Gov. Christie co-hosting 'Today' to promote N.J. shore

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. (AP) ? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is co-hosting NBC's "Today" on Friday morning as part of a campaign to proclaim that the state's shore is ready for business seven months after being devastated by Superstorm Sandy.

The governor, who has made several appearances on national talk shows, follows Laura Bush and Sarah Palin as political figures who have been guest co-hosts on the morning show.

Christie has spent this week as promoter-in-chief with a series of events designed to boost tourism ahead of Memorial Day weekend, when crowds usually start flowing to the beach.

The show is to be broadcast from Seaside Heights, where the storm swept a roller coaster into the ocean, making for one of the superstorm's iconic images.

The roller coaster was taken away this month, but Casino Pier, the seaside amusement park where it used to sit, plans to have 18 rides open this summer.

Up and down the coast, some boardwalks have been rebuilt ? though not the one here ? and beaches are open, though many of them are narrower this year. Southern New Jersey resorts such as Ocean City and the Wildwoods had relatively little damage.

When the storm hit in October, New Jersey sustained an estimated $37 billion worth of damage, with 360,000 houses and apartment units damaged.

Boosting the shore is important to New Jersey because tourism brings in more than $35 billion per year.

But some Democrats are complaining that Christie, a Republican, is promoting the shore as a way to promote himself as he seeks re-election this year. They take aim especially at a $25 million federally funded ad campaign for the shore. Christie and his family appear in a TV commercial as part of the campaign. He has said that not being in the ad because of fears of political criticism would have been a mistake.

The White House announced that President Barack Obama will tour the coastline with Christie on Tuesday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/christie-co-hosting-today-promote-nj-shore-064618041.html

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Magnetic field misbehavior in solar flares explained: The culprit is turbulence

May 22, 2013 ? When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines of force should flow away in lock-step with the particles, whole and unbroken. Instead, the lines sometimes break apart and quickly reconnect in a way that has mystified astrophysicists.

But in a paper published in the May 23 issue of the journal Nature, an interdisciplinary research team led by a Johns Hopkins mathematical physicist says it has found a key to the mystery. The culprit, the group proposed, is turbulence -- the same sort of violent disorder that can jostle a passenger jet when it occurs in the atmosphere. Using complex computer modeling to mimic what happens to magnetic fields when they encounter turbulence within a solar flare, the researchers built their case, explaining why the usual rule did not apply.

"The flux-freezing theorem often explains things beautifully," said Gregory Eyink, a Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics professor who was lead author of the Nature study. "But in other instances, it fails miserably. We wanted to figure out why this failure occurs."

The flux-freezing theorem was developed 70 years ago by Hannes Alfv?n, who later won a Nobel Prize in physics for closely related work. His principle states that magnetic lines of force are carried along in a moving fluid like strands of thread cast into a river, and thus they can never "break" and reconnect. But scientists have discovered that within violent solar flares, the principle does not always hold true. Studies of these flares have determined that their magnetic field lines sometimes do break like stretched rubber bands and reconnect in as little as 15 minutes, releasing vast amounts of energy that power the flare.

"But the flux-freezing principle of modern plasma physics implies that this process in the solar corona should take a million years!" Eyink said. "A big problem in astrophysics is that no one could explain why flux-freezing works in some cases but not others."

Some scientists suspected that turbulence was playing havoc with the behavior predicted by this principle. To find out, Eyink teamed up with other experts in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, data management and computer science, based at Johns Hopkins and other institutions.

"By necessity, this was a highly collaborative effort," Eyink said. "Everyone was contributing their expertise. No one person could have accomplished this."

The team developed a computer simulation to replicate what happens under various conditions to the charged particles that exist in a plasma state of matter within solar flares.

"Our answer was very surprising," Eyink said. "Magnetic flux-freezing no longer holds true when the plasma becomes turbulent. Most physicists expected that flux-freezing would play an even larger role as the plasma became more highly conducting and more turbulent, but, as a matter of fact, it breaks down completely. In an even greater surprise, we found that the motion of the magnetic field lines becomes completely random. I do not mean 'chaotic,' but instead as unpredictable as quantum mechanics. Rather than flowing in an orderly, deterministic fashion, the magnetic field lines instead spread out like a roiling plume of smoke."

Although some scholars may still believe there are other explanations for solar flares, Eyink said, "I think we made a pretty compelling case that turbulence alone can account for field-line breaking."

The way the researchers from different disciplines teamed up with Eyink to solve the solar flare puzzle was particularly noteworthy.

"We used ground-breaking new database methods, like those employed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, combined with high-performance computing techniques and original mathematical developments," he said. "The work required a perfect marriage of physics, mathematics and computer science to develop a fundamentally new approach to performing research with very large datasets."

Eyink added that the research could lead to a better understanding of solar flares and mass ejections of material from the sun's corona. Such powerful "space weather" or geomagnetic storms can endanger astronauts, knock out communications satellites and even lead to massive blackouts of electrical power grids on Earth, he said.

Co-authors of the Nature study from Johns Hopkins's Whiting School of Engineering and Krieger School of Arts and Sciences were Cristian Lalescu and Hussein Aluie, from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics; Kalin Kanov and Randal Burns, from the Department of Computer Science; Charles Meneveau, from the Department of Mechanical Engineering; and Alexander Szalay, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Aluie is also affiliated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The authors of this study are also affiliated with Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES), which has been facilitating groundbreaking research based on big data.

The co-authors from other institutions were Ethan Vishniac, from the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Canada; and Kai B?rger, from Fakult?t f?r Informatik, Technische Universit?t M?nchen, Munich, Germany.

