Congressman: Boston bombing suspects may have had foreign help

?

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., joins MSNBC's Alex Witt to respond to his colleague Rep. Mike Rogers' claim that more arrests will be made in the Boston Bombing investigation.? Rep. Schiff explains the role of the CIA and Russian intelligence in the investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

By Craig Giammona, NBC News

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that federal authorities are investigating whether the suspects in the Boston marathon bombing received training that helped them carry out the deadly attack.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday that it was too soon to dismiss a possible connection between the suspects and foreign terrorists.

"Right out-of-the-box, U.S. officials unanimously are saying there's not foreign connection to this case when in fact the FBI just began its investigation into the case," McCaul said on Fox News Sunday. "They just got the computer. They just sent a U.S. team over to (the) Chechen region, and to Dagestan, to interview witnesses."

He added: "I think given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device, goes back to Pakistan or Afghanistan, leads to believe ? and the way they handled these devices and the trade craft leads me to believe that there was a trainer. And the question is, where is that trainer or trainers? Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?"

Publicly, U.S. officials investigating the bombing said there is no evidence of a wider plot, including training, direction or funding for the attacks.

And on CBS' Sunday morning show, Face the Nation, Sen. Claire MCaskill (D-Missouri) said there was no evidence the suspects were "part of a larger organization."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining his older brother, Tamerlan, who's now dead, in setting off the bombs near the marathon finish line. The attacks killed three and wounded 264. The brothers are ethnic Chechens who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. Both parents now live in Russia.

McCaul said Sunday that the suspects' mother had contributed to their "radicalization" and would be detained for questioning if she returned to the United States.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported Sunday that the parents of the bombing suspects had scrapped plans to the travel to the United States.

During an interview from an undisclosed location in Russian, the suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told the wire service that he believed he would not be allowed to see his surviving son Dzohkhar, who was captured and has been charged in connection with the April 15 bomb blasts that killed three people and wounded 264.

"I am not going back to the United States. For now I am here. I am ill," Tsarnaev said. "Unfortunately I can't help my child in any way. I am in touch with Dzhokhar's and my own lawyers. They told me they would let me know (what to do)," he said.

Tsarnaev had said Thursday that he planned to travel to the United States to see Dzkhokhar and bury his elder son, Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police in a firefight four days after the bombings.

Reuters said Tsarnaev agreed to the face-to-face interview on condition that the village's location not be disclosed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b470655/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C280C179578150Econgressman0Eboston0Ebombing0Esuspects0Emay0Ehave0Ehad0Eforeign0Ehelp0Dlite/story01.htm

After Earth Ryan Lochte Bayern Munich the blaze Michael Shannon Chrissy Amphlett Java

Tulsa 2024 Olympics? Beach volleyball in Tijuana? US solicits bids for Games.

Tulsa 2024 Olympics is only one of the possibilities. San Diego boosters have included events in Tijuana, Mexico, as one of their selling points. A cross-border Olympics would be a first.

By Mark Sappenfield,?Staff writer / April 28, 2013

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama lobby for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics at the International Olympic Committee Session in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009. That failed. Maybe a proposal to hold events in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2024 will help.

Gerald Herbert/AP/File

Enlarge

Can one Summer Olympics be held in two countries? Or in Oklahoma?

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Those are questions that have surfaced in recent days as the United States Olympic Committee looks for bid cities to host the 2024 Summer Olympics.The USOC has contacted 35 cities as part of a feeling-out process.

Of those 35 cities, Tulsa, Okla., was the smallest, with only 400,000 residents. But the mayor of Tulsa is not dismissing the notion of hosting the Summer Games out of hand, despite the fact that the city would need to more than triple its number of hotel rooms (to at least 45,000) and find more than $3 billion to build infrastructure like an Olympic stadium.

"I see this as a great opportunity, I really do," Mayor Dewey Bartlett told AP, encouraged the city's success in hosting the Bassmaster Classic in February

Perhaps the most intriguing candidate was San Diego, which has submitted a joint bid with Tijuana, Mexico.

USOC Chief Executive Scott Blackmun said the bid "would have its challenges," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. "We haven't looked at it carefully. We just learned about it.?

Yet the problems might not be so difficult. No Olympic Games have been shared between two neighboring host countries, but the world of soccer has been dividing is major events between countries for years. South Korea and Japan shared the 2002 World Cup, and the European Championships were held in Austria and Switzerland in 2008 and Poland and Ukraine last year.

In Euro 2012, for example, Poland and Ukraine set up special "green lines" at customs posts on the border, which allowed fans with game tickets and nothing to declare to pass through via an expedited process.

Of course, the World Cup and European Championships are spread out at eight sites over an entire month, while the Summer Olympics ? while mammoth ? want to be as compact as possible to limit travel for athletes, fans, and VIPs. Soccer tournaments are a string of big events evenly spaced out, while the Summer Games are a constellation of small events packed together in time and space.

But San Diego and Tijuana are hardly worlds apart. The driving distance is 17 miles. For the Winter Games, which have increasingly devolved into city sports (skating, hockey) and mountain sports (skiing, sliding), 17 miles would be nothing.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/mRlzIwzqSs4/Tulsa-2024-Olympics-Beach-volleyball-in-Tijuana-US-solicits-bids-for-Games

Chopper Live jerry brown michael buble michael buble Jenni Rivera Alive Facebook Down bo jackson

From the Editors

I grew up in a small house with a yard, a power mower, a used car, and a black-and-white television tuned every week to Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Then, it was clear what ?middle class? meant. My immigrant grandparents had started with nothing, and it took two generations? hard work for my parents to leave their row houses in Baltimore for tract housing just beyond the city line. Money wasn?t easy to come by, but we weren?t poor.

Thus, my family joined a rapidly expanding middle class that, in the wake of World War II, arguably turned this nation into the world?s dominant economic power. A consumer-driven market, a widening meritocracy hungry for new talent, a disciplined and usually satisfied workforce, an economic system conducive to democratic freedoms?a prosperous middle class has been the secret to (and the result of) all of this.

Now, it?s no longer clear what the middle-class idyll looks like. Many high earners don?t own a home?that totem of middle-classness?and many wage laborers have smartphones, that bourgeois essential. In reality, as we explore in these pages, possessions no longer suffice to define what it means to be middle class.

This special edition of National Journal is part of The Next Economy project, sponsored by Allstate and produced in collaboration with The Atlantic. It offers a comprehensive look at the state of the middle class in the wake of the Great Recession and an inert recovery. The story isn?t pretty, but it offers reasons to hope.

