In a March 23, 2013, file photo Jennifer Lopez performs at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix. Jennifer Lopez sang ?Happy Birthday? to the leader of Turkmenistan during a performance DSaturday June 29, 2013, but her representative says had she known there were human rights issues in the country, she wouldn't have performed there at all.(Photo by Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP, file)
In a March 23, 2013, file photo Jennifer Lopez performs at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix. Jennifer Lopez sang ?Happy Birthday? to the leader of Turkmenistan during a performance DSaturday June 29, 2013, but her representative says had she known there were human rights issues in the country, she wouldn't have performed there at all.(Photo by Rick Scuteri/Invision/AP, file)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Jennifer Lopez sang "Happy Birthday" to the leader of Turkmenistan during a show, but her representative said she wouldn't have performed there at all if she had known there were human rights issues in the country.
The singer and actress performed in the former Soviet bloc country on Saturday night. A statement released Sunday by her publicist to The Associated Press said the event was hosted by the China National Petroleum Corp. and wasn't a political event.
However, the country's leader, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, did attend. Berdimuhamedow has been criticized for oppressive rule by human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch describes Turkmenistan as "among the most repressive in the world."
After a United Nations visit last month, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said the country had made progress in the area of human rights, but "a lot more work is needed to complete this process and to ensure practice is in line with international standards."
Lopez's publicist says the event was vetted by Lopez's staff: "Had there been knowledge of human rights issues any kind, Jennifer would not have attended."
The birthday serenade was a last-minute request made by the corporation to Lopez before she took the stage, and she "graciously obliged," the statement said.
Lopez is the latest celebrity to face scrutiny for performing in countries or for leaders with human rights violations.
In 2011, Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank profusely apologized after attending a birthday party for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had been accused of torture and killings; she said she didn't have a full understanding of the event.
Beyonce, Nelly Furtado, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and Usher were paid handsomely to perform at parties linked to the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. All later announced plans to donate their performance fees to charity and said they hadn't known the leader was connected to terrorism.
Lopez has no other performances scheduled in the country, her publicist said. Her performance fee wasn't disclosed.
___
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A dome of extreme hot weather is baking much of the West, but whether or not the moment is historic will be up to the thermometer at Death Valley?s Furnace Creek, where the world?s hottest temperature ? 134 degrees ? was recorded in 1913.
By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff Writer / June 29, 2013
The thermometer at the Furnace Creek resort is already at 120 degrees before noon in Death Valley National Park in Furnace Creek, Calif. Excessive heat warnings will continue for much of the Desert Southwest as building high pressure triggers major warming in eastern California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Chris Carlson/AP
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Potential record temperatures are inching up across the American West as a high pressure dome slides across gauzy skylines and trembling desert canyons. But only one place can determine whether a new world heat record will be set this weekend: Death Valley, Calif.
Skip to next paragraph Patrik Jonsson
Staff Writer
Patrik Jonsson is the Atlanta-based correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He writes about national affairs from a decidedly Dixie frame of mind.
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Death Valley is a seared moon landscape that periodically blooms with fields of wildflowers. A thermometer near Furnace Creek recorded a 134 degree day in o July 10, 1913, which remains the hottest recorded air temperature on planet earth.
As heat warnings reverberate on Saturday from Phoenix to Las Vegas and hospitals gear up for a spike in heat exhaustion victims and perhaps worse, weather watchers are watching to see whether this heat wave breaks any records.
The heat wave is "a huge one," National Weather Service specialist Stuart Seto said, according to the AP. "We haven't seen one like this for several years, probably the mid- to late 2000s."
Phoenix was forecast to hit nearly 120 on Saturday. The record in that part of the world, Arizona?s Valley of the Sun, is 122.
Energy-sapping heat is expected to spread across Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah, potentially to dangerous levels. Las Vegas may see 117 degrees this weekend, which would mark only the third time the Nevada gambling capital got so hot. An average of 658 Americans die from heat-related causes every year, far more than are hurt or killed by tornadoes.
"This is the hottest time of the year, but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they'll be toward the top," weather service meteorologist Mark O'Malley tells the AP. "It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West."
Forecasters say the temperature in Death Valley, meanwhile, could inch to 130, at least close to one of the earth?s most extreme weather moments. The world in 1913 was far less polluted and industry, cars, and planes emitted a fraction of modern-day carbon emissions, which many earth scientists today blame for climate change.
At any rate, Death Valley has been pretty hot in recent years. On July 12, 2012, nighttime temperatures dropped to only 107 degrees after a 128 degree day, tying a world record for highest daily low temperature set a few days earlier in Oman. That same day, the 24-hour mean temperature in Death Valley clocked in at 117.5 degrees. That 24-hour period was the hottest in recorded world history.
