Furious."

The operation, run out of the Phoenix offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and U.S. Attorney's office was meant to follow the guns from the initial buyers along the U.S. border to violent drug cartel leaders in Mexico.

However ATF agents did not track the weapons after they were transferred from the initial buyer to others who smuggled them across the border. As many as 2,000 guns may have been sold under the operation.

Two AK-47 style weapons from that program were found in Arizona 18 miles from the border where a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was shot and killed during a December 2010 shootout with illegal immigrants.

A similar, smaller program was run during the Bush administration dubbed "Wide Receiver."

"We are undertaking key enhancements to existing department policies and procedures to ensure that mistakes like those that occurred in 'Wide Receiver' and 'Fast and Furious' are not repeated," Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a letter to Congress.

Republicans have been demanding to know who in the Obama administration knew about the "Fast and Furious" operation and when. Holder and other senior ATF and Justice Department officials said they did not learn about it until early 2011.

(Reporting By Jeremy Pelofsky)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/pl_nm/us_usa_mexico_guns

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Fly Delta Android app updated to ease international travel

Fly Delta Android App

Delta Air Lines' Fly Delta Android app has long been one of the first things I install on a phone. It's well-designed, and has added a couple killer features since its release nearly a year ago -- mainly the ability to view upgrade/standby lists and check and change seats from your phone, and more recently they added the ability to track your checked baggage. Good stuff.

And now Delta's added even more functionality in Version 1.7. Here's the full changelog.

  • Check in for flights arriving or departing international locations
  • Discover Delta’s valued partners within the "Traveling with Us" section
  • Support for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwhich) [sic]
  • Fixes for many of the bugs reported by our customers, along with several speed enhancements

It's nice that Delta's added check-ins for international flights. (Though you'll presumably still have to get your boarding pass when you arrive.) The "Traveling with Us" section is a little bit of advertising (we've got a screen cap after the break), where so far we have promotion of Delta's American Express credit card and something from TED. It's pretty unobtrusive, though, so no big deal. Then there's the ICS support and other bug fixes, which is always good (though the app had been working just fine for us), though there's still a menu button down at the bottom, and not as an Action Bar "overflow" as Google's pushing everyone toward. (On the other hand, the app's design is otherwise very nice, so we'll overlook that.)

But what really gets us excited is the prospect of "several speed enhancements." With previous versions of the app, you needed to fire it up a few minutes before you could get to your itinerary and find your confirmation number or seat assignment or mobile boarding pass. Things definitely feel a little quicker; hopefully that's not just a placebo -- it really was a big gripe with the Delta app.

read more



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/uLqXfOT3rN0/story01.htm

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Friday, January 27, 2012

Wall Street lower at open after GDP data (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? U.S. stocks fell on Friday after data showed the U.S. economy grew less than expected in the fourth quarter, while weak earnings from Ford and continued caution over Europe's debt crisis also weighed on the market.

U.S. gross domestic product expanded at its fastest pace in 1-1/2 years in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Commerce Department said, but missed forecasts. A strong rebuilding of inventories and weak spending on capital goods hinted at slower growth this year.

"Today's GDP numbers while positive indicate that the economy is not really doing all that well and (Federal Reserve) Chairman Bernanke's extreme policy may be in fact what's needed," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial, Westport, Connecticut.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see some profit-taking at any time, given the recent rally we've had."

Ford Motor Co (F.N) shares fell 5.5 percent to $12.04 after the carmaker reported a lower-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on higher commodity costs and losses in Europe and Asia.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was down 37.31 points, or 0.29 percent, at 12,697.32. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) slipped 1.47 points, or 0.11 percent, at 1,316.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was up 3.55 points, or 0.13 percent, at 2,808.83.

Euro zone finance officials voiced optimism a deal to avert a disorderly Greek default was imminent and key building blocks to resolve Europe's sovereign debt crisis were gradually fitting into place. Renewed concern about the crisis has troubled markets this week.

Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) shares fell 0.1 percent to $64.82 after its quarterly profit plunged 49 percent as it wrote down the value of its appliance and salon professional products businesses. It also said this year's profit would come in lower than previously expected due to the strong dollar.

Chevron Corp (CVX.N) reported lower earnings as increased spending on oil and gas projects and losses at its refinery business offset gains from higher crude oil prices. The shares fell 2.4 percent to $104.01.

Juniper Networks Inc (JNPR.N) and Riverbed Technologies Inc (RVBD.O) offered gloomy first-quarter outlooks late Thursday that were below expectations. Juniper was down 8.1 percent to $20.55.

