When green means danger: A stunning new species of palm-pitviper from Honduras

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

A new species of green palm-pitviper of the genus Bothriechis is described from a seriously threatened cloud forest reserve in northern Honduras. Because of similarity in color pattern and scalation, the new species (Bothriechis guifarroi) was previously confused with other Honduran palm pitvipers. Genetic analysis revealed that the closest relatives of the new species are actually found over 600 km to the south, in the mountains of Costa Rica. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys.

The gorgeous new species was discovered by scientists during two expeditions in 2010 aimed at studying the fauna of Texiguat Wildlife Refuge, one of the most endemism-rich and diverse highland forests in Mesoamerica. This beautiful, but highly toxic, snake represents the 15th endemic species occurring in the region. Texiguat Wildlife Refuge was created in 1987 to protect populations of wildlife such as the famous but elusive jaguar and Central America tapir, as well as howler and white-faced monkeys, sloths, and a variety of endemic amphibians, reptiles, and plants.

To draw attention to the dedication and sacrifice of many grassroots conservationists in Honduras and Central America, the new species was named in honor of Mario Guifarro of Olancho. Guifarro was a former hunter and gold miner who became an outspoken conservationist when he saw the vast rainforests of eastern Honduras being destroyed and converted to cattle ranches. After years of threats and multiple attempts on his life, Guifarro was ambushed and murdered on 15 September 2007 while on a mission to delimit a biosphere reserve for the indigenous Tawahka.

The lead author of the study Dr Josiah Townsend, Department of Biology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, comments on the importance of the discovery and conservation status of the new species: "The description of Bothriechis guifarroi has important implications for Central American biogeography as well as conservation. We recommend that B. guifarroi be immediately classified as Critically Endangered due to its limited known area of occurrence and the potential for anthropogenic damage to its habitat. We also consider that this species warrants immediate consideration for protection under CITES, given its striking appearance and high potential for exploitation in the pet trade."

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Townsend JH, Medina-Flores M, Wilson LD, Jadin RC, Austin JD (2013) A relict lineage and new species of green palm-pitviper (Squamata, Viperidae, Bothriechis) from the Chort?s Highlands of Mesoamerica. ZooKeys 298: 77, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.298.4834

Pensoft Publishers: http://www.pensoft.net

Thanks to Pensoft Publishers for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128272/When_green_means_danger__A_stunning_new_species_of_palm_pitviper_from_Honduras

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California wildfire triples in size, but evacuation orders are lifted

Over 28,000 acres have been burned in southern California, and officials say the fire is at 20 percent containment. Officials are hoping to get a lucky break to fight the fires. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

A raging 28,000-acre wildfire that sent thousands of people fleeing from their homes in Southern California was about 56 percent contained and evacuation orders were lifted Saturday, officials said.

The Springs Fire has charred a 44-square mile swatch across Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

High temperatures, dry vegetation and strong winds helped stoke the blaze, which began Thursday off the Ventura Freeway.

Fifteen homes have been damaged as close to 1,900 firefighters backed by air tankers and helicopters have worked to bring the flames under control, according to a release from the Ventura County Fire Department.

Forecasters expected increased humidity over the weekend, which they expected would help firefighters, who had battled early Santa Ana winds. The strong gusts blew from inland regions toward the coast and drove the Springs Fire toward the Pacific Ocean this week but died down on Friday.

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?It?s a total turnaround from what we had,? Kurt Kaplan, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard, Calif., told the Associated Press of the break in the weather.

David Mcnew / Getty Images

Firefighters battle a growing wildfire that reached the beaches in Ventura County and pushes its way toward the upscale city of Malibu.

?Firefighters continue to construct control line and mop up operations. Firefighters are working in a challenging environment, with the potential for fire flare-ups throughout the day,? the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in a release. ?A low pressure weather system has developed over the fire bringing higher humidity, lower temperatures, [and] creating an opportunity to increase containment.?

Capt. Mike Lindberry of the Ventura County Fire Department said that workers planned to take advantage of the improved conditions to get a hold on the fire.

?That will give us a chance because it?s going to really bring that fire activity down quite a bit,? Lindberry told the AP on Saturday. ?I think we will make some significant progress,?

Firefighters still faced the challenges of fighting the flames in the scrubby brush areas where the fire spread.

?It feels ? like you?re always behind,? U.S. Forest Service Division Chief Steve Seltzner told NBC Los Angeles. ?Just about the time you get caught up, the fire is out-flanking you.?

The Pacific Coast Highway was reopened on Friday night after a nine-mile stretch was shut down on Thursday evening as flames crawled down slopes toward the coast.

?The hillside is subject to falling debris and rock slides as there is little vegetation,? the California Department of Transportation cautioned in a release.

Related:

This story was originally published on Sat May 4, 2013 7:15 AM EDT

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Proposals Aim To Ease Michigan's Adoption Process ? CBS Detroit

LANSING (WWJ/AP) - Michigan lawmakers have introduced measures they say will make it easier for Michigan residents to adopt. The five-bill package was introduced Tuesday.

Under one of the measures, birth mothers would have 72 hours to revoke their consent for the adoption. Under current law, there is no limit for when a mother can revoke her consent.

Republican Rep. Mike Shirkey of Clarklake said in a statement that current law makes it tedious and time consuming for families to adopt.

The legislative package also would provide children in foster care with added stability and support by creating a Resource Families Bill of Rights, which would help empower foster parents to improve children?s care.

?We need to do all we can to make sure Michigan?s foster children get placed in permanent, loving homes,? Shirkey said.? ?Our adoption and foster care systems need reforms as well.?We should endeavor to encourage Michigan couples to look at Michigan children first.?This is continuous improvement of an important process at its best.?

Another measure would shorten the supervisory period for some adopting families. For families that adopt children under one year of age, the supervisory period would drop from six months to three months. It would remain six months for families that adopt older children.

TM and ? Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/05/04/proposals-aim-to-ease-michigans-adoption-process/

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Professor Hannibal Travis: United Nations Reaction Muted to Warning Signs of Genocide in Middle East

Turkey not a Credible Model for "Arab Spring" Countries

ZURICH, May 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Warning signs are present for a genocide of indigenous Christians in the Middle East, stated Professor Hannibal Travis in a speech delivered on Thursday as a part of CSI's lecture series on the Future of Religious Minorities in Middle East. He furthermore argued that the policies of Turkey and its allies obstruct the advance of universal human rights norms in a region still grappling with the genocide of Turkey's Christians during World War I.?

