If a picture is typically worth a thousand words, this one is worth at least double that.
This photo, which is making the rounds on Facebook, purportedly shows 3 American soliders abroad during Easter time.
Happy Easter, indeed.
Check it out:
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/easter-bunny-soliders-photo_n_2989396.html
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My weekly webinar is a great tool for my joint venture partners to communicate with me and with each other. I?ve been using webinars for a long time now and I?m comfortable with sharing my computer screen as well as giving a spontaneous presentation, responding to questions and allowing others to respond as well.
But you may not like to take on all that responsibility at once. So, teleseminars can be a good alternative, one that new information marketers often prefer.? They are conducted on the telephone instead of a computer, although it is possible to use your computer as your phone, too.
Your Information Marketing Teleseminars Revisited
Bob Jenkins gives some good teleseminar planning ideas in his post on The Future of Ink, which is geared towards repurposing the recorded presentation. I use this idea to great advantage with webinars, too.
Jenkins says, ?You can rapidly increase your digital publishing when you reduce the time it takes for you to create and publish your content. And my favorite way to do that is starting with teleseminars. Here?s why:
You can speak faster than you can type.
Getting ideas out of your head is likely easier by speaking instead of writing.
You can take an audio recording and repurpose it to create other forms of marketing and customer content. Better still, most of the repurposing can be done by someone else ? freeing up your time to do what you do best!?
His reasons are my reasons, too. I record webinars in order to create and publish content on YouTube and on my website. As Jenkins also suggests for repurposing teleseminars, I use virtual assistants to accomplish all the tasks following my webinars.
Source: http://www.fredgleeck.com/blog/your-information-marketing-teleseminars-revisited/
The Rocketeer/Spirit: Pulp Friction
It doesn?t look like there were as many comic-related announcements on Saturday at WonderCon as there were on Friday, but the second day of the con certainly brought some gems.
? IDW and DC announced that Mark Waid (Daredevil, Insufferable) and Paul Smith (Uncanny X-Men, Leave it to Chance) are teaming up for The Rocketeer/Spirit: Pulp Friction. ?Not many writers have been lucky enough to write The Rocketeer or The Spirit,? Waid said in a press release, ?so I feel like I?ve won the lottery. This is one of the most exciting-and scariest-assignments I?ve ever undertaken. Luckily, I?ve got Paul Smith to make me look good!? The first issue of the miniseries arrives in July.
? IDW also announced the creative team for their THUNDER Agents revival. Writer Phil Hester (Godzilla, Wonder Woman) and artist Andrea Di Vito (Dungeons & Dragons) are the latest team to chronicle the adventures of the agents. Dave Sim and Jerry Ordway will provide covers.
? ?Star Trek: After Darkness? will serve as an epilogue to this summer?s big Star Trek sequel. It?ll run in issues #21-23 of IDW?s ongoing Star Trek title, written by regular series writer Mike Johnson with art from Stellar Labs.
? And finally from IDW, the publisher will release Visual Funk, an art book featuring the work of Jim Mahfood, in October, as well as a Black Dynamite miniseries that starts in September. .
? Jeff Smith announced that his next project is called T?ki Save the Humans. It?ll be a free, weekly webcomic, followed by print collections.
? Aspen Comics announced its summer event ?The Elite Saga,? which also serves as a celebration and culmination of 15 years of Fathom.
? Legendary Comics will publish Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero, a prequel to the film coming out this summer. The graphic novel will be written by the film?s writer Travis Beacham and supervised by director Guillermo del Toro. It will feature a cover by Alex Ross and interior art by Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet and Pericles Junior with inks by Steve Bird and Mark McKenna.
Tagged: Alex Ross, Andrea Di Vito, Aspen Comics, comic books, comic conventions, DC Comics, graphic novels, Guillermo del Toro, IDW Publishing, Jeff Smith, Jim Mahfood, Legendary Comics, Mark McKenna, Mark Waid, movies, Pacific Rim, Paul Smith, Pericles Junior, Phil Hester, Sean Chen, Steve Bird, the Rocketeer, The Spirit, thunder agents, Travis Beacham, T?ki Save the Humans, webcomics, WonderCon, Yvel GuichetSource: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2013/03/wondercon-13-a-round-up-of-news-from-saturday/
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Pluto and its moon Charon act like a double-planet system with wreath of other, smaller moons. NASA's New Horizons mission could help explain how those moons got there.
This photo by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the five moons in their orbits around Pluto.
Hubble Space Telescope/NASA/AP
EnlargeNew research by two astronomers has the potential to make the current NASA mission to Pluto and beyond more than just a first close-up glimpse of the distant, demoted planet. It could help scientists understand how planets form around other stars.
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The reason: While Pluto's companion, Charon, is widely considered a moon, its orbital relationship to Pluto is identical to that of stars in a binary-star system. Indeed, some astronomers hold that Charon is not a moon, but part of a binary dwarf-planet system, with Pluto as the senior partner.
With at least four other small moons orbiting beyond Charon, the Pluto system could be a unique laboratory for scientists.
"Not only could we try to understand the outer part of the solar system, we could actually have an idea of how planets form around binary stars and actually test it real life," says Scott Kenyon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who performed the analysis along with University of Utah's Benjamin Bromley.
Charon is thought to have formed from a collision between Pluto and another object, Dr. Kenyon explains. To try to determine how the smaller outer moons might have formed thereafter, the researchers used computer simulations. Did the outer moons form from the debris of the collision? Or did they take shape long afterward from the primordial disk of dust, rock, and ice that Pluto-Charon captured from its general neighborhood?
