Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/01/30/70283/
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Greek PM meets top ECB, EU officials after summit (Reuters)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Greece's Prime Minister Lucas Papademos held talks on restructuring Greek debt with senior officials from the European Central Bank and the European Union after an EU summit on Monday, officials said.
ECB President Mario Draghi was originally expected to attend the meeting but was replaced by Joerg Asmussen, Greek and German officials said. Asmussen, an ECB executive board member, has publicly opposed the ECB taking part in the private sector writedown of Greece's debt holdings.
An ECB spokesman confirmed Asmussen's attendance.
Also at the meeting were Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Olli Rehn, and Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.
It was not clear what was on the agenda, but it was expected to focus on whether the 50 percent reduction in the nominal value of the private sector's holdings of Greek government bonds will be sufficient to restore Athens to debt sustainability.
The Greek government has been in negotiations with banks and insurance companies for several months over plans to exchange their holdings of around 200 billion euros of Greek bonds for around 100 billion euros of longer-dated securities with a lower coupon.
The aim is to reduce Greece's debt burden from around 160 percent of GDP currently to 120 percent of GDP by 2020.
However, the IMF calculates that even with a 50 percent writedown by the private sector, it will not be sufficient to reach the 2020 target. Instead, it may be necessary for the public sector - potentially including the ECB - to take a hit on their holdings.
One EU official played down the meeting, calling it a "stock-taking exercise," with the core negotiations going on between the Greek government and the Institute of International Finance, which represents banks and insurance companies.
Van Rompuy told reporters after the summit that the aim was to finalize a deal on a second package of support for Greece by the end of the week, so that all details are agreed by mid-February. Euro zone finance ministers next meet on February 12-13.
Failure to strike a deal on a second package - expected to total at least 130 billion euros of support, depending on the private sector's role - could mean that Athens is unable to meet a 14.5 billion euro bond repayment in March.
(Reporting by Harry Papachristou and Jan Strupczewski, writing by Luke Baker)
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Monday, January 30, 2012
Iran to stop oil exports to "some" countries soon: IRNA (Reuters)
TEHRAN (Reuters) ? Iran's oil minister said on Sunday the Islamic state would soon stop exporting crude to "some" countries, the state news agency IRNA reported.
"Soon we will cut exporting oil to some countries," Rostam Qasemi was quoted by IRNA as saying.
Benchmark Brent crude prices rose to around $111.50 a barrel on Friday on expectations Iran's parliament would vote to halt exports to the European Union as early as next week, in retaliation to EU plans to stop all Iranian crude imports by July amid deepening tension over Tehran's nuclear programme.
Iran's parliament on Sunday postponed the debate over the bill.
(Created by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Alison Williams)
"The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius wins DGA award (Reuters)
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius was named the year's best feature film director by the Directors Guild of America on Saturday, further positioning the silent movie-era romance as a frontrunner for Oscars.
The movie about a fading star whose career is eclipsed by the woman he loves just as talkies are putting an end to silent pictures has been a critical darling throughout the Hollywood's current awards season.
"This is really touching and moving for me," said French director Hazanavicius upon accepting his award at the Grand Ballroom adjacent to the Kodak Theatre where the Oscars, the film industry's highest honors, will be given out on February 26.
"It's maybe the highest recognition I could hope for," he said.
The DGA Awards are a key indicator of who may win Academy Awards next month because only six times since the DGA began handing out annual honors in 1948 has the its winner failed to also be named best director by Oscar voters.
More important, there is a long history among members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars, to give their Academy Award for best film to the movie made by the winner of best director.
The next stop in the race for Oscars is Sunday's Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles where "The Artist" will look to extend its streak of victories, including a Golden Globe for best film musical or comedy and honors from critics groups.
The DGA also gives out other awards, including one for best film documentary, which went to James Marsh for "Project Nim."
Among TV award winners, Patty Jenkins was given the DGA trophy for best drama series for the pilot episode of "The Killing" and Robert B. Weide took home the DGA award for best comedy series for an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
(Reporting By Bob Tourtellotte; Editing by Bill Trott)
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Need for court artists fades as cameras move in
This Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, photo, shows courtroom sketch artist Carol Renaud in her Chicago home studio. Artists have drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera ban. Just 14 states still have prohibitions in place, amd three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
This Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, photo, shows courtroom sketch artist Carol Renaud in her Chicago home studio. Artists have drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera ban. Just 14 states still have prohibitions in place, amd three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
This 2009 sketch of Bolingbrook police officer Drew Peterson by courtroom artist Carol Renaud is seen at her Chicago home on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Artists have drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera ban. Just 14 states still have prohibitions in place, and three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs. (AP Photo/Carol Renaud)
This Dec. 7, 2011 file courtroom sketch by artist Tom Gianni shows former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, left, speaking before U.S. District Judge James Zagel at his sentencing hearing at federal court in Chicago. Sketch artists have been drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera ban. Just 14 states still have prohibitions in place, and three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs. (AP Photo/Tom Gianni, File)
FILE - In this May 14, 2008 file photo, courtroom sketch artist Andy Austin poses at Chicago's Federal Plaza with one of her works from the corruption trial of Conrad Black. Austin has worked as a court artist for 40 years. Artists have been drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera bans. Just 14 states still have the prohibitions in place, though three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
This May 20, 2008 file courtroom sketch by artist Lou Chukman shows R&B singer R. Kelly, right, watching in court as prosecutors played the sex tape at the center of his child pornography trial in open court in Chicago. Artists have drawing legal proceedings since the Salem witch trials to the recent corruption trial of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but their ranks are thinning as states lift courtroom camera bans. Just 14 states still have prohibitions in place, and three of those states, Minnesota, South Dakota and Illinois, recently moved to end theirs. (AP Photo/Lou Chukman, File)
CHICAGO (AP) ? One marker in hand and one in his mouth, Lou Chukman glances up and down from a sketchpad to a reputed Chicago mobster across the courtroom ? drawing feverishly to capture the drama of the judge's verdict before the moment passes.
Sketch artists have been the public's eyes at high-profile trials for decades ? a remnant of an age when drawings in broadsheet papers, school books or travel chronicles were how people glimpsed the world beyond their own.
Today, their ranks are thinning swiftly as states move to lift longstanding bans on cameras in courtrooms. As of a year ago, 14 states still had them ? but at least three, including Illinois this month, have taken steps since then to end the prohibitions.
"When people say to me, 'Wow, you are a courtroom artist' ? I always say, 'One day, you can tell your grandchildren you met a Stegosaurus," Chukman, 56, explained outside court. "We're an anachronism now, like blacksmiths."
