Trent Reznor announces NIN will tour the U.S. this year, ending a four-year hiatus.
Trent Renzor
Photo: Karl Walter/ Getty Images
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702562/nine-inch-nails-tour.jhtml
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Slum houses and luxury apartments in Mumbai, India Courtesy of Daniel Brook
India?s tallest buildings, the missile-shaped Imperial Towers, rise up through the smoggy haze of the nation?s financial capital, Mumbai, like a shimmering vision of Oz. The most dramatic view of the towers comes from gazing at them down Falkland Road, a diagonal avenue that cuts through the heart of the island metropolis and dead ends right before the buildings. But the luxury high-rises? promotional photographs never show this view because, to Mumbaikars, Falkland Road is synonymous with prostitution and is best known for the infamous cages that display the human merchandise. On Falkland Road, rates for services begin at $1; just up the street, in Imperial Towers, the penthouses go for $20 million. The economic vertigo is even more intense than the actual vertigo one gets staring down at Falkland Road from the penthouse balcony.
Mumbai has long been famous for the cheek-by-jowl existence of some of the world?s richest and poorest people. In the decades since India?s independence, impoverished squatters have been filling in any unused space in the megacity, and courts and politicians have generally protected their right to stay. But in the last decade, a new generation of luxury developments has been built atop transformed slums like the shantytown that once sat on the site where Imperial Towers now rises. They are the products of a land policy reform that allows real estate developers to build market-rate projects atop former slums provided they rehouse the slum dwellers on site; though it is easy to miss, next to the tall, flamboyant Imperial Towers sits a cluster of midrise slabs. The results are often surreal, but Mumbai?s slum redevelopment program may have repercussions far beyond India. The city is providing a real-world test of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto?s theory that the best way to fight poverty in the developing world is to give slum dwellers legal title to their property. But not everyone sees it as a solution to the multifaceted problem of developing world poverty.
The Mumbai slum redevelopment policy is the brainchild of local starchitect Hafeez Contractor, who is not coincidentally the designer of Imperial Towers. ?I used to always say something should be done about the slums. And I always used to say that the best way of [dealing with] slums was that you give them free houses, keep the land, and build on it and make money,? Contractor told me when we met in his office near the Mumbai stock exchange. ?When I first told them in 1982 ? everybody said I am crazy. Today, they are implementing it.?
In 1995, with the backing of the populist local power broker, Balasaheb Thackeray, Contractor?s plan was approved. ?Whatever you might say, Balasaheb had balls of steel,? Contractor said of the controversial figure, an open admirer of Hitler, who died last year. ?All credit should be given to him.?
With the policy framework in place, as the Mumbai economy has boomed in the new century, the slum-dotted landscape has been transformed. Increasingly, slums in prime locations, like the one near the Mumbai international airport chronicled in Katherine Boo?s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, have become the site of negotiations between residents and developers. The law specifies that if 70 percent of a slum?s residents approve, the land can be redeveloped in exchange for each family being given an on-site apartment of 270 square feet. (Rumors that developers trade cash bribes for votes are rampant in the city.)
When I visited the Imperial Towers site with a group of U.K.-based architects, a family of four welcomed us into their tiny two-room apartment?one room for sitting and sleeping and the other, a kitchen-cum-bathroom, for everything else. The mustachioed man of the house, who wore a white undershirt that clung to his burgeoning potbelly, showed the place off with pride, though each room was not much bigger than the parking spaces in the multistory lot reserved for the millionaires next door.
The architects were less impressed. The group was universally shocked that these filthy buildings, with their dark and dirty hallways and water stains beneath the windows from drying laundry, had been built so recently. In both style and upkeep, they resembled the crumbling 50-year-old slabs that ring former East Bloc cities like Bucharest, Romania, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. In theory, one of the benefits of legalizing and formalizing the slum is to get slum dwellers to pay for the electricity they were formerly stealing from the city and connect them to the municipal water system. But because the policy calls for rehousing the poor without doing anything to raise their incomes, many end up unable to pay for utilities or contribute to the upkeep of the buildings through residents? association dues. And the authorities lack leverage to get residents to pay their dues even when they can; this is a system that couldn?t evict the tenants when they were brazen squatters.
Rehousing apartments and luxury high-rises in MumbaiCourtesy of Daniel Brook
As we toured the lone snippet of shantytown that had yet to be transformed into rehousing slabs, one architect noted that for all the poverty of its conditions, with only makeshift electricity connections and no running water, the village-like settlement that clung to the hillside reflected the organic urbanism humans built for centuries before being upended by the high modernist dream of housing people more ?efficiently? in boxes. As I chatted with him, careful to avoid stepping into the development?s open sewer, this sounded like a sentimentalization of poverty. But when I later spoke with Mumbai urbanist and author Naresh Fernandes, he noted, ?We?re just beginning to stack up the poor in high-rises while Chicago?s just demolished all of its high-rise projects.?
As for de Soto?s larger theory about the benefits of giving the poor title to the land on which they?ve previously squatted, the test results have yet to come back, as the slum redevelopment regulations don?t permit rehoused slum dwellers to sell their apartments until they?ve lived in them for 10 years. At that point, residents will face a choice of whether to part with their centrally located apartment and purchase a larger one farther from the center of the city or perhaps use the apartment as collateral to take out a small business loan. Even if the program ultimately vindicates de Soto, there is a limited universe of cities in India or elsewhere in the developing world where such projects could be built. The program is predicated upon the fact that Mumbai is a global financial and entertainment hub built on an island where, for all its poverty and problems, the land is worth billions. For the numbers to add up, the high-end developments need to be high-end enough to pay for the low-end rehousing apartments. This approach wouldn?t work in second-tier Indian cities like Nagpur or in cities in less economically dynamic developing countries like, say, Managua, Nicaragua.
