বুধবার, ২৪ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

NTSB probes safety testing of Boeing 787 batteries

WASHINGTON (AP) ? As airlines prepare to resume flying Boeing's beleaguered 787 Dreamliners, federal investigators looked Tuesday at how regulators and the company tested and approved the plane's cutting-edge battery system, and whether the government cedes too much safety-testing authority to aircraft makers.

The National Transportation Safety Board is also asking how problems with the aircraft's lithium-ion battery system that led to a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another escaped the notice of regulators and company officials who certified the plane's safety.

"We are here to understand why the 787 experienced unexpected battery failures following a design program led by one of the world's leading manufacturers and a certification process that is well-respected throughout the international aviation community," NTSB's Chairman Deborah Hersman said at the opening of a two-day board hearing. Officials with the FAA, Boeing and Boeing subcontractors responsible for the battery system were scheduled to testify.

"We are looking for lessons learned not just for the design and certification of the failed battery, but also for knowledge that can be applied to emerging technologies going forward," Hersman said.

To save manpower, the FAA designates employees at aircraft makers to oversee the safety testing of new planes. Every item that is part of an airplane, down to its nuts and bolts, must be certified as safe before the FAA approves that type of plane as safe for flight. Boeing won FAA safety certification for the 787 in August 2011.

"In a way, the designee system is admitting the FAA doesn't have the manpower to do what is required, and also that they may not have the expertise," said John Goglia, a former NTSB board member and aviation safety expert.

The FAA has used designated company employees to oversee and validate some safety testing for more than two decades, a practice critics complain has inherent conflicts of interest. The agency significantly expanded its use of designees in recent years under pressure from manufacturers, who complained it was taking the agency too long to approve new planes because they didn't have enough staff.

"If industry had to wait for government employees to be available to do the testing" and to develop enough technical knowledge to assess new aviation technologies, "we would just never get any products certified," Goglia said.

The 787, Boeing's newest and most technologically-advanced plane, is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. It has long been known that lithium batteries are more susceptible than conventional nickel-cadmium batteries to extreme, uncontrolled temperature increases and fires that are very different to put out. But lithium batteries weigh less, store more energy and recharge faster than conventional batteries, making them attractive to airlines.

Boeing did some of the safety testing on the 787 battery system, but much of the testing was done by a subcontractor, Thales of France, which made the 787's electrical system, and by battery maker GS Yuasa of Japan, according to a previously released NTSB report. The testing concluded there was no chance that short-circuiting would lead to a fire, and the odds of a smoking battery were one in every 10 million flight hours.

Instead, there were two battery failures when the entire 787 fleet had clocked less than 52,000 flight hours. The first was on Jan. 7 aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport shortly after landing following an overseas flight. Firefighters reported two small flames and dense clouds of white smoke streaming from the battery. It took over an hour before they declared the incident under control.

Nine days later a smoking battery aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 led to an emergency landing in Japan. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered all U.S.-registered 787s grounded the same day, and aviation authorities in other countries swiftly followed suit.

The NTSB, which is investigating the Boston incident, hasn't yet determined the root cause of the fire and may never be able to do so. The insides of the battery were severely charred, leaving few clues for investigators.

Boeing has since developed and tested a revamped version of the battery system, with changes designed to prevent a fire or to contain one should it occur. FAA officials approved the revamped batteries last week and agreed to lift the grounding order. The company has been working furiously to install the new system on the 50 Dreamliners in service worldwide. Boeing has orders for 840 of the planes from airlines around the globe.

What the NTSB uncovers regarding the FAA's safety certification program could have important implications for the agency's ability to handle other technology challenges, including the transition to a new air traffic control system and the introduction of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace, said Jim Hall, a former safety board chairman.

"It's important to know that the government has oversight capability," Hall said. "Our aviation safety, which is unparalleled at the moment in the world, has been built on having active oversight by the FAA."

___

Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ntsb-probes-safety-testing-boeing-787-batteries-071419182--finance.html

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Strengthening legumes to tackle fertilizer pollution

Apr. 23, 2013 ? The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture can wreak havoc on waterways, health and the environment.

An international team of scientists aims to lessen the reliance on these fertilizers by helping beans and similar plants boost their nitrogen production, even in areas with traditionally poor soil quality.

Researchers from the Center of Plant Genomics and Biotechnology at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory report as an advance article April 5 for the Metallomics journal of The Royal Society of Chemistry on how to use X-ray analysis to map a path to increasing the amount of nitrogen that legumes deposit into the soil.

Cultivation of legumes, the plant family that includes peas, beans, alfalfa, soybeans, and peanuts, is one of the main ways farmers add natural nitrogen to agricultural fields. Rotating bean and corn crops to take advantage of the nitrogen beans deposit in the soil has long been a global farming tradition. Legumes use iron in the soil to carry out a complex chemical process called nitrogen fixation, which collects atmospheric nitrogen and converts it into organic forms that help the plant grow. When the plant dies, the excess nitrogen is released back into to the soil to help the next crop.

But often legumes are grown in areas with iron-depleted soil, which limits their nitrogen fixation. That's where research can lend a hand. The Argonne-UPM team has created the world's first model for how iron is transported in the plant's root nodule to trigger nitrogen fixation. This is the first step in modifying the plants to maximize iron use.

"The long-term goal is to help sustainable agriculture practices and further diminish the environmental damage from overuse of nitrogen fertilizers," said Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero, lead author of the paper from UPM. "This can be done by maximizing the delivery of essential metal oligonutrients to nitrogen-fixing rhizobia."

The research team, which included Lydia Finney and Stefan Vogt from the APS, used high-energy X-rays from the 8-BM and 2-ID-E beamlines of the APS to track the distribution of minute iron amounts in the different developmental regions of rhizobia-containing roots. This is the first high-energy X-ray analysis of plant-microbe interactions.

X-rays, such as those from the APS, provided a high sensitivity to elements and a high spatial resolution not attainable by other means. Full details can be found in the paper Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules.

In future studies at the APS, Gonzalez-Guerrero hopes to identify and characterize the key biological proteins responsible for iron transportation. That would give researchers targets to manipulate and screen for new legume varieties with increased nitrogen-fixation capabilities and higher nutritional value.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/Argonne National Laboratory. The original article was written by Tona Kunz.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. Benjam?n Rodr?guez-Haas, Lydia Finney, Stefan Vogt, Pablo Gonz?lez-Melendi, Juan Imperial, Manuel Gonzalez-Guerrero. Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules. Metallomics, 2013; DOI: 10.1039/C3MT00060E

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

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/WFDVPPsK7IM/130423161911.htm

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Making of Europe unlocked by DNA

DNA sequenced from nearly 40 ancient skeletons has shed light on the complex prehistoric events that shaped modern European populations.

A study of remains from Central Europe suggests the foundations of the modern gene pool were laid down between 4,000 and 2,000 BC - in Neolithic times.

These changes were likely brought about by the rapid growth and movement of some populations.

The work by an international team is published in Nature Communications.