A federally protected subtropical desert and once a supplier of gold, silver and borax, Death Valley has a unique mix of landscape and weather that create what Chris Carlson, an AP photographer, described as ?unrelenting heat so bad it makes my eyes hurt, as if someone is blowing a hair dryer in my face.?
As air rises from the near plant-less valley floor, it cools as it gains elevation, eventually dropping back to the valley floor again, denser than before. As superheated localized air masses thus circulate, Death Valley becomes a convection oven.
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I decided to keep it simple & use the suggested questions for my intro.
1) What's your username? Why'd you pick that username? faeriebreath. & honestly, I don't remember why I picked it...but whenever I look at it now, it makes me think of someone who eats fairies by the bowl full. It's also my LJ username, so if anyone still uses LJ, feel free to add me. & the title of the thread is just because I needed a title. heh.
2) How'd you find this place? Why did you look it up? Google. I was looking up roleplay forums. :D
3) How long have you roleplayed on forums or chat? On what sites? Did you start with tabletop games or such? I started in 6th or 7th grade, but once I graduated high school I sort of stopped.
4) In coming to RPG, what've you been looking for specifically? A new home for roleplay? Better roleplay? Just to get back into roleplay, and to get more practice with writing fiction & developing characters.
5) What kinds of roleplay are you interested in? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Fantasy mostly. Not necessarily "high fantasy," I enjoy fantasy themes that take place in the real world too. And if the story is good enough, I'll do "realistic" rp's. Preferably modern since I'm not too great at history. XD I'm really awful at sci-fi RPs, I think...but I'm willing to give them a try.
6) What're your hobbies? Reading, duh. Crafts. Gardening. Doodling. Taking photos of stuff (plants & animals, mostly). Making collages & mediocre paintings. Playing Neopets. :P
7) What's something you're good at besides writing? I occasionally sew clothes (I make my own or upcycle stuff I find at thrift stores). I also make jewelry.
8) Do you have any friends here at RPG that invited you here? Would you want to make more friends while you're here? No & yes.
9) Do we get cookies for looking through your thread and saying hello? This is the best that I can do:
Divorce early in childhood affects parental relationships in adulthoodPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 Society for Personality and Social Psychology
June 28, 2013 - Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say.
"By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychologists are especially interested in childhood experiences, as their impact can extend into adulthood, but studying such early experiences is challenging, as people's memories of particular events vary widely. Parental divorce is a good event to study, he says, as people can accurately report if and when their parents divorced, even if they do not have perfect recollection of the details.
In two studies published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Fraley and graduate student Marie Heffernan examined the timing and effects of divorce on both parental and romantic relationships, as well as differences in how divorce affects relationships with mothers versus fathers. In the first study, they analyzed data from 7,735 people who participated in a survey about personality and close relationships through yourpersonality.net. More than one-third of the survey participants' parents divorced and the average age of divorce was about 9 years old.
The researchers found that individuals from divorced families were less likely to view their current relationships with their parents as secure. And people who experienced parental divorce between birth and 3 to 5 years of age were more insecure in their current relationships with their parents compared to those whose parents divorced later in childhood.
"A person who has a secure relationship with a parent is more likely than someone who is insecure to feel that they can trust the parent," Fraley says. "Such a person is more comfortable depending on the parent and is confident that the parent will be psychologically available when needed."
Although there was a tendency for people to experience more anxiety about romantic relationships if they were from divorced families, the link between parental divorce and insecurity in romantic relationships was relatively weak. This finding was important, the researchers say, as it shows that divorce does not have a blanket effect on all close relationships in adulthood but rather is selective affecting some relationships more than others. They also found that parental divorce tends to predict greater insecurity in people's relationships with their fathers than with their mothers.
To help explain why divorce influences maternal relationships more than paternal ones, and to replicate the first study's findings, Fraley and Heffernan repeated their analysis with a new set of 7,500 survey participants. Unlike in the first study, however, they asked the participants to indicate which of their parents had been awarded primary custody following their divorce. The researchers speculated that paternal relationships were more insecure following divorce because mothers are more likely than fathers to be awarded custody.
The majority of participants 74 percent indicated that they had lived with their mothers following divorce or separation, while 11 percent indicated living with their fathers; the remainder lived with grandparents or other caretakers. The researchers found that people were more likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with their mother and, conversely, were less likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with him. The results were similar with respect to mothers.
While it is premature to speculate on the implications of this work for decision-making regarding child custody, the work is valuable as it suggests that "something as basic as the amount of time that one spends with a parent or one's living arrangements" can shape the quality of child-parent relationships, write Fraley and Heffernan.
"People's relationships with their parents and romantic partners play important roles in their lives," Fraley says. "This research brings us one step closer to understanding why it is that some people have relatively secure relationships with close others whereas others have more difficulty opening up to and depending on important people in their lives."
