S.F. mourns a twin with a passion for fashion









SAN FRANCISCO — They were known simply as the San Francisco Twins.


At 5-foot-1 and about 100 pounds apiece, the fashion enthusiasts were an integral part of the city fabric for four decades. With matching furs, hats and high-end purses, they completed each other's sentences, posed for countless tourist snapshots and modeled for the likes of Reebok, Joe Boxer and IBM.


Now one is gone.





Vivian Brown, 85, who had Alzheimer's, died in her sleep Wednesday, leaving behind Marian, who was eight minutes younger. The illness, and news of the twins' financial distress, brought an outpouring of support from city residents in recent months.


Donations managed by Jewish Family and Children Services helped Vivian move into an elegant assisted living facility in Lower Pacific Heights and provided for a car service so Marian could visit "as much as she wanted to," Development Director Barbara Farber said. "The community really responded.…It's been a beautiful thing."


At a benefit concert for the twins in August, the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin and other musicians honored Marian. Cash flowed in to cover her meals at Uncle Vito's Pizza on Nob Hill, long one of the ladies' regular haunts.


On Friday, fans offered collective condolences as they swallowed some bitter medicine: The sightings that brought joy to many — of the twins in leopard-print cowboy hats parading up and down Powell Street and window shopping at Union Square — are forever a thing of the past.


In saying goodbye to Vivian, the city has ushered out an era of style.


"All of that has gone, and that's true of all cities," said Ann Moller Caen, the widow of Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, who wrote often about the twins. "They've lost the elegant few."


Mayor Ed Lee echoed residents' grief in online postings throughout the day, saying that "San Francisco is heartbroken" over Vivian's passing and was "fortunate to have called her a true friend."


The twins, who were born in Kalamazoo, Mich., and held degrees in business administration, moved to San Francisco in 1973, prompted by Vivian's chronic bronchial condition. Once on the West Coast, Vivian became a legal secretary and Marian worked at a bank.


But fashion was their passion, and they cut a striking double image.


There were the fitted white suit jackets with pleated skirts, veiled hats and white fur coats; the red wool Ellen Tracy suits with black felt hats and black gloves.


"When you first came to the city and saw them, you might think it was a little joke. But it really wasn't," Caen said Friday. "They were very warm and very pleasant to everyone, and they just loved Herb. And he loved them."


Evelyn Adler recalled that her father, who sold shoes at the Emporium on San Francisco's Market Street in the 1970s, had regularly waited on "the girls," as he called them.


"They were always at the very height of sometimes ridiculous fashion," said Adler, 82. Her father, she said, had talked of how years of wearing pointy shoes left the twins with overlapping toes. (They later embraced lower heels that were "much more suited to their feet," Adler said.)


As a volunteer for Jewish Family Services, Adler recently shopped for a new wardrobe for Vivian — and was taken aback by the sight of the twins in separate outfits. About a quarter-century ago, the twins admitted to an interviewer that after a six-month attempt to dress differently in their 20s, they had abandoned the project forever. Even their lingerie matched.


They had their regular haunts, which Marian now frequents solo.


David Dubiner, owner of Uncle Vito's Pizza, said the sisters began coming in nearly two decades ago. They always sat at the table by the window, chatting with tourists for so long that their food had to be reheated.


Vivian often did more talking, Dubiner said, but Marian now holds court for two.


On Thursday evening, Marian arrived alone at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square to "have a glass of champagne and toast her sister goodbye," said Tom Sweeney, chief doorman at the hotel who for the last 37 years watched the twins descend the four blocks from their Nob Hill apartment.


"They're quite the personalities of San Francisco," Sweeney said. "We'll definitely miss Vivian."


lee.romney@latimes.com





Read More..

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 12











Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.


SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!


Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.


And now, without further ado, we give you…


TODAY’S PUZZLE:



Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.




Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.



Read More..

“Doctor Who” audio drama featuring five doctors due out in November






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Good news, “Doctor Who” fans; five actors who’ve played the Doctor in the long-running British sci-fi series are uniting for an audio drama to be released in November, in celebration of the series’ 50th anniversary.


Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann – aka, Doctors four through eight – are all participating in the 100-minute drama, dubbed “Doctor Who: The Light at the End.” According to Big Finish, which is producing the drama, the story will present a scenario in which the assembled Doctors’ “paths suddenly intersect when they face imminent destruction.”






A number of the Doctors’ companions are also coming along for the ride. Louise Jameson, Sarah Sutton, Nicola Bryant, Sophie Aldred and India Fisher will be reprising their roles from the series.


On the villain front, Geoffrey Beevers is coming back to play renegade Time Lord the Master, “and there will be a number of appearances from some much-cherished old friends from the TV series,”‘ according to producer David Richardson.