Decades of study of the DNA patterns of modern Europeans suggests two major events in prehistory significantly affected the continent's genetic landscape: its initial peopling by hunter-gatherers in Palaeolithic times (35,000 years ago) and a wave of migration by Near Eastern farmers some 6,000 years ago. (in the early Neolithic)

Family tree Continue reading the main story

?Start Quote

The genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don't know why?

End Quote Prof Alan Cooper University of Adelaide

Analysis of DNA from ancient remains in Central and Northern Europe appears to show that the genetic legacy of the hunter-gatherers was all but erased by later migrations, including pioneer Neolithic farmers but possibly by later waves of people too.

The latest paper reveals that events some time after the initial migration of farmers into Europe did indeed have a major impact on the modern gene pool.

In the study, an international team of researchers focused on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the information in the cell's "batteries". This type of DNA is passed down, almost unchanged, from a mother to her children.

By studying the mutations, or changes, in mtDNA sequences, researchers are able to probe the maternal histories of different human populations. It has enabled them to build a "family tree" of maternal ancestry, and group different mtDNA lineages together based on shared mutations.

For the latest paper, the authors chose to focus on one of these groupings known as haplogroup H.

Haplogroup H dominates mtDNA variation in Europe. Today, more than 40% of Europeans belong to this genetic "clan", with frequencies much higher in the west of the continent than in the east.

The team selected 37 human remains from the Mitelelbe Saale region of Germany and two from Italy, all of whom belonged to the "H" clan. This area has a very well preserved collection of human skeletons forming a continuous record of habitation across different archaeological cultures since Palaeolithic times.

The remains investigated here span 3,500 years of European prehistory, from the Early Neolithic to the Bronze Age.

Sequencing the mitochondrial genomes of these 39 remains revealed dynamic changes in DNA patterns over time. The team found that the genetic signatures of people from the Early Neolithic period were either rare or absent from modern populations.

And only about 19% of the Early Neolithic remains from Central Europe belonged to the H haplogroup.

But, from the Middle Neolithic onwards, DNA patterns more closely resembled those of people living in the area today, pointing to a major - and previously unrecognised - population upheaval around 4,000 BC.

Co-author Prof Alan Cooper, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, said: "What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don't know why.

"Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was."

Population growth and migration from western Europe may have driven up the frequency of people carrying haplogroup H.

Migrant wave

A significant contribution appears to have been made in the Late Neolithic, by populations linked to the so-called Bell Beaker archaeological culture. Sub-types of haplogroup H that are common today first appear with the Beaker people and the overall percentage of individuals belonging to the H clan jumps sharply at this time.

The origins of the "Beaker folk" are the subject of much debate. Despite having been excavated from the Mittelelbe Saale region of Germany, the Beaker individuals in this study showed close genetic similarities with people from modern Spain and Portugal.

Other remains belonging to the Late Neolithic Unetice culture attest to links with populations further east.

"We have established that the genetic foundations for modern Europe were only established in the Mid-Neolithic, after this major genetic transition around 4000 years ago," said co-author Dr Wolfgang Haak.

"This genetic diversity was then modified further by a series of incoming and expanding cultures from Iberia and Eastern Europe through the Late Neolithic."

Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project, which was behind the study, commented: "Studies such as this on ancient remains serve as a valuable adjunct to the work we are doing with modern populations in the Genographic Project.

"While the DNA of people alive today can reveal the end result of their ancestors' ancient movements, to really understand the dynamics of how modern genetic patterns were created we need to study ancient material as well."

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22252099#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Facebook and romantic relationships

Apr. 23, 2013 ? A Western Illinois University faculty member who published a study about Facebook and narcissism last year has authored another study about Facebook and romantic relationships.

WIU Department of Communication Assistant Professor Christopher Carpenter, with his co-author Erin Spottswood (Cornell University), have authored, "Exploring romantic relationships on social networking sites using the self-expansion model," which will appear in the July 2013 journal issue of Computers in Human Behavior. According to Carpenter, in the study, the co-authors found the more past romantic relationships the participants had, the more interests they listed in their Facebook profiles.

"I predicted this relationship because other research suggested that part of romantic relationship development involves adopting new interests and behaviors from one's partner," he said. "I also found that people who report appearing in more photos with their partners on Facebook and who regularly tag their partner in their status updates tend to have closer romantic relationships."

In humans, the self-expansion model -- per a seminal study authored by State University of New York, Stony Brook, Psychology Professor Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron, author of the book, "The Highly Sensitive Person" -- asserts the desire to grow is a key motivation. One of the key sources of this need to expand one's self is derived from romantic relationships.

Carpenter said he studies humans' interactions on Facebook and social networks because the online networks offer a unique window into people's lives.

"We can't follow people around with a tape recorder getting a record of what they say all day. Facebook, on the other hand, offers us the chance to see one part of that record. We can see how often people interact with their romantic partners on Facebook, what they say to each other and how they present themselves on their profiles," he explained. "As for this specific study, I had read about self-expansion theory and I began wondering if we ever truly cut ties with someone when we break up. We might not see that person anymore, but when we develop a relationship with someone, we take on some of their interests and traits and, in many cases, hang on to them long after we break up. Facebook offered a unique way of examining the extent to which those traces of past relationships remain in our profiles."

Carpenter said the study's sample included 276 respondents who answered questions about their relationship histories and social networking sites uses, while a subset of the sample (149 participants) answered additional questions about their current romantic partners.

In addition to receiving wide media attention about his 2012 study, "Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior" (published in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences, March 2012), Carpenter served as an invited Oxford Union Society speaker on the motion, "This House Believes Social Media has Successfully Reinvented Social Activism," in England in May last year.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Western Illinois University.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. Christopher J. Carpenter, Erin L. Spottswood. Exploring romantic relationships on social networking sites using the self-expansion model. Computers in Human Behavior, 2013; 29 (4): 1531 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2013.01.021

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/Z5NyT0nG8Ac/130423110713.htm

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মঙ্গলবার, ২৩ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Where is the Scrutiny of Crop Insurance Fraud? | Environmental ...

?

Minnesota Congressman Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) struck a nerve this month when he said that ?there is five times as much fraud? in the federal crop insurance program as there is the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

?There is less fraud in food stamps than in any government program,? Peterson told the National Journal on April 10. ?There is five times as much fraud in crop insurance than in food stamps.?

The senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee captured the exasperation that many feel when legislators attack SNAP even though the feeding assistance program has the lowest error rate of any government program.

Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack weighed in as well.

There?s also an issue we?re taking very seriously on crop insurance ? because the percentage of error and fraud rate is higher in crop insurance than it is in SNAP,? Vilsack said. ?Obviously those programs are different in terms of size ? but even if you reduce the error rate in crop insurance, you?re talking about tens of millions, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in savings as well.

In recent years, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have dedicated hours of hearings to alleged cases of SNAP fraud.

For example, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held high-profile hearings on ?Food Stamp Fraud as a Business Model,? and an Agriculture subcommittee convened a hearing ?to Review Quality Control Systems in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.?

