Sunday, March 31, 2013

Sudanese rebel group releases 31 kidnapped Darfuris

CAIRO (Reuters) - Sudanese rebels have released 31 Darfuris who they had kidnapped a week ago on their way to a conference for people displaced by the region's decade-long war, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Saturday.

Conflict has raged in Darfur since 2003 when mainly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the Arab-led government, accusing it of politically and economically marginalizing the region.

Violence has subsided from its peak in 2003 and 2004, but a surge has forced more than 130,000 people to flee their homes since the start of the year, according to the United Nations.

Last week, the international peacekeeping mission UNAMID said an armed group had kidnapped 31 Darfuris who the peacekeepers had been escorting in three buses. The abductors took them to an unknown location.

On Saturday, the ICRC said a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), one of the main Darfur rebel groups, had released the men and handed them over to the Red Cross, according to a statement.

The SLA was not available for comment, and no more details were available about the incident that happened in a border area between Central Darfur State and South Darfur State.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes in Darfur.

Sudan refuses to recognize the court, which it says is biased against leaders who refuse to kowtow to Western powers.

In 2008, the United Nations said about 300,000 people may have died in Darfur's war, a figure some activists say is too low. The government has put the death toll at about 10,000.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing in Cairo and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sudanese-rebel-group-releases-31-kidnapped-darfuris-192154553.html

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Paulos: Investing in workers makes cents | The Salt Lake Tribune

I have owned my advertising and PR agency here in Salt Lake City, The Summit Group Communications, for 31 years. Now, that certainly does not make me John D. Rockefeller or Steve Jobs, but I have learned some very important things, like the correlation between the culture of a workplace and its bottom-line success.

When I talk about a company?s culture, I am not talking about its brand ? which is what a company is and provides for its consumers. I am talking about who and what a company is for its most important assets ? its employees.

I have found (and, as it turns out, there is fascinating research to support) that the happier employees are, the better they perform for the company, directly affecting its profits. And, as research conducted by the American Sociological Association shows, diversity in the workplace also has a direct and positive correlation with profit. In fact, it showed that "workplace diversity is among the most important predictors of a business? sales revenue, customer numbers and profitability."

So, how to create a happy and diverse workforce?

First, recruit well. There is incredible talent out there looking for rewarding work. For example, I want my compensation packages to be competitive, opening the company up to as broad a talent pool as possible. And especially as the job market continues to recover, potential employees are scrutinizing potential employers as much as we are evaluating them.

Second, we have to take care of our employees so they want to stay. This means having inclusive policies and procedures ? whether mandated by law or not ? so that everyone is treated fairly and can work in environments free from discrimination and harassment. We have to spell this out and we have to enforce it. No exceptions. Some of history?s most successful individuals were women, people of color, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities and so on. Successful businesses invite and protect everyone.

Creating a happy and diverse workforce also includes investing in programs that make work fun and positive. This is not to say that all companies have to provide a game room the size of Google?s, but a rolling nacho cart every now and again can be quite nice. At TSG, we liken our work to running intervals. We expect our folks to sprint for us, so we make sure to provide them with rest and proverbial Gatorade.

Without progressive benefits, inclusive nondiscrimination policies, institutionalized programs for fun and good health, we all suffer. And although it creates a competitive advantage for me when other companies do not provide the basic protections and benefits to their employees, I very much believe that all workers deserve open and safe workplaces.

Now, I certainly want my company to see continued success, but for me, taking care of my employees is more about doing what I think is right than it is about profit. And while we may not all agree on that, can we all agree to invest in a safe and productive workplace for the people who make sacrifices for us every day?

story continues below

Bill Paulos founded The Summit Group Communications in 1982. Today, its 80 employees do business in 32 states and TSG is the longest running, independently owned advertising and public relations firm in Utah.

Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/56075825-82/employees-company-paulos-bill.html.csp

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Mama bear? National Zoo artificially inseminates giant panda

Smithsonian's National Zoo / Reuters

Giant panda Mei Xiang looks over a stone wall in her enclosure at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in this handout provided by the Smithsonian National Zoo during a spring snow in Washington, D.C. March 25, 2013.