The simulations suggest that both scenarios are possible, but that each would yield moons with different compositions. NASA's New Horizons mission could help prove if either scenario is right. New Horizons is now half way to Pluto and is expected to reach the dwarf planet in 2015.
The results of the calculations by Kenyon and Dr. Bromley have been submitted for publication and have been posted on an astrophysics website in hopes that the New Horizons science team can work in observations that would test these competing ideas into the mission's science plan during the Pluto flyby.
Over the years, the known size of the Pluto system has expanded. Pluto itself was discovered in 1930 by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. It took another 48 years to pick out Charon. In 2005, astronomers discovered Nix and Hydra. And between July 2011 and July 2012, researchers detected another two moons ? P4 and P5. (A recent nonbinding poll to name the two moons suggested Vulcan and Cerberus.)
Assuming a giant impact formed Charon, the raw material for the other moons could have come from debris that formed a disk outside Charon's orbit.
For moons to form in this way, there would have needed to be enough debris, and it would have needed to be orbiting Pluto and Charon at a distance relatively undisturbed by their gravity ? so clumping could occur. "If you can't get material out past the orbit of P5 [the closest known moon to Pluto and Charon], then you're doomed," Kenyon says, because gravity from Pluto-Charon would sweep the material into those two objects.
But simulations of the impact scenario suggested that material did pass the orbit of P5 and that this scenario was the most efficient means of producing moons, Kenyon says. The collision yields more than enough debris to make moons with the masses astronomers think the system's moons have. Moreover, in the simulations, the innermost moon tends to settle into an orbit at a distance comparable to P5.?
But the approach that focuses on the primordial disk of dust and ice can also form moons, simulations found. At some point after the giant collision, the Pluto-Charon system could have drawn in a ring of dust and ice from material in the vicinity ? material that was part of the solar system's original inventory of dust, gas, and ice.
"You just gradually accumulate stuff over millions and millions of years, and that coagulates into the satellites," Kenyon says.
But simulations found that the masses of the moons formed in this scenario are at the lowest end of the range of mass estimates astronomers have calculated for the moons in the Pluto-Charon system. And those less-massive moons would appear in orbits much farther from Pluto-Charon than the existing moons.
Either way, if both scenarios start out with the same amount of mass in the debris disks, the same number of satellites will form, but their composition will be different.
If the satellites are formed from the collision debris, their composition will look much like Charon's. Charon is less dense than Pluto, consisting of a roughly 50-50 mix of ice (mostly water ice) and rock with a very icy surface. This allows it to reflect a relatively larger amount of sunlight from its surface than would a more mixed surface composition.
If the satellites formed via gradual accretion of primordial ice and rock well after a giant impact, Kenyon adds, the satellites would be darker and with a higher proportion of rock to ice.
In that way, they would look more like typical objects in the Kuiper Belt ? the broad expanse of rocky and icy objects left over from solar system's construction phase some 4.6 billion years ago. The belt's inner edge is about 2.8 billion miles from the sun, just beyond Neptune's orbit. The outer edge is thought to lie about 4.7 billion miles from the sun.
Pluto, which orbits the sun at an average distance of 3.7 billion miles, is the second largest known dwarf planet. The solar system's largest, most massive dwarf planet is Eris, which orbits the sun at an average distance of 6.3 billion miles.
Based on the simulations, New Horizons could find perhaps five to 10 more moons in the Pluto-Charon system, Kenyon says. They would be small, perhaps ranging from 1,000 feet to a mile or two across, and outside the orbit of Hydra. And there would be enough material for a tenuous disk of particles whose size are measured in inches.
New Horizons can begin its observations of the Pluto-Charon system about 70 days before its closest encounter and for some days after.
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MIAMI (AP) ? Trying to show that the economy remains a top priority, President Barack Obama promoted a plan Friday to create construction and other jobs by attracting private money to help rebuild roads, bridges and other public works projects.
Obama fleshed out the details during a visit to a Miami port that's undergoing $2 billion in upgrades paid for with government and private dollars. The quick trip was designed to show that the economy and unemployment are top priorities for a president who also is waging high-profile campaigns on immigration reform and gun control.
Obama said the unemployment rate among construction workers was the highest of any industry, despite being cut nearly in half over the past three years.
"There are few more important things we can do to create jobs right now and strengthen our economy over the long haul than rebuilding the infrastructure that powers our businesses and economy," Obama said. "As president, my top priority is to make sure we are doing everything we can to reignite the true engine of our economic growth ? and that is a rising, thriving middle class."
Among the proposals Obama called for, which require approval from Congress, are:
?$4 billion in new spending on two infrastructure programs that award loans and grants.
?Higher caps on "private activity bonds" to encourage more private spending on highways and other infrastructure projects. State and local governments use the bonds to attract investment.
?Giving foreign pension funds tax-exempt status when selling U.S. infrastructure, property or real estate assets. U.S. pension funds are generally tax exempt in those circumstances. The administration says some international pension funds cite the tax burden as a reason for not investing in American infrastructure.
?A renewed call for a $10 billion national "infrastructure bank."
Arriving at the expansive port in Miami, Obama stood inside a double-barreled, concrete-laced hole in the ground, touring a tunnel project that will connect the port to area highways. The project has received loans and grants under the programs Obama touted and is expected to open next summer.