At the Atria Mall, a slum redevelopment where the developer has opted to build upscale retail, twin dealerships for Rolls Royce sedans and Ducati motorbikes greet entering shoppers. Inside, stores for global brands including Swatch and Samsonite share air-conditioned space with local boutiques, among them a jewelry shop called Bling. Behind the building, a high wall plastered with billboards for upscale watches and other luxury goods obscures the telltale water-stained high-rises. I slipped through a gateway to find piles of garbage swarming with flies and lying against the backside of the wall; despite the city?s far-reaching slum redevelopment policy, it has yet to build a comprehensive sanitation system. The sewage stench called into question the quality of the municipal wastewater system to which the city aspires to connect its reconstituted slums.
Does the slum redevelopment program actually solve the city?s problems, or does it just hide them behind walls plastered with ads for luxury goods? When I told one of the city?s leading urbanists that I was heading to the Atria Mall, which she knew well from shopping, she looked puzzled. ?Atria?s a slum redevelopment? I had no idea.?
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=45c56f4a1e32172ddb27d4eeb92439c9
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LOS ANGELES ? Some dressed down in jeans and hoodies. Others looked camera-ready in suits or chic dresses and spiky stilettos.
But all of the stars who rehearsed Saturday for the 85th Academy Awards seemed excited about being a part of the big show.
They paraded through the Dolby Theatre in 15-minute increments: Meryl Streep. Ben Affleck. Reese Witherspoon. Richard Gere. Jennifer Aniston. John Travolta. Nicole Kidman. Jack Nicholson. And dozens more.
Each practiced their lines in front of an audience of show workers and awarded prop Oscars to rehearsal actors. They also scanned the theater from the stage, searching for their show-night seats.
"Oh, wow. That's a very dramatic picture of me," best-actress nominee Jessica Chastain said after spotting her seat-saving placard. "I'm looking at everyone's headshots. It's kind of incredible."
Affleck confessed his excitement from the stage as he looked out at all the famous faces expected Sunday.
"This is like the most memorable aspect of the Oscars," the "Argo" director said. "You see all these place cards (at rehearsal), then you come back and they're all here!"
Affleck also chatted backstage with the college students who won a contest to serve as trophy carriers during the ceremony.
"I love that," he said. "It's super cool."
Travolta also took time with the students.
"I was there when that idea was born and I said it was the best idea they could possibly come up with," he told the aspiring filmmakers backstage. "And here you are!"
Travolta plans to bring his 13-year-old daughter, Ella Bleu, to the ceremony.
Kidman made rehearsals a family affair. Husband Keith Urban and their eldest daughter, Sunday, watched from the audience as Kidman ran through her lines.
She looked impeccable in a wine-colored dress and tall, metallic shoes, but other stars were decidedly more casual. Kristen Stewart arrived in jeans, sneakers and a backward ballcap. (She also limped on an injured right foot.) Renee Zellweger also opted for comfort in jeans and running shoes.
The cast of "Chicago," including Gere, Zellweger, Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta-Jones, injected their rehearsal with silliness. Latifah purposely over-enunciated her lines, and when a pair of rehearsal actors claimed an Oscar onstage and gave an acceptance speech, Zeta-Jones started to play them off with an imaginary violin.
"Get outta here!" Gere said with a smile.
Octavia Spencer, who won the supporting actress Oscar last year for her performance in "The Help," also had a little fun.
"I'm going to do a soft-shoe," she said, shuffling off stage.
Streep and Jane Fonda were each wowed by the set design. Fonda snapped a photo of it with her iPhone, and Streep marveled at how far the walk to the microphone was.
"All the way to here?!" she asked. "Oh my God."
Halle Berry literally stumbled during her first rehearsal, her pointy heel catching on part of the stage. She insisted on trying again.
"Woo hoo," she said. "Made it."
___
AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: . www.twitter.com/APSandy
___
Online:
www.oscars.org
Jane Fonda even took a picture of the stage with her iPhone.
The Academy Awards will be presented Sunday and broadcast live on ABC.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/24/oscar-preparations-movie-stars-hollywood_n_2753063.html
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News10 has lots of fun in store for you as you get ready for the Academy Awards and our post show, which airs immediately after the live awards broadcast on Feb 24.
CLICK here to find out how to create and share your own award acceptance speech!
It's free and easy to do with your iPhone and iPad.
Check it out!
~~~~~
Follow along with?all the?Academy Award?action on Twitter by using #News10Oscars.
To News10's?Oscars page
Source: http://eldoradohills.news10.net/news/fun/111094-news10-award-winning-iphone-and-ipad-fun
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DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (AP) ? The Roman Catholic church in Philadelphia doesn't need another public relations headache after years of priest-abuse and school-closure headlines, but it's got one in the form of a pony-tailed 11-year-old athlete.
Sixth-grader Caroline Pla is fighting the archdiocese for the right to keep playing church-sponsored youth football.
The soft-spoken twin has been battling boys on the gridiron since she was 5. She's played the last two seasons in a Catholic Youth Organization league, where the 5-foot-3, 110-pound offensive tackle and defensive end made the all-star team.
But the archdiocese may put the kibosh on her Catholic youth league career. While at least a few U.S. dioceses let girls play football, and about 1,600 girls play on U.S. high school teams, the Philadelphia league is open only to boys.
"First they said it was a boys sport. Then they said it was a safety issue. Then they said it was inappropriate touching. I think they are just constantly looking for excuses to not change it," Caroline said Thursday at her home in Buckingham Township, Bucks County.
She first played in a public Pop Warner league, then moved along with her teammates to the Catholic Youth Organization league in fifth grade. After one season without a hitch, she learned last fall that an overlooked boys-only rule would be enforced. The archdiocese, though, agreed to let her finish the season.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is now reviewing the ban, with a decision expected next month after a panel of coaches, parents and doctors weigh in.
"Traditionally, football is a boys-only sport due to its full contact nature," the church said in a statement. "Most parents and players have preferred this; some now disagree."