The National Zoo announced Saturday that a team of scientists and veterinarians had artificially inseminated the Zoo's female giant panda after natural breeding failed to occur.

The statement said that Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated with a combination of fresh and frozen semen taken from the zoo's male panda, Tian Tian. The fresh semen was taken earlier Saturday morning, while the frozen semen had been held since 2003.

Scientists determined that Mei Xiang was ready to breed earlier this week after observing a rise in her urinary estrogen levels.

"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we?re encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we?ve seen so far,? Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute said. "We have an extremely small window of opportunity to perform the procedures, which is why we monitor behavior and hormones so closely.?

Panda pregnancies last between 95 and 160 days. Experts say that it is impossible to determine from behaviors and hormones whether a panda is actually pregnant or not because a fetus does not begin to develop until the final weeks of gestation.

Mei Xiang gave birth to a female cub on September 16 of last year, but the cub died one week later due to lung and liver damage. Mei Xiang and Tian Tian have produced one surviving offspring, Tai Shan, who was born in 2005 and currently lives in China.

The panda habitat at the National Zoo has been closed since Tuesday, when Mei Xiang was deemed ready to breed. The Zoo plans to re-open the habitat to visitors Sunday.

NBCWashington.com

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a2bff9e/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C30A0C175298730Emama0Ebear0Enational0Ezoo0Eartificially0Einseminates0Egiant0Epanda0Dlite/story01.htm

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Huge online attack exposes internet's vulnerability

It was the largest online attack ever reported. Over the course of the past week, servers belonging to an international non-profit company called The Spamhaus Project, which fights email spammers, were inundated with up to 38 gigabytes of traffic each second. That's about 10 DVDs' worth of data. The company ground to a halt, and another firm that tried to come to Spamhaus's online aid was also drawn into the battle. News reports suggested the onslaught was so big that the internet itself slowed down during the worst of it. Such accounts may have been overblown, but in the aftermath it has become clear that the attackers can exploit vulnerabilities in just about anything ? from software to the infrastructure of the internet itself ? to devastating effect.

In the case of the Spamhaus ambush, the attackers exploited open domain name server (DNS) resolvers, the address books of the internet. The majority of internet users only ever ask these internet address books to handle simple requests like, "Take me to www.google.com". But a lot of DNS software comes with default settings that call for it to answer many other questions, like making sure that a website is what it says it is. Such requests can massively boost the amount of traffic that the DNS resolver returns. "If you make a request for DNS security labels or extensions, the response is very large," says Jared Mauch of NTT America, who is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan .

The attackers query DNS resolvers en masse. In the process, they fake their own IP addresses, replacing them with the address of the target. This technique, called IP spoofing, results in a torrent of the DNS responses all flooding into the target at once.

Next big thing

There are fixes, but networks have been slow to adopt them. One initiative, the Open DNS Resolver Project is set up to encourage people to make the adjustments: simply changing the settings on software and equipment is enough. But even if operators do shore up DNS resolvers, there are signs that attackers are already moving on to the next big exploit.

Mike Smith, director of the customer security internet response team at Akamai in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says he has been dealing with a hole in web-based content-management systems like Wordpress and Joomla which lets attackers use other companies' hosting platforms to launch their attacks.

"These content-management systems are basically not managed," Smith says. "People often have Wordpress and Joomla installed on their servers, and they don't even know that they have it. Attackers are taking over these applications."

Because company servers have faster internet connections than home computers, the infected software ? which forms a network known as the BroBot ? can be taken over and made to launch highly powerful attacks. "Those servers have 100 megabits of internet capacity each. They can send a lot of traffic very quickly," he says.

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For the love of Joffrey! Stars dish on 'Thrones'

By Anna Chan, TODAY

Forget young love. On HBO's "Game of Thrones," there are just "tactical relationships," Sophie Turner, who plays long-suffering Sansa Stark, told The Clicker at the show's season three premiere in Seattle.

Helen Sloan / HBO

Margaery (Natalie Dormer) gets to know her king, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), a bit better on season three of "Game of Thrones."

