Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/166750240?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Monday, 28 November 2011
Colleges defend humanities amid tight budgets (AP)
HARTFORD, Conn. ? Like many humanities advocates, Abbey Drane was disheartened but not surprised when Florida's governor recently said its tax dollars should bolster science and high-tech studies, not "educate more people who can't get jobs in anthropology."
Drane, a 21-year-old anthropology major at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, has spent years defending her choice to pursue that liberal arts field.
And now, as states tighten their allocations to public universities, many administrators say they're feeling pressure to defend the worth of humanities, too, and shield the genre from budget cuts. One university president has gone as far as donating $100,000 of her own money to offer humanities scholarships at her school.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott's comments last month cut to the heart of the quandary: whether emphasizing science, math and medical fields gives students the best career prospects and a high-tech payback to society, and whether humanities fields are viewed as more of an indulgence than a necessity amid tight budget times.
"You can definitely feel the emphasis on campus, even just based on where the newest buildings go, that there is a drive toward the sciences, engineering and (the) business school," said Drane, a senior from Plymouth, Mass. "I'm constantly asked what job opportunities I'll have in anthropology or what I'm going to do with my degree, and I tell people that it's giving me a skill set and critical thinking you can apply to anything."
Humanities studies peaked in U.S. colleges in the 1960s and started dwindling in the 1970s as more students pursued business and technology and related fields. Today, more than 20 percent of each year's bachelor's degrees are granted in business; in humanities, it's about 8 percent.
Liberal arts colleges, too, have declined. A study published in 2009 by Inside Higher Ed said that of 212 liberal arts colleges identified in 1990, only 137 were still operating by 2009.
At Amherst College in western Massachusetts, a healthy endowment makes closing the doors a remote possibility at best. But its president, Carolyn "Biddy" Martin, experienced the same concerns about the humanities in her previous job as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was tapped this year to serve on a commission for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences to review the issue.
Martin said many universities struggle with declining enrollment in those fields, making the classes an easy budget target if their worth is not defended.
"There are more and more people in higher education ? and I hope political leaders ? who are understanding that an over-leaning emphasis on the sciences to the expense of the humanities is not a good thing for the country," she said.
Therein lays the debate for many, though, including Gov. Scott in Florida, who is unapologetic about his push to direct tax dollars toward rapidly growing science, technology, engineering and math fields, known collectively as STEM.
And since state governments control nearly two-thirds of all higher education funding, according to the National Governors Association, their embrace or disregard for humanities can affect the study paths of hundreds of thousands of students.
The governors' organization published recommendations for states this year on how to align their higher education priorities with their labor markets and economic development, citing Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington for "bold, comprehensive strategies" in those efforts.
It did not advise state governments to move money from humanities, but said it's "often challenging" to get the universities to participate in economic development, partly because of "their emphasis on broad liberal arts education."
Advocates say STEM fields also provide tangible returns for states, universities and businesses through patent royalties, new products and the prestige of achieving scientific breakthroughs ? paybacks far less evident among, say, new intellectual insights by scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer's literature, devotees of Frederic Chopin's nocturnes or adherents to Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist views.
"People feel like there are no real careers open for people studying in the liberal arts and I don't think that's true at all," said John Beck, 20, a senior from Newton, Mass., who's majoring in philosophy at the University of Connecticut.
His father and two grandparents are doctors, and his mother and brother are both pharmaceutical scientists. He is double majoring in economics and plans to attend law school, a decision that eased his parents' concerns about his philosophy studies because they see a legal career as a tangible way to support himself.
He sees it as a good use of his philosophy degree, too, though he says he would have been perfectly content to pursue teaching, public service or other fields to which many other philosophy majors gravitate.
To Susan Herbst, students shouldn't have to choose between picking a field they love and one that offers them the best shot at a job. She believes humanities does both, and feels so strongly about it that she and her husband donated $100,000 this year to provide scholarships limited to students in those fields.
"The humanities are where people learn about ethics and values and critical thinking," said Herbst, the president of the University of Connecticut. "The truth is that for all of these students going into the STEM fields or other social sciences or business, if they didn't have the humanities, they don't know why they're doing what they do. The humanities really teach us how we're supposed to live and why what we do matters."
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Sunday, 27 November 2011
Sharp set to supply LCD panels for the iPad 3
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple will add Sharp to its list of LCD panel manufacturers, specifically for the next generation iPad. The information comes from people familiar with the situation.?Apple is apparently looking to diversify component suppliers for its products and as...
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/NWJJyAyThvM/story01.htm
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Saturday, 26 November 2011
NASA to Launch Huge Mars Rover Saturday (SPACE.com)
NASA plans to launch its newest Mars rover tomorrow (Nov. 26), a beast of a robot that officials say is the most complex and capable planetary explorer ever built.
Technicians rolled the car-size Curiosity rover and its Atlas 5 rocket to their pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Friday morning (Nov. 25) to prepare for liftoff, which is slated for today at 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT).
Chances are good that Curiosity ? the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission to assess past and present Martian habitability ? will get off the ground on time, officials say. Current forecasts predict just a 30 percent chance that bad weather will postpone the launch, and the mission team is working no issues with the rover or its rocket.