###
The study, "Attachment and Parental Divorce: A Test of the Diffusion and Sensitive Period Hypotheses," R. Chris Fraley and Marie E. Heffernan, was published online on June 28, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in September 2013 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Divorce early in childhood affects parental relationships in adulthoodPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa M.P. Munoz spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com 703-951-3195 Society for Personality and Social Psychology
June 28, 2013 - Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say.
"By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychologists are especially interested in childhood experiences, as their impact can extend into adulthood, but studying such early experiences is challenging, as people's memories of particular events vary widely. Parental divorce is a good event to study, he says, as people can accurately report if and when their parents divorced, even if they do not have perfect recollection of the details.
In two studies published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Fraley and graduate student Marie Heffernan examined the timing and effects of divorce on both parental and romantic relationships, as well as differences in how divorce affects relationships with mothers versus fathers. In the first study, they analyzed data from 7,735 people who participated in a survey about personality and close relationships through yourpersonality.net. More than one-third of the survey participants' parents divorced and the average age of divorce was about 9 years old.
The researchers found that individuals from divorced families were less likely to view their current relationships with their parents as secure. And people who experienced parental divorce between birth and 3 to 5 years of age were more insecure in their current relationships with their parents compared to those whose parents divorced later in childhood.
"A person who has a secure relationship with a parent is more likely than someone who is insecure to feel that they can trust the parent," Fraley says. "Such a person is more comfortable depending on the parent and is confident that the parent will be psychologically available when needed."
Although there was a tendency for people to experience more anxiety about romantic relationships if they were from divorced families, the link between parental divorce and insecurity in romantic relationships was relatively weak. This finding was important, the researchers say, as it shows that divorce does not have a blanket effect on all close relationships in adulthood but rather is selective affecting some relationships more than others. They also found that parental divorce tends to predict greater insecurity in people's relationships with their fathers than with their mothers.
To help explain why divorce influences maternal relationships more than paternal ones, and to replicate the first study's findings, Fraley and Heffernan repeated their analysis with a new set of 7,500 survey participants. Unlike in the first study, however, they asked the participants to indicate which of their parents had been awarded primary custody following their divorce. The researchers speculated that paternal relationships were more insecure following divorce because mothers are more likely than fathers to be awarded custody.
The majority of participants 74 percent indicated that they had lived with their mothers following divorce or separation, while 11 percent indicated living with their fathers; the remainder lived with grandparents or other caretakers. The researchers found that people were more likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with their mother and, conversely, were less likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with him. The results were similar with respect to mothers.
While it is premature to speculate on the implications of this work for decision-making regarding child custody, the work is valuable as it suggests that "something as basic as the amount of time that one spends with a parent or one's living arrangements" can shape the quality of child-parent relationships, write Fraley and Heffernan.
"People's relationships with their parents and romantic partners play important roles in their lives," Fraley says. "This research brings us one step closer to understanding why it is that some people have relatively secure relationships with close others whereas others have more difficulty opening up to and depending on important people in their lives."
###
The study, "Attachment and Parental Divorce: A Test of the Diffusion and Sensitive Period Hypotheses," R. Chris Fraley and Marie E. Heffernan, was published online on June 28, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in September 2013 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
CNC mills are usually the antithesis of portable. Sometimes they're as big as trucks. But ShopBot Tools, a North Carolina-based CNC Tool manufacturer, is trying to change that with the Handibot, a CNC Mill you can carry around.
The Handibot is a three-axis CNC mill that's run through a smartphone, tablet or desktop app. First, you model whatever you plan to cut, drill, or carve in the app. Then here's where the Handibot is really different from traditional CNC equipment?rather than bringing the material to the machine, you bring your Handibot to the plastic, wood, aluminum, or whatever material you're using. So you've got a lot of flexibility. It should work on a table, floor, or ceiling, and it's ready to go when you hit start. Even though it's portable, ShopBot says it doesn't lose any of the precision of one of the traditional CNC big boys.
So, yes, it's a Kickstarter campaign. And you have to kick in $1,995 if you want to get your hands on a Handibot. But ShopBot says that the crowdfunding aspect will help them build a community of makers around the Handibot, a la Thingiverse or other comparable maker communities. What's really exciting about the Handibot? ShopBot doesn't really know what people could do with it. But the fact that it is portable leaves the options wide open. [Kickstarter via Core77]
In their zeal to defend the name Redskins against disorganized and scattered opposition that gradually is becoming more organized and less scattered, the NFL team bearing that name has had a tendency to seize in knee-jerk fashion upon anything that supports the position that the name isn?t offensive.
The two primary tactics having entailed citing the various high schools that still use the name (there are fewer all the time) and trumpeting the opinions of Native Americans who have no problem with the name, and who ostensibly would regard as a compliment the greeting, ?What?s up, redskin??
