ATYRAU, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron helped inaugurate the world's costliest oil project in Kazakhstan on Sunday on a trip aimed at sealing business deals but quickly beset by questions over the Central Asian nation's poor human rights record.
Kazakhstan hopes Cameron's visit, the first by a serving British prime minister, will cement its status as a rising economic power and confer a degree of the legitimacy from the West it has long sought.
The visit takes place just days before the nation marks 15 years since the founding of the new Kazakh capital Astana, also the 73rd birthday of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a national holiday and cause for celebration that has been anticipated for days in state media.
Nazarbayev, a former Communist party apparatchik, has overseen market reforms and maintains wide popularity among the 17-million strong population, but has tolerated no dissent or opposition during his more than two decades in power.
Cameron said he hoped the 30 businessmen accompanying him would sign over 700 million pounds worth of deals during his two-day trip.
"We are in a global race for jobs and investment. This is one of the most rapidly emerging countries in the world," Cameron told reporters on his arrival in the Kazakh oil capital Atyrau.
His office said he aimed to "put British businesses in prime position to secure contracts that the Government believes could total ?85 billion in the coming years".
Cameron is also hoping to persuade Kazakhstan to expand transit rights for British military forces relocating equipment from Afghanistan between now and a planned withdrawal next year. Nazarbayev has already granted overflight rights, but Cameron is looking for land transit rights too.
Cameron and Nazarbayev together opened the Bolashak (Future) oil plant which will process crude that is due to start flowing from the giant Kashagan offshore oilfield in September.
Royal Dutch Shell has a 16.81 percent stake in the facility, which is in the Kazakh segment of the Caspian Sea. Nazarbayev said last week consortium members had so far invested $48 billion, making it the most expensive oil venture in the world.
TEMPTING TARGET
As Britain's trade with the euro zone suffers because of the currency bloc's debt woes, it is looking further afield to forge business links with countries that have enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years.
With a $200 billion economy, the largest in Central Asia, and deep oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan is a tempting target. Britain is already among the top three sources of foreign direct investment, according to Kazakh officials.
Since its 1991 independence, officials say British firms have invested about $20 billion in their economy, part of a total $170 billion ploughed into Kazakhstan since then.
But more high profile trade links carry political risks.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said Cameron had a duty to use his trip to denounce human rights abuses.
"We are very concerned about the serious and deteriorating human rights situation there in recent years, including credible allegations of torture, the imprisonment of government critics, (and) tight controls over the media and freedom of expression and association," it said in a letter on Friday.
Answering questions from reporters in Atyrau on Sunday, Cameron said he never put trade and business interests before rights.
"We will raise all the issues, including human rights. That's part of our dialogue and I'll be signing a strategic partnership with Kazakhstan," he said.
"Nothing is off the agenda, including human rights."
Activists most want Cameron to bring up the case of Vladimir Kozlov, a jailed opposition leader, when he meets Nazarbayev.
An outspoken critic of the Kazakh leader, Kozlov was jailed for seven-and-a-half years in October for colluding with a fugitive billionaire in a failed attempt to rally oil workers to bring down the government. Kozlov denied the charges.
Nazarbayev, a former steelworker who now holds the title "The Leader of the Nation", says that he puts stability and rising living standards before hasty political changes in his steppe nation, the world's ninth-largest by area and five times the size of France.
Comparing Kazakhstan to "Asian economic tigers" like South Korea and Singapore, he has said he wants to turn it into "the economic snow leopard of Central Asia".
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; in Almaty; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
We have all heard the stories about the federal education policy instituted under the George W. Bush administration referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).? That program required schools to continually test students in order to gauge which schools are ?failing? to produce students who were making sufficient educational progress.? The outgrowth of NCLB was the need for teachers to ?teach to the test?.? Schools across the country stopped teaching important subject areas because they were not deemed important enough to be on the all important test.? Now, the latest federal educational program embraced by the Obama Administration, called Common Core standards, builds on the NCLB program and continues to force testing using standards that have not even been tested and are products of corporate sponsors tied to the testing industry!
?For starters, the misnamed ?Common Core State Standards? are not state standards. They?re national standards, created by Gates-funded consultants for the National Governors Association (NGA). They were designed, in part, to circumvent federal restrictions on the adoption of a national curriculum, hence the insertion of the word ?state? in the brand name. States were coerced into adopting the Common Core by requirements attached to the federal Race to the Top grants and, later, the No Child Left Behind waivers. (This is one reason many conservative groups opposed to any federal role in education policy oppose the Common Core.)
Written mostly by academics and assessment experts?many with ties to testing companies?the Common Core standards have never been fully implemented and tested in real schools anywhere. Of the 135 members on the official Common Core review panels convened by Achieve Inc., the consulting firm that has directed the Common Core project for the NGA, few were classroom teachers or current administrators. Parents were entirely missing. K?12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standards?and lend legitimacy to the results.? Common Dreams
I guess that in this day and age I should not be surprised that testing companies would be behind the push to continue to keep testing students.? Maybe I am na?ve, but why would any administration want to push for standards that haven?t been tested in any schools?? I understand the financial reasons why States and school districts want to implement these standards.? Without them they could not get the Race to the top grants or the NCLB waivers that the Common Dreams article discussed.? However, the evidence shows that the NCLB type testing requirements do not produce the results that its backers and the proponents of Common Core allege.