Caroline sent Chaput an email in January, explaining that her Catholic youth league team had been the best chapter in her burgeoning, three-season sports career.
By then, she and her parents, George and Marycecelia Pla, had taken to the airwaves to lobby for a rule change. An online petition has attracted more than 100,000 signatures, and Caroline recently appeared on Ellen DeGeneris' show as well as newscasts.
"I'm perplexed that you would contact me last, after publicizing your situation in both the national and regional media," Chaput wrote in a January email shared by the family. "That kind of approach has no effect on my decision-making. CYO rules exist for good reason."
The Women's Sports Foundation believes there are instead good reasons to reverse the rule ? and not just for the sake of girls.
"What the diocese is missing is all the wonderful things that come out of co-ed sports. The mutual respect that lasts a lifetime between girls and boys," said lawyer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist in swimming who now is senior director of advocacy for the Women's Sports Foundation.
From a safety perspective, pre-pubescent girls and boys are often the same size. And legally, private or religious groups that receive any type of federal funding ? through low-income lunch programs or other aid ? must abide by Title IX, the 1972 law that guarantees girls equal access to sports, she said. There are exceptions for contact sports, but they cannot be invoked once girls have been allowed to play in a program, she said.
Hogshead-Makar advises colleges to make sports activities co-ed whenever possible ? in the weight room, on the team bus, on the court. She believes the mutual contact fosters respect and reduces rates of violence against women.
No matter how Chaput rules, Caroline could still play football next season for Pop Warner or her school team. And she has no plans to play in high school because she doesn't think she'll be big enough to play her position at that level.
Her brother plays on the high school freshman team, while her twin sister and an older sister have been cheerleaders.
"Right now, I'm one of the biggest because I've hit my growth spurt and a lot of them haven't," said Caroline, who scored her first touchdown this past season on a 15-yard run. "It's just really fun."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pa-girl-defends-her-catholic-football-league-play-072042580.html
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Video: Researchers develop protein 'passport' that help nanoparticles get past immune system
Friday, February 22, 2013The body's immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and Penn's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics have figured out a way to provide a "passport" for such therapeutic devices, enabling them to get past the body's security system.
The research was conducted by professor Dennis Discher, graduate students Pia Rodriguez, Takamasa Harada, David Christian and Richard K. Tsai and postdoctoral fellow Diego Pantano of the Molecular and Cell Biophysics Lab in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Penn.
It was published in the journal Science.
"From your body's perspective," Rodriguez said, "an arrowhead a thousand years ago and a pacemaker today are treated the same ? as a foreign invader.
"We'd really like things like pacemakers, sutures and drug-delivery vehicles to not cause an inflammatory response from the innate immune system."
The innate immune system attacks foreign bodies in a general way. Unlike the learned response of the adaptive immune system, which includes the targeted antibodies that are formed after a vaccination, the innate immune system tries to destroy everything it doesn't recognize as being part of the body.
This response has many cellular components, including macrophages ? literally "big eaters" ? that find, engulf and destroy invaders. Proteins in blood serum work in tandem with macrophages; they adhere to objects in the blood stream and draw macrophages' attention. If the macrophage determines these proteins are stuck to a foreign invader, they will eat it or signal other macrophages to form a barrier around it.
Drug-delivery nanoparticles naturally trigger this response, so researchers' earlier attempts to circumvent it involved coating the particles with polymer "brushes." These brushes stick out from the nanoparticle and attempt to physically block various blood serum proteins from sticking to its surface.
However, these brushes only slow down the macrophage-signaling proteins, so Discher and colleagues tried a different approach: Convincing the macrophages that the nanoparticles were part of the body and shouldn't be cleared.
In 2008, Discher's group showed that the human protein CD47, found on almost all mammalian cell membranes, binds to a macrophage receptor known as SIRPa in humans. Like a patrolling border guard inspecting a passport, if a macrophage's SIRPa binds to a cell's CD47, it tells the macrophage that the cell isn't an invader and should be allowed to proceed on.
Penn's Dennis Discher explains how his lab designed a protein that acts a "passport" for the body's immune system. Nanoparticles equipped with this passport last longer in the bloodstream than equivalent particles without it.Credit: Kurtis Sensenig, University of Pennsylvania
Since the publication of that study, other researchers determined the combined structure of CD47 and SIRPa together. Using this information, Discher's group was able to computationally design the smallest sequence of amino acids that would act like CD47. This "minimal peptide" would have to fold and fit well enough into the receptor of SIRPa to serve as a valid passport.
After chemically synthesizing this minimal peptide, Discher's team attached it to conventional nanoparticles that could be used in a variety of experiments.
"Now, anyone can make the peptide and put it on whatever they want," Rodriguez said
The research team's experiments used a mouse model to demonstrate better imaging of tumors and as well as improved efficacy of an anti-cancer drug-delivery particle.
As this minimal peptide might one day be attached to a wide range of drug-delivery vehicles, the researchers also attached antibodies of the type that could be used in targeting cancer cells or other kinds of diseased tissue. Beyond a proof of concept for therapeutics, these antibodies also served to attract the macrophages' attention and ensure the minimal peptide's passport was being checked and approved.
"We're showing that the peptide actually does inhibit the macrophage's response," Discher said. "We force the interaction and then overwhelm it."
The test of this minimal peptide's efficacy was in mice that were genetically modified so their macophages had SIRPa receptors similar to human. The researchers injected two kinds of nanoparticles ? ones carrying the peptide passport and ones without ? and then measured how fast the mice's immune system cleared them.
"We used different fluorescent dyes on the two kinds of nanoparticles, so we could take blood samples every 10 minutes and measure how many particles of each kind were left using flow cytometry," Rodriguez said. "We injected the two particles in a 1-to-1 ratio and 20-30 minutes later, there were up to four times as many particles with the peptide left."
