Source: www.care2.com --- Saturday, December 31, 2011
There have been a lot of 911 calls coming from Toronto Mayor Rob Ford?s residence. An article by Robyn Doolittle in the Toronto Star is raising a series of questions about those calls. How many were there really? What is happening at the Ford residence? Does the public deserve to know? Is Ford abusing his [...] ...
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ABUJA (Reuters) ? The death toll from a bomb attack on a church just outside Nigeria's capital Abuja on Christmas Day has risen to 37, with 57 people wounded, a source at the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Friday.
The bombing at St. Theresa's Catholic church in Madalla on Abuja's outskirts during a packed Christmas mass was the deadliest of a series of Christmas attacks on Nigerian churches and other targets by the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram.
"As of just now, the latest death toll from the bombing of St. Theresa's church is at 37. Wounded, we have 57," a senior NEMA official said. The initial death toll had been 27.
The official asked not to be identified because the victims were now in the hands of hospitals and morgues.
President Goodluck Jonathan's office put out a statement late on Friday pledging that "the government will fight Boko Haram, the group of evil-minded people who want to cause anarchy, to the end."
Jonathan held talks on Friday with Mohame Bazoum, Deputy Prime Minister of Niger. Security officials suspect the countries' porous common border is a gathering point for militants, and that Boko Haram may have made contact there with al Qaeda's north African wing.
"The perpetrators pass through borders at will and we have to ensure that there are no safe havens for them in the sub-region," Jonathan said.
He had summoned his security chiefs for an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the growing Islamist militant threat and how to deal with it.
National Security Adviser General Owoye Andrew Azazi told Reuters that Nigerian security services were considering making contact with moderate members of Boko Haram via "back channels," even though explicit talks are officially ruled out.
EXPLOSIONS, SHOOTINGS IN NORTHEAST
This year was the second in a row that Boko Haram has attacked churches at Christmas. Its strikes are becoming deadlier and more sophisticated, and suggest that it is trying to ignite sectarian strife in a country historically prone to conflicts between a largely Muslim north and Christian south.
Three explosions struck the northeastern city of Maiduguri shortly after Muslim Friday prayers, but caused no casualties, the military said. In a separate incident, gunmen shot dead three members of a cleric's family.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful" in the northern Hausa language, has been blamed for a campaign of shootings and bombings against security forces and authorities in the north.
Attacks in and around the capital - including one on the U.N. headquarters in August that killed at least 24 people - suggest the group is trying to raise its profile and radiate out from its heartland in the northeast.
On Tuesday night, unidentified attackers threw a homemade bomb into an Islamic school in the southern Delta state, an apparent sectarian reprisal that wounded seven people, six of them young children.
On Wednesday night, an explosion in a local bar in the northern city of Gombe wounded one person, police said.
(Reporting by Tim Cocks)
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SEOUL (Reuters) ? Young and untested, Kim Jong-un has all but taken over North Korea's leadership, with state media calling him "supreme commander" and "leader of the state, army and party" well before his late father was borne through the streets of Pyongyang in a state funeral on Wednesday.
Kim, believed to be about 27 years old, walked alongside a limousine carrying his father's coffin, as it set out on a funeral procession amid snowflurries.
After the reclusive state emerges from a period of mourning on Thursday, Kim, vice chairman of the ruling party's Central Military Commission, is expected quickly to take on additional titles to cement his place at the top.
"Kim will need the Workers' Party general secretary post and the supreme commander position, which require the party to meet for a full Central Committee meeting," said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
"But he does need to be officially appointed new leader so that meeting could come in February or March, before they want to go ahead with declaring the year of the 'strong and prosperous' nation in April," Yang said, referring to a long-proclaimed national goal.
Experts who study the North's power structure say it will likely take years for the third member of the Kim dynasty to solidify his grip on the state and be able to run it without a coterie.
The power behind the throne is widely believed to be Jang Song-thaek, the husband of the junior Kim's aunt, a pragmatic survivor of the North's tradition of purge and bitter intrigue surrounding the former leader who died on December 17 at age 69.
Jang could steer the young Kim toward opening up one of the world's most isolated states that has been squeezed tight under international sanctions designed to punish it for its defiant missile and nuclear tests.
Not much is known about the younger Kim, not even his exact age, though his father, Kim Jong-il, and his autocratic regime had made preparations for the son's transition to power.
