iVoice Sharon Rowley, in true Tim Russert style, breaks out the white board and breaks down the issues that matter to her. Sharon explains why she'd like to see money spent on education.
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Elton John claims to have "never seen a decent" Super Bowl halftime show, and he doesn't expect a change to start this year. When the 64-year-old British rock star was asked his opinion about the upcoming mid-game entertainment during an interview with Good Morning America, he said he didn't expect headlining performer Madonna to impress him.
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Moscow ? The Russian government is installing web cameras at more than 90,000 polling sites in an effort to undermine expected accusations of widespread fraud in the upcoming presidential election.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced the initiative after evidence of fraud in last December?s parliamentary elections sparked Russia?s first mass protests since the fall of the Soviet Union. Amateur video footage depicting the alleged fraud at polling sites was widely circulated after those elections.
Mr. Putin, who is seeking a third presidential term in the March 4 poll, has accused the protest movement of working to delegitimize the electoral process. Broadcasting the elections on the Internet will ???completely remove all falsifications,??
RELATED ? Defying Putin: 7 Russians to watch
???I want to rely on the popular will of the people, on their trust,??
Members of the Russian opposition and independent election observers have reacted to the plan with skepticism, citing its cost and uncertain benefit. Many say that the webcams are a technological fix to an issue that warrants true dialogue and reform.
No room for errorThe ambitious project has an official price tag of $430 million, although the total cost to the government is estimated at $840 million (26 billion rubles) when factoring in services provided at a loss by the state telecommunications entity Rostelecom. It calls for two cameras to be installed at every polling site, with the exception of certain state-run institutions, said Ilya Massukh, deputy minister of communications and mass media, at a press conference on Jan. 13.
The footage from the cameras will be livestreamed, and on election day, visitors to the special online platform hosting the video will be able to switch between precincts to observe citizens casting their votes. After voting ends in the last district, the cameras will switch to broadcasting the tallying of votes, complete with sound.
The government has purchased more than 350,000 computers and web cameras from foreign suppliers after determining that Russian companies lacked the capacity to complete the rush order. The last of the equipment reached Moscow last week, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Thousands of technicians have been mobilized to install the necessary software in two factories near Moscow and distribute the equipment to the individual polling sites across Russia, all by the first week of March.
What would be a challenging proposition in any country is complicated in Russia by poor Internet infrastructure. Many of the schools that serve as polling sites in the country?s far-flung regions were only recently connected to the Internet at speeds too low to support the video transmission. The state telecommunications provider Rostelecom intends to lay thousands of miles of broadband cable ? and it must do so within the next five weeks in the dead of winter.
?We don?t have any room for error? in constructing the system, said Mr. Massukh. ?And that also creates a certain degree of pressure.? If the plan succeeds, the total amount of footage generated on March 4 will equal almost 250 years of video, exceeding the amount YouTube averages every two months, Massukh said. The system is designed to support an expected 25 million viewers simultaneously on election day.
pagebreak
Skepticism about impactMikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets who announced his presidential run after December?s protests, dismissed the project as a wasteful ?profanity? on air with radio station Echo Moscow.
?The project has an important symbolic meaning as a gesture but it is unlikely that it will have a real effect on the election results,? says Ilya Ponomarev, a deputy in the State Duma from the party Just Russia.
The work of human election monitors is more important because of their ability to obtain copies of the election protocols where the results are recorded, he says. Manipulation of the protocols after the votes have been tallied is the most common type of election fraud in Russia, he explains.
Election monitors reported in the past that the most egregious fraud often happens in those state-run institutions that will not have cameras ? hospitals, prisons, and military facilities.
Whether the videos can be used as evidence in possible investigations into electoral fraud is unclear. There has been no change to Russian election law to specifically provide for the use of web cameras, says Aleksandr Ignatov, acting director of the Russian Public Institute of Election Law.
Amateur videos taken during the recent Duma (parliament) elections were widely rejected as inadmissible evidence in court. While the fact that this initiative was led by the government should give it some weight, it remains the prerogative of each judge to decide whether to admit the videos as evidence should there be an investigation, Mr. Ignatov says.
Cameras can't fix systemic issuesSystemic issues affecting the fairness of Russia?s electoral system will be not be captured by the cameras. Putin faces no serious competitor in the vote, despite his sagging poll numbers. Procedural election rules are often used to prevent opposition candidates from appearing on the ballot.