Travis, Associate Professor of Law at Florida International University, noted a "pattern of reprisals against religious and ethnic groups believed to be friendly with the regime" in the Arab revolutions and civil wars which began in 2011. ?He cited many instances of anti-minority violence in these countries, including the attack on St. Mark's Cathedral in Egypt in April 2013, the ethnic cleansing of black Africans in Libya, and attacks on Christians in Syria.

Travis pointed to serious warning signs for genocide in countries like Egypt and Syria, including civil war, demonization of groups, and institutionalized inequality between religious groups.

Explaining the United Nations' apparent apathy towards this crisis, Travis claimed that the UN often displays "inaction, double standards and incongruity" in its dealings with human rights issues, since those nations supported by voting blocs based on ethnic or religious proximity at the UN tend to escape scrutiny.? He argued that Turkey's leadership within the largest of these blocs, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has resulted in the "neglect of human rights violations against the indigenous populations of Turkey, Iraq and Syria."

Mr. Travis also argued that, despite claims that Turkey is a force for stability and can be seen as a "model" for democratic governance and tolerance, Turkey remains economically underdeveloped and deeply hostile towards religious minorities.? Travis claimed that Turkey plays a negative role in the region by protecting human rights violators such as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and supporting violent movements in former Ottoman territories like Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria, creating more conflict "as veterans of civil and international wars migrate from country to country."

Travis concluded that legal reforms in the United Nations system were required to "promote a universal application of human rights norms and genocide prevention." Travis suggested several possible reforms, including decoupling the International Criminal Court from UN Security Council referrals, introducing greater transparency and participation at the UN, exploring alternatives to regime change as a remedy for human rights violations, and protecting the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.

Prof. Travis' presentation, "Preventing Genocide in the Middle East: The Continuing Relevance of the Ottoman Experience and the Problem of Bias within the United Nations," can be viewed at?middle-east-minorities.com.?

Hannibal Travis is an associate professor of law at Florida International University, and the author of the first comprehensive history of physical and cultural genocide in the Middle East and North Africa, entitled?Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan.?

In response to increasing violence and displacement of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, Christian Solidarity International has issued an Alert for the Prevention of Genocide: www.csi-usa.org.

Contact: Joel Veldkamp, joel@csi-usa.org, 515-421-7258

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SOURCE Christian Solidarity International

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/professor-hannibal-travis-united-nations-reaction-muted-warning-193100841.html

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GUSA: A Year in Sport ? Glasgow Guardian

Beatrice Cook

It has been yet another successful year for the Glasgow University Sport Association; alongside the University?s recent triumph at the Glasgow Taxis Cup for the third consecutive year, there has been consistent victory in other areas of club sport, with Glasgow University Women?s Football ?team remaining undefeated in the British University and College Sports (BUCS) Championships ?since February 2011, and the Glasgow University Netball BUCS team dominating over Edinburgh seconds, securing a place in the Conference Cup final to fight to retain their title. However, it is not all about club and competitive sport here at the University of Glasgow. A recent drive to focus on health and wellbeing at the University has been seen in the restructuring of the association?s Council with the introduction of the position of Welfare Convenor, as well as the Sports and Wellbeing Week at the beginning of the second semester. In addition to that, emphasis has been placed on recreational sports and clubs, with the creation of the Recreational Sports League in 2012, opening up sport to a wider collective. GUSA has strived to remain an open and equal institution, and with the coming construction of the new Stevenson Hive Building Project meaning more gym space and increased service levels for all members, it seems that there has never been more of an exciting time for sport at the University of Glasgow.

GUSA has over fifteen thousand members, with approximately two thousand of those students using its facilities on a daily basis; from this statistic alone it is obvious that the association is extremely popular across campus, its partnership with the Sport and Recreation Service (SRS) serving to further strengthen its reputation and influence, whilst its Council, made up of twelve university students elected by their peers, acts on behalf of the student body to ensure a bright future for sport and wellbeing. This popularity was clearly seen at the recent GUSA Council elections, where 1066 votes were cast to decide on who would take up the mantle for one of the seven remaining opposed positions; this is in stark contrast with the other Union elections occurring at the same time. Whilst the Glasgow University Union garnered a respectable 878 returned ballots, the Queen Margaret Union only managed 476 votes, with the healthy turnout for the GUSA elections, where many senior roles within the council were largely unopposed, showing the solid level of support that the association has gathered over the years. Furthermore, by comparing the Student Representative Council (SRC) sabbatical hustings with the GUSA equivalent, the latter having double the turnout, it is evident that students feel they can actively engage and be involved with the association, as well as influencing the future of university sport.

With 48 different clubs and 83 sporting teams affiliated to GUSA competing in BUCS, it is no wonder that this academic year has arguably been the biggest and best yet for the University of Glasgow. The wealth of choice and variety has given new and continuing students the opportunity to get involved in a sport they?ve never tried, or to indulge their competitive side. With groups ranging from the more competition-based hockey, swimming and rugby clubs, to their recreational counterparts, including surfing, ski and snowboarding, as well as canoeing and kayaking, there is a great deal on offer sports-wise. Also, with gym membership at just ?50 for the entire year, this is yet another reason to get involved with GUSA. Moreover, this year has seen the commencement of a recreational sports league, the Glasgow Championship, so for those of us who don?t want to feel under pressure to perform at club level, you have to the chance to participate in regular sporting fixtures in badminton, football, hockey, rugby and squash alongside people of a wide range of performance levels and abilities. This fantastic concept further widens the pool of potential new members, affording students and staff alike the opportunity to get involved in sport in an entirely new and unrestrictive level.