In January, Senate Agriculture Committee member John Thune (R-S.D.), in an op-ed titled Time to Reform the Broken Food Stamp Program, wrote that ?it is difficult to predict just how far and widespread fraud and abuse may reach.?? And just last week, House Agriculture Committee member Martha Roby (R-Ala.) tweeted, ?I look forward to exploring ways to eliminate fraud & abuse within the food stamp program to ensure the system works for those who need it.?

Where is the scrutiny of crop insurance fraud?

Just last month, the Associated Press reported on the largest crop insurance fraud case in history.

Federal investigators have unraveled a massive scheme among dozens of insurance agents, claims adjusters, brokers and farmers in eastern North Carolina to steal at least $100 million from the government-backed program that insures crops.

Forty-one defendants have either pleaded guilty or reached plea agreements after profiting from false insurance claims for losses of tobacco, soybeans, wheat and corn. Often, the crops weren?t damaged at all, with farmers using aliases to sell their written-off harvests for cash.

Prosecutors compared the case to busting a drug cartel, where federal investigators used a confidential informant to ensnare a key participant in the sophisticated fraud, who then agreed to implicate others. That first wave of prosecutions led to still more names to investigate.

And this month, a crop insurance adjuster and four farmers went to trial for allegedly defrauding the government of more than $9.6 million.

With no limits on subsidies and little review of claims, it should be no surprise that crop insurance fraud is common. Under current law, some policyholders receive more than $1 million each in premium support annually, and more than 10,000 receive more than $100,000 each.

According to one of the perpetrators in the North Carolina case, insurance adjuster Jimmy Thomas Sasser, crop insurance fraud is ?everywhere, all across the country.??

Even Rain and Hail, a crop insurance company, half-heartedly acknowledged that fraud is a problem, putting it this way:

Fraud, waste and abuse do occur in the crop insurance program. The degree to which these occur is not well?documented.

As the cost of the program ? and the claims ? have grown, more and more stories of crop insurance fraud have surfaced:

?????? North Carolina insurance company owner Robert Carl Stokes (PDF) was sentenced to 30 months in prison plus 3 years of supervised release after pleading guilty to making false statements, committing mail and wire fraud and conspiring to launder money. Stokes recruited tobacco farmers in fraudulent schemes to defraud crop insurance companies by promising them profitable insurance claims even if they did not suffer any actual crop loss. Stokes falsified various documents including insurance applications, production history and acreage reports and weight tickets.

?????? In Carroll County, Iowa, farmer Mark J. Hoffman (PDF) was sentenced to 20 months in prison plus 3 years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges of bank fraud, farm program fraud, crop insurance and bankruptcy fraud. He was ordered to pay restitution of? $2.3 million. Hoffman, who was ineligible for crop insurance and other federal benefits because his farm violated conservation standards, was charged with putting the property in the name of a hired hand in order to conceal that fact.

?????? In Au Gres, Mich., K & W Farms Inc. owner Allan A. Kuehnemund (PDF) was sentenced to 87 months in prison after being convicted on 16 felony charges, including mail fraud, making fraudulent claims, making false statements and falsifying documents in order to fraudulently obtain crop insurance. Kuehnemund repeatedly submitted false information and falsified records to obtain more than $2 million in insurance.

?????? Duane Huber (PDF), of the North Dakota Huber Farms General Partnership, was charged with setting up sham farming operations through third parties to evade payment limitations on farm programs and to manipulate crop production, income, and expense data so as to get crop insurance and other benefits that he wasn?t entitled to.

?????? In Texas, crop loss adjuster Darren Randell Jeffrey (PDF) of Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. pleaded guilty to falsifying appraisals supporting more than $700,000 in fraudulent loss claims for cotton, grain and sorghum farmers.

?????? Virginia insurance agent George T. Kiser was sentenced to 27 months in prison, 3 years supervised release and restitution for a conspiracy to make false statements to federal agencies. According to the indictment, Kiser knew that crop yield histories were false and advised clients on how to receive payments for fictitious losses.

But in contrast to the Congressional obsession with possible fraud in the food stamp program, only one legislator has begun to raise concerns about abuses in the crop insurance program ? Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). She has been drawing attention to a recent report by USDA?s Inspector General that found that USDA was selling questionable policies.?

Of course, the real ?fraud? is the myth that crop insurance is ?insurance? at all. A program that pays most of the premiums, pays insurance companies to sell policies to farmers and then pays most of the claims when crops fail is a generous federal safety net for the same mega farms that have feasted on taxpayer funded farm subsidies for decades.

Source: http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2013/04/where-scrutiny-crop-insurance-fraud

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Taliban take 9 hostage after helicopter's emergency landing

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A Turkish civilian helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people aboard the aircraft hostage, including eight Turks, officials said Monday.

The transport helicopter landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Pakistan border, said district governor Hamidullah Hamid.

Taliban fighters then captured all nine aboard the helicopter and took them from the area, Hamid told The Associated Press. He said most of the nine civilian hostages are Turks but that one is an Afghan translator.

In Ankara, a spokesman at Turkey's Foreign Ministry told the AP that there were eight Turks aboard the helicopter but did not know if it also was carrying other civilians or what their nationalities were. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry regulations, had no information about the condition of the civilians.

Turkey's semi-official Anadolu news agency quoted Logar Deputy Police Chief Resishan Sadik Abdurrahminzey as saying that "a large number" of policemen were being sent to the region to rescue the hostages.

NATO said the helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details. ISAF spokeswoman Erin Stattel said the coalition was assisting in the recovery of the aircraft. She could not say whether the helicopter made a precautionary landing or the Taliban had forced it down.

Logar Deputy Police Chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said he didn't know what kind of cargo the helicopter was carrying, where it was headed, or whether it was working for NATO.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Thomas Wagner on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/tjpwagner.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-capture-9-helicopter-afghanistan-054142913.html

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G-20 approval of Japan's easing drives markets up

People walk by an electronic stock board of a securities firm showing Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock exchange surged 261.88 to 1,578.36 in Tokyo Monday, April 22, 2013. Asian markets traded higher Monday, with Tokyo stock markets heading close to a five-year high after a meeting of global finance leaders lent support to Japan's aggressive monetary policy. The Nikkei index rose after a statement by finance ministers and central bank presidents from the world's biggest economies appeared to give its blessing to aggressive credit-easing moves pushed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying they were intended to stop prolonged deflation and support domestic demand. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

People walk by an electronic stock board of a securities firm showing Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock exchange surged 261.88 to 1,578.36 in Tokyo Monday, April 22, 2013. Asian markets traded higher Monday, with Tokyo stock markets heading close to a five-year high after a meeting of global finance leaders lent support to Japan's aggressive monetary policy. The Nikkei index rose after a statement by finance ministers and central bank presidents from the world's biggest economies appeared to give its blessing to aggressive credit-easing moves pushed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying they were intended to stop prolonged deflation and support domestic demand. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

A woman walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo, Monday, April 22, 2013. Asian markets traded higher Monday, with Tokyo stock markets heading close to a five-year high after a meeting of global finance leaders lent support to Japan's aggressive monetary policy. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

A man is reflected on the electronic board of a securities firm in Tokyo, Monday, April 22, 2013. Asian markets traded higher Monday, with Tokyo stock markets heading close to a five-year high after a meeting of global finance leaders lent support to Japan's aggressive monetary policy. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

(AP) ? A global stamp of approval for Japan's aggressive monetary policy pushed global stocks higher Monday, as investors in Europe followed the exuberance in Asia.