Funding for the research came from National Science Foundation grant CDI-II: CMMI 0941530, and the database infrastructure was funded by NSF grant OCI-108849 and by Johns Hopkins' Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science. Support also was provided by Microsoft Research. Vishniac's work was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The turbulence data on which the analysis relies are publicly available at http://turbulence.pha.jhu.edu .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/CQ2jZ2HK3wc/130522160303.htm

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Police: Trenton standoff resolved, 3 children safe

A state police swat team member readies a robot to enter a home where a man had barricaded himself on Friday, May 10, 2013 in Trenton, N.J. The standoff with an armed man who police said took multiple hostages entered its second day Saturday as authorities worked to negotiate his surrender and his captives' safe release. The man, whose identity has not been released, was holed up in a brick house in South Trenton more than 18 hours after the standoff began Friday afternoon, authorities said. (AP Photo/The Trentonian, Scott Ketterer) TRENTON TIMES OUT; PHILLY METRO OUT

A state police swat team member readies a robot to enter a home where a man had barricaded himself on Friday, May 10, 2013 in Trenton, N.J. The standoff with an armed man who police said took multiple hostages entered its second day Saturday as authorities worked to negotiate his surrender and his captives' safe release. The man, whose identity has not been released, was holed up in a brick house in South Trenton more than 18 hours after the standoff began Friday afternoon, authorities said. (AP Photo/The Trentonian, Scott Ketterer) TRENTON TIMES OUT; PHILLY METRO OUT

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) ? A standoff with an armed man who took multiple hostages inside a Trenton home has ended and three children are safe, police said early Sunday.

Word of the confrontation's conclusion came a short while after the standoff, which had had prompted the evacuation of nearby homes, entered its third day.

"The Trenton hostage situation is resolved, the three children are safe, and the area is secure," state police Sgt. Adam Grossman told The Associated Press, delivering a joint statement also from Trenton police and county prosecutors.

He refused to reveal any more about the standoff, including how it ended, what became of the gunman, any information about the children, and if there were any other hostages.

Grossman indicated that more details will be released at a news conference later in the morning.

The man, whose identity has not been released, had been holed-up in a two-story red brick house in South Trenton, authorities said. The standoff began Friday afternoon.

During the standoff, police declined to give any details on the number of people being held, their ages or relationship to the armed man.

Earlier, state police Lt. Stephen Jones had described the standoff as an "ongoing, tense situation" and said police were working to "bring this to a peaceful end."

On Saturday, family members of a woman they said was among the hostages grew angry, with some of them going under police tape and briefly confronting officers about the situation.

"Do something! Do something!" screamed a man who said he was the woman's nephew. "Make something happen!"

Police were called to the home before 3 p.m. Friday on reports that a man had barricaded himself inside.

Authorities said police entered the home and found the man brandishing a gun. Police retreated safely, and a SWAT team was called in.

Police said an arson bomb unit was also on the scene. Police declined to say whether the man was making any demands.

Homes on the surrounding block had been evacuated as a precaution, and police tape cordoned off the street in front of the house and nearby. An ambulance was parked near the home but left the scene earlier Saturday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-12-US-Barricaded-Home/id-e2994722416c4af69a56d190588dbb5a

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Odds Are Against Congress Restoring Cancer Drug Funding : Roll ...

Lawmakers and outside coalitions supported by doctors and drug companies face an uphill battle in their bid to reverse sequester cuts that have hit cancer drugs.

Although more than 60 lawmakers are co-sponsoring a bipartisan House bill (HR 1416) to block the cuts, it is not scheduled for floor action and there is no companion version in the Senate. Moreover, the White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill want to replace the whole sequester and have said they are not interested in piecemeal funding fixes.

Still, heavy lobbying efforts by groups that represent cancer doctors and pharmaceutical companies, such as the Community Oncology Alliance, are under way. They argue that if Congress can act to end furloughs of air traffic controllers, as it did last month, cancer patients should also be protected.

?We don?t want people waiting in lines in airports. But at the same time, when we have cancer patients who are vulnerable and need our help, I really thought that should have been the place that we should have gone first,? Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., the bill?s main sponsor, said in a May 1 interview with MSNBC. Fifty other GOP House members back the bill, along with more than a dozen Democrats.

Their aim is to reverse the sequester?s 2 percent cut in Medicare funding that covers the costs of drugs administered in doctors? offices for cancer treatments and some other ailments. Those payments have long been a key source of revenue for small cancer clinics, which advocates say deliver services more efficiently than larger facilities.

Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at John Hopkins University, said companies lobbying to restore the funds have a long history of successfully shaping Medicare policy. ?The pharmaceutical companies are a very powerful force in Washington,? he said.

Advocates for cancer doctors point to a 2011 report done for McKesson Corp., an owner of cancer specialty services, which found the average annual cost of drugs and associated treatments was $47,500 per patient at a smaller cancer practice and $54,000 per patient at a larger hospital.

Source: http://www.rollcall.com/news/odds_are_against_congress_restoring_cancer_drug_funding-224713-1.html

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Drugmakers, health groups bring poor girls vaccine

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Two multinational drugmakers are teaming up with top global health groups to protect millions of girls in the world's poorest countries from deadly cervical cancer.

Starting with pilot programs in eight Asian and African nations, the ambitious project ultimately is intended to inoculate more than 30 million girls in more than 40 countries by 2020. Given that most women killed by cervical cancer live in developing countries, the project could have a huge impact.

The endeavor was announced Thursday by the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership that's worked with drugmakers to deliver affordable vaccines to poor countries to treat childhood illnesses that are big killers.

