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Sunday, June 23, 2013
Lavrov: Syria peace conference could be derailed
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks to the media after his meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, unseen, in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, June 15, 2013. Russia's foreign minister says the evidence put forth by the United States of chemical weapons use in Syria apparently doesn't meet stringent criteria for reliability. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks to the media after his meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, unseen, in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, June 15, 2013. Russia's foreign minister says the evidence put forth by the United States of chemical weapons use in Syria apparently doesn't meet stringent criteria for reliability. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
ST.PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) ? Russia's foreign minister has strongly warned that an international conference intended to negotiate peace for Syria could be derailed if the U.S. decides to push for a no-fly zone over the country.
Sergey Lavrov, speaking in an interview with The Associated Press and the Bloomberg news agency on Friday, also warned against pushing the demand for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, calling it unrealistic. He accused the West of sending conflicting signals to the Syrian opposition, encouraging rebels to keep fighting.
He said that supplies of weapons to the Syrian opposition promised by Washington and under consideration by the EU would be a "very big mistake."
A time and place for the international conference on Syria hasn't been announced yet.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013
Top 5 Posts on SEO for Real Estate - Placester
Love it or hate it, search engines are driving more traffic to your website than any other online channel. In fact, when it comes to traffic, search beats out social media by more than 300 percent! To help you understand the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO), we?ve rounded up five of our favorite posts on the topic. (For those who are entirely new to the world of SEO, take a quick look at our Little Black Book of SEO Terminology so you can get familiar with all of the different terms).
In no particular order?
by?John E. Miller (via Geek Estate)
If you?re looking for a quick read where you can get some solid SEO takeaways, this post is for you. The top ten list offers easily digestible insight, with tips that range from using internal links and obtaining backlinks to creating content and virtual tours. Quote: ?Utilization of videos and pictures are incredibly important in increasing SEO for any website; however, they are even more important for real estate SEO efforts.?
by Jeff Bernheisel (via Inman News)
An incredibly detailed post with a narrower focus than the previous entry, ?Winning the local SEO game? offers practical advice for optimizing your site for local search. The three main points author Jeff Bernheisel explores are 1) how to tag your site properly, 2) how to get indexed by different sites and social networks, and 3) how social media sharing and ?buzz? can help improve your search rankings. Quote: ?Many in the SEO world believe that this ?buzz? will eventually become more important than the old-school methods of building backlinks and worrying about keyword density.?
by David Friedman (via Realtor Mag)
The ?3 Pillars? post opens with some great facts and figures as to why SEO is crucial for real estate. Author David Friedman then goes on to thoroughly explain each of his three pillars: keyword strategy, website technology, and optimizing your content for search. Quote: ??when you invest in SEO, you?re constantly building on your earlier investments. This is like buying a home instead of renting. Your dollars build equity.?
by Emily Cote (via Outspoken Media)
An insightful post from the boutique SEO consulting company Outspoken Media, ?Guide to Real Estate SEO,? does a great job of setting up the challenges that real estate professionals face when optimizing for search. Author Emily Cote then does a deep dive that covers everything from strategy and content to IDX technology and URL structures. Quote: ?SEO is vital to a successful online presence for both brokers and agents because higher rankings can translate into significant sales increases?especially when each transaction is in the $100,000s.?
by Colin Ryan (via Real Estate Marketing Academy)
We?ve decided to include this popular post from our Academy on the list because it offers a slightly different approach than the other entries. Instead of focusing on new techniques that you can implement to improve your SEO, it covers seven common flaws that plague SEO strategies. It?s a great tool for evaluating the potential shortcomings of your SEO efforts. Quote: ?Trying to rank for ?Boston real estate?? You?ll be competing with hundreds of other companies, as well as big publishers like Zillow and Trulia. Instead, do your research: Use Google?s AdWords Keyword Tool??
Source: https://placester.com/real-estate-marketing-academy/top-5-posts-on-seo-for-real-estate/
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Flooding forces 75,000 from west Canada homes
CALGARY, Alberta (AP) ? Flooding forced the western Canadian city of Calgary to order the evacuation of the entire downtown area on Friday, as the waters reached the 10th row of the city's hockey arena.
About 230,000 people work downtown on a typical day. However, officials said very few people need to be moved out, since many heeded warnings and did not go to work Friday.
Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated population of 75,000, have already been evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and is the center of Canada's oil industry.
No deaths were reported since torrential rains hit the region Wednesday night, although one woman swept away with a mobile home was still missing.
In the downtown, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.
The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League Calgary Flames has flooded and the water inside is 10 rows deep. The 19,000-seat Saddledome is one of the feature buildings on the famed Calgary Stampede grounds, which is largely under water.
Officials said there was little that can be done to pump the water out of the building because there is simply too much.
About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said.
Nenshi said he's never seen the rivers that high or that fast, but said the flooding situation is as under control as it can be. Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked. And if things don't change, officials expect that the flow on the Bow River ? which, in in the mayor's words early Friday, looks like "an ocean at the moment" ? will remain steady for the next 12 hours.
Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work.
The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.
Schools and court trials were cancelled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.
Alberta Premier Alison Redford promised the province will help flood victims put their lives back together and provide financial aid to communities that need to rebuild The premier said at a briefing that she has spoken to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is heading to Calgary and has promised disaster relief. She urged people to heed evacuation orders, so authorities could do their jobs. She called the flooding that has hit most of southern Alberta an "absolutely tragic situation.