According to Thomson Reuters data, 59 percent of 152 S&P 500 companies reporting earnings as of Thursday morning beat analysts' estimates. In recent quarters, the beat rate has been 70 percent at this stage of the earnings season.

A rally from late last year that has pushed the S&P 500 up 23 percent from lows in October has left the index facing tough resistance at around the 1,330 level, which marks a four-year downtrend line from its all-time highs in 2007.

Oliver Pursche, president at Gary Goldberg Financial Services in Suffern, New York, cautioned against reading too much into recent market strength.

He cited a "volatile environment," in which "there are plenty of global issues that can derail the global economy."

Eastman Chemical Co (EMN.N) offered to buy specialty chemical maker Solutia Inc (SOA.N) for about $3.38 billion in cash and stock to extend its reach in emerging markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region. Solutia shares rose 41 percent to $27.59.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Obama Borrows from Republicans in State of Union Speech (ContributorNetwork)

Barack Obama ripped off key components of Jon Huntsman's stump speech during his State of the Union address. Obama also recycled Rick Perry's rhetoric and borrowed from Newt Gingrich.

Manufacturing Renewal

Huntsman "made increasing American manufacturing a central tenet of his economic platform" according to Shira Schoenberg of the Boston Globe. It was a centerpiece of his stump speech when he crisscrossed New Hampshire prior to the primary. Huntsman predicted that jobs that had been off-shored were going to be repatriated to the U.S. as foreign countries were losing their cost-competitiveness.

In Peterborough, Huntsman said, "That window is open and we need new policies to take advantage of it," according to the Bangor Daily News.

During his State of the Union address, Obama talked about his "blueprint for an economy that's built to last -- an economy built on American manufacturing," according to the White House transcript.

Obama also adopted Huntsman's "nation building here at home" theme. Huntsman had said the U.S. should not remain behind in Afghanistan for the purpose of nation building. Praising a "new greatest generation" of military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, Huntsman called for nation building here at home.

Talking about the military and his boosting of the Veterans Administration budget, Obama said, "it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation."

Trust Deficit

Obama also borrowed the climax of Huntsman's stump speech, his "Trust Deficit" theme. Obama vowed to levy a fee on banks to aid mortgage holders whose homes are underwater as it "will give banks that were rescued by taxpayers a chance to repay a deficit of trust."

Huntsman took a hard-line against big banks, denouncing the "too big to fail" ethos, according to the Bangor Daily News. Huntsman proposed taxing America's six largest banks to raise revenue to reduce taxes on non-financial corporations, according to Time Magazine.

Obama adopted the same policy, but named a different beneficiary.

Later, Obama said, "I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad -- and it seems to get worse every year."

During the January 7 GOP presidential debate, Huntsman said, "...[W]e have a serious trust deficit in this nation. The American people now longer trust our institutions of power. And they no longer trust our elected officials," according to the Washington Post transcript.

Perry & Gingrich

When articulating his energy policy, Obama used Rick Perry's "all-of-the-above" phraseology.

In a May 2010 speech on educational financing, Perry said, "Texas has more nuclear power plants under development than any other state?as we continue to pursue our all-of-the-above strategy to meet our state's power needs," according to his official Web site. It's a phrase Perry used during his presidential campaign.

According to Time, Obama purloined the title of Newt Gingrich's book, "Winning the Future" when he told Congress "Don't let other countries win the race for the future."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120127/pl_ac/10890023_obama_borrows_from_republicans_in_state_of_union_speech

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Core suppliers savor bigger Apple pie (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Suppliers basked in the reflection of Apple's glowing results on Wednesday after the company's gold standard iPhones and iPads flew off the shelves over the holiday sales season.

Apple's forecast-beating fourth-quarter figures late on Tuesday helped it to beat Google's Android as the largest smartphone platform in the United States and to regain the world's largest smartphone maker spot from Samsung.

Apple's results were spearheaded by sales of the iPhone 4S, which is packed with technology from British chip designer ARM, said analyst Nick James at Numis.

Apple accounts for about 10 percent of ARM's technology revenues, and for about 35 percent of graphics and video chip designer Imagination's technology revenues, he said.

"It means people are still driven by performance in terms of having the highest performance, highest functioning devices, and those tend to have quite a number of ARM-based chips in them."

"It is one of the key things that drove Imagination to come through to the next level," James added.

Shares in ARM jumped 4.2 percent, while shares in Imagination were 4.1 percent higher at 1030 GMT.

Analyst Didier Scemama at RBS said that although Apple was only one of many ARM customers -- the Cambridge-based company supplies virtually every smartphone and tablet with their cheap designs -- from a sentiment standpoint there has been a strong correlation between the two stocks.