Although this year has seen a distinct move away from the stereotypes of sport, the University of Glasgow still retains its sporting prowess when it comes to the competition stakes; the university?s recent win at the 2013 Glasgow Taxis Cup evidently shows that GUSA has developed a finely tuned machine of sporting excellence, their success adding to Glasgow?s four previous victories at the same competition. In comparison to the previous year?s nail-biting finale, when Glasgow reigned supreme with only a point separating them from rivals Strathclyde, this year?s competition resulted in unparalleled success for Glasgow University, finishing with 49 points overall, compared with Strathclyde?s 35 points and Glasgow Caledonian?s 23.

In addition to this latest victory for the University of Glasgow, GUSA continues to oversee the nurturing of extremely talented sportsmen and women with elite athlete funding. These funds include sports bursaries and the Winning Students scholarship; whilst the former gives those honoured with the bursary both sporting and academic support, as well as taking care of them throughout their competitions and student life, the Winning Students scholarship, Scotland?s national sports scholarship programme, ?supports student athletes with annual scholarships up to ?5,500 to help them achieve their sporting and academic goals.? Furthermore, this year?s GUSA Ball, held on the 9th?of February at the Hilton Hotel, gave the University the opportunity to award these dedicated athletes with a recognition of their achievements; the Rebecca Cooke Award for female athlete of the year went to Ruth Dunn of the prestigious Boat Club, the Bob Wilson Award for best male athlete went to Calum Nicol, a rising star in the field of basketball, while the Glasgow University Triathlon Club were awarded best up and coming club. Dunn and Nicol are amongst many names to look out for in the coming years, and with the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games rapidly approaching, it will undoubtedly be the time for Glasgow University?s finest athletes to step up to the mark.

On a more grandiose scale, the Glasgow University Boat Club, established in 1867, is one of the oldest clubs at the university and arguably the most prominent. Based off-campus in Glasgow Green, it competes on both a Scottish and National level, but certainly the most exciting event in its calendar is the Edinburgh-Glasgow Boat Race. The race, taking place for the first time in 1877, is the second oldest in the UK, with only the famous Oxbridge Boat Race preceding it. According to the Glasgow University Boat Club website, ?Winning is euphoric, losing ? despair?The race is a blur. Heart rates soar, muscles scream with the effort and minds are locked in concentration? Perseverance through all adversities differentiates the winning crew.? This year sees the race taking place on the 25th?of May, and on that day, the media?s attention will turn to see which of the rival Universities will take home the highly sought after title. GUSA?s support has unquestionably helped in GUBC?s success thus far, with access to training facilities at both Glasgow Green and the Stevenson Building allowing the club to harness their full potential.

The general welfare and health of students has always been of great importance to the University, and the introduction of a Welfare Convener in the Council, taken on this year by Leah Tomlinson, as well as the Buddy System and Sport and Wellbeing Week demonstrates GUSA?s continuing dedication to look after its members. The purpose of the newly established Welfare Convener is to ?provide support in the planning and delivery of welfare associated events and initiatives such as the Sport & Wellbeing Week, [being] responsible for the administration and accreditation of the Healthy Body Health Mind award programme [and] works closely with Sport & Recreation in raising the awareness of the benefits of leading an active and healthy lifestyle to the University community.? The success of the Sport and Wellbeing Week at the beginning of the second semester emphasises GUSA?s commitment to providing a better service for all students, with keynote speakers including the inspirational Scottish track cyclist Graeme Obree and activities ranging from free exercise taster sessions, personal training, to talks on healthy eating and eating disorders, there was something to interest everyone. Starting university is a life changing experience, and GUSA strives to ensure that each and every member is given the best possible opportunity at living a healthy student life by promoting a healthy and happy lifestyle. The Buddy System, where disabled students wishing to get involved in sport are specially paired up with GUSA volunteers and given the chance to participate without any physical or mental barriers. This has proved a vital addition to GUSA?s growing list of achievements, further displaying the association?s ability to provide an open and fair service for all students at the university.

GUSA is a strong institution at the University of Glasgow; its drive to secure a bright and fair future for sport has meant that it not only remains a dominant force in competitive sport, but it also provides an open and diverse foundation for new and continuing students by promoting health and wellbeing, as well as equality within sport and a variety of clubs and leagues to interest both staff and students. From its numerous victories at BUCS, the Glasgow Taxis Cup and on a national level, as well as its creation of a recreational league and the Sport and Wellbeing Week, Glasgow University Sports Association has forged a strong relationship with its members, and continues to provide a sports and wellbeing service of unparalleled quality. As an anonymous source once told me, ?Glasgow University Sports Association IS sport.?

Source: http://glasgowguardian.co.uk/2013/05/03/gusa-a-year-in-sport/

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Home furniture for decorating the entire interior - GoArticles.co.in

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Source: http://www.goarticles.co.in/home-furniture-for-decorating-the-entire-interior/

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Xbox 720: Molyneux ?knew a lot? about Microsoft's plans, is currently ...

Thu, May 02, 2013 | 11:46 BST

Microsoft is gearing up to announce its Xbox 360 successor at an event on May 21, and former creative director at Microsoft Game Studios Peter Molyneux has suggested that while he ?knew a lot? about the company?s next-gen plans, he?s fascinated to see which way the reveal will go.

Speaking with Edge, Molyneux discussed what he?d like to see from Microsoft?s new rig, and added, ?I?m going to be absolutely fascinated to see what they finally come out with, because I kind of knew a lot when I was at Microsoft about what their plans were, and plans change and aspirations change.

?I?m sure they?ll have put a lot of time and thought and rehearsal into that press briefing, but I?m going to be fascinated to see what the hardware is, and how it will fit into this new world that we?re in now ? this new world of hyper-connectivity, of super-portability.

?Or whether they?ll double-down and say ?you know what? We are the games console, and that?s what we define ourselves as? and say [they] don?t really care about hyper-connectivity or hyper-portability. It?ll be fascinating which way they jump.?

Molyneux suggested he?d prefer the latter, and added, ?This is my personal feeling as a gamer. What I would do is double-down on what this console is for: it?s for playing games. It?s for playing console games for this massive, incredibly loyal audience of gamers out there.

?When they start to mix all this other stuff in there I?m kind of slightly like: ?look, I don?t want another way of looking at Facebook?. You know, I?ve got all the ways of looking at Facebook. I don?t want another way of looking at Netflix. Just give me what I?ve paid my ?299 for, and that is to play amazing, incredible computer games.?