Upending expectations, finance ministers and central bank governors from the world's largest economies gave their blessing this weekend for Japan's monetary easing, which has driven the value of the yen against the dollar down more than 20 percent since October.

That sent Japan's Nikkei 225 index to its highest close in nearly five years, encouraging other stock markets to follow suit.

In mid-morning trading in Europe, the FTSE index of British shares rose 0.8 percent to 6,337. France's CAC-40 was up 0.5 percent at 3,669, and Germany's DAX jumped 0.7 to 7,510 after EU statistics showed government deficits across the 17-country eurozone declined in 2012. However, the figures also showed deficits rose in countries imposing the toughest austerity measures, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Ahead of Wall Street's open, S&P futures were up 0.6 at 1,556, while Dow futures rose 0.5 percent to 14,538.

Earlier in Asia, the Nikkei closed 1.9 percent higher at 13,568.37. South Korea's Kospi added 1 percent to 1,926.31, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng closed 0.1 percent higher at 22,044.37. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.7 percent to 4,966.60. Shares in mainland China were mixed.

Oil was also buoyed by the enthusiasm. Benchmark crude for May delivery was up 38 cents to $88.65 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"We are high on Hopium, know it and need a clear miss on upcoming PMI's for the divergence between extreme hopes and reality to sink in," said Sebatian Galy, an analyst with Societe Generale. The PMI survey of the manufacturing for the countries that use the euro will be released Tuesday.

The decline of the yen has stirred up concerns among Japanese exporters' key rivals, such as the U.S. and South Korea that Japan's real goal is to weaken the yen as a way to gain trade advantages. But officials at the G-20 meeting were reluctant to voice any opposition to the Bank of Japan's monetary stimulus program.

Other countries may now feel free to rein in their own currencies.

"The rapid weakening of the yen, as a direct result of the ultra-loose monetary policy, has led to suggestions that the BoJ (Bank of Japan) would be warned about future easing, which could prompt other central banks to act in order to limit the appreciation of their own currency," said Craig Erlam, a market analyst with Alpari Research.

The euro was fairly even against the dollar Monday at $1.3048.

___

Associated Press Business Writer Youkyung Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-22-World%20Markets/id-5e607c42ec304efcad07971873010127

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Bank of England's cheap credit scheme to be extended -reports

LONDON (Reuters) - A scheme to get more credit flowing in Britain's stagnant economy will be expanded to include specialist lenders and will run for a year longer than planned, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

The Bank and the Treasury have been working on plans to extend the 80-billion-pound Funding for Lending (FLS) scheme, and the newspaper said an announcement could come as early as this week.

Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to do more to foster growth after Britain lost its AAA credit rating - the top grade - from two agencies and the International Monetary Fund said the government should consider slowing the pace of its deficit-cutting programme.

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Treasury officials hoped the introduction of a second stage of the FLS scheme might give the IMF reason not to criticize economic policy when it carries out an annual review next month.

Osborne said on Friday the government and the central bank would announce "fairly shortly" changes to the scheme, which provides banks and other lenders with cheap financing if they keep or raise lending to households and businesses.

The FLS was launched last year but so far it has not resulted in much more borrowing by small and medium-sized companies.

The Telegraph said the FLS, originally due to end in January next year, would be extended by a year to 2015.

The newspaper said the scope of the scheme would be expanded to include specialist institutions such as asset-based lenders, invoice finance houses and leasing firms in an attempt to ease the credit crunch still felt by small firms.

A Treasury spokesman declined to comment on plans to change the FLS beyond what Osborne had said on Friday.

Asset finance allows businesses to borrow against invoices and machinery.

Since coming to power in May 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has introduced austerity measures to try and reduce a record peacetime deficit, but persistently weak growth has frustrated the government's economic plans.

(Reporting By Estelle Shirbon and William Schomberg; Editing by Erica Billingham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bank-englands-cheap-credit-scheme-extended-reports-140612501--sector.html

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সোমবার, ২২ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Flight of Boston Marathon bombing suspects ended in mayhem

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - As a massive manhunt geared up for the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing on Thursday evening, the brothers wanted in the attack decided to take their chances by venturing into the streets near their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Before the night was out, one of the young men was dead, crushed beneath his own hijacked getaway car, while the other cowered in a boat, bleeding heavily, as police closed in.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, broke their cover hours after authorities released photographs of the suspects. It is unclear why they decided to remain in the area so long after Monday's attack.

The evening began to unravel when the brothers encountered Sean Collier, a 26-year-old police officer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to accounts by police and government agencies.

Collier had been responding to a call of a disturbance at the university's Cambridge campus. Whether that call was connected to the brothers is unclear. Earlier reports that the pair had robbed a nearby convenience store were later withdrawn by the authorities.

In any case, Collier's body was found in his car at about 10.30 p.m. on Thursday. He had been shot multiple times, in what Boston Police Chief Ed Davis described as an assassination-style murder.

The brothers, meanwhile, were fleeing west across Cambridge to the nearby suburb of Watertown in a hijacked car. For a time, the car's owner was an unwilling passenger and listened as the pair told him that they had bombed the marathon earlier in the week.

After about half an hour, the brothers pulled into a gas station and forced the man to withdraw cash from an ATM before leaving him behind. Apparently unknown to them, police were tracking their movements using the man's cellphone, left behind in his car. Somewhere along the way, they stole a second a car.

AT LEAST SIX BOMBS

At about 12:30 a.m. on Friday, a police officer from the suburb of Watertown found the brothers, each now in his own stolen car, on a quiet street. Almost immediately, the brothers emerged from their vehicles and began firing, Edward Deveau, the chief of Watertown police, said in an interview with CNN on Saturday.

He said other officers arrived to find themselves in the middle of a gun battle, including a transit police officer who would be shot in the groin. About 200 rounds were shot in five or 10 minutes.

The brothers, armed with handguns and a rifle, also lobbed explosive devices, some resembling crude grenades, according to Deveau.

Police believe they had at least six bombs, three of which exploded, Deveau said. One was a pressure cooker bomb similar to a device used in the marathon bombing, Boston police said.

Towards the end of the battle, Tamerlan began walking towards the officers, shooting as he approached. Then, a few feet from the officers, his ammunition ran out, Deveau said.

He was tackled by the officers, who attempted to handcuff him in the street. Meanwhile, Dzhokhar had gotten back into a car and raced towards the group.

"One of them yells, 'Look out!', and here comes the black SUV, the carjacked car, directly at them," Deveau said.

The officers were able to dive out of the way. Tamerlan was not. He was hit by his brother's car and dragged a short way down the street, Deveau said, leaving a streak of blood in the asphalt that was still visible on Saturday, according to residents.

Tamerlan would later be pronounced dead at a hospital, while the younger brother disappeared into the night, leaving the car abandoned and fleeing on foot.

As the manhunt dragged on through Friday, residents of the Boston area were urged to stay indoors as officers in combat gear went house to house in a cordoned-off zone of about 20 streets in Watertown.