Kim was appointed as a four-star general last year and vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission at a Workers' Party meeting, bringing him to the forefront and in line to take over from his father.
Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008 but had recovered, and had led an active public schedule in recent months making field trips with the junior Kim often at his side.
Educated in Switzerland, he is thought to speak English and German, and bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather, the North's founder, Kim Il-sung.
Two attacks on the peninsula last year which killed 50 South Koreans, were, analysts say, aimed at winning the army's support for a continuation of dynastic rule and underscored an intent to maintain the state's military-first policy.
The young Kim is likely to follow the same militaristic path, experts say, maintaining a strong grip over one of the world's largest armies and pressing on with a nuclear weapons program in the face of international outrage.
SUCCESSION PROCESS
For added security, Kim Jong-il promoted his sister and her husband, Jang, to top positions to create a powerful triumvirate to run the family dynasty.
"Despite economic hardship, food shortages, and a welter of sanctions, the Kim Jong-il regime seems stable, and the succession process is, by all appearances, taking place smoothly," John Delury and Chung-in Moon of Yonsei University wrote in an article in April.
The two scholars also say China is actively engaged on diplomatic and economic levels in supporting North Korea's survival, stability and development.
China prefers the status quo on the peninsula, worried that if the South takes over the North, the South would bring its U.S. military ally to the Chinese border.
CLOAK OF SECRECY
The most frequently viewed photograph of Jong-un before his emergence last year was of him as an 11-year-old. But recent pictures and footage of him show a heavy-set young man with his hair clipped short.
There is a question over whether his late mother, a Japanese-born professional dancer called Ko Yong-hui, was Kim Jong-il's official wife or mistress -- an issue that might weigh on his legitimate right to replace his father.
Kim Jong-il was very publicly named heir by his father, Kim Il-sung, but he studiously avoided repeating the process and for years none of his three sons appeared in state media.
Kim Il-sung, the "eternal president," died in 1994.
After taking over from his father, Kim Jong-il saw his state's economy grow weaker and a famine in the 1990s killed about one million of his people, while he advocated a military-first policy.
Seventeen years later, he will likely get the same sort send-off from his people that his father did, with a carefully staged procession through the streets of Pyongyang, capping a cult of personality and seeing power move to his son.
In a book about his time as chef to the ruling household, Kenji Fujimoto of Japan said that of the three sons, the youngest, Kim Jong-un, most resembled his father.
He is also said to have a ruthless streak and the strongest leadership skills of the three as well as being his father's favorite, though his youth may also be a problem in a society that values seniority.
(Editing by Ed Lane and Ron Popeski)
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The University of Arkansas men's basketball team is set to host Charlotte tonight at 7 p.m. at Bud Walton Arena. bit.ly/svYLmX 
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Source: http://twitter.com/ArkRazorbacks/statuses/152070755272765440
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Updated with info from DENA, from my site: Who's Actually Playing Social Games In Japan? serkantoto.com/2011/12/29/who? 
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Source: http://twitter.com/serkantoto/statuses/152336516755111936
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President Obama speaks on the economy at Osawatomie High School in Kansas on December 6.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Paul Osterman is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author, with the late Beth Shulman, of "Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone."
(CNN) -- Every politician in America declares concern for the economic crisis of the middle class. But to truly help the middle class, we must take on our nation's exploding economic inequality.
Consider two basic facts: Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% of households captured almost 60% of all income growth in the U.S., yet median wage growth in the 2000s has been flat.
In his Kansas speech on the economy this month, President Obama described the growing inequality as the "defining issue of our time." He urged America to avoid a race to the bottom and instead to create good, well-paying jobs. The president laid out a series of important steps to restore fairness by repairing the tax and regulatory system, but these strategies are not enough. Nor is improving education; that's obviously important, but it will take many years to have an impact.
To make a significant difference for working men and women today and the generations who follow, we must directly take on the unfairness of the job market. The distribution of economic rewards is driven by the jobs people hold, and we have allowed job quality to deteriorate for far too many for far too long.
Paul Osterman
How do we know that a lack of job quality contributes to growing inequality? At the bottom of the labor market, 20% of adults in the U.S. today work in jobs that pay poverty wages, wages that would not raise a family of four above the poverty line, even with full-time, year-round work.
