Monday, January 28, 2013

Hitler Home Movies: How Eva Braun Documented ... - Business Insider

Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian, has conducted most of his life in a circle of hell.

Becker's childhood passed in the fetid, terrifying atmosphere of Berlin's air-raid shelters as the Allied raids intensified and the city was reduced to burning rubble. He recalls the radio announcements ? "Achtung, achtung, ende ende, ?ber Deutschland sinfe bender. Achtung, achtung" ? followed by the helter-skelter rush downstairs. When the bombs fell ? even far off ? "the change in the air pressure was enormous, and extraordinary," he says. "People used to bleed from the ears, the nose and the eyes. I came out deaf, with tinnitus." Today, Becker adds, "I envy children who grow up without fear."

When the war ended in 1945, Becker and his family found "a world in ruins. The bodies of soldiers lay in the streets. When you passed a bombed-out building you could hear the buzzing of bluebottles in the darkness. Death was still underneath the ruins," he remembers. The devastated, malodorous aftermath of the Third Reich left a deep psychological scar. "As a child I had been forbidden to use dirty words. Now I would stand in front of the mirror in my mother's bedroom and repeat 'shit' and 'arsehole'." He laughs at the memory. "But I was thinking of Hitler."

In some ways, Becker has been thinking about Hitler ever since, and what the F?hrer did to the German people. "I was raised in a world of lies," he declares. As the Second World War morphed into the Cold War, the terrible truth about one of the most evil regimes in history began to leak out. Poignantly, the first Germans to come to terms with the reality of the Third Reich were those children who had somehow survived the fall of Berlin ? young men like Lutz Becker.

A gifted abstract German artist and film-maker, Becker discovered his vocation as an artist in the 1950s, when he also acquired a passion for film. In 1965, he won the Gropius prize for art and chose to spend it by transferring to the Slade, first coming to London in 1966 to study under William Coldstream. His contemporaries included the artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman. While researching his thesis, his troubled relationship with his childhood under the Third Reich found a new outlet. "It was in the Bundesarchiv," Becker recalls, "that I first unearthed a photograph of Eva Braun holding a 16mm Siemens cine-camera."

Eva Braun still exerts a strange fascination. Today, 80 years after Hitler became chancellor, Braun is both a symbol of Nordic simplicity, and also a tragic figure whose ordinariness provides a window on to the banality of evil. Postwar fascination with the Nazis means that Eva Braun still has a remarkable grip on our imagination ? the little girl in the fairytale who takes us to the horror in the woods.

The woman who holds the key to the domestic face of Adolf Hitler was 17 when she was first introduced to the F?hrer, who was only identified as "Herr Wolff". This blind date had been set up by Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffman, for whom Eva Braun worked as an assistant.

Hoffman, who ran a photographic studio in Munich, had been instrumental in the making of Hitler's image. He ensured that Hitler was always seen as a determined, defiant and heroic figure, a man of iron. From the 1920s, Hoffman's photographs were duplicated by the million in the German press, and sold as postcards to the party faithful. When Hitler's mistress, Geli Raubal, committed suicide on 18 September 1931 in the apartment they shared in Munich, there was an urgent need to hush up a potential scandal, and give the F?hrer's private life the semblance of normality. Hoffman stepped in. Eva Braun bore a striking similarity to the dead woman, and Hitler took comfort in her company after Raubal's suicide. By the end of 1932, they had become lovers.

Braun continued to work for Hoffman, a position that enabled her to travel with Hitler's entourage, as a photographer for the NSDAP (Nazi Party). Her relationship with the F?hrer was troubled. Twice, in August 1932 and May 1935, she attempted suicide. But by 1936 she was fully established as the F?hrer's companion. Hitler was ambivalent about her. He wanted to present himself as a chaste hero. In Nazi ideology, men were leaders and warriors, women were housewives. So Adolf and Eva never appeared as a couple in public, and the German people were unaware of their relationship until after the war. According to Albert Speer's memoirs, Fr?ulein Braun never slept in the same room as Hitler, and always had her own quarters. Speer later said, "Eva Braun will prove a great disappointment to historians." But Speer was wrong. He had overlooked Eva's gifts as a photographer.

Once he found the photograph of Eva with her cine-camera, Becker began to speculate about the possibility of Braun's home movies. If there was a camera there must have been some film, and if there was film, it must have been stored somewhere. The Nazis were nothing if not meticulous record keepers. In the late 1940s there had been reports circulating of a collection of home movies. Becker had heard these stories, but had never pursued them. No one had ever confirmed where such films might be hidden, or even if they existed at all.

Now in London, Becker began to make inquiries. He searched the records of the Imperial War Museum and the National Film Archive. "In those days," he recalls, "there was no great interest in film as historical evidence. Most historians believed that newspapers were more important than film, as testimony. But I had a very sharp need to sort out my own past." Becker would look at anything that helped with decrypting the terrible conundrum of Nazism.

Perhaps only a child of Nazi Berlin could have felt both the need and the determination to do this. It's hard, now, to appreciate how little was known of Hitler's mistress in the 1950s and 60s. It was Becker's research that would change the world's perception of the F?hrer and the Aryan wife (Braun married Hitler the day before their suicide) who died at his side in the bunker.

Becker's quest took him to the heart of a strange, postwar ? predominantly American ? society of Nazi obsessives: former veterans, trophy hunters, amateur cineastes and right-wing Aryan fantasists. In April 1970, Becker found himself in Phoenix, Arizona, at a gathering of film buffs, when he was introduced to a retired member of the US army unit responsible for the liberation of Hitler's chalet at Obersalzberg in April 1945. This veteran marine told Becker that, so far as he could recall, he had indeed noticed piles of film canisters in Hitler's mountain lair, but had not understood their significance. This material, he remembered, had been taken away by the US Signal Corps, the division of the American army responsible for the films and photographs retrieved from the ruins of the Third Reich.

Becker's curiosity was roused. Assuming they existed, these film canisters, he reasoned, must eventually have been taken to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC. This was the home of such treasures as, for example, the original Declaration of Independence. With some anticipation, Becker trawled through the National Archive's catalogue, but in vain. He could find nothing that answered to the description of Eva Braun's home movies. For a while, the trail went cold but, he says, "I still had this instinct that there would be some films."

Becker continued to pursue his career as an artist in London, but he could not shake off his reputation as the film historian of the Third Reich. In 1971, he was approached by the producer David Puttnam and Sandy Lieberson, co-founders of the documentary unit Visual Programme Systems. They asked him to act as a consultant on a documentary series about the nazification of Germany in the 1920s and 30s. With some misgivings, Becker signed on, not least because "as a?private person, I could not finance my research into Eva Braun's films". Working for Puttnam and Lieberson, Becker now had full responsibility for researching the US National Archives in depth. He could still find no trace of Eva Braun's fabled home movies, but at least he was in conversation with the curators who might be able to help.

Part of Becker's problem in these early days was that his search was for 16mm footage. To the world's film archives, 16mm film was inferior to 35mm, the regular film stock used for official propaganda. The curatorial priority for most film archives at that time was to preserve nitrate footage shot on 35mm film before it disintegrated or disappeared; 16mm film was a lesser priority. Nonetheless, on his visits to Washington, Becker did turn up new information about a National Archives vault of uncatalogued 16mm film held in an old aircraft hangar in a forgotten part of Maryland, just outside Washington DC.

