After the final installment of The Twilight Saga was released in November, we finally had to say goodbye to the characters of Bella (Kristen Stewart) Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) -- but it's not quite over yet!
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Splitsecnd Turns Any Car Into A Connected Car, Launches Plug-In Crash Detection Device
Many new cars now feature an automatic crash-detection system that will call 911 for you whenever you are in a crash that is bad enough for your airbags to inflate. Adding this kind of functionality to an older car is typically very costly, but the Nashville-based startup Splitsecnd just launched an Internet-connected plugin for any car that offers the same kind of functionality and also lets you track your car's location online. The device costs $199 plus a $14.95 monthly service fee and is now available for purchase on Splitsecnd's website. It will ship within the next two weeks. The company hopes to start selling it at brick-and-mortar stores later this year.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/uYcbZlcczBo/
Bathroom Floods During Oscars
Nearly half of the Dolby Theatre lobby is covered in standing water as attendees stream in.
By Amy Wilkinson
Lobby of the Dolby Theatre
Photo: MTV News
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702502/oscars-bathroom-flood-dolby-theatre.jhtml
Twitter announces support for Firefox OS, app to be in Firefox Marketplace when devices ship
Twitter has announced that they will be among the first marquee applications to support Firefox OS. Mozilla announced yesterday that Firefox has committed mobile operators in 18 markets, and that Alcatel, ZTE, and Huawei are partnered to build devices for the new OS.
The interface they are showing looks very much like the Android app, and Twitter says the application offers a rich experience, and is easy to use. In addition to the standard functions, Twitter plans to take advantage of Firefox OS' unique Web Activity feature, and users will be able to tweet out from any app that supports them.
For more information about Firefox OS, visit Mozilla's blog, and for information about Twitter for Firefox visit the source link.
Source: Twitter
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/OxVY2N802V4/story01.htm
2nd round of heavy snow in Plains, Midwest; 2 dead
Traffic moves on the I-40 service road Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. A blizzard packing 50 mph wind gusts and more than 11 inches of snow blasted Amarillo and Texas Panhandle Monday, making travel nearly impossible. Interstate 40 and many major highways in the Panhandle have been closed. (AP Photo/The Amarillo Globe News, Michael Schumacher)
Traffic moves on the I-40 service road Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. A blizzard packing 50 mph wind gusts and more than 11 inches of snow blasted Amarillo and Texas Panhandle Monday, making travel nearly impossible. Interstate 40 and many major highways in the Panhandle have been closed. (AP Photo/The Amarillo Globe News, Michael Schumacher)
Vehicles navigate along Interstate 27 during blizzard conditions in Lubbock, Texas, Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. State troopers are unable to respond to calls for assistance and National Guard units are mobilizing as a winter storm blankets the central Plains with a foot of snow in some places. Roads are closed Monday throughout West Texas and the Panhandle. (AP Photo/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Zach Long)
Amarillo emergency personnel assist a stranded motorist on the I-40 service road Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. A blizzard packing 50 mph wind gusts and more than 11 inches of snow blasted Amarillo and Texas Panhandle Monday, Feb. 25, 2013, making travel nearly impossible. Interstate 40 and many major highways in the Panhandle have been closed. (AP Photo/The Amarillo Globe News,Michael Schumacher)
Cattle stand in blizzard conditions in Lubbock, Texas, Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. State troopers are unable to respond to calls for assistance and National Guard units are mobilizing as a winter storm blankets the central Plains with a foot of snow in some places. Roads are closed Monday throughout West Texas and the Panhandle. (AP Photo/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Zach Long)
Chance Cain, from left, Simon Mourning and Nathan Talley walk towards a sledding hill near downtown Wichita, Kan. as a winter storm moves through the area on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/The Wichita Eagle, Travis Heying) LOCAL TV OUT; MAGS OUT; LOCAL RADIO OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) ? The nation's midsection again dealt with blizzard conditions Monday, closing highways, knocking out power to thousands in Texas and Oklahoma and even bringing hurricane-force winds to the Texas Panhandle. Two people have died.
Already under a deep snowpack from last week's storm, Kansas was preparing for another round of heavy snow Monday evening and overnight, prompting some to wonder what it could do for the drought.
"Is it a drought-buster? Absolutely not," National Weather Service meteorologist Victor Murphy said. "Will it bring short-term improvement? Yes."
The storm is being blamed for two deaths on Monday. In northwest Kansas, a 21-year-old man's SUV hit an icy patch on Interstate 70 and overturned. And in the northwest town of Woodward, Okla., heavy snow caused a roof to collapse, killing one inside the home.
Earlier on Monday, blizzard warnings extended from the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles into south-central Kansas. The blizzard warnings were dropped Monday evening for the far western portion of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.
Meanwhile to the east, lines of thunderstorms crossed Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida, bringing heavy rain and an occasional tornado warning.
As many as 10,000 people lost power in Oklahoma, as did thousands more in Texas.
"I have a gas cooking stove and got the oven going," said Ann Smith, owner of the Standifer House Bed and Breakfast in Elk City, Okla., late Monday afternoon. Her daughter and grandchildren had come over because they lost power.
"If it gets cold tonight, I guess we'll have to put pallets in the kitchen," Smith said with a laugh.
Colorado and New Mexico were the first to see the system Sunday night, with up to 2 feet falling in the foothills west of Denver.
As it moved into the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles Monday, the storm ground travel to a halt, closing miles of interstates and state highways.
Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Daniel Hawthorne said about a dozen motorists had to be rescued, but no one was injured. The National Weather Service in Lubbock reported at one point that as many as 100 vehicles were at a standstill on Interstate 27.
Extremely strong winds whipped around at least a foot or more of snow in the Texas Panhandle, and a hurricane-force gust of 75 mph was recorded at the Amarillo airport. Amarillo recorded the biggest snowfall total in Texas ? 19 inches, just short of the record of 19.3 ? while Fritch was second with 16.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed all highways in the Panhandle and much of the state's northwest because of blizzard conditions. Trooper Betsy Randolph said several dozen motorists have reported being stranded or have abandoned their vehicles.
Chris McBee, a storm chaser, got stuck outside Woodward in northwest Oklahoma in the mid-afternoon. By then, the city was leading Oklahoma's snow totals with 15 inches of snow.
"We were planning to go back to Oklahoma City tonight, but the road was just impassable," McBee told The Associated Press. "You couldn't see 50 feet in front of you." A man with a bulldozer dug out McBee's vehicle.
"He's just helping people," McBee said, adding he assumed the man was still out there. "We tried to pay him and he refused."
While the wintry precipitation is "a shot in the arm," National Drought Mitigation Center climatologist Mark Svoboda said, the drought in the Plains and Midwest is far from over. Svoboda, speaking from Lincoln, Neb., said 12 inches of snow is equivalent to about 1 inch of rain.
