jamespiska: এপ্রিল 2013

মঙ্গলবার, ৩০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Asia stocks up after S&P hits record; Nikkei slips

BANGKOK (AP) ? Asian stock markets rose Tuesday, brushing off tepid Japanese manufacturing data after the Standard & Poor's 500 index closed at another all-time high.

Better-than-expected pending homes sales for March renewed faith in the U.S. economic recovery. The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes reached the highest level in three years. Wages and spending in the U.S. also rose last month. European shares finished higher Monday after Italy formed a new coalition government.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.9 percent to 22,774.96. South Korea's Kospi advanced 1.3 percent to 1,966.27. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 1.1 percent to 5,183.10. Benchmarks in Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand and the Philippines also advanced.

"The U.S. is hitting new highs almost every day now and improved sentiment in the eurozone is helping overall markets across the board," said Jackson Wong, vice president of Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong.

However, Japanese data showing only modest improvement in manufacturing dampened sentiment there. Factory output rose 0.2 percent in March, its fourth straight monthly increase. The number fell short of expectations and analysts continue to believe the country's economic recovery remains relatively weak. Japan's Nikkei 225 index was nearly unchanged at 13,887.97.

"While export revenues have been boosted strongly by yen depreciation and consumers' confidence has also jumped, the recovery in export volumes and actual consumer spending remained comparatively slow," analysts at DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore said in a commentary.

Among individual stocks, Australia's ANZ Banking Group Ltd. rose 5.2 percent after the company announced a rise in half-year profit.

Sentiment has been boosted in recent days by expectations that the European Central Bank will reduce interest rates on Thursday.

The Federal Reserve concludes a policy meeting Wednesday and is not expected to make changes in its super-loose monetary policy. On Friday, U.S. nonfarm payrolls data for April will be published, a key gauge of employment in the world's No. 1 economy.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.7 percent to close at 14,818.75 on Monday. The S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent to 1,593.61, a record high. The Nasdaq composite index rose 0.9 percent to 3,307.02.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 9 cents to $94.41 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.50 to finish at $94.50 on the Nymex on Monday.

In currencies, the euro fell slightly to $1.3094 from $1.3097. The dollar fell to 97.92 yen from 98.01 yen.

___

Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asia-stocks-p-hits-record-nikkei-slips-030846247.html

Univision josh hamilton Susan Rice the Who jon bon jovi jon bon jovi Kliff Kingsbury

Google Kills Chrome's Unpopular Redesigned New Tab Page Before It Hits Stable Channel

At the end of last year, Google announced that it would start testing a number of changes to Chrome’s New Tab page. The changes that were currently percolating through the development channels were anything but popular. Instead of the usual eight links to your most-visited sites, the Chrome beta channel currently features a large Google Search box and just your four most-visited links. Now, it looks like Google is giving up on these changes. The other major change that was massively annoying (and made me switch back to the stable channel, too), was that Google added an “Apps” tab to the bookmarks bar and removed the usual shortcuts to web apps from the Chrome Web Store from the second page of the New Tab page. The latest beta version of Chrome has now reverted back to the old New Tab page. As intrepid Google watcher (and now Google employee) Francois Beaufort noticed last week, the offline version of Chrome now renders two rows with four tiles each again, with the Google Search box still sitting above these, though). Chances are this design will now make its way through the release channels. It’s not clear what will happen to the “Apps” icon in the bookmarks bar, though. You can still see what the experience would have looked like by switching the “Enable Instant extended API” to “enabled” in the latest Chrome beta.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GHAP7-YmU5Q/

60 minutes go daddy Tom Kenny Long Island Medium Alfonso Ribeiro adam sandler College Football Scoreboard

Cicadas get a jump on cleaning

Apr. 29, 2013 ? As cicadas on the East Coast begin emerging from their 17-year slumber, a spritz of dew drops is all they need to keep their wings fresh and clean.

Researchers at Duke University and James Cook University in Australia have shown that dew drops can be beneficial not only in cleaning cicada wings, but other water-repellant surfaces. On these so-called superhydrophobic surfaces, dew drops "jump" by themselves, carrying away the contaminants.

A team led by Chuan-Hua Chen, Alfred M. Hunt Faculty Scholar and assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, demonstrated that tiny particles such as pollen can be removed from cicada wings by a phenomenon he has described as jumping droplets. When growing dew drops coalesce together, the merged drop jumps off water-repellant surfaces. The jumping motion is automatic, powered entirely by the surface energy initially stored in the dew drops.

Using a specially designed high-speed video imaging system, the engineers captured the jumping water droplets on a cicada wing, as well as the associated self-cleaning processes.

"The ability of water-repellant surfaces to self-clean has conventionally been attributed to rain droplets picking up dirt particles," Chen said. "For this conventional wisdom to work, rainfall must be present and the orientation has to be favorable for gravity to effectively remove the rain droplets. These limits severely restrict the practical use of self-cleaning superhydrophobic surfaces.

"We have found, however, that the self-propelled jumping motion of the dew drops is very effective in dislodging contaminating particles, regardless of the orientation," Chen said. "These new insights can help guide the development of man-made surfaces that are not dependent on any external forces and are therefore truly self-cleaning."

The results of Chen's research were published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Katrina Wisdom, a Duke undergraduate and a Pratt Research Fellow in Chen's lab at the time of this study, was the paper's co-first author.

Cicadas are flying insects typically a few inches long. The most common species emerge on a yearly basis, with some U.S. species arriving every 17 years. When they dig out from underground as nymphs they molt, shedding their skin to reveal their wings. They then take flight as full-grown cicadas, spending the next four to six weeks flying around searching for and attracting mates with their distinctive song. After depositing eggs in the ground, the cicadas die and the cycle begins anew.

