Liberty Newspost July-18-2012

Curated News Edition
- 19/07/12
http://www.LibertyNewspost.com
Israeli tourist attack: A pretext for war with Iran?

RT (News RSS : Today)
expressed, that these attacks that have been carried out between the Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:16:51 PM parties, between Israel and Iran, Security tape is seen after an could somehow provide casus explosion at Bulgaria's Burgas belli for a war. airport July 18, 2012 (Reuters / In the case of Israel not having a Impact Press Group) pretext to go into Iran and overtly Israel has accused Iran of attack its nuclear facilities, if you masterminding a terror attack in have a situation like this, in which Bulgaria just hours after the Iran is implicated, whether rightly tragedy claimed the lives of or wrongly, for a terrorist attack, several Israeli tourists. The that could create a basis where an incident could be used as a pretext Israeli "counter" attack may be for a legitimate strike against Iran, perceived as more legitimate than analyst Jamal Abdi told RT. a preventative strike against Iran, - RT: It took Benjamin Netanyahu against a nuclear program that just two hours to blame Tehran all indications say has not for the bombing, saying that all developed into a nuclear weapons signs point to Iran. What are the program. g r o u n d s f o r s u c h h a s t y RT: Given the pressure Iran is conclusions? under concerning its nuclear Jamal Abdi: I dont think he has program, and the international g r o u n d s t o m a k e s u c h a n sanctions that come with it, would accusation. I think it is an it be in Tehran's interests to extremely dangerous accusation. mastermind an attack like this? And it really feeds some of the JA: I dont know about the concerns that I know privately interests of Tehran, but I would officials in Washington have not necessarily rule out some of [unable to retrieve full-text
the accusations that Iran was behind this. I think that we have entered a very dangerous cycle of escalation between the US, Iran and Israel. And given the attacks that weve seen inside of Iran against nuclear scientists, some of the sabotage efforts that have apparently been carried out by Israel, honestly I havent seen the evidence but I would not be shocked if Iran was behind this. And I think it is absolutely deplorable when innocent civilians are targeted by terrorist attack like this, regardless of where it happens or who conducts the attacks. RT: Do you think blaming Iran for this attack could be diverting attention from Israel's ongoing domestic problems? JA: I dont know what Netanyahu's intentions are. I do know that he has used some extremely dangerous rhetoric and that there does seem to be a push by him to ratchet up the pressure content]
for military action conducted either by Israel or the United States. And so when we have this confrontation between Israel and Iran, this is a strong suit that Netanyahu has politically, the very hard line that he has taken against Tehran. I dont know that it necessarily undermines anything that he is trying to do by immediately blaming Iran for this before even his own intelligence people have declared that Iran is behind this disgusting attack. RT: The US recently reiterated its support for the Jewish state. How far do you think they would go to back Israel should it decide to take action? JA: I dont think the Unites States is going to have much of a choice, unfortunately, if it comes to a third party like Israel attacking Iran or if Iran does something provocative in the Persian Gulf. I think we are on the precipice right here, and this is a
hair-trigger situation. If something happens, the United States is very likely going to be sucked into it. There was a leak, in the Pentagon couple months ago, a simulation in which they found that in the case of Israeli strike on Iran immediately you have the United Stated getting sucked into it, immediately you have US soldiers getting killed in a counter-attack by Iran. So the ability to control a situation like this once it actually does spiral into a war scenario, I think, is going be outside of US hands. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Top News/
Syrian Rebels Land Deadly Blow to Assad's Inner Circle - New York Times
NEIL MacFARQUHAR (Top Stories - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:03:58 PM
Associated Press Smoke billowed over Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. BEIRUT, Lebanon The killing on Wednesday of President Bashar al-Assads key security aides in a brazen bombing attack, close to Mr. Assads own residence, called into question the ability of a government that depends on an insular group of loyalists to function effectively as it battles a strengthening opposition. Map Photographs Daoud Rajha, left, Syrias defense minister, and Asef Shawkat, President Bashar alAssads brother-in-law, were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bombing in Damascus. A still image from Syrian television showed what it said were security forces involved in clashes in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday. An undated photo released by Syria's state-run television, showed Syria's defense minister, Daoud Rajha, center, with army officers. A child was treated last week after a bombing in Qusayr, Syria. A bombing last month left the center of Qusayr in rubble. Government forces erected a
security cordon in areas of Damascus. A frame from a video released by antigovernment activists showed Syrian army troops in central Damascus on Monday. The strike dealt a potent blow to the government, as much for where it took place as for the individuals who were targeted: the very cabinet ministers and intelligence chiefs who have coordinated the governments iron -fisted approach to the uprising.
The defense minister and the presidents brother-in-law were both killed, and others were seriously wounded. The attack on the leaderships inner sanctum as fighting raged in sections of the city for the fourth day suggested that the uprising had reached a decisive moment in the overall struggle for Syria. The battle for the capital, the center of Assad family power, appears to have begun. Though there was no indication he was wounded, Mr.
Assad stayed out of public view unusual but not unprecedented in a secretive country where the government has long tried to present an image of quiet control. In Washington, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that Syria is rapidly spinning out of control, and warned Mr. Assads government to safeguard its large stockpile of chemical weapons. Its obvious what is happening in Syria is a real escalation, he said at a joint news
conference with the British defense minister, Philip Hammond. The impact of the days events reverberated on multiple levels, piercing the psychological advantage that Mr. Assads superior military strength has provided in preserving the loyalty of his forces and frightening much of the public into staying home. With the opposition energized and SYRIAN page 3
SYRIAN
continued from page 2
the government demoralized, analysts wondered if other military units and trusted lieutenants would be more inclined to switch sides and if the government would retaliate with an escalation of violence. The idea that a poorly organized, lightly armed opposition force could somehow get so close to the seat of power raised questions about the viability of a once unassailable police state. The Assad family has for decades relied on overlapping security forces and secret police to preserve its lock on power. At best, for Mr. Assad, the system failed. At worst, for Mr. Assad, defectors or turncoats helped carry out an inside operation. The government said that the attack was the work of a suicide bomber, while an officer with the Free Syrian Army said it was a remotely detonated explosive. The most significant victim was Asef Shawkat the husband of the presidents older sister, Bushra who was the deputy chief of staff of the military after years as a top intelligence official. The others killed were Gen. Dawoud A. Rajha, the defense minister and the most prominent Christian in the government; and Maj. Gen. Hassan Turkmani, a previous defense minister serving as the top military aide to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa. Who will replace these people? asked Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese military officer and a military analyst knowledgeable about Syria. They are
irreplaceable at this stage; its hard to find loyal people now that doubt is sown everywhere. Whoever can get to Asef Shawkat can get to Assad. Everyone, even those close to the inner circle, will now be under suspicion, he said. State television also said the minister of the interior, Lt. Gen. Mohamed al-Shaar, had been gravely wounded but was in stable condition. Hisham Ikhtiar, the head of general security, was reported by some activist organizations among those in critical condition, along with some junior officers, but the official news media did not confirm that. The bombing took place in a small, nondescript building in a neighborhood that is home to the countrys elite. The building housed a research center run by the national security agency, one of many overlapping intelligence agencies. It was at the heart of the governments nexus of control, said an analyst with long experience in Damascus, speaking anonymously because he still travels there often. If the regime had a center, that was it. But the government mounted a show of normality. It quickly appointed a new defense minister, Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, the military chief of staff who had previously been responsible for trying to squash the uprising in northern Idlib Province. He appeared briefly on television, vowing that the military would
not be deterred by the attack from cutting off every hand that harms the security of the homeland and citizens. The military also issued a statement saying in part, This terrorist act will only increase our insistence to purge this country from the criminal terrorist thugs and to protect the dignity of Syria and its sovereignty. Activists reported an even harsher crackdown, with government soldiers firing indiscriminately in several embattled neighborhoods or from helicopters, especially on the southern part of Damascus where fighting first erupted Sunday. Dozens of people were killed, and defections soared, activists said. The regime reacted hysterically to the attack, said Rami alSayyed, an activist in Damascus. The security forces and thugs infiltrated various neighborhoods, committing all kinds of crimes. Today we cut the head of the snake, but we still have the tail. Like any event in Damascus, details surrounding the attack were murky. There were competing accounts of how the attack occurred and competing claims of responsibility. The Free Syrian Army based in Turkey said it had helped carry out the attack. Also, a brigade from a group with a seemingly religious bent called the Islamic Battalions said it was responsible. Lt. Malik al-Kurdi, the second in command of the Free Syrian Army troops in Turkey, said it was not a suicide bombing but
bombs planted around the national security building that were set off by remote control. Since the uprising began in March 2011, claiming an estimated 17,000 victims, Syria has been run by an ever tighter circle of army and security officials close to the president. General Rajha was one of the prominent minority figures used by the Assad government to put a face of pluralism on the military and security services dominated by the presidents Alawite sect. The Syrian regime has started to collapse, said the activist who leads the Syrian Observatory, who goes by the pseudonym Rami Abdul-Rahman for reasons of personal safety. The attack heightened the perception globally that after months of clashes, Syria was embroiled in a civil war. On the other end of the scale, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered an emotional speech live on television, saying that the Syria of Mr. Assad and Mr. Shawkat was the backbone of the Arab confrontation with Israel. The attack came as diplomatic maneuvers to seek a cease-fire remained deadlocked by differences between Syrias international adversaries and sponsors, principally Russia. The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote on a Westernsponsored resolution that would threaten Mr. Assads government with economic sanctions if it does not implement a peace plan
negotiated by the special envoy Kofi Annan more than three months ago. The resolution, which Russia has threatened to veto, would extend the mission of 300 unarmed United Nations monitors, whose work has been suspended because of the violence. Security Council members agreed to delay the vote, originally scheduled for Wednesday, until Thursday at Mr. Annans request, to allow more time for diplomats to resolve their differences over the resolutions wording. But in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov, offering Russias first official commentary on the Damascus bombing, said via his Twitter account that the attack had put consensus between members of the Security Council even further out of reach. A dangerous logic: While discussions on settling the Syrian crisis are being held in the U.N. Security Council, militants intensify terrorist attacks, frustrating all attempts, he wrote. In Syria, the information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, appeared on a talk show to reject claims by those calling it the beginning of the end. The morale of our people is very high and our armed forces are at their highest level, he said. But residents of Damascus had been shaken as never before. Residents reached by telephone said that after the news broke SYRIAN page 9
Top News/
5 things Yahoo's Mayer can learn from Steve Jobs - MarketWatch

(Top Stories - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:01:32 PM
she tries to save Yahoo and its tattered brand. Unlike our naysaying By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch MarketWatch colleague Jon SAN F R A N C I S C O Friedman, who believes there is (MarketWatch) It is a rare tech no hope for Yahoo, Tech Tales c o m p a n y t h a t c a n m a k e a thinks Yahoo is an Internet comeback. company that could be revived. And its nearly impossible for an A n d M a y e r , a r a r e w o m a n Internet company. It may take engineer who is also young, awhile, but when it looks like the charismatic and respected, could innovation is gone and the geeks b e t h e o n e t o d o i t . R e a d in Silicon Valley declare you are Friedman's negative take on done, theyre usually right. Yahoo. The two most impressive tech Because Mayer cant consult turnarounds in the last two with the late Apple/quotes/zigman decades have been at International /68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPLBusiness Machines Corp. and 0.11% co-founder, Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.,/quotes/zigman/68270/ who orchestrated one of the quotes/nls/aapl AAPL-0.11%/ greatest turnarounds in the Valley, quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/ we have compiled a few tips that a a p l A A P L - 0 . 1 1 % b o t h might help. previously known mostly as 1) Review all of Yahoos product computer makers. lines with a brutal and But among Internet companies, unsentimental eye. And dont be t h e r e a r e m o r e d e a d t h a n afraid to kill products that are not survivors. Take note, Yahoo/ profitable or have too long a quotes/zigman/59898/quotes/nls/ horizon to become something. yhoo YHOO+0.64%. Marissa Time is of the essence. Upon Mayer could learn a lot from returning to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs. Jobs narrowed Apples focus to So Marissa Mayer, formerly a four product areas: consumer, well-regarded Google Inc./quotes/ professional, desktop, portable, zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog before eventually embarking on GOOG+0.70% executive, is new arenas, such as digital music, facing an imposing challenge as smartphones and tablets. What Yahoos chief executive. She will Google do following Mayer's lacks CEO experience and will be exit? working under a microscope as New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer
won't be directly replaced at Google, where until Monday she was vice president of local, maps and location services. Liz Gannes reports on digits. 2) After getting Yahoo focused on its core strengths, unleash a marketing campaign to tell consumers and partners about them. For years, each new Yahoo CEO has had a muddled answer to what Yahoo really is. If Mayer can determine how to truly enunciate Yahoos mission, she might want to develop an ad campaign that would resonate with consumers, much like Apples Think Different ads told people what Apple was all about, without showing a single product. And dont fall into the trap that former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Carly Fiorina did, by putting herself in the ads, a major misfire. The mantra of re-invention at H-P was marred when Fiorina became the face of an ad campaign, speaking in front of a mock-up of the fabled H-P garage, a move that was widely derided in the Valley. 3) Stop the leaks from inside Yahoo. Jobs was known for endorsing the view that loose lips sink ships and fostered a culture of super secrecy, often firing those who spoke to the press out of turn. While we in the
media love leakers, this can be viewed as an act of disloyalty and it can also be a way to find out who isnt on your side. 4) Go with your gut instincts, as Jobs always did. Perhaps that will lead to a re-evaluation of the cluttered Yahoo home page. Even though the company has gone through a few redesigns, Yahoo.com still looks as messy as ever. Mayers focus on user interface and the influence of Googles clean look will hopefully spill over to Yahoo. Ugh. While she is taking stock of the home page, she should get rid of some of the sites horrible content. One small idea would be to replace some of Yahoos celebrity fawning omg! content with sharper, snarkier writers, such as the popular bloggers Tom and Lorenzo, for example. You know what to do, darlings. /quotes/zigman/59898/quotes/nls/ yhoo YHOO+0.64% 5) Find some stars within Yahoo, and get them to stay. Find others from outside and recruit them. Just as Jobs persuaded star designer Jony Ive to stay at Apple and recruited Tim Cook to be its operations chief, Mayer needs to find the star engineers, web designers and algorithm geeks inside Yahoo, and persuade new recruits to believe in the mission. And from
there, hopefully product innovation will occur. While Mayer has a few things on her side, such as her engineering background, her achievements at Google and her product management skills, Mayer has never run a big company. Its going to be a tough job. But she has a chance in a lifetime to reinvigorate a company that many are still rooting for. Perhaps she can take parts of Jobss recipes at Apple, and make them her own./quotes/ zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl US : U.S.: Nasdaq Volume: 9.02M July 18, 2012 4:00p Market Cap $567.53 billion/quotes/zigman/ 68270/quotes/nls/aapl US : U.S.: Nasdaq Volume: 9.02M July 18, 2012 4:00p Market Cap $567.53 billion/quotes/zigman/ 59898/quotes/nls/yhoo US : U.S.: Nasdaq Volume: 19.27M July 18, 2012 4:00p Rev. per Employee $353,977/quotes/zigman/93888/ THINGS page 9
Top News/
No sign of Assad after bomb kills kin, rebels close in

(Reuters: Top News)
Ministry were wounded, deeply damaging the security apparatus of the Assad family, which has By Mariam Karouny and Oliver ruled the country with an iron fist Holmes for four decades. BEIRUT/AMMAN| Wed Jul 18, Intense clashes were reported in 2012 11:31pm EDT the capital's central districts of (Reuters) - Mystery surrounded Mezze and Kafar Souseh, while a t h e w h e r e a b o u t s o f S y r i a n police station in the Hajar alPresident Bashar al-Assad on Aswad district was in flames. Thursday, a day after a bomber The army was shelling its own killed and wounded his security capital from the surrounding chiefs and rebels closed in on the m o u n t a i n s a s n i g h t f e l l . centre of Damascus, vowing to Government troops, having "liberate" the capital. vowed retaliation for the The Syrian leader made no public assassination, fired machineguns appearance and no statement after into the city from helicopters. a bomber killed his powerful A security source said the b r o t h e r - i n - l a w , h i s d e f e n s e bomber who struck inside the minister and a top general. security headquarters was a By the early hours of Thursday, b o d y g u a r d e n t r u s t e d w i t h residents had reported no let-up in protecting the closest members of the heaviest fighting to hit the Assad's circle. State television capital in a 16-month revolt said it was a suicide bomber. Anti against Assad's rule. -Assad groups claimed The fighting came within sight of r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . the presidential palace, near the Washington, which fears a security headquarters where the spillover into neighboring states, bomber struck a crisis meeting of said the situation seemed to be defense and security chiefs. spinning out of control. Russian Assad's brother-in-law Assef Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Shawkat, a top commander and said "the decisive fight" was one of the pillars of the Assad under way in Damascus. clan's rule, was killed in the blast The U.N. Security Council put along with Defense Minister off a scheduled vote on a Syria Daoud Rajha. resolution and U.S. President Another senior general also was Barack Obama phoned President k i l l e d a n d t h e h e a d s o f Vladimir Putin of Russia, Assad's intelligence and the Interior main protector, to try to persuade
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:31:40 PM
Moscow to drop support for him. "As we continue to pursue the political option the realities on the ground may have overtaken us, therefore I think the clock is ticking and have we ... reached the point where the political option is too late?" King Abdullah of Jordan said in an interview with CNN. "I think we should continue to give politics its due, but if we haven't already passed that window I think we are getting very close to it." CORE OF CRISIS UNIT KILLED The generals killed and wounded in the bombing form the core of Assad's crisis unit to crush the revolt, which grew out of protests inspired by Arab Spring uprisings that unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The armed forces chief of staff, Fahad Jassim al-Freij, quickly took over as defense minister to avoid giving any impression of official paralysis. "This cowardly terrorist act will not deter our men in the armed forces from continuing their sacred mission of pursuing the remnants of these armed terrorist criminal gangs," Freij said on state television. "They will cut off every hand that tries to hurt the security of the nation or its citizens."
The explosion appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the capital that has escalated since the start of the week. Rebel fighters call it the "liberation of Damascus" after months of fierce clashes which activists say have killed 17,000 people. "This is the final phase. They will fall very soon," Abdelbasset Seida, a leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, told Reuters in Qatar. "Today is a turning point in Syria's history. It will put more pressure on the regime and bring an end very soon, within weeks or months." Ahmad Zaidan, spokesman for the Higher Council of the Revolution's Leadership, an opposition group, said the blast was a major blow to the morale of the army, 50,000 of whom - out of 280,000 - the opposition estimates have deserted. "It's the beginning of the breaking of the chain, the regime has lost control now and those around Bashar al Assad whom he relied on are gone. The regime's foundations have been shaken. It's just Bashar now who's left," said Zaidan. FEAR OF DESTABILISATION U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: "This is a situation that is rapidly spinning out of control." He called for maximum global pressure on Assad to step
down. Western leaders fear the conflict, which has been joined by al Qaeda-style jihadists, could destabilize Syria's neighbors: Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Syrian forces hit rebel positions across the capital after the attack on the security meeting, with activists saying government troops and pro-government militia were flooding in. State television broadcast footage showing men in blue army fatigues ducking for cover and firing - the first time official media has shown clashes in the heart of the capital. Government troops used heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns against rebels in residential neighborhoods, armed mostly with small arms and rocketpropelled grenades. Rebels were jubilant at their success in penetrating into the capital and at the deaths of the security chiefs. Abdullah alShami, a rebel commander based in Turkey, said: "I expect a speedy collapse of the regime ... and it means we will not be in need of outside intervention, with the regime beginning to crumble much faster than we envisaged." Yet some opposition figures said SIGN page 7
Top News/ Policy/
Group Comes to Romney's Defense - Wall Street Journal

DANNY YADRON (Top Stories - Google News)
The new spot comes as some Republicans acknowledge that Mr. Obama's attack on Mr. Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:04:11 PM Romney's career as a privateBy DANNY YADRON And equity investor, now in its fourth COLLEEN MCCAIN NELSON week, has left the Republican In the exchange of attack ads that candidate on the defensive and is defining the presidential race, made it hard for him to advance Mitt Romney has been hindered his own message. Mr. Obama's by a feature of campaign-finance accusations revolve around the law. While Mr. Romney is idea that Mr. Romney, through his outraising President Barack investments, aided companies that Obama, much of his money can't outsourced U.S. jobs to other be used until he formally becomes countries, which the Romney the GOP nominee. campaign has vigorously denied. Now, one of Mr. Romney's allies "There are periods of time when in the super PAC world plans to you can tell the momentum is give some direct help. American clearly with you. You can tell C r o s s r o a d s , a G O P - a l i g n e d there are other times the message political action committee, will momentum is clearly with the begin an $8.8 million ad buy in other side," said Henry Barbour, a nine states on Thursday to defend R o m n e y f u n d r a i s e r a n d Mr. Romney from Democratic R e p u b l i c a n N a t i o n a l charges that he helped ship U.S. Committeeman from Mississippi. jobs overseas, said the PAC's "In the last week or two the president, Steven Law. momentum has shifted more The Crossroads ad marks a towards Obama's attacks." departure for it and most other Mitt Romney at a stop outside political groups. Until Wednesday in Bowling Green, now, they have spent most of their Ohio. Combined with outside m o n e y o n s u c h t h e m e s a s backers, he has been raising more criticizing Mr. Obama for the than President Obama. rising federal deficit. But the new Mr. Barbour added he thinks Mr. ad is the first from Crossroads to Romney still is in a strong spot to mention Mr. Romney explicitly, win. and in defending him it serves a A Romney fundraiser said of the role that candidates traditionally GOP candidate's campaign: have filled themselves. "People would like to see [unable to retrieve full-text
improvement on the agility and speed of the responses." Other Republicans say Mr. Romney in due time will define himself more fully to voters, particularly as the media spotlight turns to him in late August at the Republican National Convention. In addition, Mr. Romney's planned trip to London next week for the start of the Olympic Games gives him a chance to shift the public discussion to his role in managing the 2002 games in Salt Lake City. That could overtake the recent exchanges with Mr. Obama's campaign over his business career and questions of whether he should release more than the two years of tax returns he is making public. The ad by American Crossroads, which was founded with the help of Bush White House aide Karl Rove, says of Mr. Obama: "The press, and even Democrats, say his attacks on Mitt Romney's business record are'misleading, unfair and untrue,' '' according to a content]
script provided by the group. The ad underscores an important feature of how the race is being financed. Outside GOP committees, along with Mr. Romney's campaign, are raising more money than their opponent, and plan to outspend Democrats this week on TV by about 2.5-to1, according to figures provided by Democratic and Republican media-tracking sources. But in spending by the campaigns themselves, Mr. Obama is putting more money into TV ads currently. Mr. Obama will spend more than $9.4 million on ads in the coming week, compared with $6.6 million by Mr. Romney. Since the unofficial start of the general election in mid-April, Mr. Obama has outspent Mr. Romney by about 3 to 1. Campaign officials have suggested that, in part, the disparity is due to the fact that much of Mr. Romney's money was raised under rules that limit its use to the general election, once he becomes the nominee. Mr. Obama is bound by the same restriction, but only Mr. Romney faced an expensive primary campaign that ate into money he was raising. The campaign won't say what fraction of Mr. Romney's cash is so encumbered.
The Romney campaign says the Democrats set a more negative tone when Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama's deputy campaign manager, said last week Mr. Romney may have committed a felony if he inaccurately described his role at Bain Capital in government filings. "They're saying they want a completely negative campaign with no rules, and the facts don't matter," said one adviser to the Romney campaign. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said, "Gov. Romney has pointed to his experience as a corporate buyout specialist as the central basis for his candidacy, yet at the same time tried to declare any examination of that record off -limits."Sara Murray contributed to this article. A version of this article appeared July 18, 2012, on page A4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Group Comes to Romney's Defense. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Top News/
U.S. can defeat any Iranian effort to block oil shipping: Panetta
(Reuters: Top News)
defeat, if they make a decision to do that." Panetta's comments came amid British Defense Secretary Phillip rising tensions in the region over Hammond signs a guestbook as Iran's nuclear program and its he is welcomed to the Pentagon threats to close the vital Strait of by U.S. Secretary of Defense Hormuz unless the international L e o n E . P a n e t t a ( R ) i n community revokes sanctions Washington, July 18, 2012. imposed on Iranian oil shipments. Credit: Reuters/Glenn Fawcett/ A security team aboard a U.S. Handout Navy oiler opened fire with a .50 By David Alexander caliber machine gun on a small WASHINGTON| Wed Jul 18, boat off the United Arab Emirates 2012 1:55pm EDT this week after it failed to heed (Reuters) - The United States has warnings to alter its course. An the military capacity to defeat any Indian fisherman was killed and Iranian attempt to shut down sea three others were wounded in the commerce in the oil-rich Gulf i n c i d e n t , w h i c h i s u n d e r region and will hold Tehran i n v e s t i g a t i o n . directly responsible for shipping Concerns about the security disruptions, Defense Secretary situation in the region have Leon Panetta said on Wednesday. prompted the Pentagon to bolster "The United States is fully its military presence, announcing prepared for all contingencies this week, for example, that it here," Panetta told a Pentagon would move the USS Stennis news conference. "We've invested aircraft carrier strike group to the in capabilities to ensure that the Gulf four months earlier than Iranian attempt to close down planned in order to maintain shipping in the Gulf is something current force levels. that we are going to be able to The Stennis will replace another
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:55:10 PM
carrier that is being withdrawn, which would have left one strike group in the region to counter Iran and support U.S. combat air operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. military announced on Tuesday more than 20 countries would participate in anti-mine exercises in the region in September. The exercises will not take place in the Strait and the Pentagon denied it was sending a message to Iran. The USS Ponce, a forward staging base ship, arrived in the Gulf earlier this month to help support mine countermeasure operations and other maritime security efforts in the region, the military said. British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, appearing at the Pentagon news conference with Panetta, said London was committed to helping ensure Gulf sea lanes remained open. "I can reaffirm our commitment to play our part in maintaining freedom of navigation in the international waters of the Gulf
and the Straits of Hormuz," Hammond said. "Any attempt by Iran to close the Straits would be illegal and the international community will not allow it to happen." Panetta said Washington was prepared to respond to any move against sea commerce by Tehran. "The Iranians need to understand that the United States and the international community are going to hold them directly responsible for any disruption of shipping in that region, by Iran or for that matter by its surrogates," he said. (Reporting by Phil; Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Paul Simao) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
China big four banks' new loans double in early July - paper Reuters
(china - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:09:14 PM
Business Recorder China big four banks' new loans double in early July - paper Reuters SHANGHAI, July 19 (Reuters) China's big four state banks doubled their pace of lending in the first half of July from a month ealier, although Chinese banks' total new lending in the month is expected to fall by about a third to 650 billion yuan... China big four banks' new loans double in early July: paper Chicago Tribune China Big Four Banks Issued Around CNY50 Billion New Yuan Loans 1st Half... Wall Street Journal China Big Four Banks Deliver Sharp Jump in Lending 1st Half July - Report Fox Business all 46 news articles
SIGN
victory would still not be easy. "It is going to be difficult to sustain supply lines and the rebels may have to make a tactical withdrawal at one point, like they did in other cities," veteran opposition activist Fawaz Tello
said from Istanbul. "But what is clear is that Damascus has joined the revolt." (Additional reporting by Dominic Evans and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in
Antakya, Turkey and Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Louise Ireland) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it
on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Top News/ Economy/
No-fly listed? How about a pilot's license instead

inspected by the country's security apparatuses. Testifying before the committee, Tim Boyle / Getty Images / AFP GAO director of Homeland Potential terrorists could still Security and Justice Issues learn to fly, and even to obtain a Stephen Lord was unable to pilot's license without interference guarantee that foreign terrorists from US government agencies, are not currently enrolled in highlighting Washington's failure American flight school programs. to provide adequate protection in General Manager for General the skies. Aviations Office of Security The Government Accountability Policy Kerwin Wilson told the Office (GAO) has reported on committee chairman that the TSA security loopholes at 935 was responsible for the a c c r e d i t e d A m e r i c a n f l i g h t uncertainty, because it is that schools to the House Committee a g e n c y s r e s p o n s i b i l i t y t o on Homeland Security. establish whether foreign The GAO presented its findings n a t i o n a l s e n t e r i n g a f l i g h t after cross-referencing the Federal program have come to the United Aviation Administration (FAA) States illegally or if they pose a d a t a b a s e , w h i c h t r a c k s a l l threat to national security. individuals who hold pilot's After 9/11, TSA founded the licenses, with the Transportation Alien Flight Student Program Security Administration (TSA) (AFSP) to screen non-US citizens database, which lists all pilots in order to provide a threat who have been subjected to a assessment before an individuals background check. flight school clearance. The result wasmind-blowing, Yet somehow 26,000 foreign said Committee Chairman Rep. nationals who finished their flight Mike Rogers.Im shocked to lessons between January 2006 and hear that someone on the no-fly September 2011, had not applied list can be approved for flight to the AFSP or been vetted by lessons, he noted, as cited by The TSA before taking flight training Los Angeles Times. and receiving an FAA airman The investigation has shown that certificate." individuals got pilot's licenses Furthermore, US Customs and w i t h o u t b e i n g c o m p l e t e l y Immigration found that illegal
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:34:30 PM
immigrants were being trained to fly. In 2010, a Boston-area flight school trained 25 students who"consisted primarily of visa overstays and illegal aliens," according to investigator John Woods. The operator of the flight school was also undocumented. The GAO has advised the Department of Homeland Security to close loopholes that allow foreigners to get flight training without being vetted. "It is completely unacceptable that a decade after 9/11, [GAO] has uncovered weaknesses in our security controls that were supposed to be fixed a decade ago," remarked Rogers. Right now, American citizens are screened against a terrorism list not when they apply for a pilot's license, but after their flight training. Around 600 U.S. citizens are on the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center no-fly list. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Indian surgeons carve up women in insurance fraud scheme

Surgeons claimed up to 30,000 rupees ($540) for such treatment, under the Indian government's AFP Photo / Prakash Singh 2008 health insurance program. Indian doctors, in a move to Removal of the uterus leaves the claim large sums from a national patient unable to bear children. In insurance scheme, have been most cases, this type of surgery illegally removing uteruses from also causes the removal of ovaries poor women, making them unable and fallopian tubes. The operation to bear children. can also cause osteoporosis in Medics in the Indian state of patients and other serious side Chhattisgarh have been carrying effects such as a change in out hysterectomies on village hormonal balance. women without a valid medical Critics of the practice say the r e a s o n i n o r d e r t o s c a m a policy was abused because of a government system that allows lack of an external oversight. p r i v a t e h o s p i t a l s t o c l a i m "There has to be a regulatory compensation for treating patients body. It cannot be left to the who cannot afford the procedures, devices of these care providers," says the state's health minister. said Raman Kataria, a physician It is reported that up to 2,000 with a non-profit organization. people were convinced into This entry passed through the having their wombs removed Full-Text RSS service if this is since the beginning of this year. your content and you're reading it "The women were deliberately ill- on someone else's site, please read advised by doctors who removed the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contenttheir uterus to get money," Amar only/faq.php#publishers. Five Agrawal, Chhattisgarh's health Filters recommends: Incinerating minister, told Reuters. Assange - The Liberal Media Go Doctors often told the women To Work. that surgery is necessary to avoid cancer.
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:05:51 PM
content] [unable to retrieve full-text
Top News/ Technology/
Bernanke slams Ron Paul's Fed audit bill