Even giving therapeutic nanoparticles an additional half-hour before they are eaten by macrophages could be a major boon for treatments. Such nanoparticles might need to make a few trips through the macrophage-heavy spleen and liver to find their targets, but they shouldn't stay in the body indefinitely. Other combinations of exterior proteins might be appropriate for more permanent devices, such as pacemaker leads, enabling them to hide from the immune system for longer periods of time.
While more research is necessary before such applications become a reality, reducing the peptide down to a sequence of only a few amino acids was a critical step. The relative simplicity of this passport molecule to be more easily synthesized makes it a more attractive component for future therapeutics.
"It can be made cleanly in a machine," Discher said, "and easily modified during synthesis in order to attach to all sorts of implanted and injected things, with the goal of fooling the body into accepting these things as 'self.'"
###
University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews
Thanks to University of Pennsylvania for this article.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. companies' capital spending plans are holding up, and mostly exceeding Wall Street forecasts, in the face of policy concerns created by arguments in Washington over the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and now automatic spending cuts.
Their willingness to spend on new offices, plants and machinery, as well as a pickup in deal making, shows that they are starting to dig into the massive amounts of cash that has been collecting more dust than interest on their balance sheets. That could prove a welcome counterpunch to a softer outlook for spending by consumers and government.
A Thomson Reuters analysis shows that for 2013, more Standard & Poor's 500 firms are forecasting capital expenditures that exceeded analysts' expectations than at any time in the past four years. Recent U.S. government data showed a rise in equipment and software spending in the final quarter of 2012.
If companies ratchet up spending, that could help unleash more hiring and extend the early-year rally in stocks, which tend to rise along with business spending.
"Once businesses start spending, that really means not only are they going to be buying goods, but they're going to be hiring Americans, and those things are really what's going to be the multiplier that helps to take this recovery and move it into greater expansion mode," said Burt White, managing director and chief investment officer at LPL Financial in Boston.
Not all the money will be spent on new projects, of course. And the spending plans announced so far are only slightly above last year's average. But they comfortably exceed the expectations of analysts, whose capex forecasts fell this year.
Part of the reason may have been the dire predictions about the "fiscal cliff" late last year when analysts were putting together their capex forecasts. At least some chief executives, including DuPont's
, blamed uncertainty over U.S. government budget and tax policy for a reluctance to invest and hire."A number of companies said we're planning our budget cycle on worst-possible conditions," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist, D.A. Davidson & Co. Lake Oswego, Oregon.
That companies have turned more optimistic than analysts heartens investors because it amounts to a vote of confidence in the U.S. economy, which has been hobbled by high unemployment and household debt, and now faces curbs in government spending.
Another sign of confidence is the recent flurry of merger and acquisition activity. The $173 billion in U.S. deals announced so far in 2013 is more than double the volume seen last year at this time, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.
After the financial crisis began in 2007, companies slashed expenses and jobs, and they remained diligent about keeping costs down even as the economy exited recession in mid-2009.
Federal Reserve data shows non-financial U.S. companies had $1.7 trillion of liquid assets, or cash, on their books as of the end of the third quarter of 2012.
MOVING OFF THE SIDELINES
The U.S. economy grew at a 2.2 percent clip in 2012 and is expected to slow to 1.9 percent this year as higher payroll taxes and government spending cuts take a bigger bite. Yet even with the economic outlook cloudy, things seem to be changing.
Of the S&P 500 companies that have issued capex guidance so far in 2013, 66 percent have spending plans that exceed analysts' expectations, the Thomson Reuters analysis showed. That's up from 57 percent in 2012, 59 percent in 2011, 55 percent in 2010, and 40 percent in 2009.
Those that have issued guidance are expecting to spend $1.59 billion on average in 2013. While that's only a modest increase from the 2012 average of $1.57 billion, it is above the analysts' estimates. Those estimates went down, to $1.48 billion in 2013 from $1.51 billion on average in 2012.
The 2013 data is based on 221 companies that have reported, while the 2012 average was based on guidance from 279 firms.
"I think companies are getting a little bit more urgency to actually go ahead and proceed with their plans despite some of the remaining uncertainties around the fiscal cliff," said Natalie Trunow, chief investment officer of equities at Calvert Investment Management whose firm manages about $13 billion in assets. "They have to remain competitive long term."
Some large firms, including Apple , have already announced plans to increase capex, and sectors with the highest percentage of companies exceeding capex estimates so far in 2013 include health care, consumer discretionary and energy, the Thomson Reuters data showed.
To be sure, some expenditures will go toward maintenance of existing equipment rather than new plants, said S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt.
Clearly some will also be overseas. But there has been a surge in investment in oil and gas production in the United States, and there are signs that some manufacturing is returning, thanks to the promise of a cheaper energy supply.
Apple, the biggest U.S. company by market capitalization, said it will spend $10 billion on capital improvements this year, about $2 billion more than last year. It ranked sixth in terms of capex projections for 2013.
Oil and gas producer Chevron
This spending could be crucial at a time when consumer and government spending are likely to decline. A rise in the payroll tax, higher gasoline prices and a delay in tax refunds slowed retail sales in January, a worrisome sign for the year. At the same time, a slate of across-the-board government spending cuts are set to take effect on March 1, barring a deal between the White House and Congress.
PROFIT MARGINS VULNERABLE?
Of course, big capital expenditures can take a toll on earnings. And investors have worried about the effect slower profit growth could have on the stock market, which started 2013 on a tear and briefly notched a five-year high.
Energy and other commodity areas have had big increases in capital spending over the last decade, a trend that could eventually hurt margins, said Vadim Zlotnikov, chief market strategist for AllianceBernstein in New York.
"I expect this very aggressive capital spending to create the type of cost inflation that would make it very difficult for profit margins to expand," he said.
But John Carey, portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston, said the positives tend to outweigh the negatives. "There's always a risk when companies invest, but without investment there can't be any long-term growth." (Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Steven C. Johnson, Daniel Burns, Martin Howell and Tim Dobbyn)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-companies-plan-spend-boost-economy-232636637--finance.html
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Ah, citizen journalism. It can change the world, as we know.
