Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newslatest/~3/heUy_IxQV6w/10117.html
oklahoma earthquake new madrid fault current time judy garland earthquake today earthquake today droid razr
Monday, December 5, 2011
Hrithik wears director?s cap again
After having assisted his father in films like “Karan Arjun” and ?Koyala”, B?town hunk Hrithik Roshan has stepped behind the camera once again. This time for his superhero flick ?Krissh2? in which he features as the male protagonist as well. Rakesh Roshan confirmed the reports saying Hrithik has been seriously involved in this project and [...]
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Russians vote in test for Putin (Reuters)
MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election seen as a test of Vladimir Putin's personal authority before his planned return to the presidency, and an electoral watchdog complained of 'massive cyber attacks' on a website alleging violations.
Putin remains by far the most popular politician in the vast country of more than 140 million people but there are some signs Russians may be wearying of his cultivated strong-man image after 12 years in power.
The 59-year-old ex-spy looked stern and said only that he hoped for good results for his ruling United Russia party as he walked past supporters to vote in Moscow.
"I will vote for Putin. Everything he gets involved in, he manages well," said Father Vasily, 61, a white-bearded monk from a nearby monastery. "It's too early for a new generation. They will be in charge another 20 years. We are Russians, we are Asians, we need a strong leadership."
A Western-financed electoral watchdog and two liberal media outlets said their sites had been shut down by hackers intent on silencing allegations of violations. Sites belonging to the Ekho Moskvy radio station, online news portal Slon.ru and the watchdog Golos went down at around 8 a.m.
"Massive cyber attacks are taking place on the sites of Golos and the map showing violations," Golos said on Twitter.
"I believe that nobody but government structures and the FSB (Security service) is capable of conducting such a campaign," Golos executive director Liliya Shibanova told reporters.
Golos said it had been excluded from several polling booths in the Siberian region of Tomsk. Moscow prosecutors launched an investigation last week into Golos' activities after lawmakers objected to its Western financing.
On Saturday, customs officers held Golos's director for 12 hours at a Moscow airport and Washington said on Friday it was concerned by "a pattern of harassment" against the watchdog.
Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter: "It is obvious the election day attack on the (radio) site is part of an attempt to prevent publishing information about violations."
President Dmitry Medvedev, who is stepping aside next year so that Putin can return to the presidency, has dismissed talk of electoral fraud. The general prosecutor's office and the Central Election Commission could be reached for comment.
SOME RUSSIANS WEARY OF PUTIN
Opinion polls before the vote put Putin's party on course to win a majority but less than the 315 seats it now has in the 450-seat lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
If Putin's party gets less than two-thirds of seats, it would be stripped of its so called constitutional majority which allows it to change the constitution and even approve the impeachment of the president.
Some voters said they would vote for Just Russia, which calls itself 'new socialist', or the Communists, who retain support largely among poorer citizens 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of a free-market system.
"United Russia has lost touch with reality," said a 30-year-old history teacher in St Petersburg who gave his name only as Alexander. He was planning to switch his vote to the Communists.
Others in Russia's second city said they would vote for liberal, Western-leaning Yabloko but the biggest liberal opposition group was barred from taking part.
One of its co-leaders, former First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, put a big X across the ballot paper and wrote: "Give us back our elections, vermin."
About 30 opposition protesters gathered by the Kremlin screaming: "Your elections are a farce!" through loudspeakers. Twelve were detained by police, Reuters witnesses said.
Witnesses said police also detained at least 20 people after more than 200 gathered in St Petersburg to protest against election fraud, whistling and chanting: "Shameful Elections!"
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, voting at a cultural centre decked out with Soviet-style hammer and sickle flags, said there appeared to be election violations in several parts of the country spanning 9,000 km (5,600 miles).
"I just spoke to our people in Siberia and the Far East and the situation is very worrying," he said.
PUTIN'S PARTY
Supporters say Putin saved Russia during his 2000-2008 presidency, restoring Kremlin control over sprawling regions and reviving an economy mired in post-Soviet chaos.
His use of military force to crush a rebellion in the southern Muslim region of Chechnya also won him broad support, and security was tight there on election day.
Opposition parties say the election was unfair from the start because of authorities' support for United Russia with cash and television air time.
Putin has no serious personal rivals as Russia's leader. He remains the ultimate arbiter between the clans which control the world's biggest energy producer.
But his party has had to fight against opponents who have branded it a collection of "swindlers and thieves" and combat a growing sense of unease among voters at Putin's grip on power.
"I shall not vote. I shall cross out all the parties on the list and write: 'Down with the party of swindlers and thieves,'" said Nikolai Markovtsev, an independent deputy in the Vladivostok city legislature on the Pacific seaboard.