The premier warned that communities downstream of Calgary have not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.
It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (four inches) of rain. Environment Canada's forecast calls for more rain in the area, but in much smaller amounts.
Calgary is not alone in its weather-related woes. There have been flashpoints of chaos from Banff and Canmore and Crowsnest Pass in the Rockies and south to Lethbridge.
More than a dozen towns have declared states of emergency. Entire communities, including High River and Bragg Creek, near Calgary are under mandatory evacuation orders.
Some of the worst flooding hit High River, where it's estimated half of the people in the town have experienced flooding in their homes.
Military helicopters plucked about 30 people off rooftops in the area. Others were rescued by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Some even swam for their lives from stranded cars.
A spokesperson for Defense Minister Peter MacKay said 354 soldiers are being deployed to the entire flood zone.
Further west, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, pictures from the mountain town of Canmore depicted a raging river ripping at house foundations.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flooding-forces-75-000-west-canada-homes-163024507.html
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Friday, June 21, 2013
Life Is Sweet
In Virginia hunt country, 47 miles from Washington, D.C., you?ll find the town of Warrenton, population 9,735. On Main Street, across from the town library and next to the courthouse, there?s a small, refurbished filling station with a cherry-red pickup truck parked out front. This Norman Rockwell painting come to life is the work of Brian Noyes, 56, who, after more than 25 years in magazine publishing, decided to chuck it all in to start Red Truck Bakery.
Noyes helped launch local magazines in Tampa, Fla., Detroit, and Houston, then he moved to Washington, D.C., in 1984 to help the Washington Post redesign its Sunday magazine. He also served stints as art director at House & Garden, Preservation, and Smithsonian magazines. But no matter where he worked, Noyes says, he always brought in tarts and pies for his co-workers.
After living in the D.C. area for 11 years, Noyes bought a farmhouse in Cherrydale, a suburban neighborhood of Arlington, Va., which he restored with his partner, Dwight McNeill, a residential architect. Then, while he was still working at Smithsonian, he found a beautifully restored 1954 Ford pickup at a high-end auto-consignment shop. That purchase changed his life.
Noyes? interest in baking started with a series of cross-country family bake-offs. Noyes would bake bread and send it to his uncle in Florida, along with the recipe. His uncle would then send back his own creations, along with playful corrections to Noyes? recipes. Noyes credits his uncle with perfecting the recipe for Red Truck?s signature whole-grain wheat bread with honey, dried cranberries, and walnuts. He went on to train at the Culinary Institute of America and L?Academie de Cuisine in Maryland. ?He?s gone now, and I think, ?I sure wish he knew what I was doing these days,? ? Noyes says.
In 2006, Noyes obtained a cottage-industry permit from the county to start baking and selling his wares out of his farmhouse. He would bake all day Friday, then on Saturday mornings he would sell an assortment of baked goods out of the truck bed outside upscale country stores in the Virginia Piedmont region. He called his business the Red Truck Bakery. It wasn?t long before he found people in parking lots waiting for his truck to arrive. Noyes recruited investors from the farm town of Orlean, Va., where many well-off white-collar professionals live, for the startup costs of a bricks-and-mortar bakery. He figured it was just a matter of finding the right location. Then the economy tanked.
?I lost all my investors. They were just circling the wagons around themselves, so I was stuck with no help,? he says.
Just as Noyes thought his dream was dead, Red Truck got a break that completely changed his business model. As he tells it, in 2007 one of Noyes? regular customers took some Red Truck baked goods to a Fourth of July picnic in Little Washington, Va., which New York Times food writer Marian Burros also attended. She was so delighted with the food that she called Noyes and asked him to send her some items for further testing: Gruy?re quiche, mincemeat pie, almond stollen, fruitcake, rum cake, and sweet potato pecan bourbon pie. Then, in the 2008 edition of her annual holiday food guide, Burros wrote, ?One of my favorite discoveries is Brian Noyes, the owner of the Red Truck Bakery in Virginia, who has a deft hand with pastries and an unerring sense of flavor balance.?
The day before Burros? review was published, the Red Truck Bakery?s website received 24 hits; the day after it appeared, it got more than 57,000. People across the country flooded Noyes? inbox with orders, and he had to figure out how to meet a national demand. He spent the month of December at home, baking, boxing, and shipping orders for the holiday season.
?I knew it was time to make this a full-time gig?I had just turned 50 and thought, ?If not now, it will never happen.? So in 2008 I gave notice at Smithsonian magazine and spent the next year trying to raise money, searching for a location, and getting the place ready to open,? Noyes says.
Burros isn?t the only fan of Noyes? creations. Michael Stern, who writes about food for Parade magazine and blogs at roadfood.com, said Red Truck has ?[m]aybe the best chicken salad sandwich anywhere.? Washingtonian named Red Truck?s citrusy pumpkin pie the best in the metro area, and the Travel Channel?s Andrew Zimmern told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that Red Truck makes ?the best granola in North America.?
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But the greatest boost Noyes could have hoped for came from one mysteriously persistent customer from Chicago. In 2008, a woman ordered a sweet potato bourbon pecan pie to be shipped to Hawaii for Christmas. She then proceeded to email him multiple times confirming and reconfirming that the pie would be shipped in time. ?She got so anal about it,? he says, ?almost to the point of being troublesome.?
After the shipment went through, the woman apologized for being such a pain, explaining that it was her job to supply the sweet potato pie for the Obama family?s holiday gathering. The Obamas? regular pie shop in Chicago wasn?t able to supply them that year, so she decided to order from Red Truck after reading Burros? review.