One fine day, in the spring of 1972, Becker drove out of DC to this vault and began searching through a rusting and discarded heap of old film canisters. It was, apparently, a fruitless quest. Most of the material seemed to be Japanese. None of it was 16mm stock. But then, as he turned over these uncatalogued cans, he spotted something no one had noticed before ? a set of cans with German labels. With rising excitement, he opened the first can and drew out a few frames of film to hold them up to the light.

Amazingly, it was colour film, and ? even more astounding ? there was Adolf Hitler with several senior Nazis (Albert Speer, Joseph Goebbels, Joachim von Ribbentrop), relaxing in the sunshine on the terrace of the Obersalzberg. These were indeed Eva Braun's home movies. Here, finally, were the overlords of the Third Reich at home, and at play.

Braun's home movies, mostly shot in Hitler's fortified chalet in Berchtesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps, have a naive innocence. She captures in the private life of the Nazi high command what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil". In Braun's footage, we see Hitler and his cronies relaxing on the terrace of his chalet. They drink coffee and take cakes; they joke and pose for the camera. Hitler talks to the children of his associates, or caresses his Alsatian, Blondi. The camera (in Eva Braun's hands) approaches Hitler in rare and intimate close-up. Occasionally, when a visitor from outside the party elite appears, the camera retreats to a more respectful distance. Mostly, however, Braun's cine-camera is among the party circle, at Hitler's side, and at his table. Most of the footage is in colour, with an extraordinary immediacy. Braun's films offer a remarkably unmediated view of the Nazi leadership and of Hitler himself. This was not the image presented by his propaganda team, or by Leni Riefenstahl, "Hitler's favourite film-maker", but the man as he actually was.

Braun's films chart the F?hrer's career up to the zenith of Nazi success, the summer of 1941. At that moment, with the eastern divisions of the Wehrmacht racing into the heart of the Soviet Union, it was reasonable to conclude, as many did, that Germany would win the war. But then came Pearl Harbor in December 1941, followed by Stalingrad and the defeat of Rommel in North Africa. Once Russia was fighting back, undefeated, and once America was committed to the Allied cause, the Third Reich was doomed, and Eva Braun ceased filming.

In the apocalyptic chaos of Hitler's downfall, the final days in the bunker and the dramatic suicides of Adolf and Eva, Braun's home movies, never widely known, became forgotten. Until Becker came on the scene.

"I asked for a Steenbeck [editing machine]," he recalls, "and began to watch. In my excitement, it was as if my life had a sense of purpose. I had been very angry about those Nazis. Now I could channel that anger in a positive way."

In film-history terms, the moment Becker opened those first canisters was the equivalent of peering into the tomb of Tutankhamun. He had finally identified the treasure that many had spoken about but none had found. Adolf Hitler's image would never be the same again.

By chance, Becker's discovery ? soon after viewed at the National Archives in Washington with great excitement ? coincided with the making of one of television's greatest documentary series, The World At War, a?project produced and masterminded by Jeremy Isaacs at Thames TV in London. In keeping with the spirit of the age, the TV history of the Second World War would not just be a?military history, featuring admirals, generals and air marshals. It was to include the common man and woman: Berlin housewives, London Blitz survivors, Russian peasants and Japanese civilians. Isaacs wanted not only to describe the victory of the west, but also to tell the story of how the whole planet had become engulfed in conflict.

Becker, meanwhile, was discovering the limits to the public's appetite for the home life of Adolf Hitler. Taking the best of the Eva Braun footage, the documentary he worked on for Puttnam, entitled Swastika, was premiered at the Cannes Film festival in May 1973. The audience was outraged, booing and whistling at the screen, with cries of "Assassins!" The presentation of the F?hrer as a friendly uncle, a petit bourgeois figure in a suit and tie, popping in and out of a family gathering, was intolerable. The iron-clad image of Hitler so carefully shaped by Heinrich Hoffman still exerted a fierce grip on the public imagination.

The production team for The World At War soon heard about Becker's material, and wove it into the series in a manner less contentious than in Swastika. Now British and American television audiences could have a new perspective on the Third Reich and its leaders. Initial outrage softened into a more mature understanding. It became easier to come to terms with the horrors of the past if its demonic protagonists were seen not as monsters but as ordinary ? sinister emissaries from humanity's dark side, but recognisably human.

Becker is still tormented by the first reactions to Eva Braun's films. "I was punished for puncturing a negative myth. People saw something that was banal in action, and banal in its colour." He believes that many had become comfortable with the carefully composed, black-and-white propaganda images of the Nazis. "People hate it when you tinker with their mythologies," he says. Over a generation, however, perceptions have changed.

Today, Becker's research, inspired by the need to make peace with the past, has, paradoxically, had the effect of historicising it. There were many equally evil 20th-century regimes ? Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot ? but none of these exert quite the same cultural and psychological charge as Nazism. Becker himself finds it painful to review Braun's home movies. He says, looking back, he has learned "to develop a sense of responsibility, and to see that [my research] could not be a howling triumph, but at best an armistice. I was able to see the ghosts of the past put into the history books. The Nazis were no longer spooking my psyche. My journey was over."

Taylor Downing's book, The World At War, is published by BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, priced ?14.99. To order a copy for ?11.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

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This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hitler-home-movies-how-eva-braun-documented-the-dictators-life-2013-1

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2 St Mary deputies out of critical condition

(AP) ? Louisiana State Police say two St. Mary Parish sheriff's deputies are out of critical condition, and the man accused of shooting them and killing two other people has been booked with arson and two counts each of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Trooper Stephen Hammons says 48-year-old Wilbert Thibodeaux (TIB-uh-doh) of Charenton (SHEHR-uhn-tuhn) is being held without bond in the Iberia Parish jail.

Hammons says the body of 78-year-old Eddie Lyons of Charenton was found in a mobile home that had been set on fire Saturday before someone told police that an armed man was walking down a street near the Chitimacha (chit-ih-MAH-chuh) tribal casino.

Thibodaux is accused of shooting Lyons, then a tribal police officer and two deputies who answered the report.

Hammons says the officers' names will be released Monday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-27-US-Louisiana-Officers-Shot/id-de629b0980ed44528b35d18e66cdae51

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Athina et hayat en chair et en Os?La Positive Attitude! | Self ...

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Source: http://selfimprovement.advancedstrategicmarketing.com/?p=1594

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App-driven life: How to pay by phone with Square Wallet

Square Wallet lets you leave your real wallet at home when you go shopping. Square Wallet knows when you're in a store and gives the clerk permission to make a charge to your account.?

By Chris Gaylord / January 27, 2013

Girl Scout Christine MacLeod scans a credit card with a mobile phone while selling cookies at Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Mass.

Ann Hermes

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Small shops, artisans, and cookie-toting Girl Scout troops have used Square credit-card readers for a few years now. The magnetic readers plug into smart phones and tablets, giving merchants an easy and mobile way to accept credit cards. But Square has bigger plans.

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It imagines using people's smart phones as fingerprints. When customers walk into a shop, their phone will wirelessly "announce" their presence. The cash register will know their name, face, and preferred payment method. When the shoppers approach the cashier, they can charge their purchase to the credit card on file simply by saying their name. The salesclerk checks the profile photo to make sure that it matches the person there, and can then approve the transaction. No wallet or signature required.