One such rule is the requirement that candidates from parties not represented in the State Duma gather 2 million signatures in support of their candidacy. On Jan. 27, the Russian Central Election Commission disqualified presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, citing too many invalid signatures.
Mr. Yavlinsky labeled the decision ?purely political? and said it was aimed at preventing his supporters from acting as election monitors. Without Yavlinksy on the ballot, his party is barred under Russian law from dispatching monitors to polling sites. Yabloko?s exclusion reduces the possibilities for independent election monitoring, says Lilia Shibanova, director of the election monitoring organization Golos.
Many observers say that a Putin victory is likely. Even if he does win, the opposition hopes to hold him to less than 50 percent of the vote, something that would force the first presidential runoff in Russia since 1996. Current polling shows Putin?s support hovering near this mark.
The prospect for a narrow election outcome raises the stakes for the public?s perceptions of the election?s integrity. With the cameras rolling, evidence of fraud could again lead protesters unto the streets.
IN PICTURES: Russians protest Putin's party
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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/russia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20120130/wl_csm/458336
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HARTFORD, Conn.?? The police chief in East Haven, Conn., is retiring amid a scandal in which four officers are accused of tyrannizing Latino residents.
Chief Leonard Gallo's attorney, Jon Einhorn, said the chief is stepping down because of the federal probe into the department, but that his client has neither participated in nor condoned racial profiling.
"He will be vindicated," Einhorn said during a press conference on Monday, adding, "He is not guilty in any wrong doing."
Einhorn said Gallo, 64, did not attend Monday's brief press event because "it was too emotionally upsetting for him."
Einhorn said Gallo, who has been chief of police for 14 years, has been thinking about retiring for a while.
"I think (Gallo's) feeling is he is doing the best thing for the town," Einhorn said.
Gallo had been suspended as chief in April 2010 after the FBI launched the criminal investigation, but he was reinstated to the post in November after his friend Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. took office.
The four officers have pleaded not guilty to charges including deprivation of rights and obstruction of justice.
More charges in the case could be filed today, according to NBCConnecticut.com.
Gallo's attorney told NBCConnecticut.com last week that the chief was identified in the indictment as co-conspirator number one and could face possible charges.
His attorney has denied the allegations.
Only on msnbc.com
Deputy Chief John Mannion will serve as interim chief and there will be a search committee to find a new chief.
More than 15,000 East Haven residents had signed an online petition asking that Gallo be replaced, according to NBCConnecticut.com.
Residents spoke out about the allegations against the city's police.
?I think it's pretty despicable, actually. I really do,? long-time East Haven resident Lindsay Kelsey told the NBC affiliate on Monday.
?If that is the case, you would like everyone brought to justice and no one should be above the law if in fact the law was broken," resident Peter Sanchez added.
The Associated Press and NBC News contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46189893/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
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FILE - In this Aug. 14, 1998 file photo, the U.S. embassy in downtown Cairo, Egypt. Three U.S. citizens whom Egyptian authorities have barred from leaving the country have sought refuge in the American Embassy in Cairo, U.S. officials said Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Leila Gorchev, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 14, 1998 file photo, the U.S. embassy in downtown Cairo, Egypt. Three U.S. citizens whom Egyptian authorities have barred from leaving the country have sought refuge in the American Embassy in Cairo, U.S. officials said Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Leila Gorchev, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 23, 2009 handout file photo proved by the Transportation Department, Sam Lahood, left, watches as his father Ray is sworn in as Transportation Secretary, at the Transportation Department in Washington. Three U.S. citizens whom Egyptian authorities have barred from leaving the country have sought refuge in the American Embassy in Cairo, U.S. officials said Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. Those banned include Sam LaHood, son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, but officials would not say whether he is at the embassy. (AP Photo/ Transportation Department, File)
CAIRO (AP) ? Three American citizens barred from leaving Egypt have sought refuge at the American Embassy in Cairo amid growing tensions between the two allies over an Egyptian investigation into foreign-funded pro-democracy groups.
The White House said Monday it was disappointed with Egypt's handing of the issue, which U.S. officials have warned could stand in the way of more than $1 billion in badly needed U.S. aid.
The growing spat between the two longtime allies reflects the uncertainty as they redefine their relationship nearly one year after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak following an 18-day popular uprising.
Mubarak was a steadfast U.S. ally, scrupulously maintaining Egypt's peace treaty with Israel and while seeking to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians ? a clear American interest.
Now, Egypt's council of ruling generals, who took power when Mubarak stood down last Feb. 11, often accuse "foreign hands" of promoting protests against their rule.