In the cover story, Amy Sullivan reports on a shift in the nature of the American Dream. As millions of people lost their homes, and multitudes of middle managers and union workers lost their jobs, Americans who had felt ensconced in the middle class learned they were only a pink slip or foreclosure away from a change in station. Middle-class Americans, she found, are thinking less nowadays about advancing and accumulating and more about just holding on to what they?ve got. A defensive sort of dream?and one that President Obama?s campaign advisers used to advantage last fall.

This subtle but consequential shift in middle-class sentiment is borne out by our own polling. In examining the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll, Ronald Brownstein finds heightened concern about economic security?a fear of sliding out of the middle class?and widespread skepticism that any but the wealthy can send their children to college or save for retirement. Being middle class means ?treading water,? says one respondent, a graduate student and pizza-delivery man in Washington state.

How daunting. So is Derek Thompson?s elegy for the ?lost generation? of millennials, who have had the misfortune to emerge into the workforce while the economy is whimpering along and who may wind up paying for their poor timing?in lower earnings, fewer promotions?for the rest of their lives. The weaker the middle class, the weaker the economy in the long run.

But truly, there are grounds for optimism. Our 17-part Index of Middle-Class Well-Being finds that most of the vectors went south over the past dozen years, but a majority of them are now turning up. Sophie Quinton tells of the revolution in online education that could bring a college diploma within almost anyone?s reach. She also hunts up five innovative, proven?and replicable?solutions that are helping workers and businesses struggling to get ahead. Another source of hope comes from Alan S. Blinder, the former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman, who suggests in a Q&A that if and when the economy returns to full employment, the middle class?s troubles will ease.

And we have another, larger reason for optimism: the American character. As the good citizens around Boston just showed us again, Americans are resilient people, whose families were self-selected (unless they were Native Americans or African slaves) as ambitious, enterprising, often desperate immigrants who chose to leave homelands where the more timid stayed behind. Americans try harder when they have to, and sometimes when they don?t. This is what the terrorists have never understood: We fight back. Psychology counts.

It?s the national mood, as much as anything, that has been holding the economy and the middle class hostage. This sourness stops consumers from consuming, lenders from lending, investors from investing. All those graphs you puzzled over in Economics 101?supply and demand, inventory and prices, whatever?were simply expressions of mass psychology, an expectation of how groups of people will react in particular circumstances. In a wired, media-centric world, a nation?s psychology can change.

So, what will it take for the beleaguered middle class to thrive once again? It would help if the economy returns to full power, with investors, lenders, consumers, and employers acting in the economy?s best interests. And, if Americans keep believing that by getting an education and working hard, they?ll be able to buy a house with a yard and a power mower and a car or two?oh, and smartphones.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/editors-202503988--politics.html

ellen degeneres tomb of the unknown soldier tomb of the unknown soldier HMS Bounty dominion power Heather Clem Con Edison

Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA

NASA is exploring ways to send a flotilla of small satellites to a destination, rather than one large orbiter. In a first test, three tiny satellites are now on orbit and beeping back at Earth. Why the idea could be an aid to scientific research.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / April 24, 2013

NASA's Phonesat aims to demonstrate the ability to launch one of the lowest-cost, easiest-to-build satellites ever flown in space ? capabilities enabled by using off-the-shelf consumer smart phones.

Courtesy of NASA

Enlarge

That's no smart phone in your pocket or purse; that's the heart and soul of a satellite.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Three satellites, to be exact, released into orbit on Sunday with the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s new Antares rocket, the latest addition to NASA's stable of space-station resupply vehicles.

The tiny satellites, each occupying a cube four inches on a side, represent an experiment in using cheap but powerful off-the-shelf technology to run a new generation of small, affordable science satellites.

Two of these orbiters, which NASA has dubbed Phonesat 1.0, use the electronics and sensors packaged in a Google Nexus One smart phone to serve as on-board computers. Accelerometers that normally tell the phones which way you've oriented the screen now gather information on the satellites' orientation in space. And the cameras? Yep, snapshots of Earth from 156 miles up.

The third satellite, a prototype for Phonesat 2.0, uses a more powerful Nexus S, which also has a built-in gyroscope. Ultimately, engineers plan to use that extra capability to control solar panels and to control the spacecraft's orientation, instead of just recording it.

The notion of using a smart phone's innards to run a satellite grew out of informal hallway chatter, recalls James Cockrell, project manager for Phonesat at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

The benchmark people often use as a point of comparison for the power of their favorite laptop or smart phone is the primitive computing power used in the Apollo program, which landed humans on the moon and brought them back safely in the late 1960s and early '70s.

Indeed, Mr. Cockrell describes a trip to the Internet that netted him the electronic-circuit diagram for the navigation and control computer used in Apollo's Lunar Excursion Module.

"Oh my goodness, you could build it in your basement" with a circuit board and a few transistors, he says.

A couple of years ago, he says, an engineer at NASA-Ames was drawing a similar comparison between his smart phone and today's satellites during an informal hallway chat. The engineer noted that a smart phone's processor is 10 to 15 times more powerful than the processors used in a conventional satellite's computer. A smart phone has much more memory. And it boasts a GPS receiver, gyroscopes, and accelerometers ? the sensors needed for navigation and to control a satellite's orientation.

"He said: 'I don't know why we couldn't make a satellite our of a smart phone,' " Cockrell recalls. Although it took a bit of additional salesmanship to convince folks higher up the organizational food chain, the Phonesat project was born.

The satellites cost about $3,500 each. The initial goals were modest: Survive the launch and beep at Earth.

So far, the satellites have successfully relayed their health ? operating temperatures, battery status, and other key indicators ? via small external transmitters.

"We call this our Sputnik moment," Cockrell says, referring to the simple "I'm alive" beeps that the world's first artificial satellite sent back to Earth in 1957.

As of Monday night, the two Phonesat 1 orbiters started taking pictures. Each satellite selected one image to beam back to Earth.

Before the beaming could begin, the image had to be cut into pieces. And yes, there's now an app for that.

And where NASA's flagship missions to the far reaches of the solar system use the agency's global Deep Space Network for communications, Phonesats are using what you could call NASA's cheap-and-not-so-deep space network ? ham-radio operators worldwide.

So far, some 100 hams have registered at www.phonesat.org, a site the program has set up to receive the packets. As of Tuesday evening, Cockrell estimated that the website had collected more than 300 packets, which computers on Earth must sort through to eliminate duplicates. Ultimately the mosaic will be assembled and displayed online.