As explained by Dave McKenna in an item published earlier today by Deadspin (yeah, I know that one of the morons who works there recently called me a moron . . . again), a supposed Native American Chief whom the Redskins recently trotted out in support of the name isn?t a Chief, and may not even be a Native American.? But the Redskins, who apparently have chosen to dispense with steps like vetting a guest, put the guy on their in-house web show, described him as a Chief, and had him explain why he supports the name.
And, yes, the guy actually said that Native Americans on the ?reservation? actually great each other with, ?Hey, what?s up, redskin??
Complicating matters for the league is that Commissioner Roger Goodell recently pointed to the same non-Chief-possibly-non-Native-American in a letter to member of Congress defending the ongoing use of the name Redskins.
The full item is worth a read, even though it?s a little lengthy.? Also, it probably should include a disclaimer that the author once triggered a defamation lawsuit from owner Daniel Snyder, which gives McKenna a natural bias.
But the point has been made.? Yet again, the Redskins end up looking bad while trying to make their name look good.
If nothing else, we now know why they?ve hired Frank Luntz.? Then again, maybe they think he?s a Chief, too.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) ? Japan's annual whale hunt is a commercial slaughter of marine mammals dressed up as science, Australian lawyers argued Wednesday as they urged the United Nations' highest court to ban the hunt in the waters around Antarctica.
Australia's case at the International Court of Justice, supported by New Zealand, is the latest step in years of attempts by governments and environmental groups to halt the Japanese whaling fleet's annual trips to harpoon minke and fin whales for what Tokyo argues is scientific research allowed under international law.
Australia calls the research claim a front for a commercial hunt that puts whale meat, considered a delicacy in Japan, on plates across the country. Commercial whaling was halted by a 1986 moratorium.
"Japan seeks to cloak its ongoing commercial whaling in the lab coat of science," Australia's agent to the court, Bill Campbell told the 16-judge panel in the wood-panelled Great Hall of Justice in The Hague.
"You don't kill 935 whales in a year to conduct scientific research. You don't even need to kill one whale to conduct scientific research," Campbell told journalists.
Japan insists its hunt is legal under a 1946 convention regulating whaling.
The case in The Hague covers Japan's hunt in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, but Japan also hunts in the northwestern Pacific.
"Japan's research programs have been legally conducted for the purposes of scientific research, in accordance with the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling," Japan's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Koji Tsuruoka said outside the courtroom. "Australia's claim is invalid. Japan's research whaling has been conducted for scientific research in accordance with international law."
But Australia argued that the scientific whaling program, under which thousands of whales have been killed in factory ships plying Antarctic waters, was set up simply to sidestep the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
"No other nation, before or since, has found the need to engage in lethal scientific research on anything like this scale," Australian Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson told the judges.
Japan's government claims the research is needed to provide data on whale populations so that the international ban on commercial hunt can be re-examined or hopefully lifted eventually based on scientific studies.
"This is something we are prepared to demonstrate: That our program is in line with Article Eight of the convention and is not commercial whaling at all," said Noriyuki Shikata, spokesman for Japan's delegation at the court.
Shikata also said that Japan would be challenging the court's jurisdiction to hear the case, but did not elaborate on the reason for the challenge.
Australia is presenting its legal arguments this week and Japan will make its case starting July 2. New Zealand also gets a chance to outline its arguments July 8.
The Sea Shepherd environmentalist group, whose pursuit of Japanese whalers ensures the hunt makes news each year, said that the opening of the case was a victory for whales and vindication of the group's controversial tactics in confronting the harpooners in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean.
"Without that, trade considerations would have been more important than the slaughter of whales in Australian waters and the Antarctic whale sanctuary," said Geert Vons of the Dutch arm of Sea Shepherd, who was in court to watch proceedings.
"It's a shame it's taken 10 years, but it is good that Australia is making this public statement by bringing this case against Japan."
Campbell sought to broaden the dispute by casting Japan's decision to kill whales as undermining the global consensus to protect the broader environment.
"There is now broad recognition ... that the environment and its constituent elements are a common resource which has to be safeguarded and managed by collective action," he said.
He also highlighted the devastating effect of wide-scale whaling before it was reined in by the 1946 convention, saying that the global blue whale population was estimated at 235,000-307,000 before whaling. A 1998 estimate put the population at "a mere 2,280 worldwide," he said.
The court will take months to issue a final and binding decision on the legality of Japan's hunt.
Australian officials are hoping that the court will deliver a judgment by the end of the year, ahead of the Southern Hemisphere summer, when Japan's annual hunt begins near Antarctica.
Greenpeace campaigner John Frizell said he was impressed by the opening of the case.
"We have heard very strong arguments from Australia why this whaling should cease and I certainly hope they will prevail," he said outside court. "This is commercial whaling and it should stop."