This vision of the future already exists. Shoppers can set up a profile through the free Square Wallet application, and, according to Square, use it at any of 75,000 merchants. Since smart phones come with GPS tracking chips, transactions can only be carried out when the person ? or at least the phone ? is in the store.

Needless to say, Square Wallet raises all kinds of questions about security and privacy. Square's biggest hurdle has been convincing shoppers to embrace this rather sci-fi scheme. But the system received a major vote of confidence in August when coffee megachain Starbucks bought a $25 million stake in the mobile-credit start-up and its chief executive officer, Howard Schultz, joined the Square board of directors. Around 7,000 Starbucks shops now use Square's software to handle credit and debit transactions ? but customers have to scan their phones, at least for now.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1n_Km7HC78M/App-driven-life-How-to-pay-by-phone-with-Square-Wallet

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Sipping over a healthy beverage can ensure good health in a fun way

Everybody loves to sip on a chilled beverage on a hot and sunny day or on a hot and steaming one during those cold nights. However, people including you also have to consume adequate water to remain healthy. Wouldnt it be wonderful if you could sip on a healthy and funky beverage that ensured great health in a fun way?

Not all beverages are healthy enough to be consumed every day soda drink machine. Alcoholic beverages can be fun but ought to be consumed within limits. Water, on the other hand is really a necessity for healthy life but can surely get boring once you have been drinking it since childhood. The key is to convert water into a fantastic beverage that may be consumed day after day without any problems. There are several ways to do it. You can either buy packaged flavored seltzer water from any neighborhood or web store, or may even buy bottled carbonated water or club soda to add some fizz into plain drinking water. If you want to save some money then you can definitely also learn on how to make carbonated water at home. All you need is a carbonator or soda club machine and enjoy all the advantages of drinking water right in the comfort of your own home.

Your desired fizzy beverage can be ready in seconds with the help of the correct carbonated water dispenser created by reputed companies such as sodastream. You can even infuse fruit flavors of your choice into this sparkling water and turn plain water into a tasty beverage that can be healthily sipped by old and young, including diabetics that might surely find the various flavors heavenly. You need to only make sure that these flavors are without sugar or calories and do not contain some other artificial chemicals. You and your loved ones can stay away from dehydration without turning your nose at plain water because it is this very plain and safe drinking water which can be converted to a lip-smacking beverage.

You can also buy bottled club soda or flavored seltzer water from outlets. However, if you intend to drink these on a regular basis then reading the labels for number of calories and sugar present in each bottle is mandatory. Fizzy beverages that simply contain caffeine and sugar ought to be consumed sparingly since they not only pile on those calories but could also damage teeth over time. Again bottled sodas can also add to polluting the environment since empty bottles could cause pollution when buried in landfills or burnt. Making your own personal beverage right in your own home is not only cost-effective but helps save the environment in a very tasty way too. Children and diabetics will definitely appreciate it even while you and your family and friends remain healthy and hydrated the entire day find out.

Though there are innumerable beverages that could tickle your tongue into unknown pleasures, the right beverage is one that can take good care of your taste buds together with your health even when you drink it on a regular basis. Flavored water or flavored carbonated water made without preservatives, sugar or artificial flavors can be quite a boon on a hot day while you relax with your favorite chilled drink on your own patio.

This entry was posted in general and tagged bottling equipment, carbonated water, carbonating machines, club soda, drink equipment, filter water, mineral water, seltzer bottle, seltzer drinks, seltzer water, seltzers, soda syphon, soda water, soda water drinks, sparkling water, water treatment. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://martarobin.nazuka.net/sipping-over-a-healthy-beverage-can-ensure-good-health-in-a-fun-way/

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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Huawei Was Top Third Smartphone Vendor In Q4 After Samsung & Apple, Says IDC

Huawei Ascend G16IDC's Q4 report on the global mobile phone market reveals that Huawei sprang up into the top-three smartphone vendors in the world, a first for the company. In Q4, Huawei held a 4.9 percent marketshare based on unit shipments. This is much less than the 29 percent chunk held by Samsung and Apple's 21.8 percent slice, but still places Huawei ahead of Sony and ZTE. In the 2012 calendar year, Huawei was number four among the top five smartphone vendors by market share, after Samsung, Apple and Nokia, but ahead of Research In Motion.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/W0o5SrzAVWc/

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The Northwest To Host Its 2nd Annual Competition For Full Figured ...

19124_4822008663457_420867122_nContact: press@nwplusamerica.com or 206.596.1115

Seattle, WA. January 23, 2013 ?Latasha Raines carries many titles; 2010 Miss Plus America, plus size model, motivational speaker, community service advocate, single mother and now Executive Director of the Northwest Plus America Pageant. Northwest Plus America is the pageant that provides opportunities for women and teens as-is, with the emphasis on confidence building, community service and realistic body image.? The pageant event is Presidents Day Weekend, February 15-17, 2013, in Vancouver, WA.? This is the 2nd year the northwest has hosted a pageant for this unique demographic. Raines started by launching the pageant in Washington State where she successfully produced the Washington Plus America pageant in February 2012. Interest spread, causing her to expand to Oregon State forming the Northwest Plus America Pageant which will yield state winners from both Oregon and Washington States from the 30 contestants. Winners will receive a generous sponsored prize package, all entry fees paid for national competition and more.

Northwest Plus America is an official state preliminary to the national Miss Plus America Pageant.? The Northwest Plus America program believes that beauty and potential come in many sizes, and is enhanced by improving our communities through volunteerism. Last year?s event drew national attention and was featured on MTV Networks last Fall.

Executive director, Latasha Raines, explains that the pageant does not encourage or promote an unhealthy lifestyle.? The pageant represents 60% of American women who are a size 12 and up, and the majority of them are clinically healthy. ?As a toned, fit college basketball player I wore plus sizes? says Latasha.?? She further states, ?the term plus was created by the fashion industry, just like petite or tall. My contestants vary in size and like any other group of individuals reflect different places of health. My job is to provide opportunities and the environment to grow confidence.? Simply stated, this system exists to level the playing field in pageantry for fuller figures.

Latasha lost both her father (49) and brother (29) recently to an undetected heart disease, both where consider the picture of health, and not required to participate in standard cardiac testing that may have prevented their deaths. Unfortunately, both passed in their sleep within months of each other.? For this reason, the Northwest Plus America Pageant has partnered with the Puget Sound American Heart Association Go Red for Women Program. She wants to give back to the American Heart Association to increase heart health awareness and to decrease heart-related deaths.? Along with fundraising, each woman crowned will act as an ambassador and volunteer during their one year reign.

The pageant has four divisions: Mrs. (married by February 1, 2013 and age 20+), Ms. (ages 30+ no age cap-can be married, widowed or divorced); Miss (ages 18-29 can be married, widowed or divorced) and Teen (ages 13-17 have never been married or pregnant).?? The Mrs./Ms/Miss division size requirement is women?s size 14 and up. The teen division size requirement is junior size 12 and up.