The three Phonesats are expected to reenter the atmosphere and vaporize at the end of their 10- to 14-day romp on orbit.

The project already has Phonesats 3.0 and 4.0 on the drawing boards, an effort that eventually could pay dividends for space research, explains Bruce Yost, who heads the Edison Small Satellite Flight Demonstration Program at NASA-Ames.

NASA is exploring concepts for sending a flotilla of small satellites to a destination, rather than one large orbiter. The arrangement would allow sensors from several satellites to take measurements simultaneously around an entire planet to unravel the processes at work on the surface or in an atmosphere.

"If each one of those little pieces of the puzzle costs millions of dollars, then you're not really making any headway" toward getting such a mission approved, Mr. Yost explains. Given the private sector's heavy investment in phone R&D and the capabilities that have emerged, the argument goes, why keep satellite-control technology development in-house and reinvent the wheel?

Earth is likely to be an early target for such "swarm" exploration, Yost says. Scientists studying and forecasting space weather are interested in lofting a flotilla of satellites that could make simultaneous measurements of the solar wind or solar storms and their influence on various parts of the Earth's magnetic field.

Cockrell and his team also are working on an eight-spacecraft flotilla to test the feasibility of this idea of satellite swarms, Yost says.

Perhaps it's fitting that the first smart phones in space run on the Android operating system. There's no word on when or if iPhones will get a crack at serving as the seed around which a satellite grows. ?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/-gOZelEbRBk/Tiny-satellites-cellphones-cheaper-eyes-in-the-sky-for-NASA

lotto winner jerry lee lewis winning lotto numbers lottery tickets mega lottery sag aftra mega mill

Palestinian watchdog: corruption continues

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? A Palestinian watchdog group says it's looking into corruption claims against government officials.

Azmi Shuabi of the Coalition for Transparency in Palestine said Wednesday it is checking 29 claims that senior officials of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority stole public funds.

Shuabi said the Palestinian Authority also has problems with money laundering, nepotism and misusing official positions.

Shuabi said most cases involve institutions overseen by the Palestinian president's office. He said it lacked proper oversight over matters like the airport authority, a project to build a shrine for former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the water authority.

He said another 12 cases were investigated and transferred to the courts.

Palestinian Authority Justice Minister Ali Muhanna says the government has made large strides in reducing corruption.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/palestinian-watchdog-corruption-continues-182306963.html

National Hurricane Center Zeek Rewards vanessa bryant vanessa bryant Prince Harry naked Prince Harry Vegas Melky Cabrera

eat sleep dream love food: Diet Review: Paleo Diet

One question I often get asked is what I think of various?diets. The Paleo diet is one of these, and seems to have become very popular amongst fitness circles, cafes and even restaurants. But do we really have to go back in time to become healthy individuals, and is this diet really sustainable in the long term? These are just a couple of questions I posed to Bronwyn Goddard, who has kindly put on her white dietetic coat to give us a review of this ever-so-popular diet.
I am so delighted to introduce Bronwyn as today's guest blogger. Not only is Bronwyn a dedicated student at the Queensland?University of Technology (the same university that I studied at), but Bronwyn and her family are also very close to my heart. You see, it was many years ago that I met Bronwyn, back when we were both training hard as gymnasts in Brisbane. Thanks to facebook we've stayed in touch, and it was not so long ago that I was over the moon to find out that Bronwyn had pursued a career in dietetics.

Bronwyn Goddard is currently studying nutrition and dietetics at QUT in Brisbane. She enjoys every opportunity to travel the world, experiencing a variety of weird and wonderful cuisines as she goes. Bronwyn aspires to work internationally, improving the lives and nutrition of underprivileged children living in third world countries.?
Connect with Bronwyn on LinkedIn


Introducing the Paleo Diet?

The Atkins diet, Tony Ferguson, the grapefruit diet, the one-food-diet, the Dukan diet, the blood type diet? the list goes on! With so many different diets on the market ? many claiming to be the new ?miracle weight loss diet?, how do you know which one to follow, which one gives the best results, and which is the healthiest? Let?s take a closer look at the Paleo diet and see how it measures up.

What is the Paleo Diet?

The paleolithic diet, more commonly referred to as the ?paleo? diet, is an increasingly popular weight loss diet. ?Paleolithic? refers to the ?early phase of the Stone Age, lasting about 2.5 million years, when primitive stone implements were used?. Accordingly, the paleo diet is an extension of this, encouraging us to eat as our ancient ancestors did ? hopefully without needing to use primitive stone implements in the process!

What makes the Paleo Diet popular?

The paleo diet markets itself by claiming that our ancestors (who followed this diet day-in day-out) were free of many diseases now very common throughout society. These include obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis - just to name a few. Some research suggests that the paleo diet reduces ?bad? cholesterol levels ? preventing cardiovascular disease. This may have some merit, as cholesterol levels are affected by certain types of fats consumed in our diet. The typical Western diet consists of many processed foods, including processed meats, takeaway foods and baked goods, which often contain high amounts of saturated or trans-fats, more commonly known as the ?bad? fats. On the other hand, the paleo diet is rich in nuts, seeds, and fish, all of which contain unsaturated fats or ?good? fats. These have been found to have the opposite effect, improving cholesterol levels. Whilst our ancient ancestors were free of these various chronic diseases, their life expectancy was also much shorter than it is today ? so many would not live long enough to develop these diseases.

Is the Paleo Diet good for us?

If we rewind 35,000 years, and consider the diet of our ancestors; at first glance it seems relatively healthy. After all, the paleo diet is rich in fresh meat, seafood, fruit, vegetables, seeds and nuts, all of which are components of a healthy diet. To its credit, the paleo diet is free from refined sugars and processed foods, which are consumed in abundance in the typical western diet. However, the paleo diet restricts dairy foods, cereals, grains and legumes, which are very nutritious and important components of a balanced diet. Research suggests that both dietary changes and increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to the increased prevalence of chronic disease throughout society since Paleolithic times. Dietary changes include the introduction of trans-fats into food production, reduced intake of various vitamins, antioxidants and dietary fibre and increased intake of carbohydrate foods with a high glycaemic index. As the paleo diet restricts processed foods, and encourages whole foods, it is no surprise that people following this diet have improved blood pressure and cholesterol levels, with or without weight loss.