Cutbacks in news budgets and shifts in aesthetic sensibilities toward digitized graphics have all contributed to the form's decline, said Maryland-based sketch artist Art Lien.
While the erosion of the job may not be much noticed by people reading and watching the news, Lien says something significant is being lost. Video or photos can't do what sketch artists can, he said, such as compressing hours of court action onto a single drawing that crystallizes the events.
The best courtroom drawings hang in museums or sell to collectors for thousands of dollars.
"I think people should lament the passing of this art form," Lien said.
But while courtroom drawing has a long history ? artists did illustrations of the Salem witch trials in 1692 ? the artistry can sometimes be sketchy. A bald lawyer ends up with a full head of hair. A defendant has two left hands. A portly judge is drawn rail-thin.
Subjects often complain as they see the drawings during court recesses, said Chicago artist Carol Renaud.
"They'll say, 'Hey! My nose is too big.' And sometimes they're right," she conceded. "We do the drawings so fast."
Courtroom drawing doesn't attract most aspiring artists because it doesn't afford the luxury of laboring over a work for days until it's just right, said Andy Austin, who has drawn Chicago's biggest trials over 40 years, including that of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
"You have to put your work on the air or in a newspaper whether you like it or not," she said.
The job also involves long stretches of tedium punctuated by bursts of action as a witness sobs or defendant faints. It can also get downright creepy.
At Gacy's trial, a client asked Austin for an image of him smiling. So, she sought to catch the eye of the man accused of killing 33 people. When she finally did, she beamed. He beamed back.
"The two of us smiled at each other like the two happiest people in the world until the sketch was finished," Austin recalled in her memoirs, titled "Rule 53," after the directive that bars cameras in U.S. courts.
There's no school specifically for courtroom artists. Many slipped or were nudged into it by circumstance.
Renaud drew fashion illustrations for Marshall Field's commercials into the '90s but lost that job when the department store starting relying on photographers. That led her to courtroom drawing.
Artists sometime get to court early and sketch the empty room. But coming in with a drawing fully finished in advance is seen as unethical.
Some artists use charcoal, water colors or pungent markers, which can leave those sitting nearby queasy. Most start with a quick pencil sketch, then fill it in. Austin draws right off the bat with her color pencils.
"If I overthink it, I get lost," she said. "I have a visceral reaction. I just hope what I feel is conveyed to my pen."
These days, Chukman and Renaud fear for their livelihoods. They make the bulk of their annual income off their court work. Working for a TV station or a newspaper can bring in about $300 a day. A trial lasting a month can mean a $6,000 paycheck. Chukman does other work on the side, including drawing caricatures as gifts.
Austin is semiretired and so she says she worries less. She also notes that federal courts ? where some of the most notorious trials take place, like the two corruption trials of impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich ? seem more adamant about not allowing cameras.
Still, though Rule 53 remains in place, federal courts are experimenting with cameras in very limited cases.
"If federal courts do follow, that will be the end of us," Austin said.
Renaud holds out hope that, even if the worst happens, there will still be demand from lawyers for courtroom drawings they can hang in their offices. Lien plans to bolster his income by launching a website selling work from historic trials he covered, including of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Chukman, a courtroom artist for around 30 years, jokes that if asked for his opinion, he'd have told state-court authorities to keep the ban in place a few more years until he retires.
"I recognize my profession exists simply because of gaps in the law ? and I've been grateful for them," he said wistfully. "This line of work has been good to me."
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Official: Yemen president in US for treatment (AP)
NEW YORK ? The embattled president of Yemen arrived Saturday in the United States for medical treatment for burns he suffered during an assassination attempt in June.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived at an unspecified location in the United States, according to the country's foreign press office. His journey had taken him from Oman, through London.
The one-line Yemeni statement said Saleh was in the U.S. for a "short-term private medical visit." His staff has said he is in the United States to be treated for injuries suffered during the assassination attempt. He was burned over much of his body and had shards of wood embedded into his chest by the explosion that ripped through his palace mosque as he prayed.
After months of unrest, Saleh agreed in November to end his 33-year-rule of the Arabian state.
His trip to the U.S. comes as Yemen, a key counterterrorism partner, prepares for an election on Feb. 21 to select his successor.
Human Rights Watch, which says it has documented the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in confrontations with Saleh's security forces, was outraged by the Yemeni president's travel to the U.S. for medical treatment.
"It's appalling that President Saleh arrives here for first-rate medical treatment while hundreds of Yemeni victims, assaulted by his security forces have neither proper medical care nor justice for the crimes they've suffered," Balkees Jarrah, international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch, said in an emailed statement. "The Obama administration should insist those responsible for atrocities in Yemen be brought to the dock."
Maneuvering and manipulation had been reliable tactics for Saleh throughout his rule over mountainous, semi-desert Yemen, mired in poverty and divided among powerful tribes and political factions. But his room to maneuver steadily narrowed when the Arab Spring revolts swept into Yemen last year. From late January 2011, hundreds of thousands of Yemeni marched in the streets nearly every day, despite crackdowns. After a particularly bloody shooting of protesters in Sanaa, many ruling party members, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and, most importantly, powerful military generals and tribal leaders abandoned him, siding with the opposition.
It is unclear how long Saleh intends to remain in the U.S. In a speech before he left Yemen for Oman a week ago, he promised to return home before the election, but the U.S. and its allies have pressured Saleh to leave Yemen for good.
American officials don't wish him to settle in the U.S., however, over concerns that it would be seen as harboring an autocratic leader accused by many of his countrymen of using violence to remain in power. Opponents have accused him of trying to interfere in Yemen's new unity government, even after he supposedly relinquished authority two months ago. He spent three months previously in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, only to return to Yemen, prompting more protests.
Saleh's travel plans in the United States have not been disclosed for security reasons. It wasn't clear where he intended to stay while in the country, or where he would be receiving medical care.
He had been traveling on a chartered Emirates plane with a private doctor, several armed guards and relatives, according to an official in the Yemeni president's office who spokes with the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the details.
The Obama administration agreed last week to allow Saleh to come to the U.S. temporarily for the medical treatment, a move aimed at easing the political transition in Yemen.
Saleh initially requested a U.S. visa in December, putting the Obama administration in the awkward position of either having to bar a friendly president from U.S. soil or risking appearing to harbor an autocrat with blood on his hands.
U.S. officials believe Saleh's exit from Yemen could lower the risk of disruptions in the lead-up to presidential elections there.
The Yemeni embassy in Washington has said Saleh planned to return home in February to attend a swearing-in ceremony for the country's newly elected president.