"We would need 2-4 feet of snow to just erase the October to present deficits," in Kansas, he said.
Jim Shroyer, a wheat specialist with Kansas State University Extension, said snow is more efficient than summer rain in replenishing soil moistures because rain tends to run off or evaporate during the summer months.
But it can take months or years for pastures and rangeland to recover to the point where there is good forage there for livestock.
"There is a lag coming out of drought where some of these impacts will linger on long after 'climatological drought' is gone," Svoboda said. "And there is always a sense of false security there."
Texas rancher Jay O'Brien warned the storm could be deadly for grazing cattle, with the wind pushing animals into a fenced corner where they could suffocate from the drifts.
"This type of snow is a cattle-killer," he said.
Parts of Kansas are bracing for anywhere from 8 to 24 inches of snow as the system moves through the state overnight. Wichita figures to take another hit after last week's storm that dumped about a foot and a half of snow.
In preparation, many Kansas school districts already have called off Tuesday classes, as has the University of Missouri-Columbia. And Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Sly James declared a state of emergency Monday, as another foot or more could fall, adding to last week's 10 or so inches.
"This one has the potential to be quite serious," James said at a news conference.
Through the day Tuesday, the storm is forecast to spin toward the upper Midwest, bringing snow to Chicago and eventually Detroit before heading toward Buffalo, N.Y, and northern New England in the middle of the week.
___
Associated Press writers Jill Zeman Bleed and Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark., Daniel Holtmeyer in Oklahoma City, and Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kan., Bill Draper in Kansas City, Mo., and John Milburn in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.
Associated PressReturn of sectarian threats in Iraq raises alarm
BAGHDAD (AP) ? The fliers began turning up at Sunni households in the Iraqi capital's Jihad neighborhood last week bearing a chilling message: Get out now or face "great agony" soon.
The leaflets were signed by the Mukhtar Army, a new Shiite militant group with ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. "The zero hour has come. So leave along with your families. ... You are the enemy," the messages warned.
Such overt threats all but disappeared as the darkest days of outright sectarian fighting waned in 2008 and Iraq stepped back from the brink of civil war. Their re-emergence now ? nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion ? is a worrying sign that rising sectarian tensions are again gnawing away at Iraqi society.
Iraqis increasingly fear that militants on both sides of the country's sectarian divide are gearing up for a new round of violence that could undo the fragile gains Iraq has made in recent years.
Members of the country's Sunni minority have been staging mass rallies for two months, with some calling for the toppling of a Shiite-led government they feel discriminates against them and is too closely allied with neighboring Iran. Sunni extremists have been stepping up large-scale attacks on predominantly Shiite targets, and concerns are growing that the brutal and increasingly sectarian fighting in Syria could spill across the border.
Many Sunnis who received the Jihad neighborhood messages are taking the warnings at face value and considering making a move.
"Residents are panicking. All of us are obsessed with these fliers," said Waleed Nadhim, a Sunni mobile phone shop owner who lives in the neighborhood. The 33-year-old father plans to leave the area because he doesn't have faith in the police to keep his family safe. "In a lawless country like Iraq, nobody can ignore threats like this."
Iraqi security forces have beefed up their presence in and around Jihad. The middle-class community, nestled along a road to the airport in southwest Baghdad, was home to Sunni civil servants and security officials under Saddam Hussein's regime, though many Shiites now live there too.
The Shiites, who are emboldened by a government and security forces dominated by their sect, have made their presence felt in Jihad in recent years. A Sunni mosque bears graffiti hailing a revered Shiite saint. A billboard on a major road shows firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr flanked by a fighter gripping a machine gun.
Jihad was one of the earliest flashpoints in Baghdad's descent into sectarian bloodshed. In July 2006, the neighborhood witnessed a brazen massacre that left as many as 41 residents dead and marked an escalation in Iraq's sectarian bloodletting. In that incident, Shiite militiamen set up checkpoints to stop morning commuters, singled out Sunnis based on their names and systematically executed them in front of their Shiite neighbors.
Residents now fear the events in southwest Baghdad could be the spark for a new round of tit-for-tat killing. Two weeks ago, a Sunni and a Shiite were each killed in separate attacks in Sadiyah, next to Jihad, said a 30-year-old Sunni government employee living in the area who gave her name only as Umm Abdullah al-Taie, or mother of Abdullah.
"Nobody dares to go out after dark," she said. "People have started to hear sectarian alarm bells ringing again."
The Mukhtar Army whose named appeared on the threatening leaflets was formed by Wathiq al-Batat, a onetime senior official in the Hezbollah Brigades. He announced the creation of the new militant group earlier this month.
Hezbollah in Iraq is believed to be funded and trained by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and was among the Shiite militias that targeted U.S. military bases months before their December 2011 withdrawal.
Al-Batat told Iraq's al-Sharqiya channel that he formed the Mukhtar Army to confront Sunnis who might attempt to topple the government in the same way that Syrian rebels are trying to overthrow Bashar Assad's Iranian-backed regime in neighboring Syria. He said the group is advised by Iran's hard-line Quds Force, which oversees external operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He declined to say whether the group received any further support from Tehran.
Little is known about Mukhtar Army's size or capabilities. Abdullah al-Rikabi, a spokesman for the group, boasted it has 1 million members and described al-Batat as loyal to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has issued an arrest warrant against al-Batat, though he still walks free. In a speech Saturday, the Shiite premier vowed to prosecute anyone who seeks to incite sectarian strife.
The Mukhtar Army denies being behind the threats, which some Shiites believe are a ruse to tar their sect and inflame sectarian divisions.
"We have nothing to do with the fliers," said al-Rikabi, the group's spokesman. He accused members of Saddam's now-outlawed Baath party and al-Qaida of making the threats in an effort to ignite civil war.
Even though they are busy hunting down the group's leader, Iraqi authorities have their doubts about the Shiite militia's involvement in the leaflets too.
Two senior security officials said intelligence agents have obtained an al-Qaida hit list containing detailed names and residential information about people ? both Sunnis and Shiites ? living in mixed areas. They believe the group plans to target residents one by one, alternating by sect, in an effort to spread panic and suggest an atmosphere of retaliatory killings.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose information about security operations.
Threatening fliers from both Sunni and Shiite militias aimed at members of the opposite sect also have begun turning up in Baqouba, a former al-Qaida stronghold north of Baghdad that has a history of sectarian violence, according to Diyala provincial council member Sadiq al-Hussein.
For those living in areas where the threats turned up, their source matters less than what they portend.
Jafaar al-Fatlawi, a Shiite government employee who lives in the Jihad neighborhood, said he has started carrying a pistol with him just to answer the door and takes his family to spend the night with relatives elsewhere in the city.
"Everybody in the neighborhood expects sectarian fighting to erupt any minute," he said. "Our security forces weren't able to stop the sectarian war before and now they'll fail again."