Whilst the paleo diet promotes positive dietary changes through reducing intake of processed foods, it is unbalanced and restricts core food groups which can lead to poor health outcomes. For example, restricting dairy foods can compromise bone health, as dairy foods (such as milk, yoghurt and cheese) are rich in calcium. As calcium is essential for maintaining bone strength, in the long term, poor calcium intake can contribute to the development of osteoporosis later life.

Is the paleo diet a suitable weight loss diet?
They say variety is the spice of life, and as the paleo diet is reasonably restrictive in the types of foods you can eat - it is likely that such a restrictive diet will get pretty boring, pretty quickly. Typically, high protein diets such as the paleo diet cause rapid weight loss. This is because these diets often restrict carbohydrate foods ? which break down into glucose and provide ?fuel? for our brain and body to function properly. When we don?t eat enough carbohydrates, our body compensates, and gets its ?fuel? by breaking down our muscle stores. The rapid weight loss experienced reflects this loss of muscle mass, not body fat. In addition, the paleo diet also restricts dairy foods which contain calcium - a very important nutrient for our bone health. There is a very strong association between poor calcium intake and the risk of osteoporosis in later life.
The paleo diet does promote healthy food choices, such as lean meats, foods high in healthy fats including fish, nuts and seeds, and there is no reason why these foods shouldn?t be incorporated into your usual diet. When it comes to sustainable, long term weight loss, it really is about having ?everything in moderation?. Incorporating these elements of the paleo diet into your everyday life is a great idea ? aiming for 2 serves of fresh fruit and 5 serves of fresh vegetables a day, opting for lean cuts of meat, having 2-3 serves of fish each week and limiting the amount of processed foods in your diet are all common elements of the paleo diet and a nutritious, balanced diet. ?The difference is not restricting food groups, such as dairy foods, cereals and grains, and legumes. Eating a variety of foods from all of the food groups will not only maintain variety and excitement in your diet, it will also ensure you receive all the nutrients you need to live a healthy and happy life! Editor's comment:

Thanks Bron! I have no doubt that this will help answers a lot of questions for our readers. At the end of the day my thoughts are that reducing nutrient-poor, highly processed foods with added salt and sugar can only be a good thing, BUT don't forget to add wholegrains, legumes and dairy to your meals to bring them to complete fulfillment.??Any questions for Bron? Feel free to post below!

?

Source: http://eatsleepdreamlovefood.blogspot.com/2013/04/diet-review-paleo-diet.html

daylight savings time douglas adams brandon knight brandon knight The Bachelor 2013 Time earthquake today

Brain biology tied to social reorientation during entry to adolescence

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A specific region of the brain is in play when children consider their identity and social status as they transition into adolescence -- that often-turbulent time of reaching puberty and entering middle school, says a University of Oregon psychologist.

In a study of 27 neurologically typical children who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at ages 10 and 13, activity in the brain's ventromedial prefrontal cortex increased dramatically when the subjects responded to questions about how they view themselves.

The findings, published in the April 24 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, confirm previous findings that specific brain networks support self-evaluations in the growing brain, but, more importantly, provide evidence that basic biology may well drive some of these changes, says Jennifer H. Pfeifer, professor of psychology and director of the psychology department's Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab.

"This is a longitudinal fMRI study, which is still relatively uncommon," Pfeifer said. "It suggests a link between neural responses during self-evaluative processing in the social domain, and pubertal development. This provides a rare piece of empirical evidence in humans, rather than animal models, that supports the common theory that adolescents are biologically driven to go through a social reorientation."

Participants were scanned for about seven minutes at each visit. They responded to a series of attributes tied to social or academic domains -- social ones such as "I am popular" or "I wish I had more friends" and academic ones such as "I like to read just for fun" or "Writing is so boring." Social and academic evaluations were made about both the self and a familiar fictional character, Harry Potter.

In previous research, Pfeifer had found that a more dorsal region of the medial prefrontal cortex was more responsive in 10-year-old children during self-evaluations, when they were compared to adults. The new study, she said, provides a more detailed picture of how the brain supports self-development by looking at change within individuals.

The fMRI analyses found it was primarily the social self-evaluations that triggered significant increases over time in blood-oxygen levels, which fMRI detects, in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. Additionally, these increases were strongest in children who experienced the most pubertal development over the three-year study period, for both girls and boys. Increases during academic self-evaluations were at best marginal. Whole-brain analyses found no other areas of the brain had significant increases or decreases in activity related to pubertal development.

"Neural changes in the social domain were more robust," Pfeifer said. "Increased responses in this one region of the brain from age 10 to 13 were very evident in social self-evaluations, but not academic ones. This pattern is consistent with the enormous importance that most children entering adolescence place on their peer relationships and social status, compared to the relatively diminished value often associated with academics during this transition."

In youth with autism spectrum disorders, this specialized response in ventral medial prefrontal cortex is missing, she added, citing a paper she co-authored in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders and a complementary study led by Michael V. Lombardo, University of Cambridge, in the February 2010 issue of the journal Brain. The absence of this typical effect, Pfeifer said, might be related to the challenges these individuals often face in both self-understanding and social relations.

"Dr. Pfeifer's research examining self-evaluations during adolescence adds significantly to the intricate puzzle of this turbulent age period," said Kimberly Andrews Espy, vice president for research and innovation and dean of the graduate school. "Researchers at the University of Oregon are piecing together how both biology and the environment dynamically and interactively support healthy social development."

###

University of Oregon: http://uonews.uoregon.edu

Thanks to University of Oregon for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 40 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127882/Brain_biology_tied_to_social_reorientation_during_entry_to_adolescence

words with friends phlebotomy dog show best in show bret michaels bret michaels pekingese

Kim Kardashian Pregnant Trenchcoat Thing: A Fashion Must or Bust?

Source:

Kristen Stewart Rupert Sanders Photos 2016 Olympics TD Bank mountain lion hanley ramirez Christian Bale visits victims Christian Bale

Women directors growing presence at Tribeca Film Festival

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Women directors are making their mark at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, crafting entries such as a psychological thriller about a person's disappearance, a look at a same-sex couple's rights and a story about sisters.

Twenty-six feature films, about a quarter of the total to be presented during the two-week festival, are by women directors, including the first feature film by a female Saudi filmmaker shot entirely in her country.

Although the number is still small compared to male directors, festival organizers said women's participation has been growing annually.

"Women have always played prominent roles and creative roles in the film industry. As far as directing, it seems more women are taking on that role," said Genna Terranova, the vice president of programming at the festival.

The choice of films at this year's festival that runs through April 28 is as varied as the women themselves.