Think of the possibilities, developers. Find lost keys or the TV remote, or a child. Make an electronic Marco Polo game! Embed the StickNFind Bluetooth sticker in an museum exhibits as a sort of supercharged RFID educational system. The world could be yours. With StickNFind's new SDK, the company behind the novel Bluetooth sticker is hoping developers will make the little device more than a one trick tiny horse.
The newest Superman iteration is a darker story for a generation that's been won over by Batman and Iron Man.
By Gloria Goodale,?Staff writer / June 25, 2013
Henry Cavill in ?Man of Steel?
Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
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Do audiences really need yet another spandex-clad, costumed superhero in a big-budget summer movie? As the new grim reboot of the Superman story, "Man of Steel," continues as a box-office hit one thing is clear: Clark Kent and his nearly invincible alter ego is the granddaddy of superheroes ? and one that retains an enduring appeal for each generation.
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What is noticeably different, however, is the darker overtones, both in the set and the mood of the script, reflecting a more cynical culture that has moved beyond the sky-blue suit of earlier versions of Superman. "Man of Steel" is the latest in a trend of somber superhero releases such as "Iron Man 3" and "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns."
While Superman's basic story hasn't changed over time, studios understand the need to freshen up a franchise, says Brad Ricca, author of "Super Boys," in an e-mail. He teaches at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. "The end result is that each new generation gets a new version that they can claim as theirs."
Producer Christopher Nolan's brooding take on the baby from an alien planet who goes from the American heartland into the global consciousness is just the latest retooling since this tale first appeared in 1938.
"Superman in the 1930s was idealistic ? a super New Dealer," says Peter Coogan, who teaches a course in comic book studies at Washington University in St. Louis.
By the 1950s the last son of Krypton was a stolid, dependable establishment figure, says Professor Coogan, who adds that the hero in "Superman: The Movie" in 1978 served as an antidote to the disillusionment of the 1970s. This latest "Man of Steel" movie positions Superman as a realistic figure, he says. "He does not immediately know how to use his gifts and needs a period of searching in order to gain the life experience to understand how to use his powers."
This tweaking around the edges of the character's psyche is fundamental to feeding the future of a long-lived franchise, says Rob Weiner, popular culture librarian at Texas Tech University. In this version, Superman is viewed with suspicion because he is "not of this earth" and is considered "all powerful," he says via e-mail, which feeds into the skepticism pervasive in today's culture.
Despite the current darker national mood, however, Superman's appeal endures for a good reason, says Allan Austin, professor of history at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pa. "Superheroes, even if often dismissed as nothing more than low-brow entertainment, are powerful representations of who we think we are and who we want to be."
Ecuador's Foreign Mister Ricardo Patino speaks to reporters at a hotel during his visit to Vietnam Monday, June 24, 2013. Patino said that his government is analyzing an asylum request from Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor wanted for revealing classified secrets. (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh)
Ecuador's Foreign Mister Ricardo Patino speaks to reporters at a hotel during his visit to Vietnam Monday, June 24, 2013. Patino said that his government is analyzing an asylum request from Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor wanted for revealing classified secrets. (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh)
A TV screen shows a news report of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong Sunday, June 23, 2013. The former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs has been allowed to leave for a "third country" because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law, the territory's government said Sunday. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) ? Ecuador's foreign minister said Monday his country will act not on its interests but on its principles as it considers an asylum request from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, wanted for revealing classified U.S. secrets.
Speaking to reporters through a translator at a hotel in Hanoi, Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said the asylum request "has to do with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world."
Patino spoke briefly to reporters on his way to a meeting with Vietnam's foreign minister. He did not say how long it would take Ecuador to decide.
Snowden was on a flight from Hong Kong that arrived in Moscow Sunday and was booked on a flight to Cuba Monday, the Russian news agencies ITAR-Tass and Interfax reported, citing unnamed airline officials.
"We know that he's currently in Moscow, and we are ... in touch with the highest authorities of Russia," Patino said.
Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said Snowden was bound for Ecuador "via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks." The organization's founder Julian Assange, was granted asylum by Ecuador last year and has been staying at the country's embassy in the United Kingdom.
The Russian reports said a plane carrying Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday and he was booked on a flight to Cuba on Monday. The reports cited unnamed airline officials and said he intended to travel from Cuba to Caracas, Venezuela. There was also speculation that he might try to reach Ecuador.
Snowden had been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks after he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs.
Patino said Ecuador would not base its asylum decision on its potential to damage the country's relationship with the United States
"There are some governments that act more upon their own interests, but we do not," Patino said. "We act upon our principles."
He added, "We take care of the human rights of the people."
Patino was to hold a news conference Monday evening in Hanoi.
WikiLeaks said it was providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.
