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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Lawmakers cancel FAA furloughs, flee Washington ? by air
Air travelers breathed a sigh of relief after Congress passed quick legislation allowing the FAA to cancel furloughs for air traffic controllers. But that's just increased partisan sniping over the sequester and its across-the-board budget cuts.
A passenger waits for his flight at Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta Friday. Congress approved legislation ending furloughs of air traffic controllers that have delayed hundreds of flights daily, infuriating travelers and causing political headaches for lawmakers. The FAA says things should be back to normal by Sunday evening.
David Goldman/AP
EnlargeOn behalf of steaming-mad air travelers ? some forced to wait hours or have their flights canceled ? Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration special dispensation to call furloughed air traffic controllers back to work.
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Then most of them scooted out of town for a week?s vacation, heading for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (known to Democrats as ?Washington National?) or to Dulles International.
On Saturday came good travel news for all air travelers, no matter their political affiliation, the FAA announcing simply:
?The FAA has suspended all employee furloughs. Air traffic facilities will begin to return to regular staffing levels over the next 24 hours and the system will resume normal operations by Sunday evening.?
(Which came as particularly good news to Decoder, who?s scheduled to fly cross-country and back ? six flights in all ? this coming week.)
But none of those now-absent members of House and Senate should expect to receive much constituent praise for having over-ruled themselves on behalf of the FAA. It took breaking part of the ?sequester? scheme for across-the-board budget cuts, designed to force themselves (and the Obama administration) to come to agreement on government spending and the deficit.
Who?s to blame? The other guy, of course.
In his radio address Saturday, President Obama had this to say:
?It was a bad idea then.?And as the country saw this week, it?s a bad idea now?.?
Republicans fired back.
"There are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts, and to impose more tax hikes on the American people,'' said Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House transportation committee, in the GOP address. ?This episode is yet another demonstration of why we need to replace the president?s sequester with smarter, more responsible cuts.?
?The president?s sequester? ? that was part of the budget deal agreed to by the Republican-controlled House, of which House Speaker John Boehner (R) said, ?I got 98 percent of what I wanted.?
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The Captain's Journal ? Dangerous Old Guys
The Baltimore Sun:
Besides drinking beer, there are two other pastimes that Bavarians love: driving and sport-shooting, including hunting. Bavarians build BMW?s ?Ultimate Driving Machines.? Bavarians? national dress is hunter green. No one who visits Munich is likely to miss the German Hunting and Fishing Museum in the middle of the main shopping street. When in Munich, I saw the world?s best-known opera devoted to shooting and hunting, Carl Maria von Weber?s ?Der Freisch?tz? (?The Marksman?), with its unforgettable Hunters? Chorus singing, ?What on earth can equal the pleasure of hunting??
Nationwide in Germany, there are hundreds of Sch?tzenvereins (shooting clubs) with thousands of members. At fairs and festivals, members march through village streets sporting their weapons. In the 19th century, German immigrants brought Schuetzenvereins to the United States, including one in Baltimore in the 1850s; some of the descendants of those immigrants are core supporters of shooting and hunting. At brewing beer, driving cars and shooting guns, Bavarians are world class.
When individual Bavarians want to own and operate Ultimate Driving Machines, they don?t think twice about getting licenses to drive and registrations to own these vehicles. They don?t think twice that they have to be of the legal age to drive, have to show that they know the traffic laws, have to show that they know how to operate these machines safely and have to present liability insurance in case their Ultimate Driving Machines injure anyone.
It?s no different in America. Those who want to own and operate a car are not troubled that they must show that they are of legal age, must demonstrate that they know the traffic laws, must show that they can operate cars safely and must maintain liability insurance on the cars they own. They do not think of licensing as a limitation on their freedom but as a protection for us all against potentially dangerous use of driving machines.
Just as Bavarians accept that they must be licensed to own and operate their Ultimate Driving Machines, so too do they accept, without objection, that they must be licensed to own and shoot firearms. What are these requirements? They are similar to those for cars.
Applicants must show that they are of legal age. They must show that they are ?reliable,? i.e., that they have not recently been convicted of certain crimes. A background check is required. Applicants must have ?personal aptitude? ? they are not mentally ill or substance abusers. They must pass a test that shows that they have ?specialized knowledge.? They must maintain liability insurance.
Sounds oh so reasonable, right?? Wait for the next part.
Finally, applicants must show that they have a ?need? to own a gun. The law defines ?need? broadly to include ?personal or economic interests meriting special recognition, above all as a hunter, marksman, traditional marksman, collector of weapons or ammunition, weapons or ammunition expert, endangered person, weapons manufacturer, weapons dealer or security firm ?? Licensing their use of firearms is no more an imposition on their freedom than is licensing the use of Ultimate Driving Machines.