The Event weekend will consist of four days of events, kicking off with the Red Carpet Fashion Show event to benefit Go Red for Women on Friday, February 15, 2013. Ending with the main competition where the new Oregon and Washington State representatives will be crowned. The event will also bring in reality TV star Rosie Mercado of Las Vegas, NV and Full Figured Fashion Week Creator, Gwen DeVoe of New York. For a complete schedule of events visit the official event website: www.nwplusamerica.com

?

The Northwest Plus America pageant is Oregon and Washington?s only pageant exclusively for America?s female majority, the full figured woman. To connect with Northwest Plus America, please contact us at press@nwplusamerica.com or 206.596.1115.? For Details on each state please visit www.orplusamerica.com for Oregon or www.waplusamerica.com for Washington.

Source: http://www.plus-model-mag.com/2013/01/the-northwest-to-host-its-2nd-annual-competition-for-full-figured-women/

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Planet Hunters


When I first reviewed the Planet Hunters Web site in January 2011, the project was in its infancy. The site and its navigation had some bugs to work out. But it had a compelling yet seemingly quixotic premise: That a group of volunteers, peering in Web browsers at graphs of stars' brightness based on public data from NASA's Kepler planet-hunting telescope, might be able to discover planets that Kepler's own search algorithms may have missed.

Two years later, that concept has been borne out beyond any skeptic's wildest imaginings. In September 2011, Planet Hunters announced its first two planet candidates, and soon after announced several more. The project's first confirmed discovery?a planet circling a binary star in a quadruple star system?came in fifth on CNN's list of the top 10 science stories of 2012.

In January 2013, the project announced a second confirmed planet?a Jupiter-sized world orbiting in the so-called habitable zone of a sunlike star?as well as 42 new planetary candidates, including 15 in their respective stars' habitable zones. These worlds?ranging in size from about 2.5 Earth radii up to slightly larger than Jupiter?are too large to support life as we know it, presumably being gas giants, they may well have large moons.

Planet Hunters volunteer Kian Jek was recently awarded the Chambliss Amateur Achievement Award, the American Astronomical Society's most prestigious award given annually to an amateur astronomer, for his work on behalf of the project. Kian, one of the two hunters credited with Planet Hunters' initial confirmed discovery, is one of a small cadre of skilled volunteers that have supported the Planet Hunters science team?who, although professionals, also volunteer their time to work on this project? by vetting and cataloguing potential planetary candidates, modeling stellar and planetary systems, keeping tabs on exotic variable stars such as ?heartbeat binaries? and dwarf novae, as well as tracking unlisted eclipsing binary systems in which a pair of stars orbit each other in our line of sight, each eclipsing the other in turn.

PC Planet Hunting
I've participated in a number of ?citizen science? online astronomy projects over the years, but none ?has sparked my imagination like Planet Hunters, which lets anyone with a computer and an Internet connection take part in one of modern science?s great quests: the search for planets orbiting other stars. On the Planet Hunters site, you can look for signs of these so-called exoplanets in public data from NASA's Kepler mission. If you're among the first to report a new planet, you get credit for the find and in some cases can have your name appear as a co-author on the discovery paper.

Planet Hunters is a collaboration between Yale University and the Zooniverse, a Web hub that hosts a number of citizen science projects. It got started with astronomy projects, the first being Galaxy Zoo, in which the public was enlisted to classify galaxies in images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; it's since added others such as Moon Zoo and Solar StormWatch. Nearly half of the 14 Zooniverse projects are astronomy related; of the others, one of them, Cell Slider focuses on identifying cells for cancer research; others are related to tracking wildlife, climate science, and studying the ancient Greeks. ?Although Planet Hunters isn't officially connected to the Kepler mission, there are close ties and cooperation between the two.

150,000 Points of Light
Kepler, a space telescope, was launched in March 2009, tasked with ??exploring the structure and diversity of planetary systems?.? (by discovering them), looking in particular for Earth-sized planets, and worlds in a star's habitable zone. After Kepler completed its basic mission in 2012, the mission was extended for another 3 years.

Kepler uses the ?transit method? for planet hunting, searching for tiny dips in a star?s brightness caused by the passage (transit) of a planet in front of the star. Kepler repeatedly (every 29 minutes) images the same star field near the constellation Cygnus showing more than 150,000 stars, using a photometer to precisely measure each star's brightness. These readings generate light curves?plots showing variations in a star's luminosity over time. A transit shows as a string of data points descending below the star's light curve. Kepler uses search algorithms to find transits in its data?so far it's credited with more than 100 exoplanet discoveries, and has published a list of more than 2,700 planet candidates.

But Kepler monitors a huge variety of stars: some of constant brightness, others that flicker erratically or pulsate like clockwork. Eclipsing binaries?two stars that orbit each other and periodically eclipse one another?often show transits similar to those from planets. Although Kepler's planet search algorithms are very good at detecting prospective planets, they don?t catch everything, and the human eye has been shown to be better at detecting anomalies in some pattern-recognition tasks than a computer. That's where Planet Hunters comes in. Having multiple participants view each image greatly improves the odds of not missing a world.

Keep Reading: The Planet Hunters Site

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/-8OZLoI4h7E/0,2817,2379660,00.asp

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Friday, January 25, 2013

Brad Bird And Damon Lindelof's '1952' Mystery Box Sparks Theories

By Hannah Soo Park Well, well, what could we possibly have here? It seems that the mystery that is Brad Bird's "1952" is finally beginning to unravel, all thanks to a tweeted photo of a simple box. It began when Damon Lindelof took to his Twitter account to offer up a glimpse at a banker's [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/01/24/1952-mystery-box/

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Dick Durbin: Benghazi Was Not A Coverup, Iraq WMD Intelligence Was

Senator Dick Durbin (D- Ill.) came to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's defense on Wednesday during a congressional hearing on the deadly Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee to testify about the State Department's handling of the Benghazi assault, which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. Over the course of the hearing, Republican committee members -- most notably Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) -- criticized Clinton repeatedly for what they characterized as a purposeful attempt by the administration to mislead the public about the causes of the attack.

Durbin, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was a member of the panel questioning Clinton, used his speaking time to defend the Obama administration's post-Benghazi investigation, by way of contrast with the Bush administration's political posturing in the months leading up to the United State's 2003 invasion of Iraq.

[I have] five words for [critics] to reflect on: Iraqi weapons on mass destruction. We were told by every level of government here that there were Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that justified a war. The invasion of the united states. We are still searching for those weapons. They didn't exist. Thousands of Americans lost their lives. We could have a hearing on that if you like.

Durbin went on to characterize the information-gathering process carried out after the Benghazi attack as conducted in good faith.

[Investigators] did a thorough review here, found shortcomings in our protection of our people overseas and reported them honestly. You not only initiated that review, you accepted those findings in their totality -- no cover-up, an attempt to be totally honest, and to make sure a tragedy like this never happens again.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/dick-durbin-benghazi-iraq-wmd_n_2539710.html

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Amazon's Cloud Drive Photos for Android gets auto-save feature, additional functionality

Amazon's Cloud Drive Photos for Android gets autosave feature, additional functionality

Despite being a little too busy scooping up companies and striking new streaming deals, Amazon hasn't exactly been overlooking its set of mobile and desktop applications. Most recently, the online retail behemoth announced a refresh was on hand for Cloud Drive Photos on Android, providing users of said app with an auto-save option that, as you likely guessed, allows pics to be automatically uploaded to ones cloud account -- this, according to Amazon, was "the most requested feature from our customers." Better yet, version 1.2 also brings camera integration to devices running Android 4.0.4 or later, which will make it easier for some folks to quickly snap a shot and save it to the cloud-based drive without too much effort. Other tidbits like multiple file downloads and uploads made it to this release as well, making for a pretty plentiful update overall -- links to download from Google Play or Amazon's own app store can be found down below.