?We have seen this show before. The entire country just finished a decade-long experiment in standards-based, test-driven school reform called No Child Left Behind. NCLB required states to adopt ?rigorous? curriculum standards and test students annually to gauge progress towards reaching them. Under threat of losing federal funds, all 50 states adopted or revised their standards and began testing every student, every year in every grade from 3?8 and again in high school. (Before NCLB, only 19 states tested all kids every year, after NCLB all 50 did.)
By any measure, NCLB was a dismal failure in both raising academic performance and narrowing gaps in opportunity and outcomes. But by very publicly measuring the test results against benchmarks no real schools have ever met, NCLB did succeed in creating a narrative of failure that shaped a decade of attempts to ?fix? schools while blaming those who work in them. By the time the first decade of NCLB was over, more than half the schools in the nation were on the lists of ?failing schools? and the rest were poised to follow.?? Common Dreams
Are these testing requirements just attempts to keep testing companies thriving?? Is it possible that the standards are actually designed to fail and push states and districts into the voucher programs and/or the charter schools that Mayor Emanuel in Chicago is pushing for? ??
As the Common Dreams article suggests, some of the standards and ideas may be useful, but its reliance on expensive ?high stakes testing? has already received a failing grade in the NCLB coursework. Why follow a path that has already been proved to be a failure?
The answer could be the cynical one that I suggested in my earlier questions.? The results that have already come in on the Common Core standards and testing may be the proof in the pudding.? ?Reports from the first wave of Common Core testing are already confirming these fears. This spring students, parents, and teachers in New York schools responded to administration of new Common Core tests developed by Pearson Inc. with a general outcry against their length, difficulty, and inappropriate content. Pearson included corporate logos and promotional material in reading passages. Students reported feeling overstressed and underprepared?meeting the tests with shock, anger, tears, and anxiety. Administrators requested guidelines for handling tests students had vomited on. Teachers and principals complained about the disruptive nature of the testing process and many parents encouraged their children to opt out.
Common Core has become part of the corporate reform project now stalking our schools. Unless we dismantle and defeat this larger effort, Common Core implementation will become another stage in the demise of public education.?? Common Dreams
To be fair, I would hope that any of the useful portions of the Common Core standards could be retained without the need for the high-stakes testing that has failed in the past.? If I had been required to go through high stakes testing similar to what the Common Core requires, I might still be taking High School Geometry!
I have a novel idea.? Why don?t we leave the teaching to the professionals and teach a broad curriculum, without the additional testing requirements that have not succeeded?? Can we improve troubled schools without attacking teachers or their unions?? If we do not stop this rush to corporate, for profit schools, I fear for our country.? Our students may learn what corporations want them to know under these standards, but is that a good thing?? What do you think?
Additional References:? Common Core; ?Illinois State Board of Education;
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) ? President Barack Obama says if any country in the world shows how people can create change, it's South Africa.
Obama is speaking at the University of Cape Town during a weeklong trip to sub-Saharan Africa. He's invoking former South African President Nelson Mandela's struggles as the source of his own inspiration to serve the public.
Obama's speech comes nearly 50 years after Robert F. Kennedy delivered his famous "Ripple of Hope" speech at the same school. Obama says it would have been impossible to imagine that 50 years later, an African-American president would address the school.
He says figures like Mandela and Kennedy represent a challenge to make a difference. He says they show that the voice of the next generation matters.
June 28, 2013 ? A cardiac hormone signaling receptor abundantly expressed both in inflamed tissues and cancers appears to recruit stem cells that form the blood vessels needed to feed tumor growth, reports a new study by scientists at the University of South Florida Nanomedicine Research Center.
The research may lead to the development of new drugs or delivery systems to treat cancer by blocking this receptor, known as natriuretic peptide receptor A (NPRA).
The findings appeared online recently in the journal Stem Cells.
"Our results show that NRPA signaling by cancer cells produces some molecular factors that attract stem cells, which in turn form blood vessels that provide oxygen and nutrients to the tumor," said the study's principal investigator Subhra Mohapatra, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine. "We showed that if the NPRA signal is blocked, so is the angiogenesis and, if the tumor's blood supply is cut off it will die."
Using both cultured cells and a mouse model, Dr. Mohapatra and her team modeled interactions to study the association between gene mutations and exposure to an inflammatory tissue microenvironment.
The researchers demonstrated that cardiac hormone NRPA played a key role in the link between inflammation and the development of cancer-causing tumors. Mice lacking NPRA signaling failed to induce tumors. However, co-implanting tumor cells with mesenchymal stem cells, which can turn into cells lining the inner walls of blood vessels, promoted the sprouting of blood vessels (angiogenesis) needed to promote tumor growth in NPRA- deficient mice, the researchers found. Furthermore, they showed that NRPA signaling appears to regulate key inflammatory cytokines involved in attracting these stem cells to tumor cells.
Dr. Mohapatra's laboratory is testing an innovative drug delivery system using special nanoparticles to specifically target cancers cells like a guided missile, while sparing healthy cells. The treatment is intended to deliver a package of molecules that interferes with the cardiac hormone receptor's ability to signal.
Dr. Mohapatra collaborated with Shyam Mohapatra, PhD, and Srinivas Nagaraj, PhD, both faculty members in the Nanomedicine Research Center and Department of Internal Medicine, on genetic and immunological aspects of the study.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and a Florida Biomedical Research Grant.