Clearly, Landon Donovan?s words spoken to a USC business class Wednesday are not somehow historic in the way, say, the citizen journalist?s pictures that showed Rodney King?s brutal beating were, or the vital chronicles of the Arab Spring.
But for soccer supporters, this represents the first we?ve heard from Donovan since the moments after his LA Galaxy won MLS Cup last December.
Donovan appeared in a regular University of Southern California forum called ?The Competitive Edge.?? A student identified on Twitter as Jesse Xiao went to the social media forum to alert the world that, among other things, Donovan did want to get back into the national team.
Have a nice day, Jurgen Klinsmann! That should put a little more pep in his step.
Donovan has taken time off since MLS Cup; he recently announced through the Galaxy a return to the MLS club set for late March.
(MORE: Landon Donovan sets return for late next month)
While the quotes attributed to Donovan have yet to be corroborated, the U.S. national team and LA Galaxy all-time leading scorer has ample ability through either organization to disclaim the words attributed to him. Presumably, he would have by now if any were less than accurate.
Among what Xiao tweeted:
(MORE: Jurgen Klinsmann talks about Landon Donovan?s career midlife crisis)?
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Feb. 20, 2013 ? In reef-building corals variations within genes involved in immunity and response to stress correlate to water temperature and clarity, finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genetics. This information could be used to conserve or rebuild reefs in areas affected by climate change, by changes in extreme weather patterns, increasing sedimentation or altered land use.
A research team led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and in collaboration with Penn State University and the Aix-Marseille University, studied DNA variations (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, SNPs) across populations of reef corals found at a range of temperatures and water clarity along the Great Barrier Reef.
SNPs which correlated to water clarity and water temperature preferred by cauliflower coral were found in genes involved in providing immune response, and regulating stress-induced cell-death. This means that coral with a specific version of these genes tended to grow at higher temperatures (or water clarity) and another variant at lower. A similar story was found for staghorn coral -- SNP in genes involved in detoxification, immune response, and defense against reactive oxygen damage, were found to be associated with temperature or to water clarity.
Dr Petra Lundgren, from The Australian Institute of Marine Science, explained, "Corals are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Not only is the temperature of the water they live in affected but extreme weather and higher rainfall leads to increased levels of sediment, agricultural runoff, and fresh water on the reef. This work opens up possibilities for us to enhance reef resilience and recovery from impacts of climate change and pollution. For example, if in the future we need to restore coral populations, we can make sure that we use the most robust strains of corals to do so."
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Images of what could potentially be the casing for Apple's iPad mini follow-up have leaked online.
The photos come courtesy of the Chinese Weiphone forum, showing a silver rear casing for an iPad mini.
Most immediately noticeable on the casing is that the Apple logo and text is a sky blue color, rather than the typical black.
After you get over the color distraction, the more important point is a more subtle difference from the current mini, in that the casing appears to indicate a thicker device that the existing model.
The iPad gained a little extra girth when Apple upgraded it to a Retina display, so a thicker casing in these alleged iPad mini 2 shots seem to point to some Retina presence in this model.
Retina rumors are nothing new for Apple's next iPad mini, with reports earlier in February suggesting that the higher resolution displays are already in production.
The iPad mini 2's retina display is said to have a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, with a ppi of 324, doubling the current iPad mini's 1024 x 798 screen and packing more pixels than the iPad 4's 264 ppi.
The blue logo and text is a newer, if purely cosmetic, change for the device. It is difficult to read too much into it though, since it could just as easily be an unfinished factory sample as it could be a bold new selection of colors for the next iPad mini line.
As always, these rumors and leaks shouldn't be taken completely at face value. The thicker casing, for example, is based on eyeballing the images rather than an exact measurement.
That said, the leaked photos line up with everything that has been heard about the iPad mini 2 so far, and with production apparently well underway we could hear an official announcement sooner rather than later.
Via AppleInsider
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Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp pose for a picture in Johannesburg, Feb. 7, 2013. (THEMBANI MAKHUBELE/Reuters)
Reeva Steenkamp is seen in this undated handout picture released by Capacity Relations on Feb. 14, 2013. South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged Thursday with shooting Steenkamp dead at his home home in Pretoria. (Reuters/Capacity Relations/Handout)
Reeva Steenkamp is seen in this undated handout picture released by Capacity Relations on Feb. 14, 2013. South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged Thursday with shooting Steenkamp dead at his home home in Pretoria. (Reuters/Capacity Relations/Handout)
South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius (right) is escorted by police at a Pretoria police station, Feb. 14, 2013. Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria. (Reuters/Stringer)
South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius (right) is escorted by police at a Pretoria police station, Feb. 14, 2013. Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his home in Pretoria. (Reuters/Stringer)
Police crime scene tape marks off the Pretoria home of South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, Feb. 14, 2013. Pistorius will appear in court Friday after being charged with murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (ANDREA ETTWEIN/Reuters)
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Oscar Pistorius apologized. He arrived late after the best of his Olympic moments, soaking everything in, leaning up against a fence beneath the stands of the great London stadium, with an explanation most reporters had never heard before.
?Sorry,? he said, his eyes surveying this once-in-a-lifetime scene. ?I had to change my legs.?
We laughed. We smiled. We - and the rest of the world - soaked it all in. ?He is magic,? my friend Christie Blatchford wrote for the National Post. ?Lit from within.? And at an Olympic Games so full of remarkable, so full of wonder, the story of the Blade Runner from South Africa competing on carbon-fibre legs, became the inspirational focal point of the Summer Games.
He stood and talked about his life, his journey, his apparent handicap, his immense goals, for as long as anyone would talk back to him. He didn?t want the moment to end. He wanted to keep talking, keep smiling, keep telling his tale.