One of those strategic pairings is that of boy-king Joffrey and Margaery Tyrell. In the season two finale, the little tyrant on the Iron Throne broke his engagement to poor Sansa and made Margaery his new betrothed to bring Houses Tyrell and Baratheon -- Lannister, really -- together.?

"(Sansa's) free of being betrothed to (Joffrey), but she's still a prisoner of his," Turner told us of the upcoming season. "It was kind of better when she was betrothed to him and she kind of had a purpose and she knew her means of escape. ... Now, she's not going to become queen, so she's just a prisoner."

As "just a prisoner," that means Joffrey may have even less reason to tone down the beatings and other public humiliations for his former betrothed.?

Not that things are going to be great for Joffrey's new queen-to-be, either. Sure, he seemed to be a bit enchanted by her in season two, but nice guy he is not.

"She's in for a nasty shock!" Natalie Dormer, who plays Margaery, told us of her character. "She has not a clue what she's getting herself into. (She's learning the) really hard way. ... The audience might know Joffrey very well after two seasons, but Margaery doesn't know him at all."

The actress wouldn't reveal if Margaery will suffer the same abuse as Sansa, but explained why she'll stick around regardless of what she might go through.

"(Margaery's) ultimate goal is to be queen," Dormer said of the character, who was previously married to the now deceased King Renley. "She wants her son to be on the Iron Throne. When people ask who's going to get on the Iron Throne, Margaery's answer is, 'My son.' That's what she's aiming for. That's what the Tyrells are aiming for. Their way to power and control of Westeros is through heritage, their offspring."

But unlike Sansa, Margaery will have loved ones close by to help her navigate the power-hungry and sometimes cruel Lannisters.

"The Tyrells are a very close family, very loyal," Dormer said, and they'll all show up at court to figure out how to best play the game of thrones against the Lannisters. "We're trying to be politically savvy, but we're trying to not do it in a way that gets our hands too dirty because we want to have the moral high ground, whereas the Lannisters are right down there in the dirt with all their tricks!"

Leading House Tyrell will be Margaery's grandmother, Lady Olenna Redwyne (Diana Rigg), better known as the Queen of Thorns for her wit and sharp tongue. (Think "Downton Abbey's" Dowager Countess in Westeros.) According to Dormer, Olenna is going to prove to be quite the foe for Lena Headey's Queen Cersei.

"The Queen of Thorns is going to outmaneuver Cersei, and if you watch season three, you'll see her do it!" Dormer teased. "We had so much fun shooting these scenes!"

Season three of "Game of Thrones" premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Related content:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/03/26/17476599-game-of-thrones-star-margaerys-in-for-a-nasty-shock-in-season-3?lite

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Saturday, March 30, 2013

"Place Beyond the Pines" review: Ryan Gosling + Bradley Cooper = overwrought daddy issues

By Leah Rozen

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Better to have a film with a reach that exceeds its grasp than a movie with no ambition in its pretty little empty head beyond regurgitating the same tired old pabulum.

"The Place Beyond the Pines," director-cowriter Derek Cianfrance's follow-up to his 2010 corrosive marital drama, "Blue Valentine," is plenty ambitious. If, in the end, it collapses on itself from trying to carry too heavy a symbolic load, one can still admire its attempted reach and several of the performances.

The focus of "Pines" is fathers and sons and how the relationship between the two, or lack of, leaves a lasting legacy. The film is essentially a trilogy, focusing sequentially on two men and two youths whose stories intersect.

The first part of the film, easily the strongest, concerns Luke (Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" star Ryan Gosling, in yet another mesmerizing performance), a daredevil motorcycle rider in a traveling carnival. He's covered in tattoos and is your classic sensitive bad boy. During Luke's star turn under a tent, he vrooms about in circles inside a spherical metal cage, an elegant metaphor for the fact that his life is going nowhere.

While performing on night in Schenectady, N.Y., he is visited by Romina (Eva Mendez, in a strong turn), a waitress with whom he hooked up briefly the last time he was in town. Upon learning that she has given birth to his son, Luke decides to stick around town and try being a father, despite the fact that Romina now lives with a decent and dependable man.