The president made private-sector infrastructure investment a key part of the economic agenda he rolled out in his State of the Union address last month. In the speech, he also called for a "Fix-It-First" program that would spend $40 billion in taxpayer funds on urgent repairs.
Congressional approval is not a sure bet, considering that House Republicans have shown little appetite for Obama's spending proposals. In fact, the infrastructure bank is an idea Obama called for many times in the past, but it gained little traction during his first term.
Obama's focus on generating more private-sector investment underscores the tough road new spending faces on Capitol Hill, where Republican lawmakers often threaten to block new spending unless it's paid for by cutting taxes or other spending. "These are projects that are helpful to the economy and shouldn't break down on partisan lines," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
But Florida Republicans, including Gov. Rick Scott, faulted Obama for being "late to the party." Before Obama arrived in Florida, Scott argued that state taxpayers have had to pick up too much of the tab for this and other port projects because the president was slow to support them.
Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters traveling with Obama that the initiatives discussed Friday will cost $21 billion, not including the $40 billion for "Fix-It-First." Krueger said any increased spending associated with the proposals would not add to the deficit.
Krueger said details of how the programs would be paid for would be included in the budget Obama is scheduled to release on April 10.
___
AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-pitches-public-works-spending-create-jobs-185930569--finance.html
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When Charles Babbage prototyped the first computing machine in the 19th century, he imagined using mechanical gears and latches to control information. ENIAC, the first modern computer developed in the 1940s, used vacuum tubes and electricity. Today, computers use transistors made from highly engineered semiconducting materials to carry out their logical operations.
And now a team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. In a paper to be published March 28 in Science, the team details a biological transistor made from genetic material ? DNA and RNA ? in place of gears or electrons. The team calls its biological transistor the "transcriptor."
"Transcriptors are the key component behind amplifying genetic logic ? akin to the transistor and electronics," said Jerome Bonnet, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and the paper's lead author.
The creation of the transcriptor allows engineers to compute inside living cells to record, for instance, when cells have been exposed to certain external stimuli or environmental factors, or even to turn on and off cell reproduction as needed.
"Biological computers can be used to study and reprogram living systems, monitor environments and improve cellular therapeutics," said Drew Endy, PhD, assistant professor of bioengineering and the paper's senior author.
The biological computer
In electronics, a transistor controls the flow of electrons along a circuit. Similarly, in biologics, a transcriptor controls the flow of a specific protein, RNA polymerase, as it travels along a strand of DNA.
"We have repurposed a group of natural proteins, called integrases, to realize digital control over the flow of RNA polymerase along DNA, which in turn allowed us to engineer amplifying genetic logic," said Endy.
Using transcriptors, the team has created what are known in electrical engineering as logic gates that can derive true-false answers to virtually any biochemical question that might be posed within a cell.
They refer to their transcriptor-based logic gates as "Boolean Integrase Logic," or "BIL gates" for short.
Transcriptor-based gates alone do not constitute a computer, but they are the third and final component of a biological computer that could operate within individual living cells.
Despite their outward differences, all modern computers, from ENIAC to Apple, share three basic functions: storing, transmitting and performing logical operations on information.
Last year, Endy and his team made news in delivering the other two core components of a fully functional genetic computer. The first was a type of rewritable digital data storage within DNA. They also developed a mechanism for transmitting genetic information from cell to cell, a sort of biological Internet.
It all adds up to creating a computer inside a living cell.
Boole's gold
Digital logic is often referred to as "Boolean logic," after George Boole, the mathematician who proposed the system in 1854. Today, Boolean logic typically takes the form of 1s and 0s within a computer. Answer true, gate open; answer false, gate closed. Open. Closed. On. Off. 1. 0. It's that basic. But it turns out that with just these simple tools and ways of thinking you can accomplish quite a lot.
"AND" and "OR" are just two of the most basic Boolean logic gates. An "AND" gate, for instance, is "true" when both of its inputs are true ? when "a" and "b" are true. An "OR" gate, on the other hand, is true when either or both of its inputs are true.
In a biological setting, the possibilities for logic are as limitless as in electronics, Bonnet explained. "You could test whether a given cell had been exposed to any number of external stimuli ? the presence of glucose and caffeine, for instance. BIL gates would allow you to make that determination and to store that information so you could easily identify those which had been exposed and which had not," he said.
By the same token, you could tell the cell to start or stop reproducing if certain factors were present. And, by coupling BIL gates with the team's biological Internet, it is possible to communicate genetic information from cell to cell to orchestrate the behavior of a group of cells.
"The potential applications are limited only by the imagination of the researcher," said co-author Monica Ortiz, a PhD candidate in bioengineering who demonstrated autonomous cell-to-cell communication of DNA encoding various BIL gates.
Building a transcriptor
To create transcriptors and logic gates, the team used carefully calibrated combinations of enzymes ? the integrases mentioned earlier ? that control the flow of RNA polymerase along strands of DNA. If this were electronics, DNA is the wire and RNA polymerase is the electron.
"The choice of enzymes is important," Bonnet said. "We have been careful to select enzymes that function in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals, so that bio-computers can be engineered within a variety of organisms."
On the technical side, the transcriptor achieves a key similarity between the biological transistor and its semiconducting cousin: signal amplification.
With transcriptors, a very small change in the expression of an integrase can create a very large change in the expression of any two other genes.