Even as authorities were announcing that the "stay-indoors" request was being lifted at about 6 p.m., a call came in to the Watertown police that there appeared to be someone hiding in a boat stored in a backyard about half a mile from the earlier shootout.

The hiding place was just outside of the perimeter of the manhunt during the day, police said.

Officers stormed the property around 7 p.m., and once again a flurry of gunfire reverberated on the streets of Watertown. Police lobbed stun grenades in an attempt to immobilize whoever was in the boat.

But police did not immediately rush the boat once the initial gunfire subsided. They said they hoped to take the suspect alive and were concerned that Dzhokhar might be carrying additional explosives or that the boat's half-full gas tank might be ignited.

As the siege dragged on for more than an hour, a police robot moved in to lift a plastic sheeting covering the boat.

An FBI negotiator stared down at the boat from the second floor of the house, relying on a helicopter flying overhead with heat-tracking devices to confirm that someone was still moving beneath the tarpaulin.

It took the negotiator 15 or 20 minutes, but, eventually, a badly injured Dzhokhar emerged from beneath the tarpaulin, lifting his shirt as instructed to show he was unarmed.

Dzhokhar, who had lost a considerable amount of blood, was loaded into an ambulance and rushed under police escort to Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in serious condition.

(This story fixes typo in Deveau in paragraph 15 in April 20 story)

(Additional reporting by Daniel Lovering; editing by Frank McGurty and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flight-boston-marathon-bombing-suspects-ended-mayhem-130400989.html

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রবিবার, ২১ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

PFT: Jim Thorpe's sons win lawsuit over his remains

Texans Reed FootballAP

With the NFL Draft approaching, we?re taking a team-by-team look at the needs of each club. Up next is the team with the No. 27 overall selection, the? Houston Texans. While they haven?t been very active in free agency, watching more go out than come in, they have added a few veteran parts for what they hope is a push to the next level.

Wide receiver: Andre Johnson remains one of the best in the league, but the Texans have precious little to go with him. They only had one other experienced wideout on the roster, and they cut him (Kevin Walter). With a bunch of kids who haven?t proven anything yet, they need to find more targets for Matt Schaub, and soon.

Outside linebacker: The Texans were practically planning for Connor Barwin?s departure for Philadelphia when they drafted Whitney Mercilus in the first round last year. But more planning is needed, as they don?t have much beyond him and Brooks Reed. Finding their pass-rusher late in the first round might be the ticket, before the best ones are gone.

Guard: The right side of their offensive line was iffy last year, and they aren?t necessarily in a spot to invest a high pick in the grade of tackle they need. So if they could find some competition inside in the middle rounds, it would be a smart move.

Nose tackle:?Shaun Cody?s not going to be able to bang forever, and has shown signs of wearing down. That?s probably why he?s still unsigned, as they appear content to go with Earl Mitchell as the starter. Adding a big body is a need if they?re not interested in bringing Cody back, or even if they are.

Tight end: The Texans are fortunate that Owen Daniels has responded to the lack of secondary receiving targets. But if they?re not going to throw outside, they might want to add another option here.

The Texans are good enough, that unless they go receiver or guard with their first pick, there?s a very good chance that guy?s not starting this year.

And that?s the goal of every franchise.

The fixes the Texans made this offseason were the kind a team makes when they think they?re this close to a Super Bowl.

They lost range in the transition from Glover Quin to Ed Reed at safety, but they hope the added leadership and championship experience counteracts that.

Upgrading at punter (from Donnie Jones to Shane Lechler) was a fine-tuning move. Likewise, losing the versatile James Casey at fullback and replacing him with veteran Greg Jones shows this team is gearing up for one big run.

Adding any useful parts in the draft would be a benefit, but it?s hardly a necessity.

But if they fall short again, it?s reasonable to start asking questions about Schaub, and the ultimate direction of the franchise.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/20/jim-thorpes-sons-win-lawsuit-over-his-remains/related/

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Obama: 'We refuse to be terrorized' (CNN)

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

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BOSTON BOMBING SUSPECTS' MOTHER: 'This ... - Business Insider

Natick Police

Zubeidat K. Tsarnaeva, the?mother of Boston bombing suspects?Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, told television networks that she believes her sons were set up.?

"I am 100 percent sure that this is a setup," she told Russia Today. "My two sons are really innocent and neither of them have ever talked about what they said now."?

She added later, however, that her older son, Tamerlan, got involved in "religious politics" five years ago. And she appeared to suggest that she had been contacted by the FBI about Tamerlan prior to the marathon bombing attacks.?

"He was controlled by the FBI for five years," she said."They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the Internet he was going [to], they used to come...and talk to me...they were telling me that he was a serious leader and they were afraid of him."?

"So how could this happen?"

"It's impossible for both of them to do those things," she added. "If there was anyone who would know, it would be me, the mother."?

Her remarks echo those of other relatives of the suspects, including their father and their aunt, both of whom insisted Friday that the two men were innocent and had been set up by the police.?

Watch her full interview with Russia Today below:?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tsarnaev-mother-setup-boston-bombing-2013-4

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শনিবার, ২০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Netflix's latest original series 'Hemlock Grove' is available for streaming

Netflix's latest original series 'Hemlock Grove' now available for streaming

Netflix's original content assault continues today with the debut of Hemlock Grove, a "supernatural" series directed by Eli Roth. This series takes place in a small Pennsylvania town which has suddenly come down with a bad case of werewolf attacks. Previous releases Lilyhammer and House of Cards chased viewers interested in quirky foreign humor and political drama, respectively, so this series represents a bit of a shift. Later this year, the streaming service will debut Orange is the New Black from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan and the second season of Lilyhammer. Cards is also due for a second season, and sci-fi fans have Sense8 to look forward to in 2014.

We'll see if its data-based approach to picking series has found another quality option in Hemlock Grove, however early reviews suggest that may not be the case for all viewers. Hitfix's Alan Sepinwall referred to it as a "streakbuster" between Cards and the upcoming season of Arrested Development, and a New York Times evaluation of the first few eps notes "it barely gets around to telling its story." Of course, it may just be targeted to viewers with different priorities, who will appreciate its style more than they did, and the company's algorithms are just waiting to dig those people out of the crowd. Whatever the case, with Netflix's characteristic all-episodes-at-once release schedule you can power through all 13 episodes and find out for yourself right now.

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Source: Netflix

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/19/netflix-hemlock-grove/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Video: One-on-one with Eddie Lacy

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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/21134540/vp/51601494#51601494

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শুক্রবার, ১৯ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

During space station fix-up, Russian becomes world's oldest spacewalker

NASA TV

Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko (bottom) and Pavel Vinogradov float outside the International Space Station on Friday during a spacewalk.

By Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. ?A 59-year-old Russian cosmonaut became the world's oldest spacewalker Friday, joining a much younger cosmonaut's son for a little maintenance work outside the International Space Station.

Pavel Vinogradov, a cosmonaut for two decades, claimed the honor as he emerged from the hatch with Roman Romanenko. But he inadvertently added to the booming population of space junk when he lost his grip on an experiment tray that he was retrieving toward the end of the 6?-hour spacewalk.