At the same time, members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates the new parliament, have suggested that they could seek to re-negotiate parts of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, causing alarm in Israel and concern in Washington over the possibility that Egypt will no longer serve as its solid anchor in the Middle East.
Egypt's investigation into foreign-funded organizations burst into view last month when heavily armed security forces raided 17 offices belonging to 10 pro-democracy and human rights groups, some U.S.-based. U.S. and U.N. officials blasted the raids, which Egyptian officials defended as part of a legitimate investigation into the groups' work and finances.
Last week Egypt barred at least six Americans and four Europeans who worked for U.S.-based organizations from leaving the country. They included Sam LaHood, the head of the Egypt office of the Washington-based International Republican Institute and the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the only Republican in President Barack Obama's Cabinet.
On Monday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington that some of the Americans under investigation were in the embassy, although she would not identify them or their affiliations, citing privacy concerns.
"We can confirm that a handful of U.S. citizens have opted to stay on the embassy compound in Cairo while awaiting permission to depart Egypt," she said.
Nuland added that those seeking refuge in the embassy were not "seeking to avoid any kind of judicial process," noting they had been interrogated before.
The U.S. Foreign Affairs Manual states that such request for refuge are generally granted only when the U.S. citizen "would otherwise be in danger of serious harm."
Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said three Americans were at the embassy.
It was unclear if LaHood was among them. In a text message, LaHood referred queries to an IRI spokeswoman in Washington, who did not respond to requests for comment. LaHood said last week that he had been told by his lawyer that he was under investigation on suspicion of managing an unregistered NGO and receiving "funds" from an unregistered NGO ? namely, his salary.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. had been in touch with Egyptian officials about the issue.
"We've made clear our concerns about this issue and our disappointment that these several citizens are not being allowed to depart Egypt," he told reporters in Washington Monday. Last week, Obama discussed the issue by phone with Egyptian military chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.
U.S. officials have warned that restrictions on civil society groups could hinder aid to Egypt, funds the country badly needs given the severe blows continued unrest has dealt its economy over the last year.
The U.S. is due to give $1.3 billion in military assistance and $250 million in economic aid to Egypt in 2012. Washington has given Egypt an average of $2 billion in economic and military aid a year since 1979, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Recent U.S. legislation conditions the continuation of that aid on Egypt's taking certain steps in its transition to democracy. These include abiding by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, holding free and fair elections and "implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion and due process of law."
The new strain on the U.S.-Egypt relationship underlines the wider question of where the various groups struggling for power will lead the country. For months, the ruling military council has faced frequent protests over its handling of the transition and calling for it to immediately hand over power to civilians.
Military leaders have blamed unidentified "foreign hands" for these demonstrations, saying they sought to destabilize Egypt.
On Monday, a member of the civilian panel created by the military to advise it said the army was considering ways to speed up the transition.
As a sign, however, that U.S.-Egypt military cooperation will continue, a delegation from Egypt's Defense Ministry arrived in New York Sunday. Egypt's state news agency quoted military attache Gen. Mohammed el-Kishki as saying that the delegation would visit U.S. military bases, meet with members of Congress and discuss bilateral military cooperation.
It remains unclear how many foreigners have been barred from leaving Egypt.
LaHood said last week that three other employees of his organization were on the no-fly list, two Americans and one European.
From the National Democratic Institute, which was also raided in December, three Americans and three Serb employees are on the list, the group's Egypt director, Lisa Hughes, said last week.
Hughes said in a text message Monday that none of NDI's employees are staying at the U.S. Embassy.
A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman did not respond Monday to requests for comment.
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Erica Werner contributed from Washington.
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ATHENS, Greece ? Greek lenders Eurobank and Alpha Bank say a planned merger to create the country's largest bank by assets could be put on hold because of debt-relief negotiations between the crisis-hit country and private creditors.
The banks said Monday that "an accurate timeline cannot be given" to complete the deal announced last August because of the negotiations.
The closely watched talks would see private holders of Greek bonds cancel half their debt and likely accept additional losses in a swap for bonds with a longer maturity.
Greece's finance ministry expressed surprise at the announcement, arguing that the negotiations had produced "nothing new or different" to factors already taken into account by both banks.
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CHICAGO --Chris Camozzi is one tough guy.