To understand the importance of amplification, consider that the transistor was first conceived as a way to replace expensive, inefficient and unreliable vacuum tubes in the amplification of telephone signals for transcontinental phone calls. Electrical signals traveling along wires get weaker the farther they travel, but if you put an amplifier every so often along the way, you can relay the signal across a great distance. The same would hold in biological systems as signals get transmitted among a group of cells.
"It is a concept similar to transistor radios," said Pakpoom Subsoontorn, a PhD candidate in bioengineering and co-author of the study who developed theoretical models to predict the behavior of BIL gates. "Relatively weak radio waves traveling through the air can get amplified into sound."
Public-domain biotechnology
To bring the age of the biological computer to a much speedier reality, Endy and his team have contributed all of BIL gates to the public domain so that others can immediately harness and improve upon the tools.
"Most of biotechnology has not yet been imagined, let alone made true. By freely sharing important basic tools everyone can work better together," Bonnet said.
###
Stanford University Medical Center: http://med-www.stanford.edu/MedCenter/MedSchool
Thanks to Stanford University Medical Center 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/127511/Biological_transistor_enables_computing_within_living_cells
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Government health officials are launching the second round of a graphic, emotional ad campaign designed to push smokers into kicking the habit.
The $48 million campaign involves TV, radio, online, print and billboard ads. It's the second year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has spent tens of millions to get people to quit smoking. In previous years the agency relied on public service announcements.
Last year's campaign which cost a few million more triggered an increase of 200,000 calls to quit smoking lines. CDC officials believe it prompted tens of thousands of smokers to kick the habit.
___
Online:
CDC campaign: http://www.cdc.gov/tips
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By James Mackenzie and Barry Moody
ROME (Reuters) - Center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani has failed in his attempt to find a way out of Italy's political deadlock and President Giorgio Napolitano will now seek another solution, the president's palace said on Thursday.
Bersani reported back to Napolitano on Thursday night after being given a mandate almost a week ago to see if he could muster enough support to form a government after the inconclusive election in February.
Napolitano's office said Bersani, who took the largest share of the vote but failed to win a viable majority, had told him his talks with other parties had ended without resolution and the president would now assess other options "without delay".
Bersani said he had told Napolitano of "significant, positive elements of understanding" in the talks with groups including Silvio Berlusconi's center-right bloc and the populist 5-Star Movement led by ex-comic Beppe Grillo.
"I also explained the difficulties deriving from objections or conditions which I did not consider acceptable."
The failure to reach a conclusion leaves Italy still stuck in political limbo more than a month after the election with the bank crisis in Cyprus fuelling fears of financial market turmoil that could threaten the stability of the euro zone.
Officials said Napolitano would start a new round of consultations with parties on Friday, beginning with Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party in the morning and ending with Bersani's Democratic Party (PD) in the evening.
A PD spokesman said Bersani had not given up on forming a government but the PDL poured scorn on the center-left leader and said he had wasted a month in a fruitless bid that proved he did not have the numbers to govern.
Napolitano has said he opposes a snap new election to end the impasse but his options are severely limited if he is to avoid a return to the polls within months.
They include naming an outsider to head a technocrat government like that of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti or a cross-party political coalition but any government must be able to rely on a majority in parliament.
On Thursday, the main indicator of market confidence - the spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their safer German counterparts - widened to 350 basis points, some 30 points higher than the level seen before the February 24-25 election.
WALL
Bersani had expressed hopes up to the last minute that he could overcome the difficulties but appeared to have run into a wall, particularly in his overtures to Grillo, whose movement says it will not support a vote of confidence in a government led by either the center right or center left.
Bersani has in turn rebuffed demands by Berlusconi that he form a broad left-right coalition, saying the scandal-plagued media magnate was too discredited to deal with.
Mindful of the risk of instability, Napolitano had insisted Bersani obtain firm guarantees of support from the other parties for a vote of confidence in parliament before he would agree to give him a firm mandate to form a government.
Bersani had tried to win support for a list of reforms that included measures on issues like political conflict of interests and corruption that were opposed by Berlusconi and he was never able to win enough guaranteed backing.
The scale of the task now facing Napolitano was underlined by Bersani earlier this week when he said that only someone who was "insane" would want to lead a government given the problems facing Italy.
The center-left leader's struggle to reach an agreement showed how hard it will be even for any new technocrat cabinet to win support in the divided parliament, increasing the chances of a snap election.
An election can only be called after parliament elects a successor to Napolitano, whose term ends in mid-May. Constitutional rules prevent a president from dissolving parliament during the final months of his mandate.
Even this task is politically fraught because Berlusconi wants to pick the new head of state, something Bersani rejects.
Underlining the challenges for the next government, a senior Bank of Italy official and the head of Italy's statistics agency ISTAT both said the government's latest economic forecasts may still be too optimistic, even after being sharply cut last week.
Last week the government said the economy, in its longest recession for 20 years, would contract 1.3 percent this year, compared with a previous forecast of a 0.2 percent shrinkage.
However, ISTAT head Enrico Giovannini told a parliamentary committee hearing on Thursday the result may be worse than that with no recovery until the end of the year or early 2014.