___
AP correspondent Jill Lawless in London and Ahmed Al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, contributed to this report.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_us/us_yemen
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Oil Off Cuba: Washington and Havana Dance at Arms Length Over Spill Prevention (Time.com)
On Christmas Eve, a massive, Chinese-made maritime oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, arrived at Trinidad and Tobago for inspection. The Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, which keeps regional headquarters in Trinidad, ferried it to the Caribbean to perform deep-ocean drilling off Cuba -- whose communist government believes as much as 20 billion barrels of crude may lie near the island's northwest coast. But it wasn't Cuban authorities who came aboard the Scarabeo 9 to give it the once-over: officials from the U.S. Coast Guard and Interior Department did, even though the rig won't be operating in U.S. waters.
On any other occasion that might have raised the ire of the Cubans, who consider Washington their imperialista enemy. But the U.S. examination of the Scarabeo 9, which Repsol agreed to and Cuba abided, was part of an unusual choreography of cooperation between the two countries. Their otherwise bitter cold-war feud (they haven't had diplomatic relations since 1961) is best known for a 50-year-long trade embargo and history's scariest nuclear standoff. Now, Cuba's commitment to offshore oil exploration -- drilling may start this weekend -- raises a specter that haunts both nations: an oil spill in the Florida Straits like the BP calamity that tarred the nearby Gulf of Mexico two years ago and left $40 billion in U.S. damages.
The Straits, an equally vital body of water that's home to some of the world's most precious coral reefs, separates Havana and Key West, Florida, by a mere 90 miles. As a result, the U.S. has tacitly loosened its embargo against Cuba to give firms like Repsol easier access to the U.S. equipment they need to help avoid or contain possible spills. "Preventing drilling off Cuba better protects our interests than preparing for [a disaster] does," U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida tells TIME, noting the U.S. would prefer to stop the Cuban drilling -- but can't. "But the two are not mutually exclusive, and that's why we should aim to do both."
(MORE: Cuba Set to Begin Offshore Drilling: Is Florida In Eco-Straits?)
Cuba meanwhile has tacitly agreed to ensure that its safety measures meet U.S. standards (not that U.S. standards proved all that golden during the 2010 BP disaster) and is letting unofficial U.S. delegations in to discuss the precautions being taken by Havana and the international oil companies it is contracting. No Cuban official would discuss the matter, but Dan Whittle, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, who was part of one recent delegation, says the Cubans "seem very motivated to do the right thing."
It's also the right business thing to do. Cuba's threadbare economy -- President Ra?l Castro currently has to lay off more than 500,000 state workers -- is acutely energy-dependent on allies like Venezuela, which ships the island 120,000 barrels of oil per day. So Havana is eager to drill for the major offshore reserves geologists discovered eight years ago (which the U.S. Geological Survey estimates at closer to 10 billion bbl.). Cuba has signed or is negotiating leases with Repsol and companies from eight other nations -- Norway, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil, Venezuela, Angola and China -- for 59 drilling blocks inside a 43,000-sq.-mile (112,000 sq km) zone. Eventually, the government hopes to extract half a million bpd or more.
A serious oil spill could scuttle those drilling operations -- especially since Cuba hasn't the technology, infrastructure or means, like a clean-up fund similar to the $1 billion the U.S. keeps on reserve, to confront such an emergency. And there is another big economic anxiety: Cuba's $2 billion tourism industry. "The dilemma for Cuba is that as much as they want the oil, they care as much if not more about their ocean resources," says Billy Causey, southeast regional director for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine sanctuary program. Cuba's pristine beaches and reefs attract sunbathers and scuba divers the world over, and a quarter of its coastal environment is set aside as protected.
So is much of coastal Florida, where tourism generates $60 billion annually -- which is why the state keeps oil rigs out of its waters. The Florida Keys lie as close as 50 miles from where Repsol is drilling; and they run roughly parallel to the 350-mile-long (560 km) Florida Reef Tract (FRT), the world's third largest barrier reef and one of its most valuable ocean eco-systems. The FRT is already under assault from global warming, ocean acidification and overfishing of symbiotic species like parrotfish that keep coral pruned of corrosive algae. If a spill were to damage the FRT, which draws $2 billion from tourism each year and supports 33,000 jobs, "it would be a catastrophic event," says David Vaughan, director of Florida's private Mote Marine Laboratory.
(MORE: Will BP Spill Lower Risk of Deepwater Drilling?)
Which means America has its own dilemma. As much as the U.S. would like to thwart Cuban petro-profits -- Cuban-American leaders like U.S. Representative and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami say the oil will throw a lifeline to the Castro dictatorship -- it needs to care as much if not more about its own environment. Because fewer than a tenth of the Scarabeo 9's components were made in America, Washington can't wield the embargo cudgel and fine Repsol, which has interests in the U.S., for doing business with Cuba. (Most of the other firms don't have U.S. interests.) Nor can it in good conscience use the embargo in this case to keep U.S. companies from offering spill prevention/containment hardware and services to Repsol and other drilling contractors.
One of those U.S. firms is Helix Energy Solutions in Houston. Amid the Gulf disaster, Helix engineered a "capping stack" to plug damaged blow-out preventers like the one that failed on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig. (It later contained the spill.) Having that technology at hand -- especially since the Cuba rigs will often operate in deeper waters than the Deepwater rig was mining -- will be critical if a spill occurs off Cuba.
Helix has applied to the Treasury Department for a special license to lease its equipment, and speedily deliver it, to Cuba's contractors when needed. The license is still pending, but Helix spokesman Cameron Wallace says the company is confident it will come through since Cuba won't benefit economically from the arrangement. "This is a reasonable approach," says Wallace. "We can't just say we'll figure out what to do if a spill happens. We need this kind of preparation." Eco-advocates like Whittle agree: "It's a no-brainer for the U.S."
(MORE: U.S. Fails to Respond to Cuba's Freeing of Dissidents)
Preparation includes something the U.S.-Cuba cold-war time warp rarely allows: dialogue. Nelson has introduced legislation that would require federal agencies to consult Congress on how to work with countries like Cuba on offshore drilling safety and spill response, but the Administration has already shown some flexibility. Last month U.S. officials and scientists had contact with Cuban counterparts at a regional forum on drilling hazards. That's important because they need to be in synch, for example, about how to attack a spill without exacerbating the damage to coral reefs. Scientists like Vaughan worry that chemical dispersants used to fight the spill in the Gulf, where coral wasn't as prevalent, could be lethal to reefs in the Straits. That would breed more marine catastrophe, since coral reefs, though they make up only 1% of the world's sea bottoms, account for up to 40% of natural fisheries. "They're our underwater oases," says Vaughan, whose tests so far with dispersants and FRT species like Elkhorn coral don't augur well.