"(Apple) should help the whole sector today, but especially Dialog Semiconductor and other suppliers," said a Frankfurt-based trader.

Shares in Dialog Semi were up 3.9 percent.

OVERTAKING SAMSUNG

Samsung became the world's largest smartphone maker in the third quarter, but analysts said the 37 million iPhones sold in the fourth quarter should easily beat Samsung's expected sales of around 30 million.

Samsung is due to report on Friday.

Research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said Apple's share of the U.S. market doubled from a year ago to 44.9 percent in the October to December period, just beating the total for Android smartphones, which slipped to 44.8 percent from 50 percent.

"Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover," said Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at the research firm.

Apple's iPhone 4S also uses chips from Samsung Electronics, Qualcomm, Toshiba and a host of smaller semiconductor companies, including TriQuint, Skyworks Solutions and Avago Technologies Inc.

In stark contrast to Apple's success, sales of handset makers using Android, including Motorola Mobility, HTC and Sony Ericsson, have stumbled in the quarter.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki, Paul Sandle and Harro ten Wolde; Editing by Will Waterman)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/wr_nm/us_apple_google_microsoft

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Clashes spread in Tibetan region in China (AP)

BEIJING ? Deadly clashes between ethnic Tibetans and Chinese security forces have spread to a second area in southwestern China, an overseas Tibetan activist group said Wednesday.

Two Tibetans were killed and several more were wounded Tuesday when security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in Seda county in politically sensitive Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province, the group Free Tibet said. It quoted local sources as saying the area was under a curfew.

The reported violence comes as some 30 Tibetans who were wounded Monday when Chinese police fired into a crowd of protesters were sheltering in a monastery in neighboring Luhuo county, a Tibetan monk said. Military forces have surrounded the building, said the monk, who would not give his name out of fear of government retaliation.

The counties have been tense for some time, and at least 16 Buddhist monks, nuns and other Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest in the past year. Most have chanted for Tibetan freedom and the return of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Many Tibetans resent Beijing's heavy-handed rule and the large-scale migration of China's ethnic Han majority to the Himalayan region. While China claims Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time.

"Chinese forces are responding with lethal force to Tibetans' ever-growing calls for freedom," Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden said in a statement Wednesday.

A man who answered the telephone at the Seda county government office would not confirm or deny the group's account of Tuesday's violence. He would not give his name.

Calls to the county police offices rang unanswered Wednesday.

Chinese authorities have said Monday's unrest in Luhuo was caused by a "mob" and that overseas advocacy groups are twisting the truth about what happened in order to undermine the government. The government says order has been restored after one Tibetan died and four others were injured. It said five police were wounded.

Independent confirmation of the clashes is difficult due to a heavy security presence and lack of access to outsiders.

The United States, which will host Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the White House next month, has expressed grave concern at the reported violence.

U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues Maria Otero urged Beijing to address "counterproductive policies" in Tibetan areas that have created tensions and threatened Tibetans' religious, cultural and linguistic identity.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington has always been clear with China about its concerns for the human rights of Tibetans and others. She said the U.S. would be "just as clear" when Xi visits next month.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

____

Gillian Wong can be reached on http://twitter.com/gillianwong

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tibet

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Euro zone ministers reject private bondholders' Greece offer (Reuters)

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) ? Euro zone finance ministers have rejected an offer made by private bondholders to help restructure Greece's debts, euro zone officials said on Monday, sending negotiators back to the drawing board and raising the threat of default.

At a meeting in Brussels to discuss Athens' debt problems, ministers said they could not accept a coupon of four percent on new longer-dated bonds expected to be issued to private bondholders in exchange for their existing Greek holdings.

Banks and other private institutions represented by the Institute of International Finance (IIF) want a 4.0 percent coupon on the new bonds, which will have a face value of half that of the bonds they replace, thereby cutting Athens' debts. Greece says the coupon must be closer to 3.5 percent.

"The ministers have sent the offer back for negotiations," one euro zone official with knowledge of the talks said, indicating that the ministers had effectively come down on the Greek government's side.

"The ministers want a lower coupon than presented in the offer (from the IIF)," the official said.

The disagreement increases the risk that it may prove impossible to strike a voluntary restructuring deal between Greece's creditors and the Greek government - an outcome that would have severe repercussions for financial markets.

The aim of the restructuring is to reduce Greece's debts from around 160 percent of GDP to 120 percent of GDP by 2020, a level EU and IMF officials think will be more manageable for the growth-less Greek economy.