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Source: Google Play, Amazon

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/25/amazon-cloud-drive-photos-android-update/

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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

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3 Americans die in Algeria attack, 7 survive

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Three U.S. citizens were killed in last week's hostage standoff at a natural gas complex in Algeria, while seven Americans made it out safely, Obama administration officials said Monday.

The State Department confirmed that gas workers Victor Lynn Lovelady and Gordon Lee Rowan were killed at the Ain Amenas field in the Sahara. U.S. officials identified Texas resident Frederick Buttaccio as the first death last week.

"I'm glad we were able to get some rescued, but we did lose three Americans," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said as he was leaving the Capitol, where he attended President Barack Obama's second inauguration. "That just tells us that al-Qaida is committed to creating terror wherever they are and we've got to fight back."

A U.S. official had told The Associated Press earlier Monday that the FBI had recovered Lovelady's and Rowan's bodies and notified their families. The official had no details on how the Americans died, and their hometowns were not released.

Militants who attacked Ain Amenas had offered to release Lovelady and Rowan in exchange for the freedom of two prominent terror suspects jailed in the United States: Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind sheik convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks and considered the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration rejected the offer outright.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was still working with Algeria's government to gain a fuller understanding of the attack and to enhance their counterterrorism cooperation in future.

"We extend our deepest condolences to their families and friends," she said in a statement. "The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms."

Last week's desert siege began Wednesday when Mali-based, al-Qaida-linked militants attempted to hijack two buses at the plant, were repelled, and then seized the gas refinery. They said the attack was retaliation for France's recent military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighboring Mali, but the captured militants told Algerian officials it took two months to plan.

Five Americans had been taken out of the country before Saturday's final assault by Algerian forces against the militants.

The U.S. official said the remaining two Americans survived the four-day crisis at an insecure oil rig at the facility. They were flown out to London on Saturday.

The State Department's Nuland confirmed that seven Americans made it out safely, but said she couldn't provide further details because of privacy considerations.

Algeria says 38 hostages of all nationalities and 29 militants died in the standoff. Five foreign workers remain unaccounted for.

Lovelady, 57, worked at Ain Amenas as a project manager for the Houston-based energy firm ENGlobal Corporation, said CEO William A. Coskey. Rowan's employer wasn't immediately known.

___

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3-americans-die-algeria-attack-7-survive-191246521--politics.html

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From Ankle To Arch: Italy's Culinary Diversity | Gadling.com

Go to your local supermarket to buy pasta and you'll find about a dozen different shapes from which to choose. Travel from the ankle to the arch of the heel in Italy, though, and you'll find 150 different types. And those are just the pasta types that begin with the letter "C."


Each of Italy's 20 regions has a distinct cuisine. Pizza crust thickens and thins. Ingredients go in and out of certain sauces. Meat is cooked in entirely different ways. On the island of Pantelleria, for example, you'll find as much couscous on the menu of an Italian restaurant as you will pasta. In Sicily bread crumbs are an actual sauce you'll find in pasta. In Valle d'Aosta, in the Alpine north, you'll find fondue made with fontina cheese. Culinary diversity is one of the wonders of travel. And Italy is one of the best places to discover new food.

You thought you knew Italian cuisine? Not until you've traveled from Torino to Taranto. Here's a quick guide to some of Italy's best regional cuisine.


Piedmont
A Slow Approach
It's no coincidence the world headquarters for the Slow Food movement, which emphasizes the use of local and organic ingredients, is based in this region in northwest Italy. Thanks to its location near the Alps, Piedmont's capital, Turin, as well as the countryside is awash in mushrooms and truffles. Which is why one of the most local dishes in the region is tagliolini with white truffles, a nutmeg-accented pasta dish that is both earthy and satisfying. Wash it down with a glass of Barolo, Piedmont's best known beverages and one of Italy's most acclaimed wines.

Lombardy
More than Milan
The most famous dish to come out of this northern region is the breaded veal or chicken cutlet a la Milanese (which later influenced the advent of Wiener schnitzel, by the way). But Lombardy's cuisine offers so much more. Risotto and polenta, for example, are more prevalent here than pasta and butter and cream-an influence from northern Europe-are just as popular as olive oil. The region's capital, Milan, is an optimal place to sample the regional cuisine, but for lesser known specialties head south to the town of Pavia, surrounded by rice patties, for risotto rusti: rice with pork and beans.

Veneto
The taste of La Serenissima
Hugging the Adriatic sea in northeastern Italy, Veneto is-surprise, surprise-a feast for seafood lovers. Dried cod stewed in milk might not sound too delizia, but try it and we trust you'll be won over. For true carnivores the fegato alla Veneziana ?calf's liver and onions-is a true taste of Venice. Like Lombardy, one of this region's neighbors to the west, rice is more prevalent than pasta. The area around inland Treviso is famous for its soft, bubbly prosecco, be sure to indulge in a glass.

Emilia-Romagna
Porky Goodness
If there's a gastronomic epicenter to a country that is already brimming with mouth-watering food, Emilia-Romagna is it. The region's fertile land means it produces some of the country's best dishes. The streets of towns like Bologna and Parma are teeming with porkliscious goodness (prosciutto, anyone?) as well as local staples like freshly made tagliatelle and lasagna. Don't forget to try some Parmagiano in its hometown, Parma.

Tuscany
Under the Tuscan Tongue
Perhaps no other region of Italy has a more romanticized cuisine than that of Tuscany. Geography has played a heavy role in shaping the cuisine, which is earthy, simple, and seasonal: from olive oil to pecorino cheese to spices like rosemary and sage. Panzanella, a bread soup, is a traditional Tuscan dish. So are various bean soups. And, of course, one cannot forget the tender steaks the region produces (the Chianina cow from the sub-region Chianti is a legend among meat eaters). Wash it all down with the king of Italian wines, Brunello di Montalcino, which hails from Montalcino in souther Tuscany.

Umbria
The Green Heart
Known as Italy's "green heart" for its fertile landscape, Umbria is a foodie paradise. The gorgeous hill-top towns are a feast for the eyes, but there's plenty for the taste buds as well. Perugia is famous for chocolate and Orvieto for its many Slow Food restaurants (such as Trattoria dell'Orso or La Grotta), but be sure to check out off-the-radar Norcia, where sausage is king. For something less meaty, try the Umbrian dish falchetti verdi: ricotta gnocchi and spinach baked with cheese and tomato sauce.

Lazio
Eternally Delicious
With Rome at its axis, this region is a culinary world all its own. Famous dishes that hail from Lazio include the egg-and-pancetta-laced pasta carbonara, tomato-and-pancetta-based spaghetti amatriciana, and the spicy pasta arabiata. Many of Rome's dishes were created in the district of Testaccio, home of an ancient slaughterhouse where workers were often paid with the "quinto quarto," or fifth part of the animal. Only the brave should sample real Roman dishes like pajata, veal intestines with the mother's milk still inside.