"The Mars Science Lab and the rover Curiosity [are] locked and loaded, ready for final countdown on Saturday's launch to Mars," said Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator at NASA's science mission directorate. [Photos: Last Look at Curiosity Rover]
A rover on steroids
At 1 ton, Curiosity weighs about five times more than each of its immediate Mars rover predecessors, the golf-cart-size twins Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on the Red Planet in January 2004 to look for evidence of past water activity.
Both Spirit and Opportunity carried five science instruments. Curiosity boasts 10, including a rock-vaporizing laser and gear designed to identify organic molecules ? the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.
Curiosity also sports a drill at the end of its 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm that will allow it to collect samples from the interior of Martian rocks, a first for a Red Planet robot.
"This rover, Curiosity rover, is really a rover on steroids," Hartman said.
Investigating Gale Crater
After liftoff, Curiosity will embark upon an 8 1/2-month cruise to Mars. In August 2012, it will land at a 100-mile-wide (160-kilometer) crater called Gale and begin assessing whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.
A 3-mile-high (5-km) mound of layered sediment rises from Gale's center. These layers preserve a record of Martian environmental change spanning about one billion years, and Curiosity is designed to read them like a book.
The rover will pay special attention to layers near the mound's base, where Mars-orbiting spacecraft have identified clays and sulfates ? minerals that form in the presence of liquid water.
The rocks shift farther up the mountain, capturing Mars' transition from a relatively warm, wet planet to the frigid, dry and dusty world we see today. Curiosity's observations could help shed light on this dramatic transformation, researchers said.
The MSL team is quick to stress that Curiosity is not hunting for signs of life; if any microbes are squirming about in Mars' red dirt, the rover probably won't be able to spot them. But Curiosity's mission is a necessary precursor to future efforts to hunt down potential Red Planet life, researchers said.
"A habitable environment needs to be described," said MSL project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech. "You just simply have to know where to look."
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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Friday, 25 November 2011
Video: Penn State case grows more complex
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Kenneth weakens some, still Category 4 hurricane (AP)
MIAMI ? Forecasters say Hurricane Kenneth is weakening some but is still a Category 4 storm in the eastern Pacific.
There is no threat to land from the strongest late-season hurricane in that area on record.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tuesday that Kenneth has maximum sustained winds near 135 mph (215 kph). The storm was centered about 810 miles (1,305 kilometers) south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico, but was moving away from the coast.
It is moving west at 10 mph (17 kph)
Kenneth is expected to weaken more on Wednesday. There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
The eastern Pacific hurricane season ends Nov. 30.
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Thursday, 24 November 2011
Groupon's shares fall below IPO price in 3 weeks
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Groupon Inc.'s stock fell below its initial public offering price for the first time Wednesday as investors reassess the challenges facing the still-unprofitable online deals company in a shaky economy.
The shares plunged $3.11, or more than 15 percent, to close at $16.96. That's well below Groupon's IPO price of $20, which was set less than three weeks ago.
The rapid fall from Wall Street's graces occurred almost entirely this week. Groupon has shed one-third of its market value since Friday's close to wipe out nearly $6 billion in shareholder wealth.
Political and economic uncertainty is making promising but unproven companies look less appealing.
Congress' inability to reach an agreement on how to reduce the U.S. deficit has raised the specter of automatic cuts and tax increases, which would increase the chances of the economy falling into another recession. That reduces Wall Street's appetite for risky investments such as Groupon, which is facing increasing competition in the rapidly growing niche of online advertising that it pioneered.
The decline also has been deepened by a skeptical class of investors, known as short sellers, who bet that certain stocks are going to slide. They do this by borrowing shares that they immediately sell, hoping they can repay the stock by buying at a cheaper price later.
Groupon gets local merchants to offer steep discounts to large clusters of consumers, a concept that turned it into one of the world's fastest growing companies. Founded in 2008, Groupon is on pace to generate more than $1.5 billion in revenue this year, primarily from commissions it gets from deals sold. Google Inc., which runs the Internet's largest advertising network, had annual revenue of just $86 million at the same stage of its existence.
Unlike Google, though, Groupon has been amassing huge losses as it tries to expand and ward off threats from hordes of copycats. The competition includes Google and another Internet powerhouse, Amazon.com Inc., which is backing a startup deals company called LivingSocial.
Through the first nine months of this year, Groupon lost $308 million, partly because its payroll swelled to more than 10,400 employees to help persuade local merchants to offer deals. Groupon's losses and massive work force provide another stark contrast to how Google went about its business as it was starting out. After three years, Google eked out a $7 million profit and had fewer than 300 employees.
As it prepared its initial public offering of stock, Groupon tried to sugarcoat the losses by emphasizing an accounting approach that securities regulators eventually required the company to abandon.
Meanwhile, some merchants have become increasingly skeptical that partnering with Groupon and similar services is really a deal for them. Groupon takes up to half the price of the coupon, so if an Italian restaurant is offering $50 worth of food for $25, the merchant gets just $12.50. Merchants can make the money back if the coupon draws a customer who keeps returning and brings friends, but some businesses complain that bargain hunters rarely come back after scoring a cheap meal or massage. Other businesses, though, see Groupon as good marketing ? a way to reach troves of new, social media-savvy customers who share good deals with friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Despite the red flags hovering over the company, Groupon's rapid growth tantalized enough investors to turn its IPO into a success. After the IPO was priced at $20, the company's stock soared as high as $31.14 in its stock market debut on Nov. 4. All of those gains have evaporated in just 14 trading days.