When asked if he still supplies the White House with desserts, Noyes offers a discreet response: ?I?m not supposed to really talk about that.?
Noyes said the combination of turning 50 and being a little naive about the challenges of starting a new business helped him make the leap. ?If I were more analytical and not so seat-of-my-pants, I probably wouldn?t have done this,? he says. ?When I saw that this old gas station was available, I didn?t even think about it. I just thought, ?If ever it?s going to happen, it?s going to happen right there.? ?
So he cashed in his savings, signed the lease in March of 2009, and opened for business that August. Since then, Red Truck?s payroll has expanded to 15 people, and Noyes plans to open another bakery in The Plains, a town of 220 that?s a short drive from Warrenton. He?s in the final stages of securing a location for the new shop, a former pharmacy in a 19th-century mercantile building.
Noyes says he never misses his old career in publishing, and he?s been able to do the best part of his magazine job?playing with typography?while designing the branding for his next bakery. Still, that doesn?t mean it?s easy to make a drastic career change. ?I wouldn?t do it without a good amount of money in the bank,? he says. ?I still go to sleep each night wondering about meeting payroll. But I?m making this place pay for itself.??
One weekend a former boss visited the bakery without knowing that Noyes was involved. ?We just looked at each other, and he pointed at me and said, ?I know you!? I said, ?Here I am! This is what I do now!? ? And despite the late-night worries, he loves it.
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I am a high school dropout. School just wasn't my thing. I loved animals, I loved to read, and I loved people. So what does a high school dropout do ? opens a pet shop at 24 years old. Read More?
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Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/second_acts/2013/06/life_is_sweet.html
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Swiss Rocket Plane May Launch People on Private Science Trips
PARIS ? A startup Swiss spaceflight company is planning to upgrade its proposed private satellite launch system into a manned suborbital space shuttle for science missions, the company announced Monday (June 17).
The company Swiss Space Systems (S3) has no immediate plans to enter the space tourism market, but does see a market for low-cost microgravity research flights that may be more attractive to researchers than launching experiments on satellites or to the International Space Station, the company's founder and CEO Pascal Jaussi said.
Swiss Space Systems officially formed in March, when it unveiled a concept to deploy small satellites from an air-launched ? but unmanned ? Suborbital Aircraft Reusable shuttle (SOAR) designed to launch from the top of a modified Airbus A300 jumbo jet. [How S3's SOAR Rocket Plane Will Fly (Photos)]
On Monday, the Payerne, Switzerland-based company unveiled an expansion of those space plane plans at the Paris Air Show here. The announcement included an agreement with veteran aerospace company Thales Alenia Space to begin work on a pressurized compartment on the SOAR shuttle to house experiments and crewmembers on future flights.
"Thanks to this, we will be able to enhance our system by replacing the satellite cargo with a similarly developed pressurized module inside the SOAR, allowing S3 to perform microgravity research flights," Jaussi said.
According to Jaussi, test flights of an unmanned version of the SOAR shuttle could begin by 2017, with the first commercial satellite launches to commence in 2018. Swiss Space Systems did not provide a timetable for manned missions, but officials said they were committed to the effort.
Private rocket plane to SOAR
The SOAR concept calls for the rocket plane to ride piggyback atop an A300 jetliner to an altitude of about 33,000 feet (10,000 meters), then light a liquid-fueled engine to boost the craft higher than 50 miles, just shy of the internationally-recognized boundary of space. The traditional edge of space is an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km).
A satellite would then deploy from SOAR's cargo pod and ignite its own rocket motor to reach Earth orbit. Swiss Space Systems claims SOAR can inject a 551-pound (250 kilograms) satellite into an orbit 434 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth.
The company, which is sponsored by the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, has a budget of about $270 million, according to its website. Jaussi said Swiss Space Systems now has about 40 employees developing the SOAR space vehicle, support infrastructure and planning certification with European regulatory authorities.
The memorandum of understanding with Thales covers the initial design of a cabin, which can be configured to carry research payloads or passengers, depending on the requirements of each flight.
According to a Thales press statement, the two companies will negotiate a contract later this summer to finalize the agreement.
Thales constructed pressurized modules for the International Space Station, including the Columbus laboratory and the Harmony and Tranquility connecting modules. The contractor's Italian business unit also builds cargo modules for Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus vehicles for space station resupply missions.
A European space plane
The SOAR design backed by Swiss Space Systems is one of a few European concepts aimed at serving the suborbital transportation market, but none of the European companies are as far along as U.S.-based Virgin Galactic, which completed the first rocket-powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo space plane in April.
XCOR Aerospace, based at the same Mojave, Calif., airport as Virgin Galactic, hopes to begin test flights of its Lynx vehicle before the end of 2013, followed by commercial flights in 2014.
Jaussi said Swiss Space Systems is working with the European Space Agency on computer modeling and trajectory analysis. SOAR traces much of its design heritage to Europe's Hermes program, a mini-shuttle scrapped by ESA in the early 1990s.
ESA has not provided any funding to the SOAR project and has not signed up to be a customer.
Company officials have participated in working groups with the European Aviation Safety Agency, a pan-European regulatory agency which monitors compliance with safety rules, Jaussi said.
Swiss Space Systems hopes technology for the SOAR vehicle will revolutionize point-to-point travel, allowing intercontinental flights to race around the globe at three times the speed of sound.