Assange has spent a year inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about sex crime allegations. He told the Sydney Morning Herald that his organization is in a position to help Snowden because it has expertise in international asylum and extradition law.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? The Taliban say they have hit one of the most secure areas of the Afghan capital with a suicide attack, as a series of explosion rocked the gate leading into the presidential palace.
Smoke rose from the eastern gate of the palace early Tuesday after more than a half dozen explosions and at least 45 minutes of on-and-off small arms fire.
The Taliban sent a quick text-message statement saying "we brought death to the enemy."
The palace is in a large fortified area of downtown Kabul that also includes the U.S. Embassy and the headquarters for the NATO-led coalition forces.
Reporters gathering for an event with President Hamid Karzai counted at least seven or eight explosions starting about 6:30 a.m.
While Microsoft and Facebook have both published information tonight about how many requests for customer info the government made over a six month period, Google and Twitter are apparently hoping to take a different route. As Google told AllThingsD and Twitter legal director Benjamin Lee tweeted, "it's important to be able to publish numbers of national security requests-including FISA disclosures-separately." Google went further, claiming that lumping the number of National Security Letters together with criminal requests would be a "step backwards." Clearly this post-PRISM revelations battle for more transparency on just what the government is doing behind the scenes isn't over, we'll let you know if any of the parties involved have more information to share.
June 14, 2013 ? They lie dormant for years, but at the first sign of favorable conditions they awaken. This sounds like the tagline for a science fiction movie, but it describes the amazing life-cycles of microbial organisms that form the biological soil crusts (BSCs) of Earth's deserts. Now a research team with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reported a unique molecular-level analysis of a BSC cyanobacterium responding to the wetting and drying of its environment. The results hold implications for land management, improved climate change models, and a better understanding of carbon cycling in soil microbial communities and how changes in global temperatures impact Earth's deserts.
"We found a way to measure from start to finish in real unaltered samples the molecular events behind the response of cyanobacterium to wetting and drying in a desert BSC," says Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, a biologist with Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division. "Not only did we get a good view of the genetic machinery that wakes the microbes up, but we also got a good sense of what constitutes a healthy BSC."
Mukhopadhyay and Trent Northen, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division, are the corresponding authors of a paper describing this research in the journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. The paper is titled "Dynamic cyanobacterial response to hydration and dehydration in a desert biological soil crust."
Arid and semi-arid deserts make up about 40-percent of Earth's total land mass. Much of the undisturbed soil crust in these deserts is a living mantle of microbes and their by-products, with the predominant inhabitants being cyanobacteria, microorganisms that use photosynthesis for energy. To survive dry spells that can go on for years, BSC microorganisms must enter a dormant state but they must also be poised for rapid resuscitation to utilize short periods of precipitation. For a better understanding of how the microbes are able to do this, the Berkeley Lab research team studied the cyanobacterium Microcoleus vaginatus.
"M. vaginatus is the early BSC colonizer, an ecosystem pioneer that fixes carbon and binds the soil together allowing the community to develop while preventing wind erosion," says Northen. "It is globally distributed in regions where water is scarce, including not only hot deserts but the arctic as well."
Working with the research group of Ferran Garcia-Pichel at Arizona State University, the Berkeley Lab team collected pie-sized samples of soil crust from the cold desert area near Moab, Utah. These samples were subjected to in situ wetting and drying over a period of six days, including two diel (day/night) cycles. The wetting simulated conditions that would be brought about by the passage of a rain front. During the study, the researchers performed whole-genome transcriptional analysis and precise biochemical measurements.
"Simulated weather conditions and sampling in a temporal manner over the six day experimental period allowed us to track key transcriptional and metabolic responses as they occurred," says Mukhopadhyay. "We found that within three minutes after wetting began, metabolic processes in the dormant microbial cells came alive. Within one hour, photosynthesis began, accompanied by carbon dioxide up-take. During this time we saw specific genes get turned on/off and specific gene expressions be elevated or depressed."
The rain episode lasted three days. Although rare, such conditions do occur in the desert and enabled the researchers to differentiate between wetting-up and drying-down responses from diel cycle responses. They discovered that when dehydration of the soil resumed, the mechanisms triggered by wetting were mirrored in the reverse direction, suggesting that the M. vaginatus microbes were preparing themselves to re-enter desiccation-induced dormancy.
"These BSC microbes are highly attuned to their environment and they respond very quickly to changes," Mukhopadhyay says. "Their responses, however, are highly sensitive to physical disturbances and alterations in temperature."
In their paper, the Berkeley Lab researchers say that a better understanding of how environmental factors influence the growth and metabolism of M. vaginatus and other BSC microbes should improve our ability to predict the impacts of climate or land-use change on BSC systems. This knowledge should also help in the development of management strategies for restoring BSCs following large-scale disturbances.