What's happened to Groupon's stock serves as a cautionary tale to anyone thinking about investing in a hot company in its early stages on the market. The trading in stocks following an IPO is prone to wild swings that can upset portfolios ? and investors' stomachs.
Groupon isn't the only example of this volatility. For instance, Internet radio service Pandora Media Inc. went public in June at $16 per share and then saw its stock climb in its debut. The shares closed at $10.51 Wednesday. After online professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. priced its IPO at $45 in May, its shares soared above $100. The stock finished Wednesday at $66.
The see-sawing phenomenon isn't limited to Internet companies. Automobile maker General Motors Co. emerged from bankruptcy protection with an IPO priced at $33 a year ago, and its stock price is now hovering at about $20.
Some IPOs maintain an upward trajectory. Google's stock has never come close to returning to its IPO price of $85 in 2004. A year after Google went public, its stock price stood at $280. On Wednesday, it closed at $570.11.
Groupon, which is based in Chicago, declined to comment on the stock price drop. It is still in a federally mandated "quiet" period that surrounds IPOs.
___
AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.
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Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Mudslides in southern Italy kill 3 people (AP)
ROME ? Torrential rain battered eastern Sicily on Wednesday, where mudslides have killed at least three people and muddy torrents have swept away cars and washed out bridges, authorities said.
A mudslide in the hamlet of Saponara, near the Sicilian port city of Messina, fatally struck a 10-year-old boy Tuesday as his family fled their home. Much of Italy's terrain is landslide-prone, and many have built homes on steep hillsides in defiance of warnings by geologists.
Muddy torrents of water rushed through the Messina area, sweeping along cars as if they were toys and knocking down part of an elevated roadway.
Heavy rains also lashed Calabria, the southern Italian region across from Sicily. State railways said washed out railway bridges, landslides on track and flooding caused suspension of service on some routes.
About 100 soldiers were sent in to Saponara, one of the worst hit towns, to rescue residents stranded in flooded homes or vehicles, Italian news reports said.
This fall, flash flooding in Genoa, northwest Italy, killed at least six people, and at least nine perished in severe floods in Tuscany and the Cinque Terre tourist area of Liguria.
President Giorgio Napolitano asked local authorities to express his solidarity and closeness to the victims' families and repeated his appeal to Italians to pay urgent attention to their fragile environment.
Some of the flooding has been blamed on failure to regularly clean storm drains.
Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi had been criticized by environmentalists for concentrating his government's efforts on his pet project to build a bridge over the strait dividing Messina from Calabria, instead of devoting financial resources and manpower to more mundane projects like maintaining drainage systems and shoring up hillsides prone to landslides.
With Italy now slashing spending to cut deficit and devote resources to reviving the economy and prevent financial disaster, the plan to build a bridge has fallen by the wayside.
"A dramatic national emergency is before our eyes," said Stella Bianchi, the center-left Democratic Party's point person on the environment. "We are paying a painful price for years of errors, culpable lack of attention" and excessive building, she said in a statement.
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Lana Wood, Sister of Natalie Wood, Speaks on Actress' Death, Criticizes Robert Wagner
Lana Wood, sister of the late Natalie Wood, is speaking out about the newly re-opened investigation into the actress' death, which took place 30 years ago this week.
The Natalie Wood case was never a closed case in her Lana’s mind, which, she said, is why she welcomed Friday's news of police re-opening the investigation.
Questions have surrounded the late actress' husband, Robert Wagner, and his handling of the incident, though he was never a criminal suspect and is not now.
“I can’t believe [Robert] would purposefully do something to hurt her,” Wood said, but adds that she "did not buy" the story Wagner told police at that time.
He said Natalie Wood slipped, hit her head and fell into the water.
“I don’t think she fell. I don’t know if she was pushed. I don’t know whether there was an altercation and it happened accidentally,” she said. “She shouldn’t have died.”
Natalie Wood who had a notorious fear of water, was found dead in the ocean off Catalina Island following an alcohol-filled night spent on a yacht with only Wagner, family friend Christopher Walken, and Dennis Davern, the boat's captain.
Lana Wood says she has had many discussions over the years with Davern, which have led her to believe there is more to the story of her sister’s death.
“He said that everybody was quite drunk and that a fight, or an argument, I should say, did break out and that Natalie was in the water and that he and [Robert] did nothing to pull her out,” she told celebrity gossip site TMZ.
According to Wood, Davern told her Wagner said: “Leave her. Teach her a lesson.”
Davern admitted that he was drunk at the time and initially lied to police, but now says he remembers Wood and Wagner getting into a heated argument.
“Robert Wagner had taken a bottle of wine and smashed it on the coffee table in front of her and Christopher,” Davern said on Good Morning America.
“Natalie Wood went to her stateroom, and Robert Wagner followed and they carried on their arguing in the stateroom.”
Moments later, he said, Wagner told him Wood was missing, but urged him not to call the Coast Guard right away.
“I said to Robert Wagner, ‘Let’s turn on the search light, we’ll see maybe if we can’t see her out there,’” Davern said.
“And he said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that at this time.’”
Wagner, now 81, recently released a statement saying he supported the investigation, however he also suggested this may be a ploy for Davern to make money on his book and the 30th anniversary of Natalie’s death.