The firm has signed an agreement to potentially operate from a spaceport in Malaysia, and "advanced discussions" are underway with sites in Morocco, Canada and Ecuador, Jaussi said.
"Far from wishing to launch into the space tourism market, we want rather to establish a new mode of air travel based on our satellite launch model that will allow spaceports on different continents to be reached in an hour," Jaussi said in a statement.
Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?and?Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/swiss-rocket-plane-may-launch-people-private-science-103304250.html
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Warrior poet | Alexandria Times
By Jim McElhatton (Photo/Sawyer McElhatton)
Middleweight contender Antoine ?Action? Douglas, a 20-year-old who has trained for years at the Alexandria Boxing Club, needed only 18 seconds to knock down his opponent during ESPN2?s Friday Night Fights last week.
The early seconds of the nationally televised match saw Douglas in a defensive stance, drawing in southpaw Ibahiem King, 28, who just the night before at a press conference had talked about his opponent?s youth and inexperience. Then, as King ended a flurry of jabs, Douglas sensed opportunity.
In an instant, he lifted his head and unfurled a left counter-hook that sent King down barely after the fight had begun.
Douglas didn?t boast or stand over King. He didn?t thump his chest. He didn?t smile. He waited until King got up and went back to work.
The fight lasted until the end of the third round, but its outcome was never in doubt after Douglas? left hook. The local boxer remained undefeated with an 8-0 record after the referee ended the fight.
?He?s another kid who, without boxing, who knows where he?d be?? legendary commentator Teddy Atlas said as Douglas pounded away on King at the match in West Orange, N.J. ?Boxing does salvage, save and redirect a lot of young men.?
A few days later, Douglas was back at the Alexandria Boxing Club, which is housed in the Charles Houston Recreation Center, talking about his quick rise in the sport, life outside the ring and exactly what Atlas was referring to when he said boxing salvages lives.
?My opponent thought I was just another young knucklehead that he was going to walk all over,? Douglas said. ?But that gave me an advantage.?
Growing up in southeast Washington, Douglas said he spent time in the city?s foster care system, but in a story as old as the sport itself, boxing gave him a way out. It brought him success as an amateur ? including a Police Athletic League championship ? but also discipline and structure at a time when little else in life seemed stable.
?My mom suffered addiction, and my dad wasn?t around,? he said, crediting a cousin with getting him involved in the sport. ?Boxing helped me immeasurably.?
Nicknamed ?Action? inside the ring, Douglas likes to read and write poetry when he?s not fighting or training. At Anacostia High School, where he graduated as an honors student, Douglas worked on the school newspaper and yearbook. He?s considering a career as a writer when he?s finished boxing.
?He doesn?t boast and run around,? said Douglas? uncle and coach, Kay Koroma, a retired boxer. ?He stays to himself.?
If that seems an unlikely portrait of a boxer, it?s not unusual around the Alexandria Boxing Club, where coaches say they don?t let young boxers train unless they have good grades. They?ve even canceled fights because of disappointing report cards.
Coaches talk to boxers about thinking big ? becoming a doctor or lawyer or, if you do work at a McDonald?s, striving to become an owner of a franchise.
?Boxing?s not a getaway, it?s not a hideaway,? said Dennis Porter, a coach who started the club in the late 1980s. ?Boxing?s not where you run away to. You?ve got to have a plan B. What happens if you get hurt? What happens if you don?t make it?
?If you?re failing school, you?re out of here. What am I going to do with you? If you can?t read, you can?t read a contract somebody?s putting in your face. We want them to go to college.?
Porter said Douglas fits the profile of a scholar outside the ring, and Koroma said the plan is not just for the contender to win a belt, but also to enroll in George Mason University.
?He?s a laid-back, stay-in-the-house kind of guy,? Porter said. ?He?s one of those guys who works out hard and goes home. He doesn?t hang out on the street. He comes to the gym, and he?s a workaholic. He wants to be world champion.?
But inside the ring, he?s another person altogether.
?The guy when I?m boxing, ?Antoine Action,? that?s a completely different me,? Douglas said. ?I don?t want to talk. I don?t want to be touched. I?m ready to fight. And that?s the one time in my life when I get to be the bad guy and get away with it.?
Source: http://alextimes.com/2013/06/warrior-poet/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=warrior-poet
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Few options for Brazil leader in face of protests
SAO PAULO (AP) ? With massive protests by middle-class Brazilians demanding wholesale government reforms, people all over this continent-sized country have reached a verdict on the streets and online: "The giant has awakened."
President Dilma Rousseff has tried to placate the crowds by supporting their right to protest, and the Sao Paulo municipal government has rescinded the 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares that sparked the demonstrations in the first place. But as the protests grow even bigger, with two major marches called for Thursday, the Brazilian government seems at a loss over how to address the sweeping demands of its people.
Protesters have presented the government with myriad demands and a growing list of complaints: It can't provide its citizens with basic security, officials are corrupt and inefficient, traffic is bottlenecked on pot-holed streets, and even cellphones don't work. And the investment that should be going into health care and education are pouring into soccer stadiums and airports instead.
Rousseff's response has been little more than rhetoric. She hasn't formed any emergency committees to deal with the crisis or offered grand gestures or fresh ideas. And that has further angered Brazilians such as Rosana Reis, a 51-year-old nurse who like millions in the middle class is feeling the pinch of high taxes and perennially poor public services while the country spends billions of dollars to host next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
"I worked for years in public hospitals and I've seen with my own eyes how everybody but the richest Brazilians suffer," Reis said during a protest this week that took over central Sao Paulo. "These politicians have money for the World Cup, money for the Olympics, but none to spend on health care or education. We've had enough. The people have woken up!"