"These are not elections: this is sacrilege," he said.
Opponents say Putin has crafted a brittle political system which excludes independent voices and that Russians are growing tired of Putin's swaggering image.
Putin is almost certain to win the March 4 presidential election and could extend his rule until 2024 if he wins the maximum two more terms.
But sports fans booed and whistled at Putin at a Moscow martial arts fight last month -- an exceptional event in a country inclined to show respect and restraint towards leaders. ($1 = 30.8947 Russian roubles)
(Writing by Ralph Boulton, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
izon heart attack grill gaddafi dead steve wynn lytro camera lytro camera st. louis cardinals
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Michigan Moves Toward More Charter Schools (ContributorNetwork)
The Michigan House Education Committee approved lifting several restrictions on the number, spacing and style of charter schools. House Republicans favored the bill, but it still has to pass Senate democrats who oppose it, says CBS News Detroit. Here's a Q-and-A about charter schools and public school academies in Michigan.
What is a charter school?
Charter schools are public schools that are owned and governed by private organizations or universities. National Charter School Resource Center defines charter schools as "independently operated schools that are allowed to operate with more autonomy than traditional public schools in exchange for increased accountability." Charter schools are also referred to as PSAs (Public School Academy). The Michigan Department of Education says they are held to the same standards as other public schools, including open vs. selective enrollment, anti-discrimination practices, immunizations and teacher certification. The perks of charters schools, supporters say, are freedom to make more educational decisions and accountability based on student needs not state-mandated guidelines.
How are charter schools funded?
With Schools of Choice provisions in the State School Aid Act, parents may choose where to send their children. With the child goes all or most of his per-student state funding vouchers. Governing organizations also invest money and apply for grants, but state dollars are the primary source of income. Charter schools are in competition with each other and with public schools for ADA (average daily enrollment) funds.
How does a charter school evolve?
As PBS explains, "A group of people--educators, parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs or others - write the charter plan describing the school's guiding principles, governance structure, and applicable accountability measures. If the state approves the charter, the state funds the charter on a per pupil basis."
What charter school restrictions are changing in Michigan?
Most states, including Michigan have placed restrictions on how many charters can operate in an area. Currently, Michigan has 255 charter schools, but if the measure passes congress, as it's expected to by the end of the year, that cap may be lifted. Other legislation lifts some restrictions on cyber schools.
Why the debate over more charter schools?
While charter schools were initially operated by colleges and educational institutions, charters are now available to private for-profit groups. Opponents are concerned that profit-based charters with a vested interest and access to public funds negatively impacts quality of education. Michigan Parents for Schools says that further that the charter school bills would prevent teachers from unionizing and make it easier for administrators to hire from independent contracting groups rather than hiring teachers directly.
Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben writes about people, places, events and issues in her native "Pure Michigan."
house of wax lego man lego man cheryl hines john lackey john lackey ed lee
AP source: Suspect in art thefts due in NY court (AP)
NEW YORK ? A wine steward suspected of a string of brazen art thefts was headed to a New York court Friday to face charges after serving time in California for stealing a Picasso pencil sketch, a person briefed on the investigation said.
Mark Lugo, who just completed a 138-day sentence for grabbing the $275,000 Picasso off a San Francisco art gallery wall, was due to be arraigned Friday on grand larceny and other charges stemming from art heists at two Manhattan hotels, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of the arraignment.
Lugo's San Francisco attorney, Douglas Horngrad, has called him "more like someone who was in the midst of a psychiatric episode" than a calculating art thief. It's unclear whether he has a New York lawyer.
Lugo, 31, has been publicly identified as a suspect in several New York heists since shortly after his July arrest in San Francisco, where police identified him as the man who walked into the Weinstein Gallery, lifted the 1965 Picasso drawing "Tete de Femme" ("Head of a Woman") off the wall, strolled down the street with the sketch under his arm and hopped into a taxi. Police tracked Lugo to a friend's Napa County apartment, where the Picasso was found unframed and prepared for shipping.
At his apartment in Hoboken, N.J., investigators then found a $430,000 trove of stolen art and high-priced wine. The purloined pieces were carefully and prominently displayed, authorities said.
In New York, the charges against Lugo include lifting a $350,000 drawing by the Cubist painter Fernand Leger from a lobby gallery at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel, according to the person briefed on the investigation. The drawing, called "Composition with Mechanical Elements," dates to 1917 and disappeared on June 28.
Lugo also is being charged with stealing a group of five works by the South Korea-born artist Mie Yim, known for her disconcerting images of toy bears and other toy-like creatures, from the Chambers Hotel on June 14, the person said. The hotel had bought the Yim works, together called "Pastel on Board," for $1,800 apiece, the person said.