Farther up the ladder, jobs have been disassembled. It used to be that a skilled job, either white- or blue-collar, paid decently, provided reasonable benefits and offered security. We left that reality behind long ago. Only about half of jobs in the U.S. today provide pensions.
Job security has eroded; many who are laid off face a substantial risk of falling into poverty. Even if laid-off workers are lucky enough to find new jobs, they are forced to take a 20% pay cut, according to my calculations using Census surveys. Being skilled no longer earns decent pay, benefits or security.
Any serious effort to address the travails of the middle class must include taking on the challenges of making the job market more fair. But even as politicians lambast Wall Street and propose making taxes more fair, they avoid the challenge of improving job quality.
What would that take? For those earning poverty wages, the answer is to raise standards and to enforce them. Today's minimum wage is more than $3 below its value in 1968, after accounting for inflation. Today, too many employers avoid paying overtime to employees who have earned it, and effective enforcement of the law to avoid this wage theft is important. A stronger voice for workers, such as unions, can improve economic outcomes, but the law today is stacked against union organizing.
For people still clinging to decent jobs, the challenge is more complicated. We need a new social contract -- between employers and employees.
In the past, when many American firms did well, they shared profits and productivity gains with their employees. That is no longer the standard. In the past, CEOs were praised if they showed a commitment to their work forces, if they saw human capital as their key competitive asset. That, too, has changed. We cannot return to the placid labor market of the 1950s and '60s, but we can certainly rekindle a sense of mutual commitment and fairness.
What will it take to begin to do all this? Leadership is critical to the solution. Our political and business leaders need to step up. There are plenty of examples of firms that respect their work forces, from Southwest Airlines to SAS software, and their model should be emulated.
But it would be na?ve to think that purely voluntary action and exhortation will turn the tide. For a real shift, we need real policy initiatives. These include increased public support for deepening training, investments in the human capital of the work force, which can come via the tax code and well-designed public-private training programs.
Also important are modernized regulations that would make it difficult for employers to use subcontractors in occupations such as building cleaners or security guards and by doing so avoid responsibility for employees who work at their site. Giving employees an even playing field in deciding whether they want to be represented by a union can also make a big difference.
In addition, governments can set an example by paying attention to the employment terms of firms that receive government contracts and to which local, state and federal governments contract out services.
Even in the current economy, we can afford to make these choices. And if we want to rebuild a strong middle class, we cannot afford to postpone them.
The inequality that has steadily grown over the past three decades can't be solved with a quick fix. But until we focus on job quality, we cannot expect any significant progress. Improving the quality of jobs for most Americans over time is the best way to meet the growing popular demand for economic fairness.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Paul Osterman.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/28/opinion/osterman-jobs-inequality/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular
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BEIJING ? Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda wrapped up a trip to Beijing on Monday where he sought China's cooperation in promoting stability in North Korea after the death of its longtime leader Kim Jong Il.
Noda's first official visit to Beijing since taking power in September would normally have centered on bilateral issues, such as squabbles over islands claimed by both countries, but the death of Kim on Dec. 17 and the announcement of his son Kim Jong Un as the country's "supreme leader" has shifted the focus.
Noda, the first foreign leader to meet with China's leaders since Kim's death, emphasized the need to get stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program back on track.
"Strengthening our countries' relations is necessary in order to solve regional and global issues," Noda said when he met President Hu Jintao on Monday, a day after holding talks with his counterpart, Wen Jiabao.
On Sunday, Noda pointed to the new situation in East Asia, saying "it is very timely to exchange views with the host of the six-party talks and the country with the most influence on North Korea," referring to China.
His visit to China was planned before Kim's death was announced Dec. 19.
When asked whether China could confirm that Kim Jong Un was in complete control of North Korea, Japanese Foreign Ministry press secretary Yutaka Yokoi would say only that Noda and Wen had discussed the situation on the Korean peninsula.
After meeting with Wen, Noda told reporters that the two leaders had agreed to cooperate to try to achieve stability on the peninsula.
"We shared the understanding that denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and its peace and stability not only benefits Japan and China but serves the common interest of all neighboring countries," said Noda.
Yokoi said that a Chinese leader has been invited to visit Japan in the first half of next year, but would not say who.
Japan does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, while China is the impoverished country's most important supporter and supplies it with food aid and much of its energy resources.