Campania
Tomatoes and Buffalos
Naples is the heart of this southern region's cuisine, and for good reason. It's here where locals put their famous tomatoes, San Marzano, and mouth-watering buffalo milk cheese, mozzarella di buffalo, to good use: they're the main ingredients for the world's best pizza, invented here in the 16th century. Lesser known treats such as bistecca alla pizzaiola, a thinly sliced beef topped with garlic and tomato sauce, are also worth the trek.

Puglia
The Pull of Puglia
Situated in the heel of the boot, the sparse olive-tree spiked landscape of Puglia has inspired a unique cuisine. And so has the region's historic poverty. Pasta is made without eggs and the shapes are unique. Orecchiette, or "little ears," originated here. Puglia gets more sun than anywhere else in Italy, which means the region's wine is delicious. The negroamaro grape, nearly exclusive to the region, produces a smooth, medium-bodied wine.

Sicily
Sun and Sea
The food of this island, the "ball" being kicked by the "boot," has a legion of influences, thanks to the many invasions over the millennia. Greeks, Vikings, Muslims and Spanish have all contributed to the cuisine. The sun and the sea have also played a large roll in shaping Sicily's table. Everything from capers to saffron to wild fennel can be found in pasta dishes (often laced, not surpsingly, with seafood). Arancini, fried rice balls, are a must. So are cannoli, fried tubular dough stuffed with cream. Lemons are ubiquitous here, which means a true taste of Sicily can be found in drinks like the luscious after-dinner digestivi, limoncello.

[Photo by David Farley]

Source: http://www.gadling.com/2013/01/21/from-ankle-to-arch-italys-culinary-diversity/

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

CSN: Flacco makes bigger plays than Brady

The New England Patriots led the NFL scoring with 557 points, third-highest all-time and almost 100 more than the next highest total this season.

So going into Sunday?s AFC title game vs. the Ravens, who are 16th with a franchise-high 398 points, the Patriots are more likely to make the big plays, right?

Wrong.

When these teams play head-to-head, the Ravens, coming off quarterback Joe Flacco?s four-quarter, 70-yard touchdown pass to Jacoby Jones in a divisional playoff win vs. the Denver Broncos last week, actually have the edge.

?They?re a team that can put up a lot of points,? receiver Anquan Boldin said of the Patriots. ?They?re a team that gives you a lot of different looks. So, we know going into a game like that we have to play well.?

In the Ravens? 31-30 win vs. the Patriots in Week 3 of the regular season, they had 9 plays of 20 yards or more. The Patriots had only 4.

Jones had the longest reception for Baltimore, hauling in the ball from 41 yards, as well as 24 and 21.

Torrey Smith, who led with 6 catches for a team-high 127 yards and 2 TDs, had catches of 38, 32 and 25 yards.?

In a 24-9 win vs. the Indianapolis Colts to open the playoffs, the Ravens had 8 plays of 20 yards or more with Boldin?s 50-yarder to top the list. They had 6 vs. Denver last week. They surpassed both opponents in the category.?

Rewinding to the 2012 AFC title game between these same teams, won 23-20 by the Patriots, the Ravens dominated the big plays again.

Brady generated only 3 plays of 20 yards or more in that game. All were to tight end Rob Gronkowski of 23, 21 and 20 yards. He has a broken forearm that will require surgery and won?t play Sunday.

Flacco had 5 plays of 20 yards or more with the longest being for 42 yards to Smith. Smith also had a 29-yard TD catch.

The Patriots averaged 35 points per game this season in large part because Brady protects the ball and his defense creates turnovers that lead to easy scoring opportunities.

They were No. 2 in the NFL in takeaways with 41. They only had 16 turnovers, which equals a giveaway-takeaway margin of plus-25 which is best in the league.?

For his part, Flacco dismisses the suggestion that his performance rises with the stakes.?

?The fact that you?re playing one way in the regular season and a completely different way in the playoffs, I think that?s a bunch of crap,? he said. ?We go out there and lay it on the line every week and ? I?d be doing myself a disservice and everybody else in the league a disservice if I were to say I thought the playoffs were different.

?I really don?t. There?s obviously a little bit more on the line, because if you don?t win, you go home. But you've put yourself into that position and every one of those games was just as important as the others, so I don?t really buy into that.??

Source: http://www.csnbaltimore.com/blog/ravens-talk/flacco-makes-bigger-plays-brady

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Welcome Fortune Through Your Front Door - Feng Shui Weekly

Posted on 20. Jan, 2013 by admin in Feng Shui Home - Doorways, Feng Shui Tips

Front Door 189x300 Welcome Fortune Through Your Front DoorWelcome to my Feng Shui weekly blog post. This week I continue to provide answers to some of the common Feng Shui questions I get asked on my workshops and training courses. This week, Where do I start on my Feng Shui journey?

This is one of the most common questions when people start to focus on how to incorporate Feng Shui principles in to the home. The foundation stones of Feng Shui, the two absolutes that you must get right if you are to attract good fortune to your home and attract what you desire to your life are balance and energy flow. But achieving a home that is balanced and has a positive flow of energy takes a while to achieve. It is not something that can be done overnight so if you want to attract good fortune to your life right now where do you start?

Because people often don?t know where to start they add Feng Shui cures and enhancements in specific places in their home which correspond to what they feel are areas which are lacking in their life. If for instance they are experiencing problems in a relationship they add enhancements to the bedroom or the south west area of the home. Whilst there is nothing fundamentally wrong with doing this I always think that if you want to make life changing enhancements to your home you should approach it as a journey and have a plan. I always suggest that when you begin to incorporate Feng Shui to your home you start with ensuring that there is a strong and positive flow energy around the space The front door is where energy enters your home and so for me this is a logical place to start. The great news is that it is also one of the simplest and quickest areas of your home to get right.

Below are some tips for ensuring that the entrance to your home is ready to welcome and nurture a positive flow of energy. If you follow these tips you should very quickly start to see small improvements happening in your life which will give you the impetus to continue making changes in other areas around your home.

Tip 1

Make sure the entrance to your home is free of clutter. Outside your home ensure that the entrance is not blocked by dustbins, bikes and old plant pots and ensure plants and shrubs are trimmed back and kept neat and away from the door. On the inside coats and shoes should be stored neatly and there should be a clear path from the door to the rest of the house. The door should be able to open fully without anything impeding it?s progress.

Tip 2

Make sure that the doorway is kept in good repair. Doors should be kept regularly varnished or painted and hinges should be well oiled so that they don?t squeak. Solid doors are better than doors with glass. If you have a glass door the glass should be kept clean and consider covering the inside of the door with a thick curtain to ensure that energy, once it has entered is kept within the home.

Tip 3

If you want to attract good fortune to your home consider painting your front door an auspicious colour. The Chinese believe that red is the best colour for a door but this is only true if the front door of your home faces south. If your front door faces east green is a great colour as this will signify new growth and opportunities. If your front door faces north paint it black or dark blue as this will help attract money and new work opportunities to the home. Finally yellow is the most auspicious colour of all as this will help to attract luck, good fortune and abundance.

