Tuesday, January 22, 2013

How To Get Low-cost Auto Insurance coverage Quotes ? Bnr.Co

As the globe economic climate improves, a lot more and much more people are obtaining cars. However, the greatest headache for a majority has usually been how to get cost-effective insurance coverage quotations. It is a mandatory requirement by all states and governments that all vehicle owners have some type of fundamental car insurance coverage. This is to shield other road users from loses that may be incurred right after an accident. The process of selecting an inexpensive and trustworthy insurance firm is not a task for the faint hearted. A excellent insurance cover goes beyond third celebration policy cover to protecting you against financial ruin due to theft, fire and accidents.

Discussed herein are various methods to enable you get affordable car insurance

Techniques through which you can get cheap insurance coverage
Safe your car: Regardless of whether you are purchasing a new or second hand automobile, make certain that it has been installed with some form of security system set up, e.g. an alarm. These are security measures against unauthorised access to your car and as such stand a likelihood of getting a discount on the insurance.

Multiple automobile discounts: Most households today have at least two automobiles. There are insurance coverage firms that provide insurance cover for two cars at the price tag of 1. In some cases, the cost of the second automobile would be much reduce. It is advisable that when in the marketplace for insurance coverage quote that you ask about discount on the second automobile.

Annual Policies: Whereas, paying for bi-annual policies may appear cheaper at closer appear its a lot more pricey when compared to annual policies. Choosing an annual policy can save you some price on your car. Moreover, you are not affected by insurance coverage rates that could alter half way through the year.

Clean Driving License: The more accidents you result in on the road the a lot more you are likely to spend on premiums. When driving on the road it really is advised that you take extra caution even if you are on the right side of the law.

When scouting for insurance agents, instead of searching newspaper and yellow pages advertisement, to get low-cost insurance quotes, make use of the world wide web. This offers you with the advantage of scrutinising hundreds of insurance businesses that can meet your wants at sensible rates, e.g. insurance cover for women, students and elderly. This is in contrast with getting to walk from 1 business to yet another therefore saving you time, energy and funds in the method.

Source: http://www.bnr.co/autos/auto-insurance/how-to-get-low-cost-auto-insurance-coverage-quotes/

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How can I replace a Delta 1400 shower valve cartridge? - Home ...

Ok, I found the problem. Answering it in hopes that it helps someone else someday... The cartridge I bought in the store was in fact the wrong piece. While the white part that is further away from the wall was the correct type the blue part was model UPG 7 vs UPG 2. It looks almost the same but the intake parts are slightly offset.

Source: http://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/24616/how-can-i-replace-a-delta-1400-shower-valve-cartridge

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Yahoo COO Henrique De Castro: The Future Of The Web Will Be Personalized

de castro at DLDAt the DLD conference in Munich today, Henrique de Castro, Yahoo's new COO and Google's former president of partners business solutions discussed the state of the web today and his vision for its immediate future. Sadly, de Castro argued that he couldn't really talk about Yahoo itself, given that he's only been there for eight weeks now. Still, his ideas about the future of the web itself can probably provide us with some hints about Yahoo's future, too.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/UrmvOgYvFS4/

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Monday, January 21, 2013

Manti Te'o Hoax Had Parallels to Alleged Perpetrator's Life

The script for the elaborate hoax played on Manti Te'o, from a horrific car accident to a leukemia diagnosis, according to reports, had parallels to the alleged perpetrator's life.

In December, three months after the fictional Lennay Kekua was killed off, the alleged orchestrator of the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasoposo, called Te'o to confess it was all a sham, the Notre Dame football star told ESPN.

Also on the line, he said, was Kekua, the woman whom he spent hours talking to on the phone and once called the love of his life.

"They said, 'It's Lennay'. And so we carried on that conversation and I just got mad. And I just went on a rampage," Te'o said.

The woman, whose voice he fell asleep to at night on the phone, may have been a fabrication, but the alleged script used to fool Te'o seemed to mirror Tuiasoposo's reality.

Click here for a who's who in the Manti Te'o case

Tuiasoposo's father posted on Facebook that his son and his band survived a severe car accident last March.

And at the same time the fake Kekua was diagnosed with leukemia, Tuiasoposo's cousin, Jazmine Lutu, also in her early 20s, was battling the disease, USA Today reported.

Watch Katie Couric's interview with Manti Te'o and his parents Thursday, Jan. 24. Check your local listings or click here for online station finder.

The sophistication and the depth of the hoax, which was publicly unraveled last week, left many people with questions that are only beginning to be answered.

Te'o received phone calls, text messages and letters before every football game from his "girlfriend." He was in contact with her family, including a twin brother, a second brother, sister and parents. He called often to check in with them, just as he did with his own family. And "Kekua" kept in contact with Te'o's friends and family, and teammates spoke to her on the phone.

"There are a remarkable number of characters involved. We don't know how many people they represent," Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said at a news conference this week. "There are male and female characters, brothers, cousins, mother, and we don't know if it's two people playing multiple characters or multiple people."

"It goes to the sophistication of this, that there are all these sort of independent pieces that reinforce elements of the story all the way through," he said.

One of Te'o's teammates who asked not to be identified told ABC News that it was normal for Te'o to pass his phone around to teammates when he was on the line with "Lennay" so they could say hello to her.

"I talked to her," this teammate said. "I wasn't suspicious."

When Te'o got the call telling him that Lennay had died last fall, he was in the locker room, the teammate said.

"He got real emotional, crying," the teammate said. "He's an emotional guy."

The teammate said he thinks Te'o genuinely got hoaxed. The fact that Te'o talked about meeting her and touching her hand -- when really he only "met" her on the Internet -- makes this teammate think that he was not completely telling the truth about his relationship.

"I think he was just embarrassed about it, the whole Internet thing," the teammate said. The player said he hasn't talked to Te'o since this story broke.

In response to Te'o's comments that the investigators hired by the school never interviewed him, just asked for a picture and any evidence he had, Notre Dame spokesman Dennis Brown provides the following statement:

"Notre Dame engaged with a highly regarded investigative firm to, first and foremost, determine who had perpetrated what by all appearances was a hoax. The 'catfish' scheme and those responsible for it were discovered so quickly that there was no need for an interview with Manti - though that would have been the next step had nothing turned up. The investigators' work has been verified by media reports and the confession this week of the principal participant."

Brown said that the investigators started their work on Jan. 2 and on Jan. 4 and the school received an oral report with the information on the "catfish" scheme and the perpetrators.

Depth of Deception

A newly released transcript of Sports Illustrated writer Pete Thamel's Sept. 23 interview with Te'o gives a hint at the staggering depth of the deception.

Te'o told Thamel that he'd been told Lennay Kekua's real name was Melelengei, but since no one could pronounce it properly it was shortened to Lennay. But her family nicknamed her Lala, he said.

Te'o's knowledge about the details of his girlfriend's life was often murky, including her majors in school, occupation and extent of her injuries after an alleged April 28 car accident with a drunk driver.

What he was absolutely clear about was how much time he spent in contact with her, especially while she was in the hospital recovering from the car accident, which led to the discovery of her leukemia.

"I talked to my girlfriend every single day," Te'o told Themel. "I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going through chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, 'Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep.' I slept on the phone with her every single night."

He would spend eight hours a night with someone, somewhere, breathing on the other end, he told Thamel.

Te'o recounted how his girlfriend who was "on a machine" after being in a coma.