Partnering with a lowlife associate (Ben Mendelsohn), Luke soon turns to robbing banks, putting his motorcycle riding skills to use by executing daring, two-wheeled getaways. His new profession leads to his path crossing with that of Avery (Bradley Cooper), a lawyer turned idealistic rookie cop whose father is a powerful judge in town.

Without giving away too much plot, the movie moves on from Luke's story to Avery's - hailed as a hero cop, he suffers from self-doubt - and then, in its final section, to what happens when the teenage sons (Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen) of the two men meet. The boys both bear the scars of having been raised, for differing reasons, with absent fathers, and an antagonism develops between them.

Only the Luke portion of the film succeeds in feeling most of the time as if the characters are more than literary and symbolic conceits. In the second and third parts of the movie, about Avery and the two teenage boys, a viewer is too aware of the puppeteer behind the camera pulling the strings in an attempt to keep the characters dancing to the heavy-handed father-son theme.

That said, there's much to appreciate in "Pines." There's a verisimilitude to the film's settings (it was shot in and around Schenectady) and the performances, especially in the first third, are raw and exciting.

Maybe if the story was told chronologically in reverse, as Harold Pinter did in his 1978 play, "Betrayal," and director Gaspar No? did in 2002's "Irreversible," it would have accumulated greater poignancy and power.

Hey, just throwing out an idea here for an alternative version to be included on the DVD.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/place-beyond-pines-review-ryan-gosling-bradley-cooper-232107276.html

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Porsha Williams Divorce Filing: Pay Me!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/porsha-williams-divorce-filing-pay-me/

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Feminist Explorations of Knowledge: Present and ... - sociology@sau



Sociology Seminar Series 2013 Presents

Panel

Discussion

Feminist Explorations of Knowledge: Present and Future of Engendered Anthropology

Through the historical trajectories vis--?a--?vis waves of women?s movements, the feminist inquiries have made it possible to recon with a host of issues, categories and political possibilities of change. Meanwhile, regional varieties of feminism have also emerged adding novel dimensions to anthropological attempts at knowledge production. This panel debates the conventional and recent orientations in feminist approaches in anthropological studies.

Panelists:

Ravinder Kaur

Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

Rajni Palriwala
Professor,Department
of Sociology, University of Delhi

Gitika Bapana,

Research Scholar, University of Delhi

Chair:

Mary E? John
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Women?s Development Study, Delhi

Discussant:

Mallika Shakya & Dev N Pathak,

Department of Sociology, SAU

Rapporteur:

Manoj Kumar Dhakal
MA Program in Sociology, SAU

Date and time :
3 April 2013; 02.15 pm

Venue:
FSI Hall, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuyri, New Delhi

All are Welcome

(Please have your mobile phones switched off? during proceedings)

Source: http://sociology-sau.blogspot.com/2013/03/feminist-explorations-of-knowledge.html

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Friday, March 29, 2013

Sun block for the 'Big Dog': Astronomers detect titanium oxide and titanium dioxide around the giant star VY Canis Majoris

Mar. 27, 2013 ? An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and from the University of Cologne, successfully identified two titanium oxides in the extended atmosphere around a giant star. The object VY Canis Major is one of the largest stars in the known universe and close to the end of its life. The detection was made using telescope arrays in the USA and in France.

The discovery was made in the course of a study of a spectacular star, VY Canis Majoris or VY CMa for short, which is a variable star located in the constellation Canis Major (Greater Dog). "VY CMa is not an ordinary star, it is one of the largest stars known, and it is close the end of its life," says Tomasz Kami?ski from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR). In fact, with a size of about one to two thousand times that of the Sun, it could extend out to the orbit of Saturn if it were placed in the centre of our Solar System.

The star ejects large quantities of material which forms a dusty nebula. It becomes visible because of the small dust particles that form around it which reflect light from the central star. The complexity of this nebula has been puzzling astronomers for decades. It has been formed as a result of stellar wind, but it is not understood well why it is so far from having a spherical shape.