(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary and Gavin Jones; editing by Barry Moody and Rosalind Russell)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italys-bersani-makes-last-ditch-appeal-government-deal-131722198.html
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WASHINGTON, D.C. ? March 27, 2013 ? (RealEstateRama) ? The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized a select group of manufacturers, retailers, public schools, hospitals, real estate companies, home builders and other organizations at the 2013 ENERGY STAR Awards for their contributions supporting energy efficiency activities during a ceremony on March 26, 2013. Of the 118 awards, 14 were presented to sponsors of the Building Technologies Office?s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) program, a nationwide program administered by the Department of Energy in conjunction with EPA. The HPwES Program helps homeowners improve the comfort and energy efficiency of their homes through a whole-house approach, focusing on how different aspects of a home can work together to increase energy efficiency. Collectively, the 14 HPwES Sponsors have made significant strides in supporting residential energy efficiency activities by overseeing local program implementation and managing the performance of participating home improvement contractors to ensure that quality standards are met. The local programs deliver energy and cost savings to homeowners, engage specially trained home improvement contractor forces, and promote initiatives to inform homeowners of the benefits of energy efficient homes.
The 2013 ENERGY STAR Awards ceremony is hosted annually by EPA and the Department of Energy to honor organizations that have made outstanding contributions to saving energy and protecting the environment through energy efficiency. HPwES Sponsors were honored in three award categories: Partner of the Year ? Sustained Excellence, Partner of the Year, and Award for Excellence. The 14 organizations recognized with this year?s Partner of the Year Awards support participating contractors that conducted thousands of energy assessments and completed nearly 40,000 home energy efficiency projects in 2012. The energy assessments and improvements help consumers to save on their utility bills and increase the comfort of their homes. HPwES Sponsors also led numerous workforce development and training activities for participating contractors contributing to a growing workforce of more skilled home improvement specialists.
This year?s HPwES awardees include:
? Arizona Public Service, Arizona
? Austin Energy, Texas
? The Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund with United Illuminating and Connecticut Light & Power, Connecticut
? Constellation Energy/Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, Maryland
? ComEd, with Illinois Home Performance, Illinois
? Dominion East Ohio, Ohio
? Entergy Texas, Texas
? Focus on Energy, Wisconsin
? FSL Home Improvements, Arizona
? Long Island Power Authority, New York
? New Hampshire CORE Utilities, New Hampshire
? New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, New York
? Public Service Company of Oklahoma, Oklahoma
? South Carolina Electric & Gas, South Carolina
There are currently 50 HPwES Sponsors nationwide, including utilities, states, municipalities, non-profit-organizations and financial institutions that promote energy efficient and renewable energy. Since 2002, HPwES Sponsors have helped homeowners complete more than 250,000 projects across the country.
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PHOENIX (AP) ? A group of U.S. senators who will be influential in shaping and negotiating details of an immigration reform package is traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona to get a firsthand look at issues affecting the region.
Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona were expected to tour the border Wednesday with Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado. They are all members of the so-called Gang of Eight ? a bipartisan group that has spent recent weeks trying to craft proposed immigration legislation.
The trip comes as Congress is in recess and as the lawmakers wrap up a bill designed to secure the border and put 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship. President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform this year, and border security is critical to McCain and other Republicans who contend that some areas along the border are far from secure.
"I wish every member of the United States Senate and Congress could see the border," McCain told reporters in Phoenix on Monday. "Only when you can see the expanse, the difficulties and the challenges of the border, can you really appreciate the need for our border security."
With top Republicans and Democrats focused on the issue, immigration reform faces its best odds in years. The proposed legislation will likely put illegal immigrants on a 13-year path to citizenship and would install new criteria for border security, allow more high- and low-skilled workers to come to the U.S. and hold businesses to tougher standards on verifying their workers are in the country legally.
McCain sought to lower expectations for the bill Monday during a town hall in Phoenix. He told immigration activists they wouldn't be completely happy with the measure and warned that the group must overcome difficult disagreements.
"We've made progress in a number of areas that I am encouraged by, but there are still areas that we are not in agreement," he said.
McCain said the lawmakers had reached an agreement on protections for young illegal immigrants brought to the country as children and on visas for workers, but declined to provide specifics.
Reports indicate that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, negotiating through the Gang of Eight senators, had reached significant agreement Friday on a new visa program to bring up to 200,000 lower-skilled workers a year to the country. The groups did not reach consensus on how much the workers would be paid.
The bill is expected to be lengthy and cover numerous issues, including limiting family-based immigration to put a greater emphasis on skills and employment ties instead.
The legislation was initially promised in March, but the lawmakers have since said they won't be done until at least April. Immigration proponents have said the group needs to introduce legislation soon, while some Republican lawmakers complain the process has moved too quickly.
If passed, the legislation could usher in the most sweeping changes in immigration law in nearly 30 years.
___
Cristina Silva can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/cristymsilva
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mccain-other-us-senators-tour-mexico-border-101144579.html
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? After ceding immigration negotiations to Congress, President Barack Obama is stepping to the forefront of the debate this week, using television interviews and White House events to gently prod lawmakers to finish work on a bill that would overhaul the nation's immigration system.
But wary of tripping up delicate bipartisan talks, Obama is largely avoiding the prickly policy issues that remain unresolved, including a new low-skilled worker program that has split business and labor. The White House prefers to leave those details to lawmakers, calculating that a bill crafted by Capitol Hill stands a better chance of winning Republican support than one overtly influenced by the president.
"We're pleased that they're making progress," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said of the "Gang of Eight" senators who appear to be on the cusp of finalizing a draft bill. "We'll reserve judgment on the product of those discussions until it's produced."