The Doctor is currently played by Matt Smith, the 11th actor to portray the role.


While the first three Doctors from the series – William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee – have died, “Doctor Who” actor Nicholas Briggs, who’s writing, directing and executive-producing the drama, says that they will play a part in the anniversary adventure.


“We wanted to do a proper, fully-fledged multi-Doctor story for this very special occasion,” Briggs said, “and it’s wonderful that all the surviving classic Doctors threw themselves behind the project so enthusiastically. That’s not to say the first three Doctors don’t appear – we wanted to pay homage to the whole history of the classic series.”


“Doctor Who: The Light at the End” will come in two versions. A five-disc, special limited edition will include two hour-long documentaries, along with the Companion Chronicles story “The Revenants,” which is performed by “Doctor Who” actor William Russell, and cast photographs. A standard two-disc version will also be available.


In addition to “The Light at the End,” BBC Two has commissioned an origin movie, “An Adventure in Space and Time,” which will “tell the story of the genesis of ‘Doctor Who’” and “look at the many personalities involved in bringing the series to life.”


The 90-minute special is being written by “Doctor Who” writer/actor Mark Garliss, with showrunner Steven Moffat and executive producer Caroline Skinner executive-producing.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: “Doctor Who” audio drama featuring five doctors due out in November
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/doctor-who-audio-drama-featuring-five-doctors-due-out-in-november/
Link To Post : “Doctor Who” audio drama featuring five doctors due out in November
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases





A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.




The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.


“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”


Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.


So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.


The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.


However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”


She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”


Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.


If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.


Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.


“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.


A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.


Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.


Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.


“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”


The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.


But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”


“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”


Read More..

Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales



The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.


Read More..

Restored funding for prescription drug-monitoring program urged









California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris on Thursday called on Gov. Jerry Brown to restore funding to a prescription drug-monitoring program that health experts say is key to combating drug abuse and overdose deaths in the state.


Harris' appeal to restore funding to CURES, as it is known, follows an article in The Times last month that reported that the system, once heralded as an invaluable tool, had been severely undermined by budget cuts and was not being used to its full potential.


The CURES database contains detailed information on prescription narcotics, including the names of patients, the doctors prescribing the drugs and the pharmacies that dispense them. The system was designed to help physicians detect "doctor-shopping" patients who dupe multiple physicians into prescribing drugs such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Xanax.








Harris' request followed Brown's unveiling of a proposed $97.7-billion budget, which projects a surplus — a feat that has been accomplished only one time in the last decade. With California's fiscal condition improving, Harris said it was up to the state to make sure the money was "spent wisely."


"This includes smart investments that benefit Californians, such as restoring funding for the state's prescription drug-monitoring program," she said in a statement.


Brown's office had no comment.


The governor's budget does increase Harris' Department of Justice general fund allocation by 4.5% to $174.3 million, but it does not earmark money for CURES. Harris could seek legislative authority to spend some of her budget on the program.


"We are going to have a discussion on the funding and where the money will come from," said Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for Harris.


CURES is the nation's oldest and largest prescription drug-monitoring program and once served as a model for other states. Today, it has fallen behind similar programs elsewhere. CURES data could be used to monitor physicians whose prescribing puts patients at risk. But it is not.


The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends that states use such data to keep tabs on doctors, and at least half a dozen states do so.


As part of spending cuts aimed at maintaining the state's solvency amid a deep recession, Brown gutted the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, which ran CURES, in 2011, shortly after Harris succeeded him as attorney general. Harris kept the program alive with about $400,000 in revenue from the Medical Board of California and other licensing boards. But it is down to one employee and has no enforcement capacity.


State officials have estimated it would cost about $2.8 million to make CURES more accessible and easier to use, and $1.6 million more per year to keep it running. However, officials say the program — with little or no additional financial resources — could now be used to identify potentially rogue doctors.


Bob Pack, an Internet entrepreneur, has advocated using CURES more vigorously to track reckless physicians and pharmacies as well as doctor-shopping patients. He became active on the issue after a driver high on painkillers and alcohol struck and killed his two young children in the Bay Area suburb of Danville in 2003.


Pack, who helped design an online portal to give physicians and pharmacists immediate access to CURES, said he was happy to see Harris ask Brown to restore funds for the program.


"But that's only a request," he said. "No one knows if that's really going to happen. Meanwhile, doctors are continuing to over-prescribe and thousands of Californians are dying from prescription drug overdoses. I hope this … has some bite to it."


An aide to Harris said restoring the CURES program is a high priority.