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Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Padma Lakshmi's Billionaire Boyfriend Dies Of Brain Cancer | Radar ...
Getty Images
By Radar Staff
Top Chef host?Padma Lakshmi is mourning the death of her longtime lover,?Theodore Forstmann, who passed away from brain cancer on Sunday at the age of 71, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The billionaire businessman was?the head of sports and modeling at talent agency IMG, he was?recently?ranked No.?242 among America's 400 Richest and is worth an estimated?$1.8 billion, the International Business Journal reported.
Lakshmi and Forstmann have been dating for several years but kept their?low-profile?relationship private until the former model gave birth last year.
PHOTOS: Celebs Stand Up To Cancer
The arrival of one-year-old daughter?Krishna in?February?2010 led to speculation over who the father was, and it was later revealed to be?venture capitalist Adam?Dell, brother of?Dell?computer firm founder?Michael Dell.
According to court papers,?Lakshmi?told Dell that she wished her child was from her other lover, Forstmann, and the baby's father claims that is why she didn't put his name on the birth certificate.
PHOTOS: Celebs We Lost In 2010
Forstmann?had an eye for beautiful younger women and previously dated Elizabeth Hurley and was even linked to Princess Diana before her death.
He was diagnosed with brain cancer and received treatment at the Mayo Clinic in May but vowed to fight the disease, telling?the New York?Times soon after his diagnosis, "This is not how I want to end. It's a bend in the road for me."
PHOTOS: Celebrities Who Died In Bizarre Circumstances
The billionaire is survived by his two sons, Siya and Everest, brothers Anthony and John, and sisters Marina Forstmann Day and Elissa Forstmann Moran.
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Source: http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/11/padma-lakshmi-billionaire-boyfriend-dies-brain-cancer
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Monday, 21 November 2011
Mich. congressman: Distant relative's sex abuse claims 50 years ago are 'false and shameful' (Star Tribune)
Black Friday backlash: Some retailers pull back
Michael Nagle / Getty Images file
Shoppers look for bargains at Toys "R" Us last year. The big-box chain is opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year.
By Marisa Taylor
Call it Black Friday fatigue.
With stores racing to open ever earlier on Thanksgiving (Wal-Mart?s doors will open at 10 p.m.!), a backlash is growing, with some retailers and analysts questioning the madness.
?The lunacy of opening at 12 midnight or even earlier on Thanksgiving evening shows that this whole Black Friday thing has run out of legs,? said IDC Retail Insights program director Greg Girard. ?Black Friday is a race to the bottom, and it?s just become another ad avenue.?
Other analysts think this year's extended hours are meant to distract shoppers from a lack of exciting inventory.
?If you build it, they will come,? said NPD Group chief industry analyst Marshal Cohen, ?but they won?t come in the dead of night. To me, you?re not going to sell more product just because you?re open more hours. It?s more of a smoke screen than it is a solution to the issue.?
This year, some stores are choosing not to take extreme measures to lure in bargain-hungry customers as they kick off a season that is expected to bring in about $465.6 billion in sales, a modest 2.8 percent increase over last year.
Sears, for one, has decided to pass on the trend for midnight openings set by big-box retailers including Best Buy, Kohls and Target. Toys 'R' Us is opening at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving night, an hour ahead of Wal-Mart.
Last year, Sears chose to keep its doors open on Thanksgiving from 7 a.m. until noon, with the idea that shoppers would come in early to rack up a few deals and then head home to their families for a midday meal.
But while the company did have good numbers that day, ?The customer feedback was very clear,? said Sears spokesman Tom Aiello. ?The customers liked the deals, but they didn?t like the idea of Thanksgiving shorted as a holiday.?
So the chain will revert to its original plan to open at 4 a.m. on Friday. ?I think there?s a group of customers that don?t aspire to get up in the middle of the night,? Aiello said.
Retail chain JC Penneyalso decided to stick with a 4 a.m. opening time this year so employees can spend Thanksgiving with friends and family, according to a company spokesman.
Employees at Target and Best Buy have launched petition drives on the website change.org protesting the early openings. ?A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,? wrote petition creator Anthony Hardwick, who identifies himself as a Target employee.
Some local retailers are still undecided on their Black Friday hours and will make last-minute decisions, according to Cohen.
Others are resisting the bonanza that is Black Friday altogether?or at least, they engage in more subtlety. Seattle-based retail chain Nordstrom has avoided opening its doors on Thanksgiving throughout the company?s history and in recent years has posted signs in its stores that read, ?One holiday at a time.?
Nordstrom waits until the morning of Black Friday to unveil its Christmas decorations, though it will open doors early that morning in some locations.
?It?s not as in your face,? said Forrester vice president and senior analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, ?but there?s a reason that Thanksgiving weekend that people work longer hours and [the stores] pull out all the stops as far as offering sales and promotions?because that?s the nature of that weekend.?
Analyst Greg Girard of IDC said?Black Friday is virtually absent from the websites of brand-oriented stores like Gap, Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor.
"And they?re doing something much more surgical in that they?re moving towards direct communications, like text messaging to consumers," he said. "They?re getting to consumers with whom they have a longer lifetime relationship."