Neither is known what physical process blows the wind, i.e. what lifts the material up from the stellar surface and makes it expand. "The fate of VY CMa is to explode as a supernova, but it is not known exactly when it will happen," adds Karl Menten, head of the "Millimetre and Submillimetre Astronomy" Department at MPIfR.

Observations at different wavelengths provide different pieces of information which is characteristic for atomic and molecular gas and from which physical properties of an astronomical object can be derived. Each molecule has a characteristic set of lines, something like a 'bar code', that allows to identify what molecules exist in the nebula.

"Emission at short radio wavelengths, in so-called submillimetre waves, is particularly useful for such studies of molecules," says Sandra Br?nken from the University of Cologne. "The identification of molecules is easier and usually a larger abundance of molecules can be observed than at other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum."

The research team observed TiO and TiO2 for the first time at radio wavelengths. In fact, titanium dioxide has been seen in space unambiguously for the first time. It is known from every-day life as the main component of the commercially most important white pigment (known by painters as "titanium white") or as an ingredient in sunscreens. It is also quite possible that the reader consumed some amounts of it as it is used to colour food (coded as E171 in the labels).

However, stars, especially the coolest of them, are expected to eject large quantities of titanium oxides, which, according to theory, form at relatively high temperatures close to the star. "They tend to cluster together to form dust particles visible in the optical or in the infrared," says Nimesh Patel from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "And the catalytic properties of TiO2 may influence the chemical processes taking place on these dust particles, which are very important for forming larger molecules in space," adds Holger M?ller from the University of Cologne.

Absorption features of TiO have been known from spectra in the visible region for more than a hundred years. In fact, these features are used in part to classify some types of stars with low surface temperatures (M- and S-type stars). The pulsation of Mira stars, one specific class of variable stars, is thought to be caused by titanium oxide. Mira stars, supergiant variable stars in a late stage of their evolution, are named after their prototype star "Mira" (the wonderful) in the constellation of Cetus (the 'sea monster' or the 'whale').

The observations of TiO and TiO2 show that the two molecules are easily formed around VY CMa at a location that is more or less as predicted by theory. It seems, however, that some portion of those molecules avoid forming dust and are observable as gas phase species. Another possibility is that the dust is destroyed in the nebula and releases fresh TiO molecules back to the gas. The latter scenario is quite likely as parts of the wind in VY CMa seem to collide with each other.

The new detections at submillimetre wavelengths are particularly important because they allow studying the process of dust formation. Also, at optical wavelengths, the radiation emitted by the molecules is scattered by dust present in the extended nebula which blurs the picture, while this effect is negligible at radio wavelengths allowing for more precise measurements.

The discoveries of TiO and TiO2 in the spectrum of VY CMa have been made with the Submillimetre Array (SMA), a radio interferometer located at Hawaii, USA. Because the instrument combines eight antennas which worked together as one big telescope 226-meters in size, astronomers were able to make observations at unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. A confirmation of the new detections was successively made later with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI) located in the French Alps.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. T. Kami?ski, C. A. Gottlieb, K. M. Menten, N. A. Patel, K. H. Young, S. Br?nken, H. S. P. M?ller, M. C. McCarthy, J. M. Winters, L. Decin. Pure rotational spectra of TiO and TiO2in VY Canis Majoris. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2013; 551: A113 DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201220290

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/2TrLzq1N3xU/130327143841.htm

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Supreme Court hears oral arguments on DOMA: Live blog (Washington Post)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Police reports in Tucson shooting rampage released

FILE - Emergency personnel attend to a shooting victim outside a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz. in this Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011 file photo taken where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others were shot as the congresswoman was meeting with constituents. Hundreds of pages of police reports in the investigation of the Tucson shooting rampage that wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords are being released Wednesday, March 27, 2013 marking the public's first glimpse into documents that authorities have kept private since the attack more than two years ago. (AP Photo/James Palka, File)

FILE - Emergency personnel attend to a shooting victim outside a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz. in this Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011 file photo taken where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others were shot as the congresswoman was meeting with constituents. Hundreds of pages of police reports in the investigation of the Tucson shooting rampage that wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords are being released Wednesday, March 27, 2013 marking the public's first glimpse into documents that authorities have kept private since the attack more than two years ago. (AP Photo/James Palka, File)

(AP) ? Hundreds of pages of police reports in the investigation of the Tucson shooting rampage that wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords are being released Wednesday, marking the public's first glimpse into documents that authorities have kept private since the attack more than two years ago.