Cicada wings are characterized by rows and rows of tiny bumps or domes of various heights and widths. They look like upside-down ice cream cones, with the conical tips projecting upward. When a water droplet lands on this type of surface, it only touches the points of the bumps, creating pockets of air underneath the droplet. The droplet is kept aloft by this cushion of air, much like the puck in an air-hockey game.

"Most cicadas are unable to clean their own wings because of their short appendages," said Gregory Watson of James Cook University. "Furthermore, these insects commonly live in areas where there is little rain over an extended period of time. However, the areas are humid, which provides the tiny dew droplets needed to 'jump clean' their wings."

"These findings point to an alternative route to achieve self-cleaning which is fundamentally different from the conventional wisdom involving rolling or colliding droplets on a superhydrophobic surface," Chen said. "Self-cleaning surfaces using the jumping-drop mechanism can work at any orientation, which is a huge advantage for applications with unfavorable orientations with respect to gravity, such as mobile electronics and building roofs."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

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

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

Journal Reference:

Katrina M. Wisdom, Jolanta A. Watson, Xiaopeng Qu, Fangjie Liu, Gregory S. Watson, and Chuan-Hua Chen. Self-cleaning of superhydrophobic surfaces by self-propelled jumping condensate. PNAS, April 29, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1210770110

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/~3/38HgLVt4phs/130429154101.htm

Jodi Arias Heat Harlem Shake mediterranean diet chase kim kardashian pregnant papa johns dominos

One On 1 Extra: Tighe On Being A Real Estate Broker - NY1

');
if(infobox=='True' && ShowInfoBox_l181235_1==false){
jQuery("#player_infobarl181235_1").trigger('click');
ShowInfoBox_l181235_1==true;
}
};

if (false)
{
$.setup_player(Play_Conf);
}

//info bar setup
jQuery('#player_infobarl181235_1').click(function()
{
var $info =jQuery('#player_info_contentl181235_1');
if($info.text()!=''){
var $content = jQuery('div',$info);
//min heigth
var min = $content.css('min-height');
var max = $content.css('max-height');
$info.slideToggle(600);
ShowInfoBox_l181235_1=!ShowInfoBox_l181235_1;
}
});
});

APNewsBreak: Report: 260,000 died in Somali famine

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? The 2011 Somali famine killed an estimated 260,000 people, half of them age 5 and under, according to a new report to be published this week that more than doubles previous death toll estimates, officials told The Associated Press.

The aid community believes that tens of thousands of people died needlessly because the international community was slow to respond to early signs of approaching hunger in East Africa in late 2010 and early 2011.

The toll was also exacerbated by extremist militants from al-Shabab who banned food aid deliveries to the areas of south-central Somalia that they controlled. Those same militants have also made the task of figuring out an accurate death toll extremely difficult.

A Western official briefed on the new report ? the most authoritative to date ? told AP that it says 260,000 people died, and that half the victims were 5 and under. Two other international officials briefed on the report confirmed that the toll was in the quarter-million range. All three insisted they not be identified because they were not authorized to share the report's contents before it is officially released.

The report is being made public Thursday by FEWSNET, a famine early warning system funded by the U.S. government's aid arm USAID, and by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit - Somalia, which is funded by the U.S. and Britain.

A previous estimate by the U.K. government said between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in the famine. The new report used research conducted by specialists experienced in estimating death tolls in emergencies and disasters. Those researchers relied on food and mortality data compiled by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.

Because of the imprecise nature of the data available, the toll remains only an estimate.

When asked about the report, Somalia Health Minister Maryan Qasim Ahmed said she didn't want to comment until she read it because of questions she had about the accuracy of the figures.

Sikander Khan, the head of UNICEF in Somalia, also said he needed to look at the report's methodology before commenting specifically. But he said generally that the response to the famine was problematic because it depended on political dynamics. He said the international community needs to change the way it classifies famines.

"You lose children by the time people realize it's met the established definition of famine," he said.

Marthe Everard, the World Health Organization's country director for Somalia, said she has not yet seen the report but would not be surprised by such a high death toll.

"The Somalis themselves were shocked about the number of women and children dying," she said, adding later: "It should give us lessons learned, but what do we do with it? How do we correct it for next time?"

Much of the aid response came after pictures of weak and dying children were publicized by international media outlets around the time the U.N. declared a famine in July 2011.

"By then you are too late," Everard said.

A report last year by the aid groups Oxfam and Save the Children found that rich donor nations waited until the crisis was in full swing before donating a substantial amount of money. The report also said aid agencies were slow to respond.

Quicker action wouldn't have prevented the deaths in areas controlled by al-Shabab. The militant group prevented many men from leaving the famine-hit region and allowed no emergency food aid in.

Thousands of Somalis walked dozens or hundreds of miles to reach camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Countless numbers of families lost children or elderly members along routes that became known as roads of death.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-report-260-000-died-somali-famine-132604775.html

stoudemire jordan hill tony nominations dark knight trailer dallas mavericks washington capitals delmon young

Mac OS X 10.9 Details - Business Insider

Apple is preparing a new version of its operating system for Mac computers called OS X 10.9 that will bring in several features from iOS, the operating system for iPhones and iPads.

Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, who is consistently accurate with reports on upcoming Apple products, has a few details on what we can expect:

The Finder, which lets you explore files and folders on your Mac, will have a new tabbed browsing mode, just like on your Web browser.
Switching between open apps will be a similar to the iPhone and iPad method: you'll be able to select an app from a tray at the bottom of your screen. This will also help improve performance and battery life by "suspending" the apps when you're not using them.
There might be some other interface changes, but they won't be anything drastic.