"She's committed to fixing the database and making it as strong as possible," said Travis LeBlanc, special assistant attorney general. "When we have limited resources and in a budget crunch, we need to focus our resources and use it in smart, efficient ways, and [CURES] is one of those," he said.


lisa.girion@latimes.com


scott.glover@latimes.com


Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.





Read More..

Live at CES — Day 6


The line outside of the Beats Electronics CES party at the Cosmopolitan’s Marquee Nightclub is a massive mess of collared shirts, short skirts and too much cologne/perfume. It’s noticeably musty in line and I think it’s from the body heat of everyone trying to inch forward.



Rapper Rick Ross is supposed to play in about an hour or two. I’m wondering if I’ll make it in to see it considering I can’t even see the doors of the club from where I stand.


Read More..

Meredith Vieira to leave “Millionaire” U.S. TV show






(Reuters) – Television personality Meredith Vieira is leaving the U.S. version of the quiz show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” after 11 seasons.


“It’s the final year of Meredith’s contract. She has chosen to move on and pursue other opportunities. We are searching for a new host,” said a spokeswoman for Disney/ABC Television Group.






Vieira will remain on the air for new episodes through May and on repeats that will play over the summer before a new host takes over in the fall, the spokeswoman said.


The international quiz show of British origin gave rise to the popular culture question “Is that your final answer?” and was the basis for the 2008 film “Slumdog Millionaire,” which won a best picture Oscar.


Vieira, a nine-time Emmy winner, may be best-known as host of “Today,” the highly rated morning show on NBC, from 2006 to 2011. Before that she was a host on ABC’s daytime show “The View.”


(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Eric Walsh)


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Meredith Vieira to leave “Millionaire” U.S. TV show
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/meredith-vieira-to-leave-millionaire-u-s-tv-show/
Link To Post : Meredith Vieira to leave “Millionaire” U.S. TV show
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says





New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.




City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.


Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.


But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.


In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.


“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.


City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.


Read More..

Cracks Appear in Cockpit Window of Boeing 787







HONG KONG — Cracks appeared Friday in the cockpit window of a 787 Dreamliner flying in Japan, the latest in a string of mishaps with Boeing’s newest and most sophisticated jet.




The plane was operated by All Nippon Airways and was heading from Tokyo to Matsuyama, in southern Japan. The flight, NH585, which was carrying 237 passengers , departed from Tokyo’s Haneda airport at 9:35 a.m. local time and landed safely. No one was injured, a spokeswoman for the Japanese carrier, Megumi Tezuka, said by phone from Tokyo. The return flight, NH590, which had been due to depart just before midday, was cancelled to allow for the screen to be replaced.


Ms. Tezuka added that this was the third time that cracks had appeared in the windshield of one of the 17 787s operated by ANA, after two similar incidents last year.


The cracks appeared on the outermost of five layers that compose the cockpit screen, and did not endanger the aircraft, Ms. Tezuka said. Moreover, cracks of this kind are not unique to the 787 Dreamliner: other aircraft types operated by ANA also have had cracks appear from time to time.


“We do not see this as a sign of a fundamental problem,” with the aircraft, Ms. Tezuka said.


Still, the incident came just days after three other safety incidents involving the aircraft revived concerns about the plane’s reliability and safety.


On Wednesday, ANA canceled another domestic flight using the 787 after an on-board computer mistakenly showed problems with the aircraft’s brakes.


On Tuesday, a fuel leak forced a 787 operated by rival Japan Airlines to return to its gate minutes before taking off from Boston. And on Monday, an electrical fire had broken out on another plane, also operated by Japan Airlines from Logan International Airport in Boston.


The first commercial aircraft to make extensive use of lightweight carbon composites that promise big fuel savings for airlines, the Dreamliner suffered a series of embarrassing delays during its production phase, and has suffered technical and electrical malfunctions since then.


Although the problems so far do not point to serious design flaws with the airplane, they represent an embarrassment to Boeing’s manufacturing ability, analysts have said.


Japan’s Transport Ministry, which oversees aviation safety in the country, said that the frequency of incidents on the Boeing 787 was not particularly higher than incidents reported for other aircraft.


The ministry, for now, did not see any need to raise alarm over the new aircraft’s safety, said Yasuhiro Yamada, an official in the aircraft safety unit.


Before Friday’s mishap, there were just six incidents on record involving Japanese airlines that caused a 787 Dreamliner to alter flight plans, according to the ministry. In two incidents in December, an ANA flight from Tokyo to Seattle turned back because of a temperature rise in the engine’s turbine, while another ANA 787 aircraft suffered a crack in its cockpit window. Nobody was injured in any of the six incidents, which were deemed by ministry officials as minor.


“Even considering that the 787 is a new aircraft, which tends to come with initial glitches, we are not seeing a higher incidence of reported problems compared to other aircraft,” Mr. Yamada said.