"This is a transformational moment for the health of women and girls across the world," said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, which is short for Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

"A vast gap currently exists between girls in rich and poor countries. With GAVI's programs we can begin to bridge that gap so that all girls can be protected against cervical cancer no matter where they are born," he said in a statement.

Drugmakers Merck & Co. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC initially will provide 2.4 million doses of their vaccines against cancer-causing human papilloma virus ? for a fraction of the cost commanded in Western countries.

Merck will supply its Gardasil for $4.50 per dose, and Glaxo its Cervarix for $4.60 per dose. In the U.S., the shots cost well over $100 apiece, and a three-dose series over six months is required.

The vaccines protect against the strains of human papilloma virus, or HPV, that most commonly cause cancer. The virus, transmitted during sex, causes cervical cancer as well as vaginal, vulvar, anal and oral cancers. The vaccines prevent roughly 70 percent of those cancers.

In developed countries, older girls and women routinely get Pap tests to check for cervical cancer or signs of precancerous changes in cervical tissue. They're treated promptly, often before cancer begins, and few die. And increasingly, young girls and now boys as well are vaccinated with either Gardisil or Cervarix, starting as young as age 9 so they're protected well before they become sexually active.

Not so in poor countries.

"They don't have the benefit of screening to catch cancer early, when it can still be treated," Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, president of Merck Vaccines, said in an interview.

As a result, 85 percent of the 275,000 women killed by cervical cancer each year live in poor countries, where HPV is most prevalent.

"It is a disease that has devastating, life-threatening consequences and it is preventable," said Gerberding, an infectious diseases expert who's a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Our aim is to do what we can to make the vaccine available."

The GAVI project will begin "demonstration projects" administering the vaccines to girls aged 9 to 13, starting in Kenya as early as this month. Then it will be expanded to Ghana, Laos, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.

The goal is for the governments of those countries to show they can set up a national system ? with medical staff, clinic supplies, distribution systems and supply management all well organized ? to provide the vaccines over the long term. The program also will bring an opportunity to teach the girls about nutrition, sexual health and HIV prevention.

Already, GAVI is planning to provide the shots nationwide in Rwanda, starting next year.

Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, N.J., is providing 93 percent of the shots initially. It's also agreed to provide more shots at an even-lower price in the future, if higher volumes of vaccines are ordered, as that would reduce production costs.

Merck and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline are among the world's biggest makers of vaccines, and both have long provided many for free or at discounted prices to health programs in poor countries.

GAVI also will work with the heavy hitters of global health and development groups, including the CDC, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank. Other partners include the charities, corporations and 18 wealthy countries that help fund GAVi.

In the U.S., the vaccines have become steady money makers since they were launched a half-dozen years ago, but they haven't turned into the mega-sellers initially envisioned.

That's partly because of their high price here, but also because of political fights. Some conservative groups opposed the vaccines, arguing that giving adolescents a vaccine to protect them against a virus transmitted by sexual activity would encourage it.

___

Follow Linda A. Johnson at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/drugmakers-health-groups-bring-poor-112248453.html

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Moon's water may have earthly origins

Ratio of hydrogen to deuterium suggests a common source

By Andrew Grant

Web edition: May 9, 2013

Water trapped deep within the moon?s interior came from the same source as water on Earth, a new study reveals. The research suggests that the moon seized a healthy supply of water from Earth when the satellite formed in the aftermath of a cataclysmic collision 4.5 billion years ago.

?This is an important result and a surprising result,? says David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech.

The findings come from the laboratory of Brown University geochemist Alberto Saal, who has spent the last five years trying to overturn the conventional wisdom that the moon was born dry. In the new study, published May 9 in Science, Saal and his team analyzed the water in two moon rocks returned by Apollo astronauts in the 1970s. The rocks probably formed from buried magma that was forced to the surface during volcanic eruptions early in the moon?s lifetime. They contain small globules of hardened lava embedded within crystals that prevented the water within from venting into space.

The team analyzed the rocks? water by measuring the concentrations of hydrogen and deuterium, a form of hydrogen with an extra neutron. The ratio of these two isotopes reflects the origin of water within the solar system. The water on gas giant planets and most comets that formed in the outer solar system has a high deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio, while Earth?s water has a lower ratio.

To Saal?s surprise, the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio of his lunar samples is very similar to that of water on Earth and in meteorites, suggesting that water on Earth and the moon originated from the same meteorite impacts billions of years ago. ?The reservoir of water for Earth and the moon is the same,? he says.

Not everyone agrees. Francis Albarede, a geochemist at ?cole Normale Sup?rieure in Lyon, France, notes that the rocks Saal analyzed are far richer in water and other volatile molecules than the thousands of other rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts. He says that there is no way to prove they are representative of the infant moon?s composition. ?They are rogue samples,? Albarede says. ?I don?t think they represent the interior of the moon, so I don?t think we can say anything about the moon?s water content.?

If Saal?s interpretation is valid, then it introduces a twist in the already-complicated quest to understand how the moon formed. The leading theory is that a giant object, perhaps the size of Mars, slammed into an infant Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Simulations suggest that the heat from such an impact would have created an orbiting ring of molten rock around Earth that eventually coalesced into the moon.

The problem is that those extreme temperatures, estimated to be in excess of 5,000? ?Celsius, should have vaporized any water that existed on Earth and the impacting object, leaving the newly formed moon bone dry. (Earth could have reacquired water later, through meteorite impacts, and held on to it due to the planet?s thick atmosphere.) But Saal?s new results have him convinced that the water fossilized in moon rocks came from Earth and somehow survived the moon-forming impact.

Stevenson agrees that this scenario makes the most sense for now, but he points out that there are a lot of strange measurements that still need to be explained. For example,?compared with Earth,?the moon has a very small amount of potassium, an element that, like water, should have vaporized after the impact. Why would potassium disappear but water, which is lighter and more volatile, survive unscathed?