"We lost her, actually, twice. She flatlined twice. They revived her twice," he said. "It was just a trippy situation."

For a while Kekua was unable to talk and he described the nurse-deemed "miracle" of how Kekua's breathing would pick up when she heard his voice on the phone.

"There were lengthy, long telephone conversations. There was sleeping with the phone on connected to each other," Swarbrick said. "The issue of who it is, who's playing what role, what's real and what's not here is a more complex question than I can get into."

Perhaps one of the most touching displays of love from Kekua to Te'o, he told the writer, was the one-page letter she would write him on her iPad before each game. One of her siblings, often her twin brother Noa, would then read him the letter over the phone before sending it to him.

"She and I, man, we had this relationship where it was just amazing," Te'o told Thamel. "With all of that time on her hands in the hospital, she was never thinking about herself and what was hurting her. She was just always thinking about others. She went on and wrote a letter to me before every game. Things that she would want me to know."

When Kekua "died" in September 2012, the news came from her brother who texted Te'o from Kekua's phone number, he told Thamel. The brother then called Te'o to deliver the news.

"He was just crying and crying and crying," Te'o said. "I just had to calm him down. I was like, 'You have to speak clearly. I need to know what's going on.' That's when he told me, 'Lala is gone.' That's what they call her. They call her Lala."

"Catfish" movie director and actor Ariel Schulman told "Good Morning America" that he believes there may have been "a few other people duped by the fake Lennay character."

Te'o at first kept a low-profile after the news of the scandal broke. But he has since released a statement calling the situation "incredibly embarrassing" and granted an interview to ESPN. ABC News' Katie Couric will conduct the first on-camera interview with Manti Te'o for her syndicated daytime talk show, "Katie," on Jan. 24 .

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/manti-teo-hoax-had-parallels-alleged-perpetrators-life-145634627--abc-news-topstories.html

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Will Climate Change Get Cold Shoulder in Obama's 2nd Term?

As President Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office for the second time, he has promised that climate change will be a priority in his second term. The chances that significant climate action will actually happen, however, remain slim, policy experts say.

"I always have hope, but it is sometimes hard to see how real progress, substantial progress, is going to be made with the fact that the Congress is so polarized," said Travis Franck, a policy analyst for nongovernmental organization Climate Interactive.

After his re-election, Obama told Time magazine that his daughters inspired him to think long term, particularly about issues of climate change. And in his first news conference after the election, the president told reporters that he planned to shape a climate change agenda, but gave no details on what that agenda might look like ? though he did say that a tax on carbon emissions was likely a non-starter.

These statements took place before the massacre at Newtown, Conn., which pushed gun control to the forefront. And climate change will surely have to vie for attention with other divisive issues, such as an upcoming congressional battle over the nation's debt ceiling. While Obama may be able to take some executive action to tighten environmental regulations in certain sectors, such as fuel-efficient vehicles or clean energy, experts say, a gridlocked Congress is unlikely to cooperate with the administration's global warming agenda.?

"From my point of view, being an observer from Europe, I think it's more likely this sector-by-sector approach is implemented than a national climate policy," said Niklas H?hne, the director of energy and climate policy at Ecofys, a renewable energy and climate policy consulting firm. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

An urgent call for action

Obama's second term comes at a time when climate scientists are making increasingly urgent calls for action to mitigate the effects of a warming world. In November, University of Bern, Switzerland, climate researcher Thomas Stocker warned in the journal Science that every year of delay makes it harder to keep warming below levels that would severely disrupt the planet.

A cap of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of warming, the most conservative goal discussed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, is already out of reach, Stocker wrote. After 2027, the world can no longer hope to keep warming below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C), which is the number currently at the center of international climate negotiations.

The World Bank also issued a report in November, calling for global action on climate change. And in January, a study published in the journal Nature found that the biggest determiner of whether the world would successfully tackle climate change is not tech savvy or hoped-for green development, but the timing of political action.

Public opinion appears receptive to climate change as well. About 73 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents and 33 percent of Republicans say they are somewhat or very worried about climate change, according to a September 2012 survey of Americans by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Support for action was higher. Three-quarters of independents, 93 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans said global warming should be at least a medium priority for the president and Congress. Severe weather such as the summer's wildfires out west may have shifted these opinions, as the same numbers in March 2012 (before the fires) were 9 points lower for Democrats and 7 points lower for independents. Republicans held steady between March and September.

Challenges in Congress

The party schisms seen in the polling data are more pronounced in Congress, where representatives routinely deny the scientific consensus that climate is changing and that greenhouse gas emissions by humans are the main driver.

"I'm not going to bet the U.S. economy or the Texas economy on a theory that is not proven," Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) told the Dallas Morning News this month. "Climate has always been changing." [Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]

Attitudes like Barton's are why climate policy specialists expect little in the way of climate legislation in the upcoming four years.

The administration can make some progress on its own, said Elizabeth Sawin, co-director of Climate Interactive. In Obama's first term, for example, the administration ordered new fuel standards for lightweight vehicles and coal-fired power plants, and there was money included in the economic stimulus for public transportation and clean energy. Similar efforts in the second term could move the country toward lower carbon emissions, Sawin told LiveScience.

"Anything is better than nothing," she said.

But a piecemeal approach is less likely than an overarching plan to succeed in slowing warming significantly, Franck, the policy analyst for Climate Interactive, said. Moreover, a failure to act nationally puts the administration in an awkward spot in international negotiations. The 2011 climate talks in Durbin, South Africa, set a plan for a new international climate treaty to be prepared by 2015.

"We've lost a lot of credibility in climate change negotiations, because we've been kind of paralyzed," Franck told LiveScience. "If [international negotiators] bring home a treaty or agree to something, when does it get ratified by the Senate? Will we have domestic legislation already? Will the Senate pass it and then we'll have to pass domestic legislation?"

If the Obama administration is stuck with instituting piecemeal regulations, it will be a "major challenge" to communicate this progress to the international community, H?hne told LiveScience.

"The international climate negotiations really depend on the U.S. bringing something forward," he said. "If the U.S. doesn't bring something forward that is considered by most players as something new and something ambitious, then the new international agreement in 2015 will not be ambitious."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas?or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.

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

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-cold-shoulder-obamas-2nd-term-133707964.html

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Inauguration weekend kicks off with day of service

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Three days of inaugural celebrations kicked off in Washington Saturday, with President Barack Obama heading up a National Day of Service ahead of his swearing-in for a second term.

The president and first lady, Michelle Obama, planned to volunteer in the Washington area Saturday. Vice President Joe Biden, his wife, Jill, and others members of his family spent the morning filling care packages for U.S. troops serving overseas, veterans and first responders.

Obama added the day of service projects in 2009 and hopes it will become a tradition for future presidents.

Volunteers also gathered on the National Mall on a crisp, sunny morning in Washington for a service summit. In a videotaped message played at the event, Mrs. Obama said the volunteers were "showing once again that by giving back, we can lift up our fellow citizens and build stronger, healthier communities."

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, the honorary chairwoman of the volunteer effort, kicked off the summit by praising her family's "chain of service."

The president will be officially sworn in for his second term on Sunday in a small ceremony at the White House. He'll take the oath of office again on Monday before hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall, followed by the traditional parade and formal balls.

Thousands of workers and volunteers were making final preparations for the celebration. Hotels and government buildings along the parade route were adorned with red, white and blue bunting. White tents, trailers and generators lined the Mall.