What?s your view? Should Microsoft go large and pitch the new Xbox as a hardcore gaming device, or has the audience shifted enough to warrant an entertainment-heavy approach? Let us know below.

Meanwhile, Molyneux has teased he may make an appearance at Microsoft?s reveal, but not on stage. His latest project Curiosity may also end in time for the announcement. Are the two linked? Decide for yourself here.

Thanks OXM.

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/02/xbox-720-reveal-molyneux-knew-a-lot-about-microsofts-plans-is-currently-fascinated/

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Brooke Mueller?s Twin Sons Taken Away Over Drug Use

Brooke Mueller’s Twin Sons Taken Away Over Drug Use

Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services have removed Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller’s twin sons, Bob and Max, from Brooke’s care due to her drug use. Charlie’s other ex-wife, Denise Richards, has been awarded temporary custody of the boys. Social workers removed the children from Brooke Mueller’s care because of claims the ...

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/05/brooke-muellers-twin-sons-taken-away-over-drug-use/

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Earth permanently deformed by really big earthquakes

Earth permanently deformed? The Earth's crust is relatively elastic, but earthquakes of more than magnitude 7 will leave the planet permanently deformed, says new research.

By Charles Q. Choi,?LiveScience.com / April 29, 2013

A collapsed building lays in ruins after an earthquake in Concepcion, Chile, in 2010. Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 marks the three-year anniversary of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck central Chile that killed over 500 people, destroyed over 200,000 homes.

(AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

Enlarge

Earthquakes can permanently crack the Earth, an investigation of quakes that have rocked Chile over the past million years suggests.

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Although earthquakes can wreak havoc on the planet's surface, more than a century of research has suggested the Earth mostly rebounds after quakes, with blocks of the world's crust elastically springing back, over the course of months to decades, to the way they initially were. Such rebounding was first seen after investigations of the devastating 1906 San Francisco temblor that helped lead to the destruction of more than 80 percent of the city. The rebound is well-documented nowadays by satellite-based GPS systems that monitor Earth's movements.

However, structural geologist Richard Allmendinger of Cornell University and his colleagues now find major earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater apparently caused the crust in northern Chile to crack permanently. [The 10 Biggest Earthquakes in History]

"My graduate students and I originally went to northern Chile to study other features," Allmendinger said. "While we were there, our Chilean colleague, Professor Gabriel Gonz?lez of the Universidad Cat?lica del Norte, took us to a region where these cracks were particularly well-exposed."

"I still remember feeling blown away ? never seen anything like them in my 40 years as a geologist ? and also perplexed," Allmendinger told OurAmazingPlanet. "What were these features and how did they form? Scientists hate leaving things like this unexplained, so it kept bouncing around in my mind."

Atacama exposed

In northern Chile, "the driest place on Earth, we have a virtually unique record of great earthquakes going back a million years," Allmendinger said. Whereas most analyses of ancient earthquakes only probe cycles of two to four quakes, "our record of upper plate cracking spans thousands of earthquake cycles," he noted.

The record of the vast number of earthquakes captured in northern Chilean rocks allowed the researchers to examine their average behavior over a much longer period of time, which makes it easier to pick out any patterns. They discovered that a small but significant 1 to 10 percent of the deformation of the Earth caused by 2,000 to 9,000 major quakes over the past 800,000 to 1 million years was permanent, involving cracks millimeters to meters large in the crust of the Atacama Desert. The crust may behave less elastically than previously thought.

"It is only in a place like the Atacama Desert that these cracks can be observed ? in all other places, surface processes erase them within days or weeks of their formation, but in the Atacama, they are preserved for millions of years," Allmendinger said. "We have every reason to believe that our results would be applicable to other areas, but is simply not preserved for study the way that it is in the Atacama Desert," he added.

Model rethink

This work "calls into question the details of models that geophysicists who study the earthquake cycle use," Allmendinger said. "Their models generally assume that all of the upper-plate deformation related to the earthquake cycle is elastic ? recoverable, like an elastic band ? and not permanent. If some of the deformation is permanent, then the models will have to be rethought and more complicated material behaviors used.

The area the researchers studied, the Iquique Gap, "is one of the few places along western South America that has not had a great earthquake in the last 100 years and thus has a high probability of a major earthquake in the next couple of decades," Allmendinger added. "We may get to test out predictions about earthquakes if the next great earthquake there happens in the next couple of decades."

The scientists detailed their findings online April 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Follow OurAmazingPlanet?@OAPlanet, Facebook?and Google+. Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

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

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/PKBKXfMMBKw/Earth-permanently-deformed-by-really-big-earthquakes

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Tim McGraw sued by former record label

Music

Sophie Schillaci Hollywood Reporter

18 hours ago

Al Powers/Invision/AP

Tim McGraw.

Tim McGraw and his former label, Curb Records, are at odds again. The Nashville, Tenn.-based label filed a lawsuit against the country music singer and Big Machine Records in federal court Monday, alleging copyright infringement and breach of contract.

Related: Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw bring live country to Las Vegas: concert review

This marks the latest development in a continuing saga of legal drama between the two. In May 2011, Curb filed a breach-of-contract state lawsuit against McGraw claiming that the artist had recorded songs for "Emotional Traffic," which was to be his final album with the label, too early prior to its delivery in a ?transparent tactic to attempt to fulfill his contractual recording commitment to Curb prematurely in breach of the recording agreement,? the suit stated.

Days later, McGraw filed a countersuit seeking advanced payment and recording-fund reimbursement, as well as a jury trial.

Related: Tim McGraw and Faith Hill to launch Las Vegas concert residency

In November 2011, a judge granted McGraw permission to record music for another label while Curb released "Emotional Traffic" on Jan. 24, 2012.

After signing with Big Machine Records in May 2012, McGraw?s latest effort -- "Two Lanes of Freedom" -- was released Feb. 5.

With its lawsuit, Curb is seeking a return of master recording, compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction against future recording or releases until its contract with McGraw has been fulfilled.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/tim-mcgraw-sued-former-label-curb-records-6C9690346

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Use of laser light yields versatile manipulation of a quantum bit

May 1, 2013 ? By using light, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have manipulated the quantum state of a single atomic-sized defect in diamond -- the nitrogen-vacancy center -- in a method that not only allows for more unified control than conventional processes, but is more versatile, and opens up the possibility of exploring new solid-state quantum systems.