BERLIN (AP) ? Three German aid workers have been missing in Syria for 45 days were likely kidnapped, their employer said Saturday.
Gruenhelme e.V. said Bernd Blechschmidt, Ziad Nouri and Simon S., whose last name wasn't provided, were taken by unknown persons from the town of Harem in Idlib district on May 14.
The group's founder, Rupert Neudeck, said a fourth staff member managed to avoid capture and is safe. The kidnapping was kept secret for more than a month so as not to jeopardize the men's safety but all efforts to determine who they are being held by were unsuccessful, he said.
"We're totally in the dark," Neudeck told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "If the kidnappers wanted a ransom we would have expected to be contacted by now."
German news website Spiegel Online reported that the aid group has been working in northern Syria since September 2012. The region has seen fierce fighting been government troops and rebels seeking to topple the regime of President Bashar Assad.
Gruenhelme e.V., whose name means 'Green Helmets' in German, specializes in reconstructing schools and medical facilities in crisis regions. It has previously sent staff to work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia.
The German Foreign Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Every quarter is pivotal for BlackBerry right now, but the one covered by today's earnings report (Q1 2014, in fiscal terms) is especially important. It's the first full period of Z10 availability and also the first quarter to cover significant Q10 shipments to markets like Canada and the UK (although not the US). So far, it's a mixed bag: revenues are up to $3.1 billion, compared to $2.8 billion generated in the same quarter last year, which was when RIM (as it was called back then) announced significant job cuts and an equally major delay to its next-gen BB 10 operating system and hardware range. However, none of that was retained as profit, and in fact BlackBerry made a GAAP loss of $84 million, compared a $125 million profit last quarter.
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Michael Jackson's oldest son described the frantic efforts to revive his father to a jury, a scene of tears and agony that ended a dozen idyllic years being raised by one of pop music's superstars.
Michael Joseph "Prince" Jackson Jr. told the panel Wednesday how he knew there was trouble in the singer's rented mansion when heard screaming upstairs and went into his father's bedroom. His father was laying halfway off the bed, eyes rolled up into the back of his head as his physician tried CPR.
His sister Paris screamed for her father and Prince, now 16, told jurors that he was crying. On the ride to a hospital, the teenager recounted how he tried to calm the fears of his sister and younger brother by telling them that angels were watching over their father and everything would be fine.
It wasn't until his father's doctor, Conrad Murray, came out of the emergency room and said he had died that Prince knew his father was gone.
"Nothing will ever be the same," the teenager told jurors. He said while his younger brother doesn't totally realize the loss, his sister has had the hardest time of them all and he has had many sleepless nights since his father died four years ago.
His voice wavered at times and tears appeared to form in his eyes, but Prince remained composed as he publicly recounted for the first time what he saw the day his father died.
The re-telling of the scene in Jackson's bedroom came after nearly an hour of Prince describing happier times, showing photos of him and his sister when they were younger and a series of videos of the children filmed by their father.
He testified in a lawsuit accusing concert promoter AEG Live LLC of negligently hiring Murray, who was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter for giving Jackson an overdose of the anesthetic propofol.
AEG denies it hired the physician or bears any responsibility for the entertainer's death.
Wearing a black suit with a dark grey tie and his long brown hair tucked behind his ears, Prince testified that he saw AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips at the family's rented mansion in a heated conversation with Murray in the days before his father died. The teenager said Phillips grabbed Murray's elbow.
Phillips "looked aggressive to me," Prince testified.
His father wasn't at home at the time and was probably rehearsing, he said.
He said he saw his father cry after phone conversations with Phillips, and wanted more time to rehearse and was unhappy with pressure to perform his 50 scheduled comeback concerts titled "This Is It."
Murray's attorney Valerie Wass and AEG defense attorney Marvin S. Putnam later denied outside court that the meeting Prince described ever happened.
Putnam said Prince would be re-called to the witness stand during the defense case later in the trial.
"I think as the testimony will show when he is called in our defense that's not what happened," Putnam said. "He was a 12-year-old boy who has had to endure this great tragedy."
The testimony began with the teenager showing jurors roughly 15 minutes of private family photos and home videos.
He described growing up on Neverland Ranch and narrated videos of the property's petting zoos, amusement park and other amenities. After his father's acquittal of child molestation charges, Prince described living in the Middle East, Ireland and Las Vegas.
Prince is the first Jackson family member to testify during the trial, now in its ninth week. On Thursday his cousins, TJ and Taj Jackson, who are Tito Jackson's sons, will take the witness stand.
Prince Jackson, his sister Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson and brother Prince Michael "Blanket" Jackson are plaintiffs in the case against AEG, which their grandmother and primary caretaker filed in August 2010.
Another image showed Michael Jackson playing piano with his son while Prince was still a toddler.
Plaintiffs' attorney Brian Panish asked Prince whether he was interested in pursuing a career in music. "I can never play an instrument and I definitely cannot sing," Prince said to laughter from the jury.
He said he wanted to study film or business when he goes to college.
His testimony also included details that AEG's lawyers will likely point to later in the case to bolster their contention that Jackson was secretive about using propofol as a sleep aid.
Prince said none of the household staff were allowed upstairs at the mansion, and the singer kept his bedroom locked while receiving treatments from Murray.