"BSC systems represent the world's largest biofilms, and the demise of such systems could release carbon, and probably more importantly, dust into the atmosphere, changing the albedo of snow-packs," says Northen. "Restoring or protecting BSCs through changes in land-use could help pull carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce dust."
A better understanding of BSCs could also deepen our understanding of the carbon cycle, which could improve the accuracy of climate models, as Mukhopadhyay explains.
"In most climate models there is little or no accounting for the carbon fixed by soil microbes," she says. "BSC cyanobacteria are the photosynthetic organism for deserts and understanding their role in the carbon-cycle will help fill in current climate model gaps. This should help improve the accuracy of these models."
The Berkeley Lab team would like to expand their efforts to examine other BSC systems around the world. Among other issues, they would like to identify the signaling mechanisms that inform dormant BSC microbes that moisture is present or that the temperature is changing and it is time to respond.
"BSCs are sentinels for marking the health or decline of the world's deserts, one of Earth's major ecosystems," Mukhopadhyay says. "It is vital that we understand them."
Co-authoring the paper "Dynamic cyanobacterial response to hydration and dehydration in a desert biological soil crust" were Lara Rajeev, Ulisses Nunes da Rocha, Niels Klitgord, Eric Luning, Julian Fortney, Seth Axen, Patrick Shih, Nicholas Bouskill, Benjamin Bowen, Cheryl Kerfeld, Ferran Garcia-Pichel and Eoin Brodie.
This research was funded through Berkeley Lab's Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.
The New England Patriots currently may employ up to 90 football players.? Eventually, 37 of them will be fired.? Owner Bob Kraft hopes quarterback Tim Tebow isn?t one of them.
Kraft, appearing Friday on CNBC, said that the organization wants to see Tebow stick around.
?We want high quality people who work hard, are team players,? Kraft said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com.? ?I don?t think there is a nicer person that I?ve ever met, and now he?ll get to compete with all the other people at the position, and our hope is that he?s on our 53-man roster.?
Kraft?s comments mesh with the notion that Tebow will be a quarterback and only a quarterback.? (Even though we still believe that, if Tebow makes the roster as a quarterback, they?ll find a way to use him as something other than a quarterback.)? Based on the team?s experience, he?s a quarterback they may eventually need.
?You never know what?s going [to happen]; Tom Brady missed the whole season a few years ago,? Kraft said.? ?You can?t enough quality people in any of your businesses.?
Kraft expanded on his belief that Tebow?s religious beliefs were an attraction ? even though that kind of talk has to make Kraft?s lawyers a little antsy.
?In this age of technology, where people are isolating themselves and going to their little instruments and spending hours of not interfacing with people; people who respect tradition, religion, spirituality, I think we need more of that in America today,? Kraft said.
Though Tebow ultimately has to be one of the best 53 players in order to make it to the 53-man roster, these intangibles could help him in a close case ? especially if Kraft is lobbying aggressively for Tebow to stick around.? As Tom Curran of CSN New England recently suggested on PFT Live, the goal could be to have Tebow?s passion influence others in the locker room.
That could end up being a bigger contribution than anything Tebow ever does on the field.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas farmers were expected to plant 1 million acres of corn this year but frequent heavy rains have knocked that estimate down by about 15 percent, state agriculture experts said Thursday.
Even though it is the middle of June, a small percentage of growers are still planting soybeans, rice and cotton. Planting corn this late is associated with diminished yields, but corn expert Jason Kelley of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture said irrigation can counter the effects of a normal late summer.
Growers have struggled to get their equipment into the fields this spring.
"It's been a struggle. Having to deal with the cold, the rainfall, the wet soils ? it really slowed things down this year," Kelley said.
Normally a wet spring will include a stretch of a week to 10 days in which growers can get their planting done.
"You hear 800,000 acres (of corn) and that seems like a lot. We can plant that in a week," Kelley said. "But it's hard to get that amount planted when you get a day here, a half day there. We couldn't get a string of seven or eight days in a row to get things done."
A year ago, producers in east Arkansas, where most of the state's row crops are grown, were harvesting corn in mid-July.
Farmers also caught a nice break last year. Since they planted early, growers missed the worst of a punishing drought in August and September.
Agricultural economist Scott Stiles of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture says even some rice is still going in the ground this late in June.
Some of the switch to rice is by corn growers who couldn't get their crops planted but some other growers decided to switch to rice because September futures contracts have been on a consistent rise for about a month.
Stiles said that corn prices could go up because about 5 percent of the nation's crop ? close to 5 million acres ? hasn't gone into the ground yet. And parts of the Midwest have gotten a lot of rain.
Regardless, Arkansas is still making a very large shift from cotton to corn. Last year state growers planted 700,000 acres of corn and, in 2011, it was 560,000 acres.
Arkansas producers haven't planted 1 million acres of corn since the post-World War II economy of the 1950s.