The veteran fighter dislocated a finger in the second and fought through it by only throwing jabs and hooks. In the final round, he dropped Justin Jacoby with great outside leg kick. Camozzi pounced to go for the kill and worked a guillotine choke. Jacoby backed up to the cage where he tapped just seconds later at the 1:08 mark of the third.
Camozzi (16-5, 4-2 UFC) came out guns-a-blazing throwing big shot landing his best at the end of the first. With less than 10 seconds left, he dropped Jacoby right a big right. Jacoby scrambled well to survive.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-fox-2-opener-camozzi-takes-jacoby-215638663.html
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BERLIN (Reuters) ? Greece must surrender control of its budget policy to outside institutions if it cannot implement reforms attached to euro zone rescue measures, the German economy minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Philipp Roesler became the first German cabinet member to openly endorse a proposal for Greece to surrender budget control after Reuters quoted a European source on Friday as saying Berlin wants Athens to give up budget control.
"We need more leadership and monitoring when it comes to implementing the reform course," Roesler, also vice chancellor, told Bild newspaper, according to an advance of an interview to be published on Monday.
"If the Greeks aren't able to succeed themselves with this, then there must be stronger leadership and monitoring from abroad, for example through the EU," added Roesler, chairman of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Reuters reported on Friday that Germany wants Greece to give up control of budget policy to European institutions as part of discussions over a second rescue package.
Greece, which has repeatedly failed to meet the fiscal targets set out by its international lenders, is in talks to finalise a second 130 billion-euro ($172 billion) package.
With many Greeks blaming Germans for the austerity medicine their country has been forced to swallow, officials in Athens dismissed the idea of relinquishing budget control as out of the question.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Sunday Greece was perfectly capable of making good on its promises.
"Anyone who puts a nation before the dilemma of 'economic assistance or national dignity' ignores some key historical lessons," he said in a statement before heading to Brussels for a European Union summit on Monday.
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that it had obtained a copy of the proposal showing Germany wants a new euro zone "budget commissioner" to have the power to veto budget decisions taken by the Greek government if they are not in line with targets set by international lenders.
"Given the disappointing compliance so far, Greece has to accept shifting budgetary sovereignty to the European level for a certain period of time," the document said.
Under the plan, Athens would only be allowed to carry out normal state spending after servicing its debt, the paper said.
Crushed by 350 billion euros ($462 billion) of debt and running out of cash quickly, Greece is scrambling to appease the "troika" of its official lenders - the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - and stitch up a deal with private creditors simultaneously.
Greece needs to strike a deal with creditors in the next couple of days to unlock its next aid package in order to avoid a chaotic default.
A government source in Berlin said Germany's proposal was aimed not just at Greece but also at other struggling euro zone members that receive aid and are unable to make good on their obligations.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-country bloc, said it wanted the Greek government to maintain autonomy.
(Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)
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HARRISBURG, Pa (Reuters) ? Former Penn State University football coach Jerry Sandusky, who is under house arrest on charges of child sexual abuse, has asked a Pennsylvania court to allow supervised visits with his grandchildren that are now prohibited.
Sandusky, 67, faces 52 criminal charges that he molested 10 boys over a 15 year period and has been tethered to his house under the terms of his release on bail in December that barred contact with anyone under age 18. He has maintained his innocence.
In a motion filed Friday, Joe Amendola, attorney for the former Penn State defensive coordinator, asked the Centre County Court to modify the terms of Sandusky's release to permit supervised contact with his 11 grandchildren.
"The Defendant's minor grandchildren have expressed their sadness to their parents about not being able to visit or talk with the Defendant since November 5, 2011," Amendola wrote.
If his grandchildren were allowed to visit him at his State College home, they would be accompanied by at least one parent, according to the motion.
Amendola is also asking the court to allow Sandusky to communicate with his grandchildren by mail, email, telephone, or by Skyping, a type of video-chatting over the Internet.
Sandusky was charged November 5 with 40 counts of molesting eight boys over a 15 year period. He had been freed after posting $100,000 after those charges were filed in November.
In December, he was arrested a second time and prosecutors added charges that raised the number of sex abuse victims to 10. He has been under house arrest since he was freed on $250,000 bail following his second arrest with restrictions.
Prosecutors say Sandusky used his position as head of The Second Mile charity to find his victims. Sandusky started The Second Mile charity to help troubled disadvantaged children.
His grandchildren are not the only people Sandusky would like to be in contact with.
Amendola said Sandusky wants "reasonable visitation" by friends at his home and he wants the ability to leave his home "for the purposes of assisting his attorneys, private investigators, and other professional individuals retained by the Defendant in the preparation of his defense."