The San Francisco district attorney's office had said Lugo also was suspected of several other New York art heists. It wasn't immediately clear whether the New York probe was continuing.
The sometime sommelier and kitchen server at upscale Manhattan restaurants also is charged in New Jersey with taking $6,000 worth of wine ? in the form of three bottles of Chateau Petrus Pomerol ? in April from Gary's Wine and Marketplace in Wayne.
Lugo pleaded guilty in October to grand theft for the San Francisco heist. He finished his sentence Nov. 21 but was being held until he could be transferred to New York.
the rum diary addams family in time cj wilson statue of liberty gold rush alaska gold rush alaska
Friday, December 2, 2011
Congress could intervene to stop railroad strike
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A costly railroad strike is looming just in time to scare Christmas-season retailers unless the nation's freight railroads and labor unions resolve their differences by Tuesday. Congress could intervene as early as Friday to avert a shutdown.
House lawmakers said Thursday they hope the parties will agree to extend the negotiation period for another 60 days. If not, House GOP leaders intend to bring up for a vote Friday a bill to block a strike, said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure rail subcommittee.
The bill would impose the settlement recommendations of a five-member Presidential Emergency Board that would bind the parties for the next three years. It is not clear whether Democratic leaders in the Senate ? generally more sympathetic to unions ? would go along with that, or seek another option such as extending the talks.
A strike of any length could cause massive disruption to the economy. Retailers say a rail strike would cost businesses and consumers $2 billion a day and prove especially damaging during the industry's most important shopping season of the year.
It would not only affect the delivery of goods but could also impact thousands of commuters if passenger trains are unable to travel on freight tracks.
"A strike during the busy holiday shopping season could be devastating," Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, said in a letter to Congress.
The last time a railroad strike occurred, in 1991, Congress quickly passed legislation that ended it within a day. A 1982 strike lasted four days.
President Barack Obama appointed the special board in October to mediate the dispute between more than 30 railroads and 13 unions. The White House action averted a strike for at least 60 days until a "cooling off" period ends Tuesday at 12:01 a.m.
The railroads, including Union Pacific Corp., CSX Corp. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, have reached agreements on wages and benefits with 10 of the 13 unions covering about 60 percent of the 132,000 workers bargaining.
The remaining three are the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and the American Train Dispatchers Association, representing about 60,000 workers.
Roland Wilder, attorney for both the engineers and maintenance unions, said he was hopeful a deal could be reached before the deadline, or that an extension could be worked out.
But even a strike by just three unions would cripple railroad commerce.
"In the railroad industry, all organizations honor the picket lines of other unions," Wilder said.
One of the thorniest issues, Wilder said, is a request by some unions for higher reimbursement for lodging and meal expenses for rail employees who are almost constantly working away from home.
The Republican leaders of the House ? Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy ? vowed earlier this week to vote on legislation that would prevent a strike if the parties fail to reach an agreement by the deadline.
"We are following with concern the situation involving our nation's railways, and we are troubled by the possibility of a national railway strike that would jeopardize American jobs and cost our nation's economy an estimated $2 billion per day," the lawmakers said in a statement.
Joanna Moorhead, spokeswoman for the National Railway Labor Conference, which represents the railroads in bargaining talks, said railroads are not eager to extend negotiations beyond the deadline.
"What we're focusing on now is not a postponement, but getting an agreement," Moorhead said.
Sandy Kennedy, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, warned in a letter to Obama on Thursday that a railroad strike would force retailers to shift the delivery of goods to trucks, increasing costs, delivery time and congestion on roadways.
"This means that the Christmas shopping season could be severely affected as products destined for stores sit idle at ports or in traffic," Kennedy said.
___
Associated Press writer Joan Lowy contributed to this report.
Associated Pressnfl standings devin hester devin hester shayne lamas cain velasquez gop debate dos santos
Monday, November 28, 2011
Apps help hone sporting prowess for all
Smartphones can now give amateurs technical help and analysis of the kind that, until recently, had only been available to the professionals
MY GOLF swing is wonky. The backswing isn't so bad, I suppose, but it's my follow-through: it's all over the place.
At least, that's the painful feedback I've gleaned from SwingReader - an iPhone app that uses video to help pinpoint flaws in the average golfer's game. Alongside runners' apps, it's just one of the new ways amateurs can now get technical help and analysis of the kind that, until recently, had only been available to the professionals.
SwingReader, from start-up tech firm UberSense, lets amateurs load videos of their own swing and compare it with footage of professional golfers to see where they are going wrong. In December, computer vision algorithms will be added to the app so that individual objects in the frame - such as the golf club's head - are tracked automatically.