Their results are published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

"In contrast to conventional electronics, we developed an all-optical scheme for controlling individual quantum bits in semiconductors using pulses of light," said David Awschalom, director of UCSB's Center for Spintronics & Quantum Computation, professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering, and the Peter J. Clarke director of the California NanoSystems Institute. "This finding offers an intriguing opportunity for processing and communicating quantum information with photonic chips."

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is a defect in the atomic structure of a diamond where one carbon atom in the diamond lattice is replaced by a nitrogen atom, and an adjacent site in the lattice is vacant. The resulting electronic spin around the defect forms a quantum bit -- "qubit" -- which is the basic unit of a quantum computer. Current processes require this qubit be initialized into a well-defined energy state before interfacing with it. Unlike classical computers, where the basic unit of information, the bit, is either 0 or 1, qubits can be 0, 1, or any mathematical superposition of both, allowing for more complex operations.

"The initial problem we were trying to solve was to figure out a way that we could place our qubit into any possible superposition of its state in a single step," said the paper's first author, physics graduate student Christopher Yale. "It turns out that in addition to being able to do that just by adjusting the laser light interacting with our spin, we discovered that we could generate coherent rotations of that spin state and read out its state relative to any other state of our choosing using only optical processes."

The all-optical control allows for greater versatility in manipulating the NV center over disparate conventional methods that use microwave fields and exploit defect-specific properties. While the NV center in diamond is a promising qubit that has been studied extensively for the past decade, diamonds are challenging to engineer and grow. This all-optical methodology, say the researchers, may allow for the exploration of quantum systems in other materials that are more technologically mature. "Compared to how the NV center is usually studied, these techniques in some ways are more general and could potentially enable the study of unexplored quantum systems," said UCSB physics graduate student Bob Buckley.

Additionally, the all-optical method also has the potential to be more scalable, noted physics graduate student David Christle. "If you have an array of these qubits in order, and if you're applying conventional microwave fields, it becomes difficult to talk to one of them without talking to the others. In principle, with our technique in an idealized optical system, you would be able focus the light down onto a single qubit and only talk to it."

While practical quantum computers are still years and years away, the research opens up new paths toward their eventual creation. According to the group, these devices would be capable of performing certain sophisticated calculations and functions far more efficiently than today's computers can -- leading to advances in fields as diverse as encryption and quantum simulation.

UCSB electrical and computer engineering graduate student F. Joseph Heremans and postdoctoral researcher Lee Bassett also contributed to this study. Additional theoretical work and insight was provided by Guido Burkard, professor of physics at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara.

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Journal Reference:

1. C. G. Yale, B. B. Buckley, D. J. Christle, G. Burkard, F. J. Heremans, L. C. Bassett, D. D. Awschalom. All-optical control of a solid-state spin using coherent dark states. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1305920110

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/computers_math/information_technology/~3/sxm5-awfszI/130501145114.htm

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Ag-Gag Laws Could Make America Sick | Later On

Businesses strongly oppose activities and regulations that expose dangerous practices, corner cutting, and other questionable (and often illegal) activities. Now that they are gaining control of the government, they are trying to make it illegal to expose business wrong-doing. Brandon Keim writes at Wired Science:

A wave of laws that target animal welfare activists who take undercover videos at factory farms has been criticized for chilling free speech and allowing cruelty to continue in secret. But it?s not only animal well-being at issue. So is public health.

Some food safety experts say these so-called ag-gag laws will cloak disease-spreading industry practices, such as processing ill cattle and housing poultry in filthy conditions, in secrecy, raising risks of food contamination.

?The ag-gag laws are touted as preventing animal activists from getting access to private places, but there?s a much broader concern the public should have,? said Elisabeth Holmes, a staff attorney at the nonprofit Center for Food Safety. ?Public health issues, food safety issues, environmental issues: all those things can be exposed through undercover investigations.?

The?first-ever ag-gag prosecution, involving a Utah woman who took roadside videos of cows at a Draper City slaughterhouse, was announced this this week. Charges?were soon dropped, but the incident hinted at a future in which farms are largely hidden from public sight.

Ag-gag laws were passed in Iowa, Missouri and Utah in 2011 and 2012, and submitted for consideration in ten state legislatures ? Arkansas, California, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Vermont ? this year. Broadly speaking, they make it illegal to take photographs or videos without farmer consent, though some go further.?Pennsylvania?s proposed law, criminalizes downloading such material over the internet.

The laws have drawn disapproval from many quarters, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Press Photographers Union, who say they threaten public discourse, though most criticisms focus on?abuse of animals?that might go unchecked in the absence of activist attention.

Against these criticisms, farm industry advocates argue that activists often misportray what actually happens on farms, turning isolated incidents into inflammatory narratives of routine abuse that further anti-meat-eating goals. The industry also portrays undercover video-taking as a violation of farmer rights.

?At the end of the day it?s about personal property rights or the individual right to privacy,? said Bill Meierling, a spokesman for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business group that?drafted the model?for many of the ag-gag laws,?to the Associated Press. ?You wouldn?t want me coming into your home with a hidden camera.?

The nation?s food, however, doesn?t come from people?s homes. It comes from farms ? and in a food system that?s?both vulnerable and productive, with a single burger containing meat from multiple farms, making problems at a single facility a potentially national issue, hidden cameras are often the only cameras. Much of what?s publicly known about factory farms comes from activities that could soon be illegal. . .

It?s amazing to see what are obviously bad-faith or fallacious arguments advanced in favor of the ag-gag laws. If those are the best reasons in favor of the laws, the laws are extremely bad.

Source: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/ag-gag-laws-could-make-america-sick/

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Facebook helps you log back in with a little help from your Trusted Contacts

Facebook wants you to log in. Real bad. But the social network hasn't traditionally gone out of its way to streamline password recovery. The site's finally make things a little smoother with Trusted Contacts, a redesign and rebrand of its Trusted Friends offering. Go into Security Settings and you can list three to five e-pals, who can help you log back into the site before your farm goes belly up. Contact them and let them know you need in, and they'll get a security code and instructions to help you get back to the wall.