Tip 4

Make a welcoming front entrance by adding bright shrubs at either side of your door, placing a welcome mat and hanging a wind chime, crystal or bell. Moving enhancements such as wind chimes and bells have the extra advantage of stimulating energy, ensuring a strong flow through your door.

Tip 5

Make sure the entranceway to your home is well illuminated. If the doorway is dark then this could lead to energy stagnating around the door rather than flowing through. Place an outside light or lights just outside your doorway and if your door opens on to a narrow hall paint the hall a light colour and make sure that any lights in the hall are bright and illuminate the whole space.

I hope that this week?s blog post has provided you with some quick and simple remedies for ensuring that your home attracts a strong and positive flow of energy. If you would like to receive these tips direct to your inbox every week please sign up for my mailing list at the top of this page.

Technorati Tags: feng shui, feng shui doorways, feng shui entrance

Tags: feng shui, feng shui doorways, feng shui entrance

Source: http://www.fengshuiweekly.com/feng-shui-tips-2/welcome-fortune-through-your-front-door

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Diplomat named Algeria attack leader and captor, one-eyed "Jack"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Veteran Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler is one of few westerners to have been taken captive by Islamist militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and to have lived to tell the tale.

Belmokhtar has claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the four-day siege in Algeria last week that resulted in the deaths of at least 23 hostages and 32 militants, according to a regional website.

Algerian officials have also blamed Belmokhtar's group for the attack, one of the worst international hostage crises in decades, though they said he was not there himself.

Fowler, a retired foreign service officer whose career included a long posting as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, was appointed in 2008 as the U.N. special envoy to Niger, which was torn by civil strife driven by a Tuareg insurgency in the uranium-rich north of the country.

Fowler, fellow Canadian diplomat Louis Guay, and their driver were on their way back to Niamey, Niger's capital, just before the weekend in mid-December 2008 when their vehicle was blocked and waylaid by three militants in a pickup truck armed with AK-47 assault rifles. The attackers bound the diplomats and their driver, threw them into the back of their truck, and drove off the road and into the heart of the Sahara Desert.

Fowler told Reuters that after an 1,100-kilometer (680-mile) trek across unmarked sands, the three captives and their three captors arrived at an encampment on a hill marked by four pickup trucks rigged with heavy machine guns. For the next eight weeks, Fowler said, he and his fellow prisoners were confined to a patch of desert on the hill, with only one or two rare visits to a tent. There they were forced to make "proof of life" videos that were circulated to Western media as ransom messages.

Penned in the open desert day and night, he and his colleagues were uncomfortable and terrified. Throughout their captivity, the prisoners ate little more than rice cooked in powdered milk, Fowler said.

"It was appalling food ... and iffy water," he said.

Fowler believes that during most of their 130 days in captivity, he and his fellow prisoners were held somewhere in the remote deserts of Mali.

Earlier this month, French President Francois Hollande ordered French troops into that sparsely populated north African country to combat Islamist and Tuareg rebels, who were advancing toward the Malian capital, Bamako.

Not long after the three prisoners arrived in the desert, Fowler said they had their first encounter with the man they learned was the "emir," or leader of the group of captors. The group described themselves as members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the north African affiliate of the central al Qaeda network.

The emir, a short, intense man who was older than the men who captured and guarded the prisoners, wore a black turban and called himself Khaled. But his most striking feature was that he had only one eye. It was said that he had lost the other while fighting with Islamic warriors against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Fowler, who published a book on his experiences entitled "A Season in Hell," said he is certain the one-eyed man was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, then a top commander of AQIM, a group noted then and now for kidnapping for ransom and other criminal activities including cigarette smuggling.

INTENSE AND MECURIAL EMIR

To give themselves with some privacy in their discussions, Fowler and the other captives gave their captors nicknames. To the intense and mercurial emir, they awarded the moniker "Jack," in honour of the one-eyed figure on playing cards.

Fowler said Jack did not live at the site with his captives but would visit them irregularly, first at the hilltop encampment and then at a series of 23 different locations where they were held during an itinerant period of several weeks.

Sometimes, he said, Jack would come and talk to them for an hour and then disappear for days. Sometimes he would stay with them for three days at a time.

These encounters were not friendly or intimate.

"He was a very focused guy," Fowler said. He told his captives that they were "prisoners of war," "apostates" and "infidels," captured in a struggle between righteous Islamic fighters and evil Western powers and the United Nations. "He was all business all the time," though sometimes the captors lightened up slightly as they tried to convince their prisoners to convert to Islam.

"If we wanted to talk about anything, it was through the prism of Islam," Fowler said.

Jack spoke only Arabic and Tamasheq, a Berber language spoken by the Tuareg, so Fowler and his fellow captives spoke to him in French, which was then translated to Jack by associates who themselves spoke that language flawlessly.

After more than four months in captivity, Fowler said, he and his fellow prisoners were introduced to an older, more courtly militant, who told them they were about to be freed. The process of their release, however, took another 11 days, during which Guay's life was threatened and Fowler concluded that he himself would never make it out alive.

Throughout the terrifying endgame, Fowler says, Jack and a fellow emir, who called himself Abu Zaid, were "very much involved." Abu Zaid turned out to be holding two European women as hostages.

Eventually, Fowler said, his two fellow captives and Abu Zaid's two female hostages were driven to a town on the road to Bamako and released.

Toward the end, Fowler's captors had said: "Your country doesn't want you back, but we are going to release you."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has denied that Canada paid a ransom to free the diplomats. A U.S. State Department cable released by the WikiLeaks organization, and cited by Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper, quotes Libya's intelligence chief at the time as saying a ransom was paid, but not how much or by whom.

Western security officials said Belmokhtar subsequently fell out with, or was ejected from the al Qaeda affiliate either because he was too pushy or too interested in self-promotion.

U.S. and European officials say that as the leader of the AQIM spinoff, which launched the latest bloody attack and hostage taking at BP's gas plant in remote Algeria, Fowler's one-eyed Jack has acted true to form.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/diplomat-knew-algeria-attack-leader-captor-one-eyed-231114813.html

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Saturday, January 19, 2013

'Jet-lagged' fruit flies provide clues for body clock synchronisation

Friday, January 18, 2013

New research led by a team at Queen Mary, University of London, has found evidence of how daily changes in temperature affect the fruit fly's internal clock.

"A wide range of organisms, including insects and humans, have evolved an internal clock to regulate daily patterns of behaviour, such as sleep, appetite, and attention," explains Professor Ralf Stanewsky, senior study author from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

"Research on animal and human clocks shows that they are fine tuned by natural and man-made time cues, for example the daily changes of light and temperature, alarm clocks and 'noise-pollution'. Understanding the principles of clock synchronisation could be useful in developing treatments against the negative effects of sleep-disorders and shift-work. This research has many implications because it extends our knowledge of how the environment influences body clocks."

Scientists have a good understanding of how light affects the internal body clock, also known as the circadian clock. Specially evolved cells in the brain contain the circadian clock, which needs to be synchronised with the natural environment every day to help them run on time.

In this new study, the researchers made groups of fruit flies 'jet-lagged' by exposing them to daily temperature changes reflecting warmer or colder climates to understand how temperature affects the circadian clock.