?There is no story for the formation of the moon that satisfies everything we know,? Stevenson says. ?But that?s fine. That?s what drives science.?

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350303/title/Moons_water_may_have_earthly_origins

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Man held in 3 Kansas deaths, child 'presumed' dead

OTTAWA, Kan. (AP) ? Authorities in eastern Kansas said Thursday they have arrested a 27-year-old convicted felon in the deaths of three people whose bodies were found on a farm, and that a fourth victim ? an 18-month-old girl ? is presumed dead.

Franklin County Sheriff Jeffrey Richards said during an afternoon news conference that the prosecutor has 48 hours from the time the suspect is arrested to file formal charges. He was arrested early Thursday and is being held at the Franklin County jail on a first-degree murder charge.

The man previously served prison time for shooting a former employer in 2005 after being fired, according to court records and interviews with that victim's relatives. Franklin County Attorney Stephen Hunting said earlier Thursday that the man does not have an attorney in the latest case.

Richards declined to discuss a possible motive for the deaths, but said the investigation remains active.

"Any lead that is coming in we are going to continue to follow up on that lead," the sheriff said Thursday morning. "Just because we have one person in custody doesn't mean we are going to stop. I believe the victims deserve that, and I believe everyone here is going to demand that."

He later declined to say whether there are any other suspects, but said there are no apparent public safety concerns.

He said the suspect in custody was located in Emporia, about 50 miles southwest of the Ottawa area farm where the bodies were discovered, but did not say when he was found or what led police to him.

Emporia police on Tuesday also found the car that 21-year-old Kaylie Bailey, of Olathe, and her 18-month-old daughter, Lana Bailey, were last seen in before they were reported missing last week.

Kaylie Bailey's body was found Monday at the farm west of Ottawa, where she had gone to drop her daughter off for the day with her friend, 30-year-old Andrew Stout, at his home. Friends who had gone to check on Stout found Bailey's body under a tarp in the garage and called police, who then found the bodies of Stout and 31-year-old Steven E. White, who also lived at the home on the farm.

Richards said he could not release causes of deaths because of the ongoing investigation. He said Lana Bailey is now "presumed" dead, although the child's body had not been found as of late Thursday afternoon.

"Finding Lana is a top priority for our investigators," Richards said earlier Thursday. "We will exhaust every lead and follow up every tip until we bring her home."

During the afternoon news conference, the sheriff said investigators were "ramping up" their search for the child. Law enforcement teams were scouring the area around the farm on horses and all-terrain vehicles and on foot. The FBI was searching by plane and the Kansas Highway Patrol by helicopter.

"We have to be very meticulous. We have to go fast, but not so fast we're going to miss something," Richards said.

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency was sending staff to Franklin County. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is assisting with the investigation as well.

Relatives of Steven Dale Free, the victim of the 2005 shooting, have long complained that the suspect got off too lightly in that case. The suspect pleaded no contest in August 2005 to a reduced charge of attempted second-degree murder in Free's shooting and was sentenced to five years in prison. He also was ordered to pay about $78,000 in restitution.

The Kansas Department of Corrections said the suspect was placed on parole in July 2009 and released from parole in April 2012.

Free's sister, Stephanie Ingram, said Free fired the suspect from a $10-an-hour-job tearing down mobile homes because he would "kick rocks around, sit down, and he wouldn't do what Steve told him." The next day, Free was playing pool with Ingram's son in a detached garage, left to use the bathroom and was shot five times. Ingram recalled that the gunfire sounded like fireworks.

Although Free survived, he was never able to work again, Ingram said. She said her brother was only paid a few hundred dollars of restitution before he died of lung cancer in December 2011 at the age of 53.

Ingram said her brother mistook the initial symptoms of cancer for side effects from the shooting, which left him with bullet fragments in his lung.

"I think somebody needs to answer for them not doing their job the first time," said Ingram, 51, of Ottawa, referring to the five-year sentence. "If they would have done their jobs when he unloaded a full gun on my brother, he wouldn't have been out to do it. Basically they slapped him on the wrist and said, 'OK, do it again.' That's really how it feels."

___

Hollingsworth contributed from Kansas City, Mo.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/man-held-3-kansas-deaths-child-presumed-dead-000846780.html

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Ouya raises $15 million, delays game console launch until June ...

The makers of the Ouya $99 video game console have raised $15 million from investors, which the company promises to use to increase production of the little game console.

On the other hand, customers who have pre-ordered will still have to wait a little longer than planned. Originally the first Ouya devices sold through retail channels were expected to ship June 4th. Now that date has been pushed back to June 25th.

Ouya says pushing back the launch date by 3 weeks will help the company meet the larger-than-anticipated demand. But according to Joystiq, the Ouya team is also using the extra time to revamp the design of the game console?s wireless gamepad a bit.

Many folks who donated to Ouya?s fundraising campaign on Kickstarter have been using pre-release hardware for the last few weeks, and one of the top complaints has been that some of the buttons on the controller can get stuck.

The Ouya game console features an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor and Android-based software. While it?s based on Android, it has a custom user interface and game store.

The goal of the project wasn?t just to release an inexpensive game console, but also to lower the barriers for game developers looking to write software that you can play on a television screen. So while the Ouya console might not have the same kind of power (or the same level of games) as the latest PlayStation or Xbox consoles, it does offer a new kind of living room gaming experience.

Early reviews of the pre-release hardware have been supportive of the device?s potential, but critical of the current state of the platform. But many of the issues people have had seem like they could be addressed by software and hardware updates.