Apple will likely unveil OS X 10.9 at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10.

Check out Gurman's report for even more details >

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/mac-os-x-109-details-2013-4

rpi dst friends with kids pacific standard time northern mariana islands summer time coolio

Jiffy for Android: Always Know Exactly Where the Time Went

It's a busy life we lead?most of us, anyway. And between work, play, family time, rest, secret-other-family time, whatever it may be that you've got going on, making sure you're distributing your time evenly can be a challenge. The simple Android fix Jiffy is here to help.

সোমবার, ২৯ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Netanyahu says Iran hasn't crossed nuclear "red line"

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday Iran had not crossed the "red line" he set for its nuclear program, despite an assessment to the contrary by a former Israeli intelligence chief.

At the United Nations in September, Netanyahu drew a red line across a cartoon bomb to illustrate the point at which he said Iran will have amassed enough uranium at 20 percent fissile purity to fuel one nuclear bomb if enriched further. He said then that Iran could reach that threshold by mid-2013.

Last week, Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, told a security conference in Tel Aviv that "the Iranians have crossed the red line" Netanyahu drew at the U.N. General Assembly.

Without referring directly to Yadlin, Netanyahu said at a meeting on Monday of his Likud-Beitenu parliamentary faction that Iran's nuclear activities remained short of his benchmark.

"Iran is continuing with its nuclear program. It has yet to cross the red line I presented at the United Nations, but it is approaching it systematically," he said in broadcast remarks.

"It must not be allowed to cross it."

The Islamic Republic says it is enriching uranium only for peaceful energy and medical purposes.

Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, has issued veiled warnings for years that it might attack Iran if international sanctions and big power diplomacy fail to curb what it regards as a drive by Tehran to develop atomic weapons.

Israel has long insisted on the need for a convincing military threat and setting clear lines beyond which Iran's nuclear activity should not advance. It says this is the only way to persuade Iran to bow to international pressure by curbing enrichment activity and allowing unfettered U.N. inspections.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-says-iran-hasnt-crossed-nuclear-red-line-142907114.html

manny pacquiao Chopper Live jerry brown michael buble michael buble Jenni Rivera Alive Facebook Down

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley: All Our Numbers Are Up 10-30% Each Month

Today at Disrupt NY 2013, Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley denied rumors that growth was stagnant for Foursquare. “I think there?s a little bit of perception that we?re not growing,”?Crowley said.?”This is false.” In reality, March 2013 was the best month to date. When it comes to growth numbers, Crowley started by saying that “[they] don?t talk about growth numbers so much.” But Foursquare tracks the number of active users, monthly sign-ups, check-ins, web visitors, etc. “All of these numbers are up 10-30 percent,” Crowley said. Yet, Crowley was very candid about the situation the company is in right now. “We?re not the shiny new thing anymore,” he said. The company is currently trying to become the main location tech company and turn into a recommendation app for restaurants, bars, etc. “A lot of people understand what we?re trying to do, being the location layer on the Internet, but there are a lot of people that don?t,” Crowley said. “People are still skeptical,” he continued. “We are like that company that quietly pushes out big enhancements,” Crowley said. The company just wants to focus on improving the product and generating revenue, even if Foursquare receives negative thoughts from time to time. A good part of Crowley’s fireside chat was about busting rumors and stating that Foursquare is a focused company that is on a good path: “We’ve set ourselves up with nice ambitious targets, and we’re set to hit our goals.”

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kBQacS84dCg/

Jenni Rivera Alive Facebook Down bo jackson bo jackson hanukkah justin tv justin tv

Analysis: Tax strategy may be key to Verizon Wireless deal

By Kevin Drawbaugh and Nanette Byrnes

(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc's chances of buying the 45-percent stake in Verizon Wireless owned by the UK's Vodafone Group Plc will hinge, at least in part, on the quality of tax advice it is getting.

Verizon, the No. 2 U.S. telecommunications company, may have found a way to structure a purchase of the stake so that Vodafone can avoid a multi-billion dollar U.S. capital gains tax bill, sources familiar with Verizon's plans said. The possibility of a huge tax bill has previously been regarded by analysts as a big hurdle to any such deal.

Reuters reported last Wednesday that Verizon was preparing a bid worth about $100 billion to take full control of Verizon Wireless - it already owns the other 55 percent - by buying the stake, according to people familiar with the matter. There are no guarantees that Vodafone will want to sell its stake or that Verizon will pursue the plan.

Vodafone declined to comment on the possibility of a Verizon bid for its stake or on the tax question.

One person familiar with the situation said Vodafone cannot consider the size of any tax payout in a possible transaction until the company has received an offer, which it has not.

A Verizon spokesman declined to comment.

Verizon hopes that if it structures a transaction to eliminate much of the tax bill, it can encourage Vodafone to come to the table for talks. Some analysts and investors say Verizon may have to pay as much as $130 billion to clinch the deal.

The tax bill on $100-billion deal, based on a simple acquisition of the stake, would be about $38 billion, according to UBS Investment Research. It could be much higher if the deal's price-tag rises above that figure, UBS noted.

That tax bill is based on the massive growth Verizon Wireless has experienced since it was established 13 years ago. The 45-percent stake that Verizon Communications wants to buy is owned by Vodafone Americas, a U.S. holding company. Given it is a U.S. entity, if Vodafone Americas were to sell that stake outright it would have to pay the full capital gains tax on the stake.

But the sources said Verizon Communications is contemplating a two-part deal that could avoid this. Instead of buying the stake outright, the sources said, Verizon Communications would buy the Delaware-based Vodafone Americas. Analysts said the seller of Vodafone Americas would not be a U.S.-based entity, so no U.S. capital gains tax would be due.