___
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed reporting.
___
Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/return-sectarian-threats-iraq-raises-alarm-064831443.html
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Easy Ways To Promote Your Business Online ? Yahoodiary
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Easy Ways To Promote Your Business Online. Internet marketing is about promoting your business on the web. It can be ... <br /><br />Craft your banner ads so that they stand out from the other million banner ads on the web.
Source: http://yahoodiary.com/blog/54214/easy-ways-to-promote-your-business-online/
Know Much More About Wonderful Advertising Codes By Amazon
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House GOP?s VAWA proposal nixes LGBT, American Indian protections
Supporters of the Violence Against Women Act rally in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
After effectively stonewalling the once bipartisan Violence Against Women Act in the last Congress, House Republicans are at it again.
On Friday, the GOP countered a Senate version of VAWA that passed through the upper chamber with bipartisan support last week with their own less inclusive bill that continues to block protections for LGBT domestic violence victims, American Indians, and undocumented immigrants.
Coverage for gay and lesbian domestic violence victims is never mentioned in the bill. The House version essentially makes it harder for illegal immigrants who were abused to reach legal status, and makes it easier for non-American Indians who are charged with abusing American Indian women on tribal land to get their cases excused from tribal courts. It says it will expand assistance to ?adult and youth victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.? You can read the entire text of the bill here and its official section-by-section summary text here.
The House bill was written to ?protect all women from acts of violence and help law enforcement prosecute offenders to the fullest extent of the law,? Eric Cantor spokeswoman Megan Whittemore, who helped craft the bill, told TPM.
The Senate bill passed last week with bipartisan support in a vote of 78-22. Every Republican and Democratic woman in the Senate voted in favor of its passage.
VAWA was first passed in 1994 but expired at the beginning of this year. Vice President Joe Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped author the original legislation. The bill provides funding to aid and counsel victims of domestic violence while implementing stronger penalties for their abusers. Some of its components included maintaining that a woman?s past sexual history cannot be used against her in a trial of her abuser and that women?shouldn?t?be forced to pay for their own protection or rape exam.
One of the authors of the Senate bill, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy,?issued a strong statement condemning the House version, saying, ?This is simply unacceptable and it further demonstrates that Republicans in the House have not heard the message sent by the American people and reflected in the Senate?s overwhelming vote earlier this month to pass the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill.?
Other prominent senators were also quick to blast the bill. ?It?s not a compromise, it?s an unfortunate effort to exclude specific groups of women from receiving basic protections under the law. And we cannot allow that to happen,? said VAWA advocate Patty Murray, D-Wash., in a statement. ?House Republican leadership just doesn?t get it.?
President Obama recently pleaded with Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act in his State of the Union address, saying, ?We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace, and free from the fear of domestic violence. Today, the Senate passed the Violence Against Women Act that Joe Biden originally wrote almost 20 years ago. I urge the House to do the same.?
Seventeen Republican representatives recently signed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, expressing support for a bipartisan solution to the legislation.
The Senate version includes $659 million in assistance over five years, a number actually down 17% from the last time the bill was reauthorized in 2005.
In her ?Open Letter? Saturday, MSNBC?s Melissa Harris-Perry addressed Republican Rep. John Duncan of Tennessee, who was recently quoted as saying, ?Like most men, I?m more opposed to violence against women than even violence against men because most men can handle it a little better than a lot of women can.?
Harris-Perry responded:
?Is it that lesbians and gay men can just a take punch better than straight women? Or maybe you?ve decided that Native American women are particularly good at handling intimate violence because you and the other House Republicans still refuse to support a bill that gives tribal authorities the ability to prosecute those who commit acts of violence on tribal lands. Maybe your refusal to reauthorize VAWA is actually based on a belief that when some people are abused it?s just not a big deal because they can handle it.?
The House version of the bill is scheduled to come up in the Rules Committee this Tuesday.
Source: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/23/house-gops-vawa-proposal-nixes-lgbt-native-american-protections/
Obama: 100 US military personnel deployed to Niger
WASHINGTON?President Barack Obama said Friday that about 100 American troops have been deployed to the African nation of Niger. Two U.S. defense officials said the troops would be setting up a base for unarmed drones to conduct surveillance.
Obama announced the deployment in a letter to Congress, saying that the forces "will provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region."
The move marks a deepening of U.S. efforts to stem the spread of al-Qaida and its affiliates in the volatile region. It also underscores Obama's desire to fight extremism without involving large numbers of U.S. ground forces.
The drone base will allow the U.S. to give France more intelligence on the militants its forces have been fighting in Mali, which neighbors Niger. Over time, it could extend the reach not only of American intelligence-gathering but also U.S. special operations missions to strengthen Niger's own security forces.
One of the two U.S. defense officials who discussed the development confirmed the American troops would fly drones and other surveillance platforms from Niger military airstrips, tracking militant and refugee movement inside Mali and around the border. The U.S. will share that intelligence with Niger's military, the official said.
Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the project.
The drones at the Niger base will be unarmed and used for surveillance, not airstrikes. Still, the development of a base in Niger raises the possibility that it could eventually be used for launching strikes.
Obama said in his letter to Congress that the U.S. forces have been deployed with the consent of Niger's government. The forces were also deployed with weapons "for their own force protection and security," the president said.
Last month, the U.S. and Niger signed a status-of-forces-agreement spelling out legal protections and obligations of American forces that might operate in Niger in the future.
Africa is increasingly a focus of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, even as al-Qaida remains a threat in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. Last month's terrorist attack on a natural gas complex in Algeria, in which at least 37 hostages and 29 militants were killed, illustrated the threat posed by extremists who have asserted power propelled by long-simmering ethnic tensions in Mali and the revolution in Libya.
A number of al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremist groups operate in Mali and elsewhere in the Sahara, including a group known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, which originated in Algeria and is active in northern Mali. Last month, French forces intervened to stop the extremists' move toward Mali's capital, and Washington has grown more involved by providing a variety of military support to French troops.
France has said it will eventually pull out of its Mali operation so that African forces can help stabilize the West African country.
???
AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
NY subject of prizewinning photo questions ethics
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) ? A man depicted in a prizewinning photography series about violence in the upstate New York city of Rochester says the essay misrepresented who he was, where he was and what he was doing at the time his picture was taken.
The dispute involves a portrait taken by Italian photographer Paolo Pellegrin, who shot it on assignment with the Magnum Photo agency last year as part of an in-depth look at a high-crime Rochester area known as the Crescent.
The black-and-white photo shows a tattooed man in a patriotic T-shirt carrying a rifle with an ammunition belt slung over his shoulder.
He appears to be standing sentry in deep shadows in front of a cinder-block wall.
The caption identifies him as "a former U.S. Marine Corps sniper with his weapon."