During cross-examination, Putnam played a clip from a deposition of Prince in which the teen said he discovered the bedroom was locked when he and his siblings were playing hide-and-seek and couldn't get inside.
Prince also said his father gave him and his sister Paris a stack of $100 bills on a few occasions to give to Murray. He said his father told him that Murray wouldn't take the money from him, and the doctor wouldn't take the full amount from the children.
The teenager said his understanding was that the money was meant to tide Murray over until he got paid by AEG Live.
He never saw or knew how Murray was treating his father.
"I was 12. To my understanding he was supposed to make sure my dad stayed healthy," Prince testified.
___
Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP
UT Arlington engineer to design prototype that predicts flash floodingPublic release date: 25-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Herb Booth hbooth@uta.edu 817-272-7075 University of Texas at Arlington
City of Fort Worth flood-prone creeks to be studied
A UT Arlington water resources engineer is developing a first-of-its-kind prototype that would allow the City of Fort Worth to more effectively dispatch emergency personnel to save lives and property when flash flooding occurs.
D.J. Seo, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, has received a $310,000 grant from the City of Fort Worth, the National Science Foundation and the National Weather Service to use very high-resolution rainfall data from a new weather radar system for high-resolution monitoring and prediction of flash flooding. The research, a collaboration with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Colorado State University, is part of NSF's Accelerating Innovation Research program.
Seo said Fort Worth emergency responders could see an effective lead time of up to 30 minutes in many flash-flooding situations.
"The prototype will provide timely and location-specific information of what's happening currently and in the immediate future when flash flooding occurs," Seo said. "The City officials can use that information to help dispatch emergency personnel at the right time and to the right place."
The weather radar system is part of a partnership among The University of Texas at Arlington, the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center; the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the National Weather Service and many other cities and universities across North Texas.
Amy Cannon, an engineer with the Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works Department, said Seo's research also would look at Zoo Creek and Edgecliff Branch in Fort Worth for real-time inundation mapping.
"These are areas that need accurate, timely flood predictions. Dr. Seo's prototype will give us an advantage in these flooding hot spots," Cannon said. "Utilizing better information through the prototype will give us an advantage in helping protect people and property during flood events."
Khosrow Behbehani, dean of the UT Arlington College of Engineering, said Seo's work would have other benefits beyond flash-flood forecasting.
"Once Dr. Seo's modeling is completed, it could very easily be adapted to study the impact of development on rainfall-runoff response in an urban area. It also could examine the emergency preparedness of a city's infrastructure for water hazards," Behbehani said. "I could also see that urban areas can use this innovative system in the future to improve their water conservation programs. That's especially important in North Texas when water conservation is needed in times of drought."
The new CASA system provides very high-resolution rainfall and other data every minute compared with every five to six minutes with the existing systems. The new system focuses on a more concise area, giving forecasters detailed information to better monitor and track storms and precipitation. Because the CASA system is designed to observe the atmosphere closer to the ground, the system requires an extensive network of radars.
UT Arlington was the first institution in the North Texas region to install a CASA weather radar system. The system sits atop Carlisle Hall on the main campus. Similar systems have been installed or are scheduled to be installed at The University of North Texas in Denton and elsewhere in Fort Worth and Addison. Plans call for eight sites initially throughout North Texas.
Seo will collect real-time data from the CASA system and integrate that with information from geographic information system maps through hydrologic and hydraulic modeling.
"The strength of the CASA system is that it provides spatially detailed information at a very high temporal frequency," Seo said. "What makes this research more exciting is that this is the first system of its kind in the country because North Texas is the first metropolitan area to deploy a network of CASA radars."
###
Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, CASA is a consortium of nine universities, government agencies and industry partners. The North Central Texas Council of Governments is coordinating participation of area municipalities.
The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution of about 33,800 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Research activity has more than tripled over the past decade to $71.4 million last year with an emphasis on bioengineering, medical diagnostics, micro manufacturing, advanced robotics and defense and Homeland Security technologies, among other areas. Visit http://www.uta.edu to learn more.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
UT Arlington engineer to design prototype that predicts flash floodingPublic release date: 25-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Herb Booth hbooth@uta.edu 817-272-7075 University of Texas at Arlington
City of Fort Worth flood-prone creeks to be studied
A UT Arlington water resources engineer is developing a first-of-its-kind prototype that would allow the City of Fort Worth to more effectively dispatch emergency personnel to save lives and property when flash flooding occurs.
D.J. Seo, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, has received a $310,000 grant from the City of Fort Worth, the National Science Foundation and the National Weather Service to use very high-resolution rainfall data from a new weather radar system for high-resolution monitoring and prediction of flash flooding. The research, a collaboration with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Colorado State University, is part of NSF's Accelerating Innovation Research program.
Seo said Fort Worth emergency responders could see an effective lead time of up to 30 minutes in many flash-flooding situations.
"The prototype will provide timely and location-specific information of what's happening currently and in the immediate future when flash flooding occurs," Seo said. "The City officials can use that information to help dispatch emergency personnel at the right time and to the right place."
The weather radar system is part of a partnership among The University of Texas at Arlington, the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center; the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the National Weather Service and many other cities and universities across North Texas.
Amy Cannon, an engineer with the Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works Department, said Seo's research also would look at Zoo Creek and Edgecliff Branch in Fort Worth for real-time inundation mapping.