The six-party talks, which include the two Koreas, the United States and Russia, as well as China and Japan, are aimed at disarming North Korea of its nuclear capability. Pyongyang walked out on the talks in 2009 ? and exploded a second nuclear-test device ? but now wants to re-engage.
Last year, North Korea was blamed for two military attacks on South Korea that heightened tensions on the peninsula.
Yokoi said China would consider Noda's request to lease pandas for a zoo in Sendai to help cheer up the northern Japanese region as it recovers from the earthquake and tsunami disasters in March.
Noda and Wen noted that 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between their countries and said both nations want to improve relations to mark that occasion.
Officials from both countries also signed memorandums of understanding on youth exchanges and setting up a clean energy and environmental protection investment fund.
Japan and China have a list of sensitive topics they are trying to make progress on, including fights over islands and energy disputes in the East China Sea.
___
Associated Press writers Gillian Wong in Beijing and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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Metallic structures with a low level electric current provoke limestone formations that attract coral growth. The technology is proving effective at restoring reefs around the world, including Bali.
By John Roach
A low-level electric current running through domed-shaped metallic structures in the waters off Bali is giving a jolt to coral reef survival there, according to news reports.
The Biorock technology is seen by some conservationists as a means to repair coral reefs damaged by years of destructive cyanide and dynamite fishing practices, as well as steadily warming oceans.
Warming oceans are a threat to the reefs since they result in more frequent episodes of coral bleaching, a phenomenon when higher temperatures cause photosynthetic algae that provide corals with food and color to leave, turning the corals white.
Without food for a sustained period of time, the corals will die. A coral bleaching event in 1998 killed one sixth of the world's tropical reefs.?
Biorock technology builds from the late German marine architect Wolf Hibertz's discovery in the 1970s that electrified metallic structures cause dissolved minerals in the water to crystallize on them.
This grows "into a white limestone similar to that which naturally makes up coral reefs and tropical white sand beaches," the Global Coral Reef Alliance explains. ?
Marine life including corals and oysters colonize this limestone.
"Corals grow two to six times faster. We are able to grow back reefs in a few years," Thomas J. Goreau, a marine biologist who is leading the development of the technology, told?AFP.
Goreau is president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance, a U.S.-based non-profit dedicated to the protection, preservation, and sustainable management of coral reefs.?
Bali success
The alliance today works with organizations around the world to implement the Biorock technology, including a 20-year-long project in Pemuteran Bay off the north coast of Bali.
Today there are about 60 of the electrified metallic cages in the bay, creating a coral reef there that is "flourishing better than ever before," AFP reports.
What's more, researchers overseeing the project say that the Biorock technology makes the corals more resistant to global warming.
"Biorock is the only method known that protects corals from dying from high temperatures. We get from 16 to 50 times higher survival of corals from severe bleaching," Goreau told AFP.
These restored reefs in turn attract fish and tourists.
Technology limits?
While the technology is useful for small areas, the scale of coral bleaching is just too large for it to be a cost-effective solution, Rod Salm, a coral reef specialist with The Nature Conservancy, told the Associated Press in a 2007 story about Biorock technology.
A more effective method of saving reefs from mass coral bleaching may be large marine protected areas that offer plenty of shade and cooler waters for the reefs, Salm noted in a 2010 blog post for Nature.
But at the small scale, at least, Goreau argues that Biorock is more cost-effective than other solutions. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently touted the successful recovery of 376 square feet of coral in Florida that was damaged when a boat ran aground in 2002.?
With $56,671 in settlement funds, the government agency attached corals to a special cement that hardens underwater. By 2010, the restored reef was healthier than an adjacent undamaged section.
Goreau issued a press release countering the agency's success story saying that his Biorock technology is more cost effective.?Based on the settlement funds used for the restoration, the government project cost $1,622 per square foot. Biorock technology can be used to grow six foot tall reef structures for $13 to $20 per square foot, he claims.
The technology will be featured in One Day on Earth, a television program sponsored by the United Nations, in early 2012. You can check it out in the video below.
More on coral reef damage and restoration:
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
A five-thousand-year-old material gets new life and super strength thanks to new technology. From the 103rd story of the Willis Tower in Chicago to Apple's future headquarters to a Corning research lab, we see how tough glass can get while maintaining its timeless beauty.