Vodafone's international structure is complicated, involving many holding companies, and the precise ownership of some assets is unclear. Vodafone Americas also owns some of Vodafone's non-US assets, the sources said, probably including some in Germany and Spain. These would be sold back to Vodafone by Verizon Communications, which would keep the Verizon Wireless stake, they said.

The two transactions could be done simultaneously or one after the other.

While the sale of the Verizon Wireless stake would not incur capital gains tax, the sale of the international assets back to Vodafone would. This is because it would involve the sale of assets by Verizon Communications, a U.S. entity.

Compared to Verizon Wireless, the smaller international assets are thought to have gained little in value. Analysts estimated their sale could hit Verizon Communications with a U.S. tax bill of about $5 billion or less.

The sources said that Verizon would seek to pass any tax hit onto Vodafone in the two-part transaction.

LONG COURTSHIP

Verizon has long coveted its partner Vodafone's stake in the Verizon Wireless joint venture, which started operations in 2000.

The last time the two came close to a deal was in 2004, when Vodafone bid for AT&T Wireless. The British company, the world's second-largest mobile operator, however, lost that bid to Cingular and has since held on to the Verizon Wireless stake for its exposure to the U.S. wireless market.

Wall Street analysts had previously seen it as unlikely that Verizon would want to do a deal involving Vodafone Americas' international assets. But those assets have underperformed in recent years when compared with the growth of Verizon Wireless, and are now a smaller part of the holding company, reducing the potential tax hit.

However, the timing of Verizon's interest in doing the deal has more to do with the gains in its stock price and low interest rates, the sources stressed.

Verizon is considering paying about half of the purchase price in cash and half in stock, Reuters reported on Wednesday. That means it may look to raise around $50 billion in debt.

UK TAX QUESTION

The kind of deal structure envisaged would still leave Vodafone with another tax question, said UK academics and analysts: Should it leave the proceeds from any sale offshore or bring them home to the UK?

Leaving the money offshore might invite scrutiny from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, which sometimes questions transactions if they seem designed solely to avoid tax and are not based in an underlying economic logic, said Prems Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Essex in the UK.

If the transaction were shaped the way the sources have described it, Vodafone would probably repatriate the proceeds into Britain, said Charles Merriman, managing director at Merriman Capital Transactions, a consultancy in London.

Once that was done, he said, the company might be able to reduce its tax bill by taking advantage of the UK's substantial shareholdings exemption. Under certain conditions, this exempts from UK corporation taxation any gains realized when one company disposes of shares in another company.

More broadly, though, Vodafone could face a political backlash in the UK from any deal that was clearly structured to avoid taxation, said Robin Bienenstock, senior analyst at Bernstein Research.

U.S. companies such as Starbucks, Amazon and Google have come under fire from British lawmakers for using legal maneuvers to cut their tax bills in the UK.

"The problem with tax is not just the technical ability to avoid it, but the scorched earth that trying to avoid it could leave with the UK government afterwards," said Bienenstock. "Recent tax cases in the UK ... suggest that an attempt to avoid tax on such a large and high profile deal would be very badly received."

(Reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, D.C. and Nanette Byrnes in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Additional reporting by Kate Holton and Tom Bergin in London; So Young Kim and Paritosh Bansal in New York; Editing by Martin Howell)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-tax-strategy-may-key-verizon-wireless-deal-050341644.html

devils la riots rachel maddow gia utah jazz lawrence of arabia denver nuggets

Obama 'appreciates' Russia's help after bombing

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin (POO'-tihn) have been discussing terrorism coordination in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The White House says the two leaders spoke by phone Monday. A statement says Obama expressed his "appreciation" for Russia's close cooperation after the attack.

The suspected bombers are Russian natives who immigrated to the Boston area. Russian authorities told U.S. officials before the bombings they had concerns about the family, but only revealed details of wiretapped conversations since the attack.

A White House statement said the leaders discussed future cooperation on security, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.

The White House also says Obama expressed condolences for a deadly hospital fire outside Moscow last week and that Obama stressed U.S. concerns over chemical weapons in Syria.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-putin-discuss-security-phone-call-192054356.html

Perez Hilton Michelle Obama Oscars Wissam Al Mana seth macfarlane oscar winners anne hathaway Castel Gandolfo

Mother of bomb suspects found deeper spirituality

BOSTON (AP) ? In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.

But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.

Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.

Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons ? Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured ? are innocent.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Amid the scrutiny, Tsarnaeva and her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, say they have put off the idea of any trip to the U.S. to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit Dzhokhar in jail. Tsarnaev told the AP on Sunday he was too ill to travel to the U.S. Tsarnaeva faces a 2012 shoplifting charge in a Boston suburb, though it was unclear whether that was a deterrent.

At a news conference in Dagestan with Anzor last week, Tsarnaeva appeared overwhelmed with grief one moment, defiant the next. "They already are talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist," she said. "They already want me, him and all of us to look (like) terrorists."

Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Mass. With four children, Anzor and Zubeidat qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.

Zubeidat took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor, who had studied law, fixed cars.

By some accounts, the family was tolerant.

Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat's two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.

"I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was," Smith told the newspaper. "Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter."

Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.

"I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said.

By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.

"She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised," Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog. "She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting."

Kilzer wrote that Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings. But she stopped visiting the family's home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, she "started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims."

"It's real," Tsarnaeva said, according to Kilzer. "My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet."

In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat's eldest son got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a child who is about 3 years old.

Zubeidat married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.

It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor and Zubeidat divorced in 2011.

About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service.

The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010. That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan at the family's home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother's name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.

After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan. The Russians also recorded Zubeidat talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

Anzor's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.

While Tamerlan was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Mass., and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a department store.

She failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.

___

Seddon reported from Makhachkala, Russia. Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mother-bomb-suspects-found-deeper-spirituality-224317582.html

meek sturgis sturgis whitney houston laid to rest daytona bike week mary kay ash tiny houses

LG Optimus F5 mid-range LTE smartphone hits France April 29, global dispersion to follow

LG's F-series handsets may not be in the same class an HTC One or GS4, but we can't help to appreciate the solid specs and LTE-goodness baked into these mid-range devices. Following a debut alongside its F7 sibling at MWC, the F5 will begin trickling out to retail April 29th in France. While there's no mention of US availability -- despite a recent leak pegging it for Verizon -- LG will also be soon be pushing it out to parts of Asia and Central / South America as well. Aimed at markets new to LTE, the smartphone packs a beefy 2,150mAh battery, five-megapixel camera, 1.2GHz Dual-Core processor and a 4.3-inch screen to display LG's skinned version of Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2. If you're curious to give LTE a go with LG, you'll find the full press release after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, LG

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/vva-YXWy-Is/

lollapalooza Facebook Phone lindsay lohan emma watson Jaromir Jagr Shain Gandee mlb

Before Bombs, a Battered American Dream

The New York Times:

It was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States citizen.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/27/tamerlan-tsarnaev-radicalization_n_3171702.html

twisted metal sea lion si swimsuit 2012 westminster dog show abe lincoln vampire hunter xi jinping matt bomer

From the Editor's Desk: So many awesome people, so little time

Mobile Nations at #tm13

I'd say this behind-the-scenes picture just about sums up our week in New York City. Take a bunch of characters from Mobile Nations, toss them into a room with John P and Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.TV, and good things will happen. OK, a lot of craziness will happen, too. But also good things.

While we haven't explicitly said what we were up to at #tm13 -- and don't worry, we'll take care of that fairly soon -- it also shouldn't be all that hard to figure out. It's been a few years since the last Smartphone Experts Round Robin (in fact, that was my first week on the job here in late 2009 after fleeing the newspaper business), and a follow-up was long overdue.

But a lot has changed since I first met the likes of Dieter Bohn, Kevin Michaluk, Rene Ritchie, Casey Chan, Matt Miller and Mickey Papillon and others for a week of smartphone nerdery in Orlando. (Lord, we looked so young.) Some of us have moved on to do other things. (I'm still proud to call each one of them a friend, though.) There's more parity among the platforms. Palm and webOS are no more. Nokia has ceded and switched (nearly exclusively) to Windows Phone. Microsoft's mobile OS has grown from awkward and clunky to attractive and graceful, if still underappreciated. Same could be same for Android, maybe. And BlackBerry is just beginning its second life.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/ICb-wSkhW2M/story01.htm

Ohio Lottery Colorado Lottery Pa Lottery Ebates lotto Illinois Lottery texas lottery

Hospitals see surge of superbug-fighting products

Using ultraviolet light, a machine disinfects a hospital room at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., Wednesday, March 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Hospitals sweep, swap and sterilize, but they can't seem to stop the spread of germs.

Health officials say 1 in 20 patients get a hospital-spread infection, and some of those are from hard-to-treat superbugs. The growing threat of these dangerous germs is driving hospitals to try new approaches, like costly new robot-like machines to wipe them out.

But there is no good national evidence that these products reduce deaths or infection rates. Some health officials say rigorous cleaning with bleach and other standard cleaning products should do the job.

Meanwhile, the government is cutting back Medicare payments to hospitals who can't keep infections under control.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-29-Disinfecting%20Robots/id-ffe5adfad2ee456cad047c5fa7bc725a

al gore la dodgers lawrence o donnell magic johnson jetblue pilot solicitor general neighborhood watch

রবিবার, ২৮ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

[Spar or fight] Realistic Melee

I haven't done a roleplay fight in a very long time and would like to try it again. I would like a melee fight with realistic human or humanlike characters.

Any weapon type from any culture is okay as long as it's reasonable and realistic. I will be using a katana for this fight.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/QPK0R8GGTPw/viewtopic.php

franklin graham jambalaya taylor swift and zac efron basketball wives manny ramirez easter 2012 jeremy lin espn

NY Disrupt Hackathon Hardware Find: Robots!

The floor at Disrupt's NY Hackathon is filled mostly with people working on software projects, but there were also some interesting hardware endeavors underway. One in particular caught my eye: a robot built from open-source components build to help anyone subject their app or device to strenuous, physical testing in a non-simulated environment.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/bQCkONu4-Gg/

jill biden jill biden martin luther king jr baltimore ravens ravens Ravens vs Patriots 49ers Vs Falcons

Drawnimal, Netflix, and More

Adults shouldn't have all the fun. This week's set of iPad apps includes something for the kids as well as a beloved, improved toy all your very own. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/tNKw40OYY9M/drawnimal-netflix-and-more

yeardley love nba all star reserves rock center christine christine double fine adventure turbo tax

Mobile Miscellany: week of April 22nd, 2013

If you didn't get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we've opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week, a familiar smartphone leaked that's said to join the prepaid ranks at Verizon Wireless, AT&T swung back against the DOJ, and Rogers issued its quarterly earnings. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that's happening in the mobile world for this week of April 22nd, 2013.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/3DShY0sTunc/

sandy Time Change 2012 news 12 world series Natina Reed giants Sandy Hurricane

Shanghai auto show: where you, too, can buy a machine-gun ready pickup

A Chinese company's trucks were a hit among Libyan rebels, and it's now seeking inroads to the lucrative insurgent market.?'The car really proved its launch strength,' wrote one Libyan rebel.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / April 26, 2013

Libyan rebels riding at the back of a pickup truck retreat east towards Benghazi from Ajdabiya, Libya, in April 2011. When the Shanghai auto show opened a week ago, ZX Auto, proudly displayed on its stand a version of its trucks that were a hit among Libyan rebels.