"These are areas that need accurate, timely flood predictions. Dr. Seo's prototype will give us an advantage in these flooding hot spots," Cannon said. "Utilizing better information through the prototype will give us an advantage in helping protect people and property during flood events."
Khosrow Behbehani, dean of the UT Arlington College of Engineering, said Seo's work would have other benefits beyond flash-flood forecasting.
"Once Dr. Seo's modeling is completed, it could very easily be adapted to study the impact of development on rainfall-runoff response in an urban area. It also could examine the emergency preparedness of a city's infrastructure for water hazards," Behbehani said. "I could also see that urban areas can use this innovative system in the future to improve their water conservation programs. That's especially important in North Texas when water conservation is needed in times of drought."
The new CASA system provides very high-resolution rainfall and other data every minute compared with every five to six minutes with the existing systems. The new system focuses on a more concise area, giving forecasters detailed information to better monitor and track storms and precipitation. Because the CASA system is designed to observe the atmosphere closer to the ground, the system requires an extensive network of radars.
UT Arlington was the first institution in the North Texas region to install a CASA weather radar system. The system sits atop Carlisle Hall on the main campus. Similar systems have been installed or are scheduled to be installed at The University of North Texas in Denton and elsewhere in Fort Worth and Addison. Plans call for eight sites initially throughout North Texas.
Seo will collect real-time data from the CASA system and integrate that with information from geographic information system maps through hydrologic and hydraulic modeling.
"The strength of the CASA system is that it provides spatially detailed information at a very high temporal frequency," Seo said. "What makes this research more exciting is that this is the first system of its kind in the country because North Texas is the first metropolitan area to deploy a network of CASA radars."
###
Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, CASA is a consortium of nine universities, government agencies and industry partners. The North Central Texas Council of Governments is coordinating participation of area municipalities.
The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution of about 33,800 students and more than 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas. Research activity has more than tripled over the past decade to $71.4 million last year with an emphasis on bioengineering, medical diagnostics, micro manufacturing, advanced robotics and defense and Homeland Security technologies, among other areas. Visit http://www.uta.edu to learn more.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
We are less than a month away from Comic-Con San Diego, and as the biggest celebration of fandom draws closer, plans for the convention are coming together. Thankfully for fans of "The Hunger Games," those plans now involve a brand new trailer for "Catching Fire." Today, Lionsgate announced that two of their upcoming movies, "Catching [...]
Professional wrestling has always been filled with hulking masses of humanity, doing battle to establish their supremacy over the competition. However, some titans towered over even the biggest Superstars.
Monster tag team photos?|?Watch the titans demolish the opposition
Sometimes, these giants of the squared circle teamed up, resulting in complete devastation. Like the beasts that rise from the ocean in Guillermo Del Toro?s thriller ?Pacific Rim,? these gargantuan grapplers left nothing but destruction in their paths. The carnage they caused seemed like something out of a monster movie, but for their opponents, it was very, very real and extremely painful.
Witness the ruin caused by 10 monstrous tag teams that left other duos crushed beneath their humongous boots.
PARIS (Reuters) - European Commissioner Michel Barnier struck back on Monday at a French minister who criticized the European Union's executive arm, calling his remarks "absurd" and saying France should stop blaming others for its own problems.
French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg accused European Commission President Manuel Barroso at the weekend of fuelling far-right groups through austerity policies, the latest in a growing war of words over EU-imposed measures to cut debt.
"I'm tired of seeing ministers like Mr. Montebourg ... saying it's always the fault of someone else, shirking responsibility and looking for scapegoats," Barnier, European commissioner in charge of regulation, told France 2 television.
"But they won't be shirking for very much longer because the moment of truth will arrive at some point, it's arriving for the minister."
Barnier's reaction, which he followed up with a Twitter post calling Montebourg's criticism "absurd & false", added to tension between Brussels and Paris where politicians are blaming austerity policies for strangling the French economy.
It showed the Commission is ready to match euroskeptic French rhetoric with criticism of a political class it says is responsible for France's lagging competitiveness, high unemployment and flat growth.
"Look how some countries in Europe, with the same Commission, are doing better than France ... Germany is doing better because it supports business," said Barnier, a French former minister, from the center-right UMP party.
The European Commission is waiting to see how France will respond to policy recommendations it made in May, which include reforming the pension system, opening up protected job sectors to competition and continuing to overhaul labor rules.
President Francois Hollande has already lowered expectations for a plan to fix a debt-laden pension system, saying there would be no rise in the legal retirement age.
Montebourg's blamed austerity for the far-right Front National party scoring 46.2 percent in a local election on Sunday in the former constituency of ex-Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac, who is under formal investigation for tax fraud.
(Reporting By Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Brian Love and Elizabeth Piper)
Sony's been explaining the design story behind its new Xperia range at a UK briefing, how it's trying to balance both the dematerialization of tech (touchscreens, gesture interfaces) and a design that's both desirable and beautiful -- and Sony's certainly got the latter down on its new smartphone. The Xperia Z Ultra follows the lines of the rest of the Z series. It has the same "OmniBalance" plane, uniform screen surface, but this time it measures in at 6.4 inches across, but still running at 1080p resolution. Yep, it does feel substantially bigger than the original Xperia Z -- check out our comparison gallery, the new Ultra model dwarfs it. You're looking at a screen width almost identical to a passport and that 6.5mm profile meant we could cram it into our trouser pockets without an issue. It's certainly a bigger device than the likes of LG's Optimus G Pro or Samsung's Galaxy Note II and you're going to have to test it out for yourself to see if you'd be willing to talk into this Xperia like phone -- it's definitely going to catch the eye.