(Reuters: Top News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:00:52 PM
SYRIAN
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa WASHINGTON| Wed Jul 18, 2012 1:00pm EDT (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday rebutted Republican lawmakers pushing a bill that would give Congress the ability to review monetary policy decisions, saying it could compromise central bank independence. Bernanke said it would be a "nightmare scenario" if politicians decided to second-guess monetary policy. "That is very concerning because there's a lot of evidence that an independent central bank that makes decisions based strictly on economic considerations and not based on political pressure will deliver lower inflation and better economic results in the longer term," Bernanke told the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee. The hearing was the likely last chance for retiring Texas Representative Ron Paul, known
for proposing the Fed should be abolished, to grill the central bank chairman. "Trillions and trillions of dollars (are) being printed out of thin air," said Paul. The Republican-controlled House is on track to take up Paul's Fed audit legislation next week. The bill, which has been co-sponsored by more than half of all House members, looks set to clear that chamber, but not the Senate. In response to a deep financial crisis and the worst recession in generations, the Fed brought official borrowing costs to effectively zero and bought some $2.3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage bonds in an effort to spur economic growth. The results have thus far been mixed, with economic growth braking sharply this year after a strong finish to 2011 and the unemployment rate stuck at a still -high 8.2 percent. The Fed has opened many of its operations, including details of emergency lending, to public scrutiny, although in some instances it did so only as a result
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around noon, people rushed out to buy food and then rushed back home again. City streets appeared deserted, with not even taxis circulating after dark. All the stores and shops are of legislation or court order. closed, said an activist in Paul's bill would direct the Damascus reached via Skype. Government Accountability Some people are scared and Office, an independent, some are happy; you can hear nonpartisan congressional agency, people firing off gunshots in to conduct a Fed review, and it many places. A video from would remove an exemption Hama showed opposition monetary policy has enjoyed. members distributing candy to Bernanke said the very notion of celebrate Mr. Shawkats death. a monetary policy audit was Reporting was contributed by misleading. Dalal Mawad and Hwaida Saad "The term 'audit the Fed' is from Beirut, Rick Gladstone from deceptive. The public thinks that New York, Ellen Barry from auditing means checking the Moscow, Isabel Kershner from books, looking at the financial Jerusalem, Elisabeth Bumiller and statements, making sure that Eric Schmitt from Washington, you're not doing special deals, and and an employee of The New that kind of thing. All of those things are (already) completely THINGS continued from page 4 open," he said. (Editing by Phil Berlowitz) quotes/nls/goog This entry passed through the US Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it : U.S.: Nasdaq on someone else's site, please read Volume: 1.55M the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content- July 18, 2012 4:00p Market Cap only/faq.php#publishers. Five $188.68 billion/quotes/zigman/ Filters recommends: Incinerating 68270/quotes/nls/aapl Assange - The Liberal Media Go US To Work. : U.S.: Nasdaq Volume: 9.02M July 18, 2012 4:00p Market Cap $567.53 billion/quotes/zigman/ 59898/quotes/nls/yhoo US CITY! : U.S.: Nasdaq Volume: 19.27M
York Times from Damascus, Syria. A version of this article appeared in print on July 19, 2012, on page A 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Bombing in Damascus Kills Key Aides to Assad And Deals a Potent Blow in the Struggle for Syria. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
July 18, 2012 4:00p Rev. per Employee $353,977 Therese Poletti is a senior columnist for MarketWatch in San Francisco. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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Top News/ Technology/
China strengthens Africa ties with $20 bln in loans - Reuters

Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:05:02 PM
Muddy Waters Report Sinks New Oriental: China Overnight - Businessweek

Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:21:04 PM
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin
BBC News China strengthens Africa ties with $20 bln in loans Reuters (Adds quotes, details, ChinaAfrica economic links). By Ben Blanchard. BEIJING, July 19 (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday offered $20
billion in loans to African countries over the next three years, boosting a relationship that has... China pledges $20 billion in credit to Africa Huffington Post China pledges $20bn in credit for Africa at summit BBC News China pushes its Africa trade ties Washington Times all 399 news articles
Muddy Waters Report Sinks New Oriental: China Overnight Businessweek New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (EDU)
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece - Revista Magazin

(andrea rossi e-cat - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:39:41 PM
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece - Revista Magazin

(Andrea Rossi - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:39:41 PM
(EDU) sank to a five-year low, (LENR, Cold fusion, Defkalion leading declines in New York- Google News) traded Chinese stocks, after short Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:39:41 PM seller Muddy Waters LLC said financial statements at its units are Energie infinita si curata prin fraudulent. The Bloomberg China fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin -US... Initial, Rossi s-a asociat cu o and more firma greceasca numita Defkalion, cu care insa a rupt colaborarea la scurt timp pentru care ar fi trebuit sa construiasca o fabrica de energie termica care sa produca un surplus de energie de 1 Megawat. Termenul limita...
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin Dupa lansarea din ianuarie 2011
a dispozitivului E-CAT inventat de Andrea Rossi, au urmat si alte demonstratii publice care au culminat cu acordarea patentului acestei inventii pe teritoriul italian pe data de 6 aprilie 2011. Tot in luna aprilie, Rossi...
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin Dupa lansarea din ianuarie 2011
a dispozitivului E-CAT inventat de Andrea Rossi, au urmat si alte demonstratii publice care au culminat cu acordarea patentului acestei inventii pe teritoriul italian pe data de 6 aprilie 2011. Tot in luna aprilie, Rossi...
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin

(brillouin - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:39:41 PM
The Power Of Negative Thinking Oliver Burkeman Delivers An Alternative Approach Keynote (TrendHunter.com)
(TREND HUNTER - The Latest Trends)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:23:11 PM
( TrendHunter.com) In this alternative approach keynote, journalist and author Oliver
Burkeman provides a radical stance by providing the negative path to positivity. Burkeman finds strong psychological evidence that...
Energie infinita si curata prin fuziunea la rece Revista Magazin Brillouin Energy Corporation este o alta companie care pe 27 Martie 2012 anunta la un show radio ca detine un boiler care functioneaza pe principiul Fuziunii la Rece. Spre deosebire de Rossi care nu accepta fonduri de sponsorizare, cei doi proprietari...
Business/ Sports/
11
Vyclone, A Startup 2 Years In The Making, Launches With $2.7 Million From Ashton Kutcher, Live Nation And DreamWorks
Alyson Shontell (Business Insider)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:00:00 PM
US Stocks Rise After Housing Starts Increase Businessweek

(housing - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:16:12 PM
Two years ago, British musician Joe Sumner approached his relative David King Lassman with an idea. He noticed on tour that a lot of fans took mobile videos during concerts. There'd be hundreds of videos on YouTube from a single event, but there was no way to connect them all. Each cinematographer had a unique view from where they were standing; Lassman wanted to mash the mobile videos into a single movie-like clip that took advantage of each view point. The result was Vyclone, an iPhone and iPad app that's launching publicly today. Vyclone allows up to four people in the same 100-foot radius to record minute-long videos. (Eventually, Vyclone will probably move to an event check-in system). Within a few minutes, Vyclone mashes the four videos together and spits out an equal-length clip using all of the different angles. Vyclone keeps track of precise recording times, so sound is never chopped up inaccurately in the
finished result. Once the social clip has been made, Vyclone notifies each person involved in the video's creation and allows them to share it via Twitter or Facebook. They can publish to each other, to their followers, or to the entire Vyclone community. The original videos can be saved as well. In addition, other Vyclone users can easily edit and cut the videos to their liking. So, not only are the videos socially recorded, they can be socially edited too. When Sumner initially approached Lassman, the two
a 'game changer' and a majorly disruptive product if we got it right. Two days later we had a term sheet," recalls Lassman. LiveNation, Thrive Capital and DreamWorks' venture arm joined in a $2.7 million round of financing. Other investors have called and expressed serious interest. Now there are 13 people working on Vyclone, nine of whom are engineers. "We're smashing people together in great moments," says Sumner. "Vyclone empowers people who are together to make something together." figured Vyclone would be a great Yesterday, four SAI editors used t o o l f o r t h e e n t e r t a i n m e n t Vyclone to film an office ping industry. It could also be a pong game between senior editors powerful tool for fans at sporting Jay Yarow and Nicholas Carlson. events or real-time, crowdsourced Here's what Vyclone came up reporting. with: They moved to Los Angeles and For more LA startups, don't miss: spent six months building a 23 Hot Los Angeles Startups You prototype. One of the first Need To Watch > investors they met was Lady Please follow SAI on Twitter and Gaga's manager, Guy Oseary. Facebook. Oseary manages a venture firm, Join the conversation about this Grade A Investments, with story Ashton Kutcher. He sent the pair to meet with Kutcher on the set of 2 And A Half Men. "Ashton told us Vyclone could be
New Zealand Herald US Stocks Rise After Housing Starts Increase Businessweek Housing starts rose 6.9 percent last month to a 760000 annual pace after a revised 711000 rate in May that was faster than initially estimated, the Commerce Department reported. The median forecast of 79 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for... U.S. Stocks Rise as Earnings Beat Estimates, Housing Starts Gain San Francisco Chronicle all 165 news articles
LA Kings star won't face date -rape charge

(Sports News Headlines Yahoo! News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:45:47 PM
Prosecutors have declined to file a date-rape charge against Los Angeles Kings star Drew Doughty, citing insufficient evidence.
12
Business/
You'd Be Surprised By The Content People Want To See On YouTube

Noah Plaue (Business Insider)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:05:00 PM
Housing Starts Are Up, but Building Permits Decline - New York Times
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:21:18 PM
YouTube has gained a reputation for hosting mindless video content. But new research from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that about a third of the time, a news story is the topic viewers are most interested in seeing. Looking at YouTube's internal data, Pew found that in four months of 2011, a news topic was the subject most viewers were looking for. The most searched topics included a fatal motorcycle accident, the Japanese Earthquake and the killing of Osama Bin Laden. The power of a news story to take over YouTube was demonstrated in the week after the March 2011 earthquake in Japan, when all of the top 20 news-related videos dealt with the natural disaster for a combined 96 million views. According to Pew, the research shows that although entertainment videos continue to dominate the YouTube landscape, a single news story can instantly rule the
As YouTube and other video sites continue to grow, the sites become a more viable medium as the news outlet of the future. Pew found that in 2011, over a quarter of Americans who use the Internet went on YouTube or a site like it everyday. YouTube has become such a news-centric hub that it has started to make some governments nervous. China, Iran and Libya, for example, have all at one time banned YouTube for fear of the information that was being made available through its videos. Despite all of this, televised news still greatly surpasses online news site: influence of overarching news videos in terms of views. News events are inherently more corporation and sponsor-minded Pew says that YouTube's place as an international news source is ephemeral than other kinds of producers. information, but at any given In fact, 42 percent of the most s i g n i f i c a n t b e c a u s e u n l i k e moment news can outpace even viewed news videos were raw televised broadcasts and cable the biggest entertainment videos. footage that had been completely news shows it allows viewers to The power of YouTube as a news unedited. In addition, the Pew "determine the news agenda for source has a great impact on Center found that unlike corporate themselves." traditional televised broadcast news, YouTube news stories were Please follow Business Insider on journalism as well. It allows not personality-oriented, with 65 Twitter and Facebook. ordinary citizens across the world percent of the most popular news Join the conversation about this to publish videos without the videos not featuring anyone at all. story
New York Times Housing Starts Are Up, but Building Permits Decline New York Times The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that housing starts rose 6.9 percent last month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 760000 units the highest rate since October 2008. Housing is clearly in recovery mode, although the sector is much... US housing starts bright spot for cooling economy Reuters Housing Starts Hit Fastest Pace Since October 2008 Fox Business all 55 news articles
Business/ World News/ Sports/
13
How People Actually Use The iPad: Results From Our Exclusive Survey (AAPL)
Jay Yarow (Business Insider)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:24:00 PM
Asian Stocks Rise as US Housing Data Boosts Confidence - Businessweek

Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:22:02 PM
We wanted to see how people are using the iPad, and how that use has evolved over the last three years. So we ran a reader survey. We got 2,242 responses which we have gathered here as a series of charts. This is the third time we've run this survey ( first here, second here). Surprisingly, the way people use the iPad hasn't evolved significantly. The use case for the first iPad remains the same as the new iPad. What does that mean? Apple nailed the iPad on the first try. It knew what it was doing. It also means developers have an opportunity to develop new applications that can change how and why we use an iPad. As much as things have stayed the same, there are a few notable trends and changes. We have included comparison charts where
San Francisco Chronicle Asian Stocks Rise as US Housing Data Boosts Confidence Businessweek The U.S. economy has gone through a bit of soft patch, but the housing sector does seem to be
heading for recovery, which is positive from a longer-term perspective for America, said Shane Oliver, Sydney-based head of investment strategy at AMP... Asian Stocks Head for Biggest Gain Since June on China Bloomberg all 123 news articles
Rahul alone to decide on his role in Congress: Sonia Gandhi - Daily News & Analysis
(Nation - Google News)
appropriate to reflect the usage changes. If we didn't include the comparison charts it's because there was no significant variance in this survey as compared to the past. Which iPad is the most popular? Somewhat surprisingly, the new iPad was the most popular despite being the newest model. People are starting to have multiple iPads in their homes.
49% of iPad owners own two or more iPads. Which version of the iPad are people buying? It's pretty evenly split between the wifi version and the wireless version. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
decide... Rahul will decide for himself, says Sonia Gandhi Economic NDTV Times Rahul alone to decide on his role Sonia serves up united flavours in Congress: Sonia Gandhi of UPA for lunch Hindustan Daily News & Analysis Times By DNA Correspondent | Place: Congress leaders seek bigger role New Delhi | Agency: DNA The for Rahul Gandhi in party Times continued speculation in the of India Congress over a bigger role for Calcutta Telegraph- The HinduRahul Gandhi got a boost with Zee News party president Sonia Gandhi all 239 news articles making it clear that the decision was upto him. It is for Rahul to
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:08:03 PM
Pitt to pay $7.5M to leave Big East early

Pittsburgh's bitter breakup with the Big East finally has an official separation date.
14
News Wire/
No sign of Assad after bomb kills kin, rebels close in

(Reuters: Top News)
Ministry were wounded, deeply damaging the security apparatus of the Assad family, which has By Mariam Karouny and Oliver ruled the country with an iron fist Holmes for four decades. BEIRUT/AMMAN| Wed Jul 18, Intense clashes were reported in 2012 11:31pm EDT the capital's central districts of (Reuters) - Mystery surrounded Mezze and Kafar Souseh, while a t h e w h e r e a b o u t s o f S y r i a n police station in the Hajar alPresident Bashar al-Assad on Aswad district was in flames. Thursday, a day after a bomber The army was shelling its own killed and wounded his security capital from the surrounding chiefs and rebels closed in on the m o u n t a i n s a s n i g h t f e l l . centre of Damascus, vowing to Government troops, having "liberate" the capital. vowed retaliation for the The Syrian leader made no public assassination, fired machineguns appearance and no statement after into the city from helicopters. a bomber killed his powerful A security source said the b r o t h e r - i n - l a w , h i s d e f e n s e bomber who struck inside the minister and a top general. security headquarters was a By the early hours of Thursday, b o d y g u a r d e n t r u s t e d w i t h residents had reported no let-up in protecting the closest members of the heaviest fighting to hit the Assad's circle. State television capital in a 16-month revolt said it was a suicide bomber. Anti against Assad's rule. -Assad groups claimed The fighting came within sight of r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . the presidential palace, near the Washington, which fears a security headquarters where the spillover into neighboring states, bomber struck a crisis meeting of said the situation seemed to be defense and security chiefs. spinning out of control. Russian Assad's brother-in-law Assef Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Shawkat, a top commander and said "the decisive fight" was one of the pillars of the Assad under way in Damascus. clan's rule, was killed in the blast The U.N. Security Council put along with Defense Minister off a scheduled vote on a Syria Daoud Rajha. resolution and U.S. President Another senior general also was Barack Obama phoned President k i l l e d a n d t h e h e a d s o f Vladimir Putin of Russia, Assad's intelligence and the Interior main protector, to try to persuade
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:31:40 PM
Moscow to drop support for him. "As we continue to pursue the political option the realities on the ground may have overtaken us, therefore I think the clock is ticking and have we ... reached the point where the political option is too late?" King Abdullah of Jordan said in an interview with CNN. "I think we should continue to give politics its due, but if we haven't already passed that window I think we are getting very close to it." CORE OF CRISIS UNIT KILLED The generals killed and wounded in the bombing form the core of Assad's crisis unit to crush the revolt, which grew out of protests inspired by Arab Spring uprisings that unseated leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The armed forces chief of staff, Fahad Jassim al-Freij, quickly took over as defense minister to avoid giving any impression of official paralysis. "This cowardly terrorist act will not deter our men in the armed forces from continuing their sacred mission of pursuing the remnants of these armed terrorist criminal gangs," Freij said on state television. "They will cut off every hand that tries to hurt the security of the nation or its citizens."
The explosion appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the capital that has escalated since the start of the week. Rebel fighters call it the "liberation of Damascus" after months of fierce clashes which activists say have killed 17,000 people. "This is the final phase. They will fall very soon," Abdelbasset Seida, a leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, told Reuters in Qatar. "Today is a turning point in Syria's history. It will put more pressure on the regime and bring an end very soon, within weeks or months." Ahmad Zaidan, spokesman for the Higher Council of the Revolution's Leadership, an opposition group, said the blast was a major blow to the morale of the army, 50,000 of whom - out of 280,000 - the opposition estimates have deserted. "It's the beginning of the breaking of the chain, the regime has lost control now and those around Bashar al Assad whom he relied on are gone. The regime's foundations have been shaken. It's just Bashar now who's left," said Zaidan. FEAR OF DESTABILISATION U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: "This is a situation that is rapidly spinning out of control." He called for maximum global pressure on Assad to step
down. Western leaders fear the conflict, which has been joined by al Qaeda-style jihadists, could destabilize Syria's neighbors: Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Syrian forces hit rebel positions across the capital after the attack on the security meeting, with activists saying government troops and pro-government militia were flooding in. State television broadcast footage showing men in blue army fatigues ducking for cover and firing - the first time official media has shown clashes in the heart of the capital. Government troops used heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns against rebels in residential neighborhoods, armed mostly with small arms and rocketpropelled grenades. Rebels were jubilant at their success in penetrating into the capital and at the deaths of the security chiefs. Abdullah alShami, a rebel commander based in Turkey, said: "I expect a speedy collapse of the regime ... and it means we will not be in need of outside intervention, with the regime beginning to crumble much faster than we envisaged." Yet some opposition figures said SIGN page 18
News Wire/
15
Children's 'Pony' Show IsMane Event for US Soldiers

(FOXNews.com)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:50:21 PM
National Guardsman identified as Darius attended a recent "Brony" convention. BuzzFeed/ Katie Notopoulos There's a new insignia showing up on the sleeves of a small group of military men, but instead of denoting rank, it advertises their love for a cartoon inspired by the girlish 1980s plastic toy called "My Little Pony." So-called "Bronies," adult men who are fans of the TV show "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic," have apparently been around at least since 2010, when the Hasbro -owned cartoon first aired. Within their ranks are "Military Bronies," service members from all branches of the military who share their love of the show and wear the "cutie mark" -- a Rainbow Dash patch on their uniforms, Army Times first reported. The bond may seem strange for men entrusted with defending their nation, but the Military Bronies' Facebook page has more than 1,500 likes and has inspired websites like FOB Equestria, where members proudly display their patches and profess their love for a show
aimed at children. In a post to the Facebook page, a self-described serviceman who gave his name, but no branch or rank said fellow Bronies have made a soldier out of him. "Non-authorized, non-military patches are not authorized for wear on military uniforms. - Pentagon spokeswoman
"You, the bronies, have taught me that there are things and people worth protecting; things bigger and more important than myself," write Ken "Derpy" Catlin. "All because I decided to watch some "gay" little show about 6 ponies. Again, as I have said before, I cannot thank you, the MLP team, or the ponies themselves enough
for what they have done for me, and this world." Within the larger group, military Bronies hold a place of honor. At a recent convention dubbed "BronyCon 2012" in Secaucus, N.J., civilian Bronies cheered wildly when they spied brethren in uniform, according to the website BuzzFeed.
We barely made it up to the top steps and everyone outside was cheering for us," a National Guardsman identified as Darius told the site. "I didnt know they were cheering for us, I thought one of the other guys had showed up, I thought it was [voice of the CHILDREN'S page 20
16
News Wire/
Zimmerman: Trayvon Said He Was 'Going to Kill Me'

(FOXNews.com)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:50:21 PM
Zimmerman addresses allegations made by 'Witness No. 9' Zimmerman: 'He punched me and broke my nose' Zimmerman: No regrets, 'all God's plan' George Zimmerman, in an interview Wednesday with Fox News' Sean Hannity, called the shooting death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin a "tragic situation" and "the most difficult thing I'll ever go through in my life." But Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watch leader, also spoke in detail about what happened that fateful night in February, saying he had followed Martin because he looked suspicious running between houses in the rain. Martin soon turned to confront Zimmerman and "asked me what my problem was" before the exchange escalated into violence, Zimmerman told Hannity in his first TV interview, conducted in an undisclosed location in Florida. The 28-year-old, with his attorney
sitting by his side, said he reached into his pocket to find his phone to call 911 for a second time, and "I looked up and he punched me and broke my nose." At one point Zimmerman said he heard Martin "telling me hes going to kill me." Zimmerman is charged with
second-degree murder for shooting and killing 17-year-old Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., though he says he acted in self-defense. At first, "I didn't think I hit him," Zimmerman said, adding he only found out later that Martin had died. Now he is in hiding and said he
feels his life is in jeopardy, based on death threats he has received. He told Fox News that on the night of the shooting he had gone out to shop at Target -- "that's the last time I've been home." The case drew intense national attention as speculation grew about the motives for the
shooting, especially given that Martin was black. Zimmerman has white and Hispanic heritage. He dismissed suggestions by some that he acted out of racism. "I don't think it's fair that they rushed to judgment to assume ZIMMERMAN: page 21
News Wire/
17
Beginning of End for Syria's Assad?

(FOXNews.com)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:50:21 PM
UN delays vote on new Syria resolution White House: Clear that Assad has lost control of Syria Senior US officials brace for Assad regime's collapse U.S. policymakers are bracing for a potential "collapse" of the power structure inside Syria, as the Obama administration closely monitors the intensifying violence in the capital. Following a bomb attack that left several Syrian regime officials dead, a State Department source forwarded to Fox News an assessment from an independent Middle East analyst who monitors social media in the region and provides occasional guidance to the department. "Tweet trends on #Damascus indicate something will collapse in #Syria next 36 hours," the message said. "Looks a lot like Tripoli did a year ago." The note was a reference to the atmosphere in Libya's capital before Muammar Qaddafi's regime was overthrown, and Qaddafi was captured and killed. It's unclear whether Damascus has entered such a period, but the capital saw an unprecedented attack Wednesday on Bashar
Assad's regime, when a bomb ripped through a high-level security meeting and killed at least three officials. Syrian TV confirmed the deaths of Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha, 65, a former army general and the most senior government official to be killed in the rebels' battle to oust Assad; Gen. Assef Shawkat, the deputy defense minister who is married to Assad's elder sister; and Hassan Turkmani, a former defense minister who died of wounds
suffered in the attack. Also wounded were Interior Minister Mohammed Shaar and Maj. Gen. Hisham Ikhtiar, who heads the National Security Department. State TV said both were in stable condition. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking alongside British Defense Minister Philip Hammond on Wednesday, said the escalating violence indicates that the rebels feel emboldened and that the government of Assad is suffering "probably some
fragmentation around the edges" as it struggles to keep a grip on power. The bombing was the harshest blow to the government's inner circle in the 16-month uprising. Hammond and Panetta both stressed the urgency of finding a political solution that results in Assad's exit. "The violence there has only gotten worse, and the loss of lives has only increased," Panetta said, "which tells us that this is a situation that is rapidly spinning
out of control." He said that is all the more reason for the international community to bring "maximum pressure" on Assad to step down and permit a stable transfer of power. Though a U.N. Security Council vote was scheduled Wednesday afternoon on a new resolution that would impose sanctions on Syria's government, that vote was postponed at envoy Kofi Annan's request. BEGINNING page 20
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News Wire/ World News/
U.S. can defeat any Iranian effort to block oil shipping: Panetta
(Reuters: Top News)
Stadium visit for Queen and Duke - The Press Association

Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:30:00 PM
defeat, if they make a decision to do that." Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:55:10 PM Panetta's comments came amid British Defense Secretary Phillip rising tensions in the region over Hammond signs a guestbook as Iran's nuclear program and its he is welcomed to the Pentagon threats to close the vital Strait of by U.S. Secretary of Defense Hormuz unless the international L e o n E . P a n e t t a ( R ) i n community revokes sanctions Washington, July 18, 2012. imposed on Iranian oil shipments. Credit: Reuters/Glenn Fawcett/ A security team aboard a U.S. Handout Navy oiler opened fire with a .50 By David Alexander caliber machine gun on a small WASHINGTON| Wed Jul 18, boat off the United Arab Emirates 2012 1:55pm EDT this week after it failed to heed (Reuters) - The United States has warnings to alter its course. An the military capacity to defeat any Indian fisherman was killed and Iranian attempt to shut down sea three others were wounded in the commerce in the oil-rich Gulf i n c i d e n t , w h i c h i s u n d e r region and will hold Tehran i n v e s t i g a t i o n . directly responsible for shipping Concerns about the security disruptions, Defense Secretary situation in the region have Leon Panetta said on Wednesday. prompted the Pentagon to bolster "The United States is fully its military presence, announcing prepared for all contingencies this week, for example, that it here," Panetta told a Pentagon would move the USS Stennis news conference. "We've invested aircraft carrier strike group to the in capabilities to ensure that the Gulf four months earlier than Iranian attempt to close down planned in order to maintain shipping in the Gulf is something current force levels. that we are going to be able to The Stennis will replace another
carrier that is being withdrawn, which would have left one strike group in the region to counter Iran and support U.S. combat air operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. military announced on Tuesday more than 20 countries would participate in anti-mine exercises in the region in September. The exercises will not take place in the Strait and the Pentagon denied it was sending a message to Iran. The USS Ponce, a forward staging base ship, arrived in the Gulf earlier this month to help support mine countermeasure operations and other maritime security efforts in the region, the military said. British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, appearing at the Pentagon news conference with Panetta, said London was committed to helping ensure Gulf sea lanes remained open. "I can reaffirm our commitment to play our part in maintaining freedom of navigation in the international waters of the Gulf
and the Straits of Hormuz," Hammond said. "Any attempt by Iran to close the Straits would be illegal and the international community will not allow it to happen." Panetta said Washington was prepared to respond to any move against sea commerce by Tehran. "The Iranians need to understand that the United States and the international community are going to hold them directly responsible for any disruption of shipping in that region, by Iran or for that matter by its surrogates," he said. (Reporting by Phil; Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Paul Simao) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
BBC News Stadium visit for Queen and Duke The Press Association The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh are to take centre stage at Leeds Arena when they attend a topping-out ceremony. The stadium visit is part of their Diamond Jubilee tour, which on Wednesday took them on a whistle-stop trip around Tyneside,... The monarch watched a flypast by a Vulcan bomber as part of her Diamond... Daily Mail Diamond Jubilee: Thousand cheer on royal couple in Tyne and Wear BBC News Vulcan bomber performs Diamond Jubilee tribute to Queen Telegraph.co.uk Evening Standard- Isle of Wight County Press- Sunderland Echo all 61 news articles
SIGN
victory would still not be easy. "It is going to be difficult to sustain supply lines and the rebels may have to make a tactical withdrawal at one point, like they did in other cities," veteran opposition activist Fawaz Tello
said from Istanbul. "But what is clear is that Damascus has joined the revolt." (Additional reporting by Dominic Evans and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in
Antakya, Turkey and Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Louise Ireland) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it
on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
News Wire/ Technology/
19
Bernanke slams Ron Paul's Fed audit bill

(Reuters: Top News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:00:52 PM
By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa WASHINGTON| Wed Jul 18, 2012 1:00pm EDT (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday rebutted Republican lawmakers pushing a bill that would give Congress the ability to review monetary policy decisions, saying it could compromise central bank independence. Bernanke said it would be a "nightmare scenario" if politicians decided to second-guess monetary policy. "That is very concerning because there's a lot of evidence that an independent central bank that makes decisions based strictly on economic considerations and not based on political pressure will deliver lower inflation and better economic results in the longer term," Bernanke told the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee. The hearing was the likely last chance for retiring Texas Representative Ron Paul, known
for proposing the Fed should be abolished, to grill the central bank chairman. "Trillions and trillions of dollars (are) being printed out of thin air," said Paul. The Republican-controlled House is on track to take up Paul's Fed audit legislation next week. The bill, which has been co-sponsored by more than half of all House members, looks set to clear that chamber, but not the Senate. In response to a deep financial crisis and the worst recession in generations, the Fed brought official borrowing costs to effectively zero and bought some $2.3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage bonds in an effort to spur economic growth. The results have thus far been mixed, with economic growth braking sharply this year after a strong finish to 2011 and the unemployment rate stuck at a still -high 8.2 percent. The Fed has opened many of its operations, including details of emergency lending, to public scrutiny, although in some instances it did so only as a result
of legislation or court order. Paul's bill would direct the Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan congressional agency, to conduct a Fed review, and it would remove an exemption monetary policy has enjoyed. Bernanke said the very notion of a monetary policy audit was misleading. "The term 'audit the Fed' is deceptive. The public thinks that auditing means checking the books, looking at the financial statements, making sure that you're not doing special deals, and that kind of thing. All of those things are (already) completely open," he said. (Editing by Phil Berlowitz) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Epoch Times | National, World, China, Sports, Entertainment News

(Epoch Times | National, World, China, Sports, Entertainment News)
Top Stories Fake drugs plague public health systems worldwide. But one expert says the problem wont go away without a tough international law. A French architect, who is suspected of having ties with ousted and scandal-ridden Chinese politician Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai, left Cambodia on his own accordheaded for China. Patrick Devillers might have information about Bos financial dealings and [...] HSBC, the U.K.-based banking giant, allowed suspicious funds from Mexico, Syria, and Iran to be funneled through the bank,
according to a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing [...] North Korea named Hyon Yong Chol the new military chief Tuesday to replace Ri Yong Ho who was relieved of his duties a day prior. The chief executive of the G4S said that he was unaware that his firm would not be able to provide enough guards during the sporting event. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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World News/ Featured/
CHILDREN'S
BEGINNING
character "Discord"] John de Lancie or Lauren Faust. I started clapping because I figured if everyone else was clapping Id do it too. Then my friend was like, no dude, theyre clapping for us. Not everyone gets it. A commenter on a Military Times forum was just one of many who questioned why grown men would feel such allegiance to a kids' cartoon. I can think of at least four violations here: wearing a duty uniform while supposedly offduty or at an unauthorized location; wearing an official Army uniform to an event that I guarantee the Army is not officially involved with; wearing a non-sanctioned patch on the uniform in place of current unit patch; and attending a My Little Pony convention. The show airs on Hub, a pay TV channel owned by Hasbro. Knowing the "My Little Pony" franchise has long been associated with little girls, the producers
have sought to reel in males with more unisex storylines. The show stars Twilight Sparkle, a unicorn pony and five other ponies who are guided through ponyville by Princess Celestia. As for the brass, asked if she had ever heard of the phenomenon of Military Bronies, a Pentagon spokeswoman said "I'm unaware of the concept. But when told about Rainbow Dash patches finding their way onto uniforms, the spokeswoman told FoxNews.com there could be a problem. Please note, non-authorized, non -military patches are not authorized for wear on military uniforms, she said. Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet Related Video Male 'My Little Pony' fans unite at annual conference Related Stories Innocent man
imprisoned for 27 years to sing national anthem at Tampa Bay Rays game 2 Seattle men stopped at border for having illegal chocolate eggs Burger King employee believed to be in disturbing lettuce picture is fired Florida customer shoots suspects during Internet cafe robbery Parents of little lemonade entrepreneurs find Obama's small biz advice leaves sour taste Share This Article Newsletter Signup Sign up for free e-mail news alerts from FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com. Newsletter Signup This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration slapped financial sanctions on a huge swath of top members in Assad's government, targeting the prime minister and 28 other cabinet ministers and senior officials. The Treasury Department announced the sanctions on Wednesday, hours after top Syrian officials were killed in the explosion in Damascus. Fox News' James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet
Related Video Assad regime close to collapse? Share This Article Newsletter Signup Sign up for free e-mail news alerts from FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com. Newsletter Signup This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
New York Times/CBS Poll: Romney 47, Obama 46

Mark Hemingway (The Weekly Standard)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:46:00 PM
From the Times's write-up of the poll:
Cameron sees no end to austerity - report Reuters UK

Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:00:02 PM
Telegraph.co.uk Cameron sees no end to austerity - report
Reuters UK | LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday that he cannot see an end to the government's austerity programme while Britain tackles
its huge budget deficit amid deteriorating economic conditions. Cameron indicated that Britain's... Cameron: austerity will last until 2020 Telegraph.co.uk
Age of austerity cuts will last until at least the end of decade, says Cameron The Independent David Cameron visits troops in Afghanistan The Sun DAWN.com- stv.tv
all 515 news articles
World News/
21
ZIMMERMAN:
that," he told Fox News. Police initially declined to press charges, citing Florida's so-called "Stand Your Ground" law. But a special prosecutor who was called in to investigate concluded that the evidence didn't support Zimmerman's claims, and the murder charge was filed. When asked what he would say to Martin's parents, Zimmerman said, "I would tell them that, again, I'm sorry." "My wife and I dont have any children," Zimmerman told Hannity. "I have nephews that I love more than life. I love them more than myself. And I know when they were born, it was a different unique bond and love that I have with them. And I love my children even though that they arent born yet. "I am sorry that they buried their child. I cant imagine what it must feel like. I pray for them daily." Zimmerman, who is free on bond in Florida while awaiting trial, has pleaded not guilty to seconddegree murder. Hannity had spoke with
Zimmerman, 28, off the record in April when he contacted Hannity against the advice of his attorneys. Both Hannity and Zimmerman denied claims that Hannity offered the murder suspect any financial assistance or payment. The interview concluded with Zimmerman looking into the camera and saying that he wishes the night hadn't ended in Martin's death. "I do want to tell everyone, my wife, my family, my parents, my grandmother, the Martins, the city of Sanford and America that I'm sorry that this happened," he said. "I hate to think that because of this incident, because my actions, it's polarized and divided American. And I'm truly sorry." Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet Related Video Exclusive: George Zimmerman breaks silence on 'Hannity'
Zimmerman to Trayvon's parents: 'I'm sorry' Zimmerman on Black Panther bounty, rush to judgment Related Slideshow Photos from George Zimmerman investigation Related Stories TRANSCRIPT: Zimmerman's first TV interview FBI Report: Zimmerman Not a Racist Share This Article Newsletter Signup Sign up for free e-mail news alerts from FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com. Newsletter Signup This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Man, 18, charged over Kings Cross killing The Australian

Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:06:54 PM
Sydney Morning Herald Man, 18, charged over Kings Cross killing The Australian Video Video Video Image Cameraman hit outside Kelly hearing Kings Cross accused appears in court Police arrest man over Kelly death SUPPORTERS of a man charged with the Kings Cross murder of Thomas Kelly
have clashed with media... Cameraman decked at Thomas Kelly murder accused's hearing Herald Sun Tears in court from teen accused of killing Thomas Kelly as cameraman pushed... Sydney Morning Herald Teenager refused bail over Kings Cross death ABC Online NEWS.com.au- Ninemsn all 983 news articles
Pranab vs Sangma: Stage set for Presidential poll today - Indian Express
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:04:37 PM
The Hindu Pranab vs Sangma: Stage set for Presidential poll today
Indian Express The stage is all set for the Presidential poll on Thursday with UPA nominee Pranab Mukherjee expected to romp home with a substantial margin against BJP-
backed PA Sangma. As many as 4896 lawmakers 776 MPs and 4120 MLAs are eligible to vote in... India set to elect its new President today Hindustan Times
Presidential poll today; advantage Pranab Mukherjee in contest against PA Sangma NDTV Prez Poll: Voting today, result on Sunday Zee News Rediff- Moneycontrol.com
all 897 news articles
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World News/ Technology/
President poll: Pranab Mukherjee to garner over 88 per cent of Delhi votes - IBNLive.com
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:06:46 PM
Thursday for which elaborate arrangements have been made in the capital. Seventy Delhi MLAs IBNLive.com and 10... President poll: Pranab Mukherjee 81 MLAs, 1 MP to cast vote in (Nation - Google News) Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:19:17 PM to garner over 88 per cent of Ranchi Times of India Delhi votes Posted On Thursday, July 19, IBNLive.com 2012 at 09:09:38 AM Pune Mirror Cumberland Courier Newspapers P T I N e w D e l h i : P r a n a b Voting for Prez poll at Vidhana Boy who set Sydney woman alight given bail Mukherjee is likely to garner over Soudha today Deccan Herald SBS 88 per cent of the 11140 vote Indian Express- Zee News A boy has been granted bail after value from 80 MPs and MLAs of all 17 news articles being charged over an attack in Delhi in the Presidential poll on which a woman was set on fire on a busy Sydney street. A teenage boy charged with setting a woman on fire with intent to murder has
Boy who set Sydney woman alight given bail - SBS

been granted bail by a Sydney magistrate. NSW teen charged for setting woman on fire Sydney Morning Herald Woman set alight: Quakers Hill man, teen, arrested Rouse Hill Times Woman on fire: teen charged Central News Magazine all 41 news articles
NASA to Test Inflatable ReEntry Vehicle at Hypersonic Speeds

Jon Mitchell (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 2:46:45 PM
report Five charged with M5 East tunnelGay will be issued: terror offences - Sydney Morning Herald WalesOnline
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:07:09 PM
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:59:28 PM
The Guardian Five charged with terror offences WalesOnline Five people have been charged with terrorism offences following investigations by the Metropolitan Police counter terrorism command, the force said. Three men from London - including
Richard Dart, who appeared in a BBC Three documentary after... Five people charged with terrorism offences BBC News police charge trio with terror training Herald Sun Five face court on terrorism charges The Sun Washington Post all 350 news articles
M5 East tunnel report will be issued: Gay Sydney Morning Herald AAP NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay says he will release a
study which reportedly addresses the issue of lung cancer among residents near a Sydney motorway when he has it. The Seven Network says that report doesn't rule out a link between the cancer... and more
On the day with the best weather in Virginia between July 21 and July 24, NASA will test its Inflatable Re-Entry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3). It's a 10foot wide, 680-pound inflatable heat shield for delivering payloads to a planet's surface from orbit. The shield will be carried by a rocket that will re-enter Earth's atmosphere at Mach 5. As it descends, its speed could reach up to 7,600 miles per hour. "We originally came up with this concept because we'd like to be able to land more mass and access higher altitudes on Mars," says Neil Cheatwood, IRVE-3 principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The test flight - from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia - will take approximately 20 minutes.
Technology/
23
These Designers Did for Fun What News Sites Can't Do to Save Their Business
Jon Mitchell (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:14:00 PM
A Web design studio built the first news site Ive ever read from top to bottom two days in a row, and it did so as a side project. Mule Design is not in the journalism business. It builds sites to solve all manner of client communication problems. But it did in a weeks work what news organizations cant seem to do at all: deliver their output in a form that's comfortable and convenient for the audience. I couldn't help myself. I had to figure out how and why. It began with a tweet. On July 9, friend of Mule and former NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh tweeted a link to statistics that showed the iPad is driving healthy evening newsreading habits. @ khoi a return to evening editions? Jim Ray (@jimray) July 10, 2012 A return to evening editions? Mule developer Jim Ray replied, by way of observation. That simple exchange put a bug in the ear of Mule design director Mike Monteiro. He mocked up a daily news site called Evening Edition, and his team built and launched it in a week. Evening Edition brings you todays world news without push
notifications. It has no streams or feeds. It doesnt do [BREAKING] or [UPDATING]. Its delivered by website to your device of choice every weekday at 5 p.m., and its just the right amount of reading for the subway ride from office to home. Its edited by Anna RascoutPaz, online media editor at Annual Reviews. She combs the days political and economic news from around the world, picks out the stories she finds important, and writes a paragraph explaining the significance of each story, including links to the reporting. Its not aggregation, Monteiro makes clear. She often combines several sources into a concise summary. It draws on other peoples reporting, like just about all of what passes as news these days - but Evening Edition performs a critical journalistic function that often falls by the wayside online: It elevates the significant information above the noise. Whats Wrong With News Sites People on news sites are overwhelmed by stories in process, says Mule lead researcher Katie Gillum. The front of your typical news site is throbbing with up-to-the-second headlines, boxes jammed full of shifting links, and a never-ending conveyor belt of posts tumbling
reach an audience that's stressed out by the presentation itself? Were all constantly awash in a torrent of news-like 'updates,' Ray wrote in his eloquent announcement of Evening Edition. In between fake celebrity death tweets, divorce notices on Facebook and newpuppy tumblrs. How is anyone supposed to sift through all of that to get to the important stuff? Although touchscreen devices have brought back evening reading, news sites arent doing nearly enough of that sifting. The gap has been filled by applications like Instapaper and Pocket, which people use to timeshift stories to read later, when theyre more relaxed. But those apps come from outside the news industry, and they leave out the ads. That's no way to build a sustainable journalistic enterprise. Ray views Evening Edition as a complement to time-shifting apps. It won't give you everything you need. But it gives you a baseline for staying informed, and lets face it, thats about all many people have time for. Evening Edition has removed the stress and work of getting that information. Theres no huge download, no email blast, no notification, no login, nothing into an abyss of next page links. How can advertisers and sponsors THESE page 27
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Technology/ Featured/
Mobile Commerce Advances With Card.io, Jumio and Shopkick Announcements

Dan Rowinski (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:15:00 PM
believes that its weight as the leading processor of digital payments will translate into D e v e l o p m e n t s i n m o b i l e mobile; all the company needs to commerce are coming so thick do is make a variety of services and fast that it is hard to keep available. This has been called an track of the shifts. Today alone, arrogant approach, but it might three companies innovating in work. smartphone payments announced Card.io is the latest startup to join significant initiatives. Two PayPals portfolio. It joins directinitially similar outfits - Card.io to-carrier billing company Zong, a n d J u m i o - a p p e a r t o b e which eBay (PayPal's parent) diverging in interesting ways. The picked up in July 2011 to boost its t h i r d , S h o p k i c k , g a i n e d a mobile ubiquity worldwide. beachhead in the retail bastion of PayPal has also acquired other Macy's. companies to fill out its mobile Card.io and Jumio started with a payments and retail portfolio similar idea: Use a smartphones including BillMeLater, Milo, camera to photograph credit cards Where and RedLaser. and process payments on the spot. PayPal has been working with But the two companies recently Card.io for a while, integrating veered off in different directions. the San Francisco startups Card.io was acquired by PayPal technology into PayPals payment today while Jumio partnered with apps. So it was natural for PayPal JMango, a mobile solutions to buy Card.io outright and make c o m p a n y . P a y P a l ' s M o b i l e the team part of its product plan. Strategy The Card.io team will join PayPal needs robust mobile PayPals global product team in presence. It has made several San Jose. moves in the last year or so to fill The Card.io team is joining out its mobile presence through a PayPal for the same reasons that mixture of acquisitions and the Zong team was excited to join building its own services. PayPal PayPal last year - to get the
opportunity to work on projects that will accelerate innovation at a scale thats just not possible at a startup, Hill Ferguson, VP of global products for PayPal, said in a blog post. Card.ios payments solution will still be available to outside developers to integrate into their own apps. Jumio Partners With JMango Jumio also makes its pay-bycamera technology available to developers, and the company, based in Mountain View, California, is partnering with application development platform JMango to bring this capability to more apps across a variety of mobile operating systems. Jumio touts its service as a way to authenticate transactions, because the actual credit card is present at the time of purchase. That is not so different from what dongle makers Square, Intuit, Erply, among others offer. The difference is that no outside hardware must attach to the phone. JMangos technology will be key
in offering Jumio to a wider, global audience, said Daniel Mattes, Jumio founder and CEO, in a press release. The speed, depth and scalability of the platform is what initially attracted us to JMangos platform. JMango will become the primary reseller of Jumios service in addition to integrating it into its development platform. Jumio is evolving differently than Card.io and seems to be focused on partnerships with other startups and developers. For instance, Jumio announced another partnership earlier this week with Ridejoy, a company that connects drivers and passengers on longdistance road trips. Shopkick Invades Macys Shopkick gives consumers the ability to interact with products in retail stores through smartphones. Here's how it works: In stores, a hardware device emits a frequency that smartphones can pick up and respond to. This interaction tells Shopkick that a potential customer is in the store. Then Shopkick offers deals through its app. Macys, one of Shopkicks first large retail
partners, plans to implement the system in more than 800 of its stores throughout the United States. Shopkick began with its own transmitter, called Signal. But it has found a more efficient way to penetrate retail environments. It has partnered with Mood Media Corporation, which broadcasts audio signals in 580,000 stores across the globe. Through a simple switch, Mood Media can relay Shopkick interactions anywhere its in-store solution is installed. Mood Media enabled Shopkick to get into every Macys store without installing its own device at each location. The Shopkick model is a counter to the recent phenomenon known as showcasing, where consumers enter retail stores to shop but ultimately buy through mobile devices or computers. The idea is to reward visitors of stores through credits, gift cards, movie passes or other items.
Happy Hour Links: 'You Didn't Built That' Pile-On

Michael Warren (The Weekly Standard)
Charles Murray on Obama's "tone-deafness." Who else, Mr. President?
and Jon Lovitz... When you've lost Adam Carolla
Technology/
25
Vyclone Launches An iPhone App For Truly Social Video Creation Christian And Sharing
Ryan Lawler (TechCrunch)
creation of videos using up to four different camera angles at once, Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:00:48 PM and includes the ability to switch Theres no shortage of social/ b e t w e e n f i l t e r s t o p r o v i d e mobile/location-based video different effects. Once videos are sharing apps out there, which will shot and uploaded to the server, let you take a video and maybe the app syncs them up based on slap a filter on it and share what the timestamp and then stitches youre doing with people nearby them together randomly, keeping and show off how friggin cool the audio track of one of the you are. Think Socialcam/Viddy/ videos. Klip/etc. But how social is that, One of the cool things is that really? Vyclone can be used even when Well how about this: What if you you dont have WiFi or a good could actually make videos that wireless connection. While its w e r e T R U L Y s o c i a l , t h a t nice to get the sort of instant combined elements from videos gratification that comes from that youve shot, as well as those instantly uploading videos and from your friends and other having mashups created on the people nearby? What if you could fly, the app works even when instantly mash up, remix, and videos arent available in realshare those videos with people on time. It merely checks the location other social networks? Thats the and timestamp of available kind of experience that the makers videos, regardless of when theyre of the Vyclone iPhone app have uploaded. That means that you created. could add them days later, and Vyclone takes advantage of Vyclone would still make new location data to determine who mixes based on new assets. youre nearby while youre Once created, Vyclone has all the shooting video in its app. It then usual viewing and sharing options matches that video against other youve come to expect from these users nearby. The app allows the types of apps: You can share on
Facebook or Twitter or save to your camera roll. Then, it can also be uploaded to YouTube. Users can also watch videos shared by other users inside the app, tag friends and events, comment on videos, and follow other users. So Ive taken a lot of video apps for a spin in my day, and I have to say that in my limited test run, Vyclone is seriously one of the coolest apps Ive ever tried out. I used with a friend it last weekend during an event in Oakland, and captured video from an event in which a music video was being filmed.* This was the final result, as shot from two different camera angles while screwing around with filters: Concerts and music festivals are an obvious use case for this type of video app, but users could also use it at sporting events and even in smaller groups. Think about capturing different angles at a birthday party or wedding, maybe? Anyway, the app currently supports just four videos being mixed today, but the founders tell me that the backend is infinitely scalable which
means that it could potentially mash up dozens of videos, like at a big Jason Mraz concert or whatnot. Speaking of, the founders include Joe Summer, musician and Chief Creative Officer (and Stings son), who dreamed up the idea. He tapped his good friend David King Lassman, CEO of Vyclone, to help execute on the plan. The company has an office in Los Angeles and a development team in London building the app. Vyclone has raised $2.7 million in seed funding from investors that include Ashton Kutchers AGRade Investments, Live Nation, DWA Investments, and Thrive Capital. == * Yes, those are women punching at each other with gigantic blowup boxing gloves. The event was entitled Foxy Boxing, and the artist featured here is Big Freedia, Queen Diva and New Orleans bounce music extraordinaire. What can I say, I do stupid shit on the weekends.
World Adoption
Christian World Adoption is one of the largest international adoption agencies in the United States. Since 1991, Christian World Adoption has placed thousands of children from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. These children now enjoy the love and security of a forever family. Christian World Adoption currently offers adoption programs in Bulgaria, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine. Explore our website to learn more about international adoption. Then, when youre ready, call our friendly adoption counselor, toll free, at 1.888.97ADOPT.
26
Technology/ Policy/
Facebook ad rates surge 58 percent, leaves Twitter in the dust

Emil Protalinski (CNET News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:39:16 PM
decrease last quarter. The U.S. and the U.K. saw increases of 11 percent while Canada saw an Facebook's average cost per increase of 8 percent. t h o u s a n d i m p r e s s i o n s h a s Cost per click (CPC), the cost increased by 58 percent in the paid by advertisers to Facebook, second quarter of 2012 compared has hit the dollar mark for the first with the year-ago period, meaning time in North America. CPC rates Facebook is earning more and increased 9 percent this quarter, more from its ads. compared with 23 percent in the Breaking down by country, the last quarter. Only the U.S. and U.S. saw an increase of 25 Canada saw increases: both percent, while Canada saw 21 countries have CPCs of more than percent and the U.K. saw 7 $1 for the first time. The U.S. saw percent. The data comes from a an increase of 13 percent to $1.04 study based on 406 billion and Canada increased by 12 impressions in more than 190 percent to $1.02. The U.K. saw a c o u n t r i e s f o r 2 7 6 c l i e n t s , reduction of 2 percent. according to the 12-slide Global Last but certainly not least, Facebook Advertising Report Q2 Facebook's recently released 2012 by TBG Digital, which was News Feed targeting options are also verified the University of delivering significantly better Cambridge. CTR. Mobile ads received CTRs Click through rates (CTR), which 14 times that of desktop ads, on i n d i c a t e h o w r e l e v a n t a n d average. The desktop category, interesting ads are to users, have which includes News Feed ads increased by 11 percent this and the ads on the right-hand side, quarter. This is great news when saw the lowest CTR at 0.083 compared with the 6 percent percent. The mobile News Feed,
by contract, saw an average CTR of 1.140 percent. How does this compare with Twitter? The smaller social network saw an average CTR of 0.266 percent. This would indicate Facebook's mobile ad CTR is four times that of Twitter's. That's impressive. Other highlights from the report include: Sponsored Stories continue to perform better than standard Facebook Ads: Analysis of 13.8 billion impressions in the first and second quarters of 2012 shows Sponsored Story ads receiving 53 percent higher CTR than standard ads. Cost per fan also saw major improvements with 39 percent savings. CTR by Sector Sees shakeup in rankings: Entertainment has dropped three places since the first quarter of 2012 to make room for Health, Pets & Animals, and Not for Profit. Health is a regular in the top five but Not for Profit has jumped four places and Pets
& Animals is a new entry. Jobs & Education sector now generates highest CPC: Jobs & Education has jumped four places to hit the top spot with an average CPC of $1.42, pushing Finance and Retail both down one place. Games and Computers & Electronics have switched places taking position four and five, respectively. "All eyes are on Facebook at the moment and a key part of its progress is the performance of its sponsored stories and mobile ads, which in particular are showing great potential for all parties," TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell said in a statement. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Satellite collars to aid conservation of snow leopards in Afghanistan

Olivia Solon
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:16:00 PM
The Inspector in Chief - By Isaac Stone Fish

ISAAC STONE FISH (Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:37:18 PM
Kim Jong Un takes charge. BY
ISAAC STONE FISH| JULY 18, 2012 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it
on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go
To Work.
Two snow leopards have been captured and fitted with satellite collars for the first time in Afghanistan in a bid to better understand the endangered species' behaviour. A team from the Wildlife Conservation Society along with Afghan veterinarians caught the leopards by shooting them with a tranquilizer gun on 27 May and 8 June. They then weighed them, measured them, took DNA samples and fitted them with Vectronix satellite collars. They were then released into the Hindu Kush mountains. By: Olivia Solon, Edited by: Nate Lanxon Continue reading...
Technology/
27
Senator says Apple e-book suit has 'empowered monopolists'
THESE
annoying. Whats left is a desirable daily news destination. A precious, rare thing. You want push notifications for @ EveningEdition? Is it 5pm pacific? Weve pushed. Is it before 5pm pacific? We have not pushed. Got it? Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) July 17, 2012 No Dara Kerr (CNET News) less diverse. Of the five publishers accused of More Nostalgia "The suit will restore Amazon to participating, three have settled: Evening Edition is supported by Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:20:13 PM the dominant position atop the e- H a c h e t t e B o o k G r o u p , sponsors, not ads. Mother Jones New York Sen. Charles Schumer books market it occupied for HarperCollins Publishers, and magazine currently supports it as reprimanded the Department of years before competition arrived Simon & Schuster (owned by a sort of experimental partnership Justice today for filing its e-book in the form of Apple," he wrote. CBS, which publishes CNET). to find an online news model that antitrust lawsuit against Apple. "If that happens, consumers will The two publishers who refused works. Evening Edition's model Using strong language in a Wall be forced to accept whatever to settle and deny the allegations wont fund a newsroom in this Street Journal Op-Ed, he wrote prices Amazon sets." are Macmillan Publishers and form. But it offers a clue to the that "the suit could wipe out the He went on to write, "This model Penguin Group. Ever since the value that news organizations are publishing industry as we know may have served Amazon well, Department of Justice filed the missing: packaging their work in it." but it put publishers and authors at suit, Apple has denied any a way that suits its readers, rather than beating them over the head. The Department of Justice a distinct disadvantage as they wrongdoing. brought the lawsuit against Apple continued to try to market paper "If publishers, authors and Journalism faces a disjuncture in April alleging that the tech books and pave a way forward for consumers are at the mercy of a "between the time put into the giant and a group of book a digital future. Without viable single retailer that controls 90% story and the value of the publishers colluded to illegally fix retail competitors, publishers were of the market and can set rock- p r o d u c t , M u l e d i r e c t o r o f e-book prices to boost profits and forced to make a Hobson's choice. bottom prices, we will all suffer," strategy Erika Hall says. The old force e-book rival Amazon to They could allow their books to Schumer wrote. "I am concerned ways of reporting the news are abandon its discount pricing. be sold at the prices Amazon set, that the mere filing of this lawsuit expensive, and the old ways of The suit also alleges that Apple thus undercutting their own has empowered monopolists and selling ads are diminishing in value. Thats unsustainable. News and the publishers pushed an current hardcopy sales and the hurt innovators." " a g e n c y m o d e l " i n w h i c h future pricing expectations for If the lawsuit doesn't settle, the organizations know it, Hall publishers set their own e-book digital books--or stay out of the e- trial is scheduled to happen in believes. Theres this visceral drive to the future, she says, prices, rather than the traditional books market entirely. In an 2013. w h o l e s a l e m o d e l i n w h i c h increasingly digital age, the latter This entry passed through the describing the urge in the news publishers set a retail price and was simply not an option." Full-Text RSS service if this is industry to innovate the crisis retailers then set their own sales Schumer argued that the "agency your content and you're reading it away. But its held back by price. model," allegedly employed by on someone else's site, please read nostalgia. In his op-ed, Schumer doesn't Apple, is a superior model the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content- Evening Edition doesnt solve the s e e m c o n v i n c e d t h a t t h e because it increases competition. only/faq.php#publishers. Five problem of the tremendous cost of t r a d i t i o n a l w h o l e s a l e i s It would also give consumers Filters recommends: Incinerating necessarily good for publishers, several platforms to buy e-books, Assange - The Liberal Media Go authors, and consumers -- saying he said, and force Amazon to To Work. that it makes the publishing world conform.
news reporting. But it costs little to build and run, and it delivers tremendous value that might eventually pay for original news gathering. The value of the service is its exceedingly simple package. This is just a small demonstration, Hall points out. Mules leading by example, and news organizations can adapt the model for their own purposes. The Whole Package There are no rules about how to fund media in this attention-scarce economy. So experiments have to be fast, lean and flexible. Looking at it that way, its no surprise that the most appealing news solution Ive seen in a long time comes not from a sclerotic news company but from a studio that knows how to package all kinds of communication from scratch. But as a busy studio building sites for others, Mule has another, more practical advantage over news companies. If this thing fails, Monteiro muses, everybodys coming to work tomorrow anyway. You can read Evening Edition at evening-edition.com on anything with a screen and a Web browser. Each new issue comes out at 5 p.m. Pacific time.
28
Technology/
Twist for iPhone is an interesting 'twist' on location sharing

Mel Martin (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
updates; you can notify them via text or email. In a nice touch, Twist doesn't do Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:15:00 PM anything till it senses (via GPS) I've been a big fan of Glympse as that you have left your origin. It a way to share my location with sends notes to the people you friends, so they know where I am specify, and sends updates along and when I might arrive. In fact, the way with your ETA. Each text it's a favorite app of mine. So I or email contains a link that will was interested to try Twist, an let people see your location on a iOS app that has similar features map. If your friends have the but accomplishes things quite Twist app, they can get the differently, and in many ways information there too. does it smarter and better. A new There are some other cool version of the app was released features that Glympse doesn't today. have. When you select your Twist is free, as is Glympse (also destination you will get a weather both Google's Latitude and forecast for that location, a street Apple's Find my Friends). Twist view from Google, and Yelp will will ask for access to your address provide reviews if the location is book both for your home address part of the Yelp data. You can and any favorite locations you also create a new destination from want to set up as defaults. When a calendar event. Twist will tell you are ready to go, get a you it's time to leave to get to destination from your address your destination on time. book, search using keywords, or In testing the app I especially drop a pin on a map. Then select liked the auto-start function. I can the recipients of your location set up my trip in advance, and
smooth moving position. Glympse does this much better. I also don't think it's always easy to figure out how to set up the your messages to people. While by no means difficult, it could still be more intuitive. These kinds of issues can be cleaned up, but I still think Twist is a giant leap forward in location sharing. I urge you to give it a try if it has capabilities you need. nothing happens until I leave. I Twist is more about the when appreciate that my route can be while Glympse is oriented toward via car, public transportation, or t h e w h e r e . B o t h a r e v a l i d , walking. The estimates of arrival interesting and useful apps. Gallery: Twist for iPhone time were very good. There are also some things I Twist for iPhone is an interesting didn't like. The app asked me to ' t w i s t ' o n l o c a t i o n s h a r i n g register for some additional originally appeared on TUAW services. I think I did, but got no The Unofficial Apple Weblog on response to my request. Curious. Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:15:00 EST. When someone is following me to Please see our terms for use of see where I am, my location on feeds. t h e i r d e v i c e ( c o m p u t e r o r Source| Permalink| Email this| smartphone) seems to lurch Comments around and jump, rather than be a
Botanical Cleanser Branding - Spread Studio Designs Fresh and Simple Packaging for 'underwearables' (TrendHunter.com)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:51:02 PM
( TrendHunter.com) The allnatural soap company underwearables' enlisted the creative assistance of design firm Spread Studio to help create the perfect packaging for the brand's eco-friendly...
Nanobots could turn 'Great Pacific Plastic Patch' into a floating island
Ian Steadman
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:00:00 PM
Nanobots or geneticallyengineered bacteria could be used
to turn the Great Pacific Plastic Patch into a floating island for people to live and holiday on. That's the hypothesis being floated by a team of UCL
graduate students, who want to
make use of the plastic that's Duncan Geere Continue reading... currently floating in the world's largest ocean, stranded by the North Pacific Gyre. By: Ian Steadman, Edited by:
Technology/ Finance/
29
New tech could target and treat irregular heartbeats

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore (CNET News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:06:05 PM
Marissa Mayer To Michael Arrington In 2010: Running Yahoo Would Be A Difficult Job [Video]
Billy Gallagher (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:00:21 PM
The eye of a hurricane (left) bears some resemblance to the localized source of an arrhythmia (right) in a patient with atrial fibrillation. In a new study, ablation targeting these rotors successfully stopped the arrhythmia.(Credit: UCSD/ UCLA) Researchers are reporting that they have found, for the first time, that tiny electrical spinning tops ("rotors") within the heart cause atrial fibrillation(AF), a type of arrhythmia in which the heartbeat is faster and irregular. What's more, they found that by targeting the so-called eye of the storm, they could actually slow or even terminate the AF, the multidisciplinary team from UC San Diego, UCLA, and Indiana University reports in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Today, catheter ablation is a common therapy used to treat AF, but because the sources of these arrhythmias have been so elusive, its success has been limited. Now that the researchers have been able to map out these socalled hurricanes within the heart using their new technique, which
they call Focal Impulse and Rotor Modulation (FIRM), they are reporting a near doubling in treatment success. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the procedure, the researchers report, is that their new approach shut down or significantly slowed AF in an average of just 2.5 minutes. This compares with the more conventional several hours of treatment over larger regions of the heart with about half the success rate. "We are very excited by this trial, which for the first time shows that atrial fibrillation is maintained by small electrical hotspots, where brief FIRM-guided ablation can shut down the arrhythmia and
bring the heart back to a normal rhythm after only minutes of ablation," said lead author Sanjiv Narayanof of the UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center in a news release. With only 92 subjects, the study is small and the results preliminary, but if these results hold across a larger group of patients with AF, better treatment is surely on the horizon. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
During a December 2010 fireside chat, TechCrunch founder (and then-editor) Michael Arrington asked Marissa Mayer what she would do if she hypothetically ran Yahoo. As you all know, Mayer was VP at Google at the time, but left on Monday to become the CEO of Yahoo. The oddly prophetic interview is even more interesting to watch now that Mayer has taken the Yahoo position. Heres the (slightly cleaned up to remove um, etc.) Yahoo bit: Arrington: Do you mind if we do some what-ifs, just for fun? Like, if you ran Yahoo, for example, what would you do? Mayer laughs Arrington: Just theoretically. Would you cut back? Lay everyone off, like theyre doing? Would you try to expand in a certain area? Im just curious. Mayer: I think if I were YahooI think, one, its a difficult job. But I do think
Carols done a lot of smart things. The partnership on search was smart in many ways. We wouldve liked the partnership to have been with us. But that was smart. I also think that looking at other really interesting brands that are getting a lot of traction on the internetthose are smart acquisitions for them to make to really help broaden out their base, broaden out their platform and ultimately stay relevant. Its no longer a hypothetical. The difficult job is Mayers and now we get to sit back and see how her thoughts have changed over the past two years and how they will translate into action. Mayer and Arrington will sit down again at TechCrunch Disrupt in September; the last time Arrington interviewed the Yahoo CEO at Disrupt, it was quite colorful. The full video is below; if you just want to watch the Yahoo piece, it starts around 28:10 Thanks to Adrianne Jeffries for the heads up.
Intel rebounds despite cut in growth forecast

Telegraph Staff (Finance News - Business news from the UK and world)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:28:24 PM
Wednesday despite the world's largest manufacturer of computer chips cutting its growth forecast.
Intel shares rebounded on
30
Technology/
Mega-iPad prototypes revealed in Jony Ive's 2011 deposition now in color

Michael Rose (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:20:00 PM
Hysterical Advertising Parodies - The 'Women Sort Yourself Out' Video Plays on Common Stereotypes (TrendHunter.com)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:07:03 PM
Hefty. Ample. Zaftig. An iPod hit with an Engorgio Charm. Pick your adjective and go with it, because this honest-to-Ive iPad prototype was just plain big. It looked like a chopped-off MacBook's top half, but it probably wouldn't have seemed out of place on Batman's bedside table. How did this early design concept (circa 2002-2004!) for an Apple tablet come to light? As Kelly relayed earlier, NetworkWorld's Yoni Heisler did some clever digging into recently unsealed depositions in Apple v. Samsung. Lawyers for Samsung interviewed Apple's design chief Jonathan Ive in December of 2011, and asked him to confirm that the photos introduced into evidence of the "035" prototype were legitimate, Apple-created artifacts. Ive testified that they were, and now that the testimony
( TrendHunter.com) Juxtaposing the hilarious advertising styles of commercials and products targeted towards men versus those targeted towards women, the Women Sort Yourself Out' parody is absolutely... has been unsealed Heisler was able to find and publish black-and -white photos of the device. BuzzFeed's Matt Buchanan & Michael Phillips have now unearthed color versions of the prototype pictures; they highlight the device's amputated-MacBookscreen affect even more strongly. In fact, the unit bears some resemblance to the Axiotron Modbook, which repurposed the plastic-case MacBook into a tablet form factor; minus the ports, of course, and probably somewhat lighter had it ever gone into production. Seeing the prototype side by side with the produced iPad, it's sobering to think about how long Apple's designers and engineers worked toward refining, improving and slenderizing the tablet concept. Of course, before the iPad itself ever saw the light of day, the technologies and software involved snuck out the door in smaller form. Mega-iPad prototypes revealed in Jony Ive's 2011 deposition now in color originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 21:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Source| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Technology/ Culture/
31
Samsung confirms Angry Birds TV app plans

Mark Raby (SlashGear)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:05:58 PM
Sport Pictures
(HowStuffWorks Daily Feed)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 1:00:56 PM
Samsung and Rovio are going after a couple different segments of the population those who own an Internet-connected Samsung TV and have somehow managed to never play Angry Birds, and those who own an Internet-connected Samsung TV and cannot get enough Angry Birds. Given that the former consists of people who have never downloaded Angry Birds on their phone or tablet, and never downloaded it onto a game console, its the latter category that is probably the bigger chunk here. Samsung announced today that it will bring the popular mobile-
game-turned-worldwidephenomenon to its smart TV platform, confirming earlier rumblings about such news. The game will launch on Samsung LED sets with models numbers of 7500 or higher, in addition to plasma sets with model number
8000 or higher. The download will be free, likely with ads to provide a monetary stream to Rovio and Samsung. Rovio has understandably been completely focused on Angry Birds for the last three years, which has made its way to
traditional game consoles as a downloadable title, been introduced to stores with a whole line of retail merchandise, got a tie-in with the theatrical animated film Rio, and is accessible via download codes in the Blu-ray version of the 20th Century Fox flick. It was only a matter of time before it started getting embedded into TVs. [ via VentureBeat] Samsung confirms Angry Birds TV app plans is written by Mark Raby& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
?"); function backgroundClick() { document.location.href="http:// entertainment.howstuffworks.com /hsw-shows/sysk-crowd-sourcedquiz.htm"; } This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Top 10 Wacky Inventions for the Home