Nasser Nasser/AP/File

Enlarge

Ever fancied owning your own ?technical? ? the sort of pickup truck fitted with a heavy machine gun that rebels careering around the streets from Somalia to Libya have made notorious? Come to the Shanghai Auto Show and a Chinese automaker will sell you one.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

Israel fears end to 40-year peace on Syrian front

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 24, 2013, Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli General, stands at an army outpost overlooking Syria and Jordan in the Golan Heights. Against a breathtaking vista of green fields and a snowcapped mountain range, all is silent but for a strong gust of wind whipping across the landscape. The tranquility is suddenly interrupted by a burst of gunfire from beyond a newly built fortified fence: Jihadi rebels are battling with Bashar Assad's battered troops in a nearby Syrian village. Watching it all unfold are Israeli soldiers atop tanks - a sight unseen here in a generation - and the sounds of explosions from a large-scale Israeli drill are distinctly heard in the background. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 24, 2013, a worker builds a security fence along the border between Israel and Syrian on the Golan Heights. Against a breathtaking vista of green fields and a snowcapped mountain range, all is silent but for a strong gust of wind whipping across the landscape. The tranquility is suddenly interrupted by a burst of gunfire from beyond a newly built fortified fence: Jihadi rebels are battling with Bashar Assad's battered troops in a nearby Syrian village. Watching it all unfold are Israeli soldiers atop tanks - a sight unseen here in a generation - and the sounds of explosions from a large-scale Israeli drill are distinctly heard in the background. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 24, 2013, an Israeli soldier looks through binoculars at a Syrian village from an army post on the border between Israel and Syrian on the Golan Heights. Against a breathtaking vista of green fields and a snowcapped mountain range, all is silent but for a strong gust of wind whipping across the landscape. The tranquility is suddenly interrupted by a burst of gunfire from beyond a newly built fortified fence: Jihadi rebels are battling with Bashar Assad's battered troops in a nearby Syrian village. Watching it all unfold are Israeli soldiers atop tanks - a sight unseen here in a generation - and the sounds of explosions from a large-scale Israeli drill are distinctly heard in the background. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 24, 2013, Israeli soldiers stand next to a metal placard in the shape of an Israeli soldier, at an observation point on Mt. Bental in the Golan Heights, Against a breathtaking vista of green fields and a snowcapped mountain range, all is silent but for a strong gust of wind whipping across the landscape. The tranquility is suddenly interrupted by a burst of gunfire from beyond a newly built fortified fence: Jihadi rebels are battling with Bashar Assad's battered troops in a nearby Syrian village. Watching it all unfold are Israeli soldiers atop tanks - a sight unseen here in a generation - and the sounds of explosions from a large-scale Israeli drill are distinctly heard in the background. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

ALONEI HABASHAN, Golan Heights (AP) ? Against a vista of green fields and snowcapped mountains, all is silent but for a gusting wind. Then comes a burst of gunfire from the Syrian civil war raging next door, where jihadist rebels are battling Bashar Assad's troops in a village.

Watching it all unfold from a few kilometers (miles) away are Israeli soldiers atop tanks behind a newly fortified fence, while a large-scale Israeli drill sends off its own explosions in the background.

This is the new reality on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, for 40 years the quietest of Israel's front lines, a place of hiking trails, bird-watching, skiing and winery tour. The military predicts all that will soon change as it prepares for the worst ? a power vacuum in Syria in which rogue groups could get their hands of the country's large stockpile of chemical weapons.

In many ways, a new era has already begun. The Syrian villages along the border change hands between military and rebel strongholds in daily battles. Their mortar shells and bullets frequently land on the Israeli side, including in some cases narrowly missing soldiers and civilians. A Syrian army tank shell landed in the border community of Alonei Habashan in February.

Though Israel believes these have mostly been cases of errant fire, it has responded with firepower of its own on several occasions in the first round of hostilities since a long-term armistice took hold after the 1973 Mideast war.

"This area became a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests," said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general who is involved in the military's strategic planning and operations. "Syria became a place that we see as a big threat to Israel and that is why we started to work in the last two years on a strong obstacle, on our infrastructure, in order to make sure that we will be ready for the future. And the future is here already."

Officials say the military's present deployment on the plateau is its most robust since 1973, and its most obvious manifestation is the brand new border fence, 6 meters (20 feet) tall, topped with barbed wire and bristling with sophisticated anti-infiltration devices. The previous rundown fence was largely untested until it was trampled over last year by Syrians protesting on behalf of Palestinians.

The military would not detail other measures it is taking, but stressed it was actively defining the new border arrangement now, before it could be too late.

On the other side of the frontier, the village of Bir Ajam is in rebel hands and Israeli troops report watching them successfully deflect Syrian military pre-dawn raids almost daily. In a village nearby, Syrian intelligence and commando forces are based in concrete, windowless structures.

At the triangle where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan meet along the Yarmouk River, a lone jeep is seen crossing uninterrupted from Jordan into Syria. In March, rebels kidnapped 21 Filipino U.N peacekeepers nearby. Thousands of refugees have used the route to flee the carnage into Jordan.

A few injured refugees have trickled into the Golan, and the military runs a field clinic to treat them. But there's no guarantee the trickle won't become a flood if Jordan in the south or Turkey in the north become unreachable.

"Syria right now is a kind of self-evolving system," Hirsch said. "No one can control or predict everything."

Israel, which borders southwestern Syria, has thus far been careful to stay on the sidelines of a civil war that has already claimed the lives of more than 70,000.