A rigid U.S. reluctance to engage communist Cuba is of course only half the problem. Another is Havana's notorious, Soviet-style secrecy -- which some fear "could override the need to immediately pick up the phone," as one environmentalist confides, if and when a spill occurs. As a result, some are also petitioning Washington to fund AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) that marine biologists use to detect red tides, and which could also be used to sniff out oil spills in the Straits.
What experts on both sides of the Straits hope is that sea currents will carry any oil slick directly out into the Atlantic Ocean. But that's wishful thinking. So probably is the notion that U.S.-Cuba cooperation on offshore drilling can be duplicated on other fronts. Among them are the embargo, including the arguably unconstitutional ban on U.S. travel to Cuba, which has utterly failed to dislodge the Castro regime but which Washington keeps in place for fear of offending Cuban-American voters in swing-state Florida; and cases like that of Alan Gross, a U.S. aid worker imprisoned in Cuba since 2009 on what many call questionable spying charges.
U.S. inspectors this month gave the Scarabeo 9 the thumbs-up. Meanwhile, U.S. pols hope they can still dissuade foreign oil companies from operating off Cuba. Last month Nelson and Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey introduced a bill to hold firms financially responsible for spills that affect the U.S. even if they originate outside U.S. waters. (It would also lift a $75 million liability cap.) Others in Congress say Big Oil should be exempted from the embargo to let the U.S. benefit from the Cuba oil find too. Either way, the only thing likely to stop the drilling now would be the discovery that there's not as much crude there as anticipated. That, or a major spill.
PHOTOS: Fidel Castro Steps Down
View this article on Time.com
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Unemployment rates decreasing in most Ky. counties (AP)
FRANKFORT, Ky. ? Most Kentucky counties are reporting a decrease in unemployment.
The Kentucky Office of Employment and Training says 114 counties reported that jobless rates fell from December 2010 to December 2011. Six counties reported an increase in unemployment during the same time period.
Woodford County had the lowest unemployment rate at 6.1 percent, followed by Fayette County at 6.5 percent and Boone County at 6.9 percent.
Jackson County had the highest jobless rate at 15.2 percent, followed by Fulton County at 14.9 percent at Magoffin County at 14.4 percent.
The statistics are based on estimates and don't include people who haven't looked for a job in the last four weeks.
Friday, January 27, 2012
House Dems raised $61 million in donations in 2011 (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The political committee representing House Democrats said it has raised more than $61 million last year, giving the group a stronger financial footing heading into the November election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's fundraising blitz leaves it with $11.6 million in cash on hand, helping to extinguish the debt the group carried through late last year.
"Going into 2011, our goal was to match the Republican majority in fundraising," DCCC Chairman Steve Israel said. "But so far, our grassroots supporters have driven us to exceed all expectations."
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the Democrats' House counterpart, said it has about $15 million cash on hand. Federal Election Commission figures show the group would have had to raise an additional $9.6 million in December to match the DCCC's fundraising efforts.
A full report on both committees' expenses will be filed with the FEC by Jan. 31.
____
Follow Jack Gillum at http://twitter.com/jackgillum
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Notre Dame researchers publish new findings on aging pediatric bruises
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Mark Alber
malber@nd.edu
574-631-8371
University of Notre Dame
A multi-university research group which includes several University of Notre Dame faculty and graduate students, has recently published a paper detailing new work on the analysis and dating of human bruises. The research, which is funded by the Gerber Foundation, will have particular application to pediatric medicine, as bruise age is often key evidence in child abuse cases.
Using a combination of modeling and spectroscopy measurements, the researchers have advanced our understanding of the changing composition of aging bruises and developed new tools for detailed biomedical studies of human skin tissue.
Spectroscopic measurement determines the chemical composition of tissue by measuring the extent to which it absorbs and reflects light of different wave lengths. In this case, the researchers examined accidental bruises to determine their concentrations of bilirubin, blood volume fraction, and blood oxygenation, which peak at various periods after contusion occurs.
The data were combined with modeling via Monte Carlo methods, which are often used to simulate highly complex systemslike the propagation of electromagnetic waves in healthy and contused skin involving many interacting degrees of freedom. The result was a multilayered model in which each layer is characterized by a number of parameters, including thickness of layer, absorption and scattering properties, refractive index, and scattering anisotropy factors. Previous research had produced models simulating only one to three layers of skin; this one simulates seven, allowing for a much clearer spectroscopic picture of a bruise's composition and age.
###
The paper, titled "Reflectance spectrometry of normal and bruised human skins: experiments and modeling" is published in the current issue of Physiological Measurement. The authors are Oleg Kim (Notre Dame), John McMurdy (Brown University), Collin Lines (Notre Dame), Susan Duffy (Hasbro Children's Hospital), Gregory Crawford (Notre Dame) and Mark Alber (Notre Dame).
[ | 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.
Public release date: 26-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Mark Alber
malber@nd.edu
574-631-8371
University of Notre Dame
A multi-university research group which includes several University of Notre Dame faculty and graduate students, has recently published a paper detailing new work on the analysis and dating of human bruises. The research, which is funded by the Gerber Foundation, will have particular application to pediatric medicine, as bruise age is often key evidence in child abuse cases.
Using a combination of modeling and spectroscopy measurements, the researchers have advanced our understanding of the changing composition of aging bruises and developed new tools for detailed biomedical studies of human skin tissue.
Spectroscopic measurement determines the chemical composition of tissue by measuring the extent to which it absorbs and reflects light of different wave lengths. In this case, the researchers examined accidental bruises to determine their concentrations of bilirubin, blood volume fraction, and blood oxygenation, which peak at various periods after contusion occurs.
The data were combined with modeling via Monte Carlo methods, which are often used to simulate highly complex systemslike the propagation of electromagnetic waves in healthy and contused skin involving many interacting degrees of freedom. The result was a multilayered model in which each layer is characterized by a number of parameters, including thickness of layer, absorption and scattering properties, refractive index, and scattering anisotropy factors. Previous research had produced models simulating only one to three layers of skin; this one simulates seven, allowing for a much clearer spectroscopic picture of a bruise's composition and age.
###
The paper, titled "Reflectance spectrometry of normal and bruised human skins: experiments and modeling" is published in the current issue of Physiological Measurement. The authors are Oleg Kim (Notre Dame), John McMurdy (Brown University), Collin Lines (Notre Dame), Susan Duffy (Hasbro Children's Hospital), Gregory Crawford (Notre Dame) and Mark Alber (Notre Dame).
[ | 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/2012-01/uond-ndr012612.php
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French politicians argue over who 'owns' Joan of Arc
In an election year Joan of Arc represents 600-year-old values that fit political messages on both sides of the aisle.