The charges against Sandusky caused an avalanche of top-down changes at Penn State. Soon after his arrest, the school's board of trustees fired iconic head football coach Joe Paterno, who died of lung cancer on Sunday, and university president Graham Spanier.
Also on Friday, Amendola followed up a request for prosecutors to turn over the names of the people who accused Sandusky and the details of those crimes. The attorney said a week had passed since his original request.
Centre County Court Judge John Cleland is scheduled to consider both matters on February 10. Prosecutors have until February 3 to file responses to the requests.
(Editing by David Bailey)
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By Dan Carney, msnbc.com contributor
President Obama is on cruise control toward his party?s nomination to run for reelection, but Tim O?Brien is hoping to capitalize on Obama?s old cruise-mobile -- a 2005 Chrysler 300C.
Yeah, it?s got a Hemi in it. That?s probably what led aspiring presidential candidate Obama to ditch the muscle car in favor of a Ford Escape hybrid to shore up his green credentials back in 2008.
These days Obama travels in a very un-green armored Cadillac for security reasons (cast aside like a forgotten girlfriend is the Chrysler). But Tim O?Brien has the car and hopes that an Obama enthusiast or history buff is willing to pay a million dollars for it on eBay. (I think you have to say ?million? like Dr. Evil when you are talking about that much money for a car.)
O?Brien says he tried to sell the car on eBay a few years ago, but that pranksters ran the bidding up to $100 million before eBay shut down the auction. With the election season heating up, he thought now might be a good time to try again. To keep out the pranksters, this time the auction requires a $2,000 good-faith deposit in order to even bid. That may have chased away prospective buyers, because in an auction that ended Wednesday, Jan. 25, there were no bidders. O?Brien says he has relisted it hoping that another week will do the trick.
If not, he could wait until the fall, when the election gets really active.
Meanwhile, of course, people want to be sure that a car whose value lies in the identity of its previous owner was really owned by the president. In Illinois when a car changes hands, the title goes back to the state, so O?Brien doesn?t have the original title with Obama?s name on it, but he has a copy made by the dealer when Obama traded it in. And when he did drive the car, it wasn?t actually titled in his name because it was leased in the name of ?a government agency,? according to O?Brien. But the documentation does show that the car was registered to Obama even if, as a lease car, it didn?t technically belong to the then-senator from Illinois.
Still, one million bucks could be a stretch. The president?s previous vehicle, a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee, sold for just $26,000, according to the New York Times.
Would you pay $1 million for a 2005 Chrysler 300C? Share your thoughts on Facebook.
More automotive news:
Audi's bloody Super Bowl commercial
Ford profit hit by commodity costs, Europe?
Chevy Volt caught in Washington's crossfire?
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(Reuters) ? Jon Rubinstein, who was instrumental in crafting Apple Inc's iPod music player, has left Hewlett Packard Co after two years on the job there.
Rubinstein was CEO of smartphone maker Palm when that company was acquired by HP in 2010. He last held a product-innovation role within HP's Personal Systems Group headed by Todd Bradley.
"Jon has fulfilled his commitment to HP," a HP spokesman said.
Rubinstein is still a board member at e-commerce company Amazon.com.
Last year HP, the largest U.S. technology company by revenue, announced it was halting its TouchPad line of tablets and any other devices based on WebOS, the mobile software it acquired when it bought Palm.
In December, HP said it would open its WebOS mobile operating system to developers and companies, potentially taking on Google Inc's free Android platform.
(Reporting By Poornima Gupta; editing by John Wallace)
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Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse
Object type: Sand dune
Location: Saturn's moon Titan
Standing atop a huge mound of black, hydrocarbon sand, your sandboard tucked under your arm, you take in the view. Row after row of black dunes march into the distance as far as the eye can see, until everything disappears behind an orange curtain of smog.
This is no Earthly vista: you're on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. You strap your feet onto the board and slip off down the dune. Titan's low gravity means it takes a while to build up speed, but also keeps friction to a minimum, so it's a long glide down before you come to a halt.
Sandboarding on Titan still, sadly, only happens in our imagination, but the moon's amazing dunes are real ? and lie in a trippy landscape worthy of a late Beatles song. They were discovered in 2006 in radar images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft (see photo) and could be key to unravelling the climatic history of this eerily Earth-like moon.
Though chilling at -179??C, Titan has rain and lakes ? albeit of liquid methane rather than water ? along with mountains and river channels.