Assad is a bitter enemy, an ally of Iran and a major backer of Lebanese Hezbollah guerilla attacks against Israel. But like his father whom he succeeded as president, he has faithfully observed U.S.-brokered accords that ended the 1973 war. Israel worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary.

Chief among Israeli concerns is that Assad's advanced weaponry could reach the hands of either his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups among the rebels trying to oust him.

"Syria is not a regular place ... it is the biggest warehouse for weapons on earth," Hirsch warned.

In an interview with BBC TV last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the rebel groups among "the worst Islamist radicals in the world."

"So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists," he said.

This week, a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Assad used chemical weapons last month. After initial denials, American and British officials confirmed the assessment of Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, that the lethal nerve agent sarin was probably used. U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that the introduction of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" that could usher in greater foreign intervention in the civil war.

For Israel, the specter of peace with Syria disintegrating adds to a growing sense of siege. It saw the Gaza Strip fall to the militant Hamas movement in an election in 2006. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the first to make peace with Israel, is now ruled by the fiercely anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. All this against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear program and its threats to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel has all but admitted that its warplanes destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, and on Thursday it shot down a drone which it said it suspects was operated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied launching it.

Hirsch, who commanded an Israeli division in a monthlong war with Hezbollah in 2006, said war regional roles have since then been reversed. While once Syria used Hezbollah in Lebanon as a proxy against Israel, Hezbollah is now deterred from acting on Lebanese soil for fear of Israeli retribution and is preparing to use the instability in Syria as its future staging ground.

"The fighting in Syria gives them an opportunity to open a new front against Israel," said Hirsch. "We must be ready for turbulence. We must be ready for the Iranian involvement inside Syria. We must be ready to be able to fight against radical fundamentalist activities that will come from Syria, and that is what we are doing here."

___

Follow Heller on Twitter (at)aronhellerap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-26-Israel-On%20Syria's%20Doorstep/id-cdaa5de61c694d4a960e6cafe8b54aba

Mother Jones cars Bacon Number Kate Middleton photos Chi Magazine Kate Middleton Nude Photos boxing news

Alaska mine would damage streams and wetlands: EPA report

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Digging a large mine in southwest Alaska would inflict widespread ecological damage, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a report on Friday that could hurt the chances of a proposed project in that region winning regulatory approval.

A large scale open-pit mine in Alaska's unspoiled Bristol Bay region would destroy up to 90 miles of salmon and trout spawning streams, harm thousands of acres of wetlands that support fish and subject local waters to chemical spills and releases of untreated wastewater, the EPA report said.

The report did not specifically analyze the plan for Pebble Mine, the project proposed for the area, because developers have not officially made permit applications. But it studied the implications of a hypothetical project similar to Pebble. (EPA report: http://r.reuters.com/dew67t)

Pebble Mine, located 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, would be one of the world's largest open-pit copper mines. Developers have described it as a potential economic boon that would target both known and anticipated reserves of 80 billion lbs (36.3 billion kg) of copper, over 100 million ounces (2.8 million kg) of gold and 5.5 billion pounds (2.5 billion kg) of molybdenum.

But the latest EPA report predicted a wider scope of environmental damage than outlined in a draft report the agency released last year.

The EPA's conclusion drew a pointed reaction from the mine's developer, Pebble Limited Partnership President John Shively, who called the latest version of the assessment "flawed" and a waste of public money.

Shively in a statement blasted EPA for what he said was a decision to heed mine opponents' demands for a "pre-emptive veto" before development plans are final.

Even "the threat of a ?pre-emptive veto' will introduce uncertainty into the process that threatens to hurt the entire U.S. economy, not just a proposed mine in Alaska," Shively said.

The new EPA assessment backs up the previous draft report's conclusions about stream and wetlands damages, but gives more details about expected damages from roads, culverts, traffic accidents and other industrialization that would likely accompany mine development.

The EPA has made no decision about whether to invoke its legal powers to block the Pebble Mine, said Dennis McLarren, Pacific Northwest regional director for the agency.

The new report will be used to make any decisions about Bristol Bay protections, McLarren said in a conference call.

"We want to better understand the delicate ecological balance the produces the extraordinary fish and wildlife resources in Bristol Bay and assess the risk that mining could pose to that balance," he said.

Developers have already spent $680 million on the Pebble Mine project and plan to spend another $80 million this year, co-owner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd said this week. The other owner and Pebble partner is mining giant Anglo American.

The Pebble Mine plan has drawn fury from commercial and sport fishermen, Alaska Natives and environmentalists.

It is upstream from waters that hold the world's largest sockeye salmon runs and other rich marine life, including endangered whales and other vulnerable marine mammals. On land, national wildlife refuges and parks are nearby.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/alaska-mine-damage-streams-wetlands-epa-report-031217221.html

Pasquale Rotella Michael Clark Duncan michael jackson courtney stodden Ncaa Football Scores Plaquemines Parish michigan football

FAA: Air traffic system soon at full operation

A United Airlines jet departs in view of the air traffic control tower at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Tuesday, April 23, 2013, in Seattle. A day after flight delays plagued much of the U.S., air travel is smoother Tuesday. But the government is warning passengers that the situation can change by the hour as it runs the nation's air traffic control system with a smaller staff. Airlines and members of Congress urged the Federal Aviation Administration to find other ways to make mandatory budget cuts besides furloughing controllers. While delays haven't been terrible yet, the airlines are worried about the long-term impact late flights will have on their budgets and on fliers. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

The control tower stands in the background as a passenger lays on the pavement outside the international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, Friday, April 26, 2013, in Atlanta. Congress easily approved legislation Friday ending furloughs of air traffic controllers that have delayed hundreds of flights daily, infuriating travelers and causing political headaches for lawmakers.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