There's also Qualcomm's notable Snapdragon 800 powering the device on a relatively large 3,000mAh battery, while Sony's simplified the design dropping a few of those much-maligned protective flaps, at least on the headphone socket. There are more impressions and a hands-on video after the break!
Has anyone come up with a way — short of moving to Sweden — that does something about that awful coating of sweat you get when you talk on the phone in the summer? I'm asking for a friend. OK, Bluetooth would be an answer, I guess, but who wants to be that guy?
Somehow, we're nearly through with June, and into July. (Yes, again.) Is it possible this has been one of the busiest years since I started doing this job full-time? Might well be, and we're not even covering things like the Xbox One (which I've preordered and will figure out why later) and the PlayStation 4. Insanity. Awesome insanity.
So, fresh off taking a break from this column for a week, some things I think I think. (With apologies to Peter King.)
BOSTON (AP) ? Doc Rivers will be the next coach of the Los Angeles Clippers if the NBA approves the rare but not unprecedented trade of an active coach, a Boston Celtics official told The Associated Press on Sunday night.
The deal would bring Boston a first-round draft pick in 2015, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it is pending a trade call with the NBA office. Rivers, who had three years and $21 million left on his contract with the Celtics, must also reach an agreement on a new deal with the Clippers.
Celtics spokesman Jeff Twiss said the team had no announcement.
The tentative agreement on Sunday wraps up weeks of haggling over the deal and frees Rivers from presiding over the dismantling of the team that won the franchise's record 17th NBA title in 2008.
The Celtics and Clippers have also discussed sending Kevin Garnett to Los Angeles in a package with Rivers for draft choices, center DeAndre Jordan and point guard Eric Bledsoe. But NBA commissioner David Stern nixed those talks this week, saying teams aren't allowed to trade active players for a coach.
A deal for Garnett could still happen, but the teams would have to convince the league that it was a separate deal. The 37-year-old big man has a no-trade clause in the contract that will pay him 23.5 million over the next two years, but it is believed he would waive it to be reunited with Rivers on the West Coast. He has also discussed retiring.
Boston could also cut ties with Paul Pierce, the longest-tenured member of the team, who is due to earn $15.3 million next season; he could be bought out for $5 million. Pierce will be 36 by the 2013-14 opener and showed signs of slowing down this season, when he averaged the fewest minutes per game in his career.
Rivers took over the Celtics in 2004 in the midst of the longest title drought in franchise history and ? with thanks to the New Big Three of Garnett, Pierce and Ray Allen ? guided them to the 2008 NBA title. They returned to the NBA Finals two years later, losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games.
But the Celtics have regressed steadily since then, twice failing to get past the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference playoffs. This year they finished third in the Atlantic Division ? they had won it five straight times ? and lost to the New York Knicks in the first round.
That convinced many that it was time to rebuild ? a process Rivers was reluctant to supervise. If the Celtics unload Garnett and Pierce, that would leave them with point guard Rajon Rondo as their only established star.
Rivers had the second-longest tenure of any NBA coach to San Antonio's Gregg Popovich, compiling a 416-305 record in Boston that was the third-most wins in franchise history behind Red Auerbach (795) and Tommy Heinsohn (427). He also spent four-plus seasons with the Orlando Magic and is 587-473 in all.
Trades for coaches have occurred about a half-dozen times in NBA history, most recently in 2007 when the Heat received compensation for allowing Stan Van Gundy to go to the Orlando Magic.
In 1983, the Chicago Bulls sent a second-round draft pick to Atlanta as compensation for coach Kevin Loughery. The Hawks used that pick to take Glenn "Doc" Rivers.
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Follow Jimmy Golen on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jgolen
NEW YORK (AP) ? The conviction of a onetime billionaire on insider trading charges was upheld Monday by a federal appeals court that concluded the government did not cheat to obtain permission to make its most extensive use of wiretaps ever in such a case.
Lawyers for 56-year-old Raj Rajaratnam had argued on appeal that the government improperly persuaded a judge in 2008 to permit a wiretap to be placed on Rajaratnam's cellphone. The wiretap was used to record 2,200 private conversations by Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon group of 14 hedge funds. Several dozen of those conversations were played for the jury that convicted him in 2011 of multiple counts of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
"Rajaratnam's arguments are not persuasive," the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel in Manhattan.
The court said the wiretaps were properly obtained, despite a lower-court judge's finding that information about a probe of Rajaratnam by the Securities and Exchange Commission was "clearly critical" and that the government acted with "reckless disregard for the truth" in omitting certain information about the investigation in its requests for wiretaps.
The appeals court said it could not conclude that the government acted recklessly in its wiretap requests when fully disclosing the details of the SEC investigation would only have strengthened its argument for wiretaps.
Chronologies of the SEC's probe strongly suggested that Rajaratnam had been careful to exchange nearly all of his inside information by telephone, the appeals court noted. And it recounted statements by a government lawyer and an FBI agent who said they never thought about including information about the SEC probe in its wiretap application. The appeals panel said the lower-court judge had erred in failing to consider the states of mind of the wiretap applicants.