Jennifer Pocock (HowStuffWorks Daily Feed)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 1:00:56 PM
-We all know someone who's a little gadget crazy. She was the first in line for the iPhone-because she camped out at the Apple store. He bribed his son or
daughter with energy drinks and extra allowance to sit up for hours waiting for the PS3, and has done unspeakable acts to get his hands on a Wii Fit. These people spend their weekends at places like the Home Depot, Brookstone and Sharper Image to fill their homes with really neat-looking stuff that doesn't have much purpose. Their
spouses would probably tell you that the obsessive gadget blogging is taking the romance out of life.You know the type. This person has spent a lot of time and money making home a more interesting place. So, hypothetically, if he or she were your neighbor, what might you come across in a tour of their
abode? Well, we've got a list of 10 possibilities. Some of these contraptions lack purpose. Some of them automatically do things that we take for granted or could easily do ourselves. Some of them are just there to add a little pizzazz to an otherwise ordinary existence. And some are downright useful.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
32
Technology/ Sports/
Hulu expands international wings, deals with BBC

still produced by the BBC, but now it carries the footnote in association with Hulu. Not too long after announcing This is the video streaming that it secured the American rights companys first ever international to a popular Israeli drama, Hulu co-production arrangement. The has now partnered up with the show will continue to air as BBC to bridge the Atlantic Ocean normal on BBC Four in the UK, and bring the UK comedy The but stateside it will air exclusively Thick of It to American shores as o n H u l u , b o t h f o r r e g u l a r well. The difference with this subscribers as well as premium latest deal, though, is that Hulu Hulu Plus members. The show will actually help with the was created and is written by p r o d u c t i o n o f t h e s h o w . Armando Iannucci, whose most According to the official details, recent credit is the HBO series season four of The Thick of It is Veep starring Julia Louis Dreyfus.
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:24:09 PM
Were really excited to give U.S. audiences a chance to catch up with all previous episodes, and as series co-producers for season four, we are proud to make full
seasons of this distinctive and smart show available exclusively to Hulu viewers, said Hulu senior VP of content Andy Forssell. This comes just days
after Hulu announced that it will air episodes from the Israeli series Prisoners of War, which is the sites first exclusive non-English series. [ via paidContent] Hulu expands international wings, deals with BBC is written by Mark Raby& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Hootsuite Opens Up Google+ Page Integration To All Users

Billy Gallagher (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:35:28 PM
Lukaku scores 2, Chelsea beats Sounders 4-2

Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:51:47 PM
Google+ Profile support due to Google restrictions. Hootsuite, which has high-profile Hootsuite, the popular social u s e r s l i k e t h e N C A A a n d media management interface, can McDonalds, provides users with now offer Google+ Pages access a c e n t r a l i z e d d a s h b o a r d t o to all of Hootsuites nearly 5 coordinate their social media million users. Since November, strategy. Facebook, Twitter and when Google allowed Hootsuite others have opened their API t o o f f e r P a g e s o n i t s s i t e , more fully to Hootsuite (and Hootsuite has been limited to only others). 200 pages. Google lifted that cap Hootsuite VP of Business today. Development Greg Gunn tells me However, it still cannot offer requests for Pages support far
exceeded their allotted 200, even when they restricted it to just their enterprise users. They worked to support Google+ Pages for clients, from Anderson Cooper to Mashable, whos primary need was Google+. It was painful because obviously we have a lot of users that wanted to use this, Gunn says of the restriction to 200 users. But it was good tension because it showed a lot of desire to interact between businesses and
consumers. Gunn added that after launching a number of partnerships this year, they have premium complimentary software companies coming down the pipeline in the next two weeks as well as exciting new types of plug -ins launching at the beginning of August.
Young Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku scored twice in the first half, Chelsea newcomers Eden Hazard and Marko Marin scored deflected goals, and the champions of Europe opened their American tour with a 4-2 win over the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday night.
Technology/ Culture/
33
Daily iPhone App: Knights of the Round Cable

Mike Schramm (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:30:00 PM
At this point in the App Store's lifecycle, we're seeing a lot of copycats and reused ideas. Even some of the best apps out there are borrowing ideas and genres instead of creating something entirely new. But Knights of the Round Cable can't be accused of that -- it's one of the more original polished titles I've seen out there lately. It's no wonder that it's from Chillingo. The idea is that you control a Knight bouncing around a 2D space, and you get two buttons to control him with. One simply sends out a cable that grabs on to
the nearest peg from whatever distance you're at, and the other switches direction, so the Knight starts spinning one way instead of the other. The goal is the game is to spin around and collect gems as quickly as you can. You get a
bonus for collecting all gems in a line, and each stage is timed, so you're kicked on to the next one when time runs out. It's fun -- controlling the spinning and bouncing is tough at first, but there is a fair amount of subtle
depth to getting good at it. You can also upgrade various specs and stats (and even use other knights), so there's a lot of replayability to the title as well. As with all of Chillingo's other releases, Knights of the Round Cable is just 99 cents, and it's a very fun, well-made game that tries a little something new and different. Daily iPhone App: Knights of the Round Cable originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Source| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Webcam Presentations, Faster Android Keyboards, and Goal Reminders [Video]

Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:00:00 PM
Readers offer their best tips for giving presentations over webcam, speeding up your Android keyboard, and reminding yourself of your goals. More
10 Tips for Grand Canyon Rafting Trips

Jane McGrath (HowStuffWorks Daily Feed)
that many don't think about visiting the river at the bottom. The water is, in fact, largely Submitted at 7/18/2012 1:00:56 PM responsible for forging the Every year, about five million canyon. tourists come to see the Grand The Grand Canyon section of the Canyon, one of the seven natural Colorado River sees about 29,000 wonders of the world. And no b o a t e r s e a c h y e a r [ s o u r c e : wonder it's so popular -- at about National Park Service]. As these a mile deep (1.6 kilometers) and adventurers can attest, you haven't up to 18 miles (30 kilometers) fully experienced the canyon until wide, it's a massive and majestic you've rafted the Colorado River. sight to behold. The views are so From Lees Ferry to Grand Wash beautiful from the top, however, Cliffs, the Grand Canyon is 277
river miles (445.8 kilometers) long. End to end, a river trip by raft can take about two weeks. But boaters have plenty of options as to how long and how challenging they want their trip to be. Although Native American Indian tribes had lived in the area for thousands of years, John Wesley Powell completed the first known expedition through the canyon on the Colorado River in 1869. Powell was a veteran who
had lost an arm fighting for the North in the Civil War. Although three of the nine men who started the expedition abandoned the expedition and were never seen again, the rest survived, completing it in three months. A modern-day rafting trip doesn't have to be as harrowing as Powell's expedition. But you will see plenty of adventure. It takes a good deal of planning and commitment, however, and the following tips will help prepare
you. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
34
Technology/ Economy/
The Laugh Factory app launching on PS3 September 1

1. If youre looking at the logo above, you might be saying to When it comes to streaming yourself, I recognize that image. video on gaming consoles, it takes Yep, The Laugh Factory is a very a lot to be the first in any iconic Hollywood comedy club c a t e g o r y a n y m o r e . T h e and has played host to some of the marketplace has certainly filled up most famous and infamous quickly with all sorts of content. comedian performances of all But Sony has found yet another time. Now, users will be able to niche it claims to be launching watch future performances from the first live comedy application the comfort of their couch as available on any console. Its well as an extensive collection of The Laugh Factory Live, and its previous shows. coming to the PS3 on September The Laugh Factory is home to
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:52:23 PM
over 30 years of top quality entertainment, and for the first time ever, theyre opening their doors to a digital audience in a
whole new way. We cant wait for everyone to check out the app for themselves, and enjoy hours of comedy gold exclusively on
PlayStation 3, Sony wrote in a PlayStation Blog post. The app will launch on September 1, and users will be able to access content for free until December. After that, it will cost $3 per month. [ via PlayStation Blog] The Laugh Factory app launching on PS3 September 1 is written by Mark Raby& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Berlin Owes A Small German Town Trillions Because Of A 450 Year Old Loan
Samuel Blackstone (Money Game)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:00:00 PM
The quiet town of Mittenwalde, about 30 kilometers southeast of Berlin, recently discovered a debt certificate from May 28th, 1562, in which Mittenwalde loaned Berlin 400 guilders (gold coins used as currency), reports Reuters. The certificate was uncovered by Mittenwalde's town historian, Vera Schmidt. As the debt came with an annual 6 percent interest rate Berlin would owe
Mittenwalde 11,200 guilders today equivalent to about 112 million ($137 million). Once the number is adjusted for inflation and compound interest, the figure comes out somewhere in the trillions, reports Reuters. Berlin a city already 63 million ($77 million) in debt may have some hope, however. The promissory note is missing the seal, which may render it invalid, the Financial Times of Deutschland reports, though historians are quick to point out that seals weren't widely used
until the 17th century. Berlin has repaid part of the debt, at least. A ceremonial guilder, dated back to 1539, was given to Mittenwalde
go for somewhere in the range of 50,000 to 100,000. ($61,000 to $122,000), reports the Berliner Zeitung. Apparently this isn't the first time the certificate has been found, nor the request for payment been made though. Every 50 years or so since 1820, Mittenwalde has been asking Berlin for payment every 50 years or so since 1820, by by Berlin's finance minister, according to the Berliner Zeitung. Ulrich Nussbaum. If it ever Please follow International on reached the market, the 3.25 Twitter and Facebook. ounce, 18 karat gold piece would Join the conversation about this story
Policy/
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Blowing up the Death Star - By Mitch Prothero

MITCHELL PROTHERO (Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:57:07 PM
Syria's rebels score a direct hit. BY MITCHELL PROTHERO| JULY 18, 2012 Click here for rare photos of the other side of Syria's civil war. BEIRUT No one really saw this coming. That is, no one except for the handful of Syrian rebels who executed the startling July 18 bombing in Damascus that claimed the lives of Syria's top intelligence and security officials. But the shockwaves of this assassination have already reverberated across the Middle East, leading political players of all stripes to contemplate the possibility of President Bashar alAssad's imminent demise. Confirmed dead in the explosion, which Syrian state media blames on a suicide bomber but Free Syrian Army officials insist was caused by a remote-detonated device, are Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha; his "deputy" Asef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in law and one of the regime's most feared strongmen; and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani, a former Defense Minister. After more than a year of being shelled by the regime's wellequipped military and terrorized by gangs of pro-regime military
thugs, the Syrian rebels' attack was the equivalent of blowing up the Death Star: They not only decapitated the Assad regime's top security officials, they sent a
message that they could reach anyone -- and any part of the country. Even if the belief that Assad could fall any day is overblown (and with such limited
access inside Syria it's impossible to know for sure) -- it is clear that his hold on power is shakier than ever. Syrian state media's account of
the attack focused on the "martyrdom" of Rajiha, but Shawkat -- who only merited a BLOWING page 37
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Policy/
Hired Gun Fight - By John Norris

JOHN NORRIS (Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:26:39 PM
Obama's aid chief takes on the development-industrial complex. BY JOHN NORRIS| JULY 18, 2012 Rajiv Shah, President Barack Obama's U.S. Agency for International Development administrator, is waging a highstakes battle to make U.S. foreign aid programs less dependent on American for-profit contractors. At the same time, he's aiming to roughly double the amount of assistance that flows directly to governments and local organizations in the developing world. Shah's initiative reflects Obama's broader desire to clean up government contracting announced early in his term, as well as the thrust of a White House review of development policy and the State Department's first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Although Shah's plan hasn't gotten much public attention, it represents a seismic shift in how American foreign aid programs are conducted and will require both wrenching institutional change and a very tough political battle if it is to become a reality. Given the degree to which USAID works with contractors, some of Shah's language has been delightfully undiplomatic. In a 2011 speech, he drew parallels between the agency's reliance on
for-profit firms and Eisenhower's warnings about the emergence of a military-industrial complex. Saying that USAID was "no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development," Shah argued that development firms were more interested in keeping
themselves in business than seeing countries graduate from the need for aid. "There is always another high-priced consultant that must take another flight to attend another conference or lead another training," he complained. Shah's fiery rhetoric quickly set off alarm bells among USAID's
many for-profit contractors, particularly since it came hot on the heels of the agency's December 2010 decision to suspend a huge non-profit, the Academy for Educational Development, or AED, from receiving new government contracts because of abuses in two
of its Pakistan projects and what USAID argued was"serious corporate misconduct, mismanagement and a lack of internal controls." AED was one of USAID's larger partners, managing about $500 million HIRED page 38
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single line in that same announcement -- is the real story here. The defense minister, who hailed from the Greek Orthodox community, was widely considered an affirmative action hire -- someone meant to keep Syria's Christian minority on the side of the regime. Shawkat, on the other hand, is a true insider. He has run Syria's feared military intelligence services, which is probably the only institution still trusted on any level by loyalists, and was in charge during the last gasps of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. He also often acted as a regime fireman, parachuting into trouble areas to quell dissent. Despite much resistance from some members of the Assad family to his marriage, Shawkat regularly amazed Syria observers with his ability to navigate the opaque power struggles and oftendeadly intrigue that comes part and parcel with the Assad family dictatorship. Syria's rebels responded with unrestrained glee, filming celebrations around Syria for YouTube and fielding phone calls from journalists in Lebanese safe houses, where they openly expressed pride in the operation. The real prize was Shawkat: Rebel officials tell FP that despite his sometimes rocky history with his in-laws -- it's rumored that Maher al-Assad, the president's brother, once shot him during a family meal -- Shawkat's dedication to the regime once again made him an indispensible and trusted enforcer at a time
when the Assad clan has seen key allies abandon them. "Shawkat and Maher have been in charge of crushing the revolution," said a Free Syrian Army official in Lebanon who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ahmad. "They can't trust the Sunnis in the army after thousands of defections and this regime always turns to its own blood when it is time to protect the regime." It's not only the assassination that is bolstering the Syrian opposition's morale. The rebels have also sustained four days of fighting in the capital, which had previously seen only limited clashes and smaller demonstrations as the rest of Syria descended into civil war. Furthermore, in numerous meetings with anti-regime fighters in Lebanon over the past several months, it has become abundantly clear that new financing and equipment have reached the once shabby rebel army units. "This regime is so rotten that even their own supporters sell us weapons," one rebel commander in a village along the border with Lebanon told me. "We never needed weapons from outside countries like America or Saudi -we needed money. Syria has plenty of weapons already and these guys are so corrupt that they profit by selling us the weapons we will later use to kill them." "Now we have money," he concluded, before demurring about the source of the generosity. Across the border in Lebanon,
which rightfully watches events unfold in Syria like its future could depend on the outcome, reaction to the assassination depended on one's political loyalties. Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, a conservative Sunni cleric currently engaged in a political standoff in the Lebanese city of Sidon with Hezbollah and its proSyrian allies, has emerged in the last month as a key critic of the Lebanese government's neutrality on the Syria question. In a wideranging interview, I asked the cleric -- whom critics have painted as an al Qaeda-style radical -- about his feelings towards the Syrian revolution next door. "The Syrian regime will fall," he said. "And it will have an impact in Lebanon, but I doubt Hezbollah will resort to violence over it. I expect they will push out politically to protect themselves from the loss of their allies in Damascus. But, God willing, we will not see sectarian violence." Assir may be right -- but as he well knows, there are no guarantees. The revolt in Syria has already been felt on multiple levels in Beirut, notably leading to street clashes in May. The Assad regime's brutal crackdown has exacerbated sectarian tensions between the pro-Assad parties that dominate the Shiite community and Lebanese Sunnis who have long resented Syria's domination of Lebanon. Assir himself has made waves in the Lebanese media by directly criticizing
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, which most Lebanese hesitate to do out of respect, fear, or both. Several weeks ago, supporters of Nasrallah attacked a local television station for daring to broadcast an interview with Assir in which he directly challenged both Nasrallah and his Shiite ally Nabih Berrih, who heads the Amal Movement. Assir worries that the Alawitedominated Syrian government's efforts to cling to power will only further radicalize its Sunni opponents. "Now as we see the regime ready to fall, I worry that the Alawites will be persecuted over personal vendettas," he said. "I speak with many leaders of the Syrian revolution and they do not want this. They have moderate minds and do not hate a group, only the regime. But even they admit that so much violence has made this a personal war and they might not be able to stop the Alawites from great suffering once the regime falls. I hope this does not happen, but I fear it is too late to stop it." Assad's allies in Lebanon, however, are not about to concede defeat. An hour and a half after my interview with Assir, back in Beirut, my car stopped to pick up several supporters and members of Hezbollah. Nasrallah has consistently argued for the survival of the Assad regime, which he describes as a great friend to Hezbollah -- and he did it again in a speech Wednesday night, praising the assassinated Syrian officials and hailing the
Syrian government as "a real military supporter of the resistance." An argument immediately broke out between the four men as they entered the car about the implications of the news of the bombing. One cadre member I have known for years was arguing that the regime was finished and that Hezbollah had a contingency plan, while his friends -supporters but not official members of the group -- seemed skeptical. "How could they have killed Shawkat?" one supporter demanded of his friend, a member of Hezbollah's military wing. "Did the regime have him killed and want to blame terrorists?" "You know these Salafis," the Hezbollah guy said, citing a common refrain that the rebels are al Qaeda members backed by the United States and Israel. "They use suicide bombings and can reach anyone if they want to." "Hezbollah has a plan," he added. "The party knows that the regime can now fall and has a plan to protect Lebanon from these people if it does." I asked if, in the case of a rebel victory, Hezbollah expects that the mostly Sunni victors will take the war to the powerful Shiite group that dominates much of Lebanon. The car grew quiet as my question was translated for all to hear. "Of course they will," he said. "These people are crazy. But we BLOWING page 39
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annually in grants and contracts, and the suspension led AED to go belly up just month later in the spring of 2011. AED insiders complained bitterly that USAID overreacted; USAID insiders countered that AED would have survived had it not tried to downplay and conceal the problems when they were first discovered. Eventually, AED paid $5 million to the U.S. government in a Justice Department settlement for the Pakistan projects in question. Top 10 USAID Contractors for FY 2011 Vendor Obligated Program Funds 1 Chemonics International, Inc. $735,599,989 2 Partnership for Supply Chain Management $417,726,429 3 John Snow, Inc. $387,360,155 4 Development Alternatives, Inc. $308,665,874 5 The Louis Berger Group, Inc. $264,436,926 6 ABT Associates Inc. $244,620,469 7 Management Sciences for Health $220,295,202 8 Research Triangle Institute $218,319,556 9
ARD, Inc. $196,989,122 10 Creative Associates International, Inc. $196,851,005 A bit of history is important in explaining why the Obama administration remains convinced that too much foreign aid flows through firms around the Beltway. Much of the current struggle has its roots in a bitter battle between the Clinton administration and Senator Jesse Helms during the mid-1990s, during which Helms and his allies attempted to abolish USAID and fold its functions into the State Department. USAID managed to fend off Helms, but ended up weathering steep cuts to its operating expenses, which forced it to dramatically reduce staff size through layoffs and attrition. Even when funding for foreign aid rebounded after Sept. 11, USAID was a shell of its former self, having lost much of its staff and expertise in key development areas like agriculture. A 2003 Government Accountability Office report captured the dilemma: "Since 1992, the number of USAID U.S. direct hire staff declined by 37 percent, but the number of countries with USAID programs almost doubled, and, over the last two years, program funding increased by more than 50 percent." In short, USAID had gone from being a development agency to being a large, poorly organized contracting agency. Incredible pressure to push money
out the door in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan only exacerbated these trends. Because USAID remains laden with bureaucratic restrictions, it also tends to rely on large umbrella contracts that favor a handful of well-connected Beltway firms. The 10 largest USAID contractors received more than $3.19 billion in 2011, and more than 27 percent of the agency's overall funding was directed to American for-profit firms last year. To put this in perspective, if the for-profit contractor Chemonics were a country, it would have been the third-largest recipient of USAID funding in the world in 2011, behind only Afghanistan and Haiti. Thus Shah's push, under the rather benign title of "procurement reform," to channel more funds directly to institutions in the developing world: governments, entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and NGOs. The theory behind relying more on local institutions is simple and compelling: If the goal of development is to build sustainable local capacity and ownership, why not have countries play a larger role in helping help themselves? Not only is this good development policy in countries where proper management controls are in place, it also has the potential to save American taxpayers a great deal of money. U.S. contractors, looking at losing large amounts of revenue,
were not about to take this lying down. The Professional Services Council(PSC), an umbrella group of government contracting firms, quickly hired lobbyists to push back against procurement reform and helped establish the Coalition of International Development Companies, an advocacy coalition of 50 contractors touting the role of "America's most effective, efficient and innovative international development companies" in advancing the national interest. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but increased lobbying funded by the PSC directly preceded a sharply worded letter from the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight, Rep. Darrell Issa, to USAID questioning the wisdom of procurement reform. The letter hammered home one of the key arguments that contractors had been using against channeling more money directly to developing-country institutions: the threat of waste and corruption by foreigners. That argument might be a little more persuasive if American forprofit contractors had not had their own problems in this regard. In 2010, Louis Berger Associates agreed to pay $69 million in penalties after the Justice Department found that it was intentionally overcharging taxpayers for its activities in Afghanistan. A 2009 Washington Post story revealed that managers at Chemonics encouraged employees in Afghanistan to deliberately downplay or ignore
failing programs so as not to disrupt the flow of the grants. The risk of waste, fraud, or abuse is a constant specter in American aid programs, but it should also be acknowledged that spending hundreds of millions of dollars on overhead for American firms is also a real cost, and doesn't always contribute a great deal to lasting development. To its credit, USAID seems to be taking a rigorous approach to ensure that proper systems are in place in countries where it is pushing out more money through local channels, and it has been conducting audits of public financial systems in those cases where it wants to work directly through foreign governments. USAID's response to Issa highlighted a recent example from Senegal in its defense. In Senegal, the agency shifted from using American for-profit contactors to build schools and instead carried out the work through a partnership with the Senegalese government. Money for the schools was not disbursed until after a completed school was certified to have met agreed safety and quality standards. The cost difference was striking: It cost $425,000 per school through American contractors, but only $200,000 when built by the Senegalese government. Things now stand at an uneasy crossroads. Contractors don't like Shah's new approach, but are nervous about too aggressively HIRED page 39
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are ready for them." And maybe they are -- at least, in the short term. But the war in Syria has all the makings of a nasty sectarian conflict that will rebound around the Middle East for years to come. The Syrian regime's propaganda that the rebels are nothing more than a group of Saudi and Israeli-backed jihadist nutters is just that -propaganda. But just because the rebels aren't al Qaeda guys frothing at the mouth for the blood of Christians and Alawites doesn't mean they're cuddly Ewoks either. And it's not just about religion: As we have seen in Libya, those who pick up weapons with the intention of fighting to the death to protect their homes rarely just go home
and retire. They are deeply changed by having killed in the name of survival, and they want power -- if only to prevent feeling so helpless ever again. But for the first time in this long conflict, Assad's opponents are allowing themselves a glimmer of optimism. After the interview with Assir, the Sunni sheikh was walking me to my car when a phone call arrived with the news of the bomb. After I told him it appeared that Shawkat and Rajiha had been killed, Assir -- who consistently preached nonviolence in our interview -- allowed a grin to erupt across his bearded face. Reaching out to bump my hand in the classic " terrorist fist jab" that President Barack Obama once gave his wife after a speech, Assir
quietly predicted the fall of the Syrian regime. "God willing, by the end of Ramadan," he said, referring to the holy month that begins in a few short days. "God willing." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
HIRED
biting the hand that feeds them. USAID has committed to working with local institutions, but its spending totals in 2011 actually saw the proportion directed to American for-profits go up, not down. The agency has a huge amount of work to do if it still hopes to reach its target of 30 percent of its aid being channeled directly to governments and local organizations in the developing world by 2015. And Shah's aggressive push for a new paradigm will likely wither on the vine if the White House flips come November. For-profit
contractors have always had their strongest allies on the Republican side of th e fence. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
IBM raises earnings target after profits beat expecations

Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:30:33 PM
American Financial History Since 1920 [Infographic]

Mamta Badkar (Money Game)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:06:00 PM
IBM, one of the technology industry's bellwethers, reported a 6pc rise in second-quarter profits despite lower revenues due the eurozone debt crisis and raised it forecasts for full-year earnings.
same period.(h/t Barry Ritholtz) Click Here If You Can Read It > Embedded from Credit Season Credit Season has created an Business Insider Asked Wall awesome infographic that charts Street Luminaries For Their modern american financial history Favorite Charts...Here's What from the stock market crash in They Gave Us > 1929, to the present day state of See the rest of the story at the economy. Business Insider Running below is a graph of the Please follow Money Game on unemployment rate, GDP growth, Twitter and Facebook. and the rising national debt for the
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Economy/
"China Rebalancing Has Begun"; What are the Global Implications? Michael Pettis on China Rebalancing, Chinese Price Deflation, and Spain Exit from Euro; Target 2 Revisited
noreply@blogger.com (Mike Mish Shedlock) (Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 2:21:00 PM
Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets has some interesting comments via email regarding much needed China rebalancing and a timeframe for a possible Spain exit from euro. Pettis On Spain Exit... How will Spanish households react to a default on preferred shares and subordinated bonds, or even a very public discussion about the possibility of such a default? I dont know, but I assume that it will speed up deposit withdrawals from the banking system even more. For that reason it continues to be a very good idea to keep an eye on Target 2 balances. These serve as a pretty good proxy, I think, for the behavior of depositors. Things are evolving in Spain exactly as we would expect them to evolve according to the sovereign-debt-crisis handbook. Unless we get real fiscal union in Europe, or Germany leaves the euro, or Germany stimulates its economy into running a very large trade deficit, or the euro depreciates by 15-20% against the dollar in the next year all very unlikely, I think I really see no reason to doubt that Spain will leave the euro and restructure its
debt within the next few years. Mish Comments on Target 2 Target 2 stands for TransEuropean Automated Real-time Gross Settlement System. It is a reflection of capital flight from the "Club-Med" countries in Southern Europe (Greece, Spain, and Italy) to banks in Northern Europe. Please see Target2 and the ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) program; Reader From Europe Asks "Can You Please Explain Target2?" for a more compete description. There is much misinformation floating around on how Target 2 works, what Germany's liabilities are, so please click on the above link if you are interested in target 2 balances. The following chart from PIMCO article TARGET2: A Channel for Europes Capital Flight shows the capital flight through March. The problem has accelerated since then, because of fears in Spain and Italy. Pettis On China Price Deflation... Chinas official GDP growth rate has fallen sharply on Friday Beijing announced that GDP growth for the second quarter of 2012 was a lower-than-expected 7.6% year on year, the lowest level since 2009 and well below the 8.1% generated in the first quarter. This implies of course
that quarterly growth is substantially below 7.6%. Industrial production was also much lower than expected, at 9.5% year on year. In fact Chinas real GDP growth may have been even lower than the official numbers. This is certainly what electricity consumption numbers, which have been flat, imply, and there have been rumors all year of businesses being advised by local governments to exaggerate their revenue growth numbers in order to provide a better picture of the economy. Some economists are arguing that flat electricity
consumption is consistent with 7.6% GDP growth because of pressure on Chinese businesses to improve energy efficiency, but this is a little hard to believe. That pressure has been there almost as long as I have been in China (over ten years) and it would be startling if only now did it have an impact, especially with such a huge impact occurring so suddenly. Adding to the slow economic growth, the country may be tipping into deflation. Last Monday the National Bureau of Statistics released the following inflation data:
In June, the consumer price index (CPI) went up by 2.2 percent year -on-year. The prices grew by 2.2 percent in cities areas and 2.0 percent in rural areas. The food prices went up by 3.8 percent, while the non-food prices increased by 1.4 percent. The prices of consumer goods went up by 2.3 percent and the prices of services grew by 1.9 percent. In the first half of this year, the overall consumer prices were up by 3.3 percent over the same period of previous year. In June, the month-on-month change of consumer prices was down by 0.6 percent, prices in cities and rural went down by 0.6 and 0.5 percent respectively. The food prices dropped by 1.6 percent, the non-food prices kept at the same level (the amount of change was 0). The prices of consumer goods decreased by 0.9 percent, and the prices of services increased by 0.3 percent. My very smart former PKU student Chen Long, who follows monetary conditions in China as closely as anyone else I know tells me: The most interesting thing is that even if CPI remains stable monthon-month, it will turn negative year-on-year in January 2013. And if it continues to decline "CHINA page 42
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Here Are The Key Market Moving Events For Thursday, July 19 (DGX, Penelope Cruz and Javier UNH, KEY, LH, TRV, FCX, SHW, LUV, FITB, PM, VFC, MS, VZ, CMG, COF, ETFC, SNDK, GOOG, NCR, AMD, MSFT, AN, BX, SWY) Bardem Get Eric Platt (Money Game) Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Loved Up Over a Gold (FCX): $0.83 Tyler Durden earlier FT article have any Sherwin-Williams (SHW): $2.12 this), manipualted Libor at CA, MadridatLunchOdierand is now Lombard Thursday is jobs day in the U.S., discussion of just where Mr.
Deep Into The Lieborgate Rabbit Hole: The Swiss Hedge Fund Link?
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:01:00 PM Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:36:40 PM
with economists forecasting a That higher after last to spill move Lieborgate is about week's over and take down many more print. Earnings season also b a n k s i s with l announcements continues, w e l k n o w n : a s previously reported that the from Google, Verizon, Morgan world's biggest bank Deutsche Stanley, and Microsoft. Bank, has become a to know.the Here's what you need rat for Liebor prosecution having turned Australia starts things off at sides. The reason: "Under the 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday evening leniency programs of the EU, with a business confidence. c oAnnouncementsygogquiett until et otal mpanies ma i m m ua.m. on rThursdayemorning 12:30 n i t y f o m f i n s o r a reduction of fines activity index. with Japan's all which the antitrust authorities would have Economists forecast the index fell otherwise imposed on them if 30 basis points in May. they hand over evidence balance Switzerland's trade on anticompetitivet agreements or those follows a 2:00 a.m., with involved in afor exports practice." expectations concerted to fall 1.5 However, just like in the case of percent sequentially in June. Barclaysconsumer confidence hits Dutch (with Diamond), JPM (with Bruno Iksil),no consensus at 3:30 a.m. There is UBS (with Kweku) and Goldman (with for the report. Fabrice Tourre), there alwaysMay Italian industrial orders for is a scapegoat. Today we 4:00 a.m. will be announced at find just who that scapegoat1.7 percent Projections are for a is. From Bloomberg: "Regulators are sequential improvement. investigating the possible roles of Hong Kong unemployment M i l o w e l a t r4 : 3 0 aa m .C rw dtih folcha s Z ihen . t , e i t Agricole, Didierthe jobless HSBC expectations for Sander at rate to and 10 basis points higher in June tick Christian Bittar at Deutsche B a3.3 percent. p e r s o n s a i d o n to n k , t h e condition retail sales are also U.K. of anonymity because thehinvestigation is ongoing.a The. sc eduled for 4:30 .m names of the banks and traders were reported earlier today by the Financial Times." Of course, as so very often happens, the link between the investigated firm, and the person in question no longer exists - after
Bittar ended up, knowing quite well there is very likely a fullscale investigation forming into his Libor transgressions. The first place we went to, naturally, was LinkedIn, not because we expected to find his profile there: very few higher echelon bankers actually post their resumes on LinkedIn, but because we were fairly confident that the very useful function of seeing whose other profiles had been looked at in the context of even a "fake" Bittar, would provide us with clues. Sure enough that's precisely Consensus is for a 0.4 percent what happened. gain in June from May, when Sure enough, the first entry for excluding fuel sales. At that pace, the DB trader is the following: it would represent a 2.6 percent Christian Bittar year-on-year improvement. Owner, SAFETY DYNAMICS Attention shifts to the U.S. at Greater New York City Area 8:30 a.m. with initial jobless Construction claims. Claims are expected to Hardly the person we are looking increase from last week's for. Yet what we were looking for unexpected drop, returning to is right here: the follow up 364,000. profiles of people that are At 10:00 a.m., both the contextually relevant, and correct. Philadelphia Fed manufacturing And again the context, at least report and existing home sales superficially, is anyone connected will be reported. The Philly Fed is to a person who allegedly has expected to remain negative, at -8, been involved in Libor while home sales improve 1.5 manipulation. We get some curious names: Going down the list, it just gets curiouser and curiouser as we go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. The first person: a cursory search reveals the
Southwest Airlines(LUV): $0.32 Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB): $0.35 Philip Morris International (PM): $1.35 VF Corp (VFC): $0.95 Morgan Stanley(MS): $0.38 Verizon Communications (VZ): $0.64 Chipotle Mexican Grill(CMG): $2.30 Capital One Financial (COF): $0.99 E*TRADE Financial (ETFC): $0.11 SanDisk (SNDK): $0.21 percent to an annual rate of 4.62 Google(GOOG): $10.09 NCR(NCR): $0.57 million. Closing out the day at 10:30 Advanced Micro Devices(AMD): a.m. is a meeting in Rome with $0.07 t h e c o u n t r y ' s D e v e l o p m e n t Microsoft (MSFT): $0.62 Minister and UniCredit's CEO. AutoNation (AN): $0.59 Blackstone Group (BX): $0.17 B e l o w , t h e k e y e a r n i n g s Safeway(SWY): $0.49 announcements scheduled for the Consensus estimates provided by Bloomberg. All times are in day. Quest Diagnostics (DGX): $1.17 Eastern Standard Time. UnitedHealth Group (UNH): SEE ALSO MEN OF WALL STREET: This Is What You Will $1.19 Be Wearing Next Summer > KeyCorp (KEY): $0.18 Laboratory Corp of America Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook. (LH): $1.79 Join the conversation about this Travelers Cos (TRV): $1.40 story
rather than Nomura, said one of the people, who asked not to be
stint at RBS is likely about to be exposed too.
Allie Merriam (PopSugar) "Geneva's oldest firm of private Submitted at 7/18/2012 of the PM bankers and one 8:15:18 largest in Switzerland and Europe." There is P news on C r u z a Zrihen i e r no e n e l o p e whether n d J a vhas Bardem had the look of love when been let go by Lombard Odier. they left a Madrid restaurant Yet. today after lunch. Javier the list, Next, we continue down draped h i s a r mreach....nRichardeFell:e ' s until we a r o u d P e n l o p shoulders, while she gripped his Well lookee here: another former handTandRsmiled on their walk I N E E S T R A T E home. She was TRADER, which DERIVATIVES decked out in a flowy dress he likely meal. There means that for their is that as a haveat his current firm Penelope's PM been rumors that BlueCrest pregnant And note and Javier's as well. with her also where second child - they welcomed a BlueCrest is based: Geneva, son, Leo Bardem, in January 2011 Swizterland. - At this point we decide to the but her rep recently denied do stories. Nonetheless,for Christian another search: one the Spanish TV show Espejo Publico recently Bittar and BlueCrest, and guest rana tanotheri nstory, uallegedly wh we f d, co rtesy of c o n f i ra t ie d sb y n t e l l in d s ,c e h a t Deriv m ve I frie gen t: Penelope is indeed expecting. The original LinkedIn list Either way,(much to the likely continues Penelope and Javier have some time to spendSocGen chagrin of at least one in their native Spain thismore CA-CIB trader and one Summer. She just k e r ) , b u upw epressv tourefor b a n wrapped t a h a e s e n Too u g h , With Love, p a t t he'll be e n Rome a n d t h e and e r n i s the next one appearsPR circuit forming: it on the that the b e f o r e S k y f a l l i sallegedly out in bankers who were November.Libor manipulation in View Slideshow involved in some capacity in their previous lives working for banks, decided to quietly depart under mutually acceptable conditions and find new lives, still trading Libor and IR derivatives, in some of the best known, and even less regulated, Swiss hedge funds and private banks. Our question then is the
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"CHINA
month-on-month at current rates, we could see negative year-onyear CPI as early as August/ September. Unlike some other analysts, in other words, I am not concerned about deflation persisting for long unless the PBoC cuts interest rates much more sharply than any of us expect. I know this may sound strange most analysts believe that cutting interest rates will actually reignite CPI inflation but remember that the relationship between inflation and interest rates in China is, as I have discussed many times before, not at all like the relationship between the two in the US. It works in the opposite way because of the very different structure of Chinese debt and consumption. Pettis On China Rebalancing... After many failed attempts, over the past six months we may be seeing for the first time the beginning of Chinas urgently needed economic rebalancing, in which China reduces its overreliance on investment in favor of consumption. Regular readers of my newsletter may be surprised to see me say this. For the past four or five years analysts have been earnestly assuring us that the rebalancing process had finally begun, and I had always insisted that it couldnt have begun yet. Why? Because as I understand it rebalancing is almost arithmetically impossible under conditions of high GDP growth rates and low real interest rates. Once the real numbers came in, it
always turned out that in fact imbalances had gotten worse, not better. Typically many of those too-eager analysts have resorted to insisting that the consumption data are wrong, although even if they are right this does not confirm that rebalancing had taken place since errors in reporting consumption have always been there. But this time seems different. Now for the first time I think maybe the long-awaited Chinese rebalancing may have finally started. Of course the process will not be easy. With Chinas consumption share of GDP at barely more than half the global average, and with the highest investment rate in the world, rebalancing will require determined effort. How to rebalance The key to raising the consumption share of growth, as I have discussed many times, is to get household income to rise from its unprecedentedly low share of GDP. This requires that among other things China increase wages, revalue the renminbi and, most importantly, reduce the enormous financial repression tax that households implicitly pay to borrowers in the form of artificially low interest rates. Forcing up the real interest rate is the most important step Beijing can take to redress the domestic imbalances and to reduce wasteful spending. And this seems to be happening. [Yet] Beijing has reduced interest rates twice this year, and reluctant
policymakers are under intense pressure to reduce them further. [However] The students in my central bank seminar at PKU tell me that there are new rumors about the way the cuts were implemented. Usually it is the PBoC that submits a proposal of rates cut to the State Council, one of them wrote me recently, but this time (July 5th) it was the State Council who handed down to the PBoC the decision to cut rates, so that the PBoC was not fully aware of the rates cut before July 5th. If my student is right (and this class has an impressive track record), this suggests that monetary easing is being driven by political considerations, not economic ones, which of course isnt at all a surprise. But even with the rate cuts, perhaps demanded by the State Council, with inflation falling much more quickly than interest rates the real return for household depositors has soared in recent months, as has the real cost of borrowing. China, in other words, is finally repairing one of its worst distortions. China bulls, late to understand the unhealthy implications of the distortions that generated so much growth in the past, have finally recognized how urgent the rebalancing is, but they still fail to understand that this cannot happen at high growth rates. The problem is mainly one of arithmetic. Chinas investment growth rate must fall for many years before the household
income share of GDP is high enough for consumption to replace investment as the engine of rapid growth. As China rebalances, in other words, we would expect sharply slowing growth and rapidly rising real interest rates, which is exactly what we are seeing. Rather than panicking and demanding that Beijing reverse the process, we should be relieved that Beijing is finally resolving its problems. As an aside, we need to make two adjustments to the trade surplus in order to understand what is really going on within the balance of payments. First, one of the causes of last months weak imports has been a sharp decline in commodity purchases. I have many times argued that commodity stockpiling artificially lowers Chinas trade surplus by converting what should be classified as a capital account outflow into a current account inflow. If China is now destocking, then Chinas real trade surplus is actually lower than the posted numbers. Second, we know that wealthy Chinese businessmen have been disinvesting and taking money out of the country at a rising pace since the beginning of 2010. One of the ways they can do so, without running afoul of capital restrictions, is by illegally underor over-invoicing exports and imports. This should cause exports to seem lower than they actually are and imports to seem higher. The net effect is to reduce the real trade surplus.
Since these two processes, commodity de-stocking and flight capital, work in opposite ways to affect the trade account, it is hard to tell whether Chinas real trade surplus is lower or higher than the reported surplus. But once destocking stops, we should remember that the trade numbers probably conceal capital outflows. How does all this affect the world? In the short term rebalancing may increase the amount of global demand absorbed by China, but over the longer term it should reduce it. Rebalancing will inevitably result in falling prices for hard commodities, and so will hurt countries like Australia and Brazil that have gotten fat on Chinese overinvestment. Rising Chinese consumption demand over the long term and lower commodity prices, however, are positive for global growth overall, and especially for net commodity importers. Slower growth in China, it turns out, is not necessarily bad for the world. The key is the evolution of the trade surplus. There is much more in his email that I wanted to use, but I stretched the bounds of fair use already. Those wishing to see more can follow Michael Pettis on his blog China Financial Markets which I consider one of the very few "must read" sites. The above report should appear on his blog shortly, with more details. Thanks Michael! "CHINA page 43
Economy/ Culture/
43
Three US Aircraft Carriers Now In The Middle East With Fourth En Route
Tyler Durden
planes into Iraq and Afghanistan. Generally, it wouldn't go back to the Fifth Fleet area of A week ago we reported news responsibility for four to five that Middle East veteran aircraft years, after a deployment to the carrier CVN-74 Stennis was W e s t e r n P a c i f i c a n d a e n d i n g i t s b r i e f s a b b a t i c a l maintenance period. But with Iran prematurely, and far earlier than making threats, crew members previously expected, and heading learned Saturday they'll be leaving right back into the field, er sea, of again in late August for eight action. As Kitsapsun reported, months." We concluded that "Bremerton-based aircraft carrier shortly, Stennis will be the third USS John C. Stennis is returning carrier accompanying Lincoln and to the Middle East much sooner Enterprise. As it turns out, a third than expected. The Navy hasn't carrier was already en route, and officially announced the new as of today, CVN 69 Eisenhower deployment plan for the Stennis, is either at the opening of the said spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Zach Straits of Hormuz, or just past it. Harrell." The ship came home to That makes 3 aircraft carriers in Naval Base Kitsap on March 2 the middle east, 2 in the Gulf and after seven months of launching the Arabian Sea and one just off
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:43:21 PM
the coast of Syria. And technically, the LHD 7 Iwo Jima Big Deck Amphibious ship, which is also just off the coast of Iran region, makes three and a half. Which means that a 5th one
(rounded up) - Stennis - is coming in 1-2 months. Good luck Iran. Source: Stratfor So to recap: Four US aircraft carriers. One big deck amphibious warfare ship. One Iran. WTI well
below its 2012 highs even with Bernanke having engaged in yet another flow-boosting Qualitative Easing operation. And One presidential election in 4 months. Average: Your rating: None Average: 3.9( 19 votes) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
"CHINA
Mike "Mish" Shedlock h t t p : / / globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of
market direction. Visit http:// www.sitkapacific.com/ account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka (Holy Kaw!) Pacific. Submitted at 7/18/2012
NYC as worlds largest amusement park [video]