The protests began a week ago in Sao Paulo and spread quickly to other cities after an initial police crackdown on demonstrators. They have become a collective, if unorganized cry for help from a newly expanded middle class that expects more for its taxes and from its democratically elected left-of-center government.
The public outcry has caught Brazil's leadership off-guard. Instead of dealing with one group with one list of demands, the government has been confronted with a spontaneous mass movement without a unified agenda.
How to quell the discontent adds up to the stiffest challenge yet to the ruling Workers Party since it took power in 2003. Rousseff has been meeting with former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad in search of a solution.
They are working under the immediate pressure of pacifying protesters before next month's papal visit to Rio and inner Sao Paulo state.
"The response of most politicians has been insufficient because they don't understand that by being elected they made a commitment to the population," said Domingos Dutra, a Workers Party congressman who has often butted heads with party leadership. "Protesters' demands are clear ? the immediate reversal of transportation fares. But there are others: improvements in health care, combating violence and combating impunity. President Dilma has taken too long to recognize that these demands are genuine."
Dutra said that when it comes to cracking down on dissenting voices, allowing environmental destruction in the Amazon or to building big public works for the World Cup and Olympics, the government moves quickly.
"But when it comes to meeting social demands, it works slowly. I hope that the government understands that society is evolving and it needs to act quickly to meet demands," he added.
A poll of protesters attending this week's rallies in Sao Paulo shows they are solidly middle class. Three-quarters have a university degree, half are younger than 25 and more than 80 percent say they don't belong to any political party, according to the survey by the respected Datafolha group.
The disconnect is apparent between those taking part in demonstrations and their Workers Party government, whose support lies among the lower-middle class and poor.
In fact, Brazil's poorest have seen their economic lives dramatically improve under the Silva and Rousseff governments, largely because of much-applauded government cash transfer programs that have helped 40 million people move from poverty into the lower-middle class in the last decade.
But other Brazilians who make up the country's solid middle- and upper-middle classes feel alienated and unrepresented by any political party, said Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
He said the wages of middle-income households have stagnated and their spending power has diminished, with no government programs helping them as they have Brazil's poorest. Complicating the picture is the so-called "Brazil cost" ? infrastructure woes and other bureaucratic red tape that make everything in the nation so costly, Roett said.
"There is a clear sense among the Brazilian middle class that the Workers Party has ignored them," Roett said. "There is no short-term answer. There has to be a multiparty dialogue to gauge just how deep the frustration goes and how government responses must be prioritized. Rousseff has to cut across the political spectrum for answers."
Natalia Querino, a 22-year-old university student, put it succinctly while joining thousands of other protesters in downtown Sao Paulo on Tuesday. She's watched Brazil spend some $13 billion so far on preparing for next year's World Cup while the country's education system continues to lag behind those of other middle-income countries.
"We are against a government that spends billions in stadiums while people are suffering across the country," Querino said. "We want better education, more security and a better health system."
Organizers said the decision to rescind higher transit fares would not bring a halt to the protest, and a demonstration scheduled for Thursday in Sao Paulo would go on as scheduled.
"What we will have is a demonstration to celebrate the victory of the people who took to the streets," said Mayara Vivian, a leader of the Passe Livre movement that kicked off the protests last week with the mantra "The giant has awakened."
Another leader, history professor Lucas Monteiro said "the government has finally ceded to popular pressure".
"The decision shows that citizens can obtain victories through popular mobilizations," Monteiro said.
For Christopher Garman, the Latin America director of the U.S.-based consulting firm the Eurasia Group, the Brazilian government has in some sense become a victim of its own economic success.
"As Brazil has gotten richer, the political demands begin to change. People are demanding different things of their government," Garman said. "When you have a shift to a 'middle income' country with a robust middle class, they start asking for something else, for improved public services."
The long-term solutions that protesters are demanding, improvements in all facets of the public sector, will require significant reforms to the political system, not simply more funding, Garman said.
"The problem isn't money; it's how you spend it," Garman said. "It's hard to see this sustaining itself for weeks on end. The nature of the movement is so diffuse it will probably peter out of its own accord. You have diffuse discontent over all these but there is no specific target."
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Sibaja reported from Brasilia and Barchfield from Rio de Janeiro.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/few-options-brazil-leader-face-protests-232249716.html
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Berkeley Lab confirms thirdhand smoke causes DNA damage
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Public release date: 20-Jun-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Julie Chao
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510-486-6491
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A study led by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found for the first time that thirdhand smokethe noxious residue that clings to virtually all surfaces long after the secondhand smoke from a cigarette has cleared outcauses significant genetic damage in human cells.
Furthermore, the study also found that chronic exposure is worse than acute exposure, with the chemical compounds in samples exposed to chronic thirdhand smoke existing in higher concentrations and causing more DNA damage than samples exposed to acute thirdhand smoke, suggesting that the residue becomes more harmful over time.
"This is the very first study to find that thirdhand smoke is mutagenic," said Lara Gundel, a Berkeley Lab scientist and co-author of the study. "Tobacco-specific nitrosamines, some of the chemical compounds in thirdhand smoke, are among the most potent carcinogens there are. They stay on surfaces, and when those surfaces are clothing or carpets, the danger to children is especially serious."