In "The Moment," a mystery starring Jennifer Jason Lee as a photojournalist in a fragile mental state following the disappearance of her lover, director and co-writer Jane Weinstock examines relationships and recovery.

Linda Bloodworth Thomason, a television writer and producer who financed her film through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, chronicles the story of a gay man after his partner's death in "Bridegroom."

In her first feature film, writer-director Jenee LaMarque focuses on the bond between sisters in "The Pretty One."

"Wadjda," Saudi writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour's tale of a 10-year-old girl in Riyadh trying to buy a bicycle, is being screened at Tribeca after winning awards at festivals in Dubai and Venice.

"Women are not only making just one type of movie," Terranova told Reuters. "They are making the types of movies that interest them and that they are passionate about."

MALE DOMAIN

While women have made strides in other areas of the film industry, directing has remained a largely male domain, particularly in Hollywood.

In 2012, women accounted for nine percent of directors working on the top 250 films, a four percent rise from the previous year, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

The number of women directors is slightly better in independent films at 16.9 percent and documentaries at 34.5 percent, according to research by the University of Southern California.

"It's just an easier place for people to make films," said Marina Zenovich, whose documentary "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic," about the late American comedian that premieres at Tribeca, referring to independent filmmaking.

The two-time Emmy Award winner believes women are making progress in what she described as a tough industry for both sexes.

"But it is harder for female filmmakers and it always has been," she said. "It is a fight that a lot of women in the industry are perking up to. We are half the population."

Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow made history when she became the first woman to win the Academy Award for best director for her 2008 film "The Hurt Locker." She is among only four women to have been nominated for the prize.

Zenovich sees Bigelow as "a total role model." Terranova agrees.

"For any female director who is struggling or maybe doing a different kind of movie, seeing Kathryn Bigelow win that award is a very inspiring moment," she said. "It certainly helps you when you see people achieve goals that you aspire to."

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/women-directors-growing-presence-tribeca-film-festival-151250216.html

jodie foster seahawks natalie wood patriots Sandy Hook Hoax 2014 Corvette Stacie Halas

Pizza Hut app comes to Xbox 360, unstoppable force meets immovable gamer

Let's be frank: many dedicated console gamers among us have at least briefly dreamed of ordering food without having to lift our hands from the controller. That's about to be more than a fleeting fantasy for Xbox 360 owners, as Microsoft is launching a Pizza Hut app today for those permanently lodged in the living room. The release puts all of the delivery menu a quick hop away on the Dashboard, including custom orders. Buyers can tempt their friends through Facebook, and there's even Kinect support for greasy-handed customers who'd rather not touch the gamepad (or a napkin, apparently) when requesting a second serving. Microsoft stresses that the Pizza Hut partnership isn't the start of a broad trend toward ordering real products through an Xbox, which is just as well -- our arteries can only take so much inactivity at once.

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

Comments

Source: Polygon

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/X1-xv168BXI/

shaka smart hungergames bagpipes aspirin aspirin 21 jump street illinois primary results

Firefox OS Developer Phones Sold Out After First Few Hours On Sale, But More Are On The Way

Geeksphone, the smartphone OEM startup based out of Madrid, put the first Firefox OS developer phones on sale early this morning, offering the Keon for $119 and the more powerful Peak for $194. Both devices are the first hardware to be offered with Firefox OS on board, and both devices are now listed as "Out of stock," just a few hours after first going on sale.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/v4hTzBqr65Q/

moses tulsa shooting doug fister the perfect storm mickelson how to tie a tie sweet potato recipes

4 more first responders killed in Texas blast ID'd (Providence Journal)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/300585863?client_source=feed&format=rss

windows 8 Emanuel Steward nyc.gov SAT Notre Dame Football Schedule detroit tigers Tsunami

China rushes relief after Sichuan quake kills 186

LUSHAN, China (AP) ? Luo Shiqiang sat near chunks of concrete, bricks and a ripped orange sofa and told how his grandfather was just returning from feeding chickens when their house collapsed and crushed him to death in this weekend's powerful earthquake in southwestern China.

"We lost everything in such a short time," the 20-year-old college student said Sunday. He said his cousin also was injured in the collapse, but that other members of his family were spared because they were out working in the fields of hard-hit Longmen village in Lushan county.

Saturday's earthquake in Sichuan province killed at least 186 people, injured more than 11,000 and left nearly two dozen missing, mostly in the rural communities around Ya'an city, along the same fault line where a devastating quake to the north killed more than 90,000 people in Sichuan and neighboring areas five years ago in one of China's worst natural disasters.

The Lushan and Baoxing counties hardest-hit on Saturday had escaped the worst of the damage in the 2008 quake, and residents there said they benefited little from the region's rebuilding after the disaster, with no special reinforcements made or new evacuation procedures introduced in their remote communities.

Luo said he wished more had been done to make his community's buildings quake-resistant. "Maybe the country's leaders really wanted to help us, but when it comes to the lower levels the officials don't carry it out," he said.

Relief teams flew in helicopters and dynamited through landslides Sunday to reach some of the most isolated communities, where rescuers in orange overalls led sniffer dogs through piles of brick, concrete and wood debris to search for survivors.

Many residents complained that although emergency teams were quick to carry away bodies and search for survivors, they had so far done little to distribute aid. "No water, no shelter," read a hand-written sign held up by children on a roadside in Longmen.

"I was working in the field when I heard the explosions of the earthquake, and I turned around and saw my house simply flatten in front of me," said Fu Qiuyue, a 70-year-old rapeseed farmer in Longmen.

Fu sat with her husband, Ren Dehua, in a makeshift shelter of logs and a plastic sheet on a patch of grass near where a helicopter had parked to reach their community of terraced grain and vegetable fields. She said the collapse of the house had crushed eight pigs to death. "It was the scariest sound I have ever heard," she said.

The quake ? measured by China's earthquake administration at magnitude 7.0 and by the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 ? struck shortly after 8 a.m. on Saturday. Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region.

The quake killed at least 186 people, left 21 missing and injured 11,393, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted the provincial emergency command center as saying.

As in most natural disasters, the government mobilized thousands of soldiers and others, sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies. Two soldiers died after their vehicle slid off a road and rolled down a cliff, state media reported.

The Chinese Red Cross said it had deployed relief teams with supplies of food, water, medicine and rescue equipment to the disaster areas.

Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits atop the Longmenshan fault, where the 2008 quake struck.

The seat of Lushan county has been turned into a large refugee camp, with tents set up on open spaces, and volunteers doling out noodles and boxed meals to survivors from stalls and the backs of vans.