He was a Lance Armstrong kind of hero, with a gentler exterior, a self-deprecating sense of humor, an engaging personality, and seemingly impossible to dislike.
And now, once again, we don?t know what to think about another athlete who may not be what we thought he was. It seems lately, too often when we hope someone is what we see, what we believe him to be, we find out differently. We find out there is a wide separation between athletic performer and person, between a sporting life and what happens behind closed doors. We find out how little we really know about anyone.
We may find out that Oscar Pistorius, hero in London, is a murderer.
Just like we found that O.J. Simpson was a murderer. And Lance Armstrong was a liar and a bully and cheat. And Tiger Woods had no soul or no conscience. And on and on it goes. From sport to sport, athlete to athlete: You don?t fall in love with the person, you fall in love with what he is doing, with the story, with his pursuit.
In recent times, Nike had used Armstrong, Tiger, Joe Paterno as celebrities to sell product. And also it employed Pistorius, with a slogan about him being a bullet. It hasn?t been the best of times for Nike, but moreso for those it chose to celebrate.
The story broke out of South Africa late Wednesday night. That Reeva Steenkamp, Pistorius? girlfriend, had been shot dead at Oscar?s home. Apparently shot four times. The original story, without police attribution, indicated Pistorius believed he was being burglarized and responded with gunfire.
The police have since distanced themselves from that theory, which was never theirs. Spokeperson Brigadier Denise Beukes said there was no truth to the burglary story at all. And before she made her public statements, Oscar Pistorius had been charged with murder in the death of the woman police would not identify until first of kin had identified the body.
The women being the model, Steenkamp, described Thursday as ?an angel on earth.? as Pistorius? longtime girlfriend.
All police would confirm is that there had been a shooting at Pistorius? house, that there were only two people home at the time and one was dead, the other arraigned. Pistorius covered his head with a hoodie as he was led out of his home by police.
Beukes also indicated that there had been previous stops at the Pistorius home for matters of domestic violence. She also said police would oppose any bail for former national hero.
This is mid-February, just six months since Pistorius celebrated the greatest days of his life. The only guns heard at the Olympic Stadium were those that started races, like Pistorius? runs in the 400 metres, the first disabled athlete racing alongside able bodied men before he would later win gold in the Paralympics. But at the Olympics, there had never been races like this before, with both controversy and wonder and in the end, joy from Pistorius and joy from those he ran against.
?He is amazing,? Byshon Nellum, the American sprinter said. ?I?m definitely inspired by this guy...This guy is out here doing this. I think he?ll inspire a generation not to give up on their dreams.?
That was August, this is now. The inspiration will be forgotten in time. The self-described ?mind-blowing experience? of the Olympics seems so long ago, lost the way our admiration for Pistorius will now be lost.
?What?s important,? said runner Kirani James of Grenada, ?is that he?s a good person. That trumps everything else.? We thought what James thought but we found out, once again, and all too often, we never really know.
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Source: http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/02/14/oscar-pistorius-another-fallen-sports-hero
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Texas is joining 10 other states in a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the way the Dodd-Frank Act gives financial regulators authority to order the dismantling of a bank.?
Texas is joining 10 other states in a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the way the Dodd-Frank Act gives financial regulators authority to order the dismantling of a bank.
The lawsuit alleges that a section of Dodd-Frank ?empowers the (U.S.) Treasury Secretary to order the liquidation of a financial company with little or no advance warning, under cover of mandatory secrecy, and without either useful statutory guidance or meaningful legislative, executive, or judicial oversight.?
Texas? move comes at the same time seven other states declared they would join the lawsuit, which was filed last June on behalf of a small Big Spring, Texas-based community bank, State National Bank of Big Spring, and two political groups.
The suit names the U.S. Treasury, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others as defendants, and it targets Dodd-Frank?s provision that gives regulators ?new authority for the ?orderly liquidation? of financial institutions.?
?Under this law, unelected federal bureaucrats can unilaterally liquidate financial institutions in which the state invests taxpayer dollars,? Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a Feb. 13 statement. ?The State of Texas could be denied basic due process rights and taxpayers? dollars could recklessly be put at risk.?
In addition, the suit challenges Dodd-Frank?s formation of the young Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the President Barack Obama?s appointment of Richard Cordray to the role of director at the CFPB.
Collin Eaton covers banking, finance and securities.
Source: http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_austin/~3/vQEiqIXb4wA/texas-joins-dodd-frank-lawsuit.html
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Threatwatch is your early warning system for global dangers, from nuclear peril to deadly viral outbreaks. Debora MacKenzie highlights the threats to civilisation ? and suggests solutions
It was the biggest bang yet. At 0257 GMT on 12 February, a magnitude 5 tremor with its epicentre in North Korea shook a worldwide network of seismic monitors. Hours later, North Korea announced its third official underground nuclear test.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) in Vienna, which runs the monitoring network, called the seismic signal "explosion-like" and declared it twice as big as North Korea's last test in 2009. That would make this bomb between 8 and 14 kilotonnes ? approaching the 15-kilotonne bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The test brought condemnation from all major governments and the UN.
It was, however, no surprise. Satellites had detected activity at the site of North Korea's previous tests,
The CTBTO said the seismic data confirms that the location was "largely identical" to the previous tests. The similarity of the seismic signal to those suggests this was not a radically new design, such as a thermonuclear bomb, says the Institute for Science and International Security.
Blast-related disturbances in the ionosphere seen by GPS satellites are still being analysed, say researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Ohio State University in Columbus.
What can we expect now? Possibly another blast ? satellite images show two tunnels were built at the site. The UN Security Council is said to be planning another resolution tightening sanctions.
Paradoxically, though, the test might strengthen moves for the US to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Lack of US ratification is preventing the treaty coming into force. Ratification was a goal during President Barack Obama's first term, but was shelved as opponents claimed a test ban cannot be verified. North Korea's test has demonstrated, again, that it can.