Ouya is continuing to ship devices to backers of its Kickstarter campaign. You can pre-order a retail unit for delivery in late June from Amazon, Best Buy, or other stores.

?

Source: http://liliputing.com/2013/05/ouya-raises-15-million-delays-game-console-launch-until-june-25th.html

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Note reportedly found inside Castro home includes chilling admission: ?I am a sexual predator?

Ariel Castro is arraigned at Cleveland Municipal Court. (Getty Images)

A note reportedly found inside Ariel Castro's Cleveland home in 2004 includes a chilling admission: "I am a sexual predator. I need help."

The letter, believed to have been written by Castro in 2004, was obtained by Scott Taylor, an investigative reporter for Cleveland's 19 Action News.

Castro, 52, was charged on Wednesday with four counts of kidnapping and the rape of three women?Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32?whom he is suspected of holding captive in his home for close to a decade. Berry gave birth to a child, who also is believed to have been held captive in the home. Police say the women were restrained with ropes and chains and were repeatedly raped.

Taylor posted excerpts from the letter on his Twitter feed.

"They are here against their will because they made a mistake of getting in a car with a total stranger," Castro wrote, according to Taylor. "I don't know why I kept looking for another. I already had 2 in my possession."

According to Taylor, Castro also "writes about wanting to kill himself and 'give all the money I saved to my victims.'"

And, Castro writes, he was surprised to learn how young DeJesus was because "he thought she was a lot older."

Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba told reporters on Wednesday that the women, as well as Castro, have given lengthy statements to police.

During their captivity, the women had been let outside twice to walk from the Castro house to the garage in the rear of the house. The women were forced to wear disguises on those occasions, he said.

City Councilman Brian Cummins, who was briefed by police on the investigation, told the Associated Press that the three women were subjected to prolonged sexual and psychological abuse. He said the women suffered multiple miscarriages while in captivity.

Castro appeared in Cleveland Municipal Court on Thursday morning for an initial hearing.

?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/castro-note-120750000.html

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People organize daily travel efficiently: Population-level study discovers small-scale details about individuals' choices

May 8, 2013 ? Studies of human mobility usually focus on either the small scale -- determining the origins, destinations and travel modes of individuals' daily commutes -- or the very large scale, such as using air-travel patterns to track the spread of epidemics over time. The large-scale studies, most of which are made possible by the vast data generated and collected by new technologies like sensors and cellphones, are very good at describing the big picture, but don't provide much detail at the individual level. Smaller-scale studies have the opposite characteristic: Their findings generally can't be scaled up from the individual to be applied broadly to populations.

But a new study led by MIT's Marta Gonz?lez bridges that gap. It uses big data and the methodologies of statistical physics and network theory to describe the daily travel behavior of individuals, behavior that holds true at the larger scale of the entire population of two cities on different continents.

The study, published in the May 8 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, shows that people in Chicago and Paris make their secondary trips -- those in addition to their primary commutes -- in a consistent and expeditious manner, using only 17 of more than 1 million possible trip sequences for up to five secondary locations.

The most important aspect of the study, Gonz?lez says, is that because the 17 trip configurations hold true across the board, they represent "motifs" in network theory. Motifs are patterns that occur with such frequency that the statistical probability of their random occurrence is negligible. The motifs indicate that the study has uncovered a simple, basic principle that can be applied broadly in more complex models.

"The existence of a motif means our predictive model can be based on a relatively simple mathematical formula rather than on more complex econometrics that try to account for all the different types of human behavior," says Gonz?lez, the Gilbert Winslow Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). "For a physicist, this is key. With our model, we can now add drops of complexity -- such as the types of secondary locations -- to get a more complete picture."

Christian Schneider, a postdoc who is first author on the paper, calls the model the "perturbation model."

"Once a person does a single 'flexible' trip beyond the primary commute, they are 10 times more likely to make an additional flexible trip rather than going directly back home. So I say they're in a perturbed state," Schneider says. An example is if a person goes from work to a restaurant, they will then be more likely to go for dessert at another establishment than they would be if they had gone home for dinner.

Another pattern emerged from the data: With the addition of each flexible trip, the number of possible trip sequence configurations increased exponentially, but the number of configurations actually used did not increase by much, if at all. So for a single flexible trip (three locations total), only three of five possible trip configurations are used. Add a location and only four of the 83 possible configurations are used. With five locations, people again use only four of the now 5,408 possible configurations. Six locations offer 1,046,991 possible configurations, only four of which are actually used. In each of those cases, the three or four chosen configurations are used by 90 percent of commuters in both Paris and Chicago.

"The motifs tell us that people seem to travel quite efficiently," Schneider says. If a person returned to the home location between trips, the total travel time and distance would be much larger. Additionally, people seem to plan ahead, thus they avoid revisiting a location."

The research team -- which also included Vitaly Belik, a former CEE postdoc, who is now a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in G?ttingen, Germany; and Thomas Couronn? and Zbigniew Smoreda, research faculty at France Telecom -- used Paris cellphone data for 154 days and a Paris travel survey covering a single day. The researchers used one day's data taken from a Chicago travel survey.

The research was funded by grants from the New England University Transportation Center, the NEC Corporation Fund, the Solomon Buchsbaum Research Fund and the Volkswagen Foundation.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/GN8uqXmHu0w/130508133119.htm

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Web TV Startup Aereo Files Preemptive Legal Action Against CBS ...

May 6, 2013 at 8:07 am PT

Here?s the next round in Aereo vs. the TV guys: The Web video startup has made a preemptive legal move against CBS, seeking to head off a series of lawsuits as it expands out of the New York area.