The Pima County sheriff's department will release an estimated 2,700 pages of records from the January 2011 shooting at a meet-and-greet event outside a grocery store that killed six people and wounded Giffords and 11 others. The documents include transcribed interviews with witnesses, various police reports and other records, and could provide new insight into how the shooting occurred.

News organizations seeking the records were repeatedly denied the documents in the months after the shooting and the arrest of 24-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, who was sentenced in November to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years, after he pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns had prevented the sheriff's department from releasing the records in response to a request from The Washington Post, ruling in March 2011 that Loughner's right to a fair trial outweighed whatever disclosures might be authorized under state law.

Last month, Burns cleared the way for the release of the records after Star Publishing Company, which publishes the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, had sought their release. The judge said Loughner's fair-trial rights are no longer on the line now that his criminal case has resolved.

Loughner's guilty plea enabled him to avoid the death sentence. He is serving his sentence at a federal prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given psychotropic drug treatments.

Arizona's chief federal judge and a 9-year-old girl were among those killed in the rampage. Giffords was left partially blind, with a paralyzed right arm and brain injury. She resigned from Congress last year and has since started, along with her husband, a gun control advocacy group.

The Star said it wanted the records because they contain information about how a mass shooting occurs, including how long it took Loughner to fire gunshots ? an issue raised by some advocates in the debate over high-capacity pistol magazines.

The Tucson newspaper argued that the records are critical in the national debate over whether such shootings could be prevented by armed resistance, whether a mass shooting occurs too quickly to be stopped and whether people with mental illnesses should be prohibited from getting guns.

Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which publishes The Arizona Republic, and KPNX-TV had joined Star Publishing in the latest effort to get the records released.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-27-US-Congresswoman-Shot-Records/id-e812b34ac2034aaea202b48244237408

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88% Django Unchained

All Critics (234) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (207) | Rotten (27)

A film bursting with pleasures great and small ...

Django Unchained is Tarantino's most complete movie yet. It is also his most vital. His storytelling talents match the heft of the tale.

Django Unchained has mislaid its melancholy, and its bitter wit, and become a raucous romp. It is a tribute to the spaghetti Western, cooked al dente, then cooked a while more, and finally sauced to death.

Genre-movie-mad writer-director Quentin Tarantino's foray into Western World is a pretty grave disappointment.

Wildly extravagant, ferociously violent, ludicrously lurid and outrageously entertaining, yet also, remarkably, very much about the pernicious lunacy of racism and, yes, slavery's singular horrors.

Quentin Tarantino no longer makes movies; he makes trailers.

Countless great scenes in the Tarantino universe

It's exactly what you expect from Tarantino, so if this movie finds itself challenged in any way, it's in being expected.

...the time always flies, and Tarantino gives us a lot of movie for our money.

Tarantino's take on slavery is wildly creative, funny and frightening, true to form yet never predictable.

Different setting, same old Tarantino

Slavery is to "Django" what the Holocaust was to Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" -- a colossal wrong to be righted by a film geek's best weapons: artistry, imagination and wicked humor.

Tarantino is, in essence, a classicist who invests the bulk of his drama and tension in lengthy dialogue exchanges that are infinitely more compelling that his elongated sequences of cathartic violence.

Still wonderfully witty and violent sequences that only Tarantino could manage or dare.

This bloody, hilarious, shocking, and righteously angry film is the kind of great art and great trash [Tarantino] aspires to make.

...compulsively watchable for the majority of its (admittedly overlong) running time...

I had a good enough time to wish that it had been better.