A passenger sits at right in the international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, Friday, April 26, 2013, in Atlanta. Congress easily approved legislation Friday ending furloughs of air traffic controllers that have delayed hundreds of flights daily, infuriating travelers and causing political headaches for lawmakers.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

The control tower stands in the background as a passenger paces while on the phone outside the international terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, Friday, April 26, 2013, in Atlanta. Congress easily approved legislation Friday ending furloughs of air traffic controllers that have delayed hundreds of flights daily, infuriating travelers and causing political headaches for lawmakers.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Federal Aviation Administration said that the U.S. air traffic system will resume normal operations by Sunday evening after lawmakers rushed a bill through Congress allowing the agency to withdraw furloughs of air traffic controllers and other workers.

The FAA said Saturday that it has suspended all employee furloughs and that traffic facilities will begin returning to regular staffing levels over the next 24 hours. The furloughs were fallout from the $85 billion in automatic-across-the-board spending cuts this spring.

The furloughs started to hit air traffic controllers this past week, causing flight delays that left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious. Planes were forced to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.

The FAA had no choice but to cut $637 million as its share of $85 billion in automatic, government-wide spending cuts that must be achieved by the end of the federal budget year on Sept. 30.

Flight delays piled up across the country Sunday and Monday of this week as the FAA kept planes on the ground because there weren't enough controllers to monitor busy air corridors. Cascading delays held up flights at some of nation's busiest airports, including New York, Baltimore and Washington. Delta Air Lines canceled about 90 flights Monday because of worries about delays. Just about every passenger was rebooked on another Delta flight within a couple of hours. Air travel was smoother Tuesday.

Things could have been worse. A lot of people who had planned to fly this week changed their plans when they heard that air travel might be difficult, according to longtime aviation consultant Daniel Kasper of Compass Lexicon.

"Essentially what happened from an airline's perspective is that people who were going to travel didn't travel," he said. But canceled flights likely led to lost revenue for airlines. Even if they didn't have to incur some of costs of fueling up planes and getting them off the ground, crews that were already scheduled to work still had to paid.

"One week isn't going to kill them, but had it gone on much longer, it would have been a significant hit on their revenues and profits," Kasper said.

The challenges this week probably cost airlines less than disruptions from a typical winter storm, said John F. Thomas, an aviation consultant with L.E.K. Consulting.

"I think the fact that it got resolved this week has minimized the cost as it was more the inconvenience factor," Thomas said.

The budget cuts at the FAA were required under a law enacted two years ago as the government was approaching its debt limit. Democrats were in favor of raising the debt limit without strings attached so as not to provoke an economic crisis, but Republicans insisted on substantial cuts in exchange. The compromise was to require that every government "program, project and activity" ? with some exceptions, like Medicare ? be cut equally.

The FAA had reduced the work schedules of nearly all of its 47,000 employees by one day every two weeks, including 15,000 air traffic controllers, as well as thousands of air traffic supervisors, managers and technicians who keep airport towers and radar facility equipment working. That amounted to a 10 percent cut in hours and pay.

Republicans accused the Obama administration of forcing the furloughs to raise public pressure on Congress to roll back the budget cuts. Critics of the FAA insist the agency could have reduce its budget in other ways that would not have inconvenience travelers including diverting money from other accounts, such as those devoted to research, commercial space transportation and modernization of the air traffic control computers.

President Barack Obama chided lawmakers Saturday over their fix for widespread flight delays, deeming it an irresponsible way to govern, dubbing it a "Band-Aid" and a quick fix, rather than a lasting solution to the spending cuts known as the sequester.

"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along," Obama said, singling out the GOP even though the bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in both chambers.

He scolded lawmakers for helping the Federal Aviation Administration while doing nothing to replace other cuts that he said harm federal employees, unemployed workers and preschoolers in Head Start.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-27-US-FAA-Furloughs/id-ff266ec5f2524584b286063a61123c2e

new ipad solar flare joseph kony 2012 arian foster dennis kucinich apple ipad kony

jamespiska

মঙ্গলবার, ৩০ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Asia stocks up after S&P hits record; Nikkei slips

Google Kills Chrome's Unpopular Redesigned New Tab Page Before It Hits Stable Channel

Cicadas get a jump on cleaning

One On 1 Extra: Tighe On Being A Real Estate Broker - NY1

APNewsBreak: Report: 260,000 died in Somali famine

Mac OS X 10.9 Details - Business Insider

Jiffy for Android: Always Know Exactly Where the Time Went

সোমবার, ২৯ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Netanyahu says Iran hasn't crossed nuclear "red line"

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley: All Our Numbers Are Up 10-30% Each Month

Analysis: Tax strategy may be key to Verizon Wireless deal

Obama 'appreciates' Russia's help after bombing

Mother of bomb suspects found deeper spirituality

LG Optimus F5 mid-range LTE smartphone hits France April 29, global dispersion to follow

Before Bombs, a Battered American Dream

From the Editor's Desk: So many awesome people, so little time

Hospitals see surge of superbug-fighting products

রবিবার, ২৮ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

[Spar or fight] Realistic Melee

NY Disrupt Hackathon Hardware Find: Robots!

Drawnimal, Netflix, and More

Mobile Miscellany: week of April 22nd, 2013

Shanghai auto show: where you, too, can buy a machine-gun ready pickup

Recent posts

Israel fears end to 40-year peace on Syrian front

Alaska mine would damage streams and wetlands: EPA report

FAA: Air traffic system soon at full operation

ব্লগ সংরক্ষাণাগার

আমার সম্পর্কে