State growers planted 710 acres of winter wheat, which is now being harvested. Stiles said the crop appears to be above average, so far.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture in its March forecast projected 1.2 million acres of rice would be planted this year in Arkansas, down about 5 percent from a year ago. Some of that could be made up by growers changing their minds about planting other crops.
Arkansas produces about half of the nation's rice and it is the state's largest cash crop.
Growers are expected to have 3.3 million acres of soybeans planted, the state's largest crop geographically. That's about the same as last year.
Producers are planting only 270,000 acres of cotton, compared to 595,000 acres in 2012 and 680,000 acres in 2011.
The U.S. Drought Monitor shows almost all of Arkansas has passed out of the drought. Only a small area in parts of three counties in the state's southwest is in moderate drought, the least extreme categories of drought.
Apple's revised its AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule to support 802.11ac, the latest and greatest Wi-Fi protocol to see adoption. Called "Gigabit Wi-Fi," 802.11ac offers performance greater than 1 gigabit per second. The AirPort Express was notably missing from any mention of update.
The AirPort Extreme has gotten a complete makeover - it's smaller than before, and features three-stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The Time Capsule will be available in 2TB and 3TB configurations. Users of the new versions of the devices will see improvements in video streaming and other bandwidth-intensive activities. Time Capsule backups will be faster, of course. The new devices incorporate a "beamforming antenna array."
Other networking hardware vendors have already beaten Apple to the punch with 802.11ac-equipped devices, but the changes are welcome and timed well with new MacBook Air systems that also support 802.11ac.
June 10, 2013 ? An analysis of recent data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of 97 adolescents who were part of study begun with very low birth weight babies born in 1982-1986 in a Cleveland neonatal intensive care unit has tied smaller brain volumes to poor academic achievement.
More than half of the babies that weighed less than 1.66 pounds and more than 30 percent of those less than 3.31 pounds at birth later had academic deficits. (Less than 1.66 pounds is considered extremely low birth weight; less than 3.31 pounds is labeled very low birth weight.) Lower birth weight was associated to smaller brain volumes in some of these children, and smaller brain volume, in turn, was tied to academic deficits.
Researchers also found that 65.6 percent of very low birth weight and 41.2 percent of extremely preterm children had experienced academic achievement similar to normal weight peers.
The research team -- led by Caron A.C. Clark, a scientist in the Department of Psychology and Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon -- detected an overall reduced volume of mid-brain structures, the caudate and corpus callosum, which are involved in connectivity, executive attention and motor control.
The findings, based a logistic regression analyses of the MRIs done approximately five years ago, were published in the May issue of the journal Neuropsychology. The longitudinal study originally was launched in the 1980s with a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (National Institutes of Health, grant HD 26554) to H. Gerry Taylor of Case Western University, who was the senior author and principal investigator on the new paper.
"Our new study shows that pre-term births do not necessarily mean academic difficulties are ahead," Clark said. "We had this group of children that did have academic difficulties, but there were a lot of kids in this data set who didn't and, in fact, displayed the same trajectories as their normal birth-weight peers."
Academic progress of the 201 original participants had been assessed early in their school years, again four years later and then annually until they were almost 17 years old. "We had the opportunity to explore this very rich data set," Clark said. "There are very few studies that follow this population of children over time, where their trajectories of growth at school are tracked. We were interested in seeing how development unfolds over time."
The findings, Clark added, provide new insights but also raise questions such as why some low-birth-weight babies develop normally and others do not? "It is very difficult to pick up which kids will need the most intensive interventions really early, which we know can be really important."
The findings also provide a snapshot of children of very low birth weights who were born in NICU 30 years ago. Since then, technologies and care have improved, she said, meaning that underweight babies born prematurely today might have an advantage over those followed in the study. However, she added, improving NICUs also are allowing yet smaller babies to survive.
Clark now is exploring these findings for early warning clues that might help drive informed interventions. "Pre-term birth does mean that you are much more likely to experience brain abnormalities that seem to put you at risk for these outcomes," she said. "They seem to be a pretty strong predictor of poor cognitive development as children age. We really need to find ways to prevent these brain abnormalities and subsequent academic difficulties in these kids who are born so small."
Co-authors were Kimberly Andrews Espy, professor of psychology and vice president for research and innovation, and dean of the graduate school at the UO; Hua Fang of the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Pauline A. Filipek and Jenifer Juranek, both of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston; and Barbara Bangert, Maureen Hack and Taylor, all of Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, in Cleveland.
Opportunity, aka The Little Rover That Could, is still making important discoveries 10 years into its Martian jaunt. After the devastating loss of twin rover Spirit in 2011, Opportunity rallied and kept trekking, only to recently discover a fascinating rock near Endurance Crater.
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2013
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Think of the possibilities, developers. Find lost keys or the TV remote, or a child. Make an electronic Marco Polo game! Embed the 