The Sri Lanka-born Rajaratnam, arrested in 2009, is serving an 11-year prison sentence at a Massachusetts prison after the government said he made $75 million illegally. He did not appeal the legality of his sentence, which was substantially less than the 19 1/2 to 24 1/2 years prison term sought by the government.
He is scheduled to be released in 2021. In his criminal case, he was fined $10 million and was ordered to forfeit $53.8 million. He also was ordered to pay a record $92.8 million civil penalty to the SEC.
Prosecutors obtained more than two dozen convictions in a case they once called the biggest insider trading prosecution in history.
June 21, 2013 ? Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials -- the kind often used for data storage -- with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.
The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.
The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.
The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.
The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.
The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.
Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.
Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.
Dimitri Basov, a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego who was not connected with this research, says the MIT team "proposed a very interesting plasmonic structure, suitable for operation in the technologically significant [terahertz] range. ? I am confident that many research groups will try to implement these devices."
Basov cautions, however, "The key issue, as in all of plasmonics, is losses. Losses need to be thoroughly explored and understood."
In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The National Security Agency has spent years demanding that companies turn over their data. Now, the spy agency finds the shoe is on the other foot. A defendant in a Florida murder trial says telephone records collected by the NSA as part of its surveillance programs hold evidence that would help prove his innocence, and his lawyer has demanded that prosecutors produce those records. On Wednesday, the federal government filed a motion saying it would refuse, citing national security. But experts say the novel legal argument could encourage other lawyers to fight for access to the newly disclosed NSA surveillance database.
"What's good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess," said George Washington University privacy law expert Dan Solove. "In a way, it's kind of ironic."
Defendant Terrance Brown is accused of participating in the 2010 murder of a Brinks security truck driver. Brown maintains his innocence, and claims cellphone location records would show he wasn't at the scene of the crime. Brown's cellphone provider ? MetroPCS ? couldn't produce those records during discovery because it had deleted the data already.
On seeing the story in the Guardian indicating that Verizon had been ordered to turn over millions of calling records to the NSA last month, Brown's lawyer had a novel idea: Make the NSA produce the records.
Brown's lawyer, Marshall Dore Louis, said he couldn't comment while the trial was ongoing.?
"Relying on a June 5, 2013, Guardian newspaper article ... Defendant Brown now suggests that the Government likely actually does possess the metadata relating to telephone calls made in July 2010 from the two numbers attributed to Defendant Brown," wrote U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenbaum in an order demanding that the federal government respond to the request on June 10.
The laws of evidence require that prosecutors turn over to the defense any records they have that might help prove a suspect's innocence.?
"This opens up a Pandora's box," said Mark Rasch, former head of the Department of Justice Computer Crimes Unit, and now an independent consultant. ?You will have situations where the phone companies no longer have the data, but the government does, and lawyers will try to get that data.?
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a motion saying they cannot respond to Brown's request because the federal government does not have the data the suspect seeks ? cell site location information, or CSLI. The leaked court order which inspired the request included was unclear on which metadata phone companies turn over.
The government?s motion also invokes the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which allows the prosecutors to respond to such requests "in camera," or privately with the judge, to explain what data it does or does not have.
"The (CIPA) allows the government to protect classified information by claiming that, first, the phone records are classified, and second, whether or not the government has phone records is also classified," Rasch said.
The assertion in the motion that "at the outset, the government does not possess the CSLI data," is intriguing, as it clearly refutes the notion that the NSA obtains location data as part of its routine records acquisition from telephone companies. But it's unlikely this case will yield more clues about what data the NSA does have, as additional legal discussion will be private.
Even without location data, it's easy to imagine other cases where call records might help prove a suspect's innocence. Rasch says the NSA should expect to deal with a lot of new requests for evidence now.
"The thing was, in the past, no one knew these records were there. Now lawyers know, and they will ask for it,? he said.
It's all part of the hazard of becoming, effectively, a backup server for all the nation's technology companies, said Solove.
"This is a little bit of an awakening to the government, that you can't hold massive amounts of personal data with impunity," he said. "Once you do, a lot of obligations and responsibilities kick in. One of the consequences of keeping data is that now you open yourself up to discovery."?
Different standards apply to discovery in civil cases, such as contested divorce, but Solove said it's possible lawyers in those cases could also appeal to the NSA for evidence, now that they know the records exist.
While it might seem unusual to demand data from an agency that not long ago was invisible to most Americans, Solove said it's important not to put the NSA on some kind of legal pedestal.
"The NSA is not above the law. It's a government agency, just like every other government agency. Just because it has this Harry Potter-like disappearing cloak, it's still an agency that is subject to the law," Solove said.?
CHICAGO (AP) ? The best names in the NHL are the ones that never make the roster.
Or get used by Mom.
Tazer. Little Ball of Hate. The Great One. Sid the Kid. Looch (who also goes by Gino). The Bulin Wall. Kells.
"There's always someone, or a few guys, that want to call you different things," said Chicago Blackhawks left wing Brandon Saad, dubbed "The ManChild" by his teammates. "I guess it's just part of the camaraderie of the sport and the guys being close. I'm not really sure of the exact science."
Anyone who has ever played a sport knows that nicknames are part of the game, a byproduct of both competition and camaraderie. But hockey players have taken it to an art form.