"Methane raining out and flowing across the surface leads to landscapes that are so much like Earth," says Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Perhaps more like Earth than anywhere else in the solar system, in fact. Comparing and contrasting the two worlds could lead to a better understanding of climate and surface features on both, she says.
What makes the similarities so astonishing is the completely different materials of which Titan and Earth are made. Titan's crust and mountains are made of water ice. The sand grains comprising its dunes are thought to be hydrocarbons like benzene, which has been detected in the dunes by the Cassini spacecraft.
On Earth, hydrocarbons tend to exist as liquids or gases in oil deposits. On Titan, though, many are frozen solid. They are thought to form when ultraviolet light drives chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere, and then to rain down onto the surface.
"The dunes may have a composition that's a little like plastic," says Radebaugh. To visualise standing on a dune on Titan, imagine "standing on huge volumes of plastic sand", she says.
Despite their unusual composition, Titan's dunes ? typically 100 metres tall, a kilometre wide, and up to hundreds of kilometres long ? are very similar in shape and size to long, skinny dunes in the Sahara desert called linear dunes.
As on Earth, Titan's dunes can tell us about climate. Last year, simulations of the dunes suggested the winds on Titan change seasonally, reversing direction and getting much faster twice a year. This solved a mystery of why Titan's dunes look as though they have been sculpted by winds blowing from west to east, even though the moon's winds were thought to blow in the opposite direction.
Now Alice Le Gall of the Space Atmospheres, Environments and Observations Laboratory (LATMOS-UVSQ) in Paris, France and colleagues have discovered more tantalising climate clues from measurements of the dunes.
They lie in a band 30 degrees both north and south of Titan's equator. Le Gall's team have shown that the dunes get smaller and more widely spaced towards the northern end of this range.
The team conclude that this happens because the ground gets wetter with liquid methane towards the north, making the sand stick together and less prone to forming dunes.
This latitudinal variation in weather is likely to be due to Saturn's egg-shaped orbit, the team conclude, which produces more intense, drier summers in Titan's southern hemisphere compared with the north.
The discovery of dunes on Titan was a stroke of luck, says Radebaugh, who worked with Le Gall's team on the latest analysis. "We had no idea that these things would be there," she says. "We were surprised to find such a close analogue to Earth in something so far away."
And if there were only some way to hop over to Titan, she would love to try sandboarding there. "I think it would be possible and probably would be really fun," she says.
Journal reference: Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2011.10.024
Read previous Astrophile columns: How to spot a dark-matter galaxy , Glimpse elusive matter in shattering star, Cool echoes from galaxy's biggest star, Stopped clocks deepen pulsar enigmas, Wounded galaxy is crux of cosmic whodunnit, Did comet killing spark Christmas light show?, Blinged-out stars were born rich, Supercritical water world does somersaults, Attack of the mystery green blobs, Undead stars rise again as supernovae, The sticky star cluster that's mostly black hole, The rebel star that broke the medieval sky, Star exploded? Just another day in Arp 220.
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OSLO, Norway ? Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere says a U.N. worker has been released in Yemen after being kidnapped by armed tribesmen two weeks ago.
Stoere says the 34-year-old Norwegian man was freed unharmed earlier Friday. Stoere gave no details about the operation or possible demands, but thanked Yemeni officials for negotiating his release.
The U.N. worker, who was not identified, was abducted by armed tribesmen in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Jan. 15 and then transferred to the central Marib province.
At the time of the kidnapping a Yemeni official said the abductors had demanded the release of a comrade who was arrested after the bombing of an oil pipelines in Marib.
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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) ? An epic French documentary about the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime has appeared on Turkish television to mark international Holocaust Remembrance Day ? the first time the film has been aired on public television in a majority-Muslim country.
State television TRT's documentary channel showed the first episode of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah" late Thursday ? the eve of the day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust.
The film has been subtitled into Arabic, Farsi and Turkish by the Paris-based Aladdin Project as part of its campaign to promote understanding between Jews and Muslims and to fight Holocaust denial.
"Shoah," the Hebrew word for Holocaust, includes testimony from concentration camp survivors and employees about the slaughter of millions of Jews in Europe by the Nazis during World War II. Lanzmann worked for 11 years on the film, which was released in 1985.
Last year, a Los Angeles-based Farsi satellite channel broadcast the 9-plus-hour documentary in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned historical accounts of the Holocaust and called for Israel's destruction.