Yet there is decidedly less energy surrounding Obama's second inauguration than there was in 2009. That history-making event drew 1.8 million people for the swearing-in of the nation's first black president.

This time, Obama takes the oath of office following a bruising presidential campaign and four years of partisan fighting. He's more experienced in the ways of Washington. He has the gray hair and lower approval ratings to show for it.

For at least the inauguration weekend, the fiscal fights and legislative wrangling will be put aside in favor of pomp and circumstance.

The White House did not say in advance what Obama's service project would be. In 2009, he helped spruce up a shelter for homeless teens in one of Washington's poorer neighborhoods then visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The White House sees the call to service as a way for Americans across the country to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. The day Obama publicly takes the oath of office marks King's birthday, and 2013 is the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader's March on Washington.

Also Saturday, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were hosting the Kids' Inaugural Concert, an evening event paying special tribute to military spouses and children.

The crowds pouring into Washington were expected to be far smaller than they were four years ago, and there will be fewer inaugural balls for the president and first lady to attend. Still, Obama's swearing-in at the Capitol is expected to draw up to 800,000 people, which would make it the largest second.

The president was still working on his inaugural address heading into the weekend. He isn't expected to delve deeply into the policy objectives he'll tackle in a second term, but the tone and theme of the speech will set the stage for the policy fights to come.

Aides said he will make the point that while the nation's political system doesn't require politicians to resolve all of their differences, it does require Washington to act on issues where there is common ground. He will speak about how the nation's core principles can still guide a country that has changed immensely since its founding.

Temperatures were forecast to fall throughout the weekend and be in the 30s on Monday when the crowds gather along the parade route that will take Obama from Capitol Hill to the White House.

Despite scaling back on some of the revelry, the inauguration will be a star-studded affair. Top acts including Beyonce, Katy Perry and Brad Paisley have signed on to perform at the weekend's events.

The inauguration also is bringing thousands of Obama campaign staffers and donors to Washington, with many getting invitations for tours and other events at the White House. On Friday, the president and first lady held two private events for donors who helped finance his 2012 campaign.

___

Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/inauguration-weekend-kicks-off-day-085009053--politics.html

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Te'o among many victims of online wishful thinking

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2012, file photo, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o chases the action during the second half of an NCAA college football game against BYU in South Bend, Ind. The wrenching story of Te'o's girlfriend dying of leukemia _ a loss he said inspired him to play his best all the way to the BCS championship _ was dismissed by the school Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, as a hoax perpetrated against the linebacker. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2012, file photo, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o chases the action during the second half of an NCAA college football game against BYU in South Bend, Ind. The wrenching story of Te'o's girlfriend dying of leukemia _ a loss he said inspired him to play his best all the way to the BCS championship _ was dismissed by the school Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, as a hoax perpetrated against the linebacker. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

In a photo provided by ESPN, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o pauses during an interview with ESPN on Friday, Jan. 18, 2013, in Bradenton, Fla. ESPN says Te'o maintains he was never involved in creating the dead girlfriend hoax. He said in the off-camera interview: "When they hear the facts they'll know. They'll know there is no way I could be a part of this." (AP Photo/ESPN Images, Ryan Jones) MANDATORY CREDIT

FILE - In this Nov. 17, 2012, file photo, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o takes the field during senior day before an NCAA college football game against Wake Forest in South Bend, Ind. The wrenching story of Te'o's girlfriend dying of leukemia _ a loss he said inspired him to play his best all the way to the BCS championship _ was dismissed by the school Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, as a hoax perpetrated against the linebacker. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2012, file photo, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o answers a question during NCAA college football media day in South Bend, Ind. The wrenching story of Te'o's girlfriend dying of leukemia _ a loss he said inspired him to play his best all the way to the BCS championship _ was dismissed by the school Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, as a hoax perpetrated against the linebacker. (AP Photo/Joe Raymond, File)

(AP) ? It started out a stunner: The Heisman Trophy runner-up had told heartbreaking stories about a dead girlfriend who didn't exist. Then it became unreal: The All-American linebacker said he had been duped, and theirs was a relationship that existed only in phone calls and Internet chats.

The reaction was predictable: Unbelievable. Couldn't happen.

People speculated he must be a straight-laced Mormon, naive and unfamiliar with modern-day dating hazards. Or he must be part of an elaborate hoax designed to bolster his image. Because no big-time college football player, beloved on campus and adored by millions, could have a girlfriend he's never ... actually ... met.

Yet even people who really ought to know better say what Notre Dame's Manti Te'o says happened to him has happened to them, and they believe it happens far more often than people care to admit.

"If we shake the tree, we would find hundreds of thousands of people falling out of the tree who are experiencing something like this," said Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the California-based American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.

It's just human nature, Epstein said, something known formally by psychologists as "confirmation bias." We watch the news that matches our political beliefs. We discount viewpoints we don't like. We ignore good advice and miss red flags, so we can continue believing in something we want to be true.

In Epstein's case, it was believing he'd made a real connection with an attractive Russian woman named Ivana he met online. In fact, she was nothing more than a computer bot someone had set up to respond to queries on an online dating site.

"A lot of people still make fun of me," he said.

Today's social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, make it easy to "meet" someone without ever doing more than chatting online or exchanging emails. The same tools that allow for such casual contact also can be used by impostors to create intricate personas that exist only on the Internet.

All of it simply makes it that much easier to delude ourselves.

"After a generation of kids growing up with Facebook and decades of online life, you'd think we wouldn't be so easily duped, but I think these people who do the duping are more inventive than people who use the technology," said Steve Jones, a communications professor and online expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

It's been happening since people first began mingling in chat rooms more than 20 years ago. In 2006, one mom in Missouri, Lori Drew, created a MySpace page for non-existent teenage boy so she could "romance" ? and strike back at ? a girl she thought was spreading rumors about her daughter. Humiliated, the targeted girl later killed herself.

"As far back as the 1980s, men were impersonating women, kids were pretending to be adults, and all kinds of relationships with non-existent or phony people flourished online," says Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, who studies social media.

Now, he says, "the rise of Twitter and Facebook have only made that easier."

Those behind Te'o's imaginary girlfriend, for instance, created more than one Twitter account for her and appear to have used photos lifted from a California woman's Facebook page to make it look that much more real.

"In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious," Te'o said in a statement earlier in the week. "If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was."

Te'o has company. As Notre Dame rose to No. 1 in the AP Top 25, sport writers nationwide recounted the story of the heroic, grieving athlete who persevered on the field after a girlfriend named Lennay Kekua was diagnosed with leukemia. Te'o and his family provided them with plenty of stories about the relationship, and no one figured out it was fiction until Deadspin.com broke that news this past week.

In his first interview since, Te'o told ESPN he had lied to his father about having met Kekua. To cover that up, he apparently lied to everyone else.

"That goes back to what I did with my dad. I knew that. I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," Te'o said during the off-camera interview Friday. "So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away."

The fact is that many people don't like to admit that they find love online, let alone that they might be misled by someone they've met that way.

For a young woman in Chicago, it started last February when a potential love interest responded to a personal ad she'd posted in the Craigslist "W4M" section. They communicated for several months online, first by email, and then instant messaging and then online voice chat.

She sent him her photo. He delayed sending his, again and again, and put off meeting in person. He wasn't ready, he told her. It bothered her, but she was so taken with the ease and intimacy of their long, daily conversations ? about their lives and their jobs, their family and friends, even sex.