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LOS ANGELES ? The moon has come a long way since Galileo first peered at it through a telescope. Unmanned probes have circled around it and landed on its surface. Twelve American astronauts have walked on it. And lunar rocks and soil have been hauled back from it.
Despite being well studied, Earth's closest neighbor remains an enigma.
Over the New Year's weekend, a pair of spacecraft the size of washing machines are set to enter orbit around it in the latest lunar mission. Their job is to measure the uneven gravity field and determine what lies beneath ? straight down to the core.
Since rocketing from the Florida coast in September, the near-identical Grail spacecraft have been independently traveling to their destination and will arrive 24 hours apart. Their paths are right on target that engineers recently decided not to tweak their positions.
"Both spacecraft have performed essentially flawlessly since launch, but one can never take anything for granted in this business," said mission chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The nail-biting part is yet to come. On New Year's Eve, one of the Grail probes ? short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ? will fire its engine to slow down so that it could be captured into orbit. This move will be repeated by the other the following day.
Engineers said the chances of the probes overshooting are slim since their trajectories have been precise. Getting struck by a cosmic ray may prevent the completion of the engine burn and they won't get boosted into the right orbit.
"I know I'm going to be nervous. I'm definitely a worrywart," said project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million, three-month mission.
Once in orbit, the spacecraft will spend the next two months flying in formation and chasing one another around the moon until they are about 35 miles above the surface with an average separation of 124 miles. Data collection won't begin until March.
Previous missions have attempted to measure lunar gravity with mixed success. Grail is the first mission dedicated to this goal.
As the probes circle the moon, regional changes in the lunar gravity field will cause them to speed up or slow down. This in turn will change the distance between them. Radio signals transmitted by the spacecraft will measure the slight distance gaps, allowing researchers to map the underlying gravity field.
Using the gravity information, scientists can deduce what's below or at the lunar surface such as mountains and craters and may help explain why the far side of the moon is more rugged than the side that faces Earth.
The probes are officially known as Grail-A and Grail-B. Several months ago, NASA hosted a contest inviting schools and students to submit new names. The probes will be christened with the winning names after the second orbit insertion, Zuber said.
Besides the one instrument on board, each spacecraft also carries a camera for educational purposes. Run by a company founded by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, middle school students from participating schools can choose their own lunar targets to image during the mission.
A trip to the moon is typically relatively quick. It took Apollo astronauts three days to get there. Since Grail was launched from a relatively small rocket to save on costs, the journey took 3 1/2 months.
Scientists expect the mission to yield a bounty of new information about the moon, but don't count on the U.S. sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Constellation program was canceled last year by President Barack Obama, who favors landing on an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.
___
Online:
Mission details: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/news/index.html
___
Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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Continue reading Switched On: Keeping the 'app' out of Apple's TV
Switched On: Keeping the 'app' out of Apple's TV originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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MONDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- A new study finds abuse in childhood may be associated with changes in the teenage brain.
The research found that teens who've been abused or neglected have less "gray matter" -- tissue that contains brain cells -- in some areas of the brain than those who haven't been subjected to maltreatment.
Forty-two adolescents involved in the study had a history of abuse or neglect. They also had reductions of gray matter in the brain, even though they had not been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, the Yale School of Medicine researchers said.
The affected brain areas may differ between boys and girls, and may depend on whether the teens were exposed to abuse or neglect or whether the neglect was physical or emotional, the researchers noted.
Reductions in gray matter were seen in the prefrontal areas of the brain, no matter whether the teen had suffered physical abuse or emotional neglect. But reductions of gray matter in other areas of the brain depended on the type of maltreatment. For example, emotional neglect was associated with less gray matter in areas of the brain that regulate emotion.
In boys, reductions in gray matter tended to be concentrated in areas of the brain associated with impulse control or substance abuse. In girls, reductions were in areas of the brain linked to depression.
The study was published Dec. 5 in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.
"Here we have teenagers who may not have a diagnosable illness but still have physical evidence of maltreatment," senior author Hilary Blumberg, an associate professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Diagnostic Radiology and in the Yale Child Study Center, said in a Yale news release. "This could help to explain their trouble with school performance or increase their vulnerability to depression and behavioral difficulties."
She emphasized that this gray matter reduction likely is not permanent.
"We have found that the brain, particularly in adolescents, shows a great deal of plasticity," Blumberg said. "It is critical to find ways to prevent maltreatment and to help the youths who have been exposed."