Their paper, "Thirdhand smoke causes DNA damage in human cells," was published in the journal Mutagenesis. The lead investigator was Bo Hang, a biochemist in the Life Sciences Division of Berkeley Lab; he worked with an interdisciplinary group, including chemists from Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies DivisionGundel, Hugo Destaillats and Mohamad Sleimanas well as scientists from UC San Francisco, UCLA Medical Center and the University of Texas.
The researchers used two common in vitro assays, the Comet assay and the long amplicon-qPCR assay, to test for genotoxicity and found that thirdhand smoke can cause both DNA strand breaks and oxidative DNA damage, which can lead to gene mutation. Genotoxicity is associated with the development of diseases and is a critical mechanism responsible for many types of cancer caused by smoking and secondhand smoke exposure.
"Until this study, the toxicity of thirdhand smoke has not been well understood," Hang said. "Thirdhand smoke has a smaller quantity of chemicals than secondhand smoke, so it's good to have experimental evidence to confirm its genotoxicity."
It is the first major study of disease-related mechanisms to come out of the California Consortium on the Health Effects of Thirdhand Smoke, which was established two years ago largely as a result of work published in 2010 by Gundel, Destaillats, Sleiman and others. The Consortium is funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, which is managed by the University of California and funded by state cigarette taxes.
The 2010 studies from Berkeley Lab found that residual nicotine can react with ozone and nitrous acidboth common indoor air pollutantsto form hazardous agents. When nicotine in thirdhand smoke reacts with nitrous acid it undergoes a chemical transformation and forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines, such as NNA, NNK and NNN. Nicotine can react with ozone to form ultrafine particles, which can carry harmful chemicals and pass through human tissue. Humans can be exposed to thirdhand smoke through inhalation, ingestion or skin contact.
Thirdhand smoke is particularly insidious because it is extremely difficult to eradicate. Studies have found that it can still be detected in dust and surfaces of apartments more than two months after smokers moved out. Common cleaning methods such as vacuuming, wiping and ventilation have not proven effective in lowering nicotine contamination. "You can do some things to reduce the odors, but it's very difficult to really clean it completely," said Destaillats. "The best solution is to substitute materials, such as change the carpet, repaint."
Now the new study suggests thirdhand smoke could become more harmful over time. To generate the samples, the researchers put paper strips in smoking chambers. The acute samples, generated at Berkeley Lab, were exposed to five cigarettes smoked in about 20 minutes, and the chronic samples, generated at UCSF, were exposed to cigarette smoke for 258 hours over 196 days. During that time, the chamber was also ventilated for about 35 hours.
The researchers found that the concentrations of more than half of the compounds studied were higher in the chronic samples than in the acute. They also found higher levels of DNA damage caused by the chronic samples. "The cumulative effect of thirdhand smoke is quite significant," Gundel said. "The findings suggest the materials could be getting more toxic with time."
Hang and coworkers exposed the human cells by first extracting the compounds from the paper with a culture medium then using the medium to culture the human cells for 24 hours. The concentrations of the compounds were carefully measured. "They are close to real-life concentrations, and in fact are on the lower side of what someone might be exposed to," Hang said.
Next Hang is pursuing further understanding of the chemistry of the NNA reaction with DNA bases. NNA is a tobacco-specific nitrosamine that is not found in freshly emitted secondhand smoke. "It looks like it's a very important component of thirdhand smoke, and it is much less studied than NNK and NNN in terms of its mutagenic potential," he said.
The researchers conclude in their paper: "Ultimately, knowledge of the mechanisms by which thirdhand smoke exposure increases the chance of disease development in exposed individuals should lead to new strategies for prevention."
###
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
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Public release date: 20-Jun-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Julie Chao
jhchao@lbl.gov
510-486-6491
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A study led by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found for the first time that thirdhand smokethe noxious residue that clings to virtually all surfaces long after the secondhand smoke from a cigarette has cleared outcauses significant genetic damage in human cells.
Furthermore, the study also found that chronic exposure is worse than acute exposure, with the chemical compounds in samples exposed to chronic thirdhand smoke existing in higher concentrations and causing more DNA damage than samples exposed to acute thirdhand smoke, suggesting that the residue becomes more harmful over time.
"This is the very first study to find that thirdhand smoke is mutagenic," said Lara Gundel, a Berkeley Lab scientist and co-author of the study. "Tobacco-specific nitrosamines, some of the chemical compounds in thirdhand smoke, are among the most potent carcinogens there are. They stay on surfaces, and when those surfaces are clothing or carpets, the danger to children is especially serious."
Their paper, "Thirdhand smoke causes DNA damage in human cells," was published in the journal Mutagenesis. The lead investigator was Bo Hang, a biochemist in the Life Sciences Division of Berkeley Lab; he worked with an interdisciplinary group, including chemists from Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies DivisionGundel, Hugo Destaillats and Mohamad Sleimanas well as scientists from UC San Francisco, UCLA Medical Center and the University of Texas.
The researchers used two common in vitro assays, the Comet assay and the long amplicon-qPCR assay, to test for genotoxicity and found that thirdhand smoke can cause both DNA strand breaks and oxidative DNA damage, which can lead to gene mutation. Genotoxicity is associated with the development of diseases and is a critical mechanism responsible for many types of cancer caused by smoking and secondhand smoke exposure.