The film is not the first Holocaust film to be shown on television in Turkey, a secular country that is seeking membership in the European Union. Turkey also has its own Holocaust film: "The Turkish Passport," which was released last year and tells the true story of Turkish diplomats who saved thousands of Jews by issuing them Turkish passports.
"Shoah" has also been shown to a limited audience at a Turkish film festival.
Nevertheless, it was the first showing of "Shoah" on a public television channel in a Muslim country. The director said he hoped more Muslim countries would follow suit.
"It is a historical event," Lanzmann, 87, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Paris. "It is extremely important that it is being shown in a Muslim country."
"The Turks are engaged in a pioneering work and I am sure it (the showing) will be followed by other Muslim countries," he said.
Extremists in some Muslim countries deny that the Holocaust ever happened, accusing Jews of inventing it in an attempt to gain sympathy and advance interests. In Iran, Ahmadinejad has frequently questioned whether the Holocaust was a true historical fact, arguing that it was used by Jews to trick the West into backing the creation of Israel.
The documentary's airing comes at a time when some Jewish groups have warned of growing anti-Semitism in Turkey, following the country's frayed relations with Israel.
Turkey was outraged by the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians during Israel's war in the Gaza Strip three years ago aimed at stopping daily rocket barrages from the coastal territory.
Ties worsened in 2010 after Israeli naval commandos killed nine Turks in a botched raid on a flotilla that was trying to breach Israel's Gaza blockade. Israel's refusal to apologize for the flotilla killings sent relations deteriorating even further. Both sides claimed they acted in self-defense.
The documentary was also aired amid an escalating dispute between Turkey and France over French legislation that would make it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks amounted to genocide.
Most historians contend that the 1915 killings of 1.5 million Armenians as the Ottoman Empire broke up was the 20th century's first genocide, and several European countries recognize the massacres as such.
But Turkey rejects the term genocide, saying there was no systematic campaign to kill Armenians and that many Turks also died during the chaotic disintegration of the empire. It also says that death toll is inflated.
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Source: http://www.tivali.biz/how-can-acquiring-wholesale-automotive-components-be-economical/
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Continue reading Western Digital MyBook Thunderbolt Duo eyes-on at Macworld 2012 (video)
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President Obama hit hard on college tuition costs in his State of the Union speech, calling on Congress to extend the tuition tax credit and to stop student loan interest from doubling in July.
President Obama hit hard on issues of college affordability in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, and continued to emphasize the importance of excellent teaching in K-12 education.
Skip to next paragraphHe called on states to raise the compulsory age of education to 18; called on Congress to extend the tuition tax credit, to stop the interest on student loans from doubling in July, and to pass the DREAM Act; and issued a threat to higher education institutions who fail to keep costs in check and keep tuition down.
?Let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can?t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down,? Obama said. ?Higher education can?t be a luxury ? it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.?
It was unclear, however, from Obama?s speech ? and in the blueprint that his administration sent out afterward ? exactly how he plans to carry out this threat.
?Unlike K-12 where lots of money pours into programs, there?s much less [Federal] money pouring into higher-education programs,? says Rita Kirshstein, director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability. Most of the money that does go to schools is in the form of research funds, she says, along with Pell Grants and subsidized loans for students.
While Ms. Kirshstein says withholding student grant and loan money could be disastrous for some students, she believes withholding research dollars might cause faculty to put pressure on administrators to look hard at their costs. Kirshstein?hopes the plan would be placed in a broader context, looking at how much various states have cut back their higher-ed funding, for instance.
?The devil is in the details if it?s going to be done effectively,? she says.
As for Obama?s other proposals, Kirshstein says she was glad to see him sound the dual themes of states making higher ed a higher priority in their budgets, and colleges and universities doing more with less.
These aren?t new themes for the administration, which has worked to improve student aid by increasing the maximum Pell Grant size last year and moving to a system of direct government loans, and which hosted a summit on higher education productivity and cost in December. But the ideas seem to be getting increased attention now.
?Those of us in higher education are always happy when higher ed issues are recognized because so much of the attention typically goes to K-12,? says Kirshstein. Obama, she believes, ?is indeed serious about this issue.?
Not that he neglected K-12 topics in his speech.
Some themes that he has hit before, like calling on Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (sometimes better known in its current incarnation as No Child Left Behind), were notably absent ? perhaps a reflection of the impossibility of getting such a bill passed in an election year.