7:51:00 PM
Visiting the Big Apple offers plenty of excitement but not as much as it does when Fernando Livschitz of Black Sheep Films comes to town with his surreal additions of amusement park rides
to the citys most familiar landmarks.
Keep your hands and feet in the car at all times, secure all valuables, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Full story at Vimeo via Kuriositas. Who thought NYC could be any more fun? Permalink| Leave a comment
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Economy/ Gaming/ Culture/
Guest Post: Poor Thieves Go To Jail, Rich Thieves Dont

Tyler Durden
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:50:15 PM
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics, This is more surreal than Barack Ill Bomb Ya Obamas Nobel Peace Prize. From the Mail: A bank clerk who dreamed of becoming a model stole 46,000 from the tills and spent it on plastic surgery and shopping sprees. Rachael Claire Martin, 24, used the cash to fund a boob job, dental work and liposuction, as well as hair extensions and nights out. She took thousands at a time from her Barclays branch in Liskeard, Cornwall, in an eightweek period. Martin initially denied 25 counts of theft in 2010. But on what should have been the first day of a week-long trial, she admitted a single charge of theft
covering the full amount of 46,000. Steal thousands from a bank? You face criminal charges, a trial and jail time. When that same bank manipulates a $600 trillion market by rigging the LIBOR rate for profit? No criminal charges, no trial, no jail time.
In a better world people who rob a company engaged in a manipulative criminal enterprise like LIBOR-rigging would not face criminal charges. There is a case that this girl should be treated as a hero. In stealing the money, she was just getting back a tiny fraction of the money that Barclays stole by rigging LIBOR.
And by spending the money at least she gave the money back to the public instead of stashing it away in the Cayman Islands. I hope she achieves her dream of becoming a model. And I hope the LIBOR-riggers spend a very long time in jail but in reality theres not much chance of that. Average: Your rating: None Average: 4.6( 27 votes) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Use the exFAT File System and Never Format Your External Drive Again [Hard Drives]
Whitson Gordon (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:30:00 PM
Using an external drive between Mac and Windows computers can be a hassle, since you constantly have to reformat it to fit which computer you're using it on. Instead of reformatting it all the time, just use the much more platform-independent exFAT and never format it again. More
Fight Night team developing EA Sports UFC

Mike Suszek (Joystiq)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:30:00 PM
The Fight Night team at EA Canada will develop EA Sports UFC, EA announced today. Since its surprise license acquisition
reveal at E3 2012, EA has kept quiet on the UFC-based game's development. Brian Hayes, who led gameplay design for Fight Night Round 4 and Fight Night Champion, will act as Creative Director for the
Ultimate Fighting title. Team and
Action Sports GM Dean Richards joins Hayes at the front of the development team, bringing in additional experience from Fight Night, along with the NHL and SSX series. Fight Night team developing EA
Sports UFC originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments
Culture/
45
Turn Your Timid Toy Keyboard Up to Justice Department Sues Telecom for 11 Challenging National Security Letter
How-To Wiki (Wired Top Stories)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 6:37:00 PM
Kim Zetter (Wired Top Stories) From Wired How-To Wiki Toy stores are a goldmine of Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:21:00 PM cheap project fodder for DIY Photo: Gini/Flickr hobbyists. As children's musical Last instruments y e amanufactured for are r , w h e n a telecommunications company the part of the population that received an had its destructive hasn't yet ultra-secret demand letter from the FBIby societal impulses smoothed out seeking information about a customer or conditioning, modern-day kids' customers, the telecom took an toys can provide the kind of basic e x t r a o r d icomponents that are electronic n a r y s t e p i t c h a l l e n g e d t h e u n d e r l arms, resilient to thrashing little y i n g authority perfect FBIs National and thus of the for hacking. In Security Letter, as well ashow this how-to, we'll teach you the legitimacy open agag order that to break of the generic toy came withand add a line-out so keyboard it. Both challenges are allowed you can amp it up in ways under a federalfor delicate little inappropriate law that governs NSLs, a power greatly expanded ears. under the Patriot Act written by This how-to was that allows the government ato get detailed Aidan Collins, musician and i n f o r m a t i o nwho lovesebuilding technologist o n A m r i c a n s finances andYou'll Need things. What communications without oversight from a judge. A screwdriver The FBI has issued hundreds of Wire snips thousands of NSLs and been Wire strippers reprimanded for abusing them A soldering iron and solder t h Aupanel l m o s t audioejack -t I'll o g h a mount n o n o f h e requests have1/4" mono jack, but be using this been challenged by the recipients. you could also use an RCA After the or 1/8-inch headphone connector, telecom challenged its N S L l a s t y eif ryou'delike. s t i c e size connector a , t h J u D Resistorse(optional) i t s o w n epartm nt took extraordinary measure: It sued the A Multimeter (not 100 percent c o m p a n y ,butrit's inice to have)r t necessary, a g u n g i n c o u documents that the company was violating the Caseby challenging Cracking the law its authority. keyboard I picked Here is a $20 Thats a pretty intense charge, up featuring a cartoon sponge. according to Matt Zimmerman, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is
This is what a phone recording of the built in speaker, a little thin, eh? The first thing you need to do is to open the keyboard up. Use a screwdriver to remove all the screws holding on the back panel. Here we can see the speaker is held in place by a plastic backing, so well have to remove that as well. This is an 8 ohm speaker, and its even labeled with which wire is the signal and which goes to ground, perfect! On most audio cables, the signal will be the "tip" of cable plug, and the ground will be the sleeve. On the 1/4-inch mono jack I'm using, you can see the big arm part is connecting to the tip of the cable, so connect the wire to the contact point that is connected to the big arm. The sleeve, or ground, of the plug makes a connection with the ring of the jack itself, and you should be able to see which contact point is attached to that. The packaging of the audio jack might also have a diagram if you're confused. Measuring Levels Now, were going to use the signal being sent to the speaker to make our line out, so itd be a good idea to see what voltage this keyboard is putting out. Take the leads of your multimeter and touch them to the solder points where the wires are attached to the speaker. Set the multimeter to read AC voltage, which might appear with this icon: V~.
Audio signals are AC, which means they alternate between positive and negative values. If your multimeter only reads DC voltage (voltage only in one direction) it wont be very helpful here. Play some sound while monitoring the voltage. A line level signal should be around .2V, at most. You can see a lot of different levels on different keyboards and toys depending on how loud they are, or what kind of speaker theyre driving. In this case, Im reading a maximum of .15 volts, which is pretty much right where I need to be. I wont have to add anything to the circuit to get it to line level. Im just going to remove the speaker, and put the audio jack in its place. What would I do if the voltage read higher than .2V? This keyboard has a pretty puny sound output, so its not surprising the voltage was already low. A louder keyboard might read something like 2v, which would be too much for the input of your amp or stereo. In this case you would need to add a voltage divider to your circuit. Applying Resistance R1 and R2 are resistors, R1 connected from the signal lead to the signal connection on your audio jack, and R2 going between the signal and ground connections on the jack itself. The amount of voltage reduction depends on the value of these resistors and the ratio between them. The most common application is to use
100k ohms for R1 and 10k ohms for R2, which would give you a little less than a tenth of the voltage you started with. That would work pretty well if you had started with 2V. If you only needed to cut the voltage in half, use the same value for each resistor, like 50k and 50k. Note: 100k and 10k are the most commonly used values because the output of a typical, decently loud, speaker toy is usually about 2V. The keyboard I had was much less than this, but I also picked the cheapest one I could find. The reduction in voltage is based on the ratio, R2 / R1 + R2, so this setup outputs one-eleventh of the input voltage, reducing it from 2V to under .2V, which is our target. Any two resistors that have the same ratio of values would reduce the voltage to the same level, but having relatively high resistance, in the 1k to 10k range, will also reduce the current by a fair amount. This will help your batteries last a bit longer as well. Luckily, as noted above, my voltage is already in the target range, so I dont need to add a voltage divider to the circuit. I just cut the wires to the speaker and strip them, then use my soldering iron to connect the matching leads to the signal and ground connectors on the audio jack. I think this little plastic grill will make a nice place to hold my audio jack, and itll be easy to snip out an opening just about the
right size. Here it is all soldered and glued into place... ...and then put back together. Easy as pie! Now, if you didnt have a multimeter and followed the steps I did, be careful when you try the sound out. Start with the volume all the way down and slowly raise it as you start playing. If the sound is way louder than youd expect, or if it sounds really distorted, its putting out too much voltage and you should go back and add that voltage divider to your circuit. If it sounds clean and nice, then youre all set! Here's a phone recording of the sounds playing through my stereo after I finished, where Im free to tweak the treble and the bass. Nice! All photos by Aidan Collins for Wired This page was last modified 23:33, 18 July 2012 by amyzimmerman. Based on work by howto_admin. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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Culture/
Phoenix Pastor Jailed Over Home Bible Study to Serve 3 Years?

(Christianpost.com > Most Popular)
Featured Posts Entertainment The Dark Knight in You What, exactly, is worth saving in Gotham City? Callous, cruel, corrupt and ... July 17, 2012| 3:38 pm The Arizona pastor who is currently imprisoned for hosting regular Bible studies at his home may have to serve up to three years for violating his probation. Michael Salman, an ordained pastor of Church of God in Christ and the founder of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Phoenix, appeared in court Monday on charges that he violated his probation by continuing to hold Bible studies on his 4.6 acre property with more than 12 people, and for failing to pay over $12,000 in fines. The Phoenix Municipal Court had earlier ruled that Salman was not to have more than 12 people at his home until he met the city's building codes, fire codes and other safety codes. "He was found guilty of violating that (12 people limit) today. So in two to four weeks supposedly the court will decide what they are going to do in terms of his violation," said John Whitehead, Salman's attorney and founding president of the legal group The
Rutherford Institute, to The Christian Post after the Monday court hearing. "The prosecutor is arguing for more jail time." READ FACT SHEET FROM THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE Whitehead noted that 15 to 20 people were meeting in Salman's home for Bible study after the court's order of a 12-persons limit. "[They brought him to court] to see if they are going to extend the 60 days in jail," he said. "He is on three year probation, which means that he could get up to three years in jail." Follow us Last Monday, Salman began his 60-day jail sentence at Maricopa County Jail for hosting Bible studies twice a week in his home. A Phoenix court found him guilty of 67 code violations in connection to failing to comply to the city's building, fire, safety, and zoning codes. The city of Phoenix argues that Salman's case is not about religious freedom but about public safety. In an interview with CP, the city prosecutor or chief prosecutor for Phoenix, Aaron J. Carreon-Ainsa, noted that five judges have looked at Salman's case, including two U.S. district judges and an appellate judge, and have affirmed the conviction. "We are interested in ensuring
that people are provided a safe place in which they can worship," said Carreon-Ainsa. "We don't want a tragedy that we sometimes read about in third world countries where people are gathered for whatever purpose and they perish because of a fire or some other situation that they are not able to protect themselves [from]..." READ FACT SHEET FROM THE CITY OF PHOENIX Salman, who is a father of six, has been hosting Bible studies on his property for the past 7 years. The city of Phoenix began interacting with Salman about zoning concerns starting in 2006, when the Zoning Administrator informed him that his property was analogous to a church and therefore he should adjust his home to comply with the Zoning Ordinance. According to the City of Phoenix Prosecutor's Office, the city has repeatedly asked Salman to comply with the safety codes and "he chose to ignore these requests for voluntary compliance prior to the commencement of any proceedings." But Brad Dacus, founding president of the Pacific Justice Institute which has defended several home Bible study cases weighed in and disagreed with the city's argument.
"The city is dealing with a 5-acre parcel of land. Based on the information we have received, there are no bona fide health or safety concerns that have been brought to light," said Dacus to CP on Tuesday. "There have been no injuries incurred by any individuals that have come to gather for this purpose. There are no imminent risks of injuries for anyone gathered for this religious purpose. And there are no bona fide nuisances that have arisen since its usage. "This attempt by the city of Phoenix is an overbearing usage of their authority in a manner that is clearly not warranted." In a YouTube video, the Salmans give a tour of their large property, emphasizing that the dozens of cars that come to their home for the Bible study are parked behind their private gate on their property and not on the streets. A notable discrepancy is that while Salman says around 30 to 40 people usually gather at his home, the city says that up to 80 people with seating for a hundred is common. Salman and his attorney decry the city's harsh punishments meted out over a home Bible study to be in violation of the defendant's religious freedom. Dacus also commented on the most recent court hearing, "To the extent to which the city of
Phoenix has placed this limitation of only 12 people being able to meet in this home, such a narrow limitation is suspect as necessary and it seems arbitrary in terms of the number selected and as well as who they chose to enforce it." PJI recently successfully defended a local Christian Bible group meeting in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., that was vulnerable to a controversial city code that required all religious, fraternal or nonprofit organizations of three people or more to obtain a conditional-use permit for hosting meetings, including Bible studies. The couple hosting the Bible group faced a $300 fine for violating this code. PJI successfully convinced the city of San Juan Capistrano to adopt a new policy that now allows up to 40 people to meet in a private residence without a permit. But the news is not as positive for Salman, who still faces a $12,180 fine and may have his 60-day jail sentence extended in a few weeks by the court. Clarification: July 17, 2012: An article on July 17, 2012, about an Arizona pastor who is currently serving a prison sentence for hosting a weekly Bible study held in a building that PHOENIX page 47
Culture/ Finance/
47
Fifty Christians Burned Alive in Pastor's Home in Nigeria

PHOENIX
in Nigeria in the village of Maseh were burned alive after they took refuge in their pastor's house July 16, 2012| 11:47 am following a terrorist raid. (Photo: REUTERS/Stringer) "Fifty of our church members Security officials assess the scene were killed in the church building of a bomb blast in Nigeria's where they had fled to take northern city of Kaduna April 8, r e f u g e . T h e y w e r e k i l l e d 2012. Suspected members of alongside the wife of the pastor Nigerian Islamist sect Boko and children," said the Rev. Haram have killed four people Dachollom Datiri, vice president and a large undetonated bomb of the Church of Christ in Nigeria, was found in Kano on Monday, in a July 11 interview. authorities said, a day after at Officials from the church least 36 people were killed in a confirmed that over 100 members car bomb near a church in were killed through various northern Kaduna. Picture taken v i l l a g e s i n N i g e r i a , w h i c h April 8, 2012. included Maseh, Ninchah, Kakkuruk, Kuzen, Negon, Reports disclosed that over 100 Pwabiduk, Kai, Ngyo, Kura Falls, people were killed by armed Dogo, Kufang, and Ruk. terrorists this past week, who "Nigeria is truly becoming the went on a 12-village killing spree new killing field for Christians. in Nigeria's Plateau state. Islamic Hundreds of Christians have extremist group Boko Haram has already been brutally murdered once again taken responsibility for including women and children the assaults. by the Boko Haram," said Open Different sources have shared Doors, USA spokesman Jerry various reports of the number of Dykst. "The Boko Haram earlier lost lives from last week's assault this week said that all Christians on Christians, which have been need to turn to Islam or 'they occurring on a weekly basis for would never know peace again.' many months in Nigeria. But a Their goal is make all of Nigeria a story last week by the Baptist country run and dominated by Press confirmed that about 50 Shariah law." members of the Church of Christ Follow us
Some Nigerian security officials have claimed that Muslim Fulani tribesmen, who populate the Plateau State, could have aided Boko Haram in their bid to get rid of Christians from the North and establish Islamic dominance over all of Nigeria. "I don't think that Boko Haram could, out of nowhere, have raided these villages. They couldn't do that without local support and collaboration," said Nigerian criminal justice consultant Innocent Chukwuma. "Attacks on Christian villages are not new in Plateau State, as Fulani tribesmen are known to have raided Christian communities in the past," further explained Heritage Foundation Africa analyst Morgan Roach. "Should Boko Haram be responsible, this would deviate from its past tactics, which have tended to be more sophisticated," he added. Nigeria's citizens have been critical of the government's response to the on-going attacks, and have called for more to be done to counter Boko Haram's terrorism activities. Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has also called
upon the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee for the U.S to officially declare Boko Haram a terrorist organization that the international community needs to battle against. "This would be the equivalent of designating Bin Laden as a terrorist, but failing to designate al -Qaida as a terrorist organization," Ortisejafor told the committee in response to only select members of Boko Haram being branded as terrorists. "There are certain Muslim extremists who believe that Nigeria must be an Islamic nation [and] Boko Haram is the body that is fronting for this group of persons [Nigeria] has a very well divided population among the two major religions [Christianity and Islam], so it's not possible to Islamize Nigeria," the pastor added. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
violated the city's building safety codes originally reported that five judges found Michael Salman guilty. Aaron J. Carreon-Ainsa of the City Prosecutor's Office in Phoenix clarified that there was only one trial and the other judges reviewed the case and affirmed the conviction. READ: FEDERAL COURT ERODES RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
PayPal helps eBay profits more than double

Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:53:29 PM
eBay more than doubled its second-quarter net profit due to higher revenue from its PayPal online payments business and its e -commerce websites.
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Culture/ Featured/
Televangelist Juanita Bynum Confesses: I've Been With Women

responsibility for my life and not doing the blame game to say 'oh, this is their fault;' I took full July 17, 2012| 9:41 am responsibility in every area "I've been there and I've done it because every choice that I made, all. I did the drugs, I've been with nobody put a gun to my head. I men, I've been with women. All made those choices due to a lack of it," she said July 13 on the of wisdom." "Frank & Wanda in the Morning" Follow us radio program. Continuing, she stated, "I'm not Host Frank Ski immediately insecure about being around r e s p o n d e d w i t h : " A r e y o u people who have issues and serious?" struggles because I've been there The unexpected confession was and I've done it all." m a d e a s t h e s e l f - p r o f e s s e d That's when she disclosed her prophetess was on the Atlanta- past sexual relations with women. based station to discuss her "Get Following Ski's "are you serious" Y o u r L i f e B a c k " t h e a t e r question, she answered, "Every production. The stage play bit of it." starring Bynum, Anthony Dalton "It's my life." and Miss Venetia "Princess" "That abuse I suffered was Lewis tackles true life issues, because I attracted after my own shame and guilt, according to a kind," Bynum added. "That abuse description of the show. was already sitting in me. I had Bynum was asked by Ski to already abused myself mentally speak on the power of purpose and emotionally for years trying and how to bounce back from to fill a void that only the power struggles or trauma. of purpose can fill. She responded, "I've been there "You can have sex with 50,000 ... but I think the minute I allowed people, you can do drugs until the somebody to help me to take full cows come home. But the void
that you're trying to fill is a void that's been put there by the Creator and it's called purpose and destiny and until you accept that you're going to walk around the living dead." Following the brief interview, a listener, Lisa Lewis, tweeted, "@SandraRose Did you hear @DrBynum (Juanita Bynum) admitt to having sex with women on @V103Atlanta? Another closet confession. I am shocked." A couple of days later, Bynum also made several follow-up comments on her Twitter account. "If my life's testamony offends you then good ..now you can go serve christ for real because he will Never dissappoint you ever!!!" she tweeted on July 15. "Testamony is what you get after something has been put to death!.Maybe that's why we don't see a lot of them. You got to kill it to tell it!" The 53-year-old also posted: "And they OVER CAME him(SATAN) by the blood of the lamb and by their TESTAMONIES!!! When we
expose the enemy we OVER THROW HIM FOR GOOD!!" "You don't get anointed because God likes you ..you get anointed when he breaks junk out of your life!" "A Life of Transparency causes people to see christ in you and thru you!!!" Bynum was married twice and was the victim of domestic abuse in both marriages. Her latest divorce occurred in 2008 after Bishop Thomas W. Weeks III pleaded guilty to assaulting Bynum in a hotel parking lot. READ: MY STORY HOMOSEXUALITY, DRUNKENNESS, GRACE AND REDEMOTION This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Remains of the Day: AT&T Shared Data Plans Coming in August [For What It's Worth]
Craig Lloyd (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:00:00 PM
AT&T announces shared data plans, YouTube launches new face-blurring editing tool, Evernote for Mac updates with Retina support and Activity Stream, and Bing gets Foursquare integrations. More
TIJABP
(Dave Winer)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:08:04 PM
I'd like to propose a new acronym. TIJABP.
This. Is. Just. A. Blog. Post. In other words, this is not the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Or the Treaty of Versailles or
even legally binding. It's not Hey Jude or Beethoven's 9th. Not Catcher In The Rye or Annie Hall.
And it's definitely not the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. (Yo Mookie!) It's just a blog post, so read it that way.
Twas written quickly, by one (busy) person, who then moved on to something else.
Culture/ Sports/ Gaming/
49
10 strange/wonderful boat races

(Holy Kaw!)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:38:00 PM
The races are strange, but the title refers to the boats. With a little ingenuity, you can build a boat, loosely defined as a flotation device, out of anything! 1. Beer Can Regatta The Beer Can Regatta is an annual event at Mindil Beach organized by the Lions Club of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. The participating boats are all made of beer or soda cans! The highlight of this years regatta, held Sunday, was the appearance of Extravacans, an enormous motor-powered boat constructed of 30,000 cans! A new category was created for the much bigger superboat, which it won as the only entry. In the main race, called The Battle of Mindil, the winner was The Flying Posties. There were other races and competitions in various categories. As you can see here, it is customary to slow down ones
An audio walkthrough of Pid's soundtrack

Richard Mitchell (Joystiq)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:59:00 PM
In this video, you will not only find a copious amount of into about the soundtrack created by Retro Family for Pid, you'll also c o m p e t i t i o n b y a n y m e a n s Now the race is open to anyone, i n s i g n i f i c a n t m a t e r i a l s a r e see lots of juicy Pid footage, available. Photograph by Brad and accompanies a downtown allowed, but the results are always including some shots of developer Fleet. festival. The only rules are that good for a laugh. Prizes were M i g h t & D e l i g h t ' s e a r l y 2. Homemade Watercraft Race the boats must be human-powered given for boats that won the race, prototypes. It's come a long way The New Paltz Regatta is for and homemade. boats that sank, creative designs, from a kid with triangles for legs. homemade boats of all kinds. This 3. Minimal Regatta b e s t c o s t u m e s , a n d o t h e r An audio walkthrough of Pid's years race took place on April The 21st Annual Schooner Wharf categories. See pictures of the soundtrack originally appeared on 29th in New Paltz, New York. Bar Minimal Regatta was held in event. Joystiq on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 The annual event began in 1955 Key West over Memorial Day See the rest at mental_floss. 23:59:00 EST. Please see our when it was launched by the the weekend. These boats are made of A l l t h e t o p s t o r i e s f r o m terms for use of feeds. Delta Kappa Fraternity of SUNY a sheet of plywood, a couple of m e n t a l _ f l o s s . Permalink| Email this| Comments (State University of New York). 2x4s, and duct tape. A few other Permalink| Leave a comment
Muschamp expects Gators to improve in his second year - NBCNews.com