And the test poses two big questions. One is North Korea's claim that the device was "a smaller and light A-bomb unlike the previous ones". This means it might be delivered on a missile, such as the Nodong, with a range of 1300 kilometres. Siegfried Hecker, former head of the US weapons lab at Los Alamos, suspects this blast tested such a lighter device. However, unlike location and yield, its weight before detonation is unverifiable.
The other question, whether North Korea has switched from a plutonium bomb to one using highly enriched uranium (HEU), might be verifiable. A switch would be bad news: North Korea stopped making plutonium in 2008 and is thought to have enough for only eight to 10 weapons, but it has its own uranium and is making HEU. It is also alleged to be collaborating with Iran, which makes HEU too. Iran insists its uranium enrichment is peaceful, so cannot test a device itself.
Which material this week's blast used will only be clear if it emits gaseous fission products. They should reach CTBTO monitoring stations in days, unless the blast fused surrounding rocks and so prevented gases from escaping, as seems to have happened in 2009.
Beyond these immediate mysteries, any long-term solution must address why North Korea feels it needs nuclear weapons at all, says Hecker. He argues that this is because it regards the US as an existential threat. Talks could calm these fears.
Yet the US insists North Korea must give up nuclear weapons before it will talk. This insistence may make renewed talks ? and thus any change of direction in North Korea ? unlikely. "We have spent most of the past twelve years not talking to North Korea," says Joe Cirincione, head of the pro-disarmament Ploughshares Fund in San Francisco. "During that time they have conducted three nuclear tests and four missile tests. When we have talked to them, they haven't conducted any tests. They shut down their facilities. That should tell you something."
Both talks without conditions, and ratifying the test ban treaty, require the US to take the initiative. North Korea's nuclear ball is now in Washington's court.
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The Republican?s biggest economic lie is that the budget deficit is, in Sen. Mitch McConnell's words,??the transcendent issue of our time,? Reich writes.?The transcendent issue is jobs and wages, he adds.
Senate Republican Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday. Reich argues that the budget deficit and cumulative debt are not, in McConnell's words, the ?transcendent issue of our time.?
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
EnlargeSenate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.)?says?Senate Republicans will unanimously support a balanced-budget amendment, to be unveiled Wednesday as the core of the GOP?s fiscal agenda.
Skip to next paragraph Robert ReichRobert is chancellor?s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. Time Magazine?named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including ?The Work of Nations,? his latest best-seller ?Aftershock: The Next Economy and America?s Future," and a new?e-book, ?Beyond Outrage.??He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
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There?s no chance of passage so why are Republicans pushing it now? ?Just because something may not pass doesn?t mean that the American people don?t expect us to stand up and be counted for the things that we believe in,? says McConnnell.
The more honest explanation is that a fight over a balanced-budget amendment could get?the GOP back on the same page ? reuniting Republican government-haters with the Party?s fiscal conservatives. And it could change the subject away from??social issues ? women?s reproductive rights, immigration, gay marriage ? that have split the Party and cost it many votes.
It also gives the Party something to be?for, in contrast to the upcoming fights in which its members will be voting?againstcompromises to avoid the next fiscal cliff, continue funding the government, and raising the debt ceiling.?
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) ? Kentucky freshman Nerlens Noel is out for the rest of the season with a torn ligament in his left knee.
Noel tore his ACL on Tuesday night when No. 25 Kentucky lost at Florida. An MRI on Wednesday revealed the injury.
The 6-foot-10 forward will have surgery in the two or three weeks. The projected recovery period is six to eight months.
Noel was hurt with 8 minutes left in the Wildcats' 69-52 loss to No. 7 Florida. He ran into the basket support after blocking a layup from behind. Noel landed awkwardly, dropped to the floor and started screaming while clutching his knee.
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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) ? Rain, thunderstorms and a slight risk of new tornadoes could complicate work Tuesday to clean up debris strewn across southern Mississippi by a tornado whose severe destruction left residents marveling that no one had died.
Since the tornado hit Sunday afternoon, residents in Hattiesburg and surrounding areas have been cutting up trees and branches and using tarps to stop water from pouring through gaping holes into their homes. There was an increased police presence in the city of Petal on Tuesday as volunteers hit the streets and storm victims salvaged what belongings they could.
More rain and a slight risk for damaging winds and tornadoes in the area Tuesday afternoon could bring more misery.
Alan Campbell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, said there's a 100 percent chance of rain for parts of central and south Mississippi, possibly up to 3 inches in places.
"There is a small concern of tornadoes across the southern portion of the state. It's not a huge concern like the other day, but it is a concern nonetheless," Campbell said. He also said there's also the possibility of straight-line winds of 60 miles per hour.
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jeff Rent said any storms and strong winds could be dangerous, especially because damaged trees that are still standing could be knocked down.
Rent said emergency crews hustled Tuesday morning to assess damages while there was a break in the rain. Rent said officials already know of more than 570 damaged and destroyed homes and that number is likely to increase. At least 80 people were injured in the storms.
David Dean spent Tuesday rounding up the last of the items he could salvage from his demolished home in Petal.
"It's really just kind of sinking in today. The first time in 54 years of my life I'm homeless," Dean said Tuesday. "But God is going to take care of it."
Dean and his wife were at church when the tornado hit, but his two adult daughters and a future son-in-law were in the house when it was demolished.
"As soon as I got here and found out my daughters were all right, I was happy. I said don't worry about the house," Dean said.
Dean said his family will stay with relatives and friends until they figure out what to do.
Officials said despite dozens of injuries, no one died. They said the human toll could have been much worse, but the nature of the storm allowed forecasters to give people ample warning. Furthermore, the University of Southern Mississippi ? which was in the tornado's path ? was emptier than usual because of Mardi Gras. And some businesses were either closed or quieter than normal because it was a Sunday.
The sheer scope of the damage made it difficult to do a full assessment. Some 50 roads were closed at one point because of felled trees, downed power lines and debris.