But the man in the picture, Shane Keller, tells the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of Rochester that it was actually taken in his basement in Brighton, a relatively well-to-do suburb with low crime that is nowhere near the poor neighborhoods that were the subject of the photo essay.
Keller, who now lives in Pennsylvania, is an ex-Marine who served in Iraq, but he was a combat photographer there, and not a sniper.
And at the time the photo was taken, he was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who was working as an assistant to the Magnum photographers.
"I don't have anything to do with any of those issues, drugs or gun violence," Keller told the newspaper.
In a response posted on the website of the National Press Photographer Association, Pellegrin said Keller "may have misspoken" about having been a sniper, or else he "may have misunderstood."
As for the erroneous captions indicating that the picture had been taken in the Crescent, Pellegrin said he believed the name was "a conceptual designation as much as a geographical one."
"Shane thinks he and his guns have nothing to do with violence in the Crescent. I disagree," Pellegrin wrote.
The Magnum photo series on Rochester has taken second-place awards in several international photo contests, including the 2012 World Press Photo contest announced Feb. 15.
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Information from: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, http://www.democratandchronicle.com
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ny-subject-prizewinning-photo-questions-ethics-174616985.html
Sports ? Fans hurt as crash mars NASCAR race
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla ?
A frightening, fiery crash sent Kyle Larson?s car airborne and debris spinning into the stands injured dozens of race fans Saturday at the NASCAR stock car Nationwide Series season-opener.
Joie Chitwood, president of Daytona International Speedway, said 14 injured fans had been transported from the circuit for treatment at local hospitals and 14 more were treated at the track?s medical facility.
He said he could not confirm reports that at least two people were seriously hurt and that one was taken immediately for surgery.
?It?s not appropriate for me to comment on that,? Chitwood said in a press conference held at the circuit some three hours after the wreck.
Various media reports put the number of injured at more than 30, with ESPN reporting that one adult had life-threatening head trauma and a 14-year-old was in critical but not life-threatening condition in hospital.
The wreck, which occurred almost as Tony Stewart was taking the checkered flag for victory, began when race leader Regan Smith turned sideways and a dozen cars bunched behind him.
?My fault,? admitted Smith. ?I threw a block.?
Larson, a Japanese-American driver who was making his first start in NASCAR?s second-tier series, was launched into the catch-fencing.
?I was getting pushed from behind, and by the time my spotter said, ?Lift,? it was too late,? said Larson, who was able to climb out of what remained of his vehicle.
?I had some flames come in the cockpit. I was alright and could get out of the car quickly. It was definitely a big hit.?
Larson?s car tore a hole in the fence separating the track from the stands. His engine sheared off with at least one tire and other debris flying into the grandstand.
?I looked in the mirror and that?s the worst image I?ve ever seen in a race in my life,? Stewart said.
A fan who identified himself only as ?Tyler? sent amateur video to ESPN and spoke with the sports network about the scary scene.
?I saw a tire about 10 feet from me, just a row above me with a man under it and people yelling for help,? he said in a telephone interview.
?Our prayers and thoughts are with everybody they are working on,? NASCAR President Mike Helton said of those being treated by medical personnel.
None of the drivers involved in the crash was injured, but driver Michael Annett was hospitalized with chest bruising after hitting a safety barrier in an earlier crash in the race.
?We?ve always known since racing started this is a dangerous sport,? a subdued Stewart said. ?As much as we want to celebrate, I?m more concerned about the fans and the drivers right now.?
Chitwood said speedway and NASCAR officials responded appropriately and according to their safety protocols, with emergency personnel in place and able to begin work promptly.
Steve O?Donnell, NASCAR?s senior vice president for racing operations, said the entire incident would be reviewed to see what, if any, changes could be made to improve safety.
Until then, he declined to speculate on what went wrong or right.
?We need to take the time to really study it and see what we can improve on,? O?Donnell said.
The race came on the eve of the season-opening event in NASCAR?s top-flight Sprint Cup series, the Daytona 500.
Both O?Donnell and Chitwood said they expected Sunday?s race to start on schedule.
?We expect to go racing tomorrow with no changes,? Chitwood said.
Danica Patrick will start the Daytona 500 from pole position after becoming the first woman to top qualifying for a NASCAR race.
Patrick had also picked up a ride for Saturday?s race, driving for Turner Scott Motorsports. She suffered engine failure early on and wasn?t involved in the late-race chaos.
? 2013 AFP
Source: http://www.japantoday.com/category/sports/view/fans-hurt-as-crash-mars-nascar-race
How human language could have evolved from birdsong
Friday, February 22, 2013
"The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language," Charles Darwin wrote in "The Descent of Man" (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language, he speculated, might have had its origins in singing, which "might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions."
Now researchers from MIT, along with a scholar from the University of Tokyo, say that Darwin was on the right path. The balance of evidence, they believe, suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom: first, the elaborate songs of birds, and second, the more utilitarian, information-bearing types of expression seen in a diversity of other animals.
"It's this adventitious combination that triggered human language," says Shigeru Miyagawa, a professor of linguistics in MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, and co-author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
The idea builds upon Miyagawa's conclusion, detailed in his previous work, that there are two "layers" in all human languages: an "expression" layer, which involves the changeable organization of sentences, and a "lexical" layer, which relates to the core content of a sentence. His conclusion is based on earlier work by linguists including Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser.
Based on an analysis of animal communication, and using Miyagawa's framework, the authors say that birdsong closely resembles the expression layer of human sentences ? whereas the communicative waggles of bees, or the short, audible messages of primates, are more like the lexical layer. At some point, between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago, humans may have merged these two types of expression into a uniquely sophisticated form of language.
"There were these two pre-existing systems," Miyagawa says, "like apples and oranges that just happened to be put together."
These kinds of adaptations of existing structures are common in natural history, notes Robert Berwick, a professor of computational linguistics at MIT who is also an author of the paper.
"When something new evolves, it is often built out of old parts," Berwick says. "We see this over and over again in evolution. Old structures can change just a little bit, and acquire radically new functions."
A new chapter in the songbook
The new paper, "The Emergence of Hierarchical Structure in Human Language," was co-written by Miyagawa, Berwick and Kazuo Okanoya, a biopsychologist at the University of Tokyo who is an expert on animal communication.
To consider the difference between the expression layer and the lexical layer, take a simple sentence: "Todd saw a condor." We can easily create variations of this, such as, "When did Todd see a condor?" This rearranging of elements takes place in the expression layer and allows us to add complexity and ask questions. But the lexical layer remains the same, since it involves the same core elements: the subject, "Todd," the verb, "to see," and the object, "condor."
Birdsong lacks a lexical structure. Instead, birds sing learned melodies with what Berwick calls a "holistic" structure; the entire song has one meaning, whether about mating, territory or other things. The Bengalese finch, as the authors note, can loop back to parts of previous melodies, allowing for greater variation and communication of more things; a nightingale may be able to recite from 100 to 200 different melodies.