Filed under: Internet, Software

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/02/facebook-trusted-contacts/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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New zooming technique for entering text into smartwatches

Apr. 30, 2013 ? Technology blogs have been abuzz that smartwatches may soon be on their way from companies such as Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. But as capable as these ultra-small computers may be, how will users enter an address, a name, or a search term into them? One solution is an iterative zooming technique developed and tested by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Called ZoomBoard, this text entry technique is based on the familiar QWERTY keyboard layout. Though the full keyboard is impossibly small on a watch-size display, simply tapping the screen once or twice will enlarge an individual key until it can be comfortably and accurately pressed.

Capital letters can be typed by momentarily holding a key. A swipe to the left deletes a character. A swipe to the right types a space. An upward swipe calls up a secondary keyboard of numbers and other symbols.

"You aren't going to write a novel, but it gets the job done," said Stephen Oney, a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). "This opens up new possibilities for devices such as smartwatches, which generally lack any means of entering text, as many aren't powerful enough for voice recognition."

"Users can enter about 10 words per minute at high accuracy on a keyboard the size of a penny," said Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. candidate who will soon join the HCII faculty. "That's plenty fast enough to dial a phone number, or enter 'where is pizza?' or get 'directions home.'"

Oney and Harrison developed and evaluated ZoomBoard with fellow HCII students Amy Ogan and Jason Wiese. They will present their findings May 1 at CHI 2013, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in Paris, where the research was awarded an honorable mention for Best Paper.

A video demonstration and other material is available at the project website, http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/Zoomboard.

"A lot of people are banking on voice for text entry on very small devices, and no doubt voice will play an increasingly central role," Harrison said. "But sometimes you need to enter something discretely and without a big fuss; for that, ZoomBoard is great."

Other approaches to text input on small devices have included new keyboard layouts and gesture-based characters. But the HCII team opted to use the conventional QWERTY keyboard because the configuration is instantly familiar to users.

Further development of ZoomBoard might include a language model, a standard feature on most soft keyboards that suggests possible words based on the first few letters typed; for ZoomBoard, this might also involve adjusting the centering point of the first zoom step over a predicted letter.

The researchers say ZoomBoard also could be useful on larger keyboards for people who have movement disorders that make typing difficult or for people who are using their keyboards while jogging.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Carnegie Mellon University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/computers_math/information_technology/~3/LRlQwXwef9w/130430131538.htm

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ECB weighs rate cut as eurozone economy struggles

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) ? Economists say the European Central Bank could cut interest rates as soon as Thursday because of fears that the euro area's economy isn't recovering ? even though top bank officials themselves caution that a cut won't do much good.

Market expectations have risen in recent days of a reduction in the ECB's benchmark rate from its current record low of 0.75 percent when bank's 23-member governing council gathers to debate the issue in Bratislava, Slovakia.

The economy of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro certainly needs a boost. The ECB says the eurozone will shrink 0.5 percent for all of this year and unemployment is at 12.1 percent. Meanwhile, annual inflation is only 1.2 percent, well below the ECB's goal of just under 2 percent. That gives the ECB freedom to cut if it wants to.

The low inflation data make it "virtually impossible" that the ECB will fail to lower the refinancing rate Thursday, said Janet Henry, chief European economist at HSBC. Cuts done at the wrong time can worsen inflation, but it appears there is little risk of that for now.

At 0.75 percent, the ECB rate is still higher than at other major central banks. The Fed is at 0-0.25 percent, the Bank of Japan at 0-0.1 percent, and the Bank of England at 0.5 percent.

ECB president Mario Draghi said at his last news conference April 4 that bank officials "stand ready to act" if their forecast for a recovery later this year appears to not be coming true.

But economists caution a cut isn't a sure thing Thursday. Some say that the bank may wait until its June rate meeting, when it has new staff economic projections to justify any move.

The ECB's refinancing rate determines what banks pay the ECB for credit. This in turn influences a host of other short-term rates charged by banks to consumers and companies. So an ECB cut should, in normal times, make it cheaper for companies to borrow to expand and create jobs.

However there's a problem: Stimulus is not getting through to the places that need it most.

Whatever the decision on Thursday, Joerg Asmussen, the bank's chief of international relations, cautioned last week that the "pass-through" from any cut to the wider economy would be "limited."

Analyst Holger Schmieding at Berenberg Bank says that's one reason a cut "isn't a done deal" although he sees a 60 percent chance for a cut at either the May or June meeting.

"Everyone knows a rate cut won't make much of a difference," he said. "That's why we have it at 60-40 rather than saying it will definitely happen."

The ECB has pointed out that its current record low rates are not being passed on to businesses because banks are struggling with their own financial problems. This is especially the case in countries hardest hit by the eurozone's financial crisis such as Spain and Italy. There, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), the chief job-creators in the economy, are not getting affordable credit.

However, a rate cut might offer some help in other ways. It might lower the euro's exchange rate against other currencies. That could help exporters, whose goods become cheaper abroad. And a cut would also lower the cost of ECB emergency credit to the hardest-hit banks. That would take some pressure off their finances so that they could lend more.

The ECB has stayed away from a key tool to help stimulate an economy that is already used by the Fed, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England. Quantitative easing, or the purchase of securities with newly created money, pushes down longer-term interest rates and aims to increase the overall supply of money in the economy. Draghi has said such a step would be difficult for the multinational ECB, since each eurozone member country's debt market is different.

Analysts say the ECB needs to find another way to spur small-business lending. One way would be to encourage banks to bundle small business loans as securities and then to use them as collateral to obtain credit from the ECB. It's not clear whether anything along those lines will be announced Thursday.

Analyst Carsten Brzeski at ING thinks say the ECB may hold off cutting rates so it can first come up with ways to make sure lower borrowing costs are actually passed on. Draghi has indicated the bank is studying possible steps, and mentioned possible involvement by governments and outside agencies such as the European Investment Bank. The EIB already offers reduced interest loans to midsize companies through local banks.