Shortish version:

• Aereo, which distributes broadcast TV programming over the Web but doesn?t pay the broadcasters to do so, has won a couple of important legal victories in federal court.
• Now the IAC-backed company plans on expanding to 22 cities outside of the New York area, starting with Boston this month.
• CBS, one of the broadcasters that is suing Aereo, has said it will oppose Aereo every time it opens in a new market, with a new suit. Last month, CBS spokesman Dana McClintock warned of new lawsuits via Twitter (at least twice), and CBS CEO Les Moonves said the same thing during an earnings call last week.
• Aereo, which cites both men in its complaint, is essentially asking the same court that granted it its first legal victory ? New York?s Southern District ? to preemptively rule against CBS in any of the cities it has announced plans to enter this year.

And here?s the comment from CBS:

These public relations and legal maneuvers do not change the fundamentally illegal nature of Aereo?s supposed business. The issue of unauthorized streaming of copyrighted television programming is now being contested in the 2nd Circuit and the 9th Circuit, and wherever Aereo attempts to operate there will be vigorous challenges to its Illegal business model.

Still here? You must really want to read this thing! Here you go:

Aereo Complaint for Declaratory Judgment ? FINAL FILED

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Source: http://allthingsd.com/20130506/aereo-citing-tweets-and-conference-calls-fires-off-a-new-legal-salvo-at-cbs/

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Exclusive Blog: Giuliana Rancic Calls Bill a ?Baby Hog?

Bill: I had a great role model for being a father -- my dad was very hands-on and I learned so much from him. It’s important for me to be an active participant in Duke's life and teach him the things my dad taught me. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time with my dad. He taught me how to water ski and snow ski, and that is something I hope to teach Duke one day.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/giuliana-rancic-calls-husband-bill-baby-hog/1-a-534588?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Agiuliana-rancic-calls-husband-bill-baby-hog-534588

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London hosts Somalia meeting to aid post-war gains

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) ? Somalia's president over the weekend received the country's first pieces of mail in more than two decades. It's the kind of small but hopeful development that leaders meeting in London on Tuesday want to see more of.

Britain and Somalia on Tuesday co-host an international donors' conference that aims to provide international support for the Somali government as it continues to leave behind two decades of conflict.

Though Mogadishu still suffers from intermittent terror attacks by the Islamic extremists of al-Shabab, including a car bomb Sunday that killed at least seven people, the capital is much more peaceful today than in years past, when deadly battles took place daily.

The weekend mail delivery to Mogadishu came courtesy of the United Nations Postal Administration. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent letters to Somalia's president.

"It's a victory and a sign of development. We have received the first letters now, and we are going to process sending letters soon," said Abdullahi Elmoge Nor, Somalia's Minister of Information, Telecoms and Transport.

At the London conference Somalia is set to share its plans to develop the country's security forces, justice sector and financial management systems. International donors are likely to pledge aid to help get Somalia's plans moving. Britain said in February it would give 3 million pounds ($4.7 million), with a large chunk intended to help train Somali lawmakers.

Eradicating sexual violence ? a cause championed by British Foreign Secretary William Hague ? will also be on the agenda. In the run-up to the conference Britain and the United Arab Emirates announced 2 million pounds ($3.1 million) in joint funding to help tackle sexual violence in Somalia.

Britain's Foreign Office said it expected representatives of "nearly 50 governments," as well as groups like the United Nations, the African Union, the World Bank, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League. Also expected to attend is Kenya's new President Uhuru Kenyatta, who faces charges at the International Criminal Court for allegations connected to 2007-08 post-election violence.

After Sunday's attack in Mogadishu, Britain's Minister for Africa Mark Simmonds said the bombing demonstrated the importance for the Somali government and international partners to work together to combat extremism. Gunmen and suicide bombers attacked Mogadishu's Supreme Court complex last month, killing more than 35 people.

Despite the attacks, new construction is up in the capital. New restaurants have opened and citizens are participating in sports leagues, which had been banned by the extremists. Britain last month opened an embassy in Mogadishu for the first time in 20 years.

Human Rights Watch urged international donors meeting in London to make accountability and women's rights a priority. It also said the government should exclude power brokers who violate human rights from any role in the security forces.

"International goodwill for the new Somali leadership and its proposed reforms should not mean unqualified support," said David Mepham, Britain director at Human Rights Watch.

The Somalia NGO Consortium ? a group of civil society actors ? noted that Somalia's new constitution requires the implementation of federalism but has not yet done so.

The northern Somali region of Somaliland ? a semiautonomous region that has been agitating for years for independence ? is not attending the conference despite the fact that furthering dialogue between the governments of Mogadishu and Somaliland had been one of the goals of the conference.

___

Associated Press reporters Cassandra Vinograd in London and Jason Straziuso in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/london-hosts-somalia-meeting-aid-post-war-gains-145810563.html

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Casino bosses transform Sin City into Club City

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- To step into club XS at the Wynn Las Vegas is to enter the dreamscape of a modern artist with fetishes for gold and bronze and bodies in motion.

A golden-plated frieze made from casts of nude women sits atop a shimmering staircase. Waves of electronic dance music grow louder with each downward step toward a pulsating, football field-sized club where lasers cut the air above thousands of dancers.

The revelers take their cues from the famous DJs onstage who are known to surf the crowd in inflatable rafts, throw sheet cakes at clubbers' faces and spray vintage champagne into their mouths.

In Sin City, where over-the-top is always the sales pitch, lavish nightclubs featuring a heart-pounding party have become the backbone of a billion-dollar industry that is soaring while gambling revenue slips.