A large van with a convertible side served as a mobile bank with an ATM, military medical trucks provided X-rays for people with minor injuries, and military doctors administered basic first aid, applying iodine solution to cuts and examining bruises.

Patients with minor ailments were lying in tents in the yard of the local hospital, which was wrecked by the quake, with the most severely injured patients sent to the provincial capital. With a limited water supply and buildings inaccessible, sanitation is a problem for the survivors.

One of the patients receiving care in the hospital's yard was the son of odd-job laborer Zhou Lin, 22. The baby boy was born a day before the quake struck. Zhou said he was relieved that his newborn son and wife were safe and healthy but was worried about his 60-year-old father and other relatives who have been unreachable in Baoxing.

"I can't get through on the phone, so I don't know what's going on there and they don't know if we are all right," he said.

Every so often, an aftershock struck, shaking windows of buildings and sending murmurs through the crowds.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-rushes-relief-sichuan-quake-kills-186-111228689.html

april fools day april fools day April Fools Jokes Julie Roberts roses april fools Good April Fools Jokes

Refresh Roundup: week of April 15th, 2013

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Tablets, Mobile

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/pjRD05AmN6U/

Jimmy Hoffa Ed Hochuli Opie modern family how i met your mother Jordan Pruitt real housewives of new jersey

Former Google CEO shares vision in tech treatise

The New Digital Age book cover is photographed in San Francisco, Friday, April 19, 2013. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company?s CEO, shares his ruminations and visions of a radically different future in ?The New Digital Age,? a book that goes on sale Tuesday. (AP Photo)

The New Digital Age book cover is photographed in San Francisco, Friday, April 19, 2013. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company?s CEO, shares his ruminations and visions of a radically different future in ?The New Digital Age,? a book that goes on sale Tuesday. (AP Photo)

In this Friday, March 22, 2013, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt gestures during an interactive session with group of students at a technical university in Yangon, Myanmar Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company?s CEO, shares his ruminations and visions of a radically different future in ?The New Digital Age,? a book that goes on sale Tuesday, April 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Some illuminating books already have been written about Google's catalytic role in a technological upheaval that is redefining the way people work, play, learn, shop and communicate.

Until now, though, there hasn't been a book providing an unfiltered look from inside Google's brain trust.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who spent a decade as the company's CEO, shares his visions of digitally driven change and of a radically different future in "The New Digital Age," a book that goes on sale Tuesday.

It's a technology treatise that Schmidt wrote with another ruminator, Jared Cohen, a former State Department adviser who now runs Google Ideas, the Internet company's version of a think tank.

The book is an exercise in "brainstorming the future," as Schmidt put it in a recent post on Twitter ? just one example of a cultural phenomenon that didn't exist a decade ago.

The ability for anyone with an Internet-connected device to broadcast revelatory information and video is one of the reasons why Schmidt and Cohen wrote the book. The two met in Baghdad in 2009 and were both struck by how Iraqis were finding resourceful ways to use Internet services to improve their lives, despite war-zone conditions.

They decided it was time to delve into how the Internet and mobile devices are empowering people, roiling autocratic governments and forcing long-established companies to make dramatic changes.

The three years they spent researching the book took them around the world, including North Korea in January over the objections of the U.S. State Department. They interviewed an eclectic group that included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Mexican mogul Carlos Slim Helu, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the former prime ministers of Mongolia and Pakistan. They also drew on the insights of a long list of Google employees, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The resulting book is an exploration into the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead as the lines blur between the physical world around us and the virtual realm of the Internet. Schmidt and Cohen also examine the loss of personal privacy as prominent companies such as Google and lesser-known data warehouses such as Acxiom compile digital dossiers about our electronic interactions on computers, smartphones and at check-out stands.

"This will be the first generation of humans to have an indelible record," Schmidt and Cohen predict.

To minimize the chances of youthful indiscretions stamping children with "digital scarlet letters" that they carry for years, online privacy education will become just as important ? if not more so ? than sex education, according to Schmidt and Cohen. They argue parents should consider having a "privacy talk" with their kids well before they become curious about sex.

Not surprisingly, the book doesn't dwell on Google's own practices, including privacy lapses that have gotten the company in trouble with regulators around the world.

Among other things, Google has exposed the contact lists of its email users while trying to build a now-defunct social network called Buzz. It scooped up people's passwords and other sensitive information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Last year, Google was caught circumventing privacy controls on Safari Web browsers, resulting in a record $22.5 million fine by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. European regulators have a broad investigation open.

Google apologized for those incidents without acknowledging wrongdoing. Schmidt and Cohen suggest that is an inevitable part of digital life.

"The possibility that one's personal content will be published and become known one day ? either by mistake or through criminal interference ? will always exist," they write.

The book doesn't offer any concrete solutions for protecting personal privacy, though the authors suspect that calls for tougher penalties and more stringent regulations will increase as more people realize how much of their lives are now in a state of "near-permanent storage."

"The option to 'delete' data is largely an illusion," Schmidt and Cohen write.

People can choose not to put any of their information online, but those that eschew the Internet risk become irrelevant as online identities become increasingly important, the book asserts. Schmidt and Cohen foresee an option that will allow all of a person's online accounts ? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Netflix and various other subscriptions ? to be merged together into a "constellation" that will serve as a one-stop profile.

If this book is right, there is no turning back from the revolution that is making Internet access as vital as oxygen and mobile devices as important as our lungs.

As much disruption as there already has been since Google's inception in 1998, Schmidt and Cohen contend that the most jarring changes are still to come as reductions in the cost of technology bring online another 5 billion people, mostly in less developed countries. At the same time, the combination of more powerful microprocessors, much-faster Internet connections and entrepreneurial ingenuity will turn the stuff of science fiction into reality.

Schmidt and Cohen are convinced that holograms will enable people to make virtual getaways to exotic beaches whenever they feel need. Nasal implants will alert us to the first signs of a cold. Virtual assistants ? the kind Google is developing with Google Now and Apple with Siri ? will become constant companions that influence when we shop and what we buy. Those assistants will generally steer us in directions drawn from an analyses of our personal preferences vacuumed off the Internet and stored in vast databases.

These aren't far-out concepts to the tech cognoscenti, or even younger generations who can barely remember what it was like to surf the Web on a dial-up modem, let alone use a typewriter.

The ideas will be more unnerving to older generations still trying to figure out all the things that their smartphone can do.