By contrast, other types of animals have bare-bones modes of expression without the same melodic capacity. Bees communicate visually, using precise waggles to indicate sources of foods to their peers; other primates can make a range of sounds, comprising warnings about predators and other messages.
Humans, according to Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya, fruitfully combined these systems. We can communicate essential information, like bees or primates ? but like birds, we also have a melodic capacity and an ability to recombine parts of our uttered language. For this reason, our finite vocabularies can generate a seemingly infinite string of words. Indeed, the researchers suggest that humans first had the ability to sing, as Darwin conjectured, and then managed to integrate specific lexical elements into those songs.
"It's not a very long step to say that what got joined together was the ability to construct these complex patterns, like a song, but with words," Berwick says.
As they note in the paper, some of the "striking parallels" between language acquisition in birds and humans include the phase of life when each is best at picking up languages, and the part of the brain used for language. Another similarity, Berwick notes, relates to an insight of celebrated MIT professor emeritus of linguistics Morris Halle, who, as Berwick puts it, observed that "all human languages have a finite number of stress patterns, a certain number of beat patterns. Well, in birdsong, there is also this limited number of beat patterns."
Birds, bees ? and dolphins?
The researchers acknowledge that further empirical studies on the subject would be desirable.
"It's just a hypothesis," Berwick says. "But it's a way to make explicit what Darwin was talking about very vaguely, because we know more about language now."
Miyagawa, for his part, asserts it is a viable idea in part because it could be subject to more scrutiny, as the communication patterns of other species are examined in further detail. "If this is right, then human language has a precursor in nature, in evolution, that we can actually test today," he says, adding that bees, birds and other primates could all be sources of further research insight.
MIT-based research in linguistics has largely been characterized by the search for universal aspects of all human languages. With this paper, Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya hope to spur others to think of the universality of language in evolutionary terms. It is not just a random cultural construct, they say, but based in part on capacities humans share with other species. At the same time, Miyagawa notes, human language is unique, in that two independent systems in nature merged, in our species, to allow us to generate unbounded linguistic possibilities, albeit within a constrained system.
"Human language is not just freeform, but it is rule-based," Miyagawa says. "If we are right, human language has a very heavy constraint on what it can and cannot do, based on its antecedents in nature."
###
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice
Thanks to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126974/How_human_language_could_have_evolved_from_birdsong
Up to 12,000 U.S., allied troops for Afghanistan
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond lead their delegations during a bilateral meeting at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense Ministers Meetings, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Panetta and his NATO counterparts are considering leaving 8,000 to 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after 2014, but a dispute arose Friday between the U.S. and German defense officials over whether that contingent would be an international force or an American one. (AP Photo/Chip Somodevilla, Pool)
Associated Press
WASHINGTON ? The U.S. and its NATO allies revealed Friday they may keep as many as 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends next year, largely American forces tasked with hunting down remnants of al-Qaida and helping Afghan forces with their own security.
Patience with the 11-year-old war has grown thin in the U.S. and Europe, yet Washington and its allies feel they cannot pick up and leave without risking a repeat of what happened in Afghanistan after Soviet troops withdrew in 1989: Attention turned elsewhere, the Taliban grabbed power and al-Qaida found refuge.
In disclosing that he and his NATO counterparts were discussing a residual force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said most allied defense ministers assured him they are committed to remaining part of a U.S.-led coalition.
"I feel very confident that we are going to get a number of nations to make that contribution for the enduring presence," Panetta told a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels at the conclusion of a defense ministers meeting.
The U.S. and its allies have managed to stick together throughout the war, despite differing views. The Europeans have seen the military mission as mainly aimed at promoting stable governance; the Americans have viewed it as mainly combat. Some allies, including France, have already pulled out their combat troops.
The Obama administration has not said how many troops or diplomats it intends to keep in Afghanistan after 2014; it is in the early stages of negotiating a bilateral security agreement with Kabul that would set the legal parameters. There currently are 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, down from a 2010 peak of 100,000.
In addition to targeting terrorists, the post-2014 missions are expected to be defined as training and advising a still-developing Afghan army and police force and providing security for the U.S. and allied civilian and military presence, officials said.
The largely unspoken assumption on which the post-2014 plan is built is that Afghanistan's own forces will be strong enough to hold off the Taliban on their own starting in 2015 and to prevent the country's relapse into civil war. The worry is that if the Taliban regained power they would allow al-Qaida to return in large numbers, defeating the original purpose of the U.S. military action in 2001.
It's a touchy topic at this stage of a still-unfolding war, with Afghans fearful of being abandoned by their foreign partners and Washington and its NATO allies wary of committing too heavily to a corrupt Kabul government facing an uncertain future.
Budget pressures in the U.S. and Europe also complicate the outlook.
"There's no question in the current budget environment, with deep cuts in European defense spending and the kind of political gridlock that we see in the United States now with regards to our own budget, is putting at risk our ability to effectively act together," Panetta said. "As I prepare to step down as secretary of defense, I do fear that the alliance will soon be, if it is not already, stretched too thin."
Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765623214/Up-to-12000-US-allied-troops-for-Afghanistan.html
Photos: Texas A&M's Joeckel sprints, stretches, jumps at NFL Combine
Photos: Texas A&M lineman Luke Joeckel sprints, stretches and jumps at NFL Combine
| Feb 23, 2013; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Texas A&M Aggies offensive lineman Luke Joeckel does the broad jump during the NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. Photo: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports |
Residents return as last Jersey Shore town reopens after Sandy
MANTOLOKING, New Jersey (Reuters) - Coming home to the last Jersey Shore community to reopen after Superstorm Sandy, Sandra Witkowski stood in her dining room on Friday to revisit that old familiar coastal view only to see her neighbor's house in the middle of Barnegat Bay.
The storm that slammed into New Jersey on Oct 29, ravaged the coastline and damaged all of the 521 houses in the narrow barrier island community, said Doug Popaca of the local emergency management office.
About 100 homes were damaged beyond repair and another 40 washed away, said Chris Nelson, a lawyer helping with the community's recovery.
One swept about 100 yards out into the bay, salt water lapping at its windows, was owned by Witkowki's neighbor.
"I love it here, but it's a lot scarier than it used to be," said Witkowski, 69, a 12-year resident of the barrier island that stands between the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of New Jersey.
Sandy caused nearly $30 billion in damages in the state. When Jersey Shore residents were evacuated, most expected they would return after a few days and were stunned when the devastation turned out to be so extreme that it would be months before they could go home.
Mantoloking, an affluent community of 296 fulltime residents that expands in summer to 4,000 beachgoers, is the last of the shore communities to allow residents to move home. Officials declared Friday "repopulation" day and welcomed home residents - at least those who still had homes to come back to.