"We learned a long time ago that in order to continue to attract people from around the world, we have to provide things that are hard to find anywhere else," said Jim Murren, CEO of MGM Resorts International, which operates nine Strip hotel-casinos boasting their own dance scenes. "These clubs, if done correctly, are tremendous magnets."

A $100 million temple to revelry, XS is the top-earning nightclub in the country, joining six other Vegas venues in the top 10. Its estimated annual revenue hovers somewhere near $90 million, according to the trade publication Nightclub & Bar.

The city now boasts more than 50 such clubs. New additions are coming all the time, including the five-story Hakkasan at the MGM Grand, which debuted last month, and Light at Mandalay Bay, Cirque du Soleil's first foray into the disco business, opening Memorial Day weekend.

The rise of the Vegas super-club coincides with the decline of the town's gambling supremacy. The tiny Chinese enclave of Macau surpassed the desert oasis as the world's top gambling destination in 2006. Singapore is on track to claim the No. 2 spot.

During the heart of the recession, when overall Strip revenues tumbled by 16 percent, nightclubs saw more profit than ever. By 2011, Las Vegas was clubbing all the way to the bank, with Strip beverage departments earning more than $1 billion, and casino tycoons began remaking the Strip into the club capital of the world.

With extravagantly paid DJs, larger-than-life venues and billboard ads that stretch beyond the Strip to Hollywood Boulevard and Miami, casinos are trying to pull off a tricky balancing act: keeping the kitschy core that draws older generations while finding a way to make the city hip enough to attract a younger, big-spending set ? emphasis on big-spending.

"We're not interested in competing against everyone to get the 21-year-olds that are going to spend little to no money and are going to clog up the hallways," Murren said.

The 10-minute taxi ride from the airport to the Strip takes visitors past dozens of billboards promoting top DJs from Holland and beyond. Celine Dion and Elton John now take their place on marquees alongside names that recall Internet handles, such as "deadmau5" and "Kaskade."

Las Vegas, long known for catching performers on the downswing of their careers, finally appears to have embraced a musical trend at the height of its popularity. Globe-trotting Dutch DJ Afrojack, 25, said he has come to consider the Strip his home because it's the one place he believes is as dance-music-focused as he is.

"When you exit the airport, you see (the face of President Barack) Obama ? and then you see me," said Afrojack, a Wynn casino favorite.

Perhaps no place exemplifies the new culture on the glittery Strip better than XS. And for most wannabe Vegas party people, the night at XS starts in line.

Casinos snake these queues past well-traveled areas ? entrances, slot banks and restaurant corridors ? turning the gussied-up partiers into one more piece of visual spectacle. At XS, clubbers line up in a central hallway near the luxury stores Hermes and Chanel.

Women pay $25 and men pay $55 just to get in, but pretty girls who out-dress the dress code are admitted for free. The door charge is mostly there to weed out people who won't spend on drinks, said nightlife baron Sean Christie, managing parner of another Wynn club, Surrender.

When it first opened in 2008, XS was lucky to be filled halfway to its 5,000-person capacity, even when featuring an act such as Tiesto, the world's highest-paid DJ, according to Forbes, pulling down $250,000 a set and making $22 million a year.

Now, the club may see 8,000 people come and go over the course of a night. That's nearly half of the capacity of Madison Square Garden.

As the clock edged toward 2 a.m. on a Saturday earlier this spring, superstar DJ David Guetta stood at the control board like a mad king, commanding his people.

A wiry, hollow-faced Frenchman with a curtain of blond hair, Guetta has been churning out electronic music since the genre's infancy in the world of underground raves 25 years ago. Now, at 45, he makes hits for pop music stars including Rihanna, Usher and Nicki Minaj ? and conducts the crowd at XS.

At the flick of his upraised palms, Guetta had thousands of revelers whooping, jumping and punching their fists in the air. When he added a drumbeat into a chorus, metallic streamers dropped from the ceiling and a fog machine churned.

"Nothing compares with this," said 23-year-old Katie Kelly, a student in San Louis Obispo, Calif., as she bobbed her index fingers skyward. "You just release and don't care about anything."

XS boasts that its layout is modeled on "the sexy curves of the human body." In practice, the design steers people to the bars on a back wall.

Female bartenders, their long hair draped over sequined black corsets, serve $15 shots of Jack Daniels whiskey, coordinating their pouring to the skull-rattling bass and synthetic blares vibrating around them. A supermarket a few miles away sells a bottle of Jack containing 17 shots for $16.

When newbies push through the swaying crowd to grab a table, they find that Vegas has monetized sitting, too. Patrons pay a $10,000 beverage minimum upfront to claim any of the dozen plush banquettes nearest the dance floor.

By the time Guetta hit his stride on this night, all of the club's 95 tables were full, including the cheaper seats away from the action and one uber-VIP table on stage. Near the bigger-than-your-apartment, 1,100-square-foot dance floor, four scantily clad girls gyrated in front of three men wearing suits and skinny ties.

One of them, Thomas Park, had filled the table with 2004 vintage Perrier-Jouet champagne and Gray Goose magnums ? for $700 and $1,300 a pop.

"We have a lot to spend," said Park, who is in his mid-30s and works as a relator in Canada. "That's why we have all the girls."

Casinos learned long ago that some VIPs don't see the point of being VIPs unless everyone can see them being VIPs, so clubs oblige big spenders with spotlights and velvet ropes cordoning off their mini-empires.

But not everyone at a table is a high roller. Some are splurging, or sharing the cost with their friends. Superstar DJ Kaskade, a Vegas regular, said he hears from fans who saved for months to pay for a table and a weekend of fun in Vegas.

"It's because they see videos of this stuff and they say: 'This is nuts.'"

Today, the club craze is moving beyond the dance floor.