Negotiations over what's called 'private sector involvement' have been going on for nearly seven months without a concrete breakthrough. Failure to reach a deal by March, when Athens must repay 14.5 billion euros of maturing debt, could result in a disorderly default.

As well as assessing Greece's debt restructuring, euro zone ministers discussed efforts to enforce stricter budget rules for EU states via a "fiscal compact," and steps to finalize the structure of a permanent euro zone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), due to start operating in July.

The ESM will have an effective lending capacity of 500 billion euros and replace the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary fund that has so far been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal and will be used to provide part of a second, 130 billion euro package of aid to Greece.

Germany has insisted that once the ESM is up and running, the combined potential outlay of the EFSF and ESM should not top 500 billion euros.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and IMF chief Christine Lagarde have said the ceiling should be raised, possibly up to 1 trillion euros, so it has more than enough capacity to handle any problems in major economies such as Spain or Italy.

The Financial Times reported Monday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was ready to see the ceiling of the combined firewall raised to 750 billion euros in exchange for agreement on tighter euro zone budget rules, but the report was immediately denied by her chief spokesman.

"It is not true. There is no such decision," Steffen Seibert told Reuters.

DEBT SUSTAINABILITY

Ahead of the ministers' meeting, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the elusive deal to convince the banks and investment funds that own Greek debt to accept deep losses on their holdings appeared to be "taking shape."

But his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble said any deal must help Greece cut its debt mountain to "not much more than 120 percent of GDP" by the end of the decade, something many economists believe will not be achieved by the existing plan.

"The negotiations will be difficult, but we want the second program for Greece to be implemented in March so that the second (bailout) tranche can be released," Schaeuble told a news conference in Paris with Baroin and the heads of the German and French central banks.

"Greece must fulfill its commitments, it is difficult and there is already a lot of delay," Schaeuble said.

Greece and its private creditors are converging on a deal in which private bondholders would take a real loss of 65 to 70 percent on their Greek bonds - giving a nominal reduction of 50 percent - officials close to the negotiations say.

Sources close to the talks told Reuters Monday that the impasse centered on questions of whether the deal would return Greece's debt mountain, currently over 350 billion euros, to levels that European governments believe are sustainable.

"There will likely be an updated debt sustainability analysis that will be discussed at the Eurogroup," a banking source in Athens said, requesting anonymity. "Talks will continue this week. The aim is to have an agreement by late next Monday."

In Brussels, European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said talks had been "moving well" and expressed confidence a deal could be sealed this week.

LAGARDE DEMANDS

Speaking in Berlin, Lagarde called on European leaders to complement the "fiscal compact" they agreed last month with some form of financial risk-sharing, mentioning euro zone bonds or bills, or a debt redemption fund as possible options.

Merkel told a news conference it was not the time to debate an increase in the euro zone's bailout funds.

"I don't think it is right to do one new thing then do another, let's get the ESM working," Merkel said, reiterating that Germany was prepared to accelerate the flow of capital into the ESM ahead of its planned introduction in mid-2012.

Euro zone leaders agreed in October that the second bailout would total 130 billion euros, if private bondholders forgave half of what Greece owes them in nominal terms.

But Greek economic prospects have deteriorated since then, which means either euro zone governments or investors will have to contribute more than thought.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Brown and Alexandra Hudson in Berlin, Leigh Thomas in Paris, Lefteris Papadimas and Ingrid Melander in Athens; Writing by Noah Barkin and Luke Baker, editing by Mike Peacock/Jeremy Gaunt/Rex Merrifield)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/bs_nm/us_eurozone_ministers

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Tears, joy as woman sets Antarctic crossing record

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) ? British adventurer Felicity Aston became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica on Monday, hauling two sledges around crevasses and over mountains into endless headwinds, pushing onward and onward for 59 days in near-total solitude.

She made it to her destination ahead of schedule, using nothing but her own strength to cover 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from her starting point on the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25 to Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf.

The most surprising thing about her journey, she said, was how emotional it proved to be, from the moment she was dropped off alone, through every victory and defeat along the way.

"I'm not a particularly weepy person, and yet anyone who has been following my tweets can see me bursting into tears," she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday while waiting for a plane to pick her up.

"When I saw the coastal mountains that marked my end point for the first time, I literally just stopped in my tracks and bawled my eyes out," she added. "All these days I thought there was no chance I was going to make it in time to make that last flight off Antarctica, and yet here I am with three days to spare."

Aston also set another record: the first human to ski solo, across Antarctica, using only her own muscles. A male-female team earlier skied across Antarctica without kites or machines, but Aston is the first to do this alone.