After this went on for eight months, he abruptly deleted his email and Yahoo Messenger accounts, the only means she'd had to reach him. She didn't even know his last name and wouldn't know him if he passed her on the street.

"It all sounds ridiculous when you're not immersed in the situation, but when you are, it's incredibly easy to get sucked in and not want out," said the 23-year-old, a young professional who shared her story on the condition of anonymity, still hesitant to admit how truly heartbroken she was over a person she'd never met in person.

Te'o offered similar details Friday, telling ESPN he never met Kekua face-to-face and when he tried to speak with her via Skype and video phone calls, the picture was blocked. Still, he said he didn't figure out the ruse.

After he was told Kekua had died of leukemia in early September, Te'o admitted he misled the public about the nature of the "relationship" because he was uncomfortable saying it was purely an electronic romance. Skeptics remain, including some young adults accustomed to making connections on the Internet and by text message.

"Maybe I'd be more inclined to buy it if he was an everyday 'Joe Schmoe,' but with his fame, I can't imagine it happening," said Jennifer Marcus, a 26-year-old New Yorker who blogs about dating and other topics. "To me it seems like he did it for sympathy, or maybe has a few screws loose like a ton of people in this world. People go to great lengths to fit in."

For the 23-year-old Chicagoan, her experience online hasn't led her to swear off using Craigslist and the OkCupid website to find dates. She has, however, started heeding the red flags she once ignored, she says, and cuts off communication with anyone who won't meet with her in person.

"I don't want my time wasted again with someone who isn't willing to give the same amount of transparency and availability that I am," she said. "I'm planning a third date with someone who is very much the person he claimed to be."

___

Online:

Epstein's article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=from-russia-with-love

___

Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org or via http://twitter.com/irvineap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-01-19-Notre%20Dame-Duped%20Like%20Te'o/id-4c6ec277aeb04ab0980b241c02c042ee

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Growth slows, markets feeling good ahead of Davos

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) ? The world's financial and political elite will head this week to the Alps for 2013's gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with the global economy far less plagued by fear than it was last year.

Much-feared worldwide panics from a collapse of the euro currency union have been avoided. China appears likely to remain an engine of global growth. Stocks are off to a running start in the New Year.

"There's a sense of relief that the worst didn't happen ... and I think that relief is probably justified," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

Davos is the venue for the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of more than 2,000 decision-makers from nearly 100 countries and hundreds of companies that starts Wednesday. The WEF has taken "Resilient Dynamism" as the theme for this year's event.

Yet the global economy is expected to remain sluggish in 2013, with two of the biggest economies ? the euro alliance and Japan ? in recession. There's also a risk that the United States, the world's largest economy, may slash government spending ? a step that could dampen the world economy. Few think global economic growth will even match last year's tepid 3.3 percent.

Despite that, as fear of a catastrophe has eased, optimism appears to have taken hold among investors. The world's financial markets have surged. Both the U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 and Europe's STOXX 600 have risen 13.5 percent in the past 12 months.

Fueling much of the improvement has been a flood of monetary expansion from the world's central banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have purchased financial assets such as bonds with newly created money. The central banks have also slashed short-term interest rates to record lows ? to near zero in the case of the Fed. The ECB has lent more than ?1 trillion to banks at low rates.

The European Central Bank gave the eurozone its biggest boost when it offered last fall to buy unlimited debt of heavily indebted countries such as Spain and Italy. That action lowered their borrowing costs and eased fears that those governments would default.

Fears that the group of 17 European countries that use the euro would break up under the weight of its debt crisis faded throughout 2012. One factor bolstering the eurozone was the deal struck between Europe and the International Monetary Fund to stop Greece from being forced to default on its debts and abandon the euro.

As interest rates have dropped, investors have shifted money into stocks, real estate and other assets, driving up their prices. One of the biggest market jumps in 2012 came in Greece's own Athens stock exchange, where stocks catapulted 33 percent. Even the yields on bonds sold by U.S. companies with subpar credit ratings ? so-called junk bonds ? have fallen.

Some pillars of the U.S. economy, like the housing, banking and auto sectors, have been gradually yet steadily recovering from the American recession, which officially ended 3? years ago. And relief was widely felt at the end of 2012, when President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress cut a deal on tax rates and delayed the "fiscal cliff" of automatic cuts and tax increases.

Worries that China, the world's No. 2 economy, would suffer a sudden slowdown proved unfounded as the country's new Communist leadership appeared to signal its commitment to growth policies. Its leaders are trying to reduce China's reliance on exports by encouraging Chinese consumers to spend more at home.

Analysts caution that the still-sluggish global economy has little room for error.

IHS Global Insight predicts the worldwide economy will expand just 2.5 percent in 2013, even less than last year's estimated 2.6 percent. In the United States, unemployment remains elevated at 7.8 percent. U.S. employers have held back on hiring and pay raises.

"There's lots of potential bad macroeconomic news," said Rabobank analyst Jane Foley. "And yet market sentiment seems to be very gung-ho."

Among the risk factors analysts cite:

?The heavy government debt loads in the eurozone, the chief concern from 2012, remain in place. Many worry that European leaders, facing citizen anger over government spending cuts in the midst of recession, will be reluctant to reduce debt and strengthen oversight of their banking system.

?A dispute in the United States over raising the government's debt ceiling, and dealing with automatic spending cuts, has only been postponed until early March. Even if the ceiling is raised, Republicans in the U.S. Congress will likely demand deep spending cuts as a price for voting to raise it. If U.S. government spending were slashed in the short run, it could slow the global economy.

?A potential conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran remains a continuing worry because it could disrupt energy supplies, driving up the price of oil and hurting growth. "That's the thing we just don't have a good handle on," said IHS Global Insight's Behravesh. "People haven't worried about it that much recently, but it's still there."

?Though China will likely continue to help drive global growth, its purchases and investments could increasingly favor Chinese companies, and "foreign companies and investors won't benefit," risk consulting company Eurasia Group argues. "We have to stop treating emerging markets as an asset class for outsized growth," the consultant said in its annual risk report.

?Some analysts warn that the cheap credit provided by the world's central banks has numbed markets to risk and could inflate the prices of some investments. The danger is that unsustainable bubbles in assets like stocks or real estate could eventually form, potentially leading to a devastating collapse in asset prices.

Rabobank's Foley says she fears that all the cash made available by central banks "has given people a license to turn a blind eye to the macroeconomic news."

Eventually, once economic growth accelerates, central banks will have to signal they're getting ready to withdraw that stimulus. Otherwise, runaway inflation could result from all the excess money pumped into the financial system. Yet that might not be until 2014 or even later.

Executives and finance officials arriving in Davos will have to get a grip on an uncertain economy that could end up causing surprise or disappointment. Now that it has dodged some major risks, Behravesh says the global economy might even outperform expectations.

"Is the glass half-empty or half-full?" he asks. "I think it's half-full. But it's nothing to cheer about either."

___

AP Business Writer Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/growth-slows-markets-feeling-good-ahead-davos-121301886--finance.html

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Saturday, January 19, 2013

RRSP or TFSA for tax savings? Some tips - Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

In my view, there are two great things about RRSPs. The first is the reduction in taxable income that results from a contribution. This reduces tax for most people, and allows them to leverage the tax reduction into higher savings capacity.

The other great feature -- maybe the most important -- is the annual cut-off date for contributions provides a deadline for procrastinators to make some decisions about their annual savings targets.