Trust the government, says the commentary.? If you want a weapon it?s virtually the same thing as needing a weapon.? We really do want to serve you.? Trust us.
Do I seem like a guy who is amenable to these ?reasonable? proposals???WRSA notes that I?m?a dangerous old guy.? Don?t try to sell a pack of lies to dangerous old guys.? After all, we have guns, and we?re dangerous.? We just want to be left alone.
Source: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2013/04/28/dangerous-old-guys/
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Monday, April 29, 2013
Russia caught bomb suspect on wiretap
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.
In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.
The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.
As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011.
Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.
In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to the Boston area over the past 11 years.
Even had the FBI received the information from the Russian wiretaps earlier, it's not clear that the government could have prevented the attack.
In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.
The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn't speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.
In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington Field Office, where that investigation was based, declined to comment.
There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside the United States, officials said.
It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn't share more information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence is being collected.
The FSB said Sunday that it would not comment.
Jim Treacy, the FBI's legal attache in Moscow between 2007 and 2009, said the Russians long asked for U.S. assistance regarding Chechen activity in the United States that might be related to terrorism.
"On any given day, you can get some very good cooperation," Treacy said. "The next you might find yourself totally shut out."
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by U.S. authorities.
But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat's former brother-in-law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a "big-time influence" as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim faith and decided to quit boxing and school.
After receiving the narrow tip from Russia in March 2011, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation into Tamerlan and his mother. But the scope was extremely limited under the FBI's internal procedures.
After a few months, they found no evidence Tamerlan or his mother were involved in terrorism.
The FBI asked Russia for more information. After hearing nothing, it closed the case in June 2011.
In the fall of 2011, the FSB contacted the CIA with the same information. Again the FBI asked Russia for more details and never heard back.
At that time, however, the CIA asked that Tamerlan's and his mother's name be entered into a massive U.S. terrorism database.
The CIA declined to comment Saturday.
Authorities have said they've seen no connection between the brothers and a foreign terrorist group. Dzhohkar told FBI interrogators that he and his brother were angry over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the deaths of Muslim civilians there.
Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008 or 2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the family as Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter version of Islam.
Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified Misha. While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the officials said they have not found a connection between Misha and the Boston attack or terrorism in general.
___
Associated Press writer Adam Goldman in Washington and Michael Kunzelman in Boston contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-caught-bomb-suspect-wiretap-105240857.html
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Sony revises its 2012 earnings forecast, doubles expected net profits
Just like last year, we're reporting on a revision Sony's making to its expectations for last year's profits, but this time around there's some positive news. According to Sony, selling some of the buildings it owns and a weakening yen have doubled its expected net profit from 20 billion yen announced in February to 40 billion yen ($403 million). The complete results will be announced May 9th, and despite Sony managing its first profit since 2008 investors are hoping to hear how it plans to keep the streak going with business gains next year. The PlayStation 4 is expected to headline CEO Kaz Hirai's plans for future products, we should hear just how optimistic Sony is about those prospects in a couple of weeks.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Sony
Via: Bloomberg
Source: Sony (PDF)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/CkXG8LsDEQE/
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AP twitter hacking causes stocks to fall
>>> welcome back. right now the dow is down about 12 point. but it is much calmer on wall street than we witnessed yesterday afternoon. the government is looking into the hacking of the associated press's twitter account which referred to a flash crash. it created a post saying there were explosions at the white house and the president was injured. the dow plunged more than 140 point wiping out more than $140 billion before gaining it all back. joining me live now, tyler mathisen , co-anchor of cnbc's "power lunch." i'm curious, looking at the tick tock , tyler , how soon before people realize what happened there.
>> it happened quickly. i was on the air at the time, tamron , and my cohost, sue herera , noticed that dow dove about 150 point there, very quickly. and there was a lot of scurrying down on the floor of the new york stock exchange . simultaneously, i was hearing in my ear that this hack and presumably, we knew very quickly, that it was a bogus hack, had taken place, and that that probably explained it. it was a matter of a couple of minutes. one of the things we don't know yet, tamron , and really one of the focuses of the investigation, is whether this attack was simply a malicious party trying to unnerve a nation already on edge after the boston bombings last week or whether it could have been someone somewhere trying to profit by the very quick down and up that it caused in the stock market . because if you put that kind of fake tweet out there, you know that the markets are going to pick it up and react negatively.
>> i think, tyler , you know because this is your business. but i think most people would be stunned to know that based on a tweet, that the markets could swing in such a way so give me -- educate us on how that works, of all things that a tweet could cause that.