Schmidt, who will turn 58 on Saturday, can remember the days before there were personal computers. But he has been studying tech trends for decades, long before he became Google's CEO in 2001 and became a mentor and confidant to company co-founders Page and Brin. That collaboration established him as one of the world's best-known executives and minted him as a multibillionaire. Before joining Google, he was chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems and CEO of software maker Novell Inc.

Many of the book's themes expand upon topics that Schmidt regularly mused about in speeches and interviews that he gave as Google's CEO. Some of his past remarks, particularly about the loss of privacy, rankled critics who believe Google had become too aggressive in trying to learn more about people's individual interests so it could sell more ads, its chief source of revenue.

Schmidt also won plenty of admirers in powerful places, including President Barack Obama, who called upon Schmidt's advice during his 2008 campaign. Political pundits once considered Schmidt to be a leading candidate to join Obama's cabinet, though Schmidt has said he never had any interest in a government job.

Schmidt relinquished the CEO job to Page two years ago, freeing him to devote more time traveling to meet government leaders around the world.

Cohen, 31, is regarded as a rising star in tech circles, though he isn't as well-known as his co-author. Time magazine just named Cohen as one of the world's 100 most influential people in its annual list. Cohen worked on State Department policy planning and counter-terrorism in both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Schmidt and Cohen emerged from their research convinced that most governments don't fully understand the implications of ubiquitous Internet access and mobile computing. They expect repressive regimes to do everything in their power control the flow of information and to abuse databases to spy on citizens. They also foresee smaller countries waging computer-based attacks on countries they would never target with troops and weapons.

Even as they address the dark sides of technology, Schmidt and Cohen hypothesize that the world ultimately will be better off as more people spend more time connected to each other on the Internet. Societies will be more democratic, governments will become less corrupt as their transgressions are exposed and people will become smarter and better informed.

"Never before in history have so many people, from so many places, had so much power at their fingertips," Schmidt and Cohen assert.

___

"The New Digital Age" is being published by Alfred A. Knopf with a suggested retail price of $26.95.

___

Online:

http://newdigitalage.com

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-21-Google-Tech%20Visions/id-8ecb7ccc46944df6af6ea0f91900909f

big sean sherri shepherd sherri shepherd arkansas razorbacks trisomy 18 ozzie guillen ozzie guillen

Insight: Pakistan cleric tries hand at politics, striking fear in Shi'ites

By Michael Georgy

JHANG, Pakistan (Reuters) - When Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi greets supporters on the Pakistan election trail, he opens his pitch with the kind of promises to the poor that any other politician might make.

But behind the reassuring rhetoric lies what his opponents believe is a dangerous agenda - to gain a foothold in parliament and further his designs to oppress Pakistan's Shi'ite minority.

Ludhianvi, a radical Sunni cleric, is a hate figure for Shi'ites who accuse him of devoting his decades-long career to fomenting an escalating campaign of gun attacks and suicide bombings targeting their community.

The prospect that he might win a place in the political mainstream at the May 11 vote horrifies Shi'ites who fear his presence in parliament will give him a much stronger platform to strike out at the sect.

And it looks like Ludhianvi may have a better shot than at the last election in 2008 when he came second. His main rival has been barred from the race and a Reuters visit to his constituency of Jhang, in the heart of populous Punjab province, found no shortage of supporters.

"I cannot bring any change if I am sitting as a layman outside parliament," Ludhianvi, flanked by bodyguards, said in an interview. "If I get into parliament, everyone will be listening to what we want."

As he toured Jhang, which served as the cradle of sectarian extremist groups in the 1980s, people in one village after another emerged from their homes to shower him with rose petals.

"If I get into parliament, I will be able to save this entire country from bloodshed," said Ludhianvi, who wears a thick beard and an embroidered skull cap and projects a commanding presence.

The election is seen as a milestone for Pakistan's fragile democracy, marking the first time a civilian government has completed a full term in a country which a long history of military meddling in politics.

Western powers are hoping the polls might deliver a government capable of grappling with huge domestic challenges and helping the United States bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table ahead of a NATO pullout in 2014.

Any triumph by Ludhianvi at the polls could be read as a sign that sectarianism - now seen as a top security threat - has made a troubling new in-road into the political sphere, which could further polarize the nuclear-armed country.

Ludhianvi was a leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba, a sectarian Sunni group which emerged in Jhang in the mid-1980s with the support of Pakistani intelligence and which has since been linked to hundreds of killings of Shi'ites.

The group's offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), evolved into one of Pakistan's most feared militant groups and has claimed responsibility for many attacks on Shi'ites, including a series of bombings that killed almost 200 people in the southwestern city of Quetta this year.

Police in Karachi, the commercial capital, suspect LeJ or similar groups are behind a wave of gun attacks on Shi'ites.

Pakistan banned Sipah-e-Sahaba in 2001 under pressure from the United States to crack down on militancy but the group changed its name to Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamat (ASWJ), which Ludhianvi heads.

Pakistan's sectarian fringe has long been plagued by divisions which make it hard to determine what role individual leaders play. But security officials see Ludhianvi as a member of a core group of ideologues whose anti-Shi'ite views have served as a source of inspiration for militants, though he denies any role in violence.

SUNNI-SHI'ITE DIVIDE

The military has in the past quietly supported Islamist politicians and parties in the interest of its own political agenda but it is not clear what stand the military-run security agencies that watch domestic politics are taking this time.

The army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, has avoided the overt meddling in politics of many of his predecessors and repeatedly insisted the election must be free and fair.

The schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor.

Emotions over the issue have boiled in modern times and even pushed some countries to the brink of civil war. Pakistan is nowhere close to that, but security officials say groups like the LeJ and Sipah-e-Sahaba are stepping up their bloody campaign to persecute Shi'ites and are destabilizing the country.

These days, Ludhianvi is careful to portray himself as a man of peace and is waging a populist campaign to capitalize on resentment of Shi'ite landowners. Coming himself from a modest background, he has vowed to build schools, hospitals and roads.

"This is a tribal area which was ruled by a few rich people who used to treat the poor people like slaves," said Ludhianvi.

"There is no education system or schools for girls and boys. Nobody even tries to build schools or colleges."

But other senior members of his ASWJ party are more vocal about their desire to restrict the rights of Shi'ites.

Aurangzeb Farooqi, head of the party in Karachi, told Reuters in January that Shi'ites should be barred from holding important public office and their public religious activities should be restricted. Farooqi is also running for a seat in the national assembly.

In Jhang, Ludhianvi's blend of populism and sectarianism has earned him considerable grassroots appeal. He won 45,000 votes at the 2008 election, placing him second to Sheikh Waqas who won with 52,000 votes.