The lost aluminum panel ? 18 inches by 12 inches (45 by 30 centimeters) and about 6? pounds (3 kilograms) ? contained metal samples. Scientists wanted to see how the samples had fared after a year out in the vacuum of space.?


Otherwise, the spacewalk went well, with the spacewalkers installing new science equipment and replacing a navigation device needed for the June arrival of a European cargo ship.

Collecting the experiment tray was Vinogradov's last task outside.

The tray drifted toward the solar panels of the main Russian space station compartment, called Zvezda, Russian for Star. Flight controllers did not believe it struck anything, and the object was not thought to pose a safety hazard in the hours and days ahead.?

"That's unfortunate," someone radioed in Russian.

Another panel of similar experiments will be collected on a future spacewalk.

This was the first of eight spacewalks to be conducted this year, most of them by Russians. Two will be led by NASA this summer.?

Until Friday, the oldest spacewalker was retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, who was 58 when he helped fix the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

Romanenko, 41, is a second-generation spaceflier who's following in his father's bootsteps. Retired cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko performed spacewalks back in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the son's first experience out in the vacuum of space.

Vinogradov made his seventh spacewalk; he ventured into a dark, ruptured chamber at Russia's old Mir space station in 1997 following a cargo ship collision. He arrived late last month for a six-month stay at the space station and will turn 60 aboard the orbiting complex in August.

The spacewalkers joked as they toiled 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the planet.

"I'm afraid of the darkness," one of them said in Russian as the space station passed over the night side of Earth.

Among the newly installed equipment was a Russian experiment called Obstanovka, which will study plasma waves and the effect of space weather on Earth's ionosphere. Vinogradov and Romanenko also replaced a faulty retro-reflector device, a navigational aid that will help guide in the European Space Agency's Albert Einstein cargo ship during an automated docking that is scheduled in June.

Russian flight controllers outside Moscow oversaw Friday's action. The four other space station residents monitored the activity from inside; Canadian commander Chris Hadfield drew the short straw and had to work on a balky toilet.?

This report includes additional information from NASA. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.?

This story was originally published on

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রবিবার, ১৪ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Melissa McCarthy And Sandra Bullock Got Rowdy On 'The Heat' Set

"The Heat," if you didn't already know, is a movie starring Melissa McCarthy and directed by Paul Feig. The last time those two worked together, it was on a little movie called "Bridesmaids" that you may have heard of. Anyway, the two have history of making out-of-control movies, and "The Heat" doesn't sound any different. [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/04/12/melissa-mccarthy-on-the-heat-set/

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শনিবার, ১৩ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Scientists use 'the force' (atomic force microscopy) to decode secrets of our gut

Apr. 12, 2013 ? A new technique based on atomic force microscopy was developed at the Institute of Food Research to help 'read' information encoded in the gut lining.

The lining of our gut is an important barrier between the outside world and our bodies. Laid out, the gut lining would cover the area of a football pitch. It must let nutrients from our foods through, but prevent invasion by disease-causing bacteria, at the same time hosting the trillions of beneficial bacteria needed for proper digestion and immune function.

At the forefront of the defensive system is a layer of mucus that lines the entire gut surface. In the large bowel, the mucus layer is an organised structure, with an inner layer that blocks bacteria, and an outer layer where beneficial bacteria (commensals) can flourish. The mucus layer is made up of large proteins called mucins with characteristic sugary, or glycosylated, chains.

Dr Nathalie Juge and colleagues from the Institute of Food Research, which is strategically funded by BBSRC, is leading studies aiming to understand the role of mucus in maintaining a healthy gut and how mucins interact with bacteria in our guts.

At the molecular level, mucins exhibit clusters of glycosylation that give the proteins a 'bottle-brush' appearance. The size of these molecular sugar chains varies with location and age of the tissue, and abnormalities in mucins are seen in inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease and colon cancer. A myriad of different conformations that the sugar chains can take up means that mucins are incredibly diverse. The differences are believed to help commensal bacteria by providing specific binding sites, as well as necessary nourishment.

Pathogenic bacteria have also evolved mechanisms to bind to mucins, as part of their arsenal to overcome our defences. We, however, are a long way behind these bacteria in understanding the coded information contained in these complex sugar chains. Understanding this 'glycocode' would give us a new way to look at the crucial interactions between good and bad microorganisms in our guts, and may also provide new insights into gut diseases.

These interactions happen at the molecular level, so for us to understand them we need tools that work at this level. IFR has a history of pioneering use of one such tool, atomic force microscopy (AFM).

AFM combines very high-resolution imaging with an ability to probe the forces between molecules. AFM works by running a very fine stylus (tip) mounted on the end of a flexible cantilever over the surface of a molecule, much like a blind person reading braille. A laser is bounced off the cantilever, amplifying the signal so that AFM can detect distances down to a millionth the width of a sheet of paper.

Patrick Gunning and Andrew Kirby, from IFR's AFM group, adapted this technique by attaching sugar-binding molecules called lectins to the AFM cantilever, via a flexible linker. They used this to probe mucins bound to a surface. The findings of this collaborative work were published in the FASEB Journal.

"It's a bit like fishing" said Dr Gunning. "The mucin molecules are immersed in saline, and float like a sea of kelp. We use lectins as the bait. We drop the line down until we hit the bottom, and then lift it back up. If the lectin finds a target sugar molecule on the mucin, it snags."

Measuring the distance between the snags gives a picture of what the overall mucin molecule looks like. By repeating this thousands of times, and then working with IFR's biomathematicians, it was possible to produce a 'fingerprint' that characterise different mucins, which means that we could differentiate between mucins derived from different parts of the gut.

The researchers now want to look at the mucins derived from diseased tissues, to further investigate differences in the glycocode. They would also like to understand how bacteria read and possibly manipulate the glycocode. In the lab, the researchers used specific enzymes targeting certain sugars on the mucin molecules. This affected the mucin's molecular structure, which in turn altered its spatial distribution. Certain bacteria in our guts also secrete these enzymes, as a means of rewriting the glycocode for their own benefit. With this new technique in hand, the researchers will continue their efforts to unravel the secrets inside our own bodies.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Norwich BioScience Institutes.

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


Journal Reference:

  1. A. P. Gunning, A. R. Kirby, C. Fuell, C. Pin, L. E. Tailford, N. Juge. Mining the "glycocode"--exploring the spatial distribution of glycans in gastrointestinal mucin using force spectroscopy. The FASEB Journal, 2013; DOI: 10.1096/fj.12-221416

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/e2Rtf7IzvfA/130412132411.htm

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A weak start on Wall Street; energy stocks slide

NEW YORK (AP) ? Energy companies led the stock market lower Friday as the price of oil sank 2 percent. Major indexes were still on track to end the week with strong gains.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 36 points at 14,828, a loss of 0.2 percent, shortly after 10 a.m. The Dow had surged more than 2 percent, a climb of 300 points, over the previous four days.

The price of crude oil dropped $2 to $91 a barrel in early trading Friday in New York. The International Energy Agency lowered its forecast for global oil demand this year, echoing predictions made earlier this week by OPEC and the U.S. Energy Department.