Obama is expected to stake out a similar position during interviews Wednesday with two Spanish-language television networks, Univision and Telemundo. The interviews follow a citizenship ceremony conducted Monday at the White House in which the president encouraged Congress to "finish the job" on immigration reform, an issue that has been stalled in Washington for years.
The president made little progress in overhauling the nation's fractured immigration laws in his first term, but he redoubled his efforts after winning re-election. The November contest also spurred some Republicans to drop their opposition to immigration reform, given that Hispanics overwhelmingly backed Obama.
In an effort to keep Republicans at the negotiation table, Obama has publicly taken a backseat on one of his top second-term priorities. He rolled out his immigration principles during a January rally in Las Vegas and made an impassioned call for overhauling the nation's laws during his early February State of the Union address, then purposely handed off the effort to lawmakers.
The president has, however, privately called members of the Senate working group, and the administration is providing technical support to the lawmakers. The Gang of Eight is expected to unveil its draft bill when Congress returns from a two-week recess the week of April 8.
Obama and the Senate group are in agreement on some core principles, including a pathway to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, revamping the legal immigration system and holding businesses to tougher standards on verifying their workers are in the country legally.
But they're at odds over key issues. The Senate group wants the citizenship pathway to be contingent on securing the border, something Obama opposes. The president has also sidestepped the contentious guest-worker issue, which contributed to derailing immigration talks in 2007.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO have reached significant agreements on a new visa program that would bring up to 200,000 lower-skilled workers to the country each year. But they reached a stalemate Friday over wages for the workers, with the labor union pushing for higher wages than the chamber has agreed to so far.
Since then, talks have resumed and negotiators are "back on the right track," Ana Avendano, a lead AFL-CIO negotiator, said Wednesday.
Avendano declined to offer specifics but said the chamber had moved off what she termed its insistence on "poverty-level wages" for the new workers.
"We're very hopeful that we're moving," Avendano told reporters after a briefing for congressional staff on temporary-worker programs.
While Obama tries to keep the pressure on lawmakers this week, four members of the Senate immigration group toured Arizona's border with Mexico to inspect the conditions there. Arizona's Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake were joined by Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado for the border tour.
___
Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Two popular reality shows made a splash upon their re-entry during the past week ? and a new one had a strong debut.
A new episode of "Dancing With the Stars" premiered on ABC last week before 17 million viewers, just behind CBS drama "NCIS" as the week's most popular program. It was down to 14.5 million Monday night, facing competition from the return of "The Voice" on NBC.
"The Voice," with Usher and Shakira as new cast members, premiered its spring season before 13.6 million on Monday, the Nielsen company said. Those are welcome numbers for NBC, which has been starved for viewers.
There's also likely to be a healthy rivalry with Fox's "American Idol" for the rest of the TV season. "Idol" reached 12.9 million viewers last Wednesday and 11.9 million viewers for its Thursday edition. Fox points out that when "Idol" debuted its new season in January, it did so with nearly 18 million viewers, far more than "The Voice."
NBC is encouraged by the relatively youthful appeal of its show. An estimated 6.1 million viewers of "The Voice" on Monday were in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that advertisers seek. "Idol" last Wednesday had 4.5 million young viewers. "Dancing With the Stars" skews much older; its viewership in the young demographic was 3.1 million on Monday.
ABC's new series "Splash," with celebrities like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Louie Anderson and Keshia Knight Pulliam displaying their diving prowess, reached just over 9 million viewers with its first episode last week. That may not sound like much, but it was more than all but two of the network's scripted series last week.
In the week's ultimate reality show ? the frenetic first week of the NCAA men's basketball tournament ? Nielsen said viewership on CBS and its partner networks was up 9 percent over last year.
For the week in prime time, CBS averaged 8.5 million viewers (5.3 rating, 9 share). ABC was second with 7.5 million viewers (4.8, 8), Fox had 5.9 million (3.6, 6), NBC had 4.2 million (2.7, 4), the CW had 1.4 million (0.9, 1) and ION television had 1.2 million (0.8, 1).
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with an average of 3.6 million viewers (1.9, 3), Telemundo had 1.3 million (0.7, 1), UniMas had 550,000 (0.3, 1), Estrella had 200,000 (0.1, 0) and Azteca 70,000 (0.0, 0).
NBC's "Nightly News" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.4 million viewers (5.7, 11). ABC's "World News" was second with 7.8 million (5.2, 11) and the "CBS Evening News" had 6.6 million viewers (4.4, 8).
A ratings point represents 1,147,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 114.7 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of March 18-24, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: "NCIS," CBS, 19.79 million; "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 17.06 million; "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 16.84 million; "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 12.94 million; "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 11.93 million; "Criminal Minds," CBS, 11.58 million; "Castle," ABC, 11.26 million; "The Walking Dead," AMC, 10.99 million; "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 10.53 million; "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.5 million.
___
ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V. History is owned by the A&E Television Networks; AMC is owned by AMC Networks.
___
Online:
http://www.nielsen.com
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/reality-shows-splash-return-air-205359891.html
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? A new report required by Congress recommends that the Department of Defense assess how well commanding officers handle sexual assault and harassment complaints when reviewing their job performance.
The Institute of Medicine said in the report released Tuesday that military sexual assault appears to be an important factor in the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. It cited previous research indicating that female veterans with a reported history of military sexual trauma were nine times more likely to have PTSD compared to other female veterans.