But Waqas has been barred from this election on the grounds that he had presented a fake education certificate, raising Ludhianvi's chances of victory.

Politicians are taking note. Rather than making alliances with big businessmen or going door-to-door for votes, aspiring office holders like Azad Ansari, who is in the wool industry, are rallying behind Ludhianvi.

Ansari once served in the secular PML-N but now hopes Ludhianvi can help him make a mark in politics.

"I will get more popular if I join him," Ansari said.

Such sentiment has fostered a perception that leaders of the PML-N party, which controls Punjab, have deliberately been soft on sectarian groups for fear of alienating potential voters.

These suspicions were compounded when Rana Sanaullah, Punjab's law minister and a PML-N stalwart, campaigned alongside Ludhianvi at a by-election rally in Jhang in 2010.

The spectacle of Ludhianvi reinventing himself sends chills through the Shi'ite community, which may make up to 20 percent of the population, though some estimates put the number lower.

"What can Ludhianvi do? He will do nothing but spread terrorism," said Raza Hussain, a resident of a Shi'ite neighborhood of Jhang.

Some fear that a victory for Ludhianvi and other hardliners at the polls will provide a veneer of political cover for violent sectarian extremists.

"This could be very dangerous," said Amir Rana, an expert on Pakistani militancy. "This would give all of their activities political legitimacy."

But some security officials argue that bringing leaders like Ludhianvi into conventional politics may be a way to weaken the sectarian threat by isolating the most violent elements.

Conscious of the need to project a respectable image, Ludhianvi is careful to avoid the kind of inflammatory rhetoric favored by many in his party.

But the presence of young men wearing headbands with the symbols of banned anti-Shi'ite groups, who hung on Ludhianvi's every word during his whistle-stop tour, keeps Shi'ites on edge.

"He has done nothing for Jhang except terrorism," said Sheikh Hussain, a businessman. "They should be stopped."

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-pakistan-cleric-tries-hand-politics-striking-fear-211307333.html

whitney houston dies dolly parton i will always love you beverly hilton hotel whitney houston found dead i will always love you whitney houston 2012 grammy awards powerball results

Obama: "Americans refuse to be terrorized" (Washington Bureau)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/300337631?client_source=feed&format=rss

earth day activities mel gibson splunk dark shadows iau msft etan patz

The debate over CISPA, a law that could change Internet privacy

Overshadowed by congressional action on guns and immigration is an Internet privacy bill that could affect most Americans, without them knowing it, on a daily basis.

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA) is making its way through Congress, and it?s passed a House vote on Thursday.

The final vote in the House was 248-168, as 42 Democrats voted for the bill, while 28 Republicans voted against it.

And like gun control, it?s far from a done deal after the House passes CISPA. It would need Senate approval, and President Barack Obama has indicated he?ll possibly veto CISPA if it comes to his desk.

Both sides of Congress would need to muster a two-thirds majority vote to override the president?s veto, which would seem unlikely in the current political atmosphere of Washington.

At the heart of CISPA is a Fourth Amendment issue.

The amendment reads:

?The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.?

CISPA is designed to let the federal government work with private companies to fight hackers and cybercriminals in and outside of the United States. As part of the effort to detect cyber threats, private companies could voluntarily share with the government data about Internet users.

The sharing could be done in ?real time? as the cybercops try to defeat and track down the evildoers. Companies could also share data among themselves as part of the effort.

There are major drawbacks about the legislation, say CISPA?s critics. The privacy provisions for consumers, they claim, are vague or nonexistent. The government and companies can?t look at your personal data, such as medical records and tax returns, if they are part of the ?data dump? that is shared in real time. But the law doesn?t require that companies excise, or edit out, that information in the transfer process.

Another criticism is that a warrant isn?t needed for the government to obtain that information. And companies that share your information won?t be held legally liable for sharing that information, a practice that seemingly conflicts with privacy policies on existing websites.

CISPA?s biggest critic in Congress is a representative from Colorado, Jared Polis. The Democrat told the House on Wednesday, ?This is the biggest government takeover of personal information that I?ve seen during my time here in Congress.?

Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Michigan and the House Intelligence Committee chairman, is leading the CISPA effort, along with Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland.

Rogers believes the measure is long needed. ?People were stealing their identities, their accounts, their intellectual property, and subsequent to that, their jobs,? he recently said. ?[Web users] began to question the value of getting on Internet and using [it] for commercial purposes. Their trust in the free and open Internet ? was at risk.?

He has also stressed that participation in CISPA is voluntary for companies.

The Intelligence Committee also released a five-page document to counter what it calls ?myths? about CISPA, including how much personal data would be shared with the government?which it says would be a rare occurrence.

The American Civil Liberties Union, however, calls CISPA ?fatally flawed.?

?The core problem is that CISPA allows too much sensitive information to be shared with too many people in the first place, including the National Security Agency,? it says.

Unlike SOPA, the failed legislative attempt last year to halt online piracy, large tech companies are supporting the efforts to get CISPA passed.

At one time, Facebook and Microsoft had signed on to support CISPA, but now they are reportedly backing away. Google appears to be on the fence about the issue.

Major communications and utilities companies support CISPA, according to a list released by the House.

Last year, the House passed a similar CISPA bill, only to see it die in the Senate. Last August, a successful filibuster blocked CISPA from getting to the floor for a vote. Both libertarians and liberals had issues with the bill, and there were disagreements about which government agencies would be involved with CISPA.

The tea party-aligned group FreedomWorks is on record, again, as opposing CISPA on Fourth Amendment grounds.

?There are grave Fourth Amendment concerns with CISPA. The bill would override existing privacy laws to allow companies to share ?cyber threat information? with the federal government without making any reasonable effort to strip out any personal information from the file,? the group said in a statement.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also has Fourth Amendment concerns.

?As it stands, CISPA is dangerously vague, and should not?allow for any expansion of?government powers through a series of poorly worded?definitions.??If the drafters intend to?give new powers to the government?s already extensive capacity to examine your?private?information, they should propose clear and specific language so we can?have a real debate,? the EFF said on its website.

Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center.

Recent Constitution Daily Stories
Constitution Check: Is the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay beyond court review?
Benjamin Franklin?s last days, funeral, and a U.S. Senate slight
Background checks defeated in key Senate vote

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cispa-fourth-amendment-143420272.html

joan crawford joan crawford john goodman kendall marshall whitney houston news sylvia plath whitney houston autopsy results