Aston, 34, grew up in Kent, England, and studied physics and meteorology. A veteran of expeditions in subzero environments, she worked for the British weather service at a base in Antarctica and has led teams on ski trips in the Antarctic, the Arctic and Greenland.

But this was the first time she traveled so far, so alone, and she said the solitude posed her biggest challenge. In such an extreme environment, the smallest mistakes can prove treacherous. Alone with one's thoughts, the mind can play tricks. Polar adventurers usually take care to watch their teammates for signs of hypothermia, which is easier to diagnose in others than yourself, she said.

She thought she was done for when her two butane lighters failed high in the Transantarctic Mountains, where it got "really very cold."

"Suddenly I realized that without a lighter working, I can't light my stove, I can't melt snow to make water, and I won't have any water to drink, and that becomes a very serious problem," she said. "It's quite stressful. It was just a matter of every single day, looking at my kit, and thinking what could go wrong here and what can I do to prevent it?"

She did have a small box of safety matches, and counted and re-counted every one until the lighters started working again at lower altitude, she said.

This Antarctic summer has seen the centennial of Roald Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole, where Britons still lament that R.F. Scott's team arrived for England days later, demoralized to see Norway's flag. Scott and his entire team then died on their way out, and some of their bodies weren't found for eight months.

Aston had modern technology in her favor: She kept family and supporters updated and received their responses via Twitter and Facebook, and broadcast daily phone reports online. She carried two satellite phones to communicate with a support team, and a GPS device that reported her location throughout. She also had two supply drops ? one at the pole and one partway to her finish line ? so that she could travel with a lighter load. Otherwise, her feat was unassisted.

While others have traveled farther using kites, sails, machinery or dogs (now banned for fear of infecting wildlife with canine diseases), she did it on her own strength.

She had to fight near-constant headwinds across the vast central plateau to the South Pole. Then she turned toward Hercules Inlet, pushing through thick, fresh snow, until she reached her goal, a spot within a small plane's reach of a base camp on Union Glacier where the Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions company provides logistical support to each summer's expeditions.

With skies clearing Monday, Aston tweeted that she's been promised red wine and a hot shower after she gets picked up. "A very long, very hot shower," she emphasized. "It's something I haven't had in quite a long time now!"

From there, she'll join dozens of other Antarctic adventurers on the last flight out, a huge Russian cargo plane that will take her to Chile. Then she will fly home next week to Kent, in southeast England.

There, after two months of little but freeze-dried food, she can look forward to chicken pie, her mother said.

"I think there will be lots of cuddles, lots of hugs, it will be quite emotional," said Jackie Aston, 61.

Felicity Aston, pondering her last hours of solitude Monday, told the AP she felt both joy and overwhelming sadness at finishing.

"I'm still reeling from the shock of it that I've made it this far. I honestly didn't think I'd be getting here," she said.

What remains, she hopes, will be a message about perseverance.

"If you can just find a way to keep going, either metaphorically or literally, whether you're running a marathon or facing financial problems or have bad news to deliver or it's tough at work or whatever, if you can just find a way to keep going, then you will discover that you have potential within yourself that you never never realized," she said.

"Keeping going is the important thing, persevering, no matter how messy that gets. I mean, for me, sometimes I'll be sitting in my tent in the morning bawling my eyes out, having tantrums. It's not been pretty. But I've kept going, and that is the important thing because at some point in the future you'll look back and just be amazed at how far you've come."

___

Associated Press writers Ed Donahue in Washington, D.C., and Meera Selva in London contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Aston's expedition site: www.kasperskyonetransantarcticexpedition.com

Aston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/felicity(underscore)aston

Aston on ipadio: http://www.ipadio.com/broadcasts/TransantarcticExpedition/2012/1/22/Transantarctic-Expedition--63rd-phonecast

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-23-AA-Antarctica-Solo-Crossing/id-48a42c246fed4ff2a3d28f9ebb3d4103

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Monday, January 23, 2012

Gantos' 'Dead End in Norvelt' wins Newbery Medal

(AP) ? This year's winners of the top prizes in children's literature were honored for stories of resilience over the most everyday troubles: a boy grounded by his parents, a dog that loses its favorite toy.

Jack Gantos' "Dead End in Norvelt" won the John Newbery Medal for the best children's book of 2011, and Chris Raschka's "A Ball for Daisy" won the Randolph Caldecott award for best illustration. The prizes were announced Monday by the American Library Association during its midwinter meeting in Dallas.

No cash prizes are given, but the awards are watched closely by booksellers and librarians and often lead to increased sales and a lasting place on a school or store bookshelf. Previous winners include such favorites as Louis Sachar's "Holes" and Brian Selznick's "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," the basis for Martin Scorsese's film "Hugo."