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about child abuse.
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Source: http://sportspyder.com/teams/houston-rockets/articles/5333398
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ISTANBUL ? A free political climate is essential to economic innovation, and countries that try to censor the Internet are pursuing a "dead end," U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told a group of young entrepreneurs gathered in Istanbul on Saturday.
The international forum, which drew hundreds of attendees, followed up on a meeting in Washington last year aimed at deepening ties between the United States and Muslim communities around the world.
Biden said a political system based on freedom of speech and religion also is the "truest shield" against sectarian strife that has afflicted the Middle East, as well as western Europe in past centuries.
He stressed the importance of a "free political climate in which ideas and innovation can flourish," adding that governments should not try to close the Internet to free expression.
"Those countries will find that that approach is a dead end," he said.
America has a history of innovation, Biden said, noting the success of companies such as Apple and Google, as well as breakthroughs in medical technology such as mobile phone apps that can help diagnose malaria.
He also praised Turkey, noting that the Muslim ally's economy has tripled in size over the last decade.
Turkey's deputy prime minister, Ali Babacan, said Turkey was an example for the region of how Islam and democracy can coexist peacefully.
The U.S. leader arrived in Turkey late Thursday and has been meeting with top officials here. He has urged Turkey to impose new sanctions on Iran, while praising Ankara for its role in pressuring Syria to stop its deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Also Saturday, Biden visited Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is recovering from a surgery. No statement was made after the meeting which lasted about two hours. In a picture distributed by Erdogan's office, the prime minister was seen standing next to Biden as the two leaders smiled. Erdogan was wearing a shirt and jacket but no tie.
Biden later met Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, in Istanbul.
Ahead of his visit to Turkey, Biden urged Turkey in emailed remarks to Turkish daily Hurriyet that Ankara should reopen a seminary that trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs, saying "the continued closure of the seminary is an anomaly and an unnecessary mark against Turkey's international image."
The Halki Theological School on Heybeliada Island, near Istanbul, was closed to new students in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control. The school closed its doors in 1985, when the last five students graduated.
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Image: AP |
They're accused of violating the Federal Wiretap Act for allegedly gathering private information without anyone's consent.
The penalty for being found guilty? $100 per day per violation. And with Carrier IQ bragging that its software keeps tabs on 140 million phones, it could get expensive quickly.
Despite many manufacturers' insistence that it's the carriers who are responsible for installing Carrier IQ, none have been named in the suit yet.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/carrier-iq-class-action-lawsuit-2011-12
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The Cricket Crosswave WiFi Hotspot ($99.99 direct) is an inexpensive cellular modem for connecting multiple devices to Cricket's wireless network.
Cricket covers about a third of the nation with somewhat slow, but reliable 3G. For cellular modems, Cricket offers 2.5GB/month for $45, 5GB for $55, and 7.5GB for $65 with no contract. If you go over the max, Cricket won't cut you off, but will throttle your speeds significantly until the next month starts.
Made by Huawei, the Crosswave is an 802.11b/g device that creates an instant mobile hotspot for up to four different devices. It can also be connected directly to your desktop or laptop via USB. There's a microSD card slot that accepts cards up to 32GB, and battery life is rated at three hours of active use or 90 hours of standby. The Crosswave can be used in all Cricket broadband coverage areas and can be used to send and receive text messages.?
Cricket's 3G network works on the 850-, 1,900-, and 1,700-MHz bands, depending upon your location. It covers many major cities, including Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and San Diego, as well as some smaller cities such as Arizona, Kansas, Tucson, and Wichita. Cricket's 3G does not cover New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or anywhere in New England or Florida, however. Make sure to check the coverage maps at?http://www.mycricket.com/coverage/maps/wireless before buying in.
At $45 per month for 2.5GB, the Cricket Crosswave looks like an affordable way to multiple devices online, provided you're in a covered city and looking for a no-contract option. Otherwise, monthly plans with the major carriers will offer your faster speeds and greater coverage, at prices that typically start around $50 for 5GB per month.
More Cell Phone Reviews:
??? RIM BlackBerry Curve 9350 (Sprint)
??? Snapfon ez ONE-c (Unlocked)
??? Samsung Captivate Glide (AT&T)
??? Samsung DoubleTime (AT&T)
??? Samsung Focus Flash (AT&T)
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/LhlFq-m14os/0,2817,2396980,00.asp
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WASHINGTON ? House Republicans have launched their most ambitious, pro-business effort yet to rein in Obama administration regulators, triggering a furious debate over the value of new rules for clean air, workplace safety, children's toys and many other categories.