By DAVID JONES Tampa Bay Online (- Bing News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:15:59 PM
Tampa Is the glass half-full or half-empty at Florida? Will Muschamp makes it sound like it's
overflowing, in spite of a 7-6 finish in his rookie year as head coach that was the first six-loss season for the Gators since 1987. The last coach to lead the UF football program to a season of just seven wins? Ron Zook in...
Read More This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five
Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
50
Culture/ Featured/
Worlds largest playable guitar hits just the right chord with kids
A Google-a-Day Puzzle for July 19
(Holy Kaw!)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:25:00 PM
Guitars have seen some rough usage in the history of rock n roll, but none so much as the worlds largest electric guitar Ken Denmead (Wired Top because others may publish their madnesses]. Find that Socrates c u r r e n t l y o n d i s p l a y a t Stories) answers before you do, if you taught about them, and his ideas Pittsburghs Carnegie Science want to be able to search for were recorded by his student, Center as part of the touring Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:01:00 PM information without accidentally Plato. Search [Socrates four e x h i b i t i o n d e s i g n e d b y t h e Our good friends at Google run a seeing the answer somewhere, divine madnesses famous play] to N a t i o n a l G u i t a r M u s e u m . daily puzzle challenge and asked you can use the Google-a-Day find that in Platos Phaedrus, Built by Houstons Academy of us to help get them out to the sites search tool, which will w h i c h u s e d S o c r a t e s a s a Science and Technology using geeky masses. Each days puzzle automatically filter out published character, he spoke of: Love, aircraft cable for strings, the 43.5will task your googling skills a answers, to give you a spoiler-free Poetry, Prophecy and the Mystic foot Gibson Flying V is a fun way little more, leading you to Google experience. R i t e s ( r e l i e f f r o m p r e s e n t for kids to learn about the science mastery. Each morning at 12:01 And now, without further ado, we h a r d s h i p ) . of sound and acoustics, or simply a.m. Eastern time youll see a new give you This entry passed through the bang away at the huge instrument puzzle, and the previous days TODAYS PUZZLE: Full-Text RSS service if this is as kids are apt to do. answer (in invisitext) posted here. A Revolutionary War colonel, your content and you're reading it Dennis Bateman, the Exhibit SPOILER WARNING: famous for resisting a siege at on someone else's site, please read Experience Director, embraced We leave the comments on so Fort Stanwix, had a grandson who the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content- the idea of bringing the behemoth people can work together to find became a literary legend. Whats only/faq.php#publishers. Five to the museum as soon as he the answer. As such, if you want the grandsons name? Filters recommends: Incinerating heard about it: to figure it out all by yourself, YESTERDAYS ANSWER Assange - The Liberal Media Go "Line it up," he said. "The idea DONT READ T H E (mouseover to see): To Work. that it was something that was COMMENTS! Search [ancient Greek actually playable, and there were Also, with the knowledge that p h i l o s o p h e r f o u r d i v i n e
acoustic demonstrations and properties that people could try out, was great," he said. Though kids arent usually encouraged to climb on or bang instruments, considering its usage in the history of rock, it might be the perfect experience for a budding young guitarist. Full story at Pittsburgh PostGazette. Video via WTAE @ YouTube. The biggest instrument in rock (sorry drummers!). Permalink| Leave a comment
Romney in Ohio: 'I Feel That We're All Catholic Today'

John McCormack (The Weekly Standard)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:30:00 PM
At a townhall-style campaign event in Ohio on Wednesday, Mitt
Romney was asked by a voter about his views on Barack Obama's "attack on religious freedom." Romney replied: Religious liberty, our first
freedom of those enumerated in the Bill of Rights. And the president and his administration said they are going to usurp your religious freedom by demanding that you provide products to your
employees, if you're the Catholic church, that violates your own conscience.
Culture/ Featured/ Science/
51
The Dark Knight Rises Beyonc Gets Stars Get Stylish For Back to Her City Their London Premiere Routine With Blue
Allie Merriam (PopSugar)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:13:20 PM
Lauren Turner (PopSugar)

Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:14:49 PM
Beyonc Knowles debuted a new braided hairstyle as she carried her daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, out of Bergdorf Goodman in NYC today. Blue, who is already 7 months old, was wrapped up in her mom's arms, but her tiny hands and feet peeked out from under the blanket. It's been a fun Summer for Beyonc and her family so far. She kicked things off with a concert series in New Jersey over Memorial Day weekend, then traveled to the UK to check out Jay-Z's Watch the Throne tour in June. Jay-Z and Beyonc also attended the BET Awards earlier this month in LA. Beyonc and Jay-Z were back out in Manhattan on Monday to
celebrate Nas's new album at Bagatelle. Beyonc is also getting involved in the upcoming presidential election by creating a video to show her support for Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. In it, she reads a letter she wrote to Michelle to thank her for being a role model to young women. View Slideshow
The stars of The Dark Knight Rises gathered in London this evening for their UK premiere. Anne Hathaway wore a Gucci gown with an intricate neckline to pose on the carpet with costars Tom Hardy and Christian Bale. Marion Cotillard, one of Dior's spokeswomen, showed her brand loyalty in an ensemble from the Christian Dior Couture collection designer Raf Simons sent down the runway just two weeks ago. Both Anne and Marion changed up their looks since Monday's NYC debut of The Dark Knight Rises. For the Big Apple screening, Anne wore white Prabal Gurung and Marion also
Enter the Popular Science/InnoCentive Mercury Removal Challenge

donned a light, poufy Dior creation. The final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is out in both the US and the UK Friday, and so far, critics are nearly uniform in their praise for the finished product. View Slideshow
Dan Nosowitz (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:10:12 PM
Goodbye Jeremy Lin

(Dave Winer)
basketball in 2012. I was glad to get to go to one of the Linsanity games at the Garden, with three Well the Knicks had something, friends. The Knicks beat the and let it go. Mavericks at the Garden, 104-97. I think next year I'll either be a Read the NY Times account for a Houston Rockets fan or just keep sense of the moment. t h e f o n d m e m o r i e s o f N Y Jeremy Lin enters the pantheon
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:20:11 PM
of NY sports folklore. No matter how the rest of his career turns out, he'll always have a place in our hearts. Alongside such great characters as Mookie Wilson, Casey Stengel, Marv Throneberry. And there's a little Jackie Robinson in there too.
Maybe it's good that we get to close the book on Jeremy Lin as a Knick, now -- before the story becomes more mundane and less heroic. Somehow it's gotta be good or it would be just plain heartbreaking sad.
Mercury Pour Wikimedia Commons A great new challenge from InnoCentive, with a nice hefty prize, all centering around improving natural gas operations. Mercury, which as we all know is highly toxic, is present in low concentrations in natural gas. There are lots of methods to remove it, but they could definitely be better--and that's where you come in. If you can figure out a new idea for removing mercury, you'll win $10,000. But hurry up--there are already 54 solvers engaged with the challenge. The deadline for submission is August 19th. Read about it over at InnoCentive.
52
Politics-Left/ Social Media/
US says Assad 'losing control' of crisis

(AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE))
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:55:56 PM
they ended the call divided over the best way forward. The United States has said Syrian "They noted the differences our President Bashar al-Assad was governments have had on Syria, losing control of his country and but agreed to have their teams urged Russia and the international continue to work toward a community to get behind a solution," the White House said political transition plan to avert in a statement. sectarian civil war. With Russia opposed to what it "The window is closing, we need sees as a Western-led attempt to to take action in a unified way to dictate the outcome of Syria's help bring about the transition that crisis, the UN Security Council the Syrian people so deserve," delayed until Thursday a proposed said Jay Carney, the White House vote on a US-backed resolution s p o k e s m a n , t o r e p o r t e r s i n that threatens Damascus with Wednesday. sanctions if it does not stop using President Barack Obama called heavy weapons and withdraw Russian President Vladimir Putin, troops from towns and cities. A s s a d ' s m a i n i n t e r n a t i o n a l Russia has indicated it will likely supporter, after a veto the measure. D a m a s c u s b o m b b l a s t Losing control reportedly killed Syria's defense The White House, reiterating the minister and Assad's brother-in- US view that Assad's days are law, throwing the 16-month old numbered, said the international rebellion onto an unpredictable community must now come path. together around a political The White House said Obama transition plan to establish a discussed the deteriorating Syrian democratic order in Syria after situation with Putin, whose Assad departs. government has repeatedly "The sooner this transition blocked efforts to rally the UN happens, the greater the chance Security Council behind tough we have of averting a lengthy and measures against Damascus. bloody sectarian civil war and the But while the two leaders agreed better we'll be able to help Syrians on the need to stop the violence, manage a stable transition to both Russian and US officials said democracy," said Tommy Vietor,
another White House spokesman. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking earlier, said Syria was lurching into dangerous territory and emphasised that Assad's government would be held responsible if it failed to safeguard its chemical weapons sites. "This is a situation that is rapidly spinning out of control," Panetta told a Pentagon news conference. US officials said they did not have any information on Assad's whereabouts, and declined to speculate on who might have been behind the attack. US blacklist Pushing ahead with unilateral sanctions, the US Treasury on Wednesday added 29 Syrian officials including virtually all of Assad's cabinet to the official US blacklist. The US also designated one company controlled by Rami Makhluf, who the Treasury statement called a "crony" of Assad, as well as five companies linked to the Syrian government agency responsible for nonconventional weapons programs. Syria's undeclared chemical weapons stockpile, believed to be the largest of its kind in the Middle East, has been reported to include a nerve agent,
mustard gas and cyanide. Western and Israeli officials have said in recent days that the Assad government appears to be shifting some chemical weapons from storage sites, but it is not clear whether the operation is merely a security precaution. The Syrian government denies carrying out the operation. Officials said they had no indication Syria had lost control of any of its chemical weapons, but Panetta warned that the US would be watching closely. "We've made very clear to them that they have a responsibility to safeguard their chemical sites and that we will hold them responsible should anything happen with regards to those sites," Panetta said. 619 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Electronic Health Records Become Mainstream

Amanda Pittman (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:33:35 PM
A large part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is aimed at making patients' health records more accessible between multiple physicians, as well as between doctors and their patients. Part of this initiative has been to implement the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. These systems allow easy sharing and accessibility for all parties involved in making your healthcare decisions. In addition to saving time, they also reduce the number of errors sometimes made in written files. Ideally, with the use of EHR systems you could move to a different state and it would be easier for your new doctor to receive a current file from your Continue reading... More About: CDC, EHR, HITECH, NCHS, electronic health records, healthcare, healthcare reform
Politics-Left/ Social Media/
53
Damascus blast 'kills' top Assad officials

Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:34:55 PM
Syria's defence minister and interior minister are among those killed after an explosion struck the National Security building in Damascus during a meeting of cabinet ministers and senior security officials, state media have reported. Defence Minister General Rajha and his deputy, Assef Shawkat, the brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad, were reportedly killed on Wednesday in the deadliest assault on government officials since the violence began 16 months ago. Also reported dead were Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim alShaar and General Hassan Turkmani, a former defence minister and currently Syria's deputy vice president, who later died of his injuries, The head of the national security office, Hisham Bekhtyar, was among those seriously wounded in the bombing that took place as ministers and security officials were meeting in the district of Rawda, according to state TV. The government announced that Fahad Jassim al Feraj had been named new defence minister. Liwa al-Islam, an Islamist rebel group whose name means "The
Brigade of Islam", claimed responsibility for the blast. The group said in a statement on its Facebook page that it "targeted the cell called the crisis control room in the capital of Damascus". The attack was also claimed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA). "This is the volcano we talked about. We have just started," FSA spokesman Qassim Saadedine said. 'Significant' attack Rajha, 65, is the most senior government official to be killed in the Syrian civil war as rebels battle to oust Assad. A former army general, Rajha was also the most senior Christian government official in Syria. Assad appointed him to the post last year. State media said several other participants in a top-level meeting who were wounded in the blast had been rushed to Al-Shami hospital in the capital. Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, the capital of
neighbouring Lebanon, said: "The fact that [the attack] happened near where the president lives is significant." "It seems it is a very serious explosion and we are not sure if its a suicide bomber in a car, or if its one of the bodyguards, or one of the insiders who blew himself up as a high-level meeting was taking place with a number of ministers and high level security official attending it," Amin said. The explosion came as clashes beween the Syrian military and the Free Syrian Army in Damascus entered a fourth straight day. In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria Fighting was also reported in the central district of al-Midan, where rebel fighters are holed up. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Government forces and tanks were deployed in areas inside and around Damascus following the violence, activists said. Street-tostreet battles were taking place
across the city, sources told Al Jazeera. "When you're talking about clashes taking place in at least seven or eight parts of Damascus then they are affecting the entire city," said Al Jazeera's Nisreen elShamayleh, reporting from Amman, Jordan. "Al-Midan is a ver big Sunni neighbourhood in the heart of Damascus. Many of the other areas are also close to security installations and government offices and buildings. so these are very significant clashes taking place in the heart of Damascus," she said. The SOHR said that more than 60 soldiers had been killed in clashes with the FSA fighters in the past 48 hours, but there was no independent confirmation of the claim as foreign media is barred from reporting inside Syria. 588 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
A Marketplace for Authentic Designer Fashion

Lauren Indvik (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:00:23 PM
Name: Hello La Mode Quick Pitch: A place to buy and sell designer goods. Genius Idea: A third party verifies the authenticity of purchases before payments are transferred. Search for a designer handbag on eBay, and you're likely to come across more than a few fakes. The auction site has made general efforts to prevent the selling of counterfeit goods -- namely, by agreeing to take down items at the request of brand owners, or that users report to be "suspicious." Despite those sanctions, shoppers still must rely largely on their own knowledge of a product -- the brand of a zipper, the shape of a buckle -- to determine if an item they're looking at is the real thing. Continue reading... More About: Hello La Mode, bizspark, ebay, fashion, retail, startup
54
Politics-Left/
UN council postpones Syria resolution vote

Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:58:37 PM
The United Nations Security Council has postponed until Thursday a vote on a Westernbacked resolution that threatens Syrian authorities with sanctions in a bid to end the 16-month conflict, Russia's UN envoy said. "A possible vote has been postponed until tomorrow morning," Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador, told reporters on Wednesday after a meeting of the envoys of the council's five permanent members, adding that further talks on the measure would be held. International envoy Kofi Annan had requested the delay amid differences between Moscow and the resolutions Western sponsors over whether Damascus should be threatened with sanctions. UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged the council to "shoulder its responsibility and take collective and effective action". "Time is of the essence. The Syrian people have suffered for too long. The bloodshed must end now," Ban said in a statement. Russia has vowed to veto the
resolution drawn up by Britain, with the backing of France, United States, Germany and Portugal. The resolution proposes non-military sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter if President Bashar al-Assad does not halt the use of heavy weapons within 10 days of a resolution being passed. Russia accused the West of inciting the Syrian opposition after the defence minister and Assad's brother-in-law were reportedly killed in a bomb attack, arguing that a proposed UN resolution amounted to support for the rebels and would lead to more bloodshed. In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria "Instead of calming the opposition down, some of our partners are inciting it to go on," Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday. Supporting the Syrian opposition "is a dead-end policy, because Assad is not leaving voluntarily", he said. Despite the probable delay in the vote, there was no sign that
Russia has withdrawn its veto threat. "We cannot accept Chapter VII and the section about sanctions," Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said in Moscow on Wednesday. 'Need to act' Foreign ministers from the five permanent Security Council members - Russia, United States, France, Britain and China - were still negotiating the future of the resolution, diplomats said. The mandate of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) ends on Friday and
without a resolution the UN may have to hurriedly withdraw the nearly 300 unarmed observers now in Damascus. Russia, Assad's main ally, and China have vetoed two council resolutions which just hinted at sanctions. Rare insights into life in Homs under daily shelling More than 17,000 people have been killed since a popular uprising against Assad began 16 months ago, activists have said. "Decisions should be taken by people in Syria, the Syrian people," Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
the Turkish prime minister, said during a press conference in Moscow with Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. "This process being prolonged is resulting in more and more massacres being committed by Assad, just like his father." Following the Russia-Turkey press conference, Al Jazeera's Jennifer Glasse noted that both Russia and Turkey had said that they were backing the option preferred by the Syrian people. "Russia believes what the people want is no intervention," she said. "Russia is very clear that it wants its resolution passed, and that it will not back any resolution that will impose sanctions." 579 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Products/ Social Media/
55
FDA approves weight loss drug Qsymia, but we say skip it

rss@consumerreports.org (Consumer Reports)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:25:32 PM
FDA approves weight loss drug Qsymia, but we say skip it The Food and Drug Administration Tuesday approved Qsymia, a combination of the stimulant phentermine and the anti-seizure drug topiramate extended-release, to help obese and overweight people lose weight. But our medical advisers say the pill should be avoided because it can cause several serious side effects. According to the evidence submitted to the FDA, Qsymia appears to help people drop a few pounds. In studies, obese and overweight people who took Qsymia for one year lost 3.5 to 9.3 more pounds than those who took a placebo. But that small benefit is probably not worth the risks of birth defects, heart attacks, and strokes. In fact, two years ago the FDA rejected the drug, then called Qnexa, due to these concerns, and it is not clear why the FDA reversed course this time, since those side effects are still an issue.
The drug also carries a warning that it can increase heart rate and should not be used by people who have heart disease or have suffered a stroke. Due to the heart concern, Vivus, the manufacturer of Qsymia, is required to conduct a study to determine whether the drug poses a risk of major cardiovascular problems, including heart attack and stroke. Also too, pregnant women should not take Qsymia because it increases the risk of their children being born with a cleft lip or palate. Qsymia will only be available through specially certified pharmacies under a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, which is intended to inform doctors and patients about the possibility of birth defects. "The very idea that a post marketing risk evaluation strategy was a condition required by the FDA for approval of this combination drug product seems like putting the cart ahead of the horse," says Marvin Lipman, M.D., chief medical adviser for Consumer Reports. "Such a study may very well result in
preventable mortality and morbidity, a high price to pay in exchange for a few pounds of flesh." Qsymia contains several additional warnings, including that it can increase the risk of glaucoma, kidney stones, mood problems such as anxiety and depression, and suicidal behavior or thinking about suicide (ideation). "This drug should only be used in the confines of a research trial in which consumers have been fully informed of its risks and benefits and, someone is responsible for the complications that occur. All the rest of us should wait until we know a lot more about its safety," says John Santa, M.D., director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. Bottom Line: We recommend avoiding all weight-loss drugs and
supplements. Their benefits are usually marginal. And even if they do help you to shed a few pounds, the side effects can be troublesome and even dangerous. If you need to lose weight, increasing exercise and limiting portion size when it comes to food are better options. Additional links: How to control your weight[Consumer Reports] Weight-loss drugs: Alli and Xenical (Orlistat): Slim benefits and embarrassing side effects[Consumer Reports] Lose weight, stay active: Six small changes can help keep off pounds[Consumer Reports] Sources: FDA approves weightmanagement drug Qsymia[FDA] Panel recommends FDA approve weight loss drug Qnexa[Consumer Reports] Subscribe now! S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences
IOC Enhances Its Social Presence

Sam Laird (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:12:16 PM
With the 2012 Summer Olympics officially beginning in just over a week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a number of new features designed to boost the Games' social presence and engagement with fans. The Olympic Athletes' Hub-- an online social destination launched in April to provide verified Twitter and Facebook feeds of past and present Olympians -- is getting two new features. First up is a section called Inside the Olympic Village, which will host a series of live chats over the coming weeks. The IOC is encouraging people to follow @Olympics on Twitter and Facebook.com/Olympics for updates on who will be chatting when. An Olympic Challenge page is also schedu Continue reading... More About: Social Media, olympics, sports
56
Products/
LG adds a hidden compartment to its French -door fridge
No Deal In Sight To End Viacom Blackout On DirecTV

Chris Morran (The Consumerist)
continue to work toward a resolution. DirecTV has claimed that Consumer Reports News your household's calendar, and Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:50:18 PM Viacom is asking for a $1 billion (Consumer Reports) more. Enhanced ice and water dispenser It's been a week since DirecTV price increase on its bundle of Submitted at 7/18/2012 1:59:59 PM design is another innovation you'll and Viacom's contract dispute channels, which includes some of LG adds a hidden compartment find on some of the latest resulted in nearly 20 million the highest-rated cable networks to its French-door fridge refrigerators. Our top-rated satellite customers staring at blank but also several niche channels. Refrigerator doors continue to get French-door refrigerator from LG screens instead of MTV, Comedy Last week, after the two parties more innovative, with the debut is one of several models on the Central, Vh1, Nickelodeon and were unable to agree to a new this week of LG's Door-in-Door m a r k e t w i t h a n e x t r a - t a l l several other Viacom-owned contract -- or extend the one French-door bottom-freezer. The missed our recommended list. dispenser that can fit pitchers and stations. Now the broadcaster is they've had for seven years -31 claimed-cubic-foot fridge We'll report more on the LG has other oversized containers. And telling viewers not to get their DirecTV pulled 26 Viacomfeatures a magnetically sealed soon as we get it into our testing GE's brand new French-door hopes up for a quick resolution. owned channels from its offerings I n a s t a t e m e n t r e l e a s e d and replaced them with a loop of compartment on the right door labs. refrigerator is the first of its kind Wednesday afternoon, Viacom CEO Michael White explaining that you can access without If you haven't shopped for a to dispense hot and cold water claims that it "made a significant the situation. opening the entire refrigerator. refrigerator in awhile, you'll alike. As the blackout continues, Besides making it easier to reach notice other innovations affecting These new refrigerator doors are and comprehensive compromise frequently used items, say a milk door design. For example, several nifty, but if you're in the market proposal" last week that would DirecTV has been offering carton or bottle of ketchup, the manufacturers have added a for a new fridge, you should pay have had all the channels restored discounts to customers angry door-in-door is a potential energy horizontal drawer between the close attention to what's going on by Friday morning. It says there about the blackout. It has also saver. freezer and refrigerator on some i n s i d e t h e u n i t . C o n s i s t e n t have been further proposals made m a d e e i g h t E n c o r e m o v i e While LG calls the feature French-door models. See our temperature control, convenient -- the latest was sent over to channels free through the end of proprietary in its news release, it's r e v i e w s o f t h e S a m s u n g storage features, and optimal DirecTV last night -- but... July. similar to Kenmore's Grab-N-Go RF4287HA, $2,600, and the GE efficiency will deliver the most "Unfortunately, DIRECTV has This entry passed through the door on its Elite 7206 French- Profile PGSS5PJX, $2,400, to satisfaction over the long haul. moved backwards significantly Full-Text RSS service if this is door refrigerator, which we l e a r n m o r e a b o u t t h i s We've reviewed more than 250 and created more obstacles to your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read recently reviewed. Don't expect c o n f i g u r a t i o n . refrigerators to help you find the reaching an agreement." any patent infringement lawsuits, Refrigerator doors are also model that's right for you. "[I]ts now clear that they have no the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentintention of working with us to only/faq.php#publishers. Five however, since LG actually becoming more interactive with Subscribe now! manufacturers many Kenmore the advent of Wi-Fi enabled LCD S u b s c r i b e t o expedite a resolution and return Filters recommends: Incinerating refrigerators. The question is, how screens embedded in the front ConsumerReports.org for expert our 26 networks to DIRECTV Assange - The Liberal Media Go w i l l t h e L G ' s p e r f o r m a n c e panel. Samsung's French-door Ratings, buying advice and subscribers," the company writes. To Work. c o m p a r e w i t h t h a t o f t h e model RF4289, $3,500, includes r e l i a b i l i t y o n h u n d r e d s o f However, Viacom says it will Kenmore? In our review, the one of these displays, and it products. Update your feed Kenmore delivered very good comes with various apps designed preferences t e m p e r a t u r e c o n t r o l a n d to generate recipe ideas, store efficiency, though it narrowly
Products/
57
McDonalds Denies There Was A Apple Has To Post Note On Physical Altercation With Scientist Its Locker Saying Samsung Didnt Copy Its Homework Wearing Computer Glasses
Mary Beth Quirk (The Consumerist)
publishing public statements that Samsung had copied it. "They are Mary Beth Quirk (The It reads in full: before all the facts are known. entitled to their opinion," he said. Consumerist) Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:00:12 PM We share the concern regarding O u r g o a l i s t o p r o v i d e a Apple is currently embroiled in [the customer's] account of his welcoming environment and Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:00:30 PM July 1 visit to a McDonalds in stellar service to McDonalds As a result of a UK court's ruling various other patent lawsuits that Samsung hadn't copied around the globe, including HTC Yesterday the Internet world was Paris. McDonalds France was customers around the world. abuzz when a scientist known as made aware of [his] complaints The scientist writes in his blog Apple's designs of products like and Google. Those companies are t h e " f a t h e r o f w e a r a b l e on July 16, and immediately that his eyepiece was broken the iPad and iPhone, a judge is all leveling copying charges computing" accused employees at launched a thorough investigation. when he was shoved outside the now ordering Apple to explain to against each other, with fights in a F r e n c h M c D o n a l d ' s o f The McDonalds France team has s t o r e , c a u s i n g i t t o t a k e everyone that said ruling exists. Germany, Netherlands and the physically assaulting him because contacted [the customer] and is photographs of the employees he Apple shouldn't be too upset, U.S. just between Apple and of his special glasses. At the time, awaiting further information from s a y s w e r e i n v o l v e d i n t h e though. After all, that judge also Samsung. McDonald's said on its France him. altercation. He also claims his said Apple's designs were way Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims based on Facebook page that it was I n a d d i t i o n , s e v e r a l s t a f f photos show the alleged perps cooler than Samsung's. The notice of the ruling has to be such generic designs, innovation investigating the matter. Today, members involved have been tearing up his doctor's note and the company says there was no interviewed individually, and all documentation explaining his posted on Apple's UK site for six in the industry could be harmed months as well as in British and consumer choice unduly "physical altercation." independently and consistently special eyewear. A s p o k e s p e r s o n i s s u e d a expressed that their interaction M c D o n a l d ' s S t a f f D e n i e s newspapers and magazines, in limited, Samsung said in a statement to Andy Greenberg at with [the customer] was polite ' P h y s i c a l A l t e r c a t i o n ' W i t h order to correct any impression statement after the hearing, while that Samsung had infringed on its Apple declined to comment. Forbes, confirming that the man and did not involve a physical C y b o r g S c i e n t i s t [ F o r b e s ] Apple Must Publish Notice had been asked to leave the altercation. Our crew members This entry passed through the copyrights, said the judge. It basically amounts to publishing Samsung Didnt Copy IPad In restaurant, but didn't have a policy and restaurant security staff have Full-Text RSS service if this is against wearing a computer informed us that they did not your content and you're reading it an ad for Samsung, as no business U.K.[Bloomberg] eyepiece to back up that decision damage any of [his] personal on someone else's site, please read likes to even mention a rival on its This entry passed through the b y s t a f f . " I t s u p t o e a c h possessions. the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content- own homepage, notes Bloomberg. Full-Text RSS service if this is restaurants discretion to establish While we continue to learn more only/faq.php#publishers. Five In the July 9 ruling, the judge your content and you're reading it its rules, she said. about the situation, we are hearing Filters recommends: Incinerating said consumers wouldn't confuse on someone else's site, please read T h e s t a t e m e n t a l s o s a y s f r o m c u s t o m e r s w h o h a v e Assange - The Liberal Media Go the Galaxy tablets and iPads for the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentthe simple reason that Samsung's only/faq.php#publishers. Five customers shouldn't jump to questions about what happened. To Work. stuff is "not as cool." He did, Filters recommends: Incinerating conclusions before the facts are W e u r g e e v e r y o n e n o t t o however, decline a bid from Assange - The Liberal Media Go known. speculate or jump to conclusions Samsung to issue an injunction To Work. that would prevent Apple from
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Products/ Sports/
Capital One fined $210 million for deceptive marketing

Consumer Reports News (Consumer Reports)
Penn State to decide Paterno statue's fate in 7-10 days - YAHOO!

(- Bing News)
to the $25 million fine assessed by the CFPB. The enforcement action also requires the bank to Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:24:59 PM stop the sales and marketing of Capital One fined $210 million any add-on product that promises for deceptive marketing debt suspension, debt The one-year-old Consumer cancellation, and credit and Financial Protection Bureau identity monitoring. handed down its first enforcement Earlier this year, the Consumer action today slapping Capital One f o r g i v e s s o m e c r e d i t - c a r d R e p o r t s M o n e y A d v i s e r bank with millions of dollars in payments and debt if a customer newsletter analyzed creditfines for deceptive marketing l o s e s a j o b , b e c o m e s m o n i t o r i n g a n d I D - t h e f t tactics used by the bank's vendors i n c a p a c i t a t e d , o r d i e s - - t o p r o t e c t i o n p r o d u c t s , m a n y to pressure or mislead its credit- consumers who were ineligible marketed by banks, and found that card customers into paying for b e c a u s e t h e y w e r e a l r e a d y they provide questionable value to "add-on products." unemployed or disabled when consumers. Capital One agreed to pay $210 they signed up. Others weren't To pick the right credit card for million in fines and restitution, told that the programs were your spending habits, see our including $150 million to some voluntary, while others were credit card buying guide, which 2.5 million customers who bought enrolled without their consent, includes common credit card credit monitoring or "payment and then had difficulty when they gotchas to look out for. Subscribe protection" services between 2002 tried to withdraw from the now! and 2012. Consumers with low programs. Customers will get S u b s c r i b e t o incomes and low credit scores either a check in the mail or a ConsumerReports.org for expert were misled about the benefits credit to their account. Ratings, buying advice and and costs of the programs by call The action was taken in reliability on hundreds of center vendors when they had coordination with the Office of products. Update your feed their cards activated. For instance, the Comptroller of the Currency, preferences some call center representatives which also slapped Capital One sold "payment protection"--which with a $35 million fine in addition
officials covered up Sandusky's abuse for years while demonstrating a callous disregard (Reuters) - A decision on whether for the victims. to remove Penn State University's Paterno was fired by Penn State's statue of its late head football board in November, days after coach Joe Paterno will be made in Sandusky was arrested for the seven to 10 days, a school abuse, and died in January of lung spokesman said Wednesday, amid cancer at age 85. calls for it to be taken down in the The statue hails Paterno as the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sex winningest coach in major college abuse scandal. football history. The university's board of trustees A small plane flew a banner will decide in that time whether around Penn State's campus on the statue will be taken from Tuesday that read, "Take the Beaver Stadium in State College, statue down or we will." Pennsylvania, where Penn State Sandusky, 68, awaits sentencing. p l a y s i t s f o o t b a l l g a m e s , He faces up to 373 years in spokesman David La Torre said in prison. an email. (Reporting by Joseph O'Leary; Critics have increased calls for Editing by Daniel Trotta and the 7-foot (2.1-metre) statue to be Vicki Allen) removed following the release last This entry passed through the T h u r s d a y o f a r e p o r t t h a t Full-Text RSS service if this is criticized Paterno for his role in your content and you're reading it protecting Sandusky, a former on someone else's site, please read a s s i s t a n t c o a c h w h o w a s the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentconvicted of sexually abusing 10 only/faq.php#publishers. Five boys over 15 years. Filters recommends: Incinerating The report by former FBI chief Assange - The Liberal Media Go Louis Freeh said Paterno and To Work. other high-ranking Penn State
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:47:21 AM
Sports/
59
Lin Says He Would Have Preferred to Stay with Knicks - New York Times Blogs
NATE TAYLOR (- Bing News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:05:42 PM
David J. Phillip/Associated Press Jeremy Lin will be getting used to this look again. LAS VEGAS The Knicks made their decision Tuesday afternoon not to match the $25.1 million offer sheet Jeremy Lin signed with the Houston Rockets, thus allowing their most popular player in a decade to walk away. And so far, the Knicks have made it clear they are comfortable enough with their conclusions on Lin that the teams top executives will not speak on the matter. On Wednesday, a team spokesperson said General Manager Glen Grunwald and Coach Mike Woodson would not talk to the news media to discuss how or why the Knicks chose not to retain Lin, the 23-year-old point guard who became a global sensation in February. Lin, however, did give insight on his free agency in an interview with Sports Illustrated. In it, he
said Grunwald called him at his parents home in Palo Alto, Calif., about 11 p.m. Eastern time. The conversation was brief with Grunwald saying: We wanted to keep you, but it couldnt work out. Tell your family I say hello, and good luck the rest of the way. A few minutes later, once Lin knew he was a Houston Rocket, he went on his verified Twitter page to speak directly to fans. Extremely excited and honored to be a Houston Rocket again!! #RedNation Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) 18 Jul 12 Much love and thankfulness to the Knicks and New York for your support this past yeareasily the best year of my life #ForeverGrateful Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) 18 Jul 12 During the off-season, Grunwald said that he wanted to keep Lin a number of times. Lin also expected to be playing next season in Madison Square Garden. Honestly, I preferred New
restaurant in Los Angeles. Woodson was saying, Youre going to be a starter, youre going to be a big part of the team, Lin said. I came away really excited. Woodson told the news media Friday that the Knicks would match Houstons offer and that indeed Lin would be his starter. It appeared those sentiments changed Saturday when the Rockets, in an effort to make it more difficult on the Knicks, restricted the offer sheet to have the third year of the backloaded contract be $14.8 million, an increase of $5.5 million from the original offer. York, Lin told Sports Illustrated. Lin was told by the Knicks I love the New York fans to during free agency that they death. Thats the biggest reason would pursue other point guards why I wanted to return to New to play with him. The list included York. Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Andre He added, But my main goal in Miller and Raymond Felton. free agency was to go to a team When the Knicks signed Kidd, that had plans for me and wanted Lin said he felt the Knicks were me. going to match Houstons offer When free agency began, Lin sheet. Lin didnt feel the same said he met with Woodson at a once the Knicks acquired Felton
in a sign-and-trade deal with the Portland Trail Blazers. Feltons signing was the first time when I thought, Oh, wow, I might not be a Knick, Lin said. Lin will fly to Houston on Wednesday and is expected to be introduced in a news conference Thursday. Lin thanked the Knicks fans again in a statement he released Wednesday afternoon. The way the fans fully embraced me and our team was something Ill always cherish forever, Lin said. It was an extraordinary and unforgettable time that was easily the best year of my life. Now I am excited to be back with the Rockets. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
60
Gaming/ Science/ News Photos
QuakeCon 2012 to have playable Dishonored, Doom 3 BFG Edition