In the absence of such a contribution deadline, many people might still delay such decisions to take money from the spending side of the plan onto the savings side.

The deadline for contributions deductible on your 2012 tax return is 60 days after year-end, or midnight on March 1, 2013. If this deadline is missed, contribution limits carry forward to future years.

The 2012 limit is 18 per cent of 2011 "earned" income, to a maximum of $22,970, plus any unused contribution room carried forward. "Earned" income is the sum of employment, net self-employment, net rental and alimony income.

The tax benefit varies according to your taxable income, which affects your income tax rate. For example, taxable income of $20,000 means tax reduction at a rate of 25.8 per cent of the contribution (and a real incentive to consider a TFSA instead), rising to tax savings of 34.75 per cent for taxable incomes between $42,707 and $67,000. For folks with taxable incomes beyond $132,406, the saving is at a rate of 46.4 per cent.

I mentioned the TFSA, the tax-free savings account, which is a second strategy for tax deferral provided by the government.

Introduced in 2008 (with perfect timing to take advantage of the stock-market bottom), the contribution limit for 2013 has been increased to $5,500. This means the maximum lifetime contributions allowed are now $25,500.

The TFSA gives no immediate tax deduction. Instead, it simply provides sheltering of the investment income earned inside the plan. The huge difference between a TFSA and an RRSP is all withdrawals from the TFSA are tax-free but all withdrawals from an RRSP (or RRIF in the future) add to taxable income.

RRSP withdrawals also add to net income, the figure the government uses to calculate a range of income-tested benefits, including OAS, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, GST tax credit and a range of other credits.

So how do you decide?

If you are in the top tax bracket, the RRSP is likely your first choice, with your best strategy to then reinvest your tax saving either to pay off debt or contribute to a TFSA.

In the lowest tax brackets (up to $31,000 taxable), using an RRSP contribution is likely to save you less tax now than withdrawals will cost you down the road in retirement. For you, the better choice is likely the TFSA.

In both cases, the most important decision is to do something. Don't let the options paralyze you.

It could be that paying off debts, making needed repairs to your house or looking after your health are better choices for you.

My hope for you, though, is that you make all these decisions in the context of your overall plan.

We'll have more on RRSP and TFSA investments and decisions in the coming weeks.

Now stay warm this weekend!

David Christianson, BA, CFP, R.F.P., TEP, is a financial planner in Winnipeg and author of Managing the Bull.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 18, 2013 B14

Source: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/finance/rrsp-or-tfsa-for-tax-savings-some-tips-187420681.html

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Bladewolf175's drawings,and paintings

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share some of my paintings and drawings that I've done. It took awhile to get tones right, learn how to blend colors, and not use black so often. It was extremely difficult to not use black...
Wolf sketch: Image

I did this one for my sister for her 16th birthday:
Image
Image
Can you believe there are really turtles with vibrant red shells?

And I just wanted to show you an amigurumi doll of amaterasu from the game Okami:
Image
Image

Also I'm trying to paint my character. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. I use oil colors and tend to stay away from acrylic...

Thanks for looking at my work. I'll post more soon.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/aSXHA2E9Nq4/viewtopic.php

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EGHS/Cranston Co-op Girls' Ice Hockey | East Greenwich Sports ...

http://eastgreenwich.patch.com/events/eghscranston-co-op-girls-ice-hockey/media_attachments/edit?upload_started=1358599594

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Source: http://eastgreenwich.patch.com/events/eghscranston-co-op-girls-ice-hockey

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Friday, January 18, 2013

Great Weekend Weather for North Texas! Here?s your forecast.

BEST WEEKEND OF THE YEAR SO FAR?

That is not saying a whole lot as we haven?t had very many weekends this year, but this one will be the best we have seen.? Lots of sunshine and high temperatures in the mid 60s each day!? It will be a bit cool in the mornings starting near 40 degrees each day.

A cold front arrives early Monday (MLK Day) morning.? No rain with this front, but it will be cooler and a bit breezy on Monday.? High temperatures for Monday will be in the upper 40s.

STATEWIDE FORECAST

SATURDAY

TX Weekend Forecast

?

SUNDAY

TX Weekend Forecastsat

?

MONDAY

TX Weekend Forecastmon

?

ANOTHER FREEZE THIS MORNING?

This morning (Friday Jan. 18) we had another freeze at DFW.? The low temperature was 31 degrees.? This is the 20th freeze so far this winter.? All of last winter we only saw 14 freezes.

JANUARY UPDATEA

?

FORECAST:

TONIGHT:? Clear and cool.? Low of 39.? S 5-10 mph

TOMORROW:? Sunny and pleasant.? High of 66.? S 10-15 mph

TOMORROW NIGHT:? Mostly clear and cool.? Low of 40.? S 5-10 mph

SUNDAY:? Sunny and pleasant.? High of 65.? S 5-10 mph

MONDAY:? Mostly sunny and cooler.? Morning low of 38.? High of 47.? NE 5-15 mph

TUESDAY:? Mostly Sunny.? Morning low of 30.? High of 56.? S 5-15 mph

WEDNESDAY:? Partly sunny and warmer.? Morning low of 39.? High of 64.? S 10-20 mph

Source: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/01/18/great-weekend-weather-for-north-texas-heres-your-forecast/

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A $4 Everybody Buys Coupon will get you 79% OFF a iPega Breath Alcohol Tester for iPhone, iPod, iPad with LCD Display (Value $62.50)

Hey Savvy Shoppers,??Everybody Buys Lowest Price Guarantee: Did you know that Groupon, LivingSocial and all other Group Buying sites keep 30% - 50% of the money you pay them as a fee. That means the Merchant gets 30% - 50% less of that money. Eg...You pay $50 for a $100 deal, most deal sites take 50% of the $50 and pays the Merchant $25. Now, Everybody Buys offers the exact same $100 deal for $35, you buy the EB coupon in this example for $3 and when you redeem that coupon, you pay the merchant $35 direct. You have now paid a total of $38, not $50, that's an extra savings of $12 and the merchant now gets $35, not $25. That's why merchants will always give Everybody Buys the lowest prices and You will always save the most money!! Daily Deal Media the largest industry website praised Everybody Buys in their article: EverybodyBuys.com - Better for Merchants and Consumers, bad for Groupon - So help us spread the word and save more money today!?? ?Today a $4 Everybody Buys Coupon will get you 79% OFF a iPega Breath Alcohol Tester for iPhone, iPod, iPad with LCD Digital Display from HotDeallio - Pay $13 (Shipping and Taxes Included) Online at HotDeallio when Redeeming your Everybody Buys Coupon (Value $62.50)?Please Redeem Red Code On Coupon Here Starting NOW: http://tinyurl.com/ap9nlfc??About the ??iPega Breath Alcohol Tester...?Detector can identify cigarette, coke, coffee smell and prevents non alcohol gas to interfere detecting results.With sound alarm function, buzzer alarm alert on excess alcohol results.Material: Plastic housing.Unique alcohol tester, designed for iPhone, iPad and iPod series.Mini and easy to carry.Quick response and resume.With voice alarm function.No need to use blowpipe, just blow into air hole.Easy to use, healthy and clean.?Team EB - Keep Saving My Friends!