"Until this study, the toxicity of thirdhand smoke has not been well understood," Hang said. "Thirdhand smoke has a smaller quantity of chemicals than secondhand smoke, so it's good to have experimental evidence to confirm its genotoxicity."
It is the first major study of disease-related mechanisms to come out of the California Consortium on the Health Effects of Thirdhand Smoke, which was established two years ago largely as a result of work published in 2010 by Gundel, Destaillats, Sleiman and others. The Consortium is funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, which is managed by the University of California and funded by state cigarette taxes.
The 2010 studies from Berkeley Lab found that residual nicotine can react with ozone and nitrous acidboth common indoor air pollutantsto form hazardous agents. When nicotine in thirdhand smoke reacts with nitrous acid it undergoes a chemical transformation and forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines, such as NNA, NNK and NNN. Nicotine can react with ozone to form ultrafine particles, which can carry harmful chemicals and pass through human tissue. Humans can be exposed to thirdhand smoke through inhalation, ingestion or skin contact.
Thirdhand smoke is particularly insidious because it is extremely difficult to eradicate. Studies have found that it can still be detected in dust and surfaces of apartments more than two months after smokers moved out. Common cleaning methods such as vacuuming, wiping and ventilation have not proven effective in lowering nicotine contamination. "You can do some things to reduce the odors, but it's very difficult to really clean it completely," said Destaillats. "The best solution is to substitute materials, such as change the carpet, repaint."
Now the new study suggests thirdhand smoke could become more harmful over time. To generate the samples, the researchers put paper strips in smoking chambers. The acute samples, generated at Berkeley Lab, were exposed to five cigarettes smoked in about 20 minutes, and the chronic samples, generated at UCSF, were exposed to cigarette smoke for 258 hours over 196 days. During that time, the chamber was also ventilated for about 35 hours.
The researchers found that the concentrations of more than half of the compounds studied were higher in the chronic samples than in the acute. They also found higher levels of DNA damage caused by the chronic samples. "The cumulative effect of thirdhand smoke is quite significant," Gundel said. "The findings suggest the materials could be getting more toxic with time."
Hang and coworkers exposed the human cells by first extracting the compounds from the paper with a culture medium then using the medium to culture the human cells for 24 hours. The concentrations of the compounds were carefully measured. "They are close to real-life concentrations, and in fact are on the lower side of what someone might be exposed to," Hang said.
Next Hang is pursuing further understanding of the chemistry of the NNA reaction with DNA bases. NNA is a tobacco-specific nitrosamine that is not found in freshly emitted secondhand smoke. "It looks like it's a very important component of thirdhand smoke, and it is much less studied than NNK and NNN in terms of its mutagenic potential," he said.
The researchers conclude in their paper: "Ultimately, knowledge of the mechanisms by which thirdhand smoke exposure increases the chance of disease development in exposed individuals should lead to new strategies for prevention."
###
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/dbnl-blc062013.php
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Protesters out again in Brazilian cities
SAO PAULO (AP) -- Scattered street demonstrations popped up around Brazil Wednesday as protesters continued their collective cry against the low-quality public services they receive in exchange for high taxes and rising prices.
In one of several protests, about 200 people blocked the Anchieta Highway that links Sao Paulo, the country's biggest city, and the port of Santos before heading to the industrial suburb of Sao Bernardo do Campo on Sao Paulo's outskirts. Another group of protesters later obstructed the highway again.
In the northeastern city of Fortaleza, some 15,000 protesters clashed with police trying to prevent them from reaching the Castelao stadium where Brazil were to play Mexico in the Confederations Cup soccer tournament on Wednesday.
Riot police used gas bombs and pepper spray to keep protesters from advancing past a barrier some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) away from venue. A police car was burned by the demonstrators, who also threw rocks and other objects at the officers. The protest disrupted fans' efforts to access the stadium for Brazil's second match at the World Cup warm-up tournament.
"We are against a government which spends billions in stadiums while people are suffering across the country," said Natalia Querino, a 22-year-old student participating in the protest. "We want better education, more security and a better health system."
Earlier, hundreds of protesters cut off the main access road to the stadium, and police responded by diverting traffic away from the road. Official vehicles of tournament organizers FIFA were among those struggling to reach the stadium.
In the city of Belo Horizonte some 2,000 protesters took to the streets in a peaceful demonstration, while others were reported to be gathering in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro.
The actions followed another night of mass marches around Brazil and nearly a week of unrest that has shocked the country's leaders ahead of a papal visit next month and next year's World Cup soccer tournament.
Beginning as protests against bus fare hikes, the demonstrations have quickly ballooned to include broad middle-class outrage over the failure of governments to provide basic services and ensure public safety, even as the country's economy modernizes and tax rates remain some of the highest in the world.
Protest organizers, who have widely employed social media, said new mass demonstrations will be held in Sao Paulo and Rio on Thursday. The Rio action promises the most volatility, with protesters planning to march to Maracana stadium where Spain and Tahiti will meet in a Confederations Cup match. Police have said they will not allow protesters to interrupt the game.
Fortaleza, Rio, Belo Horizonte, Salvador and Brasilia have received soldiers from Brazil's elite National Force to bolster security during tournament games.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter urged protesters Wednesday to stop linking their anger against the government to the Confederations Cup. The cost of building stadiums for the FIFA tournaments has been a regular complaint at marches.
In an interview with Brazil's Globo TV network broadcast, Blatter said he could "understand that people are not happy, but they should not use football to make their demands heard."