"You can identify objects within the video without the user having to wear sensor nodes on their body," says the firm's Amit Jardosh. "This has never been done on a mobile phone before."
Smartphone sensor packages - which increasingly include an accelerometer and gyroscope - mean they can be also be strapped to an athlete and used to record detailed biomechanical data, such as a runner's stride. But carrying out analysis on a cellphone is impractical. "Processing this data chews up a tonne of battery power," says Tristan McNab of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
So McNab is working on an iPhone platform that logs the athlete's movements using the smartphone's built-in sensors but then uploads the data to cloud servers via Wi-Fi for the heavy number-crunching.
Users have an account that allows them to access a suite of analytical tools online. "By offloading calculations to the server, we save the user battery power and they may only need to buy a single app," says McNab.
But all of this data is useless to athletes unless it's delivered in a "reasonable and rational way", says Richard Wheater, head of coaching for England Athletics.
For example, an amateur runner may not know what to do with a system that says "your foot is pronating 32 degrees when it hits the ground". Simpler instructions like "try lifting your knees" could be more helpful.
"You've got to remember it's the quality of interpretation that counts," he says.
For this reason, UberSense's product still requires someone to view the video frames and make recommendations to the athlete.
Beyond apps, researchers are also turning to devices known as inertial measurement units (IMUs). Michael Lapinski at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge has developed the sportSemble system, which uses IMUs to analyse how baseball pitchers throw the ball. Each unit contains an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer to measure strength and direction of magnetic field, similar to those found in an iPhone. One is attached to the pitcher's hand, wrist, upper arm, chest and waist.
IMUs are much more sensitive than the iPhone's sensors - the IMU accelerometers can record forces up to 120 g created as an athlete goes through his pitching motion, for example. Lapinski is working with a Major League Baseball team (he won't say which one) to catalogue how their star pitchers manage to dominate the league's best hitters. Such data could also help amateur players improve their game.
IMUs could even help those looking to improve their regular jog. Christina Stohrmann at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich has attached sensors to a runner's hip and foot to distinguish between the contrasting running styles of novices and those more experienced. Currently, optical tracking is used to monitor a runner's gait. This requires expensive equipment and limits the analysis to an indoor treadmill. "Even professional athletes don't have regular access to these systems, they are so expensive," says Stohrmann.
Data collected from the sensor units picks out how each runner's foot hits the floor, whether it is toe first (better for sprinters) or a mid-foot stride (for long-distance runners). It also measures heel lift and length of sole contact with the ground.
Stohrmann says her system, presented at the Ubicomp conference in Beijing, China, in September, could be used like an advanced version of pedometer kit Nike+ to give biomechanical feedback and tips to amateur runners via a smartphone app.
Andy Harland, head of the sports technology research group at Loughborough University, UK, says the increase in performance from such devices will likely be more dramatic in novice athletes than professionals. "Some kind of law of diminishing returns would apply here," he says. "Some basic intervention is likely to allow a novice to develop a golf swing or running style to a reasonable level fairly quickly. However, much more sophisticated analysis methods and interpretation would be needed to allow an elite athlete to improve by a much smaller amount."
In other words, all the fancy new measurements probably won't make you as good as a pro. But they should at least level the playing field.
Measure for leisure
Amateurs already have ways to get simple data about their training.
One of the first such products was Nike+, a pedometer that is attached to your training shoe and syncs data with your iPod. Earlier this year Nike teamed up with satnav company TomTom to create a GPS-enabled watch, and Garmin recently launched a competing device, Garmin Fit.
Team sports are catered for too. Adidas has just unveiled a new football boot that contains a sensor which detects how much ground the footballer is covering, their direction, and how often they sprint. Wahoo Fitness uses pedometers and heart rate monitors that link with an iPhone app to log progress while running or cycling.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
Subscribe now to comment.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
earthquake in texas official time news 9 tuscaloosa tuscaloosa earthquake california earthquake california
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Hamas: Palestinians to skip interim government
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? A senior Hamas figure says that rival Palestinian leaders have quietly decided to keep their respective governments in the West Bank and Gaza in place until elections are held.
This arrangement would make it less risky for West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to pursue reconciliation with the widely shunned Islamic militant Hamas group, which rules Gaza.
It would bypass the contentious issue of forming an interim Palestinian unity government before elections, tentatively scheduled for May.
The Hamas figure says the understanding was reached in talks last week between Abbas and Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the leaders have not made their decision public.
An Abbas envoy, Azzam al-Ahmed, denied on Saturday that such a deal had been made.
Associated Presspay it forward pay it forward haunted houses favicon.ico favicon.ico footloose best iphone 4 case
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)