In other trading, the Standard & Poor's 500 was down seven points, or 0.4 percent, at 1,588. The Nasdaq composite dropped 12 points, also 0.4 percent, to 3,288.

Wells Fargo dropped 2 percent to $36.84. Quarterly profits surged for the country's biggest mortgage lender, but revenue slumped below Wall Street's forecasts.

M&T Bank fell 4 percent to $100.87. The bank said it had to delay its merger with Hudson City Bancorp after the Federal Reserve flagged the bank's compliance with money-laundering rules.

A handful of reports out Friday also heightened concerns about the economy. Sales at U.S. retailers fell in March and companies restocked their shelves at a much slower pace in February than in the month before. That means companies expect weaker consumer and business spending.

Those reports pushed traders into the safety of Treasurys. In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.74 percent from 1.79 percent late Thursday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/weak-start-wall-street-energy-stocks-slide-144147918--finance.html

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Mail Pilot For iPhone And iPad Launches, Turns Your Email Inbox Into A Full-Featured To-Do List

mail-pilotBefore Mailbox was even an officially announced project, and long before it sold to Dropbox in what is said to have been around a $100 million deal, Josh Milas and Alex Obenauer took to Kickstarter to fund their very own reinvention of email. The team created Mail Pilot, which promised "email reimagined," with the goal of turning email into a task-oriented to-do list to help people truly get things done.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/uRSBiea8KNU/

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Has 'mainstream' media ignored Gosnell tragedy?

The grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Dr. Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate's coverage includes testimony as grisly as you'd expect. "An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions," the channel reports. "Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.' He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, 'it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'"

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One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. "I can't describe it. It sounded like a little alien," she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, "Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell's idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania."?

Until Thursday, I wasn't aware of this story. It has generated sparse coverage in the national media, and while it's been mentioned in RSS feeds to which I subscribe, I skip past most news items. I still consume a tremendous amount of journalism. Yet had I been asked at a trivia night about the identity of Kermit Gosnell, I would've been stumped and helplessly guessed a green Muppet. Then I saw Kirsten Power's USA Todaycolumn. She makes a powerful, persuasive case that the Gosnell trial ought to be getting a lot more attention in the national press than it is getting.

The media criticism angle interests me. But I agree that the story has been undercovered, and I happen to be a working journalist, so I'll begin by telling the rest of the story for its own sake. Only then will I explain why I think it deserves more coverage than it has gotten, although it ought to be self-evident by the time I'm done distilling the grand jury's allegations. Grand juries aren't infallible. This version of events hasn't been proven in a court of law. But journalists routinely treat accounts given by police, prosecutors and grand juries as at least plausible if not proven. Try to decide, as you hear the state's side of the case, whether you think it is credible, and if so, whether the possibility that some or all this happened demands massive journalistic scrutiny.

* * *?

On February 18, 2010, the FBI raided the "Women's Medical Society," entering its offices about 8:30 p.m. Agents expected to find evidence that it was illegally selling prescription drugs. On entering, they quickly realized something else was amiss. In the grand jury report's telling, "There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets. All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff." Authorities had also learned about the patient that died at the facility several months prior.

Public health officials inspected the surgery rooms. "Instruments were not sterile," the grand jury states. "Equipment was rusty and outdated. Oxygen equipment was covered with dust, and had not been inspected. The same corroded suction tubing used for abortions was the only tubing available for oral airways if assistance for breathing was needed. There was no functioning resuscitation or even monitoring equipment, except for a single blood pressure cuff." Upon further inspection, "the search team discovered fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic - in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers."?

And "Gosnell admitted to Detective Wood that at least 10 to 20 percent of the fetuses were probably older than 24 weeks in gestation - even though Pennsylvania law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks. In some instances, surgical incisions had been made at the base of the fetal skulls." Gosnell's medical license was quickly suspended. 18 days later, The Department of Health filed papers to start the process of closing the clinic. The district attorney submitted the case to the grand jury on May 4, 2010. Testimony was taken from 58 witnesses. Evidence was examined.?

In Pennsylvania, most doctors won't perform abortions after the 20th week, many for health reasons, others for moral reasons. Abortions after 24 weeks are illegal. Until 2009, Gosnell reportedly performed mostly first and second trimester abortions. But his clinic had come to develop a bad reputation, and could attract only women who couldn't get an abortion elsewhere, former employees have said. "Steven Massof estimated that in 40 percent of the second-trimester abortions performed by Gosnell, the fetuses were beyond 24 weeks gestational age," the grand jury states. "Latosha Lewis testified that Gosnell performed procedures over 24 weeks 'too much to count,' and ones up to 26 weeks 'very often.' ...in the last few years, she testified, Gosnell increasingly saw out-of-state referrals, which were all second-trimester, or beyond. By these estimates, Gosnell performed at least four or five illegal abortions every week."?

The grand jury report includes an image of a particularly extreme case (the caption is theirs, not mine):

That photo pertains to an unusual case, in that the mother had to seek help at a hospital after the abortion she sought at Gosnell's office went awry. The grand jury report summarizes a more typical late-term abortion, as conducted at the clinic, concluding with the following passage:

When you perform late-term "abortions" by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it "ensuring fetal demise." The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that "snipping."

Over the years, there were hundreds of "snippings." Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the "snipping" was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff.

But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant - seven and a half months - when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could "walk me to the bus stop." Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times. And these were not even the worst cases.

Abuse of Women Patients

What little media coverage there's been in the case has understandably focused on the murder allegations. The grand jury report also makes clear how horrific Women's Medical Society was for the patients.

The unsanitary conditions were just the beginning.

One woman "was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus," the report states. Another patient, 19, "was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus. As a result of the delay, she fell into shock from blood loss, and had to undergo a hysterectomy." A third patient "went into convulsions during an abortion, fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor. Gosnell wouldn't call an ambulance, and wouldn't let the woman's companion leave the building so that he could call an ambulance."

Often times, women given drugs to induce labor delivered before the doctor even arrived at work.

Said one former employee:

If... a baby was about to come out, I would take the woman to the bathroom, they would sit on the toilet and basically the baby would fall out and it would be in the toilet and I would be rubbing her back and trying to calm her down for two, three, four hours until Dr. Gosnell comes.

She would not move.

One patient died:

She was a 41-year-old, refugee who had recently come to the United States from a resettlement camp in Nepal. When she arrived at the clinic, Gosnell, as usual, was not there. Office workers had her sign various forms that she could not read, and then began doping her up. She received repeated unmonitored, unrecorded intravenous injections of Demerol, a sedative seldom used in recent years because of its dangers. Gosnell liked it because it was cheap. After several hours, Mrs. Mongar simply stopped breathing. When employees finally noticed, Gosnell was called in and briefl y attempted to give CPR. He couldn't use the defibrillator (it was broken); nor did he administer emergency medications that might have restarted her heart. After further crucial delay, paramedics finally arrived, but Mrs.Mongar was probably brain dead before they were even called. In the meantime, the clinic staff hooked up machinery and rearranged her body to make it look like they had been in the midst of a routine, safe abortion procedure.