Nordstrom, like many higher-end stores, doesn?t rely as heavily on Black Friday to make or break its sales year. Black Friday ?is among our most high volume days. But it isn?t our largest sales day of the year, unlike many retailers,? said Nordstrom spokesman Colin Johnson.
Do you plan to shop Black Friday?
With some major chains opening the doors on Thanksgiving for "Black Friday" sales, retail employees are beginning to publicly complain about sales creeping into their Thanksgiving holiday. KNSD's Bob Hansen reports.
?
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Sunday, 20 November 2011
Video: Leading Economic Indicators
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Video: Extreme weather tied to climate change
A report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change confirms that weather will only get more extreme as greenhouse gasses continue to be pumped into the air by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. NBC?s Anne Thompson reports.
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Saturday, 19 November 2011
Friday, 18 November 2011
Newspaper owners team up in deal-finding venture (AP)
SAN FRANCISCO ? A group of newspaper publishers and other media companies are teaming up to sell more advertising aimed at people looking for online deals.
Eight companies formed a joint venture that has acquired Find n Save, a search engine focused on discount offers made by merchants in cities across the U.S. The venture acquired Find n Save as part of its purchase of Travidia, an online shopping service. Financial terms of that deal weren't disclosed in Thursday's announcement.
The joint venture's initial owners include: Advance Digital, part of Advance Publications Inc., whose newspapers include The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; A.H. Belo Corp., owner of The Dallas Morning News; Cox Media Group, owner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and more than 100 radio and TV stations; and Gannett Co.; owner of USA Today and more than 80 other newspapers as well as more than 20 TV stations.
Discussions are being held with other media companies interested in joining the venture.
Find n Save is tapping into the coupon craze that helped turn Groupon's daily-deal service into a hot commodity. Although it's still losing money, Groupon Inc. is growing so fast that the 3-year-old company already has a $15 billion market value.
Unlike search engines such as Google, Find n Save specializes in showcasing discounts offered by advertisers within local markets. A consumer can type, say, "burrito" into a search field, and receive a list of nearby Mexican restaurants and the deals they're offering.
The search engine makes money from the advertisers in its database. Other ads can be placed by companies looking to connect with people whose search engine requests have signaled their interest in certain products and services.
The participating newspapers will share in the revenue and contribute daily deals covering their markets to Find n Save's index.
Find n Save currently tracks local deals in 19 of the top 50 U.S. markets. The joint venture plans to add 21 more top markets to the list during the next month. By the end of 2013, the joint venture expects more than 400 newspapers to be affiliated with Find n Save.
Newspapers have been mining the Internet for more revenue to offset a steep decline in print advertising that has triggered bankruptcies and massive cutbacks during the past three years. The drop has been driven by the Internet's appeal to advertisers looking for less expensive ? and in some cases, more effective ? alternatives to print advertising.
The joint venture overseeing Find n Save will be run by acting CEO Christopher Trippe, who helped newspapers put together a partnership with Yahoo Inc. that began five years ago.
The venture's other partners include Hearst Corp., whose newspapers include the San Francisco Chronicle and 14 other dailies; MediaNews Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post and more than 50 other newspapers; McClatchy Co., owner of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, The Miami Herald and 28 other dailies; and The Washington Post Co., publisher of the largest newspaper in the nation's capital.
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Wanted: Astronauts; Missing: US rocket to fly them
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Looking for a job? NASA is hiring astronauts. You can even apply online at a giant government jobs website.
There's only one hitch: NASA doesn't have its own spaceship anymore and is sending fewer fliers into orbit right now.
"The experience is well worth the wait," promised NASA flight crew operations director Janet Kavandi as the space agency started a public search Tuesday for new astronauts.
There will be flights, but not many, with the space shuttle fleet retired. A handful of astronauts each year are launching on a Russian Soyuz spaceship to the International Space Station for six-month stays.
In about three to five years, NASA hopes to purchase trips for astronauts headed to the space station on American-built commercial rockets instead. And eventually, NASA hopes to fly astronauts in a government owned Orion capsule to an asteroid or even Mars, but those pioneering trips are more than a decade away.
With veteran astronauts leaving the space agency, Kavandi said NASA is afraid it will not have enough astronauts, something a National Research Council report pointed out in September.
NASA needs about 55 astronauts, and with a new class of nine graduating earlier this month, the astronaut roster is up to 58. One of those new astronauts will get to fly to the space station as early as 2013, Kavandi said.
"We're ready to serve, we're ready to get going," new astronaut Serena Aunon said Tuesday at NASA headquarters.
So to find candidates, NASA on Tuesday unveiled what its personnel chief called its biggest ever push to hire new astronauts ? with dozens of cheering elementary school students there to ask questions.
In the past ? when NASA had a space shuttle ? the space agency didn't make such a big deal of searching for astronauts, and they were inundated with applications. This new drive comes with a YouTube recruitment video complete with flashy images and driving techno-beat background music.
"We need you to help plan for this future of exploration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says in the video. "Join NASA. Get your application in now for the 2013 astronaut candidate class. Your spaceflight experience begins right now."
But before you polish up your resume, NASA isn't loosening its standards. You must have at least a bachelor's degree ? most astronauts have a master's or a doctorate ? in engineering, biological science, physical science or math. You must learn Russian, but be a U.S. citizen. You must know basic physics. Being a medical doctor or a teacher helps. You must have vision that can be corrected to 20/20, no high blood pressure and be between 5 foot 2 inches and 6 foot 3 inches.