XS opens into an open-air adult playground complete with table games, food and a huge circular pool. Around 3 a.m. on this particular night ? still several hours from closing time ? women in bachelorette sashes waded toward floating white platforms as crescendos drifted over the water.

Beckoning from the other side of the pool, past clumps of partiers, is the upscale "vibe-dining" restaurant Andrea's, where DJs spin lounge music. Hakkasan is taking the vibe-dining concept further, importing a London-based, Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurant to serve as the foundation for its five-story complex.

Most casinos have also incorporated nightclubs during the day ? a way to infuse the dance scene into an otherwise typical summer pool party.

At Andrea's, while taking in a production he helped create, Christie confessed he worries about what might happen to Vegas now that it's banking so heavily on an indulgent club scene ? especially if 20- and 30-somethings develop a taste for a new indulgence.

But then he quickly corrected himself, saying he'd be just as happy to lure patrons with country western stars.

"Whatever they want, I just serve up. Hopefully, I serve it up the best," he said. "I'm not one to care about that kind of stuff. I'm just here to make money and throw great parties."

___

Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/casino-bosses-transform-sin-city-180947899.html

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Liz Ryan: How do I bring up relocation expense on my job interview?

Dear Liz,

I have a second interview for a Director job next week, and at the first
interview I didn't say a word about relocation. I had just finished up a
one-year international assignment and so I assume the hiring manager knows I'm
going to need relocation assistance. That's why I didn't bring it up. I am
staying with friends now. How and when do I bring up the overhanging issue of my
relocation expenses when I go to the second interview next week?

Thanks,

Grace

Dear Grace,

Congratulations on the interview! You were correct not to bring up relocation at
a first interview. I don't recommend that you talk about compensation or any of
the transactional issues on a first interview, because at that early stage you
haven't established that there's even a mutual interest. Now you know - they
want you to come back. Now it's time to talk about what it would take to get you
on their team, including the relocation package.

Your interview is already set up, so you can talk about compensation there. We
usually recommend that you bring up salary with the person who contacts you to
set up the second interview.

When you're talking with your hiring manager at the interview, you can ask
"Would this be a good time for us to synch up on the comp package? I'd hate to
waste your time if we're not in the same ballpark." Of course, you'd hate to
waste your own time too, but we'll be polite and make it all about him or her,
your hiring manager.

Undoubtedly your hiring manager will ask you "Well, what would it take to get
you here, if we go in that direction?" You can say "I'm looking at opportunities
in the range of whatever to whatever." There's no sense talking about extras
like your relo package if your basic comp level is going to make the guy's head
explode. If the salary or salary-plus-bonus part, the cash compensation, goes
well, you can say "And of course I need to get out here." Let that phrase sit
there. You don't need to go into detail. Companies of any size have relo
policies.

If they balk at the idea of bringing you to town for an out-of-town job, run
away fast. For a Director level position, that piece of the package should go
without saying.

That being said, a friend of mine once got an offer for a VP job in Maine, and
the CEO told her that he wouldn't pay for temporary lodging. He said "We'll fly
you up one weekend and you can get an apartment, and we'll pay the commission on
your house sale in Chicago. After that you're on your own." My friend fled, of
course. The cheapskate CEO's relo offer made no sense at all. She's selling a
house, and she's supposed to find an apartment in one weekend and use it as
temporary lodging? And sign a one-year lease on the apartment? The nice name for
folks like that CEO is "penny-wise and pound foolish."

You are in great shape, Grace. If they don't get that people have to physically
move and move their belongings in order to take out-of-town jobs, they don't
deserve you. Keep us posted!

Best,

Liz

?

?

?

Follow Liz Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/humanworkplace

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-ryan/how-do-i-bring-up-relocat_b_3216614.html

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Loblaw raises dividend, plans $7-billion REIT | Investing | Financial ...

Loblaw Cos. Inc. saw a big boost in first-quarter earnings due to changes in its retirement plan and a resulting gain.

The Canada?s biggest grocery chain earned $171-million, or 60? per share on a fully diluted basis in the first quarter ended March 23, compared with $122-million (43?) in the same period of 2012.

The quarterly profit includes a gain of $51-million, or 13? per share, related to defined benefit plan changes made during the quarter. Loblaw said it will realize annual pre-tax savings of about $14-million related to the retirement plan changes.

The company also hiked its dividend for the second time in six months, from 22? per common share to 24?, a rise of 9.1%.

Revenue was $7.2-billion, up 3.8% from $6.9-billion in 2012 and same-store sales, a key measure of performance in retail, were up 2.8%.

Loblaw shares rose 5.26% to $45.00 in TSX trading at 10:51 a.m. ET Wednesday.

?The first quarter showed continued evidence of momentum in our core business,? Galen Weston, Loblaw?s executive chairman, said in a statement. ?Greater assortment and an improved in-store experience are resonating with customers, translating into same-store sales growth and positive trends in tonnage and market share.

?Despite the increasingly competitive environment, I believe that our improving customer experience and demonstrated ability to create leverage by driving cost savings and efficiencies will enable us to win in the marketplace and deliver value to our shareholders.?

This quarter marks the start of a pivotal year for the grocery retailer, which is in the final phase of a massive IT systems overhaul, and has plans to create a $7-billion real estate investment trust for its properties. The company said Wednesday it expects to file a preliminary prospectus for its real estate investment trust in late May and complete an initial public offering in early to mid-July.

The company has also taken a bruising in the public eye for an association to the Bangladesh factory collapse last week, where some of its low-priced Joe Fresh apparel line was made. Along with British retailer Primark, Loblaw has said it will compensate the families of the victims.

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/01/loblaw-raises-dividend-plans-7-billion-reit/

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