Without such additional measures, a cut "would quickly go up in smoke and could even be regarded as an act of despair," Brzeski said. "It is hard to believe that the ECB would cut rates first and come up with a broader SME funding scheme later."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecb-weighs-rate-cut-eurozone-economy-struggles-094739832.html

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Twice As Nice: Mason and Skyler?s Adorable Romper

See how Kourtney Kardashian and Rachel Zoe's dapper lads stylishly wear the same Nico Nico orange romper.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/2_DE8UjRu6g/

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Texas foreclosures numbers remain among the highest in U.S.

Texas is one of the largest states for completed foreclosures, according to a new report from CoreLogic.

Once again, the Lone Star State has made it into the top five.

Over the 12 months ended March 2013, Texas had 53,359 completed foreclosures, according to Irvine, Calif.-based CoreLogic.

A completed foreclosure occurs when a property is sold at auction to either a third party or to the lender holding the mortgage.

It?s a familiar scenario for Texas. CoreLogic?s February report also had Texas listed among the top five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures.

Three states completed more foreclosures than Texas over the past 12 months ? Florida with 102,847 foreclosures; California with 83,310 foreclosures; and Michigan with 70,315 foreclosures. These are the same three states that were ranked above Texas in February as well.

As was the case in February, Georgia was once again the one state with less completed foreclosures than Texas ? with a total of 48,199 completed foreclosures in March, CoreLogic reports.

Of the five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures, only Florida follows the judicial foreclosure process. In such states, lenders have to provide evidence to the courts before it can issue notices of default, and thus begin the foreclosure process.

In non-judicial states like Texas, lenders can issue notices of default directly to borrowers.

On the national front, a total of 55,000 foreclosures were completed during the month of March ? marking a 16-percent decline from the 66,000 foreclosures completed in March 2012, CoreLogic reports.

It?s a start, but the market still has a ways to go. Between the years 2000 to 2006, the country was averaging 21,000 completed foreclosures a month.

Tricia Lynn Silva covers real estate, retail, construction, and law firms; she also plans and edits some special reports.

Source: http://feeds.bizjournals.com/~r/bizj_sanantonio/~3/XZHsn9USD8A/texas-foreclosures-numbers-remain.html

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Alibaba pushes into social networking with Weibo investment

By Sayantani Ghosh and Sruthi Ramakrishnan

(Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group acquired an 18 percent stake in web portal Sina Corp's microblogging service Weibo in its first big move into selling advertising on China's highly competitive social networks.

Sina's U.S.-listed shares surged 21 percent to $60.81 in early trading, before easing back to $56.90.

The $586 million deal, which values Weibo at over $3 billion, will provide more advertising revenue to Weibo as Sina tries to monetize the service and increase its lead over rival Tencent Holdings' social messaging product, WeChat.

The deal, seen by analysts as generously priced, should drive more web traffic to Alibaba's Taobao Marketplace, China's largest e-commerce website with a consumer focus.

Alibaba is tipped to go public within the next year.

Weibo, China's version of Twitter, has grown at a fast clip since its launch in 2009 and has gained from the blockage of Twitter by the Chinese government.

More than 500 million Chinese use Weibo to opine on everything from Korean soap operas to China's latest political intrigue.

"(The stake purchase) is as an endorsement from Alibaba ... of the value of Sina's Weibo platform," Morningstar analyst Dan Su said.

"This indicates the tremendous value of the data that is present on the Weibo platform that can be mined for a lot of activities, such as ecommerce."

Unlisted Alibaba, controlled by charismatic Chinese internet entrepreneur Jack Ma, also runs Alibaba.com, the country's largest business-to-business commerce platform, and Alipay, a PayPal-like online payment platform.

Ma, one of China's best known corporate leaders, reckoned to be worth $3.4 billion by Forbes late last year, built his e-commerce empire from scratch.

He plans to step down as CEO on May 10 and become executive chairman. Alibaba is likely to go public in a listing in Hong Kong that could value the company at about $100 billion, according to industry sources.

Alibaba has kept mum about its IPO plans, but its listing will likely be a windfall for Yahoo Inc, which owns nearly a quarter of the company.

GENEROUS FOR SINA

Some analysts, who had valued Weibo between $600 million and $2.5 billion, said the deal offered by Alibaba was generous.

"We believe this deal is very positive for Sina. It instantly gives pricing to Sina Weibo with a valuation of $3.26 billion; the per share base could be $48," T.H. Capital Research analyst Tian Hou said.

"Sina's resource consolidation with Alibaba Group, which has a huge dominant position in China's e-commerce, can escalate Weibo's development," she said.

Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and Weibo, has had investors worried as the growth rate of Chinese online advertising slows. Its shares have slipped 15 percent in the last 12 months.

Maxim Group analyst Echo He said the Alibaba deal would help Sina in the longer term, but giving Sina cash would not solve its problems and its valuation would still depend on its own profitability.

This is not the first time Sina has tied up with a major Chinese company to seek new streams of revenue.

Sina allied with Baidu Inc last year, integrating Baidu search in its mobile website, while Baidu said its cloud initiative would come with the Weibo app preinstalled.

The analysts said Sina could potentially team up with many other companies, while Morningstar's Su said the deal ruled out any near-term plans for another such major alliance.

Sina has also granted Alibaba the option to increase its stake in Weibo to 30 percent within a stipulated time, which it did not specify.

The alliance is expected to generate about $380 million in advertising and social commerce services revenue for Weibo over the next three years, Sina said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sina-says-alibaba-buys-18-percent-stake-weibo-121859682.html

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Owner of collapsed building captured in Bangladesh

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) -- The fugitive owner of an illegally constructed building that collapsed and killed at least 377 people was captured Sunday by a commando force as he tried to flee into India. At the disaster site, meanwhile, fire broke out in the wreckage and forced authorities to suspend the search for survivors temporarily.

Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested in the western Bangladesh border town of Benapole, said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, junior minister for local government. Rana was brought back by helicopter to the capital of Dhaka where he faced charges of negligence.

Rana's capture was announced by loudspeaker at the disaster site, drawing cheers and applause from those awaiting the outcome of a continuing search-and-rescue operation for survivors of Wednesday's collapse.

Many of those killed were workers at clothing factories in the building, known as the Rana Plaza, and the collapse was the deadliest disaster to hit the garment industry in Bangladesh that is worth $20 billion annually and is a mainstay of the economy.