? A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Skip to next paragraphFrance is celebrating 600 years of its most famous daughter, Joan of Arc. A young peasant girl hearing heavenly voices, fierce yet compassionate and rising as a military leader to end a foreign siege, Joan of Arc still retains a hold on the French imagination.
Starting as a nobody, she broke nearly every 15th-century gender barrier. In 2012 she?s a Christian heroine in a secular state: For the right, a holy warrior of the sacred soil; on the left, a brave iconoclast fighting corrupt elites.
Now in Orl?ans, where in 1429 she instructed French generals how to kick out the British in nine days, there?s a year of conferences, films, art, music, and parades.
But a fight is brewing. In France, culture is politics, and this is an election year. Nationalists have long claimed Joan as theirs. She?s an icon for the far-right National Front, run by Marine Le Pen.
So on Joan?s official birthday, Jan. 6, President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Joan?s birthplace. ?Joan belongs to no party, to no faction, to no clan,? Mr. Sarkozy said. Ms. Le Pen retorted that Sarkozy had abandoned Joan?s values, as well as French national sovereignty, seen in the ?Islamization? of France.
So it goes. What remains outside politics for the French is a life that got the attention of Shakespeare and Mark Twain alike.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
"An Integral Element" -- For Communications Day, B16 Leads With ...
As we draw near to World Communications Day 2012, I would like to share with you some reflections concerning an aspect of the human process of communication which, despite its importance, is often overlooked and which, at the present time, it would seem especially necessary to recall. It concerns the relationship between silence and word: two aspects of communication which need to be kept in balance, to alternate and to be integrated with one another if authentic dialogue and deep closeness between people are to be achieved. When word and silence become mutually exclusive, communication breaks down, either because it gives rise to confusion or because, on the contrary, it creates an atmosphere of coldness; when they complement one another, however, communication acquires value and meaning.
Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist. In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves. By remaining silent we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself; and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested. In this way, space is created for mutual listening, and deeper human relationships become possible. It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other. Joy, anxiety, and suffering can all be communicated in silence ? indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression. Silence, then, gives rise to even more active communication, requiring sensitivity and a capacity to listen that often makes manifest the true measure and nature of the relationships involved. When messages and information are plentiful, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary. Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected, to make evaluations, to analyze messages; this makes it possible to share thoughtful and relevant opinions, giving rise to an authentic body of shared knowledge. For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of ?eco-system? that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.
The process of communication nowadays is largely fuelled by questions in search of answers. Search engines and social networks have become the starting point of communication for many people who are seeking advice, ideas, information and answers. In our time, the internet is becoming ever more a forum for questions and answers ? indeed, people today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware. If we are to recognize and focus upon the truly important questions, then silence is a precious commodity that enables us to exercise proper discernment in the face of the surcharge of stimuli and data that we receive. Amid the complexity and diversity of the world of communications, however, many people find themselves confronted with the ultimate questions of human existence: Who am I? What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? It is important to affirm those who ask these questions, and to open up the possibility of a profound dialogue, by means of words and interchange, but also through the call to silent reflection, something that is often more eloquent than a hasty answer and permits seekers to reach into the depths of their being and open themselves to the path towards knowledge that God has inscribed in human hearts.
Ultimately, this constant flow of questions demonstrates the restlessness of human beings, ceaselessly searching for truths, of greater or lesser import, that can offer meaning and hope to their lives. Men and women cannot rest content with a superficial and unquestioning exchange of skeptical opinions and experiences of life ? all of us are in search of truth and we share this profound yearning today more than ever: "When people exchange information, they are already sharing themselves, their view of the world, their hopes, their ideals" (Message for the 2011 World Day of Communications).
Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning, as well as making space for silence and occasions for prayer, meditation or sharing of the word of God. In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated, as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives. It is hardly surprising that different religious traditions consider solitude and silence as privileged states which help people to rediscover themselves and that Truth which gives meaning to all things. The God of biblical revelation speaks also without words: "As the Cross of Christ demonstrates, God also speaks by his silence. The silence of God, the experience of the distance of the almighty Father, is a decisive stage in the earthly journey of the Son of God, the incarnate Word ?. God?s silence prolongs his earlier words. In these moments of darkness, he speaks through the mystery of his silence" (Verbum Domini, 21). The eloquence of God?s love, lived to the point of the supreme gift, speaks in the silence of the Cross. After Christ?s death there is a great silence over the earth, and on Holy Saturday, when "the King sleeps and God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages" (cf. Office of Readings, Holy Saturday), God?s voice resounds, filled with love for humanity.
If God speaks to us even in silence, we in turn discover in silence the possibility of speaking with God and about God. "We need that silence which becomes contemplation, which introduces us into God?s silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming Word, is born" (Homily, Eucharistic Celebration with Members of the International Theological Commission, 6 October 2006). In speaking of God?s grandeur, our language will always prove inadequate and must make space for silent contemplation. Out of such contemplation springs forth, with all its inner power, the urgent sense of mission, the compelling obligation "to communicate that which we have seen and heard" so that all may be in communion with God (1 Jn 1:3). Silent contemplation immerses us in the source of that Love who directs us towards our neighbours so that we may feel their suffering and offer them the light of Christ, his message of life and his saving gift of the fullness of love.
In silent contemplation, then, the eternal Word, through whom the world was created, becomes ever more powerfully present and we become aware of the plan of salvation that God is accomplishing throughout our history by word and deed. As the Second Vatican Council reminds us, divine revelation is fulfilled by "deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them" (Dei Verbum, 2). This plan of salvation culminates in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the mediator and the fullness of all revelation. He has made known to us the true face of God the Father and by his Cross and Resurrection has brought us from the slavery of sin and death to the freedom of the children of God. The fundamental question of the meaning of human existence finds in the mystery of Christ an answer capable of bringing peace to the restless human heart. The Church?s mission springs from this mystery; and it is this mystery which impels Christians to become heralds of hope and salvation, witnesses of that love which promotes human dignity and builds justice and peace.
Word and silence: learning to communicate is learning to listen and contemplate as well as speak. This is especially important for those engaged in the task of evangelization: both silence and word are essential elements, integral to the Church?s work of communication for the sake of a renewed proclamation of Christ in today?s world. To Mary, whose silence "listens to the Word and causes it to blossom" (Private Prayer at the Holy House, Loreto, 1 September 2007), I entrust all the work of evangelization which the Church undertakes through the means of social communication.