Given these tight requirements, NASA will still probably get 3,000 qualified applicants, Kavandi said. The job pays between $64,700 and $141,700.
And if you are hired expect to lots of travel to foreign countries, Kavandi said. And oh yes, maybe into space.
___
Online:
NASA's site for seeking astronauts: http://astronauts.nasa.gov/
NASA recruitment video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLblEzuX8Zo
Government jobs site: http://tinyurl.com/astronautjob
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Thursday, 17 November 2011
Jobless claims at 7-month low, building permits jump (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? New claims for jobless benefits hit a seven-month low last week, while permits for future home construction rebounded strongly last month, bolstering views the economy was gaining traction.
The improving economic picture was spoiled somewhat by other data on Thursday showing factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region slowed this month on weak orders. However, employers hired more workers and increased working hours.
"Economic conditions are moving upward at an accelerating pace," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. "However, two major roadblocks stand in the way of solid growth: Rising oil prices and European debt issues."
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 5,000 to 388,000, the Labor Department said. Economists had forecast claims rising to 395,000.
Separately, permits for residential construction rose 10.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 653,000 last month, the Commerce Department said. However, new home construction fell 0.3 percent to annual rate of 628,000 units.
Stocks on Wall Street had a weak tone as investors kept a wary eye on Europe, while prices for Treasury debt fell. The dollar was little changed against a basket of currencies.
LABOR MARKET CONDITIONS IMPROVING
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index fell to 3.6 this month from 8.7 in October.
A reading above zero indicates factory activity is expanding in the region, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware.
But a measure of factory employment in the region rose to a six-month high, taking some of the sting out of the report, and the average workweek index more than tripled.
The claims data covered the survey period for November's nonfarm payrolls. Claims dropped 16,000 between the October and November survey weeks, implying an improvement in nonfarm employment.
After wobbling in the second quarter, the labor market is regaining momentum, but not enough to cut into a 9 percent unemployment rate and promote faster economic growth.
Recent data such as retail sales and industrial production point to firming growth, further reducing the risk of a new recession.
Economists believe fourth-quarter growth could top an annual pace of 3 percent, stepping up from 2.5 percent in the July-September period.
But the crisis in Europe, which has caused bond market turmoil across the region, could derail the recovery.
St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said the debt crisis in Europe probably would not hit the U.S. economy hard.
"If it blows up in a big disorderly way, which is what everyone is worried about, then that could come back to haunt the U.S.," Bullard told CNBC. "If it just tumbles along for a long period of time, which is the most likely outcome, then I'm not sure that you get much feedback to the U.S."
Initial claims have now held below the 400,000 mark that is normally associated with some healing in the jobs market for a second straight week.
The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, hit its lowest level since April.
"We believe this decline could be heralding a pickup in the pace of job creation and we note that the increase in private payrolls in April was 241,000." said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.
"While we do not yet expect to see such a strong reading on job creation for November, we do expect the report to show a pickup in employment growth along with a continued pattern of upward revisions to the prior two months."
The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped to a three-year low in the week ended November 5
(Additional reporting by Jason Lange and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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Syria faces growing world pressure to halt bloodshed (Reuters)
BEIRUT (Reuters) ? Jordan's King Abdullah told Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Monday he should step down and the European Union added pressure with more sanctions after the Arab League's surprise suspension of Damascus for its violent crackdown on protests.
Syria looks ever more isolated, but still has the support of Russia, which said the Arab League had made the wrong move and accused the West of inciting Assad's opponents.
Despite the diplomatic pressure, there was no let-up in violence and some 40 people were killed in fighting between troops and insurgents and army defectors near the Jordanian border, Syrian activists said.
The anti-Assad unrest, inspired by Arab revolts elsewhere, has devastated Syria's economy, scaring off tourists and investors, while Western sanctions have crippled oil exports.
Jordan's King Abdullah said Assad should quit. "I believe, if I were in his shoes, I would step down," he told the BBC.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said the League's decision, due to take effect on Wednesday, was "an extremely dangerous step" at a time when Damascus was implementing an Arab deal to end violence and start talks with the opposition.
Syria called for an emergency Arab League summit in an apparent effort to forestall its suspension.
Nabil Elaraby, the organisation's secretary general, said he had delivered the request to rulers of Arab League states and 15 members would have to approve in order to hold a summit, according to Egypt's state news agency MENA.
The League's suspension is a particularly bitter blow for Assad who has always seen himself as a champion of Arab unity. But adding to the injury, the Cairo-based League plans to meet Syrian dissident groups on Tuesday.
Even so, Elaraby said on Sunday it was too soon to consider recognizing the Syrian opposition as the country's legitimate authority.
Elaraby met representatives of Arab civil society groups on Monday and agreed to send a 500-strong fact-finding committee, including military personnel, to Syria as part of efforts to end the crackdown on demonstrators and dissenters.
"Syria agreed to receive the committee," said Ibrahim al-Zafarani, of the Arab Medical Union.
Moualem said Syria had withdrawn troops from urban areas, released prisoners and offered an amnesty to armed insurgents under an initiative agreed with the Arab League two weeks ago.