Part-blaxploitation film, part-spaghetti Western and all-Tarantino, 'Django Unchained' comes charging at its audiences with guns a-blazin'. It's not quite up to par with 'Reservoir Dogs' or 'Pulp Fiction,' but it's still Tarantino - enough said.

Overlong, overblown and overly self-indulgent. But excess is what Tarantino does. And just as he won't put one word in his characters' mouths when he can have them utter 10; he won't dispatch a bad guy with one bullet when he can discharge a dozen.

It would seem that this film's irreverence isn't a case of didn't-try-can't-fail dismissiveness, but rather something more innocuous: it's simply the world interpreted through Tarantino's boisterous perspective.

The funniest western since Blazing Saddles, the bloodiest since The Wild Bunch and the most visually stylish since The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

Guilty of almost every indulgence [Tarantino] has ever been accused of...but it's hard to hold it against him, when the results are this bloody good

Ultimately enjoyable, if a little underwhelming, if nothing else we can be grateful to Django Unchained for allowing the phrase "that's the worst thing since Quentin Tarantino's Australian accent".

Impolitic though it might be to suggest it, there's something extremely satisfying about the violence here-though, for my money, it resides less in seeing these racist thugs get their comeuppance, than in the director's staging of it.

it's fitting that one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time is using the western and blaxploitation genres to connect the enduring blemish on the American psyche - only to set loose a bad motherf*cker to set it right.

Thrilling, stylish, funny, brutal, superbly-acted, sharply written and wonderfully offensive.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/django_unchained_2012/

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Summly Purchased By Yahoo; Teenager Scores $30 Million Payday

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/summly-purchased-by-yahoo-teenager-scores-30-dollars-million-pay/

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Facebook Replies offers threaded commenting for businesses and popular profiles

DNP Facebook introduces Replies threaded commenting for businesses and popular profiles

Starting today, Facebook is launching a new threaded Replies commenting system for users with more than 10,000 followers as well as Pages linked to brands and businesses. By placing the most "liked" conversation logs at the top of its related post, the social network hopes this new addition will improve interactions between groups and their readers. Qualified profiles should be able to opt-in to the feature today, but the company advises that it will be activated for all Pages and profiles with more than 10,000 followers on July 10th. As of now Replies is only supported on the site's desktop version, but Facebook plans to add this feature to its Graph API and mobile applications. While it's great to see the popular social network finally pulling its commenting system out of the Dark Ages, we can only imagine the flame wars that will ensue between followers. Moderators, start your engines.

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Comments

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Facebook

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/kWAddFdQOjk/

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Younger buyers jumping into retirement real estate

Charlie Rocque knows a great real estate deal when he sees one ? at one of the largest retirement communities in the nation, Century Village in Boca Raton, Fla.

"I bought an apartment that not long ago was valued at around $75,000, and I picked it up for $20,000," Rocque said. "The value comes in surroundings, it comes with the club house, it comes with the peace of mind that I have some place I know that if I need to go there I can go there."

Home values in the area have fallen over 50 percent from the height of the housing boom, according to Zillow.com. Now they are starting to rise again, and that has buyers of all ages flooding in, even into retirement communities.

Roque is 56 years old and works full-time.

"This is my little get away place. It's very quiet where I live; my particular apartment it's very quiet and I like that," Rocque said.

Read More: Finally: Supply of Homes for Sale Begins to Rise

Alexander Fabian, age 61, also saw the opportunity. For him, Century Village gives him a second home.

"I bought because I was here for a year prior, and what I was paying for rent, it was kind of crazy, so I might as well buy, so I live here and I have a home in Vegas, also," Fabian said.

In the last 12 to 24 months, the average age of a new buyer at Century Village has gone from the mid-70s to the low 60s, according to Ben Schachter of Century Village Real Estate Inc. Schachter, well under the retirement age, owns six condos in the Village.

Read More: Defying Gravity: Miami Condos Flying High Again

"People are looking at this in terms of their long-term future," Schachter said. "They recognize that with the time value of money they are better off investing now, taking advantage of 20, 40, $60,000 price points, because if they look back just a half a decade ago, prices were three to four times what they are now. They're looking at the market as it increases, as the economy is strengthening, and they want to buy now while it's the best opportunity to do so."