Within hours of the prizes' announcement, "Dead End in Norvelt" and "A Ball for Daisy" were both in the top 50 on Amazon.com and both out of stock.

Gantos and Raschla are well established in children's publishing. Gantos, 60, has been a finalist for the Newbery and the National Book Award. Raschka, 52, won the Caldecott in 2006 for "The Hello, Goodbye Window."

Gantos' novel follows the humorous adventures of a boy named Jack Gantos, grounded "for life" by his parents and prone to the most gushing nosebleeds. But he is restored by the stories he learns about his hometown, Norvelt, a planned community in Pennsylvania founded during the Great Depression.

The author is more than a little like the Jack Gantos of his book. He spent part of his childhood in Norvelt and shares his character's sensitive nose. Gantos said he thought of "Dead End" after giving a eulogy for his aunt that looked back on Norvelt's special past.

"I talked about the spirit of people helping people, and how people really banded together," Gantos said during a telephone interview from his home in Boston. "And at the end of my eulogy, a lot of people came up to me and said they didn't know about the history of Norvelt. I love history, and I love humor, so I thought history could use a little humor."

Raschka's wordless picture book, told through watercolor, ink and gouache, recounts the saga of a white and gray terrier whose beloved red ball is stolen by a bigger, brown poodle. The ball bursts and Daisy's spirit seems to break with it, until the poodle returns with a blue ball that leaves the pets and their owners equally content.

Raschka said "Daisy" was inspired by his son, who at age 4 was devastated when his yellow ball broke during a scrape with a neighbor. The author said he began thinking of "those first feelings of losing something beloved" and knowing you can't get it back. For the story, he changed the main character from a boy to a dog.

"When you're a picture book illustrator, your readers are often 3 or 4 years old, and you don't want the drawing to be upsetting in itself," Raschka said during a phone interview from the offices of Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Inc. "By having an animal, there's some distance, and yet there is still a connection."

Other winners were announced Monday, including John Corey Whaley's "Where Things Come Back," which received the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult literature; and Kadir Nelson's "Heart and Soul," winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award for best African-American story. The King prize for best illustrated book was given to Shane W. Evans' "Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom."

Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones," winner last fall of the National Book Award for fiction, was among 10 recipients of the Alex Award for adult books that appeal to teens. Others cited included Erin Morgenstern's acclaimed debut "The Night Circus" and David Levithan's "The Lover's Dictionary." Bill Wright's "Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy" received the Stonewall award for "exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience."

The Pura Belpre award for best Latino author went to Guadalupe Garcia McCall for "Under the Mesquite," while the Belpre illustration prize was given to Duncan Tonatiuh for "Diego Rivera: His World and Ours." Translator Laura Wilkerson's work on Bibi Dumon Tak's "Soldier Bear," originally published in Dutch in 2008, won her the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for best book translated from a foreign language.

Susan Cooper, known for her fantasy series "The Dark is Rising," won the Margaret A. Edwards award for lifetime achievement in young adult literature.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-23-Books-Newbery-Caldecott/id-778466cfae404bfeb0014ae40e7e04c1

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92% Arthur Christmas

Arthur Christmas is a beautiful and fun Christmas movie that is sure to be a holiday classic. The story follows Arthur who is the son of Santa Clause, his brother Steve is a smart but at times inconsiderate role model who is second in command to Santa, and when a little girl has a gift that did not get sent Arthur does everything he can to make sure this girl has a Merry Christmas. The plot of the movie is funny and a great lesson to be told about Christmas and children, and what i learned from this movie if anything is that every child needs to believe in Santa, because there is nothing better than believeing that there is somebody who loves you that whill bring you a present on Christmas day, and the characters of the film were good but i found the characters to be a little selfish at times besides Arthur who was a incredibly kind and good charcater and he saved the film in a way from being just a bunch of selfish men wanting to be a star. The voice cast was great, James McAvoy was perfect for the character, Hugh Laurie was also was a well done choice as Steve, Jim Broadbent was good as the voice as Santa, and Bill Nighy was also a great choice for his role, what else can I say for voice actors other than I liked them. The animation was incredible, I could really tell they worked hard to make a beautiful Christmas film and it really payed off big time, I loved the beauty in this film. Arthur Christmas had some few problems that kept it from being a perfect Christmas film, but those were minor compared to the things that they got right that made it a great Christmas film and that will make it remembered for years to come.

December 30, 2011

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arthur_christmas/

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Body of UK hostage turned over to embassy in Iraq

The body of a British hostage kidnapped in Iraq in 2007 has been turned over to the U.K. Embassy in Baghdad, officials said Friday.