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Source: http://feeds.dealery.com/~r/dealery-san-diego/~3/l5cz7QpFBw0/

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Video: Cleaning robot wants to be a Roomba for your windows

Most of us are familiar with robots that can clean floors like the Roomba, but they aren't much use when it comes to that bane of household chores, cleaning the windows. Enter Winbot 7, the first robot that can get out there and clean your glass without risking life or limb.

Winbot 7 uses a dual suction system that lets it stick to the vertical glass sheet like Spider-Man, mapping out a route around your panes. A three-stage cleaning system uses a wet pad, followed by a squeegee and a drying cloth to make make sure the glass ends up spotless and clear.

This sounds a whole lot safer than leaning out on your windowsill while trying reach the outside glass, and a suction cup tether makes sure that Winbot won't land on someone's head if it loses suction and slips off the glass.

The main catch I see is that, unlike a Roomba that can navigate an entire floor of your house at a time, the Winbot will need to be moved manually from window to window. Then add in having to move it from the inside to the outside of the glass and it all adds up to a lot of manual repositioning. Then again, Roomba can't do stairs, yet.

My only question is: what ever happened to Winbots 1 through 6?

Winbot 7 will be available this summer for around $300 to $400. Check out the video to see it in action.

Ecovacs, via Gizmag

For the latest tech stories, follow DVICE on Twitter
at @dvice or find us on Facebook

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2013/01/finally-a-clean.php

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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Video: Maria's Observation: CEO Pay Cut

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50487470/

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Universality of Preadaptation for the Human Condition

I have often wondered about whether key human adaptations (e.g., bipedalism, large brain size, opposable thumbs) represented universal traits for the development of high intelligence and technological complexity.? In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012) by evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson, he posits that they are.? Wilson argues that highly intelligent, technologically complex species have been so rare in the history of life because there are specific universal preadaptations required to produce the human condition.? He contends that without these preadaptations, a species intelligent enough to ?build a microscope, deduce the oxidative chemistry of photosynthesis, or photograph the moons of Saturn? is an impossibility (Wilson, 2012: 45).? From Wilson himself:

?Overall, it now seems possible to draw a reasonably good explanation of why the human condition is a singularity, why the likes of it has occurred only once and took so long in coming.? The reason is simply the extreme improbability of the preadaptations necessary for it to occur at all.? Each of these evolutionary steps has been a full-blown adaptation in its own right.? Each has required a particular sequence of one or more preadaptations that occurred previously.? Homo sapiens is the only species of large mammal ? thus large enough to evolve a human-sized brain ? to have made every one of the required lucky turns in the evolutionary maze.? (Wilson, 2012: 45)

So what are these ?lucky turns??? And are they as universal as Wilson supposes?? First I think it is appropriate to explain what is meant be an ?evolutionary maze.? An evolutionary maze is a metaphor to understand the probability of an organism acquiring a certain trait (i.e. large size, flight, echolocation, intelligence, etc.).? By using this metaphor we can say with certainty that descendants of contemporary pigs could become aquatic, but will never be able to fly.? This is because their ancestors acquired adaptations that ?closed the door? to flight as a future adaptation through the evolutionary maze.? In essence, Wilson uses this metaphor to illustrate how many, and what type, of preadaptations it took for evolution to produce a highly intelligent, technologically complex species.? So that brings us back to ?lucky turns?. What were they for us?? And can we deduce that these preadaptations represent a universal process for biological evolution?? Is the human condition a singularity?? According to Wilson there were four major turns, and these turns can be seen as prerequisites for biological evolution to produce another species with our abilities:

1. Land

The first of Wilson?s lucky turns is an adaptation to a terrestrial environment.? This is the first key preadaptation because Wilson argues that technological evolution past simple stone tools requires fire.? This means that in the evolutionary maze aquatic species could develop technology, but could never develop technologies with evolutionary trajectories of their own.? Therefore, no descendant of the octopus or dolphin could deduce oxidative chemistry of photosynthesis, or photograph the moons of Saturn, without first adapting to land.

2. Large body size

Wilson?s next preadaptation is large body size.? The reason for this adaptation is fairly self-explanatory: in order for a species to develop human-level intelligence, they must have a body that can support the evolution of a human-sized brain.? Wilson draws on his experience studying the highly complex societies of ants, bees, and termites to support the inclusion of this preadaptation: ?[body size is the] one reason why leafcutter ants, although the most complex of any species other than humans, and even though they practice agriculture in air-conditioned cities of their own instinctual devising, have made no significant further advance during the twenty million years of their existence.? (Wilson, 2012: 46).? In contrast, we acquired this adaptation gradually over time within the order primates.

3. Grasping hands

The third preadaptation is grasping hands.? For Wilson, a species that has not acquired this ability will never be able to manipulate the environment in the way necessary to produce complex technologies.? Of course, this is a preadaptation that our lineage acquired within the order primates.? Grasping hands distinguishes primates from all other mammals.

4. Meat/Control of Fire

The fourth preadaptations are the consumption of meat and control of fire.? Meat is a necessary adaptation for Wilson because it yields higher energy per gram eaten, and because of the cooperation between individuals required to acquire meat.? In our lineage, meat was first consumed regularly within the genus Homo.? Before this the australopithecines subsisted off of vegetation, although they were potential scavengers as well.? Regular consumption of meat was followed shortly by the control of fire.? For humans, control of fire allowed us to catch larger game, and created a central common cooking space, which facilitated the development of an even more complex social environment dependent on altruistic sharing of resources.

The Evolutionary Maze

The metaphor of the evolutionary maze is a useful one.? It can help us conceptualize biological evolution.? However, Wilson depicts the human journey through the maze to be the only possible way for biological evolution to produce both high intelligence and technologically complex species.? Of course, I agree that the maze towards these evolutionary developments is narrower than the maze towards less complex adaptations.? I also agree that a great number of preadaptations are necessary for a species to achieve high intelligence and technological complexity.? However, the human condition may not be a singularity.? Unfortunately, we know of only one species that has developed high intelligence and technology with an evolutionary trajectory of its own.? Therefore, our sample size is too small to be definitively sure that our path through the maze was the only one.

As a consequence, I believe questions about the universality of the human condition must be relegated to a grey borderland between philosophy and empirical science.? Are there universal preadaptations?? I think it is possible, but we can?t scientifically determine that yet.? Take for example Wilson?s first preadaptation: adaptation to land.? Is it impossible for a lineage adapted to an aquatic setting to develop high intelligence and technological complexity?? I am just not sure how we can scientifically rule that out.? Just because it hasn?t happened on Earth, doesn?t mean that it can?t happen in the future, or on some other planet similar to our own.

As Wilson point out in the book, alien scientists studying our planet three million years ago would likely think nothing special of the australopithecines.? However, they were part of the maze that ended up producing us.? Could our species be making a similar mistake as Wilson?s hypothetical alien scientists if we conclude that the evolutionary maze to high intelligence and technological complexity is shut to the descendants of octopuses and dolphins?? Furthermore, we can?t conclude that consumption of meat and control of fire are necessary preadaptations, even though they were for us.? Although meat yields higher energy per gram eaten when compared to vegetation on Earth, it may not be the case on other planets.? I would argue the same with the preadaptation for control of fire.? It was important for our lineage, but could technology develop without control of it in an aquatic setting?? We don?t have the data to rule it out.