Under overcast skies, they made their way across three bridges - the only way onto the island. Cresting the bridge into Mantoloking, residents saw empty coastline where once sat a solid line of million-dollar waterfront homes side-by-side.
"You are almost in a state of shock when you see the devastation," said Popaca, 66, who has lived in Mantoloking for 32 years. "We know several people whose houses are gone, they don't exist anymore," Popaca said.
Ordered by police to leave his home as the storm approached, Popaca moved back after the structure was treated for mold and had its insulation replaced.
Witkowski, a retired secretary who has been living with her daughter's family in nearby Point Pleasant since the storm hit, said repair work was still underway to fix the damage.
"It's a little frightening, but it's home, and we're coming back," Witkowski said.
(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Leslie Gevirtz)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/residents-return-last-jersey-shore-town-reopens-sandy-233112618.html
Men's Nordic Skiing at NCAA Central Region Championships at Houghton, Mich.
Men's Nordic Skiing at NCAA Central Region Championships Houghton, Mich.
The Gustavus men's nordic skiing team travels to Houghton, Michigan for the NCAA Central Region Championships.? Competition begins on Saturday, February 23 and concludes on Sunday, February 24, 2013.
Give a gift to Gustavus Nordic Skiing
Source: https://gustavus.edu/calendar/men-s-nordic-skiing-at-ncaa-central-region-championship/35682
Ford investing $200M at Ohio auto plant
Courtesy Bloomberg
Ford Motor Co. is investing $200 million and hiring 450 workers at an auto plant in Cleveland.
- Staff Dayton Business Journal
Ford Motor Co. is investing $200 million and hiring 450 workers at an auto plant in Cleveland.
The automaker will boost production of its 2.0-liter EcoBlast engine at its Cleveland Engine Plant.
Production of the engine for North America is currently based in Valencia, Spain. The investment in Cleveland will shift North American production to Ohio, while the Valencia Engine Plant will remain the production location of the engine of Europe-built vehicles.
Valencia will continue to produce and ship parts for these engines to North America.
?Cleveland Engine Plant was the first to produce EcoBoost engines and will continue to be a cornerstone of Ford?s strategy to deliver affordable fuel economy for millions,? said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of The Americas.
Related: Click for slideshow of best-selling new car makes in Dayton.
The investment in Ohio is the latest for global carmakers. Honda Motor Co. has made several key investments including $100 million into its engine plant in Anna and hiring 100 new workers there. The Anna plant ranks as the largest manufacturing facility in the Dayton region with about 2,400 workers.
General Motors also has invested in operations in Northeast Ohio, where it builds the Chevrolet Cruze, and Chrysler has invested in its Toledo-area operations.
Click here for more.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Car bomb kills at least 53 in Syrian capital
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) ? A car bomb exploded Thursday near Syria's ruling party headquarters in Damascus, killing at least 53 people and scattering mangled bodies among the blazing wreckage in one of the bloodiest days in the capital since the uprising began almost two years ago.
Elsewhere in the city, two other bombs struck intelligence offices, killing 22, and mortar rounds hit the army's central command, activists said.
Recent rebel advances in the Damascus suburbs, combined with the bombings and three straight days of mortar attacks, mark the most sustained challenge of the civil war for control of the seat of President Bashar Assad's power.
Syrian state media said the car bombing near the Baath Party headquarters and the Russian Embassy was a suicide attack that killed 53 civilians and wounded more than 200, with children among the casualties. Anti-regime activists put the death toll at 61, which would make it the deadliest Damascus bombing of the revolt.
The violence has shattered the sense of normalcy that the Syrian regime has desperately tried to maintain in Damascus, a city that has largely been insulated from the bloodshed and destruction that has left other urban centers in ruins.
The rebels launched an offensive on Damascus in July following a stunning bombing on a high-level government crisis meeting that killed four top regime officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister. Following that attack, rebel groups that had established footholds in the suburbs pushed in, battling government forces for more than a week before being routed and swept out.
Since then, government warplanes have pounded opposition strongholds on the outskirts, and rebels have managed only small incursions on the city's southern and eastern sides.
But the recent bombings and mortar attacks suggest that instead of trying a major assault, rebel fighters are resorting to guerrilla tactics to loosen Assad's grip on the heavily fortified capital.
The fighting in Damascus also follows a string of tactical victories in recent weeks for the rebels - capturing the nation's largest hydroelectric dam and overtaking airbases in the northeast - that have contributed to the sense that the opposition may be gaining some momentum.
But Damascus is the ultimate prize in the civil war, and many view the battle for the ancient city as the most probable endgame of a conflict that according to U.N. estimates has killed nearly 70,000 people.
To defend the capital, Assad is using his most reliable and loyal troops, activists say, including the Republican Guard and the feared 4th Division, commanded by his brother, Maher. Armed checkpoints have sprung up across the city as part of the regime's efforts to keep the rebels at bay.
Thursday's car bomb hit a checkpoint on a bustling thoroughfare in the central Mazraa neighborhood between the Baath Party headquarters and the Russian Embassy. The force of the explosion shattered the balconies of apartment blocks along the tree-lined street and blew out the windows and doors of the party building.
Video of the blast site on Syrian state TV showed firefighters dousing a flaming car with hoses, while lifeless and dismembered bodies were tossed onto the grass of a nearby park. The state news agency, SANA, published photos showing a large crater in the middle of the rubble-strewn street and charred cars with blackened bodies inside.
"It was huge. Everything in the shop turned upside down," one local resident said. He said three of his employees were injured by flying glass that killed a young girl who was walking by when the blast hit.
"I pulled her inside the shop, but she was almost gone. We couldn't save her. She was hit in the stomach and head," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for talking to foreign media.
Ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast, which sent a huge cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but suspicion will likely fall upon one of the most extreme of Syria's myriad rebel factions, Jabhat al-Nusra.
The group, which the U.S. has designated to be a terrorist organization, has claimed past bombings on regime targets, including the double suicide blast outside an intelligence building in May that killed 55.
Such tactics have galvanized Assad's supporters and made many other Syrians distrustful of the rebel movement as a whole, most of whose fighters do not use such tactics.
The main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned Thursday's bombing without accusing a specific group of carrying it out. It did, however, suggest that the regime allowed foreign terrorist groups to operate in Syria.
"The terrorist Assad regime bears the most responsibility for all the crimes that happen in the homeland because it has opened the doors to those with different agendas to enter Syria and harm its stability so it can hide behind this and use it as an excuse to justify its crimes," the group said in a statement on its Facebook page.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the "indiscriminate violence against civilians."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned "the series of bombings in populated areas in the Syrian capital Damascus today, which resulted in numerous deaths and injuries," and expressed condolences to the families of victims.
Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti news agency quoted a Russian Embassy official as saying its building had been damaged in the blast but no one was hurt.