Yet violence has intensified since then, especially in the central city of Homs, pushing the death toll in eight months of protests to more than 3,500 by a U.N. count. Damascus says armed "terrorist" gangs have killed 1,100 soldiers and police.
Syria's ban on most foreign media makes it hard to verify events on the ground.
SHOOTING, TANK FIRE
In the latest violence, army defectors attacked a security police bus at a highway intersection near Khirbet Ghazaleh, 20 km (12 miles) north of the border with Jordan, activists said, one of the first reported major armed clashes.
Government troops, backed by armor then launched an assault on Khirbet Ghazaleh, on the Hauran Plain an area of flat farmland that also borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and killed 20 insurgents, the activists said. A similar number of troops were killed, they said.
"Members of the (defectors') brigade fought back when the army attacked and Bedouin from nearby villages also rushed to help Khirbet Ghazaleh," said one of the activists, who gave his name as Abu Hussein.
Security police also shot dead activist Amin Abdo al-Ghothani in front of his nine-year-old son at a roadblock outside the town of Inkhil in southern Syria, a grassroots organization known as the Local Coordination Committees said.
In Homs, residents said renewed tank shelling killed a teenager and wounded eight people in the restive Bab Amro district. Students in the Damascus suburb of Erbin chanted "God is greater than the oppressor," according to a YouTube video.
Moualem described Washington's support for the Arab League action as "incitement," but voiced confidence that Russia and China would continue to block Western efforts to secure U.N. Security Council action, let alone any foreign intervention.
"The Libya scenario will not be repeated," he said.
It was the Arab League's decision to suspend Libya and call for a no-fly zone that helped persuade the U.N. Security Council to authorize a NATO air campaign to protect civilians, which also aided rebels who ousted and killed Muammar Gaddafi.
Syrian state television said millions of Syrians protested at the League decision in Damascus and other cities on Sunday.
Crowds also attacked Saudi, Turkish and French diplomatic missions in Syria after the Arab League announcement.
Moualem apologized for the assaults, which have worsened already tense ties between Syria and its former friend Turkey.
"We will take the most resolute stance against these attacks and we will stand by the Syrian people's rightful struggle," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the Turkish parliament, saying Damascus could no longer be trusted.
Non-Arab Turkey, after long courting Assad, has lost patience with its neighbor. It now hosts the main Syrian opposition and has given refuge to defecting Syrian soldiers.
EU SANCTIONS
The European Union extended penalties to 18 more Syrians linked with the crackdown on dissent and approved plans to stop Syria accessing funds from the European Investment Bank.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was in touch with the Arab League to work on an approach to Syria, but the 27-nation body appears set against military intervention.
Syria, which borders Israel, is Iran's main Arab ally and has strong ties with Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and the Islamist Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country joined China to block a U.N. resolution critical of Syria in October, criticized the Arab League's decision.
Russia, an arms supplier to the Syrians, has urged Assad to implement reforms but opposes sanctions and has accused the United States and France of discouraging dialogue in Syria.
"There has been and continues to be incitement of radical opponents (of Assad) to take a firm course for regime change and reject any invitations to dialogue," Lavrov said.
The Arab League also plans to impose unspecified economic and political sanctions on Syria and has urged its members to recall their ambassadors from Damascus.
Assad still has some support at home, especially from his own minority Alawite sect and Christians, wary of sectarian conflict or Sunni Muslim domination if he were to be toppled.
Despite some defections, the Syrian military has not emulated its counterparts in Egypt and Tunisia in abandoning long-serving presidents faced with popular discontent.
The government has acknowledged that sanctions are hurting, but it is not clear whether this will force any policy change.
Chris Phillips of the Economist Intelligence Unit in London said Syria's economy was "slowly bleeding to death."
(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Dominic Evans in Beirut, Ayman Samir in Cairo and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111114/wl_nm/us_syria
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Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Hands-On With The Samsung Captivate Glide For AT&T
You may have already been acquainted with the Samsung Captivate Glide, but it hasn't quite gotten as much attention as it deserves. Today, that changes. I got the opportunity to get up close and personal with the new Android slider and found it to be a solid little handset for anyone who simply can't stand touchscreen keyboards.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gDDEVtsq678/
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Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Experts: Okla. quakes too powerful to be man-made
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NY charity studies possible Penn State scandal link (Reuters)
STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) ? A New York-based charity was investigating on Monday whether it sent disadvantaged children for vacations at the home of accused child sex abuser and former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
News reports from about a decade ago -- related to the promotion of Sandusky's memoir "Touched" -- mentioned that Sandusky and his wife Dottie served as volunteer hosts for children from The Fresh Air Fund for several years.
The Fresh Air Fund, founded in 1877, sends disadvantaged New York City children to camps and volunteer host families in 13 U.S. states and Canada for "free summer experiences," according to its website.
"We have contacted the Pennsylvania authorities to report any Fresh Air involvement," Andrea Kotuk, spokeswoman for The Fresh Air Fund, told Reuters. "We're going through records."
Sandusky was charged on November 5 with sexually abusing eight young boys over more than a decade and prosecutors said he met all his alleged victims through the nonprofit Second Mile program for disadvantaged youth, which he founded in 1977.
The Second Mile program said it cut ties with Sandusky in 2008. The longtime head of the charity resigned on Monday and hired a new legal team as it prepared for what experts say is an inevitable flurry of civil litigation.