The House was set to vote Friday on the second of two anti-regulation bills, legislation that would impose potentially stifling procedures on federal regulators. Republicans argue that avoiding expensive new regulations would aid businesses in hiring workers, while Democrats counter that Americans' health and safety would be jeopardized.
The White House budget office didn't wait for the vote to announce that if the bill passed Congress, senior administration advisers would recommend a veto.
At this point, the Republican effort is mainly a 2012 campaign issue because the Democratic-run Senate has not passed any of the anti-regulation bills the House has approved this year.
Until now, Republicans have focused on derailing specific proposed rules, many of them from the Environmental Protection Agency. The latest effort, however, would curtail regulators ? and their proposed rules ? across the entire federal government.
The bill considered Friday, the Regulatory Accountability Act, would require numerous steps before new rules could be issued. Regulators would have to consider the legal authority for the rule, the nature and significance of the problem, any reasonable alternatives, and potential costs and benefits of the alternatives.
Federal courts would have an expanded role and the government would have a tougher legal standard to meet for a proposed rule to be affirmed.
OMB Watch, an advocacy organization that tracks federal regulations, said if the bill already had been law, the government would not have been able to issue a finding that greenhouse gases endangered public health. The group said it would have been more difficult to withstand court challenges to findings that a popular weed killer was dangerous. It would have been tougher to defend statements about the health impact of too much salt. And the government would have had to weaken a strong rule on lead in gasoline.
Still to come, probably next week, is a bill that would make it far easier for Congress to kill regulations.
The House on Thursday passed the first of the three bills in this latest anti-regulation effort. It would give more weight to the impact of federal regulations on small businesses, whose owners can be a powerful political force and are being courted by both parties.
The bill went to the Senate on a 263-159 vote.
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NASA's better days can appear long past to the public. The U.S. space agency that once landed a man on the moon now wrestles with questions of existential crisis after retiring its space shuttle fleet this year. But it may still have enough leftover mojo to boldly set new goals to go where no man has gone before ? if it can shake off its instinct to always look for guidance from the president and Congress.
A chance exists for NASA to declare a new vision for space exploration, said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. His nonprofit group wants to help the space agency control its destiny based on the authority of its "smartest, badass scientists" and spaceflight achievements, rather than acting as a political football for lawmakers while waiting for someone to decide its next mission.
"If they were in Silicon Valley, we'd be worshiping them," said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. "But they're NASA, so we're cutting their budget."
Removing the blinders
Part of the uncertainty problem surrounding space exploration is that "the public narrative around NASA seems broken," Leitner explained. Even as news reports glowed over fantastical visions of possible new technologies from the secretive Google X lab in November, NASA was carefully preparing to launch its nuclear-powered Curiosity rover ? the size of a Mini Cooper ? to explore the possibility of life on Mars.
The other part of the problem may come from NASA's blindness to its own "cool" factor. That realization came to Leitner during a 3-hour Friday-morning talk among NASA representatives and big thinkers from all walks of life at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia on Nov. 18.
"We got there by having people in (the) room who are experts in science and technology say (to the NASA representatives), 'You know we're looking to you for that guidance on space exploration,' and watch NASA be surprised by their own credibility," Leitner told InnovationNewsDaily.
NASA's blindness to its brand's coolness became more evident as the discussion wore on. Leitner and his Insight Lab colleagues posed a hypothetical to the NASA representatives: If they summoned Larry Page, Google cofounder, and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, to a meeting, would the Silicon Valley VIPs attend?
The NASA representatives said they didn't know. "Of course (they'd come), you're NASA!" Leitner and his colleagues responded.
Taking control
NASA's chance to take a new leadership role arises in a time when new countries and private spaceflight companies alike have begun crowding into an area once dominated by the United States and the former Soviet Union. That "fragmented environment" gives a chance for NASA to possibly become both architect and chief builder for space exploration.
"Somebody has to be the architect; NASA has earned that role," Leitner said. "We were in the building where Orville Wright had his office. If you're that guy, you get to declare the nation's priorities for flight."