The team discovered that a group of 'dorsal clock cells' found in the back of the fly's brain was more important for clock-synchronisation at warmer temperatures. But a group of ventral clock cells found further to the front of the brain played an important role at the cooler temperature range. In addition to their clock function, these cells also act like a thermometer, being more active at certain temperatures.

The research also shows that removing the light-receptor Cryptochrome, an important component in synchronising the clock to the daily light changes, leads to the flies being more sensitive to temperature changes. This could help to explain why daily light changes, which are a more reliable time cue compared to the daily temperature fluctuations, are the dominant signal in nature for synchronising the clock.

###

Queen Mary, University of London: http://www.qmul.ac.uk

Thanks to Queen Mary, University of London 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.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126347/_Jet_lagged__fruit_flies_provide_clues_for_body_clock_synchronisation_

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Goldman officials get over $100 million in stock-filings

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc awarded 22 senior executives and board members more than 736,000 restricted shares worth nearly $104 million as part of their 2012 bonuses, according to securities filings on Friday.

Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein received 94,320 restricted shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The shares were worth $13.3 million as of Goldman's closing price of $141.01 on Thursday, when the shares were granted.

The award was 53 percent larger than the 61,702 restricted shares Blankfein received last year when Goldman's shares traded at $113.45.

But Blankfein did not get the biggest award. Vice Chairman Michael Sherwood, who is co-head of Goldman's international division, received 109,461, according to a separate filing. That award was worth $15.4 million as of Thursday's closing price of $141.01.

The stock awards for executives will be delivered in three equal installments through 2016 and generally cannot be sold for five years. For board members, the shares will be delivered on the first trading day of the third quarter the year after they retire.

Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn and outgoing Chief Financial Officer David Viniar each received 85,136 restricted shares worth $12 million. Vice Chairmen Michael Evans, who is global head of growth markets, and John Weinberg, who is a co-head of investment banking, each received 75,208 restricted shares worth $10.6 million.

Mark Schwartz, a vice chairman and chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific who re-joined Goldman in June, received 37,428 restricted shares worth $5.3 million.

Chief Accounting Officer Sarah Smith received 36,594 shares worth $5.2 million, while General Counsel Greg Palm received 29,998 shares worth $4.2 million. Chief of Staff John Rogers received 28,509 shares worth $4 million, Global Head of Human Capital Management Edith Cooper received 26,382 shares worth $3.7 million and Global Head of Compliance Alan Cohen received 24,254 shares worth $3.4 million.

Goldman's 10 board members also received restricted stock awards ranging from 589 shares worth $83,055 for Mark Tucker, the CEO of the Asian life insurer AIA Group Ltd, who joined Goldman's board in November, to 3,829 shares worth roughly $539,927 for lead director James Schiro.

Altogether, the directors received 28,741 restricted shares worth $4.1 million on Thursday, when they were granted.

(Reporting By Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Leslie Gevirtz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/goldman-executives-nearly-100-million-stock-awards-filings-190450967--sector.html

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Colo. theater reopens, months after mass shooting

AURORA, Colo. (AP) ? One survivor had to pause on his way into the theater and pray. Another braced for flashbacks as he entered the auditorium where 12 people died and dozens were injured during a massacre six months earlier. Others refused to come, viewing the reopening of the multiplex as insensitive.

The former Century 16, now renovated and renamed the Century Aurora, opened its doors to victims of the July 20 attack on Thursday night with a somber remembrance ceremony and a special showing of "The Hobbit."

Theater 9, where neuroscience graduate student James Holmes allegedly opened fire on a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Returns," is now an XD theater with a wall-to-wall screen and stadium seating.

"We as a community have not been defeated," Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan told victims, officials, and dozens of police officers and other first responders who filled half the theater's seats at the ceremony.

"We are a community of survivors," Hogan declared. "We will not let this tragedy define us."

Pierce O'Farrill, who was wounded three times in the shooting, made a point of finding his old seat in the second row of the theater. "It was just a part of closure, just going back to that spot where, obviously, I was in the most pain I'd ever felt in in my life," said O'Farrill, who was hit three times and had to be carried out by the SWAT team, past the shooter's discarded rifle.

Holmes is charged with 166 felony counts, mostly murder and attempted murder for the shooting. A judge has ordered him to stand trial, but he won't enter a plea until March.

The reopening comes nearly six months after the attack and a week after many victims sat through a three-day hearing at which prosecutors described the attack in excruciating detail

Several families boycotted what they called a callous public relations ploy by the theater's owner, Cinemark. They claimed the Texas-based company didn't ask them what should happen to the theater. They said Cinemark emailed them an invitation to Thursday's reopening just two days after they struggled through Christmas without their loved ones.

"It was boilerplate Hollywood ? 'Come to our movie screening,'" said Anita Busch, whose cousin, 23-year-old college student Micayla Medek, died at the theater.

Victims have filed at least three federal lawsuits against Cinemark Holdings Inc., alleging it should have provided security for the July 20 midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," and that the exit door used by the gunman to get his weapons and re-enter should have had an alarm. In court papers, Cinemark says the tragedy was "unforeseeable and random."

"We certainly recognize all the different paths that people take to mourn, the different paths that people take to recover from unimaginable, incomprehensible loss," Gov. John Hickenlooper said at the ceremony.

"Some wanted this theater to reopen. Some didn't. Certainly both answers are correct," Hickenlooper said.

The governor credited Cinemark CEO Tim Warner for flying to Colorado after hearing about the shooting to see what he could do.

Warner told attendees that the caring response to the tragedy by first responders, the community and the world was a testament that good triumphs over evil.

Samuel Aquila, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Denver, concluded the ceremony with a prayer for the dead and the living.

"All of us in some small way suffered in your suffering," Aquila told the crowd. "The way of peace means rejecting the violence of that night."

Cinemark planned to offer free movies at the multiplex to the public over the weekend, then permanently reopen it Jan. 25. Throughout the evening, police officers and security guards turned away people who drove up asking how they could get tickets to the upcoming free shows.

The decision to reopen even divided at least one victim's family.

Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed, attended the event.

"The community wants the theater back and by God, it's back," Sullivan said. "Nobody is going to stop us from living our lives the way that we lived our lives before. This is where I live."

Alex's widow, Cassandra Sullivan, joined the boycott. So did Tom Teves, whose own son, Alex, also was killed.

"They can do whatever they want. I think it was pretty callous," Teves said.

Adam Witt, who was grazed in the shoulder during the attack, was expecting flashbacks when he walked into the theater Thursday night. He and his wife Tiffany were pleasantly surprised at how unfamiliar the renovated space seemed.

"It was strange but oddly reassuring," said Tiffany Witt, 24. "The way it looks different -- it gives us the feeling that we're moving on from what happened."

Marcus Weaver struggled to keep his emotions under control as he walked through the multiplex lobby. On July 20 he was shot in the arm and his friend Rebecca Wingo was killed. Thursday night he had to stop and pray before entering the theater.

He was glad he did. Inside he saw the woman with whom he had shared a terrifying ambulance ride on July 20, and another woman from his church whom he hadn't even realized had been in the auditorium that night.

"There was so much love in that room, it conquered all the ill feeling I had," said Weaver, 42, who wore a shirt bearing Wingo's name and image. "The shooter, he can't win. This community is way stronger."

___

Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi and Colleen Slevin contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/colo-theater-reopens-months-mass-shooting-085750893.html

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