On the other hand, I believe the preadaptations Wilson explored do give us important insight.? For example, I would think it to be highly unlikely for a species with a small body size to develop human-level intelligence.? As he mentioned, the lack of advance among the social insects is likely attributable to this variable.? Also, I am in general agreement with Wilson that a species like us would require some type of grasping preadaptation.? Of course, grasping hands could be supplemented for the evolution of some other type of appendage (e.g., fin, tentacle, etc.) that could be used to manipulate the external environment.

This means all intelligent science fiction aliens should be equipped with some type of grasping appendage, in order to be scientifically appropriate.? Jokes aside, this type of question is worth exploring.? However, I think we should be cautious and hesitant to make any broad conclusions.? A scientific consensus will not likely be reached until we have more data, and that requires understanding life off of our island of life: Earth.

References:

Wilson, E.O.? 2012.? The Social Conquest of Earth.? New York: W.W. Norton.

?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=e7dfe590b731da41d06bdc0d8486bfdb

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Wed, January 16, 2013 - Playing with Fire: Artists of the California Studio Glass Movement

The best of the Bay Area for KQED fans: discover events hand-picked by our editors, sponsored listings, and more.

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Source: http://events.kqed.org/events/index.php?com=detail&eID=24566

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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

A look at what countries are contributing to Mali

Here's a look at what countries are providing to help Mali's battle against armed Islamic extremists who have occupied the country's north since March. West African nations authorized immediate deployment and France launched attacks last week after fighters pushed even further south, toward the capital, Bamako.

FRANCE

France's resources in what they call Operation Serval include:

? 800 troops are now in place in Mali. This number is forecast to "gradually" increase to 2,500, according to a government official, who insisted on anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press.

?French forces on the ground include 200 troops from Operation Epervier in Chad who have been flown into Bamako. This includes some French Foreign Legionnaires. And a company of the 2nd marine infantry regiment based in Auvours, France was moved into Bamako on Saturday. Also present are a group of 200 soldiers who moved into Mali on Monday from their base in Ivory Coast, along with around 60 armored vehicles.

?Gazelle helicopter gunships from the 4th helicopter regiment of the special forces armed with HOT anti-tank missiles and 20mm cannons. The 4th regiment, based in Pau, France, has 12 of these helicopters.

? Mirage 2000D fighter jets based in Chad and four Rafale fighter jets sent from their base in France have taken part in the bombing campaign, supported by two C135 refueling tankers. Two Mirage F1 CR reconnaissance jets were also moved from their base in Chad to Bamako on Monday. France has six Mirage 2000D, 3 C135s, one C130, 1 Transall C160 stationed in Chad as part of its Operation Epervier.

___

U.K.

?Two C-17 aircraft to carry foreign troops and military equipment to Mali. One C-17 has arrived in Bamako, Mali and the second is currently in France.

?Britain is not offering any troops, but Mark Simmonds, the government minister for Africa, said British personnel also could be involved in training the Malian army.

? The only military personnel will be a Royal Air Force ground crew intended to service C-17 transport.

___

United States: The U.S. is providing intelligence-gathering assistance to the French, and officials would not rule out having American aircraft land in the West African nation as part of future efforts to lend airlift and logistical support. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday that the U.S. is still working through the details of assistance it will provide France.

___

EU: The European Union says it is speeding up its preparation for a troop training mission in Mali, which will now likely be launched in the second half of February or early March, but the EU is not planning any direct combat role.

___

ALGERIA: Algerian Foreign Ministry spokesman Amar Belani said on Monday that Algeria was closing the nearly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) border with Mali. After months of expressing grave doubts over any intervention in Mali, regional powerhouse Algeria has backed the French attack. It has granted overflight rights to French jets heading to northern Mali.

___

BENIN: Will send 300 troops.

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BELGIUM: Transport.

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BURKINA FASO: Will send 500 troops to Mali and 500 others to control the northern border. Check points have also been set up in Burkina Faso on roads to it northern border with Mali.

___

CHAD: To send troops, but no specific number yet.

___

DENMARK: Denmark is sending a C-130 transport aircraft with a crew and support staff of about 40 people, the Danish Foreign Ministry said.

___

ESTONIA: Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said his country would be ready to send "a couple of officers" to Mail to help staff the EU's training mission.

___

GERMANY : German officials have ruled out sending any combat troops to support Mali, but French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Germany will offer logistical, humanitarian and medical support.

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GUINEA: Will send 144 troops.

___

MAURITANIA: Mauritanian armed forces were placed on high alert along the border with Mali. The president says the country would not take part in the fighting in northern Mali. The Mauritanian army had conducted raids in 2010 and 2011 against the bases of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in northern Mali.

___

NIGER: Will send 500 troops.

___

NIGERIA: Will send about 900 troops, including a company of 190 expected to leave in the next 24 hours.

___

SENEGAL: Will send 500 troops.

___

TOGO: Will send 500 troops.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/look-countries-contributing-mali-144102684.html

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Obama: Not Raising Debt Limit "Absurd", "Financial Disaster"

President Obama today shot down Republican threats to let the federal government default on its loans, saying, "To even entertain this happening... is irresponsible. It's absurd."

"We've got to pay our bills," Mr. Obama said in a White House news conference. He reiterated that while he is willing to compromise over plans for deficit reduction, he will not accept using the debt limit as a bargaining chip.

"They will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy," he said. "The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip."

Within a matter of weeks, Washington is likely to be embroiled in three fiscal debates: The $16.4 trillion debt limit the Treasury Department is expected to hit by mid-February or early March, the $1.2 trillion in "sequester" cuts set to go into effect on March 1, and the expiration of the "continuing resolution," or federal government funding on March 27.

The risk of failing to address any of these issues is high, but failing to raise the debt limit poses the greatest threat: By failing to do so, Congress would risk letting the government default on its loans, which economists say would have disastrous consequences.

Mr. Obama today quoted House Speaker John Boehner on the issue, who last year said letting the government default would be "a financial disaster not only for us, but for the worldwide economy."

In spite of the president's warnings -- and the potential economic consequences -- Republicans say they're ready to use the threats of defaulting or a government shutdown to win significant spending cuts in the next round of negotiations. Ideally, the GOP wants dollar-for-dollar cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.

"In another month from now, all these tea party people and others are going to be together and using that as the hammer to get that done, and I feel very good about that," Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., told CBSNews.com about the threat of defaulting.

While many Republicans are willing to use the threat of default as leverage, even more are reportedly willing to let the government shut down.

"I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we're serious," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., the fourth ranking Republican in the House, told Politico. "We always talk about whether or not we're going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we've come to the end of the road."

Source: http://www.ktva.com/home/outbound-xml-feeds/Obama-Not-Raising-Debt-Limit-Absurd-Financial-Disaster-186807531.html

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Israeli company: Anti-missile system passes tests

JERUSALEM (AP) ? An Israeli defense technology company says it has successfully tested an anti-missile system designed to protect commercial passenger jets.

Elbit Systems Ltd. on Wednesday said its C-MUSIC system to protect large jets against shoulder-launched missiles from the ground passed tests. Elbit said it proved effective a number of times in protecting a Boeing 707 aircraft.

In 2002, militants fired two surface-to-air missiles at an Israeli charter plane shortly after takeoff in Mombasa, Kenya. The missiles missed their target but spurred an Israeli effort to improve countermeasures.