From the Vatican, 24 January 2012, Feast of Saint Francis de Sales
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
-30-
Source: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2012/01/integral-element-for-communications-day.html
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List of 84th annual Academy Award nominations
Complete list of 84th Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:
1. Best Picture: "The Artist," ''The Descendants," ''Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," ''The Help," ''Hugo," ''Midnight in Paris," ''Moneyball," ''The Tree of Life," ''War Horse."
2. Actor: Demian Bichir, "A Better Life"; George Clooney, "The Descendants"; Jean Dujardin, "The Artist"; Gary Oldman, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"; Brad Pitt, "Moneyball."
3. Actress: Glenn Close, "Albert Nobbs"; Viola Davis, "The Help"; Rooney Mara, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"; Meryl Streep, "The Iron Lady"; Michelle Williams, "My Week With Marilyn."
4. Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh, "My Week With Marilyn"; Jonah Hill, "Moneyball"; Nick Nolte, "Warrior"; Christopher Plummer, "Beginners"; Max von Sydow, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close."
5. Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo, "The Artist"; Jessica Chastain, "The Help"; Melissa McCarthy, "Bridesmaids"; Janet McTeer, "Albert Nobbs"; Octavia Spencer, "The Help."
6. Directing: Michel Hazanavicius, "The Artist"; Alexander Payne, "The Descendants"; Martin Scorsese, "Hugo"; Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris"; Terrence Malick, "The Tree of Life."
7. Foreign Language Film: "Bullhead," Belgium; "Footnote," Israel; "In Darkness," Poland; "Monsieur Lazhar," Canada; "A Separation," Iran.
8. Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, "The Descendants"; John Logan, "Hugo"; George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon, "The Ides of March"; Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, "Moneyball"; Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."
9. Original Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius, "The Artist"; Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, "Bridesmaids"; J.C. Chandor, "Margin Call"; Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris"; Asghar Farhadi, "A Separation."
10. Animated Feature Film: "A Cat in Paris"; "Chico & Rita"; "Kung Fu Panda 2"; "Puss in Boots"; "Rango."
11. Art Direction: "The Artist," ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2," ''Hugo," ''Midnight in Paris," ''War Horse."
12. Cinematography: "The Artist," ''The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," ''Hugo," ''The Tree of Life," ''War Horse."
13. Sound Mixing: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," ''Hugo," ''Moneyball," ''Transformers: Dark of the Moon," ''War Horse."
14. Sound Editing: "Drive," ''The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," ''Hugo," ''Transformers: Dark of the Moon," ''War Horse."
15. Original Score: "The Adventures of Tintin," John Williams; "The Artist," Ludovic Bource; "Hugo," Howard Shore; "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," Alberto Iglesias; "War Horse," John Williams.
16. Original Song: "Man or Muppet" from "The Muppets," Bret McKenzie; "Real in Rio" from "Rio," Sergio Mendes, Carlinhos Brown and Siedah Garrett.
17. Costume: "Anonymous," ''The Artist," ''Hugo," ''Jane Eyre," ''W.E."
18. Documentary Feature: "Hell and Back Again," ''If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front," ''Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory," ''Pina," ''Undefeated."
19. Documentary (short subject): "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement," ''God Is the Bigger Elvis," ''Incident in New Baghdad," ''Saving Face," ''The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom."
20. Film Editing: "The Artist," ''The Descendants," ''The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," ''Hugo," ''Moneyball."
21. Makeup: "Albert Nobbs," ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2," ''The Iron Lady."
22. Animated Short Film: "Dimanche/Sunday," ''The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," ''La Luna," ''A Morning Stroll," ''Wild Life."
23. Live Action Short Film: "Pentecost," ''Raju," ''The Shore," ''Time Freak," ''Tuba Atlantic."
24. Visual Effects: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2," ''Hugo," ''Real Steel," ''Rise of the Planet of the Apes," ''Transformers: Dark of the Moon."
___
Online:
http://www.oscars.org/
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Warrant needed for GPS tracking, high court says
File - This Jan. 5, 2011 file photo shows Yasir Afifi at his home in San Jose, Calif., where a GPS tracking device was placed on his car. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
File - This Jan. 5, 2011 file photo shows Yasir Afifi at his home in San Jose, Calif., where a GPS tracking device was placed on his car. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? In a rare defeat for law enforcement, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed on Monday to bar police from installing GPS technology to track suspects without first getting a judge's approval. The justices made clear it wouldn't be their final word on increasingly advanced high-tech surveillance of Americans.
Indicating they will be monitoring the growing use of such technology, five justices said they could see constitutional and privacy problems with police using many kinds of electronic surveillance for long-term tracking of citizens' movements without warrants.
While the justices differed on legal rationales, their unanimous outcome was an unusual setback for government and police agencies grown accustomed to being given leeway in investigations in post-Sept. 11 America, including by the Supreme Court. The views of at least the five justices raised the possibility of new hurdles down the road for police who want to use high-tech surveillance of suspects, including various types of GPS technology.
"The Supreme Court's decision is an important one because it sends a message that technological advances cannot outpace the American Constitution," said Donald Tibbs, a professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. "The people will retain certain rights even when technology changes how the police are able to conduct their investigations."
A GPS device installed by police on Washington, D.C., nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep and tracked for four weeks helped link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before an appeals court overturned his conviction.
It's not clear how much difficulty police agencies would have with warrant requirements in this area; historically they are rarely denied warrants they request. But the Obama administration argued that getting one could be cumbersome, perhaps impossible in the early stages of an investigation. In the Jones case, police got a warrant but did not install the GPS device until after the warrant had expired and then in a jurisdiction that wasn't covered by the document.
Justice Antonin Scalia said the government's installation of the device, and its use of the GPS to monitor the vehicle's movements, constituted a search, meaning a warrant was required. "Officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote.
Relying on a centuries-old legal principle, he concluded that the police action without a warrant was a trespass and therefore an illegal search. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor.
All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, a decision the American Civil Liberties Union said was an "important victory for privacy."
But there was a major division between Scalia, the court's conservative leader, and Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor and usually a Scalia ally, over how much further the court should go beyond just saying that police can't put a GPS device on something used by a suspect without a warrant.
Alito wrote, in a concurring opinion, that the trespass was not as important as the suspect's expectation of privacy and the duration of the surveillance.
"The use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy," Alito wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor in her concurring opinion specifically said she agreed with Alito on this conclusion.
No justice embraced the government's argument that the surveillance of Jones was acceptable because he had no expectation of privacy for the Jeep's location on public roads.
Alito added, "We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the four-week mark."
Regarding the issue of duration, Scalia wrote that "we may have to grapple" with those issues in the future, "but there is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here."
Sotomayor, in her separate opinion, wrote that it may be time to rethink all police use of tracking technology, not just long-term GPS.
"GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person's public movement that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, religious and sexual associations," Sotomayor said. "The government can store such records and efficiently mine them for information for years to come."
Alito also said the court and Congress should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones. Alito noted, for example, that more than 322 million cellphones have installed equipment that allows wireless carriers to track the phones' locations.
"If long-term monitoring can be accomplished without committing a technical trespass ? suppose for example, that the federal government required or persuaded auto manufacturers to include a GPS tracking device in every car ? the court's theory would provide no protection," Alito said.
Sotomayor agreed. "It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to their parties," she said.
Washington lawyer Andy Pincus called the decision "a landmark ruling in applying the Fourth Amendment's protections to advances in surveillance technology." Pincus has argued 22 cases before the Supreme Court and filed a brief in the current case on behalf of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group with expertise in law, technology and policy.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the court's decision was "a victory for privacy rights and for civil liberties in the digital age." He said the ruling highlighted many new privacy threats posed by new technologies. Leahy has introduced legislation to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that specifies standards for government monitoring of cellphone conversations and Internet communications.
The lower appellate court that threw out Jones' conviction also objected to the duration of the surveillance.
The case is U.S. v. Jones, 10-1259.
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Television section
For the week of Jan. 9-15
1. AFC Divisional Playoff: Denver at New England, CBS, 34.2 million
2. Fox NFC Playoff: NY Giants at Green Bay, 23.8 million
3. "NCIS," CBS, 21 million
4. Golden Globe Awards, NBC, 16.8 million
5. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 16.6 million
6. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 16.1 million
7. "Person of Interest," CBS, 14.9 million
8. "The Mentalist," CBS, 13.6 million
9. "Rob," CBS, 13.5 million
10. "Modern Family," ABC, 12.12
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032450/ns/today-entertainment/
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Ship search finds 12th body, captain's documents
An Italian fireman descends from an helicopter to the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
An Italian fireman descends from an helicopter to the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
A woman checks if her clothes are dry as the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia is seen in background, off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain, Capt. Francesco Schettino, who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia lays off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
An Italian Coast Guard boat patrols the area around the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
Fuel spilling experts work on the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The cruise captain who grounded the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast with 4,200 people on board did not relay correct information either to the company or crew after the ship hit rocks, the cruise ship owner's CEO said as the search resumed for 21 missing passengers. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
GIGLIO, Italy (AP) ? Divers plumbing the capsized Costa Concordia's murky depths pulled out the body of a woman in a life vest Saturday, while scuba-diving police swam through the captain's cabin to retrieve a safe and documents belonging to the man who abandoned the cruise liner after it was gashed by a rocky reef on the Tuscan coast.
Hoping for a miracle ? or at least for the recovery of bodies from the ship that has become an underwater tomb ? relatives of some of the 20 missing appealed to survivors of the Jan. 13 shipwreck to offer details that could help divers reach loved ones while it is still possible to search the luxury liner. The clock is ticking because the craft is perched precariously on a rocky ledge of seabed near Giglio island.
"We are asking the 4,000 persons who were on board to give any information they can about any of the persons still missing," said Alain Litzler, a Frenchman who is the father of missing passenger Mylene Litzler. "We need precise information to help the search and rescue teams find them."
Early Sunday, instruments monitoring any movement of the Concordia indicated that vessel had shifted slightly, so search efforts were suspended for the night, Italian state radio reported.
The death toll rose to at least 12 Saturday after a water-logged body was extracted from a passageway near a gathering point for evacuation by lifeboats in the rear of the vessel, Coast Guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said. It was not immediately clear if the woman was a passenger or crew member. A female Peruvian bartender and several adult female passengers were among the 21 people listed as missing before the latest corpse was found.
Relatives of the bartender and of an Indian crewman, along with two children of an elderly couple from Minnesota who are among the missing, boarded a boat Saturday to view the wrecked Concordia Saturday, said a maritime official, Fabrizio Palombo.
Family members tossed flowers near the site while islanders standing on the rocky edge of the island also strew bouquets on the water in a tribute to the victims.
Another Coast Guard official, Cosimo Nicastro, said the woman's body was found during a particularly risky inspection.
"The corridor was very narrow, and the divers' lines risked snagging" on furniture and objects floating in the passageway, Nicastro said. To help the coast guard divers reach the area, Italian navy divers had preceded them, setting off charges to blast holes for easier entrance and exit.
Meanwhile, police divers, carrying out orders from prosecutors investigating Captain Francesco Schettino for suspected manslaughter and abandoning the ship, swam through the cold, dark waters to reach his cabin. State TV and the Italian news agency ANSA reported that the divers located and remove his safe and two suitcases. His passport and several documents were also pulled out, state media said.
Searchers inspecting the bridge Saturday also found a hard disk containing data of the voyage, Sky TG24 TV reported.
Three bodies were found in waters around the ship in the first hours after the accident. Since then, divers have gone inside the Concordia to recover all the remaining victims, who were apparently unable to escape the lurching ship during a chaotic evacuation launched almost an hour after the liner hit a reef.
Some survivors who couldn't board lifeboats waited for hours aboard the capsizing craft for rescue by helicopters while others jumped into the water and swam to safety.
The last survivor, found aboard 36 hours after the crash, was an Italian crewman who broke his leg in the confusion and couldn't leave the ship.
The Concordia hit the reef, well-marked on maritime and even tourist maps, while most of the passengers sat down to dinner in the main restaurant, about two hours after the ship had set sail from the port of Civitavecchia on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Costa Crociere, the ship's operator and subsidiary of U.S.-based Carnival Cruise Lines, has said the captain had deviated without permission from the vessel's route in an apparent maneuver to sail close to the island of Giglio and impress passengers.
Schettino, despite audiotapes of his defying Coast Guard orders to scramble back aboard, has denied he abandoned ship while hundreds of passengers were desperately trying to get off the capsizing vessel. He has said he coordinated the rescue from aboard a lifeboat and then from the shore.
The effort to find survivors and bodies has postponed an operation to remove heavy fuel in the Concordia's tanks; specialized equipment has been standing by for days.
Light fuel, apparently from machinery aboard the capsized ship, was spotted in nearby waters, authorities said Saturday.
But Nicastro said there was no indication that any of the nearly 500,000 gallons (2,200 metric tons) of heavy fuel oil has leaked from the ship's double-bottomed tanks, seen as a risk if the ship's position changes. He said the leaked substance appears to be diesel, which is used to fuel rescue boats and dinghies and as a lubricant for ship machinery.
There are 185 tons of diesel and lubricants on board the crippled vessel, which is lying on its side just outside Giglio's port. Nicastro described the fuel in the sea as "very light, very superficial" and appearing to be under control.