The fire that broke out late Sunday night sent smoke pouring from the piles of shattered concrete and halted some of the rescue efforts ? including a bid to free a woman who was found trapped in the rubble.

The blaze was caused by sparks as rescuers tried to cut through a steel rod to reach the woman, said a volunteer, Syed Al-Amin Roman. At least three rescuers were injured in the fire, he said. It forced them to retreat while firefighters frantically hosed down the flames.

Officials believe the fire is likely to have killed the trapped woman, said army spokesman Shahinul Islam. Rescue workers had delayed the use of heavy equipment for several hours in the hope that she could be extricated from the rubble first. But with the woman presumed dead, they began using heavy equipment around midnight.

An exhausted and disheveled Rana was brought before reporters briefly at the Dhaka headquarters of the commando team, the Rapid Action Battalion.

Wearing a printed shirt, Rana was sweating as two security officers held him by his arms. A security official helped him to drink water after he gestured he was thirsty. He did not speak during the 10-minute appearance, and he is likely to be handed over to police, who will have to charge him and produce him in court within 24 hours.

A small-time politician from the ruling Awami League party, Rana had been on the run since the building collapsed Wednesday. He last appeared in public Tuesday in front of the Rana Plaza after huge cracks appeared in the building. Witnesses said he assured tenants, including five garment factories, that the building was safe.

A bank and some shops on the first floor closed Wednesday after police ordered an evacuation, but managers of the garment factories on the upper floor told workers to continue their shifts.

Hours later, the Rana Plaza was reduced to rubble, crushing most victims under massive blocks of concrete.

Rana's arrest was ordered by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the Awami League leader.

On Saturday, police arrested three owners of two factories. Also detained were Rana's wife and two government engineers who were involved in giving approval for the building design. Local TV stations reported that the Bangladesh High Court has frozen the bank accounts of the owners of all five garment factories in the Rana Plaza.

Three floors of the eight-story building apparently were built illegally.

A garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside when it fell. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.

Army Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the coordinator of the rescue operations, said the next phase of the search involved the heavy equipment such as hydraulic cranes that were brought to the disaster site Sunday. Searchers had been manually shifting concrete blocks with the help of light equipment such as pickaxes and shovels, he said.

The work will be carried out carefully so as not to mutilate bodies, he said. "We have engaged many private sector companies which supplied us equipment, even some heavy ones," Suhrawardy said.

In a rare bit of good news, a female worker was pulled out alive Sunday. Rescuer Hasan Akbari said when he tried to extricate a man next to the woman, "he said his body was being torn apart. So I had to let go. But God willing, we will be able to rescue him with more help very soon."

The collapse and previous disasters in garment factories have focused attention on the poor working conditions of workers who toil for as little as $38 a month to produce clothing for top international brands.

The death toll surpassed a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards. But since then, very little has changed in Bangladesh.

Its garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy, having grown rapidly in the past decade.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers.

Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

__

AP writers Farid Hossain and Gillian Wong in Dhaka contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/owner-collapsed-building-captured-bangladesh-184621056.html

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How Siri, Google Now respond to 5 questions

With Google's voice assistant now available on iPhones and iPads, The Associated Press used an iPad Mini to throw five test questions at Google Now and Siri on Monday afternoon in New York. Here's what the two digital assistants had to say for themselves:

___

Question: What is the meaning of life?

Siri: "I can't answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens." Siri has more than a dozen prepared responses to that question.

Google Now: The voice assistant was silent. Instead, keywords in that question triggered an ad for the Mormons on the top of the search results page. That was followed by links to a Wikipedia entry for "meaning of life" and other sites.

___

Question: What is the weather like Friday?

Siri: "It should be nice Friday... up to 61 degrees and sunny." Siri also presented a graphic with day-by-day conditions over the next six days, using information from Yahoo.

Google Now: "Friday's forecast for New York, New York, is 64 degrees and clear." Google then presented a box with day-by-day conditions over the next 10 days, as well as current conditions.

___

Question: What movies are showing this weekend?

Siri: "I found five movies playing nearby on Friday." Siri then presented a card with show times, parental ratings and favorability ratings from the Rotten Tomatoes website. Four of the movies were at art-house cinemas, as theater chains hadn't released weekend schedules yet. Links to buy or rent those movies on iTunes were offered when available.

Google Now: "Movies playing in New York on Friday." Google then offered a page with times, descriptions and other information for 13 movies, including six IMAX movies playing at science museums in New York and Jersey City, N.J. As with Siri, most of the rest were at art-house cinemas.

___

Question: How did the Mets do?

Siri: "The Mets lost to the Phillies yesterday. The final score was 5 to 1." An inning-by-inning scoreboard was presented.

Google Now: "The Mets lost to the Phillies 5 to 1." An inning-by-inning scoreboard was offered up.

___

Question: Please set my alarm for seven.

Siri: "I've set an alarm for 7 a.m." Siri assumed 7 the next morning rather than 7 that evening. Siri then showed a digital clock with a lever at "on," which you can switch to "off."

Google Now: The voice assistant was silent. Instead, search results appeared, including an article on "How to Use Siri's Clock - For Dummies."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-29-Google-Apple-Five%20Questions/id-e95e51051f4740d98845254c0ce73360

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SRI EV1 brings all-electric racing to the Mexican 1000 rally (video)

We've seen electric off-roaders tackle the Dakar Rally, but racing on the Baja peninsula has proven elusive -- until this weekend. After driving in smaller races, SRI's EV1 has joined the big leagues by starting in NORRA's Mexican 1000 rally. The 535HP, 400kW open-wheeler has participated in at least the first trio of special stages, and it will ideally join a handful of further stages that fit within the vehicle's 100-mile range. While the EV1 is far from the front of the Evolution class, at 36th place as of this writing, winning isn't the point -- SRI wants to drum up enough funding to hot-swap batteries and complete every stage in future races. Its project should at least be proof that smaller EVs can thrive in some of the world's harshest racing conditions.

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: Autoblog

Source: SRD (Facebook), SRI, NORRA

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/29/sri-ev1-brings-all-electric-racing-to-the-mexican-1000-rally/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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