"Increased efforts by DOD are necessary, and a zero-tolerance approach should be implemented," said the Institute of Medicine, which provides advice concerning health and science to policymakers in the federal government and private sector.
The recommendation about sexual assaults was part of a broad look at the health needs of troops and veterans involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although most of the returning troops have adjusted well to life after deployment, 44 percent have reported some readjustment problems.
The most common overlapping health problems are PTSD, substance abuse, depression and symptoms attributed to traumatic brain injuries.
But the problems seen today are really just the beginning, the report said.
"Previous wars have demonstrated that veterans' needs peak several decades after their war service," the IOM panel said.
To prepare for those costs, the federal government should undertake long-term cost forecasts like those that Congress requires for Social Security and Medicare. It said those forecasts should be conducted annually and publicly released by the Department of Veterans Affairs and confirmed by an independent expert.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the deployment of about 2.2 million troops as of mid-December, it said. Women have played a central role in the efforts. They make up 14 percent of active-duty troops and nearly 18 percent of National Guard and Reserve personnel. The panel's recommendations often focused on the needs of returning female veterans. It said that recent research indicates that female veterans have a higher risk of developing depression than their male counterparts, though they are less likely to commit suicide.
"For more than a decade, female military service members have been subject to repeat deployments, have endured prolonged separation from families, have served side by side with men, and have been exposed to harsh wartime conditions, including witnessing death and destruction," the report said.
The IOM report also said that the support services it provides to military families tends to focus on married, heterosexual couple and their children. The panel said the military needs to ensure its support services also help single parents, same-sex couples and stepfamilies.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-pentagon-must-more-prevent-assaults-153030149--politics.html
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By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Somali man who was a high-level liaison between al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen and later became a U.S. government informant and witness has pleaded guilty to multiple U.S. terrorism-related charges, the Justice Department said on Monday.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed a guilty plea by Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame to nine U.S. criminal charges. They alleged he once commanded hundreds of fighters for the Somalia-based militant group Al-Shabaab.
Law enforcement and legal sources said Warsame is one of the most important militants connected to Somali-based al Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab and Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to be captured by U.S. forces and to agree to become a U.S. informant.
Information provided to U.S. authorities by Warsame has resulted in the capture or arrest of other suspected al Qaeda militants from East Africa, lawyers familiar with recent prosecutions brought by U.S. authorities said.
In one of those cases, former al Shabaab members detained in the African state of Djibouti last year were brought to New York for trial in U.S. courts without any known extradition proceedings in Djibouti, the lawyers said.
Critics of U.S. counter-terrorism policy alleged that the case was an example of how the administration of President Barack Obama has continued to engage in "rendition," a procedure under which suspected militants are moved from country to country without normal legal procedures.
While it has foresworn some controversial counter-terrorism practices used by the administration of President George W. Bush, including the use of physically coercive interrogation tactics and secret CIA prisons, the Obama administration announced it would not completely abandon the use of rendition.
According to one official document unsealed on Monday with Warsame's guilty plea, U.S. authorities seized a laptop and two other electronic devices when he was arrested two years ago. The memories of these devices, prosecutors said, contained "dozens of pages of handwritten notes by Warsame as he learned how to build bombs; letters back and forth between the senior leaders of AQAP and al Shabaab, and correspondence in which Warsame describes why he was sent to Yemen by al Shabaab."
In the same document, prosecutors said that information provided to the United States by Warsame was corroborated by at least four other witnesses who interacted extensively with him in Africa, three of whom are presently cooperating witnesses in a Shabaab-related case in Minnesota, which has a substantial Somali-American community.
REDUCED SENTENCE?
Prosecutors said that Warsame's guilty plea was made in secret on December 21, 2011. But the records were sealed as a result of what the government described as a "cooperation agreement" between Warsame and U.S. authorities.
Although the maximum sentence Warsame could receive for his guilty plea is life in prison, customarily prosecutors agree to request a reduction in sentence for suspects who cooperate extensively with investigators.
A law enforcement official said the case had been unsealed because investigators felt that keeping it secret would no longer potentially compromise ongoing investigations. It was unclear when Warsame will be sentenced.
A Justice Department official said that Warsame had begun cooperating with U.S. authorities after he was captured by U.S. military forces in April 2011. For the next two months, the official said, he was questioned "for intelligence purposes."
A law enforcement official said these interrogations were conducted while Warsame was held aboard a U.S. military ship sailing off the coast of Africa.
Subsequently, the Justice Department said in a press release, Warsame was read his Miranda rights. But after waiving those rights, he continued to cooperate with U.S. investigators, the department said.
A Justice Department official said that U.S. authorities continue to make "active use" of information provided by Warsame and that his cooperation "has been and continues to be enormously valuable." Warsame remains in custody in the United States.
Prosecutors alleged in unsealed documents that, in addition to leading and training Shabaab fighters, Warsame also served as a liaison between the Somalia-based group and AQAP, which U.S. authorities consider to be perhaps Al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate.
The documents say that after waiving his rights on around seven separate occasions, Warsame "confessed to agents" that he had fought alongside and commanded "hundreds of al Shabaab fighters in battle in Somalia."
In late 2009, the documents say, al Shabaab leaders sent Warsame to meet and train with AQAP in Yemen. There, U.S. authorities allege, he received "military, explosives and weapons training from AQAP, assisted in the exchange of communications between senior members of al Shabaab and AQAP," and allegedly facilitated al Shabaab weapons purchases from AQAP.