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Alan McMenemy was one of five men kidnapped by Shiite militants in a daytime attack outside Baghdad's Finance Ministry. McMenemy was part of a security detail guarding computer expert Peter Moore, who was released alive in 2010.

The bodies of the other bodyguards ? Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell and Alec MacLachlan ? were returned in 2009.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement Friday that his thoughts were with McMenemy's family and friends.

"They have waited so long for his return and I hope that this will allow them to find some peace after an ordeal that no family should ever have to suffer," Cameron said.

The statement did not provide any detail as to how or under what circumstances McMenemy's body was returned. He was long believed to be dead, and a second statement released on behalf of McMenemy's widow Roseleen said that his body's return "will allow us to properly grieve for him ... we will draw some comfort from the fact that we have him home at last."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46075948/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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Obama Sings Al Green (talking-points-memo)

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

First secure quantum computer is blind to its own bits

The first secure quantum computer has been made by combining entanglement, a bizarre property of tiny particles, with the power of apparent randomness.

The technique is similar to quantum cryptography, which guarantees the secrecy of a message sent from one place to another, but in this instance guarantees the privacy of data-processing. It could enable code-breakers, governments or private individuals to harness the power of a quantum server remotely without having to worry that the owner can snoop on their data or calculations.

Quantum computers exploit the ability of quantum particles to be in more than one state at the same time. This allows the computer to check many possible solutions to a problem simultaneously.

If this capability can be scaled up, it could allow quantum computers to solve problems that are beyond the power of classical computers. Nobody has yet succeeded in building a useful quantum computer, but if they do, such computers will be expensive and rare. So it is unlikely that people, or even government departments, will have their own.

Fragile qubits

Renting time on them remotely, though, presents a new problem: how to ensure that whatever the remote user is doing is hidden from the person or company who owns the computer. Enter blind quantum computation, first outlined theoretically in 2009. It combines two tricks to ensure that a computer owner can detect nothing about the data it receives, the algorithm it executes or the result it finds.

The first is entanglement, the ability to link two quantum particles no matter how far apart they are. Entanglement is hugely fragile: sneeze and it vanishes. As a result, if an eavesdropper measures any properties of an entangled qubit, his or her presence will be obvious.

However, all quantum computers already have entangled qubits, and this alone can't provide complete security. An eavesdropper could still glean some information in the process of being detected.

So blind quantum computing has an added twist. The remote user must encode the programs to be run on the computer in such a way that it looks random but in fact is not. The quantum computer still runs the program but if the computer owner intercepts the result, he or she would not be able to make sense of it. The user, of course, can decode the result that is returned by reversing the encryption process.

Doubly blind

For the first time Stefanie Barz at the University of Vienna in Austria and colleagues have demonstrated such blind quantum computing using a photon-based quantum computer.

They created strings of photons that looked random but were actually encoded versions of two programs: Deutsch's algorithm, which looks for regularities in certain mathematical functions, and Grover's algorithm, which searches an unsorted database.

They beamed these strings at the quantum computer. It ran the algorithms but because of encryption there was no way to detect it was doing this just by examining the quantum computer. Only when the results were returned could they be decoded and checked. "It's a new level of security," says Barz.

The secrecy is two-way. The technique also ensures that the user cannot know anything about the quantum computer. "You don't learn anything about their technology or how it works. It's a kind of double-blindess," says Vlatko Vedral, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the work.

This may seem like an extreme form of secrecy, but Vedral says that various government and military organisations need to guarantee the secrecy of their data and calculations on timescales of 30 to 50 years. "The only way of doing that is to use blind computing," he says.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214707

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Acer Iconia A200 now available at Best Buy for $349

A200

As if deciding on an Android tablet wasn't hard enough now yet another one is available to make things harder. The Acer Iconia A200 is now available from Best Buy, both online and in stores, for $349. The A200 is a Honeycomb-based tablet, but all signs point to a mid-Febuary ICS update -- and there's a giant sticker on the box saying that an upgrade is coming. So, will this be your next tablet? Be sure to stay tuned as we review this bad boy!

Source: Best Buy; thanks to everyone who sent this in!



Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/cFwtOgpNjgo/story01.htm

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Friday, January 20, 2012

Egypt revolutionaries seek to retake initiative (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) ? Pro-democracy activists marching through the crowded streets of Cairo last week were met with smiles and laughter from some, but also suspicion and hostility. Setting out, they had expected trouble, and maybe even violence.