By setting its own grand strategy, NASA could better hold a steady course despite new presidential administrations or changing budgets. That would buck the trend of allowing congressionally-approved budgets to decide spaceflight missions and goals.
"NASA has an opportunity that they didn't know they had," Leitner explained." They currently judge their value in the world based on budgetary guidelines; that doesn't quite resonate with public perception or narrative."
One small step
Insight Labs organized its " Reclaiming Public Fascination " meeting with the goal of sparking a conversation among outside thinkers about changing NASA's public narrative and message. Such a target seemed more achievable in a three-hour meeting than changing the mission of NASA or figuring out a new direction for technological breakthroughs.
More space news from msnbc.com
Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: This year's Space Advent Calendar kicks off with a picture of the moon hanging above Earth like a Christmas tree ornament.
But Insight Labs also aims to do much more than simply provide standard consulting advice to organizations for free. It aims to help tackle the big problems that keep the heads of government agencies and nonprofits up at night.
"A lot of people say, 'Here's how you can reorganize yourself to be more efficient,' but a lot of big-name organizations are solving the wrong problem," Leitner said. "We go way up the headwaters of the problem."
The Insight Labs founders have already begun more in-depth interviews with some of the thinkers who attended the meeting, and continue to talk with NASA about making slight changes to past assumptions to make the path forward easier. In one email, Leitner told a NASA contact that the space agency was still "planning for gravity in a zero-gee environment." Why not float free?
You can follow InnovationNewsDaily senior writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @ ScienceHsu. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @ News_Innovation, or on Facebook.
? 2011 InnovationNewsDaily.com. All rights reserved. More from InnovationNewsDaily.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45515176/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/
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In her published remarks, Furedi says there?s no ?reason to think that doctors [or] women are abusing the current situation,? since ?the number of women who request late abortions is very small,? and ?there is no evidence that the number of women requesting late abortions is increasing.? On this, we agree. Late-term abortion isn?t a broad or growing social problem. It isn?t where I?d prefer to focus my energy on reproductive matters. I?d rather talk about contraception. But the debate organizers wanted this topic. And even if the percentage of abortions performed at late stages is low (5 percent occur after 16 weeks, 1.3 percent occur after 21 weeks), that?s still thousands of cases (32,000 after 16 weeks, 8,000 after 21 weeks). We can do better.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5ed21df55713c2742ef49b35066f0a23
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for president, left off the campaign trail for a day to announce the formation of the Institute for Applied Cancer Research at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Why is Perry involved in this?
Perry is the governor of Texas and thus has involvement in the creation of a cancer research institute in Houston. Perry was able to burnish an image of someone who creates jobs, fosters health care, and is on the cutting edge of technology as he helped to announce the establishment of a new research center to find treatments to fight cancer. He might be eschewing presidential politics for a day, as the Chronicle suggests, but nothing Perry does can be but political as he persists in his quest for the presidency.
What is the Institute for Applied Cancer Research?
The institute has been established to develop and test cancer therapies that will treat tumors based on their genetic fingerprints. The institute will conduct trials of the drugs it develops in order to discover the optimal treatments for cancer. It will gather together top researchers who will work collaboratively with other cancer research organizations and private businesses. The goal is to greatly enhance the survival rates for a variety of cancers over the next 10 years.
The institute will staff 30 research scientists and will be funded by M.D. Anderson for at least $15 million a year, plus whatever external fundraising can be achieved. The goal is to raise $2.5 million the first year and $42 million by the fifth. Within two years, 70 research scientists will be employed at the institute.
Currently only 5 percent of cancer drugs survive from initial discovery to approved treatment. The institute's goal is to improve that rate using a new model for research and development.
Why locate the Institute at M.D. Anderson?
The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is one of the most renowned cancer treatment centers in the world. However its reputation for clinical care has yet to be matched by a record for drug discovery and research. The Institute for Applied Cancer Research will remedy that situation, complimenting the operations of the cancer center by bringing new treatments to fruition.
On a broader note, the establishment of the institute is designed to help jump start a biotechnology industry in Texas. Such would not only diversify the business base on the state, but would generate more jobs and economic growth. Health care, considering an aging population, is one of the fastest growing industries in the western world. Finding cures for cancer that are both effective and cost effective will go a long way toward extending and improving the quality of life.
Texas resident Mark Whittington writes about state issues for the Yahoo! Contributor Network.
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