From the littlest mite to the NHL's biggest stars, everyone's got a moniker ? and usually more than one. Most are simplistic, involving the addition or subtraction of a letter or two. Shorten a last name, tack on an 's' or a 'y' ('ie' also works) and, voila! Instant nickname. Patrice Bergeron becomes "Bergy." Brent Seabrook is "Seabs" or "Seabsy."
If a player's last name only has one syllable, just add an 'r' or a 'y' (the 'ie' rule applies here, as well). Patrick Kane is now forever known as "Kaner," while Patrick Sharp, his occasional partner on Chicago's second line, is "Sharpie."
And anyone whose last name is Campbell is automatically "Soup" or "Soupy."
"Pretty boring," said Boston Bruins center Chris Kelly, who is known as, you guessed it, "Kells." ''I wish we came up with cooler nicknames."
But the beauty of the simplicity is in its versatility. It can be applied to almost any name, regardless of nationality.
Jaromir Jagr? Jags. Alex Ovechkin? Ovie. Marty Turco? Turks.
It even works with Bruins left wing Kaspars Daugavins.
"We call him Doggie," Kelly said.
But just as there are exceptions to every grammatical rule, there are some names that defy the conventions of hockey nicknamification. Or lend themselves to some added creativity.
Blackhawks right wing Jamal Mayers is "Jammer" ? not to be confused with Chicago defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson, who is "Hammer." Edmonton goalie Nikolai Khabibulin is "The Bulin Wall." Henrik Lundqvist, he of the 2012 Vezina Trophy, seven straight 30-win seasons and Olympic gold medal in 2006, is, simply, King Henrik.
Other monikers come about because of something a player does on the ice.
Hall of Famer Max Bentley was known as the "Dipsy Doodle Dandy from Delisle" because of his silky-smooth style of evading opponents. Steve Yzerman thought Johan Franzen looked like "a mule" whizzing around the ice as a rookie back in 2005. The nickname stuck. Phoenix enforcer Paul Bissonnette is "BizNasty."
And some nicknames just happen.
Boston forward Brad Marchand is now called the "Little Ball of Hate," thanks to President Barack Obama. But the nickname originally belonged to Pat Verbeek of the New York Rangers. He got it because teammate Glenn Healy had already dubbed Ray Ferraro the "Big Ball of Hate."
"It's just a bunch of guys probably acting a little bit younger than they should and goofing around," said Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, known as "Tazer" or "Captain Serious."
But it's also a nod to hockey's roots, a reminder that no matter how big the NHL becomes, it's not that far removed from its quaint history of small towns and backyard ponds.
"It goes back to the fact that hockey, more than baseball, for example, was a Canadian frontier game ... and the large majority of players came from small areas," said Stan Fischler, the MSG hockey analyst and leading NHL historian.
"(The NHL) is a multibillion-dollar industry. But at the same time, it does have a folksy, family feel about it," Fischler said.
Indeed, not only does everyone have a nickname, but everyone uses them, too.
Imagine LeBron James' teammates calling him "Jamesy" or "Headband." Or Gregg Popovich referring to Tim Duncan as "Duncs."
It would never happen.
Yet Chicago coach Joel Quenneville routinely refers to his players by their nicknames, and sometimes is the one who comes up with them. The next Blackhawk to call Kane Patrick will be the first.
"That's part of the beauty part of hockey," Fischler said. "Apart from the intensity on the ice, it's a very friendly sport."
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AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen in Boston contributed to this report.
Minnesota?s commercial real estate experts are displaying ?lingering concerns? about where the industry in the Twin Cities is headed, according to a study released Tuesday by the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.
The semiannual Minnesota Commercial Real Estate Survey is based on responses from 50 industry leaders. They are asked questions about their expectations for future vacancy and rental rates, development costs, and new project financing in the next two years. The results are based on an index of zero to 100?with values greater than 50 indicating ?optimistic?; at 50 meaning ?neutral?; and below 50 representing ?pessimistic.?
Overall the survey revealed a composite score of 47. This is only the second time a score has been measured below 50 since the survey originated in 2010; the first was last November when it was 48.
Experts predicted higher land prices and rising costs for building materials. The land price index dropped to 33, its lowest level since the survey?s inception, leaving the experts worrisome about how this will affect new development. The high cost of building materials, which scored a 22 on the index this year, down from a 26 in the fall, may also negatively affect new development, according to the study.
?We?re continuing to see the same trend that emerged last year,? Herb Tousley, University of St. Thomas director of real estate programs and co-conductor of the survey, said in a statement. ?However, there are some key differences in the survey this year, including a higher level of confidence among leaders that rental rates and occupancy will continue to grow into 2015.?
The index for rental rates increased from 67 to 69, reflecting growing confidence. The index for the amount of equity required by lenders also increased from 58 in fall 2012 to 64 now, which indicates the experts? continued belief that the credit markets are returning to more normal loan-to-value requirements.
The survey concludes that industry experts have not significantly changed their expectations of what market conditions will look like two years from now. Overall they remain slightly pessimistic about the prospects for the commercial real estate market in 2015, but remain confident that rents and occupancy will continue to grow in the next two years.
The complete survey results can be viewed?here.
This article is reprinted in partnership with Twin Cities Business.
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Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
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The index for rental rates increased from 67 to 69, reflecting growing confidence. The index for the amount of equity required by lenders also increased from 58 in fall 2012 to 64 now, which indicates the experts? continued belief that the credit markets are returning to more normal loan-to-value requirements.