But an official leading rescue, search and anti-pollution efforts for the ship suggested that the luxury liner would have leaked contaminants on board when it tipped over.
"We must not forget that on that ship there are oils, solvents, detergents, everything that a city of 4,000 people needs," Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency, told reporters in Giglio.
Gabrielli was referring to the roughly 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew who were aboard the cruise liner when it ran into the reef and, with seawater rushing into a 230-foot (70-meter) gash in its hull, listed and fell onto its side. "Contamination of the environment, ladies and gentlemen, already occurred" when the liner capsized, Gabrelli said.
Vessels equipped with machinery to suck out the light fuel oil were in the area. Earlier on Saturday, crews removed oil-absorbing booms used to prevent environmental damage in case of a leak. Originally white, the booms were grayish.
Schettino, is under house arrest for investigation of alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all were evacuated.
The search had been suspended Friday after the Concordia shifted, prompting fears the ship could roll off a rocky ledge of sea bed and plunge deeper into the pristine waters around Giglio, part of a seven-island Tuscan archipelago.
___
D'Emilio reported from Rome. Colleen Barry contributed from Milan and Andrea Foa from Giglio.
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Apple vs. the textbook: Can education go paperless?
By Rosa Golijan
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller introduces iBooks 2 during a Jan. 19 event.
Apple announced that it was "reinventing the textbook" using the iPad, its iBooks bookstore and a new kind of book creation tool. But despite the tremendous success of the iPad in recent years, and despite the biggest partners in educational publishing, does the company have the ability to effect real change? Or is Apple ignoring some serious obstacles? Content providers and education experts are torn.
During a press event on Thursday, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller explained that the "iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools" and that the brand-new iBooks 2 app will offer students an interactive way to learn using a device they may already be familiar with.
Schiller described the iBooks Author app and how it can be used to easily create these interactive learning experiences. He also announced that?three major textbook publishers ??Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt?? are working to provide content priced at $14.99 and under.
What Schiller didn't touch on, however, is?how Apple will control the quality of textbooks offered through the iBookstore, whether these interactive textbooks will truly be a help (rather than a distraction), and how?he expects all these snazzy new tools to make their way to students who may not be able to afford iPads.
Apple
Can Apple control quality and manage the educational boards?
As soon as the iBooks Author tool was introduced, many Apple watchers who had previously witnessed the garbaging up of the iTunes App Store ? with useless or redundant fart or flashlight apps?? let out a collective sigh.
How long until the shiny new corner of the iBookstore, where the textbooks will reside, is filled with hastily made, low-quality products, or worse yet, works of high quality that nevertheless contain misleading or unsubstantiated information.
Ben Jackson, an independent app developer based in New York, told me he believes that Apple has learned a lesson from the App Store ??to which it refuses to admit useless apps nowadays?? and that it?will subject textbooks to some form of review which is "as strict, if not more strict, than app review policies" as this content is "directed towards kids for the purpose of learning."
The tech giant plans to offer digital textbooks for e-readers. NBC's Mark Barger reports.
Mac McCarthy, ANewDomain.net publisher and founding editor-in-chief of IDG Books, told me that he's confident that existing textbook review processes will continue to exist as well, and be applied to books supplied through the iBookstore?? with a little twist.?
"This will turn out to be as important a move on Apple's part as anything they have ever done ??iTunes, but in education ??totally disruptive against a bad system, for good," wrote McCarthy, commenting during Technologizer's liveblog of the announcement. When I asked him to elaborate on that remark, he explained that the way textbooks are currently approved for classroom use frequently drives publishers to do things that aren't good for students.
Bloated, overpriced textbooks are a symptom of one-size-fits-all publishing, a necessity for the imprints who have to jump through hoops pitching the same textbook to multiple approval committees in multiple state and local jurisdictions.?By giving even the bigger publishing houses more flexibility, iBooks 2 may be able to remove some of these issues from the playing field entirely.
Apple
Does an interactive textbook really facilitate learning?
Before Schiller dove into the iBooks 2 announcement, he made it a point to discuss?the flaws of traditional textbooks. Such textbooks, he explained, aren't the most ideal learning tool. They can be cumbersome, get dog-eared and suffer from wear. They're not interactive, easily searchable or cheap.?
And that's why the iPad and iBooks 2 are supposedly necessary ??to offer learning experiences filled with movies, multitouch gestures, links, lightning-fast searches, photo galleries, instant quizzes, automatic flashcard creation and other interactive elements.
These features sound great on paper, and they solve problems that those who have graduated already suffered from (but managed to live with) throughout the education process, but how great will everything be in practice?
Sylvia Martinez, president of Generation YES, a nationwide program that helps K-12 schools integrate technology into the classroom, suggests that we likely won't see the textbook reinvention we're being told is occurring. "Publishers will still create and students will still consume," she told me. "If heavy backpacks were the only issue, [iBooks 2] would be amazing, but as that isn't the case, [it's] simply more convenient."
All the features offered by iBooks 2 are great, Martinez said, but they're still not changing how education is being approached. We're still attempting to "deliver learning to students," instead of focusing on reality?? which is that students need to be encouraged to learn.
"Students taking notes, creating flashcards and taking quizzes after reading a text are not revolutionary, even when spiced up by multimedia. Students should be creators, not consumers. Decreasing the weight of student backpacks may provide a health benefit but says nothing about learning in the 21st century," she said.
"But," Martinez acknowledged, "some teachers and students will [use iBooks 2] and that can be great." Perhaps some students will even begin to get in groups and create their very own textbooks using iBooks Author.
Apple
Did you bring enough iPads for the whole class?
Though Apple is certain to work to address many of the above issues in the months and years to come, there's still one glaring problem: How do you get iPads to every student in the U.S.?
Schiller mentioned that over 1.5 million iPads are being used in education, but that number is meaningless without context.
U.S. Census statistics?show that there are well over 57 million enrolled students between the ages of 5 and 19. Factor in students who don't fall into that age range???plus teachers and motivated parents ??and suddenly Schiller's number isn't quite as impressive.
A soon-to-be-released national survey by PBS LearningMedia, an online media-on-demand service, reveals that?while 91 percent of teachers surveyed "reported having access to computers in their classrooms" only "one in five (22 percent) said they have the right level of technology." I would doubt that many would count iPads as "the right level of technology" when they are struggling to fulfill their minimal needs. Sixty-three percent of those teachers cited budget constraints as the "biggest barrier to accessing tech in the classroom."
What is certain is that while the notion of iPad textbooks offers great promise, by pledging to take the digital classroom to the next level, Apple raises as many concerns as it answers.
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