But in his speech Obama continued to preach the importance of teaching and accountability. His education agenda so far has defied typical partisan lines: Some of its most frequent critics are loyal Democrats, including the teachers? unions, while some Republicans have praised it.
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Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/01/26/steven-spielberg-moses/
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THURSDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers who identified a new genetic signature associated with bile duct cancer say their discovery could lead to targeted treatment for the deadly cancer.
The team at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center screened samples from 287 patients with gastrointestinal tumors and found that growth-enhancing mutations in two genes (IDH1 and IDH2) may account for nearly one-fourth of bile duct tumors that develop in the liver.
Mutations in IDH1 were found in 13 percent of all bile duct tumors and in 23 percent of those within the liver itself. Mutations in IDH2 were less common.
It may be possible to develop drugs that target this mutation in order to control tumor growth, they said.
The findings were published online in The Oncologist.
Bile duct cancer occurs in a duct that carries bile from the liver to the small intestine.
"Patients with bile duct cancer have a generally poor prognosis. Most of them are diagnosed with advanced or metastatic disease, so surgical resection [removal] is not feasible," study co-senior author Dr. Andrew Zhu, director of Liver Cancer Research at the MGH Cancer Center, said in a hospital news release.
"Identifying this new and relatively common mutation in intrahepatic [within the liver] bile duct cancer may have significant implications for the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of patients whose tumors harbor this mutation," Zhu added.
Currently, there are no drugs that target IDH mutations, but extensive efforts are underway to develop such drugs, the researchers say.
Each year in the United States, 12,000 people are diagnosed with cancers of the gallbladder and bile duct, but only 10 percent of those cancers are discovered early enough for successful surgical treatment. Average survival, even with chemotherapy, is less than a year.
More information
The American Cancer Society has more about bile duct cancer.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Will you have a heart attack or a stroke in your lifetime? Your odds may be worse than you think.
Men and women may have a false sense of security about their chances of having a heart attack or stroke based on the current practice of calculating a patient's risk 10 years into the future. New Northwestern Medicine research shows a young or middle-aged adult who is at low risk in the short term may be at very high risk in the long term -- if he or she has just one or two risk factors such as higher than optimal cholesterol or blood pressure levels.
This is the first study to examine the lifetime risk of heart disease in white and black men and women. Previous studies have been in whites and predominantly males. It's also the first study to look at the entire adult age spectrum. The research also looked at the risk across multiple birth cohorts and found the effect of the risk factors remained consistent regardless of the decade in which a person was born.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Part of the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project, the research tracks more than 250,000 participants from 18 different groups of people living in the community over a period of more than 50 years. The patients' risk factors for cardiovascular disease -- blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status and diabetes status -- were measured at ages 45, 55, 65 and 75 years for each participant.
"We are giving incomplete and misleading risk information if we only focus on the next 10 years of someone's life," said principal investigator Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, chair and associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "With even just one risk factor, the likelihood is very large that someone will develop a major cardiovascular event that will kill them or substantially diminish their quality of life or health."
The risk-factor profile was considered optimal when a participant had a total cholesterol level of less than 180 milligrams per deciliter and untreated blood pressure of less than 120 over less than 80, was a nonsmoker and did not have diabetes.
The new research on long-term risk may be important in estimating the future burden of cardiovascular disease in the general population, Lloyd-Jones noted.
Some key findings of the study:
"Just even one small increase in risk, from all optimal risk factors to one that isn't optimal, like slightly elevated cholesterol or blood pressure, significantly bumps up a person's lifetime risk," Lloyd-Jones said. (Non-optimal means a person doesn't have diabetes and doesn't smoke but either cholesterol is 180 to 199 or blood pressure is 120 to 130 on top or 80 to 89 on the bottom. These numbers aren't at levels that need to be treated with medication, but they are still higher than desired.)
"This study underscores the importance of lifestyle -- particularly diet, exercise and smoking cessation -- all the lifestyle patterns that are important in reducing the development of the risk factors in the first place," said Jarett Berry, MD, who worked on the study when he was at Northwestern's Feinberg School and is now assistant professor of medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
"We need to do a much better job of making sure these risk factors don't develop in the first place, getting kids and young adults off to better starts so they don't gain weight and are following healthier lifestyles throughout their lives," Lloyd-Jones said.
Lloyd-Jones pointed out that maintaining the full package of optimal risk factors through middle age had a dramatic effect on the remainder of a person's life. "It appears that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts," he said.
The research was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120125172310.htm
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