>> sort of yes and no, tamron . the market reacts to rumors all the time. rumors there's been a bombing at an oil installation in nigeria. or things that are filtered through one way or another. somebody tells somebody. what is different now is the speed and the transmission method, in this case, by twitter. and what happened in this case, clearly, is that there are an awful lot of program traders, who are following lots of different feeds. news feeds, twitter feeds, all kind of sources. and those traders' computers pick up the feeds. pick up the language they would see, ap, bombs, white house , and immediately, they would send cell signals, ask questions later, or react now. so that how it really happens. is it these were all computerized trades that o were getting executed, based on the alga rhythms in the system. just like google used algorithms to lead you to searches somewhere, those algorithms prompt trading.
>> okay, tyler mathisen , thank you. let's we heard tyler complain, but it still leaves you scratching your head when you think about the amount of money wiped out, even though it was earned back, how does this happen? what's the next step in making sure it doesn't?
>> i think the more disturbing thing is that unlike a run of the mill rumor, this appeared to be an official ap report. from what we can tell now, someone hack need the twitter page --
>> well, if we learned anything last week, reports could be wrong. if you didn't know it, after last week, you know it now. so the tweet was not verified.
>> we do put a certain amount of credibility in gate keepers that we trust. if msnbc came out with a tweet, you would react to it differently than if your friend, joe, came out with a tweet. charles schwab , which hosts trillions of dollars of our assets, bank accounts and trading, their website was hacked for about an hour and a half. you couldn't get on the website. it happened again this morning for periods of time between 10:00 and 12:00 . imagine if you have a rumor hitting and charles schwab 's site down because of hacking, this is one of those risk factors. unless you keep your stuff in cash in a mattress or gold, there is nothing can you do about it.
>> does it speak to the biggerish university frailty? we talk about washington, all street and how big women an guys are doing, but nevertheless, this is still a fragile situation.
>> and when it is electronically enhanced, and tyler is right, a lot of this is computer driven and al algorithm, it can all spiral down quickly. but it can also spiral up quickly.
>> all right, thank you very
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New imaging technology could reveal cellular secrets
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Researchers have married two biological imaging technologies, creating a new way to learn how good cells go bad.
"Let's say you have a large population of cells," said Corey Neu, an assistant professor in Purdue University's Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "Just one of them might metastasize or proliferate, forming a cancerous tumor. We need to understand what it is that gives rise to that one bad cell."
Such an advance makes it possible to simultaneously study the mechanical and biochemical behavior of cells, which could provide new insights into disease processes, said biomedical engineering postdoctoral fellow Charilaos "Harris" Mousoulis.
Being able to study a cell's internal workings in fine detail would likely yield insights into the physical and biochemical responses to its environment. The technology, which combines an atomic force microscope and nuclear magnetic resonance system, could help researchers study individual cancer cells, for example, to uncover mechanisms leading up to cancer metastasis for research and diagnostics.
The prototype's capabilities were demonstrated by taking nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of hydrogen atoms in water. Findings represent a proof of concept of the technology and are detailed in a research paper that appeared online April 11 in the journal Applied Physics Letters. The paper was co-authored by Mousoulis' research scientist Teimour Maleki, Babak Ziaie, a professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Neu.
"You could detect many different types of chemical elements, but in this case hydrogen is nice to detect because it's abundant," Neu said. "You could detect carbon, nitrogen and other elements to get more detailed information about specific biochemistry inside a cell."
An atomic force microscope (AFM) uses a tiny vibrating probe called a cantilever to yield information about materials and surfaces on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Because the instrument enables scientists to "see" objects far smaller than possible using light microscopes, it could be ideal for studying molecules, cell membranes and other biological structures.
However, the AFM does not provide information about the biological and chemical properties of cells. So the researchers fabricated a metal microcoil on the AFM cantilever. An electrical current is passed though the coil, causing it to exchange electromagnetic radiation with protons in molecules within the cell and inducing another current in the coil, which is detected.
The Purdue researchers perform "mechanobiology" studies to learn how forces exerted on cells influence their behavior. In work focusing on osteoarthritis, their research includes the study of cartilage cells from the knee to learn how they interact with the complex matrix of structures and biochemistry between cells.
Future research might include studying cells in "microfluidic chambers" to test how they respond to specific drugs and environmental changes.
A U.S. patent application has been filed for the concept. The research has been funded by Purdue's Showalter Trust Fund and the National Institutes of Health.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Emil Venere.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Charilaos Mousoulis, Teimour Maleki, Babak Ziaie, Corey P. Neu. Atomic force microscopy-coupled microcoils for cellular-scale nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Applied Physics Letters, 2013; 102 (14): 143702 DOI: 10.1063/1.4801318
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/ayYzbNTiLZE/130425160208.htm
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