The scandal had thrown Penn State University into turmoil after some university officials were accused of covering-up the alleged child sex abuse.
Former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and former finance official Gary Schultz, have also been charged with failing to report an incident after revered football coach Joe Paterno told them in 2002 that an assistant saw Sandusky being sexually inappropriate with a boy in a campus locker room.
Sandusky, Curley and Schultz have all denied the charges.
Paterno, 84, was fired by the university last week after it was revealed that while he had fulfilled his legal obligation by telling Curley about the alleged incident, he did not call police. The scandal also claimed Penn State President Graham Spanier, who was dismissed after 16 years in the job.
The then-graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, who is now an assistant football coach, has been placed on administrative leave. He told a grand jury that he had seen Sandusky raping a boy aged about 10 in the locker room showers in 2002. He also did not call police.
Sandusky coached for more than two decades at Penn State before retiring in 1999 and was once considered a likely successor to Paterno. After his retirement he still had access to Penn State facilities.
A spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general declined to comment on possible links between Sandusky and The Fresh Air Fund and a spokesman for the New York attorney general was not immediately available.
Prosecutors in Texas have opened an investigation into Sandusky after grand jury testimony in Pennsylvania indicated that he may have abused a young boy when Penn State was in San Antonio for the 1999 Alamo Bowl.
(Writing by Michelle Nichols)
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Monday, 14 November 2011
Just Show Me: How to configure the web browser on your iPhone or iPad (Yahoo! News)
Welcome to?Just Show Me on Tecca TV, where we show you tips and tricks for getting the most out of the?gadgets in your life. In today's episode we'll show you how to configure the Safari web browser on your iPhone or iPad once you've upgraded to?iOS 5.
You can configure lots of different settings with the iOS 5 web browser that will make your browsing safer and more private. This includes things like disabling JavaScript (so potentially annoying web pages don't appear), or changing your preferred search engine from Google to another service like Microsoft's Bing. You can even enable private browsing, so your phone doesn't keep records of what sites you've visited.
For more episodes of Just Show Me, subscribe to Tecca TV's YouTube channel and check out all our Just Show Me episodes. If you have any topics you'd like to see us cover, just drop us a line in the comments.
This article originally appeared on Tecca
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Sunday, 13 November 2011
IEA Warns of Irreversible Climate Change In 5 Years
Do you realize that it's possible for what you say to be true (and I agree with the general point) AND for it to also be true that humans are capable of altering the environment? Given that, it's also possible that the natural changes wouldn't be so bad, but the human caused changes might end up being very bad for us. So shouldn't we do something to stop the changes we can stop?
The answer to your questions lies not in the direct answer, but the indirect one. To give the answer I have to give a little background.
The Earth's climate has always been changing and it always will. The treehugger notion we could or should stop the climate from changing is great irony - because that would be a bigger imposition on the Earth's ecology than doing nothing. It would introduce a static climate never before seen on Earth - if it were possible - with inevitable and unforeseen consequences. But there are temperature zones the Earth appears not to like, and it transitions through them swiftly - and then stays on one side or another of this zone for a longer time. There are other zones that global average temperature can vary in for a considerable period of time - until it enters this unsavory zone and then rapidly crosses over it again. I'll leave the "why" of this to some philosopher or trained scientist, but it's a useful observed fact without understanding why.
Giving the average global temperature of the 21st century as 0, we reached the peak of the current temperate zone about 5,000 years ago at a level called the Holocene Climatic Optimum at about +1C. This is about 4-8C below the maximum temperature for the last 450K years or so, and there appear to be feedback effects which prevent the temperature from going any higher than that maximum because it hasn't deviated from this pattern for 2.5 million years - longer than humans have been around. There is a climate danger zone at -0.6C and if we enter it the temperature drops quickly to a new range of -5 to -8C for a very long time. Glaciers march and scrape our cities into the sea, owning the land for a hundred thousand years.
Unfortunately for our teeming billions, up until about 300 years ago the temperature had declined from the Holocene Optimum of +1C to -0.6C and was trending down. -0.6C appears to be the upper bound of one of those unsavory zones, and the next stop is -5C [wikimedia.org] which is quite a drastic change. We were on the cusp of transition into the ice, and in fact that period is called the "little ice age". Each time in the last half-million years the average temperature passed below -0.7C it skipped directly over the intervening temperatures and went directly to the lower level - resulting in the die-off of terrestrial animals including humans, glaciation, and other unpleasant effects. The duration of this cold period averages 100,000 years which is likely longer than we could bear it. If it had not been for the warming currently attributed by some to the burning of fossil fuels and its concomitant CO2 discharge, we would likely already be suffering the cold dipping to -5C or more.
Perhaps 6 billion of us would be dead already, or never born - not from the cold, but from the inevitable famine and struggling for resources that it would bring. But that's not the end. 300 years from now there would be only a few million of our seven billions left, if the resulting wars didn't leave the planet uninhabitable entirely. Our entire industrial revolution, sciences and arts these last 200 years? Lost, perhaps forever.
No matter what we do the Earth will not stay habitable to this many humans forever. In the last half-million years we've had only four such periods lasting an average 12,000 years or so. This warm period we now enjoy is not the Earth's normal temperature. And when it's over, it really and truly does appear to be over for a very long time. It will be cold sooner or later. For me and mine, I
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