Among the charges to which Warsame pleaded guilty were providing material support to both Al Shabaab and AQAP, as well as conspiring to teach and demonstrate the making of explosives and possessing firearms and explosives including machine guns, the Justice Department said.
(Editing by Warren Strobel and Cynthia Osterman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suspect-tied-african-yemen-militants-pleads-guilty-u-180913911.html
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Mar. 25, 2013 ? When it comes to posting on social media, there are few areas of our lives that are off limits.
We post about eating, working, playing, hunting, quilting -- you name it. Just about everything is up for public consumption ? except our health.
A new study from BYU finds that while most of us go online regularly for help in diagnosing health issues, very few of us actually post information, questions or experiences on health topics.
"Less than 15 percent of us are posting the health information that most of us are consuming," said Rosemary Thackeray, BYU professor of health science and lead author of the study appearing online in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
According to the study, more than 60 percent of Internet users go online for health help, looking for advice, digging up user experiences on social media and consulting online reviews in hunt of health providers and health care facilities.
Thackeray believes if people were more "social" about health information on social media, the better the information would become.
"If you only have a few people sharing their experience with using a painkiller, that's different than 10,000 people doing that," Thackeray said. "If we're really going to use this social media aspect, there needs to be a true collective wisdom of the crowds."
According to data Thackeray and BYU colleagues Ben Crookston and Josh West used from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, three-fourths of people begin their hunt for medical or health information online by using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo.
By the end of their search, nearly a third have used social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter) for health- related activities while 41 percent have consulted online rankings or reviews of doctors and health care facilities.
However, only 10 percent of respondents actually posted reviews and 15 percent posted comments, questions or information when it came to health-related info.
"The inherent value of 'social' in social media is not being captured with online health information seeking," Thackeray said. "Social media is still a good source of health information, but I don't think it's ever going to replace providers or traditional health care sources."
But, the researchers say social media could be more valuable to all parties if more people joined in on the health discussion. Patients could become more empowered and doctors could be more aware of the public discourse around certain medical issues.
The challenge now is how to get more people to contribute health info on social media sites.
"We're just not there yet, but we'll probably get there in the future," Thackeray said.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/DYkj6cdhnz0/130325101524.htm
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Showtime
If Carrie isn't Brody's lover next season on "Homeland," he'll probably want to keep an eye over his shoulder.
By Kurt Schlosser, TODAY
You don't have to be a super spy to get some scoop on the next season of "Homeland." Just listen to what actor Damian Lewis has to say about his character Nick Brody and love interest Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes).
Lewis told Digital Spy last week that he knows what's going to happen through episode six of the upcoming third season of the Showtime series.
"I think Brody and Carrie are over," Lewis said of his war hero turned would-be terrorist and the CIA agent who loved him. "I don't think those two can be together. Can you imagine them being married and bringing up kids? I don't think it would last long. They'd be in the divorce courts pretty quickly. So I don't think that's a story that's got many legs."
Anyone hoping for more weekend romps at Carrie's cabin will be bummed by Lewis' assertion. But he does have a point that Sgt. Brody raising kids with the woman who's supposed to be chasing him just doesn't make sense. After all, how could they turn out as well as this one and this one?
Lewis and Danes both won best actor Emmy awards, and "Homeland" was named best drama series last fall.
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KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai will travel to Qatar within days to discuss peace negotiations with the Taliban, the Afghan Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday, as efforts intensify to find a negotiated solution to the war, now in its 12th year.
Karzai's trip to Qatar would represent the first time the Afghan president has discussed the Taliban peace process in Qatar, and comes after years of stalled discussions with the United States, Pakistan and the Taliban.
In the past, he has accused the United States of holding talks with the Taliban, without Afghan government involvement.
The trip will involve talks about the creation of a Taliban political office in the country's capital, Doha.
"President Karzai's trip is the result of an invitation from the Qatari Emir and will involve discussions about mutual cooperation and the (Taliban) peace process", Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai said at a press conference on Sunday.
Karzai was expected to travel to Qatar within a week, a senior Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Efforts to find a negotiated settlement to the decade-long war in Afghanistan
The Taliban have been waging a bloody decade-long war against America and coalition nations in Afghanistan.
(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Dylan Welch; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afghanistans-karzai-heads-qatar-discuss-peace-taliban-082719108.html
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LONDON (AP) ? British police say experts found no hazardous materials in their search of the property where self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky's body was found.
Berezovsky, a 67-year-old onetime Kremlin kingmaker who fled to Britain after a bitter falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found dead Saturday at the property in Ascot, a town 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of London.
Police are treating his death as "unexplained."
They said Sunday that officers specially trained in chemical, biological and nuclear materials have given the scene the "all clear."
They say the majority of the cordon around the property has now been lifted and crime scene officers are carrying out a full and thorough investigation to determine the circumstances around Berezovsky's death.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-no-hazardous-material-berezovsky-111027399--finance.html
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After JP Morgan was recently awarded a ?crisis management? award for it?s handling of the London Whale trading scandal, I thought I?d praise the firm?s management with a piece of my own:
JPM Asset Management: A world leader
And I don?t want Bob Diamond to feel left out, so here?s one for him
You can see more finance adbusting here
This entry was posted in guest blog, Headlines. Bookmark the permalink.Source: http://maxkeiser.com/2013/03/24/finance-adbusting/
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