Jessica Conditt (Joystiq)
Fans married kaka photos, cried on his wedding day New York Daily News
(news photos - Google News)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:03:34 PM
id Software; Ted Price, President and CEO of Insomniac Games; Chet Faliszek and Tom Leonard QuakeCon 2012 kicks off August from Valve Software; and Geoff 2 in Dallas, Texas, and details K e i g h l e y , h o s t o f S p i k e ' s about its sweet gaming offerings G a m e T r a i l e r s . " are coming in. First, the Quake Minecraft EDU and PVP will Live tournament will see also have a presence at professional and amateur players QuakeCon. At Bethesda's own compete for a share of $30,000 in booth, QuakeCon attendees can the Duel Invitational Masters g e t t h e i r h a n d s o n b o t h Championship, Capture the Flag Dishonored and Doom 3 BFG Open, Duel Open and Free For Edition. All, the last of which will be Continue reading QuakeCon available to attendees at the 2 0 1 2 t o h a v e p l a y a b l e Quake Live Free Play booth. Dishonored, Doom 3 BFG Edition Registration for the Quake Live QuakeCon 2012 to have playable tournament is open now through Dishonored, Doom 3 BFG Edition July 31 on the Quakecon site. originally appeared on Joystiq on The annual keynote address will Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:00:00 EST. be handled by id Software co- Please see our terms for use of founder John Carmack. The full feeds. p a n e l l i n e u p i s s e t t o b e Permalink| Email this| Comments announced in a few days, but it will include "Marty Stratton from
Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:00:00 PM
Geoengineers Will Release Tons of Sun-Reflecting Chemicals Into the Air Above New Mexico
Colin Lecher (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
multimillion dollar geoengineering research fund from Bill Gates) and James Anderson, will release the Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:30:00 PM T o p o f t h e A t m o s p h e r e chemicals from a balloon 80,000 Wikimedia Commons feet above Fort Sumner, then Even if they can be a major measure the effects on the ozone's disaster for people nearby them, chemistry. (To answer the big volcanoes do one good thing: question: no, this can't be pulled helping to cool the planet by off in a lab.) This will be a test, sending sun-reflecting chemicals not a full-on attempt to stop into the stratosphere. Now two climate change, the researchers Harvard engineers are trying to say, and it won't have any major replicate the better part of the effects on the environment. volcanic process on a small scale Nonetheless, geoengineering by spraying thousands of tons of s t r a t e g i e s l i k e t h i s a r e s u l f a t e a e r o s o l s i n t o t h e controversial, to say the least. atmosphere above New Mexico. [ The Guardian] Within a year, the researchers, David Keith (who manages a
CBC.ca Fans married kaka photos, cried on his wedding day New York Daily News New Delhi, July 19 -- When Rajesh Khanna said in an electric fan commercial recently that no one could steal his fans from him, he was not joking. All the ooh-ing and aah-ing that girls do for their male idols today holds no comparison to how crazy... Rajesh Khanna Dies: Best Images Of Bollywood's First Superstar [ PHOTOS] International Business Times all 1,267 news articles
Science/ Politics-Right/ News Photos
61
Victoria's Secret Designer is Giving Private Spaceflight a Makeover

Clay Dillow (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:33:43 PM
Photos: Dodgers Beat Phils in 12th - Los Angeles Daily News

Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:21:56 PM
FFD's Next-Gen Spacesuit, Under Development via Kickstarter A Brooklyn-based startup is designing a next-gen spacesuit for the space tourism industry An unlikely duo has launched an unlikely commercial space company in an unlikely place. A former Roscosmos (that's the Russian space agency) employee and the designer famous for crafting the Victoria's Secret angel wings are teaming to create nextgeneration space suits for the commercial spaceflight industry in Brooklyn. Final Frontier
Design yesterday cleared its funding goal on Kickstarter by more than $7,000, and is on its way to developing a new breed of intra-vehicular space suit. These new spacesuits are designed with the space tourism
most importantly--trimming the per suit price tag. That's not to say it will be cheap; FFD is trying to bring a suit to market for $50,000. Still, that beats out the price of NASA's suits by a long shot. According to their Kickstarter pitch, FFD is trying to construct their suit and put it on the way toward NASA certification by the end of the year. If they pull it off, their 3G suit could be skirting the heavens aboard commercial space market in mind. Building on vehicles within the next few years earlier iterations of spacesuits --no angel wings required. More t h e y ' v e d e s i g n e d , N i k o l a y over at Co.Design. Moiseev and Ted Southern are [ Co.Design] focusing on extending the operating pressure envelope, reducing weight, and--perhaps
Photos: Dodgers Beat Phils in 12th Los Angeles Daily News Photos: Dodgers Beat Phils in 12th. Posted Jul 18, 2012. Tweet. Matt Kemp hits a two-run homer in the 12th inning beat the Phillies 5-3, Wednesday, July 18, 2012. DS19-DODGERS-PHILS-MB. 1 of 19. The Dodgers Matt Kemp watches his two-run homer in... and more
Obama Has 'A Lot on His Plate' and Can't Meet with his Jobs Council
(The Feed)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:38:09 PM
Via HuffPo: President Barack Obama has not met with his jobs council for six months because he has too much on his plate, White House press secretary Jay Carney said on
Wednesday. Theres no specific reason, except the president has obviously got a lot on his plate, Carney said during the daily White House briefing. But he continues to solicit and receive advice from numerous folks outside the administration about the economy about ideas that he
can act on with Congress or administratively to help the economy grow and help create jobs. The 26-member Presidents Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has not officially met since January, according to a Politico report. That article suggested that the group of
business executives and CEOs might be reticent to appear with Obama as his reelection campaign heats up. . . At least Jay Carney did say, Hey, I know three different jobs councils. Which one do you mean? Greg Pollowitz This entry passed through the
Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
62
Health/
HIV Cure Is Closer As Patient's Full Recovery Inspires New Research

Richard Knox (Shots - Health Blog)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:02:00 PM
[7 min 49 sec] Download Richard Knox/ NPR Timothy Ray Brown, widely known in research circles as the Berlin patient, was cured of his HIV infection by a bone marrow transplant, doctors say. His story
inspired scientists to look for new ways to vanquish the disease in other patients. Ask AIDS researchers why they think a cure to the disease is possible and the first response is " the Berlin patient." That patient is a wiry, 46-yearold American from Seattle named Timothy Ray Brown. He got a bone marrow transplant five years
ago when he was living in Berlin. Brown, who now lives in San Francisco, is something of a rock star in the AIDS community. He has made himself endlessly available to researchers, who regularly bleed and biopsy him to learn as much as possible about his amazing cure. "I have sort of a guilt feeling about being the only person in the
world who's been cured so far," Brown said in an interview with NPR. "I'd like to dispel that guilt feeling by making sure that other people are cured." The transplant was to cure leukemia unrelated to his HIV infection. The German doctors gave Brown a new immune system from a bone marrow donor who is immune to HIV by virtue
of a genetic mutation shared by 1 percent of Caucasians. Brown stopped taking his HIV drugs at the time of the transplant. Five years later, he's still free of HIV drugs and apparently free of HIV. And he's still the only person to be cured of HIV, doctors say, although everyone HIV page 63
63
HIV
acknowledges that bone marrow transplantation is not something that could be used routinely for this purpose. Dr. Steven Deeks at San Francisco General Hospital is following Timothy Brown closely. He's an organizer of a two -day symposium on curing HIV this week in advance of the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. Until recently, Deeks says, it was virtually taboo to use "HIV" and "cure" in the same sentence. "It was the C-word," he says. "It was something that we weren't allowed to talk about. We weren't allowed to pursue. I'm not entirely sure why it got to that point." One big reason is research back in the late 1990s that showed how HIV hides out in certain immune cells. They're called memory cells because they contain a memory of all the infections we encounter in life. They stand ready to attack if a germ reappears. "HIV has really taken advantage of this very fundamental aspect of the immune system and found a way to essentially hide in these long-lived T-cells," says Robert Siliciano, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Years ago, Siliciano showed that HIV-infected memory cells hang around for 60 or 70 years basically, a lifetime. But the virus invariably roars to life again as soon as somebody stops taking antiviral drugs. "People actually began to think
this was not going to be a problem that we could solve in the foreseeable future," Siliciano said in an interview. That's changed. Lately Siliciano and others have discovered that some drugs such as one that treats alcoholism, another that fights cancer can wake up the sleeping cells and cause them to spit out hidden AIDS viruses. The goal is to purge HIV from its secret reservoirs throughout the body. Scientists hoped the memory cells that harbored them would be killed in the process, wiping out the HIV reservoirs. Unfortunately, they were wrong. "That's been one of the recent discoveries that's been a little bit discouraging," Siliciano says. "Some of the drugs we thought would turn on latent HIV in fact do that, but the cells don't die. Nor are they readily killed by the immune system." Researchers think it might be possible to make a vaccine that would prime the immune system to mop up infected HIV cells after a drug smokes the virus out. Researchers are also on the trail of drugs that are more efficient at purging HIV. Richard Knox/ NPR Nurse Priscila-Grace Gonzaga with Gregg Cassin, a San Francisco gay man who has been infected with HIV since the early 1980s. He's a volunteer in a cutting-edge gene therapy experiment to see whether HIVinfected people can be given an immune system that is
invulnerable to HIV infection. Other scientists are pursuing a different approach gene therapy. It aims to re-create the Berlin patient's cure, without a risky and expensive bone marrow transplant. Gregg Cassin is a human guinea pig in an experiment sponsored by Sangamo Biosciences, a California-based company. His experience provides a tantalizing clue that gene therapy against HIV might work. Cassin thinks he got HIV in the early 1980s. He didn't start antiviral treatment until his immune cell counts plunged to near-zero. He's watched many friends get sick and die from AIDS while he's remained healthy. Last year Cassin volunteered for the gene therapy experiment. "I wanted to get into the next exciting thing in research," he says, "and completely by accident, I found out I had one of these mutations, the CCR5 mutation." That's the same mutation that Brown's bone marrow donor had the genetic quirk that makes him immune to HIV. But Cassin has only one out of two possible mutations, while the Berlin patient's donor has both. So Cassin is only partly protected. But it may explain why he has survived so many years of HIV infection without treatment. In the gene therapy trial, researchers took out some of Cassin's immune cells and treated
them with a chemical called a zinc -finger protease that knocks out both CCR5 genes. Then they grew billions of these engineered cells and injected them back into Cassin. After a few weeks, according to plan, Cassin stopped taking antiHIV drugs. He was off therapy for several weeks. But then he panicked. "This is the part I feel a little bit bad about, a little embarrassed about," Cassin says. "But my viral load shot up, and I got nervous. So I went back onto treatment." He may have panicked too soon. Two weeks later, Cassin got the results of his latest blood test, which had been done just before he resumed treatment. It showed the amount of HIV in his blood had started to drop sharply, even without antiviral drugs in his system. "My body was taking care of it," he says. Scientists will never know whether his viral load, as it's called, would have continued to drop, as Brown's did after a similar initial spike. That will take many more patients who have more definite and lasting benefits. The same goes for other wouldbe cures. Most researchers think in the end the answer will be a combination of approaches. Meanwhile, Brown is still teaching scientists lessons. Recent research suggests a few of his cells may still contain traces of HIV, or rather, HIV genes. But if
that's true, researcher Deeks says it doesn't seem to matter. "The consensus on what actually happened," Deeks says, "is that he's cured clinically. Whether there's any virus left, we're not sure. But we can't detect anything that can replicate, and his immune system is no longer really responding to the virus. Which to us suggests that the virus must be almost gone." If so, "almost gone" may be good enough and that's an important insight. As they say, more research is needed. I asked Brown if he's going to put up with being poked and prodded for years to come. "I think so," he says. "Until there's a cure, I'm going to keep working for it. And well, hopefully, one day I won't have to do it any more" because he'll be just one of many cured of HIV. "That would be nice," he says. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
64
Health/
Prostate Cancer Surgery Shows No Benefit For Many Men

(Shots - Health Blog)
published. Overall, the researchers found no Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:03:00 PM difference in rates of death from iStockphoto.com any cause, including prostate Surgery for prostate cancer cancer, among men who had their shouldn't be an automatic choice, prostates surgically removed a new study says. compared to those who didn't. Finally, the results from a Preliminary results were released decades-long study that compared more than a year ago. surgery for prostate cancer to The newly published conclusion: careful monitoring have been "Our findings support observation
for men with localized prostate cancer, especially those who have a low PSA value and those who have low-risk disease. Up to two thirds of men who have received a diagnosis of prostate cancer have a low PSA value or low-risk disease, but nearly 90% receive early intervention typically surgery or radiotherapy." The findings appear in the latest
issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. IN 2011, Dr. Timothy Wilt, the lead author on the paper, presented findings from the study, called PIVOT for short, at a meeting of urologists in Washington. Thousands of doctors, many of whom routinely perform prostate surgery, sat silent as the evidence suggested
that waiting was a reasonable choice for men whose cancer hadn't spread and appeared to be a low risk to their health. The federally funded PIVOT study looked at the health of 731 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1994 and 2002. They were randomly assigned to PROSTATE page 65
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have their prostates surgically removed or to be observed. After follow-up of about 10 years, a little fewer than half of the men in each group had died. Now that the data have been subjected to peer review and have been published in an influential journal, they may get even more attention. "Overtreatment of prostate cancer is a well-recognized phenomenon," Dr. Durado Brooks, of the American Cancer Society, said in a statement about the paper. "Observational management has been recommended for some men for over a decade, yet 9 out of 10 U.S. men diagnosed with prostate cancer continue to receive definitive therapy (usually surgery or radiation)." Prostate surgery has risks and side effects, including incontinence and impotence. The PIVOT results may help give
doctors and patients more confidence that waiting can be OK, he said. "Some 30 to 40 percent of men diagnosed with prostate may be candidates for observation, many men have never heard of observational management and are never informed that this may be a reasonable option for them." Some doctors have already gotten the message. "For my practice it's not going to change much," urologist Benjamin Davies, a cancer specialist at the University of Pittsburgh med school, told Shots. The PIVOT results "confirm our suspicions that treating low-risk prostate cancer in older men is not helpful." In his reading of the study, there is a survival benefit for patients with high-risk cancers. For men whose PSA results were greater than 10 and who had surgery, the rate of death from any cause was lower than for men with similar
PSAs who didn't have surgery. An accompanying editorial pointed out some shortcomings in the study, including the fact that about one-fifth of men didn't stay in their assigned group. But it notes that the results from PIVOT and some other trials show "that a national focus on PSA screening and treatment for prostate cancer may have a marginal benefit on the lifespan of men but at a considerable cost." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
PM fails to rule out more austerity

(Evening Standard - News)
Students' online photos of California tests delay release of scores - Los Angeles Times
Submitted at 7/18/2012 10:46:02 PM
89.3 KPCC Students' online photos of California tests delay release of scores Los Angeles Times Student photos of state standardized tests posted on social
networks have caused a two-week delay in the release of scores and could result in more serious ramifications for nearly 150 California schools. In a letter sent to all state school districts... Calif. probe finds no impact of online test photos Sacramento Bee all 28 news articles
and we have to have sustainable debts. I can't see any time soon Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:50:07 PM when the pressure will be off." David Cameron has conceded He continued: "I don't see a time that he cannot envisage a time when difficult spending choices when the UK economy will not be are going to go away. under pressure as he failed to rule "We are in a very difficult out austerity measures having to situation. There is some good continue into the next decade. news, we've just seen inflation fall Falling inflation was good news, again. he told The Daily Telegraph in an "But I don't deny for a minute that interview conducted before the it is a lot tougher than the p u b l i c a t i o n o f i m p r o v i n g forecasters were expecting." unemployment statistics. But he He added: "We've had one of the said the situation remained "a lot longest and deepest recessions for tougher than forecasters were decades in Britain. It was an expecting". incredibly tough set of Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy circumstances and it has proved Heywood warned last month that very hard to get out of those the fiscal reform challenge facing situations. public services across the board "But I think the plan we have has could stretch as far as 2020. given people confidence that the In 2010 the Government set out a Government has a grip and knows five-year austerity programme but what needs to be done." Chancellor George Osborne has This entry passed through the already been forced to extend that Full-Text RSS service if this is to 2017. your content and you're reading it Asked if the austerity programme on someone else's site, please read may continue right through the the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentnext five-year parliament, Mr only/faq.php#publishers. Five Cameron told the newspaper: Filters recommends: Incinerating "This is a period for all countries, Assange - The Liberal Media Go not just in Europe but I think you To Work. will see it in America too, where we have to deal with our deficits
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Solar Company Leaders Blame China, Not Loan Process, for Bankruptcy
Michael Sandoval (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 5:09:01 PM
Chinese government subsidiesas much as $35 billionwere responsible for the downfall of Abound Solar, not a flawed federal government loanapproval process, according to testimony delivered before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today. Executives from the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer pointed to predatory pricing by Chinese solar companies underwritten by the Chinese government subsidies as the reason for the Colorado firms failure. But questions of sound decision-making in granting the sizable loans and allegations of political pressure applied to hasten their approval went unresolved during the hearing. Craig Witsoe, Abounds former CEO, told committee members in his written statement that aggressive price-cutting employed by Chinese companies drove the price of solar panels down as much as 50 percent in 2011. David Frantz, acting executive director of the Department of Energy loan program, said department marketing analyses
during the loans approval process in 2009. Republicans have focused on the connections between Abound Solar and Bohemian Companies, an investment firm owned by Democratic mega-donor Pat Stryker. It wasnt unusual to have bipartisan support for them and it wasnt unusual for individual D e m o c r a t s a n d Republicansmembers of Congress and state legislatorsto call on individual projects, said Jonathan Silver, former executive director for the DOE loan program office. When asked about the frequency of receiving calls and letters or requests for face-to-face meetings with legislators, Silver responded succinctly: Constantly. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) contended that questions about improper political pressure appeared to indicate that solar to sell below cost and put Abound as well as bipartisan support, said remained despite protestations panel prices were expected to out of business before we were Tiller in response to questions from DOE officials, Abound decrease only 20 percent by 2020. b i g e n o u g h t o p o s e a r e a l from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D- e x e c u t i v e s a n d D e m o c r a t i c committee members. Company executives and DOE competitive threat to Chinas MD). loan administrators blamed rapidly growing market share, Democrats on the committee This is, in fact, a vast scandal, Abounds demise on Chinese Witsoe said in his statement. were at pains to point out Issa said. market pressures created by the A b o u n d s c h a i r m a n bipartisan support for the loan You cannot blame it all on subsidies and price-cutting, rather concurred. Such a severe market guarantees to companies like China, and you certainly cannot than incompetence or political change made it difficult for Abound, which saw Democratic stand here, sit here, and blame pressures exerted on the part of Abound and others to survive, s u p p o r t i n C o l o r a d o a n d China as though you didnt know government officials in the loan said Thomas Tiller. Republican support in Indiana, that they would be a fierce approval process. Abound drew financial backing according to letters issued by SOLAR page 69 Chinese panel makers were able from investors tied to both parties, House members from each state
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David Frum
(David Frum)
Andrew Sullivan complained yesterday that I had engaged in a McCarthyite attack on Ron Paul by writing the following: A politician isnt answerable for the antics of every one of his supporters. But theres surely a reason, isnt there, that racists, anti-Semites, 9/11 Truthers, and Holocaust deniers are so strongly attracted to the Paul campaign. They hear something. They continue to hear it too, no matter how firmly Ron Pauls more mainstream supporters clamp their hands over their own ears. Andrews riposte: Notice how pure the smear is, enabled and not diminished by the first sentence. Notice the key concept of Beltway ideological policemen: there is a mainstream and a non-mainstream. Dabble with the latter at your peril. Since David has perished by the cult of the mainstream, its odd he should deploy it against others. But to throw in Holocaust denial and 9/11 Truthers for good measure! Really. And notice how particularly cheap and easy it is to use such tactics against a libertarian. The traditional left is often based on collective associations, building a movement out of oppressed groups and their grievances, whether it be class or race or even
sexual orientation. Libertarianism is the opposite. Its about dis associating. When you listen to Paul saying he will not turn anyone away from supporting his platform regardless of their motives or beliefs, you are hearing a reflection of his libertarianism, not his bigotry. He will accept support from any quarter and compared with the corporate money flowing into the other candidates coffers, he is about as independent as a presidential candidate can be. Because he is a radical individualist, he doesnt even understand why he should somehow explain the belief of others, or justify their support. You should ask them, not him. This kind of gotcha-association game is particularly easy because libertarians favor liberty above all, and that will necessarily mean liberty for bigots as well as others. A principled belief in states rights will doubtless lead to more racist and homophobic policies in many states but also, of course, more enlightened and successful inclusive states like Oregon or New York or Massachusetts or California. A rejection of statism might lead to more discrimination in the private sector. But it doesnt mandate it. And it need not encourage it. A noninterventionist foreign policy will allow evil to triumph elsewhere in
the world, because it believes its none of our business or too riddled with unintended consequences to try extirpating. That may be right or wrong, but it is not an approval of the evil of Assad or Ahmedinejad or the North Korean junta. And again, it is actually much deeper an American tradition than permanent warfare. But if you can trot out David Duke or Ayatollah Khamenei as potential Paul supporters, you have a very easy, cheap and essentially McCarthyite target. It saddens me that this kind of tactic works. I still believe that the newsletters, because they were in Pauls name, require a clearer explanation from Paul than the muddled ones he has given. He should not be left off the hook. And his proposals deserve a thorough vetting and discussion. But there is something awry when a candidate is assessed not on his arguments and proposals but on the shadiness and ugliness of some of his fringe supporters. Ron Pauls supporters ask that their candidate not be judged by his associates. Or by the people he chose to employ. Or by the newsletters he published. Or by the book he wrote. Or by the way he earned the largest part of his living when out of office in the 1990s. Or by his purchase of the mailing list of the Holocaust-
denying Liberty Lobby. Or by the radio shows he chooses to appear on. Or by his strategic decision to reach out to racist voters. Or by the conspiracy theories to which he lends credence, from government creation of AIDS to Israeli culpability for the 1993 bombing to a putative 9/11 coverup. And here I thought that libertarianism was a doctrine of personal responsibility? May Ron Paul at least be judged by the words he has spoken with his own mouth within the current campaign? The supporters say no again. When Ron Paul tells an interviewer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made race relations worse, were not supposed to consider what he might mean by better. When Ron Paul warns that a border fence would be used to prevent fleeing American citizens from exiting the country, were not supposed to conclude that hes a paranoid crank. Andrew deploys what might be called the ontological defense of Ron Paul, as follows: 1) Ron Paul is a libertarian. 2) Libertarians espouse individualism. 3) Racism is a form of antiindividualism. 4) Therefore Ron Paul cannot be a racist. That is a demonstration of what
might be called the deductive method of reasoning. But theres another way to study reality: induction. Like this: 1) Ron Paul has again and again exploited bigotry, paranoia, and hate as fundraising devices. 2) Ron Paul is a libertarian. 3) So yes, I guess it is possible for a libertarian to do that. Heres my question for Ron Paul supporters: why the denial of the undeniable? Perhaps you like Pauls message of legalized marijuana? Why not just say so? You dont think its important to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? Argue it forthrightly. If you regard Social Security and Medicare as literally the moral equivalents of slavery, go ahead, make your case. But all this excuse-making, special pleading and jiggering of the rules of evidence so as to exculpate Ron Paul from the record of his whole political life? For what? This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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Evangelical Wheaton College Joins HHS Mandate Lawsuit

Jennifer Marshall (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 3:54:01 PM
Wheaton College, an evangelical institution, filed a lawsuit against the HHS mandate today, joining Catholic University of America in opposing the rules coercive trampling on religious liberty. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Wheaton College in the schools complaint. Left to right: John Garvey, President of Catholic University of America; William P. Mumma, President of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Philip Ryken, President of Wheaton College. Wheaton College, a leading evangelical postsecondary educational institution, has joined the chorus of organizations suing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its mandate requiring nearly all insurance plans to cover abortion drugs and contraception. Wheaton College and other distinctively Christian institutions are faced with a clear and present threat to our religious liberty, said Dr. Philip Ryken, president of Wheaton College, in an announcement today that the evangelical institution has joined a lawsuit with the Catholic University of America (CUA) against the anti-conscience
mandate. Our first president, the abolitionist Jonathan Blanchard, believed it was imperative to act in defense of freedom. In bringing this suit, we act in defense of freedom again. Wheaton College is the fourth
Protestant college to file suit against the HHS mandate (and, full disclosure, this authors alma mater). The Illinois institution joins Colorado Christian University, Geneva College, and Louisiana College. In total, more
than 50 institutions are participating in more than 20 lawsuits. These plaintiffs include Catholic hospitals, religious schools serving inner city children, and ministries providing hospice care and assistance to the
developmentally disabled. The HHS mandate lawsuits take on added significance since the Supreme Court ruling in late June that allowed Obamacare to stand. EVANGELICAL page 70
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competitor, Issa continued, rejecting the explanations provided by the DOE officials and Abounds executives alike. Pushed by Rep. Jim Jordan (ROH), Silver acknowledged that DOE officials considered but ultimately rejected Abounds low ratings from Fitch, prompting this exchange: Jordan: We always come back to this point in these hearings. Did you give the loan guarantee because political connections persuaded you to do it, or did you give it based on the merit? And thats certainly not there. So its either you did it for your buddies, or you were incompetent and said, Were not going to pay attention to what Fitch says, even though it all came true, and were just going to give the money anyway. Its got to be one or the other because there is no other conclusion you can reach. Silver: Well, Congressman, Im not the smartest guy in the room, but Im also not incompetent, so Ill answer the question by saying that we did market analyses, we did financial analyses, we did technical analyses, we did legal analyses, we did regulatory analyses . . . Jordan: And Fitch didnt do that? Silver: Well actually we have more resources on this project, to be candid, than Fitch does.
Jordan: Youve got more resources and they were right, and you were wrong? Silver: Theres no right and wrong in an assessment of what out-year production prices for solar panels are going to look like. Silver ultimately defended the DOEs procedural assessment, arguing that no one could have anticipated such drastic market fluctuations as a result of Chinas aggressive moves in the solar sector. Abound was the recipient of a $400 million loan guarantee from the DOE Section 1705 program, and had drawn down approximately $70 million before DOE officials suspended access to additional funds under the loans agreement. The company had failed to meet important financial benchmarks in order to tap into the loans remaining balance, said Frantz. Frantz defended the loan to Abound and the loan programs financial integrity. Because of the strong protections DOE put in place, the department has already protected more than 80 percent of the original loan amount and expects to recover a portion of the outstanding loan through the course of bankruptcy proceedings, wrote Frantz. Silver argued that the departments green energy
portfolio remained healthy. The expected loss on the Abound transaction, which we are here to discuss today, represents less than four one thousandths of 1 percent of the total financings, Silver wrote. In total, less than 3 percent of the DOE funds invested have gone to failed companies, according to Silver. Frantz defended the loan program offices record on job creation and energy savings as well. Collectively, LPO projects are expected to support nearly 60,000 jobs and deploy alternative energy that will save nearly 300 million gallons of gasoline per year. Of LPOs 19 generation projects, six are already complete and nine are sending power to the electricity grid, Frantz said. Failures like Abound are part of process, Frantz continued: To win the clean energy jobs of the future, the United States must do more than invent technologies; we must also manufacture them, deploy them here at home, and sell them around the world. The production of energy technologies benefits from scale. Simply put, we cannot have a competitive clean energy industry without programs that help spur deployment and markets. Not every company, nor every investment, will be a success but America will be stronger and
more competitive if we continue to support and build a thriving clean energy industry here at home. In testimony provided before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in June, Heritages Derek Scissors argued that following Chinas example in continuing subsidies for questionable clean energy projects, a suggestion raised during Wednesdays hearing, would not be wise. The combined results of this spending and these errors are abysmalwaste, below-average gains in energy efficiency, lack of innovation, greater dependence on foreign sources, and a terrible record on the environment, wrote Scissors, a senior research fellow for Asia economics. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Just What We Need: A Bureaucracy for Professional Boxing

Daniel Dew (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 4:38:40 PM
A recent poll of American voters found that their top concern is the fair and accurate ranking of professional boxers. Not really, of course, but a new bill in the House and the Senate addresses this apparently egregious problem. The Professional Boxing Amendments Act of 2012, introduced in the Senate on June 18 and in the House the next day, would establish a United States Boxing Commission to regulate professional boxing. Other than requiring all professional boxing matches to be approved by the Boxing Commission and defining a knockout, the bill would require organizations that sanction boxing matches to provide to a boxer whose ranking was changed a thorough written explanation for such a change. The penalty is imposed under the law governing perjury. Who says Congress is out of touch with the concerns of the American people? Perjury is punishable by up to four years in prison (18 USC JUST page 70
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The mandate goes into effect on August 1. After that, as employers renew their health plans in the coming year, they will have to comply with the HHS mandates coercive requirement to cover abortion drugs, contraception, and sterilizationregardless of religious or moral objections. As Ryken noted, the narrow religious exemption included in the final rule effectively only applies to churches and will provide no protection for countless religious employers that hold moral objections to the mandated services. In the case of Wheaton, coverage of abortion drugs would violate the commitment to protecting unborn life stated in the schools community covenant, which is signed by faculty, staff, and students. Throughout the spring, the Administration touted a so-called accommodation to the rule for non-exempt institutions. But that accommodation is nothing more than concept and holds no force of law. Moreover, the college views the rumored accommodation as a shell game that does not resolve the moral issue that we have,
Ryken explained today. Damage to religious liberty remains the fundamental problem, and the HHS policy sets an alarming new precedent, as Ryken explained: The mandate, by providing an exemption for churches, but not for other religious institutions like Christian colleges, is in effect to create two classes of religious institutions in the U.S.: those that have full protection for their religious freedom and those who dont. That serious challenge explains the evangelical-Catholic alliance among the plaintiffs, as Ryken noted in a press briefing with CUA President John Garvey today: Wheaton College is a distinctively Protestant institution, in our hiring practices, in our theology, but we have a respect for Roman Catholic institutions and, in this case, we recognize that we have common cause with the Catholic University of America and other Catholic institutions in defending religious liberty. Were, in fact, cobelligerents in this fight against government action. I think the fact
that evangelicals and Catholics are coming together on this issue ought to be a sign to all Americans that something really significant in terms of religious liberty is at stake. All Americans benefit from religious liberty, and we should all be prepared to defend it. Todays news of Wheaton joining the legal challenge should call attention to the seriousness of the HHS mandates threat to religious freedom specifically and the potential for future collisions with conscience under centralized health care policy like that embodied in Obamacare. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
1621 and 18 USC 1623). That punishment is in addition to the one years imprisonment (and $100,000 fine) already authorized by the underlying statute that this bill seeks to amend (15 U.S. 6309). Are we going to send someone to prison for five years if a court decides that his explanation isnt thorough enough, or that he didnt disclose all of the information used to change a boxers ranking, or that he used the wrong adverb? Perhaps the Supreme Court will one day have the opportunity to bless us with its infinite wisdom regarding boxing and what factors the Boxing Commission should use in ranking boxers. (Will this be a new line of questioning in confirmation hearings? Well, tell us Mr./Ms. Smith, how would you judge what makes a good right cross?) This would not be the first time the Supreme Court has graced us with its understanding of the essential elements of a sport. In PGA Tour v. Casey, the Supreme Court was faced with a similar question regarding the meaning of the word golf. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Governments power [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, U. S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 3, to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers
of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a fundamental aspect of golf. We can only hope that the Supreme Court will one day give similar guidance in regard to boxing. After all, it is important enough to be regulated by the government and to send a person to prison. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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Prison report 'disturbing read'

Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:50:08 PM
Sex offenders are being released from prison before going on treatment schemes designed to change their behaviour, inspectors have said. There was a scary and disturbing situation where work to reduce the risk posed by criminals after their release was not happening to any meaningful extent in many jails, the damning report said. Fears that prison staff were being groomed or intimidated by gangs and high-risk sexual and violent offenders also meant greater supervision should be offered by managers, the joint report by the prisons and probation inspectorates said. The report, which said opportunities to reform inmates were being missed, found there were no plans to deliver treatment programmes to one in three sex offenders who needed one. Chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick said the report made for a "very disturbing read".
"What's happening on the ground now in terms of offender management is too poor in too many places and needs to be galvanised," he said. "On the face of it, it is just really disturbing. Sex offenders are being released without adequate interventions to reduce the risk that they will reoffend. However you juggle the priorities, that ought to be somewhere near the top." Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke called for a rehabilitation revolution two years ago, saying that simply banging up offenders and warehousing them in overcrowded prisons was bad value for taxpayers. Mr Hardwick said the management of offenders was missing in "far too many places". "The resettlement side was often in place but the parts that were about assessing risk and addressing the behaviours and attitudes that underpin offending simply weren't there in too many cases," he said. "Of course it's important that people are held securely, of course going to prison
is a punishment, of course it's important that they're held in safe and decent conditions. But if that's all you do, then you are just warehousing people, as Ken Clarke has said. It may be a decent warehouse, but a warehouse nonetheless." Steve Woodgate, the lead inspector, added that risk assessments were "no where near good enough", with one in four prisoners not having had a sufficient assessment. "One in four people in prison in this sample not having been assessed is a bit scary," he said, adding that reviews were done in less than half (42%) of cases. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Samsung Galaxy S III 64GB not discontinued, coming in the 'second half of this year'
Edgar Alvarez (Engadget)
will be determined at the time of release." In other words, not all is Submitted at 7/18/2012 11:22:00 PM lost, though it looks like anyone Yesterday, rumors about the wanting to grab one of these is meaty 64GB GS3 model having going to have to wait it out on the reached a discontinued status sidelines for just a little longer. started circulating around the Filed under: Cellphones i n t e r w e b s - - m u c h t o t h e Samsung Galaxy S III 64GB not disappointment of power users discontinued, coming in the looking to snag the roomy 'second half of this year' originally handset. As it turns out, however, appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Samsung's told The Verge that Jul 2012 23:22:00 EDT. Please this is far from the truth, saying see our terms for use of feeds. the proportionally spacious Permalink| The Verge| Email this| Galaxy S III is coming "during Comments the second half of this year," but also noting this "may vary and
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Miliband demands review of G4S

Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:50:09 PM
gathering of his party's candidates to be the first elected police and crime commissioners (PCCs) in Labour leader Ed Miliband wants England and Wales, will say that G4S to be barred from taking on ambition must be put on hold. any more government contracts "Before they are awarded any new until its competence has been policing contracts, we need a reviewed in the wake of the r e v i e w o f G 4 S ' s a b i l i t y t o Olympic security scandal. deliver," he will tell them. Mr Miliband will use a speech to His call comes amid reports that demand a moratorium on any new a request may be made for up to public money being awarded to 2,000 additional troops to plug the giant firm after what he said any further gaps in security if was a failure that "beggared G4S's problems become more belief". severe. And he will present the fiasco as The Ministry of Defence, which evidence that the coalition should has already upped its contribution halt moves to massively increase by 3,500 to 11,000, said that private sector involvement in contingency plans were in place p o l i c i n g , w a r n i n g i t w i l l to increase the numbers again if undermine forces' resilience. necessary. The under-fire security giant is David Cameron pledged on already involved in 600 million Wednesday to "go after" G4S worth of private work for the over the Olympics security chaos Home Office alone and had been as the Government targeted the hoping to further increase its f i r m ' s m u l t i m i l l i o n - p o u n d share of the market. management fee. But Mr Miliband, addressing a G4S boss Nick Buckles made an
humiliating appearance before MPs on Tuesday during which he admitted that there would be financial consequences from the company's failure to recruit enough staff but insisted it wanted to keep a 57 million management charge. But sports minister Hugh Robertson said the Government was activating "all penalty clauses" in the contract, some of which applied to the management fee. Both Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband have been keen to stress that they fully expect the Games to be a major success despite the problems as the row continues to overshadow the final build-up. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Flawed Analysis of Drone Strike Data Is Misleading Americans

Conor Friedersdorf (Politics : The Atlantic)
America Foundation sponsors " The Year of the Drone," an invaluable effort to analyze press Submitted at 7/18/2012 1:00:00 PM reports on drone strikes. "Our The media's go to source for kill research draws only on accounts figures is the New America from reliable media organizations Foundation. But its invaluable with deep reporting capabilities in work is being cited in support of Pakistan," Bergen wrote, "and conclusions it doesn't support. reports in the leading EnglishReuters language newspapers in PakistanPeter Bergen is among the most -the Daily Times, Dawn, and the influential people in America News--as well as those from Geo when it comes to shaping public TV." attitudes about drone strikes Using reports of drone strikes in inside Pakistan. An author, print those outlets, the New America journalist, and broadcaster, he is a Foundation does its best to national security analyst at CNN, determine the date an attack a fellow at Fordham University's occurs, the number of "militants" Center on National Security, and killed, and the number of civilian the director of the New America deaths. Everyone interested in Foundation's National Security those subjects is indebted to the Studies Program. It's that last organization for the work it has position that is most important for FLAWED page 73 our purposes, for the New
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done aggregating disparate information. But Bergen and others are repeatedly overstating the conclusions that can be draw from their research. As a result of this wrongheaded analysis, published most prominently at CNN, countless Americans are being misled about our drone war. I noticed this problem earlier this month, when a graphic published at the top of a Bergen column at CNN asserted that zero innocents have been killed during drone strikes carried out in Pakistan this year. As I explained at length, there is no way to confirm that conclusion from the New America Foundation's data. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a British run enterprise that tracks drone strikes, has since weighed in agreeing with my analysis, concluding in part that "Bergen's claim of zero reported civilian casualties this year is... factually inaccurate." On July 14, Bergen published another problematic article at CNN, "Civilian Casualties Plummet in Drone Strikes." I'll address its dubious assertions first and note its troubling omissions afterward. Here's the core of Bergen's piece: The New America Foundation has been collecting data about the drone attacks systematically for the past three years from reputable news sources such as the New York Times and Reuters, as well as Pakistani media outlets such as the Express Tribune and Dawn. According to the data generated by averaging the high
and low casualty estimates of militant and civilian deaths published in a wide range of those outlets, the estimated civilian death rate in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan has declined dramatically since 2008, when it was at its peak of almost 50%. Today, for the first time, the estimated civilian death rate is at or close to zero. Over the life of the drone program in Pakistan, which began with a relatively small number of strikes between 2004 and 2007, the estimated civilian death rate is 16%. And in the Obama administration, between 1,507 and 2,438 people have been killed in drone strikes. Of those, 148 to 309, or between 10% and 12%, were civilians, according to the New America Foundation data. Drawing conclusions that specific from the New America Foundation's data is completely unjustified. To understand why, think about the nature of the information they've gathered. Without even reading the specific press accounts, it's obvious that drone strikes unreported in the press are completely invisible. Restricting ourselves to the drone strikes that do make it into the press, how reliable are the numbers given for total killed, militants killed, and civilians killed? The short answer: not very reliable. For a longer, more specific critique, I was steered to collaborative research being conducted at two law clinics, New
York University's Global Justice Clinic and Stanford's International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic. Their report on drone strikes in Pakistan is coming out in a couple weeks. Professor Sarah Knuckey of NYU provided me with findings she's pulled together with help from Christopher Holland, a former student in the Global Justice Clinic. They analyzed the stories cited by the New America Foundation as the basis for its report on drone strikes in 2012. What follows is my summary of their findings: The New America Foundation cited 96 articles as the basis for their conclusion that there have been zero civilian casualties in Pakistan during 2012. Links to ten of the articles didn't work, so the NYU team ultimately analyzed 86 total articles from a total of 13 different news sources.
Pakistani officials). In 15 articles cited by the New America Foundation sources said the identities of those killed could not be identified. And in 18 articles, the "compound" or other object of attack was said to be "destroyed," calling into question estimates about numbers of casualties and the identities of the dead.
In his work on drones, Bergen pointedly notes that the New America Foundation relies on reports "from reliable media organizations with deep reporting capabilities in Pakistan," as though "deep reporting" is a prerequisite if New America is to treat a casualty estimate as reliable. But many of the accounts that form the basis of New America estimates are no more deeply reported than getting an unnamed official to state the In 74 percent of the articles, the number of deaths, which is taken only source for the number of on faith because it's the only "militants" killed was anonymous information available. There is, of government officials (almost course, reason to doubt the always unnamed Pakistani accuracy of both Pakistani officials). intelligence and government officials, especially those who are only willing to speak off the The New America Foundation record. documented 27 separate drone Yet Bergen writes in his CNN strikes in 2012. In more than half piece that the New America of those drone strikes -- 16 of F o u n d a t i o n ' s e s t i m a t e o f t h e m , t o b e e x a c t - - a l l innocents killed is "far below the information about the number of civilian death rate that the "militants" killed came from Pakistani government and other unnamed government officials private research groups such as ( a l m o s t a l w a y s u n n a m e d Pakistan Body Count have
claimed. A report released by Pakistani authorities in 2010 estimated that for every militant killed in a drone strike in 2009, 140 Pakistani civilians also died, and that the civilian casualty rate for that year was more than 90%." In other words, confronted with an official estimate of civilians killed from Pakistan's government, Bergen treats it skeptically, and concludes that it is wildly wrong. Yet when an anonymous Pakistani officials gives an estimate that is filtered through any one of 13 press outlets, Bergen treats it as reliable, using it to inform his analysis of the actual number of innocents killed. That brings us to the information that never appears in Bergen's articles. Most problematically, he separates drone strike victims into "militants" and "civilians" without ever offering a working definition of "militant." Bergen does note that the Obama Administration reportedly "considers as a 'militant' any military-age male in the strike target area," and assures readers that "The New America data is not based on the U.S. official definition of a militant and does not rely on any U.S. official counting of the strikes." Eight days ago, I emailed Clara Hogan, a press liaison at New America, asking about its working definition of militant, but received no answer. I emailed Bergen the same question on July 13, but FLAWED page 75
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The Terrifying Background of the Man Who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit
Conor Friedersdorf (Politics : The Atlantic)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 12:39:17 PM
A federal investigation a l l e g e d E n r i q u e Prado's involvement in seven murders, yet he was in charge when America outsourced covert killing to a private company. CIA It was one of the biggest secrets of the post-9/11 era: soon after the attacks, President Bush gave the CIA permission to create a top secret assassination unit to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. The program was kept from Congress for seven years. And when Leon Panetta told legislators about it in 2009, he revealed that the CIA had hired the private security firm Blackwater to help run it. "The move was historic," says Evan Wright, the two-time National Magazine Award-winning journalist who wrote Generation Kill. "It seems to have marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise." The quote is from his e-book How to Get Away With Murder in America, which goes on to note that "in the past, the CIA was subject to oversight, however tenuous, from the president and Congress," but that "President Bush's 2001 executive order
severed this line by transferring to the CIA his unique authority to approve assassinations. By removing himself from the decision-making cycle, the president shielded himself -- and all elected authority -- from responsibility should a mission go wrong or be found illegal. When the CIA transferred the
assassination unit to Blackwater, it continued the trend. CIA officers would no longer participate in the agency's most violent operations, or witness them. If it practiced any oversight at all, the CIA would rely on Blackwater's self-reporting about missions it conducted. Running operations through Blackwater
gave the CIA the power to have people abducted, or killed, with no one in the government being exactly responsible." None of this is new information, though I imagine that many people reading this item are hearing about it for the first time. Isn't that bizarre? The bulk of Wright's e-book (full
disclosure: I help edit the website of Byliner, publisher of the ebook) tells the story of Enrique Prado, a high-ranking CIA-officer -turned-Blackwater-employee who oversaw assassination units for both the CIA and the contractor. To whom was this TERRIFYING page 78
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haven't received a reply from him either. As best I can tell, the New America Foundation is following the usage of the various media outlets whose work it draws upon, or the definition used by named and unnamed Pakistani officials, or both, which is problematic, because neither the press nor the Pakistani government seems to have a consistent, rigorous, or transparent definition of what "militant" means. It's the weasel word of the drone era. A precise definition of militant isn't the only omission that Bergen should remedy. In his latest CNN piece, he writes that "the drop in the number of civilian casualties since 2008 came as a result of several developments, one of which was a directive issued from the White House just days after President Obama took office, to tighten up the way the CIA selected targets and carried out strikes. Specifically, Obama wanted to evaluate and sign off personally on any strike if the agency did not have a 'near certainty' that it would result in zero civilian casualties." This gives readers the impression that Obama has personally weighed in on every risky strike since 2008, but the fact of the matter is that the CIA doesn't acknowledge the possibility of civilian casualties when all present at the scene of a strike are
military-aged males; and the CIA has also launched signature strikes wherein the identities of the human targets are not known to their killers. Surely that detail is relevant. So is this portion from The New York Times story on drones: ...three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it "guilt by association" that has led to "deceptive" estimates of civilian casualties. "It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants," the official said. "They count the corpses and they're not really sure who they are." With signature strikes reportedly down in Pakistan this year, but up in Yemen, where the CIA now has the authority to conduct them, it's also problematic for CNN to title Bergen's piece, "Civilian casualties plummet in drone strikes," when its contents analyze just one of the several countries where we're waging a drone war. It's finally worth noting an exchange between Bergen and the folks at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Says Bergen in his CNN piece: The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism also maintains a count of drone
casualties in Pakistan. It reports that between three and 24 civilians have been killed in 2012. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's high estimate of 24 civilian deaths in 2012 came in part from reports provided by an unreliable Pakistani news outlet as well as the claims of a local Taliban commander, which contradicted all other reports. Here's the Bureau's reply: His comments appear to refer to a CIA drone strike on February 9 in which local Taliban commander Badar Mansoor died. Citing just four sources, NAF's data reports only that three to five 'militants', including Mansoor, died in the attack. Among 18 unique sources we cite, the Bureau links to a story by Reuters, the international news agency. Reuters notes a Taliban commander's claims that Mansoor's wife and child died in the February 9 attack. Local paper The News also reported that Mansoor's wife and children were either injured or killed; and a Bureau field researcher reported anecdotal claims from the town that some of the leader's family had died. As the Bureau notes, these overt claims of civilian deaths on February 9 remain contested. We state that between zero and two civilians reportedly died in the strike. It is not clear either way. What cannot be stated is that no civilians died. The Bureau goes on to assert that there are specific,
uncorrected errors in the New America Foundation data: When the Bureau began looking in earnest at US drone strikes in summer 2010, we started to work with NAF's data, and that of the Long War Journal. At that time we had no interest in the timeconsuming (and expensive) effort of compiling and maintaining accurate data on covert US strikes. But the more we worked with NAF's material, the more troubled we became. In February 2011 for example, the Bureau wrote to NAF noting a number of errors. We pointed out a strike that it had missed entirely ( November 5 2005). The Bureau also drew NAF's attention to a number of date errors. The Foundation claimed a strike had taken place on May 14 2005, for example. In fact that attack took place on May 8th. Bergen personally acknowledged the email, saying 'thanks for drawing attention to these.' Yet almost 18 months on those errors - easily verifiable remain uncorrected. Despite these alleged errors, the New America Foundation data is a valuable resource shedding light on a secretive military campaign that is very difficult to report on thoroughly and accurately. What's needed is greater awareness of its limits. It cannot tell us how many drone strikes occurred in a given year - only the approximation of how many were reported in the
media. It cannot tell us how many "militants" were killed, how many civilians were killed, or the ratio between them. It can only tell us the minimum number of civilians reported to have been killed in the media. It cannot tell us whether the rate of civilian deaths has gone down -- only that the anonymous Pakistani officials relied upon for the majority of press reports say there are fewer civilian deaths. What if the Pakistanis feeding information to Western journalists have changed the way that they classify someone a militant in much the same way that President Obama did? This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2012/07/flawedanalysis-of-drone-strike-data-ismisleading-americans/259836/ This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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The Supreme Court Still Thinks Corporations Are People

Rep. Adam Schiff (Politics : The Atlantic)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 2:11:12 PM
If the Justices won't change their minds, we're going to have to amend the Constitution. Reuters Three weeks ago, in a decision all but lost in the tumult over the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, the Justices overturned a century-old Montana law that prohibited corporate spending in that state's elections. In the bigger scheme of things, the Montana case may have been the more significant decision that week, since corporate influence over a raft of key issues -including health=care reform -was hanging in the balance. In the Montana case, the Supreme Court had the chance to revisit its deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United. But despite the urgings of members of the Court itself and a public shellshocked by the recent torrent of unregulated corporate expenditures, the Court chose instead to double down and reaffirm the conclusion of Citizens United that corporations are people -- at least as far as the First Amendment is concerned. As a legal decision, the Citizens United opinion was remarkable in many ways -- in its willingness to
overturn a century of jurisprudence, in its choice to issue as broad a ruling as possible rather than as narrow as the case and Constitution required, and in
its reliance on minority or concurring views in prior decisions rather than the prevailing opinions in those same cases. As Justice Stevens pointed
out in a striking dissent, nothing had really changed since prior controlling caselaw except the composition of the Court itself. So much for stare decisis. Solving the
nation's most entrenched problems See full coverage But what stood out most about SUPREME page 79
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Quotes of the day

Erika Johnsen (Hot Air Top Picks)
Portman was a willing recruit when she recently asked him to co -sponsor a bill promoting greater Submitted at 7/18/2012 9:01:38 PM energy efficiency. posted at 10:01 pm on July 18, Portman could be a vice president 2012 by Erika Johnsen who would be highly effective M i t t R o m n e y s c a m p a i g n working with Congress, says Sen. announced Tuesday that it has John Cornyn, R-Texas. hired staff for the presumptive I would think he would have a Republican nominees future lot to offer from his service as a running mate, further fueling congressman and as a senator and speculation that the GOP hopeful his administration experience, will announce his pick soon. says Cornyn. Randy Bumps, the former *** political director of the National I am happy where I am, Im Republican Senatorial Committee, fortunate to get to represent our will serve as the director of s t a t e , P o r t m a n s a i d i n a n operations for the eventual vice interview with an Ohio radio presidential pick. And Kevin s t a t i o n t h i s m o r n i n g . I Sheridan, a former spokesman for was elected in 2010 because of t h e R e p u b l i c a n N a t i o n a l my interest in trying to move our Committee, will serve as the country forward and our state running mates communications forward here in the U.S. Senate, director. so thats where I intend to stay. *** *** If you talk to Democrats, they say Picking Jindal would allow they genuinely like Portman. Republicans a historic do-over; he I find him to be a serious w o u l d b e t h e f i r s t I n d i a n legislator whos focused on American on either parties results, says Sen. Ben Cardin, D- national ticket and, unlike Palin, Md., who adds that Portman i s m u c h m o r e o f a k n o w n shows a willingness to listen to all commodity and hence less of a sides. risk. I think hed be a great choice Theres also this x-factor: The for Romneys running mate, says Indian-American community can New Hampshire Democratic Sen. be a major source of campaign Jeanne Shaheen. She notes that cash if they are activated to give.
Picking Jindal as VP would ensure huge buy-in figuratively and literally from this community. Jindal isnt oozing charisma like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. But neither is he labeled as a vanilla pol in the way that Portman and Pawlenty have been cast. Jindal wouldnt likely overshadow Romney as Christie and Rubio clearly would but neither would he be lumped in with the boring white guy pick that might not get Romney the sort of bump he is looking for. *** The case for the two-term Louisiana governor is straightforward. Jindal is a deeply accomplished guy: a Rhodes scholar and former McKinsey consultant, he nabbed a Louisiana cabinet post at 25, served a stint in George W. Bushs Administration, and was a member of the House before entering the statehouse in Baton Rouge. He has fiscal cred with the partys anti-tax faction and a record of business-friendly policies. A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, gay marriage and restrictions on gun rights, he
has trenchant support among social conservatives, particularly Evangelicals. Plenty, actually. From a political standpoint, the pick doesnt make much sense. Louisiana is a lock to go in Romneys column. If youre not tapping a No. 2 who can help you pick up a swing state, you want him or her to provide an entree into a demographic group. The selection of Jindal, an IndianAmerican, would avoid the questionable optics of an all-white -guy ticket in a rapidly changing nation; to some it might signal an effort on the part of the GOP to expand its demographics. But Jindal is a staunch conservative with little obvious appeal to swing voters. He would excite the partys base, but sheer antipathy toward Obama has that box checked already. *** Mitt Romney has released tax records for 2010 and 2011, and thats the standard for Republican nominees two years worth, and look, we shouldnt be debating tax returns from 10 or 15 years ago or college transcripts from 20 or more years ago, Pawlenty said, referring to calls by some Republicans for President Obama to release his college transcripts. We should be debating the main
issue in this race, which is jobs and the middle class. *** We have a lot of people who are entertaining, who can light their hair on fire or, you know, do whatever, Pawlenty said. But the bottom line is, these are serious times, we need seasoned, experienced people who get the job done. Im not as flashy as some, but compared to some others, I think Im right in there, he added. Nonetheless, Im not defending it one way or the other. Im just saying people rhetoric and teleprompter and jokes, and you know, that kind of stuff, doesnt put gas in our cars, it doesnt pay our mortgages, it doesnt pay our health insurance premiums. People are hurting. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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TERRIFYING
awesome responsibility entrusted? According to Wright's investigation, a federal organized crime squad run out of the MiamiDade Police Department produced an investigation allegedly tying Prado to seven murders carried out while he worked as a bodyguard for a narco crime boss. At the time, the CIA declared him unavailable for questioning; the investigation was shut down before he was arrested or tried. There's a lot more to the story -Wright's e-book is almost 50 pages long -- but this bit is of particular note: The reporting on Prado's activities at Blackwater produced no evidence that the firm's employees had ever killed anyone on behalf of the CIA. But I spoke to Blackwater employees who insisted that they had. Two Blackwater contractors told me that their firm began conducting assassinations in Afghanistan as early as 2008. They claimed to have participated in such operations -- one in a support role, the other as a "trigger puller." The contractors, to whom I spoke in 2009 and 2010, were both exSpecial Forces soldiers who were not particularly bothered by assassination work, although they did question the legality of Blackwater's involvement in it. According to the "trigger puller," he and a partner were selected for
one such operation because they were Mexican Americans, whose darker skin enabled them to blend in as Afghan civilians. The first mission he described took place in 2008. He and his partner spent three weeks training outside Kabul, becoming accustomed to walking barefoot like Afghans while toting weapons underneath their jackets. Their mission centered on walking into a market and killing the occupant of a pickup truck, whose identity a CIA case worker had provided to them. They succeeded in their mission, he told me, and moved on to another. This contractor's story didn't completely fit with other accounts about Prado's unit at Blackwater. The e-mail written by Prado and later obtained by the Times seemed to indicate that the unit wouldn't use Americans to carry out actual assassinations. Moreover, two CIA sources insisted that the contractors I spoke to were lying. As one put it, "These guys are security guards who want to look like Rambo." When I asked Ed O'Connell, a former Air Force colonel and RAND analyst with robust intelligence experience in Afghanistan, to evaluate these contractors' claims, he first told me they were almost certainly a "fantastical crock of shit." But a year later, in 2011, after a research trip in Afghanistan under
contract to CENTCOM, O'Connell had changed his assessment. He told me, "Your sources seem to have been correct. Private contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA." So there you have it: A former Air Force colonel, speaking on the record and using the present tense, said in 2011 that "private contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA." Says Wright: While Blackwater's covert unit began as a Bush administration story, President Obama now owns it. In 2010, his administration intervened on behalf of the Blackwater executives indicted for weapons trafficking, filing motions to suppress evidence on the grounds that it could compromise national security. The administration then awarded Blackwater (which is now called Academi) a $250 million contract to perform unspecified services for the CIA. At the same time, Obama has publicly taken responsibility for some lethal operations -- the Navy SEALs' sniper attack on Somali pirates, the raid on bin Laden. His aides have also said that he reviews target lists for drone strikes. The president's actions give him the appearance of a man who wants the best of both worlds. He
appears as a tough, resolute leader when he announces his role in killings that will likely be popular -- a pirate, a terrorist. But the apparatus for less accountable killings grinds on. Needless to say, this ought to spark an investigation, but more than that, it should cause Americans to step back and reflect on how vulnerable we've made ourselves to bad actors in the post-9/11 era. We're giving C.I.A. agents and even private security contractors the sort of power no individual should wield. And apparently our screening apparatus turns out to be lacking. This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2012/07/theterrifying-background-of-the-man -who-ran-a-cia-assassination-unit/ 259856/ This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Surprise: TSA hasnt held courtordered public hearings on scanners, junktouching

Mary Katharine Ham (Hot Air Top Picks)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 8:21:24 PM
posted at 9:21 pm on July 18, 2012 by Mary Katharine Ham As an occasional-to-frequent flier, I was pretty attuned to the news story in 2010 when the Transportation Security Administration suddenly decided that letting them see naked pictures of you or put their hands in your pants was a prerequisite to flight. I enjoyed the public backlash if for no other reason than it was refreshing to see a bunch of citizens draw a line with the federal government, thereby making other apolitical citizens at least think about what rights they should reasonably give up when walking into a screening line. So often, these things go unremarked upon. These days, as the backscatter machines become more prevalent, I opt out. Its not so much for any worries about the backscatters, though I dont think they or their operators should be blindly trusted, as it is a desire that the TSA agent involved suffer the slight delay and humiliation that SURPRISE: page 80
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Citizens United was not the Court's legal reasoning, but its staggering naivete. As the Court confidently declared, "We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." And for skeptics who thought otherwise, the Court provided this additional assurance: "The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." Well, glad that's settled. Unfortunately, the five Justices who joined this opinion must be the last five Americans to feel that way. Certainly none of the evidence before the Court in Citizens United or the Montana case compelled a conclusion so at odds with reality. To be fair to the present Court, they did not invent the distinction between direct contributions (which may be regulated) and independent expenditures (which may not). That flawed distinction goes back more than 35 years to Buckley v. Valeo, where the Court struck down part of a Watergate-era reform which
attempted to place limits on both forms of campaign spending. In Buckley, the Court felt that there was a compelling state interest in regulating contributions to candidates, but that there was not yet sufficient evidence of a similarly compelling need to regulate independent expenditures. To the Court's credit in Buckley, however, the Justices acknowledged the need to revisit that conclusion in the future if events should prove otherwise. Events have most certainly proved otherwise following Citizens United. Since that decision, corporate expenditures have reached astronomic levels, numbering in the billions of dollars, and the "independence" of those expenditures -- their theoretical separation from the office holders they are intended to influence -- is a fiction no one buys anymore. The proliferation of super PACs and their outsized influence on House, Senate, and presidential politics is beyond dispute by all except those five Americans who happen to sit on the Court. But if the Montana case makes anything clear, it is that this Court has dug in -- no amount of
unrestrained spending, no appearance of impropriety, or actual corruption of our system is likely to dislodge this newly entrenched precedent from the threat it poses to our democracy. Regrettably, a constitutional amendment is required for that. Fortunately, one of the nation's preeminent constitutional scholars, Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe, has drafted one, which I have introduced as H.J. Res. 111. It provides, simply, "Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to forbid Congress or the states from imposing content-neutral limitations on private campaign contributions or independent political campaign expenditures." The Amendment also allows -but does not require -- public financing of campaigns when states choose to enact such laws: "Nor shall this Constitution prevent Congress or the states from enacting systems of public campaign financing, including those designed to restrict the influence of private wealth by offsetting campaign spending or independent expenditures with increased public funding." The tidal wave of independent
expenditures creates an unmistakable appearance of impropriety, and over time, it cannot help but corrupt. The Court having failed to bear witness to these debilitating changes since Buckley, the people have the power to act. Independent expenditures, like direct contributions, should be subject to reasonable limits and should be transparent. And corporations are not people. For if they were, as Justice Stevens points out, how could we deprive them of the right to vote? This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2012/07/thesupreme-court-still-thinkscorporations-are-people/259995/ This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
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SURPRISE:
comes with a public feeling up along with me. That, and Ive discovered that if you opt out, because youre not technically done with your screening process, the TSA agent intent on groping you has to carry your bags and bins for you to the screening area. It seems like the least they can do, and I like a little valet with my TSA. Now, its been more than a year since the uproar over the scanners. At the time, the Electronic Privacy Information Center went to court demanding that the government be blocked from using the scanners, on constitutional grounds. A federal appeals court rejected the constitutional arguments 3-0, but also said the TSA violated federal law when it implemented new search guidelines without a public comment period and public hearings. The TSA argued it didnt have to do public comments or hearings because its reacting to evolving threats. From a Wired report on the courts
ruling: Judge Douglas Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said the TSA must allow for the 90-day noticeand-comment period because of the new substantive obligations on airline passengers. It is clear that by producing an image of the unclothed passenger, an AIT scanner intrudes upon his or her personal privacy in a way a magnetometer does not. Therefore, regardless whether this is a new substantive burden, the change substantively affects the public to a degree sufficient to implicate the policy interests animating notice-and-comment rulemaking, Ginsburg wrote. Indeed, few if any regulatory procedures impose directly and significantly upon so many members of the public. Not surprisingly, therefore, much public concern and media coverage have been focused upon issues of privacy, safety, and efficacy, each of which no doubt would have been the subject of many comments had the TSA
seen fit to solicit comments upon a proposal to use AIT for primary screening. The court ordered the TSA to do a public comment period and hearings promptly. A year later, the government has yet to hold those hearings. And the appellate court has twice denied motions from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which brought the case, to order the TSA to get going. The TSA did start displaying outlines of passengers instead of the more explicit pictures it was formerly seeing. A Cato Institute scholar has started a WhiteHouse.gov petition to get a White House response on TSAs feet-dragging. It takes 25,000 signatures to compel a White House response, according to, well, the White House (for whatever thats worth). Sign onto it if youd like to try to make them answer. Though I suspect theres a problematic correlation between those who are suspicious of body scanners and those who do not
wish to create an account on a White House website. Now, think back to every TSA outrage youve heard about in the past year the tiny children terrorized, the elderly women decolostomized and remember the federal agencys constant refrain: Trust us. Our consummately professional screeners are just here to keep you safe. Then, theres this. No comment. A silly flashback video to my ire of the time: This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
Pawlenty: Romney doesnt need a flashy running mate

Erika Johnsen (Hot Air Top Picks)
Submitted at 7/18/2012 7:41:12 PM
posted at 8:41 pm on July 18, 2012 by Erika Johnsen A quick vice-presidential state of play: Weve heard tips about all sorts of timelines over the past few days (Romney will announce his veep-selection this week; hell announce after the Olympics; he wont announce until after the convention; etcetera). The generally-agreed-upon word on the street is that Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, and Bobby Jindal are at the top of the short list, with Chris Christie, Condi Rice, and a few others not too far behind. Which, of course, has everybody speculating: Is Romney going to PAWLENTY: page 81
Sony's Walkman F PMP hits the FCC mere seconds after being announced
Daniel Cooper (Engadget)
Submitted at 7/19/2012 12:11:00 AM
It was mere seconds after Sony's Walkman F was publicly announced to the baying hordes of PMP fans that the dismantled
remains of one was found outside the FCC's headquarters. The autopsy report unsurprisingly passed the Android-powered media player safe for human consumption, only clarifying that the unit's WiFi radio is of the
802.11 b/g/n variety. Sony's
flagship media player will hopefully arrive on American soil soon, we've got a whole season of Breaking Bad to catch up on. Sony's Walkman F PMP hits the FCC mere seconds after being announced originally appeared on
Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| FCC| Email this| Comments
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PAWLENTY:
go for the safe, perhaps vanilla selection of someone like Portman, who has a resume chock -full of experience and could help him politically by bringing home a swing state; or will he choose a more high-risk, high-reward option like Christie, who could potentially fly off the handle but who isnt afraid to call em as they see em? Tim Pawlenty appeared on Cavuto this afternoon, in defense of the dull option the American people, he argues, have had enough flash with the Celebrity Presidency to last them a lifetime, and what theyre looking for now are real solutions for their very real material problems. (And hey, check that out he even made a funny!) You have been whittled down to what Im told is a shorter list, apparently because youre considered, at least by the Romneys, we are told, sir, this
could be wrong safe, reliable, steady as she goes, nothing too flashy. Dare I say dull, Cavuto said. If you goad me into it, Ill show you my tats, Pawlenty said. Cavuto laughed as Pawlenty added, Im teasing, Im teasing. We have a lot of people who are entertaining, who can light their hair on fire or, you know, do whatever, Pawlenty said. But the bottom line is, these are serious times, we need seasoned, experienced people who get the job done. Im not as flashy as some, but compared to some others, I think Im right in there, he added. Nonetheless, Im not defending it one way or the other. Im just saying people rhetoric and teleprompter and jokes, and you know, that kind of stuff, doesnt put gas in our cars, it doesnt pay our mortgages, it doesnt pay our
health insurance premiums. People are hurting. Ill leave you with one very big hmmmm, just to keep things interesting it appears that Tim Pawlentys website has been taken down, with just a please come back later to greet visitors. Could the website possibly be under construction for some reason?!?! This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Incinerating Assange - The Liberal Media Go To Work.
FERRARI,
Ferrari, Logic3 team on headphones, may be closest we get to an Enzo's engine note
Jon Fingas (Engadget)
headphones, may be closest we get to an Enzo's engine note originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Ferrari| Email this| Comments
manages to pack in some Formula 1 styling along with the remote control. Prices are high at $150 to Ferrari likes to brand just about $315 for the Scuderias, or $201 to everything. That said, the two $352 for high rollers eying the new lines of in-ear and over-ear Cavallinos -- but it's hard to headphones it's introducing with dispute that either series is much Logic3's help seem like more more likely to turn up at our natural fits for the supercar brand houses than a hybrid Enzo. than for other gadgets. The speed- Continue reading Ferrari, Logic3 loving elite will inevitably swing team on headphones, may be towards the Cavallino series' closest we get to an Enzo's engine premium materials and universal note microphone remote. Us plebeians Ferrari, Logic3 team on have to consider the more plasticFERRARI, page 81 laden Scuderia range, which still
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