Residents of Century Village must either be 55 years or older or be married to someone that age. However, buyers can be any age, and that has many younger investors jumping in. They are taking advantage of good rental income and the peace of mind from knowing that they already have a place to retire. Ten percent of Century Village residents still work part time or full time. This younger set has already brought changes to the Village.

"We have classes that never existed before: Zumba, yoga, tai chi, unbelievable recreation for these very healthy seniors because they are younger," Schachter said.

Read More: Housing Recovery 'Fundamentally Strong': Lennar CEO

The community offers tennis, two pools and a full-service gym. As for the group activities, they still tend to skew older. At a water aerobics class, late one Thursday morning, the sun was shining and the water was flying through the blaring rock music, but mostly grey haired heads bobbed back and forth.

"I'm in touch with people around here, but I don't associate with them a lot as far as socially here in the club house," said Rocque. "Because I'm not around. I'm always working."

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/29f96b75/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Cyounger0Ebuyers0Ejumping0Eretirement0Ereal0Eestate0E1B90A57379/story01.htm

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Study warns on location data privacy

Link Information - Click to View

Study warns on location data privacy
A study of mobile phone data - used by advertisers or even released publicly - reveals that individuals can be identified using only four location points.

Source: BBC News
Posted on: Monday, Mar 25, 2013, 8:48am
Views: 15

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127430/Study_warns_on_location_data_privacy

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2 heads not always better than 1 -- like on a shark

Journal of Fish Biology / C. M. Wagner et al

The two-headed bull shark fetus. It's about 8 inches (20 centimeters) from head to head.

By Douglas Main
LiveScience

When a fisherman caught a bull shark recently off the Florida Keys, he came across an unlikely surprise: One of the shark's live fetuses had two heads.

The fisherman kept the odd specimen, and shared it with scientists, who described it in a studypublished online Monday?in the Journal of Fish Biology. It's one of the very few examples of a two-headed shark ever recorded ? there about six instances in published reports ? and the first time this has been seen in a bull shark, said Michael Wagner, a study co-author and researcher at Michigan State University.

Technically called "axial bifurcation," the deformity is a result of the embryo beginning to split into two separate organisms, or twins, but doing so incompletely, Wagner told OurAmazingPlanet. It's a very rare mutation that occurs across different animals, including humans.

"Halfway through the process of forming twins, the embryo stops dividing," he said.

The two-headed fetus likely wouldn't have lived for very long in the wild, he said. "When you're a predator that needs to move fast to catch other fast-moving fish ? that'd be nearly impossible with this mutation," he said. ?[See the two-headed shark.]

Journal of Fish Biology / C. M. Wagner et al

A radiograph of the two-headed shark.

Wagner said the description of the deformed shark may someday help better understand how these deformities arise in sharks and other animals.

Two-headed snakes and turtles can be bought from certain specialty breeders, and there is a small market for such creatures, Wagner said.

Several of the few examples of two-headed sharks available today come from museum specimens from the late 1800s, when deformed animals and other macabre curiosities fetched high prices, he said.

Another reason the two-headed shark likely wouldn't have survived: its small body. "It had very developed heads, but a very stunted body," Wagner said. There's only so much energy that can go into the body's development, and it went into the shark's double noggins, he added.

Email Douglas Main?or follow him @Douglas_Main. Follow us?@OAPlanet, Facebook?or ?Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/29f9ec8a/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C250C17458690A0E20Eheads0Enot0Ealways0Ebetter0Ethan0E10Elike0Eon0Ea0Eshark0Dlite/story01.htm

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What Do You Think Of Standing Desks?

I'm really of two minds about standing desks. On the one hand ugh. I don't wanna. Too perky, too enthusiastic and soooo much, you know, standing. On the other hand we Americans are not a healthy bunch. We need to pull it together. And all this driving, cubicle-sitting and blogging is not helping us get going. So maybe it's for the best? More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/MM4EXg6bizo/what-do-you-think-of-standing-desks

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