Elbit says the new system can be applied to any aircraft. It says it integrates advanced fiber laser technology with a thermal camera to protect against missiles fired from the ground.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-16-Israel-Aircraft%20Safety/id-e7af52d0cdcb40e9821439d9377d905f

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Observatory: Study Measures Psychological Impact of China?s One-Child Policy

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Chinese policy that penalizes families for having more than one child has had psychological fallout for the children born after it was instituted in 1979, a new report suggests.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/study-measures-psychological-impact-of-chinas-one-child-policy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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After 2010 Campaign, Gov. Rick Scott Gave Back Dog Reagan

Rick Scott Dog Reagan

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (File/AP)

Tampa Bay Times:

Shortly after winning the GOP nomination in 2010, Rick Scott announced to the world through Facebook that his family had rescued a Labrador Retriever.

And, with help from his Facebook friends, Scott gave it a name: Reagan.

But where is Reagan today?

Read the whole story at Tampa Bay Times

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/rick-scott-dog-reagan_n_2476205.html

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?To Rome With Love? Blu-ray: Jesse Eisenberg on working with Woody Allen ? EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

In To Rome With Love, Woody Allen?s most recent traveling roadshow in an iconic European locale, the director steps in front of the camera for the first time since 2006?s Scoop. He plays a retired music-recording exec who visits Rome with his wife (Judy Davis) to meet their daughter?s Italian fianc?, whose father just so happens to be an undiscovered opera virtuoso ? as long as he performs in the shower. It?s one of four amusing story threads, but fans of Allen?s most memorable on-screen neurotics will be drawn to Jesse Eisenberg, who plays an American architectural student tempted by his girlfriend?s free-spirited old classmate (Ellen Page). Eisenberg?s previous work ? especially in movies like The Squid and the Whale and Zombieland ? seemingly pointed him towards an inevitable collaboration with Allen, and you can sense the writer/director may have felt the same way by the way he wrote Eisenberg?s character?s relationship with an older, wiser architect played by Alec Baldwin. When the young man is thrust into an awkward romantic situation where he has to navigate a moral dilemma, you can almost hear two voices whispering advice into Eisenberg?s ear: Baldwin?s architect and Woody Allen himself.

With Rome out on Blu-ray today, the 29-year-old Eisenberg spoke to EW about working with a legend, his next appearance on the New York stage, and an upcoming reunion with Zombieland co-star Woody Harrelson. Click below for a Q&A and an exclusive video extra clip from the new Blu-ray.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Woody Allen is famous for being very particular about selecting the right actors for his films, but then being hands-off and letting them do what they want once the production begins.
JESSE EISENBERG: Yes, I guess he was very open-minded about letting the actors kind of fill up the space. A lot of the shots are just one shot and because you?d don?t have an opportunity to edit many different shots together, you kind of have to fill up a lot of the space between the written dialog, so he was just very open to us saying anything. I think he?s the best script writer, so it seems a little strange to be improvising in a movie of his. But he just wants things to sound casual and to kind of move quickly so there?s not a lot of dead space.

Was it daunting to meet and work with someone you admire so much?
I grew up obsessed with him, so I felt like I knew everything about him. Any time that he would give notes to me or the other actresses, we would just kind of look at each other and smile like idiots because we couldn?t believe we were getting to hear his voice up close. My friend described it as like seeing your favorite band live. His manner of speaking and cadence are so embedded in my mind that there?s something really exciting about being in the same room and hearing it live.

Allen has said in interviews that you?re basically his stand-in, the role he would?ve wanted to play were he a younger man.
That was never explicitly said, but if you?ve seen every movie that he?s made and read the script, you could clearly see where the character fits into the canon. Also, when you?re on set with him, it?s a little difficult not to be speaking with him and then immediately get wrapped in something that?s written in his voice and not feel influenced by the way he writes and jokes. His dialog is so specific.

Your character, an aspiring architect, has a somewhat cosmic encounter with a famous architect played by Alec Baldwin who might be an older version of yourself. Was it awkward to act opposite a character that doesn?t fully interact with the rest of the characters in the scene?
When I read it, I was wondering what [Allen] wanted the character to represent and then while we were doing it, I just made a decision to make it very clear to myself because there?s no other way to perform it with any kind of consistency. It?s a little vague, but the relationship is very specific. The rapport is very specific. It?s almost as though he?s my conscience. On one hand, he?s giving me advice that I know is right, and on the other hand, it?s kind of annoying to hear what you know is right, because it?s not what you want to do in the moment.

You?ve written plays, including The Revisionist, which you?re rehearsing right now in New York. Was that an aspect of your career that you discussed with Allen?
Somebody brought it up just because we both had plays going on at the same time in New York, so he was asking me about my show and telling me about his upcoming show. But we didn?t much exchange feedback.

Where do you possibly find the time to write?
I write all the time because I?m lonely. When you?re acting, you?re working every day all day. But then you have long amounts of time off. I finished a movie in August and didn?t start another until October so I wrote a play for next year.

What?s The Revisionist about?
It?s kind of loosely based on a true story: this young science-fiction novelist is having writer?s block and he goes to Poland because he thinks that this dramatic change of scenery will cure his writer?s block. He has a second cousin in Poland so he thinks he can get a free room, but she?s this 75-year-old woman who is profoundly lonely and very interested in connecting with her American family. So she thinks of his trip as exclusively a personal visit for her. And he sees this trip exclusively as a free room to write. So there?s a clash of interests. And she has this very complicated history that he starts to uncover over the course of his trip. It?s pretty funny.

You?ll play the young writer and Vanessa Redgrave plays the second-cousin. Were you involved in landing her?
When I was writing this, I saw her in The Year of Magical Thinking and thought if I could just get it to her, the play would work because she?s so wonderful. In that Joan Didion play, there are great moments of levity surrounded by a very tragic story, and obviously she does that. She?s the greatest actress alive. I?ve been trying to get my script to her for five years. I tried all these weirdly circuitous routes and burnt bridges to get it to her, and no one ever sent it to her. Then, I met an agent who saw my last play. And they said, ?What else do you have?? I said, ?I have a play that I?m doing next year.? ?Oh,? they said, ?Vanessa Redgrave would be perfect.? I said, ?I know.? Two weeks later she had read it and agreed to do it. It was pretty quick once she got it, but it took five years to get to her. I?m so happy that I haven?t aged out of the role yet!

Do you prefer stage or film?
The acting thing is pretty similar, but the experiences on the whole are very different. I find theater to be far more stressful because you?re doing the same show every night. But I love writing plays. I write plays instinctively. I don?t like writing movie scripts. As a writer, I write plays and that?s why I [act in] them. I wouldn?t be as comfortable doing somebody else?s play right now because it?s so stressful. My plays, I do them because I can get the ball rolling and get them on a little more easily. I?m going to do one play a year, so I?m going to write another play for next year. And then I also have a musical that will go on next year, that I wrote the music to ? somebody else wrote the book and the dialog.

You also have Now You See Me coming out in June, which as a Zombieland fan, I loved to see you paired with Woody Harrelson again.
We?re friends. I guess we weren?t actively looking to do a specific movie together, but when I signed on to this movie, I think the people who were making it thought it would be so great to [reunite us]. It?s a cool movie but it?s very different than Zombieland. These magicians pull this bank heist and Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent play these FBI agents who are tracking us and sort of uncovering their secrets. I play this character who thinks of himself as the greatest magician in the world. And he might be. I guess he?s arrogant, but I would also say for good reason. Woody Harrelson plays a mind reader, and they team up [with two others] to perform these great feats.

Source: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/01/15/to-rome-with-love-blu-ray-jesse-eisenberg-woody-allen/

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