Not everyone in this working class neighborhood of Imbaba liked their chants, and when they stopped outside a mosque to screen a film critical of the military council, one angry local resident forced them to move on.

It's a scene that illustrates just one of the problems facing Egypt's pro-democracy groups as they try to rally support for a campaign against military rulers they believe are standing in the way of promised change.

Though Egypt has just held its most free elections in six decades, political reforms in the country of 80 million have fallen far short of the overhaul sought by the young reformists who occupied Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, precipitating the end of Hosni Mubarak's rule.

Hardly represented at all in a new parliament dominated by Islamists, those activists now find themselves sidelined and fighting to salvage a reputation they say has been damaged by media loyal to the state, which has cast them as foreign-backed troublemakers.

"We must present the revolution's real message because the official media is delivering misinformation," said Omar Almasry, a blogger who took part in the march.

"People power made the revolution a success. Now we are missing it," said Almasry, an independent liberal, who left his camera at home in anticipation of trouble.

Watching the procession from a bus stop, Mohammed Hussein expressed the skepticism felt by those Egyptians who are more concerned with making a living than further upheaval.

"They want revolution, revolution, revolution. But then what?" said the 42-year-old school teacher. "There must be someone behind them."

The sentiment reflects the challenge facing the groups which set off the anti-Mubarak uprising a year ago as they try to bring people back into the street.

"The youth movement has a long way to go in reclaiming the revolution," said political analyst Mohamed Soffar.

RECLAIMING THE REVOLUTION

While many Egyptians have tired of endless protests, refocused their attention on their livelihoods and left the military council to its business, among the activists, distrust of the generals has only grown with time.

They doubt the armed forces will meet its promise to fully hand power to civilian rule by the end of June and are concerned the military rulers are trying to co-opt the revolution for their own ends.

"We went into the revolution for democracy, freedom and social justice," said Saeed Abu el-Alaa, a 28-year-old leader of the Youth Socialist Alliance, one of the groups pressing for deeper and faster reform.

"The democracy we are living is superficial and false."

Human rights group Amnesty International has faulted the generals for a "a catalogue of abuses that was in some aspects worse than under Hosni Mubarak," including violent suppression of protests and a surge in military trials.

Headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's defense minister for two decades, the military council has defended its role in the post-Mubarak Egypt, portraying itself as the guardian of the revolution.

"If there is pent-up frustration between some youth and the armed forces, then it must be eradicated," said Major General Ismail Etman, a member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, addressing the youth complaints.

The newly elected Muslim Brotherhood, which was slow to back the uprising, is cooperating with the military for now, fuelling suspicions it might agree to a power-sharing deal, although it remains publicly committed to democratic reforms.

Both the Brotherhood and the military have called for celebrations on January 25, setting them at odds with youth groups who want the day to be an occasion for mass protest.

"I call for another revolution," said Ahmed Harara, a 31-year-old who was blinded while taking part in the protests last year. "It will take four or five years at least until we get rid of this regime."

Even without the overt support of the well-organized Brotherhood, leading activists say they are better placed today than they were a year ago to bring people into the streets.

STRONGER THAN A YEAR AGO

Ahmed Maher, a founder of the prominent April 6 movement, dismisses any suggestion that the youth groups are floundering.

April 6, for example, now has 20,000 committed activists across Egypt, seven times its size when it helped launch the uprising, the bespectacled 31-year-old civil engineer said.

"Whoever talks about an end to the role of the square is deluded," said Maher, speaking at a sidestreet cafe where Cairenes meet to talk politics.

The activists say they are learning from their mistakes and are seeking to address criticism of their failure to join forces with like-minded groups and to build grassroots support.

Organisation is improving, said Sally Touma, a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition, set up last year after the uprising erupted. "You have to do some self-reflection on the mistakes that were made," she said.

"We have to organize people in groups so the revolution is in every neighborhood," she said, speaking while taking part in the Imbaba protest.

Part of a campaign called "Liars," the march was one of some 300 events held since December aimed at highlighting what the activists call the military council's dishonesty.

The rally was itself the result of closer coordination between nascent political groups with the same aims.

The night before, representatives of five groups gathered in a cramped office for the third time in a month. Packed into a smoky room, the attendees voted on "The Revolution Continues Movement" as a new umbrella name for their alliance.

"There's no need for each group to work on its own," said Abu el-Alaa, the socialist youth leader who was attending the meeting. "Our main aim is organization, organization, organization to preserve our existence and our revolution."

But he agreed the revolutionaries needed to urgently address their image problem to counter what he described as the "theft of the revolution."

"We are lacking popular support, despite the fact we are stronger."

(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/wl_nm/us_egypt_activists

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