Blatter added: "We did not impose the World Cup on Brazil."
On Tuesday night, tens of thousands of Brazilians flooded central Sao Paulo, with the protest following the rhythm of mobilizations that drew some 240,000 people across Brazil the previous night. Though mostly peaceful, small bands of radicals split off in Sao Paulo to fight with police.
Fernando Grella Vieira, head of the Sao Paulo state public safety department, said 63 people were detained during Tuesday's protests. He told the Globo TV network on Wednesday that police would guarantee the right to demonstrate but would "repress all forms of vandalism."
Local governments in at least four cities have responded to the unrest by agreeing to reverse bus and subway fare hikes, and Sao Paulo's fare hike could also be rolled back. It's not clear that will calm the country, though, with the protests already expanding to take on a wide range of other issues.
Beyond complaints about transit fares, protesters haven't produced any concrete demands even as they've waved signs, gone on social media and chanted their anger at the entire governing system. A common cry at the rallies: "No parties!"
"What I hope comes from these protests is that the governing class comes to understand that we're the ones in charge, not them, and the politicians must learn to respect us," said Yasmine Gomes, a 22-year-old squeezed into the plaza in central Sao Paulo where Tuesday night's protest began.
President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship, has hailed the protests for raising questions and strengthening Brazil's democracy. "Brazil today woke up stronger," she said in a statement Tuesday.
Yet Rousseff offered no actions that her government might take to address complaints.
The protests have raised troubling questions about the country's ability to provide security ahead of it playing host to some of the world's biggest events, including the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
And Brazil's media has scrambled to cover the sprawling protests, while at times sparking the ire of protesters, with the powerful Globo TV network in particular drawing derision.
Whenever what appears to be a Globo helicopter swoops over a demonstration, protesters hiss, raise their fists and chant slogans against what they say was the network's failure to widely show images of a violent police crackdown on protesters last week in Sao Paulo.
Such mass protests are rare in this 190 million-person country, with demonstrations generally attracting small numbers of politicized participants.
Many now protesting in Brazil's streets hail from the country's growing middle class, which government figures show has ballooned by some 40 million people over the past decade amid a commodities-driven economic boom.
The protesters say they've lost patience with endemic problems such as government corruption and inefficiency. They're also slamming Brazil's government for spending billions of dollars to host the World Cup and Olympics while leaving other needs unmet.
A November government report raised to $13.3 billion the projected cost of stadiums, airport renovations and other projects for the World Cup. City, state and other local governments are spending more than $12 billion on projects for the Olympics in Rio.
Attorney Agatha Rossi de Paula, who attended Tuesday's protest in Sao Paulo along with her mother, called Brazil's fiscal priorities "an embarrassment."
"We just want what we paid in taxes back, through health care, education and transportation," said the 34-year-old. "We want the police to protect us, to help the people on the streets who have ended up with no job and no money."
So far, the mass gatherings have shown no evidence of any central leadership, although they've been tied to smaller activist organizations such as one asking for lower transit fares. Groups of Brazilians have also staged small protests in other countries, including Mexico, Portugal, Spain and Denmark.
A cyber-attack knocked the government's official World Cup site offline Tuesday, and the Twitter feed for Brazil's Anonymous hackers group posted links to a host of other government websites whose content had been replaced by a screen calling on citizens to come out to the streets.
___
AP writers Jenny Barchfield and Rob Harris in Rio de Janeiro, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Tales Azzoni in Fortaleza and Jill Langlois in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-again-brazilian-cities-200427532.html
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Samsung Galaxy S4 Active from AT&T hands-on (video)
We just went hands-on for the first time with Samsung's Galaxy S4 Active a scant few hours ago, and here we are taking yet another look at it this afternoon in an AT&T variant that showed up at a New York City tech event. The specs and bullet points are identical to the model we checked out earlier today: a 5-inch (TFT LCD) 1080p display (443 ppi), a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, LTE radios and Android 4.2.2, an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash out back, and up to two-megapixel stills in front. This model, however, is the one US AT&T customers will get their hands-on tomorrow for $200 (with two-year contract, of course). How does it fare? Well, identically to the model we checked out earlier today. But hey, have a look at the model you'll actually get in your hands stateside come tomorrow!
Update: We've updated the post with a video just below the break!
Edgar Alvarez and Daniel Orren contributed to this report.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Mobile, Samsung, AT&T
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Microsoft Backs Off Restrictive Xbox One Policies - Including Always Online, Used Game Blocks, and Region Locks
 Microsoft Backs Off Restrictive Xbox One Policies Including Always Online, Used Game Blocks, and Region Locks Microsoft appears to have backed away from their rather absurd and draconian DRM policies for their upcoming Xbox One console. According to a blog post by the company, the company will be backing away from the console's previous "online check in every 24 hours" requirement, as well as lifting many of the restrictions on used games. Microsoft's also backing off of the restrictions on game rentals, something that would have seriously harmed companies like Gamefly.com. Even region locks will be going away after consumer complaints. According to Microsoft's President of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick, the following changes are going to be made after receiving "candid feedback":?An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games ? After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360. ?Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today ? There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360. The move was absolutely essentially from Microsoft's standpoint, given the huge early PR boon it was providing Sony's PS4. Provided the shifts don't come with unwanted caveats, it's refreshing to see Microsoft isn't entirely tone deaf. |
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?ShawSource: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Microsoft-Backs-Off-Restrictive-Xbox-One-Policies-124740
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