___
Associated Press photographer Rogelio Solis in Petal, Miss., contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-rain-could-complicate-miss-twister-cleanup-102407392.html
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Barclays is to axe thousands of jobs outside its investment bank as part of a streamlining of Britain's second-biggest lender under its new chief executive.
The cull, which will come alongside roughly 2,000 previously-reported cuts inside Barclays' investment bank, will underline the scale of the transformation planned by Antony Jenkins, who took on the top job five months ago.
Details of the job cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday alongside a wider review of the bank's operations.
The precise number of cuts being planned by Mr Jenkins was unclear on Monday evening, but even 7,000 job losses across the group would represent just 5% of Barclays' 140,000-strong workforce.
One insider said that the cuts would be "significant" and could reach "double-digit thousands over time", but refused to be specific.
Mr Jenkins has drawn up a series of plans aimed at rebuilding Barclays' reputation among both shareholders and customers.
His blueprint will include cutting Barclays' bonus pool to less than ?2bn and forcing senior investment bankers to hold onto their awards for longer.
The new boss will also, as Sky News revealed on Saturday, take the axe to Barclays' structured capital markets unit, which made hundreds of millions of pounds for the bank through complex tax-led transactions.
Barclays will announce its annual results for 2012 tomorrow.
Despite a ?290m fine for Libor-rigging and more than ?1bn being set aside for mis-selling products to customers, the bank is expected to report substantial profits.
Barclays declined to comment.
Source: http://news.sky.com/story/1050847
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Need a burner? I won't judge. Maybe you want to hand out a semi-bogus number to intriguing guys at nightclubs. Maybe you're just in the U.S. for a few days, visiting. Ready SIM cards from Roam Mobility feed your need for disposable mobile phone numbers with a quick and easy, grab-and-go solution that works with any unlocked handset.
Plans and Setup
Ready SIM offers seven different plans. Unlimited talk and text SIMs with no data support run $15 for 3 days, $20 for a week, $25 for two weeks, or $40 for 30 days. With data, you'll pay $25 for a week with 500MB, $35 for two weeks with 1GB, and $55 for 30 days with 2GB. Prices are competitive with other operators.
When I say grab and go, I mean it: Ready SIM doesn't require any ID, subscription, signup, email address, or other form of contact. You don't have to talk to anyone to set it up. It's completely anonymous and self-activating, as far as the law provides. And when your time is up, well, you just dispose of the card.?
Right now, Ready SIM comes only in the standard SIM size. Convertible standard/MicroSIMs will be available in March, with iPhone 5-compatible nanoSIMs coming in April.
I used Ready SIM in a range of feature phones and Android-powered smartphones. Setup was easy: Pop in the SIM, text a ZIP code to 7850, and get back a local phone number for that ZIP code. Trying two SIMs, I got a 415 number for the 94101 zip code and a 646 number for 10010. I got a text with my phone number and the SIM's expiration date, and I was on my way.
With data plans, there's one extra step: You need to create a new APN called "roam" and save it. That was easy enough to do in the networking settings of my Android phones.
There's no account management at all, and no cash balance on the SIM. All plans offer unlimited talk in the U.S., both domestic and international text, and voice mail. You can't make international calls, although you can receive them. Things get a little tricky with the data plans, as Roam doesn't give you a way to monitor your data usage. If you have an Android phone, I'd suggest immediately downloading the Onavo Count app, which keeps track of your data usage. In April, the company says it will start sending customers an SMS warning when they're down to 10 percent of their allotted data. If you run out of data, you can't add more; you just have to get another SIM.
SIMs can't be renewed, either, at least for now. Roam says that in March you'll be able to extend SIMs with top-up cards within 72 hours of their expiration time. If you like your number, you can port it out to another, longer-term provider.
Network and Phones
Ready SIM uses T-Mobile's nationwide HSPA+ 42 network. For international travelers, that can be a bit of a downer. While T-Mobile is busily converting its 3G network onto the internationally compatible 1900MHz band, most of T-Mobile's 3G network is still on the AWS band. That means in most of the country, international-spec phones will be stuck on the slower 2G EDGE system, getting Internet speeds of about 100-120kbps. If you can find a T-Mobile-compatible phone, speeds will be dramatically higher,?as much as 6-8Mbps down.
Ready SIM doesn't offer any phones itself, relying on independent dealers. One of them, Social Mobile, sells phone-and-SIM packs through readysimgo.com, but the phones are overpriced. Frankly, you're better picking up the cheapest possible GSM phone on Amazon or eBay. Decent phones with QWERTY keyboards from major manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei should start around $40.
If you're looking for inexpensive smartphones for this service, Amazon has the motherlode. Consider the $99.99 Huawei U8150, the $164.99 HTC G2 Vision, or a whole bunch of BlackBerrys, for instance. Ready SIM will also work with any T-Mobile phone.
Terms, Privacy, and Conclusions
For better or for worse, Ready SIM's privacy is bound by U.S. law. That means Roam Mobility has to keep records of every call made to or from a Ready SIM for seven years after a SIM is deactivated, and has to hand those over to law enforcement with a court order. If you buy your Ready SIM with cash over the counter, though, Roam has no idea who you are, and can't connect your call details with your identity.
Internet traffic is safer. All Ready SIM data goes through a private APN which routes traffic through a proxy server, so it looks like all Web requests are just going to the proxy server. Presumably, a court could subpoena the proxy server, but once again, if you buy your Ready SIM with cash, Roam doesn't know who you are.
Ready SIM is a unique product: a short-term SIM with a real focus on privacy. Since it's time-limited, it's best used for a specific trip, task, or project. If you're looking for longer-term GSM prepaid service, check out our roundup of the?Best Prepaid SIM Cards. The service clearly still has some growing to do?we'd like to see those MicroSIMs, as well as some way to top up data allowances. But in its focus on privacy, Ready SIM is unique.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Gzj1J-YRgVU/0,2817,2415122,00.asp
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