Even then, there might have been some slim hope of reviving Mrs. Mongar. The paramedics were able to generate a weak pulse. But, because of the cluttered hallways and the padlocked emergency door, it took them over twenty minutes just to find a way to get her out of the building. Doctors at the hospital managed to keep her heart beating, but they never knew what they were trying to treat, because Gosnell and his staff lied about how much anesthesia they had given, and who had given it. By that point, there was no way to restore any neurological activity. Life support was removed the next day. Karnamaya Mongar was pronounced dead.

Another provocative detail: A former employee testified "that white patients often did not have to wait in the same dirty rooms as black and Asian clients. Instead, Gosnell would escort them up the back steps to the only clean office - Dr. O'Neill's - and he would turn on the TV for them. Mrs. Mongar, she said, would have been treated 'no different from the rest of the Africans and Asians.'"

Said the employee:

Like if a girl - the black population was - African population was big here. So he didn't mind you medicating your African American girls, your Indian girl, but if you had a white girl from the suburbs, oh, you better not medicate her. You better wait until he go in and talk to her first. And one day I said something to him and he was like, that's the way of the world. Huh?

And he brushed it off and that was it.

Anesthesia was frequently dispensed by employees who were neither legally permitted nor trained to do it, including a 15-year-old high school student who worked at the clinic, the report states.

Most employees did as they were told, but one objected:

Marcella Stanley Choung, who told us that her "training" for anesthesia consisted of a 15-minute description by Gosnell and reading a chart he had posted in a cabinet. She was so uncomfortable medicating patients, she said, that she "didn't sleep at night." She knew that if she made even a small error, "I can kill this lady, and I'm not jail material." One night in 2002, when she found herself alone with 15 patients, she refused Gosnell's directives to medicate them. She made an excuse, went to her car, and drove away, never to return. Choung immediately filed a complaint with the Department of State, but the department never acted on it.

The Failure to Stop It

That brings us to a subject you've perhaps been wondering about: How on earth did this go on for so long without anyone stopping it? The grand jury delved into that very question in their report. I'm going to excerpt it at length, because it bears directly on the question that will concern us afterward: has this story gotten an appropriate amount of attention from the news media?

Here is the grand jury on oversight failures:

Pennsylvania is not a third-world country. There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago. But none of them did...

The first line of defense was the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The department's job is to audit hospitals and outpatient medical facilities, like Gosnell's, to make sure that they follow the rules and provide safe care. The department had contact with the Women's Medical Society dating back to 1979, when it first issued approval to open an abortion clinic. It did not conduct another site review until 1989, ten years later. Numerous violations were already apparent, but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them. Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected.

But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro form a effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all... The only exception to this live-and-let-die policy was supposed to be for complaints dumped directly on the department's doorstep. Those, at least, would be investigated. Except that there were complaints about Gosnell, repeatedly. Several different attorneys, representing women injured by Gosnell, contacted the department. A doctor from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia hand-delivered a complaint, advising the department that numerous patients he had referred for abortions came back from Gosnell with the same venereal disease. The medical examiner of Delaware County informed the department that Gosnell had performed an illegal abortion on a 14-year-old girl carrying a 30-week-old baby. And the department received official notice that a woman named Karnamaya Mongar had died at Gosnell's hands.

Yet not one of these alarm bells - not even Mrs. Mongar's death - prompted the department to look at Gosnell or the Women's Medical Society... But even this total abdication by the Department of Health might not have been fatal. Another agency with authority in the health field, the Pennsylvania Department of State, could have stopped Gosnell single-handedly.

The Department of State, through its Board of Medicine, licenses and oversees individual physicians... Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street. The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell. The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.

Shortly thereafter the department received an even more disturbing report - about a woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar, who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. The woman was 22 years old. A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the department. That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department's possession. Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint too... The same thing happened at least twice more: the department received complaints about lawsuits against Gosnell, but dismissed them as meaningless...

Philadelphia health department employees regularly visited the Women's Medical Society to retrieve blood samples for testing purposes, but never noticed, or more likely never bothered to report, that anything was amiss. Another employee inspected the clinic in response to a complaint that dead fetuses were being stored in paper bags in the employees' lunch refrigerator. The inspection confirmed numerous violations... But no follow-up was ever done... A health department representative also came to the clinic as part of a citywide vaccination program. She promptly discovered that Gosnell was scamming the program; she was the only employee, city or state, who actually tried to do something about the appalling things she saw there. By asking questions and poking around, she was able to file detailed reports identifying many of the most egregious elements of Gosnell's practice. It should have been enough to stop him. But instead her reports went into a black hole, weeks before Karnamaya Mongar walked into the Woman's Medical Society.

...And it wasn't just government agencies that did nothing. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and its subsidiary, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, are in the same neighborhood as Gosnell's office. State law requires hospitals to report complications from abortions. A decade ago, a Gosnell patient died at HUP after a botched abortion, and the hospital apparently filed the necessary report. But the victims kept coming in. At least three other Gosnell patients were brought to Penn facilities for emergency surgery; emergency room personnel said they have treated many others as well. And at least one additional woman was hospitalized there after Gosnell had begun a flagrantly illegal abortion of a 29-week-old fetus. Yet, other than the one initial report, Penn could find not a single case in which it complied with its legal duty to alert authorities to the danger. Not even when a second woman turned up virtually dead...

So too with the National Abortion Federation.

NAF is an association of abortion providers that upholds the strict est health and legal standards for its members. Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar's death. Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused. It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected. Of course, she rejected Gosnell's application. She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.

The conclusion drawn at the end of the section is provocative. "Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that," it states. "But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

A Front-Page Story

Says Kirsten Powers in her USA Today op-ed, "Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams intoned, 'A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,' as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed -- a major human rights story if there ever was one -- doesn't make the cut."

Inducing live births and subsequently severing the heads of the babies is indeed a horrific story that merits significant attention. Strange as it seems to say it, however, that understates the case.

For this isn't solely a story about babies having their heads severed, though it is that. It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers. Any single one of those things would itself make for a blockbuster news story. Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn't make national headlines??

But it isn't even solely a story of a rogue clinic that's awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them. And I probably wouldn't have the staff. But there is so much fodder for additional reporting.

There is, finally, the fact that abortion, one of the most hotly contested, polarizing debates in the country, is at the center of this case. It arguably informs the abortion debate in any number of ways, and has numerous plausible implications for abortion policy, including the oversight and regulation of clinics, the appropriateness of late-term abortions, the penalties for failing to report abuses, the statute of limitations for killings like those with which Gosnell is charged, whether staff should be legally culpable for the bad behavior of doctors under whom they work...

There's just no end to it.?

To sum up, this story has numerous elements any one of which would normally make it a major story. And setting aside conventions, which are flawed, this ought to be a big story on the merits.?

The news value is undeniable.?

Why isn't it being covered more? I've got my theories. But rather than offer them at the end of an already lengthy item, I'd like to survey some of the editors and writers making coverage decisions.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-dr-kermit-gosnells-trial-major-news-story-104719415--politics.html

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