Among those injured by flying glass was Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical Damascus-based Palestinian group. He suffered cuts to his hands and face, according to an official at his office, which is about 500 yards from the bomb. Hawatmeh was treated at a hospital and released.
In a separate attack, Syrian state TV said mortar shells hit near the Syrian Army General Command but caused no casualties. The report said the building was empty because it was being repaired from a bombing last year.
The Observatory said two mortar rounds struck near the building but it did not report casualties. It also said two more shells landed in the upscale Malki neighborhood, causing no damage or casualties.
Another blast in the northeastern Barzeh neighborhood killed seven people, a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said three separate car bombs exploded near different security facilities in Barzeh, followed by intense clashes between rebels and regime forces. It said 22 people were killed, 19 of them security officers.
State media also reported that security forces in Damascus had arrested a second, would-be suicide bomber driving a car full of explosives near the site of the Mazraa bombing.
On Wednesday, two mortar shells exploded next to a soccer stadium in Damascus, killing one player. A day earlier, two shells hit near one of Assad's three palaces in the city, with some damage reported.
In the southern town of Daraa, where Syria's uprising began nearly two years ago, the Observatory said 18 people were killed in an airstrike on a field hospital, included eight rebel fighters, three medics, one woman and a young girl.
A video posted online showed the dead and wounded being loaded into the backs of trucks. Some were bloody and had bandaged heads, while others were carried on stretchers.
The videos appeared to be authentic and corresponded with Associated Press reports of the events depicted.
The conflict began in March 2011 with political protests against the government, and has since evolved into a civil war between Assad's regime and hundreds of rebel groups seeking to topple it.
International diplomacy has failed to slow the fighting.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday that his message to Assad is "it is time to go," and that the senseless killing must be brought to an end through a political process.
He also urged Assad to respond to a dialogue offer made recently by Syrian opposition chief Mouaz al-Khatib.
"A political agreement on a transition is the way forward in Syria to bring to an end this terrible and unacceptable loss of life," he said.
Al-Khatib has said he is open to talks with the regime as a way of removing it from power. The government has refused, insisting the talks should be without preconditions and inside the country.
The Syrian National Coalition met in Cairo on Thursday to try to firm up its position on whether to engage with the regime in talks. A final decision was expected Friday.
____
Lucas reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard and Zeina Karam in Beirut, Bradley Klapper in Washington and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/car-bomb-kills-least-53-syrian-capital-201450169.html
PARIS TN: Henry County's Lakewood School tornado space will be unique
It will be a ?fast and furious? project but one that will be unique to schools in Tennessee, members of the Henry County Board of Education and Henry County Commission learned Thursday of work planned to be completed this summer to create a tornado-safe space in portions Lakewood School.
Plans are to add steel walls, ceilings and doors supported with a new concrete pad and framework to the three classroom corridors at Lakewood. This will create a tornado-safe ?box? that will protect students and faculty from tornadoes with wind speeds up to 250 miles an hour.
?It will be the first retrofit of this nature in the state of Tennessee,? Greer Lashlee of Lashlee-Rich Inc. of Huntindon said.
This unique project was approved because it would be less costly to add the protective shell to the existing building than to build a stand-alone tornado shelter large enough to protect the nearly 1,000 members of the school?s students, faculty and staff.
The Board of Education has been awarded TEMA and FEMA grants that will pay for 88.5 percent of the cost of making portions of the system?s three elementary schools ? Lakewood, Harrelson and Henry ? tornado safe.
The school board and county commission have agreed to split the remainder of the cost of the project, which is estimated at about $460,000.
Lashlee explained that construction at Lakewood School would be finished first because that grant application had been approved first.
Construction at Harrelson and Henry schools is expected to be completed in the summer of 2014.
Jerry Hartsfield, an architect with TLM in Jackson, explained the project would be intense because the current concrete floors would have to be drilled out and removed before construction could begin.
Hartsfield explained it was because of the lifting action of tornados that workers would need to pour a new foundation in which to embed the reinforcement beams for the safe space.
?When it is finished, the hallways will look much like they do now,? Hartsfield said as the acoustical ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights will be replaced to cover the steel ceiling of the shelter.
The floor also will be retiled and high impact sheet rock will cover the steel panels on the walls.
The only visible difference will be that there will be tornado doors hinged against the walls which teachers will be responsible for closing in the case of a tornado.
Hartsfield suggested these doors might need to be fastened in some way so that students could not accidently mash their hands between them and the walls as the doors were heavy steel doors.
Steel doors also will be added at the two ends of each corridor to give those in the safe space complete protection.
Henry County Sheriff Monte Belew asked about the possibility of opening the spaces to the public during severe weather.
Hartsfield said that according to the terms of the grant, the spaces were to be used for the students first any time school was in session either for regular classes or extracurricular activities.
He indicated that outside of these school hours, the areas could be used by the public.
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Snow in Arizona delays resumption of Match Play
MARANA, Ariz. (AP) ? Bundled in a winter jacket in a chilly tent near the snow-covered driving range, Mark Russell was asked where the opening day of the Match Play Championship ranked among his bizarre weather experiences.
"It's right there," said Russell, the PGA Tour's vice president of competition.
And Russell has been on the job for more than 30 years.
First-round play in the World Golf Championships event was suspended Wednesday when rain that came down sideways quickly gave way to snow from a winter storm that dumped close to 2 inches on Dove Mountain in about an hour. The temperature plunged to 33 degrees at the cactus-lined layout 2,800 feet above sea level.
"I've seen snow on the course when I was a kid, but nothing like that on any of the tours. It was crazy," said top-ranked Rory McIlroy, one of 20 players in the 64-man field who never even made it to the first tee Wednesday at the Ritz-Carlton Club.
After more snow during the night and morning temperatures around freezing, the course remained coated Thursday morning and play finally resumed at 1 p.m.
The field is cut in half after each round and, with sunshine in the forecast the rest of the week, it shouldn't be difficult to get caught up.
"We've got a lot of possibilities with this small field," Russell said.
Tiger Woods also was in one of the 10 matches that didn't start Wednesday. He opened against Charles Howell III, while McIlroy faced Shane Lowry.
Sergio Garcia, in the leadoff match, had just holed a 10-foot par putt to win the 15th hole and go 2 up over Thongchai Jaidee when play was suspended Wednesday.
Ian Poulter's only other tournament this year was on Maui for the Tournament of Champions, where it took four days just to get started because of high wind.
"I can't believe it. When have we ever seen that?" he said, taking off his rain gear in front of his locker. "The two events I've attempted to play this year have been three days of 50 mph wind and 2 inches of snow in an hour. It's absolutely, flippin' unbelievable."
What does that say for the rest of the year?
"Can't get worse," he said. "Just incredible. Bizarre. Have you ever seen it? Especially where we are."
Maybe he should consider himself lucky. At least he didn't play Torrey Pines, where fog wiped out an entire round Saturday and Woods had to wait until Monday to polish off his 75th career victory. There were frost delays in the opening rounds at Phoenix.
But snow?
"I remember one year in Vegas in a collegiate tournament it was sleeting," said Webb Simpson, who played one shot. "We all charged toboggans to our coach in the pro shop and he wasn't too happy about it. This is crazy weather. But we've got a great forecast for the weekend, so hopefully, it will melt tonight."
Poulter was cold from the start, rubbing his hands together and jumping in place to keep warm in the morning chill.
The Englishman had a 3-up lead over Stephen Gallacher through 12 holes, then left the course plotting revenge after European Ryder Cup teammate Peter Hanson hit him with a snowball.
"I'm like an elephant," Poulter said. "I will not forget."
In only 3? hours of golf, there was some impressive play.
Bo Van Pelt, who took three shots to get out of a bunker early against John Senden, won six straight holes ? only two of them with birdies ? to build a 5-up lead through 12. Jason Day was 6 up through 10 holes against Zach Johnson, Matt Kuchar was 3 up over Hiroyuki Fujita through 14, and defending champion Hunter Mahan was 4 up at the turn against Matteo Manassero.
"It's hard to keep your hands warm," Mahan said. "You're feeling of everything just isn't quite there. By the last three shots we hit, it was unbelievable, crazy."
The best competition might have come after play ended.
Rickie Fowler wound up and fired snowballs from the parking lots. The caddies spent an hour having a snowball fight, though most of the players stayed inside.
That included Carl Pettersson, a guy who tries to see the glass half-full.
"This is one time I have the advantage of being fat," Pettersson said.
With delays like this, he might have company.
"It seems like every rain delay ? or snow delay ? that we have, you just seem to sit there and eat dessert," Day said. "And there's a bunch of yummy chocolates in there."
This was the second time in three years that wintry weather interrupted the Match Play Championship. Light snow covered everything but tee boxes and greens the morning of Luke Donald's victory over Martin Kaymer in the 2011 championship match. It cleared before the match, but there was a brief delay because of sleet that turned greens white.
DIVOTS: The last time the opening round wasn't finished was in 2005, when it never got started because of rain that put just about every hole at La Costa under water. ... The first-round losers will receive $46,000.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/snow-arizona-delays-resumption-match-play-154830912--spt.html
Uncover Business Enterprise Options And Franchise In India
source article, by definition, is the authorization to promote a firm's products or solutions in a specific put, and represents a strategic alliance involving teams of persons who have particular interactions and responsibilities with a prevalent objective to dominate marketplaces. As such, franchising is the most preferred method of developing a organization in the United States - and this generates lots of remarkable small business opportunities in Connecticut In truth, even although franchises themselves only represent 3.2% of the full quantity of businesses in the US, they basically regulate 35% of all retail and support revenue in the United States financial system.
It is expected to get the construction suitable. This could feel obvious, but if just one or other of the parties sees the other producing all the cash or, in fact, if neither of them is making sufficient, the partnership will arrive to an close.
So the quick challenge then becomes: The place do I get the hard cash and funding to total a effective transaction. This is exactly where your economical search commences, and as we observed, there are some solid similarities in what you will need for any business enterprise financial loan - some of them staying a enterprise approach and acceptable financial projections.Although the majority of organization financing in Canada demands personal guarantees from the homeowners as a again up strategy for your financial institution there are in simple fact means to restrict your individual guarantee when it comes to financing a franchise .
They will be anticipating leadership and way aid when they want to develop, or when they meet the inescapable difficulties on-likely training and marketing and advertising assist and the products or services growth to continue to keep their company at the forefront of its marketplace. They will also count on you to develop and manage criteria, the two in your very own organization and all through the network.
Administration & Operation Risk: the franchisor really should have a mature business enterprise design, and ought to be capable to offer franchisees with continuous operational assistance, technological support, education and other worthwhile solutions.
Omega-3s dramatically inhibit breast cancer tumor growth
(NaturalNews) A new study just published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry appears to be the first to provide what the researchers call "unequivocal evidence that omega-3s reduce cancer risk."
So, how much of a risk are they talking about? A huge one. The scientists from the University of Guelph found that a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (healthy fats found in cold water fish such as salmon and certain plant foods, including walnuts) can inhibit the growth of breast cancer tumors by 30 percent, especially if started early in life.
"It's a significant finding," David Ma, a professor in Guelph's Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, and one of the study's authors, said in a media statement. "We show that lifelong exposure to omega-3s has a beneficial role in disease prevention - in this case, breast cancer prevention. What's important is that we have proven that omega-3s are the driving force and not something else."
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women worldwide and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women. While natural health advocates and many cancer researchers have long thought that diet could help prevent malignancies, studies to document these claims have sometimes been inconsistent or even lacking.
"There are inherent challenges in conducting and measuring diet in such studies, and it has hindered our ability to firmly establish linkages between dietary nutrients and cancer risk," Ma explained. "So we've used modern genetic tools to address a classic nutritional question."
Here's what Ma and his research team did. They created a novel transgenic mouse that both produces omega-3 fatty acids and develops aggressive mammary tumors. Then, the researchers compared those animals to mice genetically engineered only to develop the same tumors. The results? The mice with the omega-3 exposure not only had 30 percent fewer tumors, but the breast tumors they did develop were a third of the size smaller than those in the control animals.
"This model provides a purely genetic approach to investigate the effects of lifelong omega-3s exposure on breast cancer development. To our knowledge, no such approach has been used previously to investigate the role of omega-3s and breast cancer," Ma stated. "The fact that a food nutrient can have a significant effect on tumor development and growth is remarkable and has considerable implications in breast cancer prevention."
Ma, who is an expert in how fats influence health and disease, added in the media statement that he hopes the study leads to more research on using diet to reduce cancer risk and on the benefits of healthy living. "Prevention is an area of growing importance. We are working to build a better planet, and that includes better lifestyle and diet," he said. "The long-term consequences of reducing disease incidence can have a tremendous effect on the health-care system."
As Natural News recently reported, there's other good news about preventing breast cancer with diet and specific nutrients from Harvard researchers, too. A recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that carotenoids (phytonutrients found in yellow, orange and red fruits and vegetables) significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer.
Sources:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2013/02/omega3s_inhibit.html
http://www.jnutbio.com/article/S0955-2863(12)00209-4/abstract
http://www.naturalnews.com
About the author:
Sherry Baker is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Health, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Yoga Journal, Optometry, Atlanta, Arthritis Today, Natural Healing Newsletter, OMNI, UCLA's "Healthy Years" newsletter, Mount Sinai School of Medicine's "Focus on Health Aging" newsletter, the Cleveland Clinic's "Men's Health Advisor" newsletter and many others.
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Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/039208_omega-3s_breast_cancer_tumors_prevention.html
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