He said the ministry continued to monitor incidents on the 787 and all other aircraft, but did not see a need for concern over the Dreamliner’s safety.


Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.


Read More..

Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park









Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.


A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.


"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.





The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.


The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.


The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.


"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."


The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.


But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.


Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.


"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."


The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.


At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."


During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.


And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.


"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."


mike.anton@latimes.com


rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com





Read More..

Live at CES — Day 5


Wired.com © 2013 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 3/21/12) and Privacy Policy (effective 3/21/12). Your California Privacy Rights.


The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.



Read More..

Justin Bieber to Do Double-Duty on “SNL” in February






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Justin’s going to be one busy little Bieber on February 9.


“Baby” singer Justin Bieber will do double duty on “Saturday Night Live” for its February 9 episode, serving as both host and musical guest, NBC said Wednesday.






Bieber, who’s currently thrilling tweeners everywhere on his Believe World Tour, has appeared on the late-night show in the past, appearing in a skit opposite “SNL” alum Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character in a February 2011 episode.


“SNL” returns from hiatus on January 19, with “The Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence hosting and the Lumineers serving as musical guest.


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Justin Bieber to Do Double-Duty on “SNL” in February
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/justin-bieber-to-do-double-duty-on-snl-in-february/
Link To Post : Justin Bieber to Do Double-Duty on “SNL” in February
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Recipes for Health: Tunisian Style Baked Cauliflower Frittata — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







In the authentic version of this frittata there is a lot more olive oil, as well as chopped hard-boiled eggs. This one is lighter and simpler. It is great for lunch or dinner and keeps well in the refrigerator.




1/2 medium head cauliflower (about 1 1/4 pounds), trimmed of leaves, bottom of the stem trimmed away


2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil


1 small onion, finely chopped


2 garlic cloves, minced


8 eggs


Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste


1/2 cup finely chopped parsley


2 teaspoons ground caraway seeds


2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan


1/2 teaspoon harissa dissolved in 1 teaspoon water, or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne


Freshly ground pepper


1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a 2-quart casserole, preferably earthenware or in a 9-inch cast iron skillet, and brush the bottom and sides of the dish with the oil.


2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Add the cauliflower and boil gently until very tender, about 15 minutes. If you prefer, you can cut up the cauliflower and steam it for 15 minutes. Using slotted spoons or tongs remove the cauliflower from the water (or from the steamer), transfer to a bowl of cold water and drain. Cut the florets from the stem and mash into little pieces with a fork. You should have about 3 cups.


3. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion softens, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, stir together for about 30 seconds and remove from the heat.


4. Whisk the eggs in a large bowl. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Stir in the cauliflower, onion and garlic, parsley, ground caraway and Parmesan. Make sure the harissa is dissolved in the water if using, and stir in; otherwise stir in the cayenne. Scrape into the casserole dish.


5. Place in the oven and bake 40 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. In Tunisia these frittatas are served at room temperature, but you can also serve it hot.


Yield: Serves 6


Advance preparation: The frittata is delicious served the next day. Bring back to room temperature or heat slightly in a low oven before serving. The cooked cauliflower will keep for about 3 days in the refrigerator.


Nutritional information per serving: 165 calories; 12 grams fat; 3 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 249 milligrams cholesterol; 5 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams dietary fiber; 139 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


Read More..

Chinese Firm Buys an American Solar Technology Start-Up


Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press


The chief of MiaSolé, John Carrington, left, at the announcement of the company’s purchase by Hanergy Holding Group, for which Zhou Jiesan is an executive.







Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley investors were pouring money into solar technologies and talking about how they would bring the same kind of innovation to green energy that they had to the computer chip.




But few anticipated that prices for silicon, the main component of traditional solar panels, would plummet or that Chinese manufacturers, backed by enormous subsidies from their government, would increase solar production capacity by a factor of 17 in just four years.


The resulting plunge in solar panel prices wiped out the dream of a new Solar Valley. Despite making advances in the new technology, known as thin-film solar, the American companies just couldn’t compete.


The federal government’s imposition of steep tariffs last year on Chinese conventional panels helped, but the industry had waited so late to apply for the tariffs that balance sheets had already been crippled with accumulated losses and investors had lost interest.


Some thin-film companies went bankrupt, including Solyndra, which had received half a billion dollars in federal subsidies. Others, like Stion, licensed their technology or formed strategic partnerships with large corporations.


On Wednesday, the chief executive of MiaSolé, one of the most promising Silicon Valley solar start-ups, appeared in Beijing for the announcement that Hanergy Holding Group of China had completed the purchase of his company and its technology for a fraction of what investors had put in. Hanergy made its money building hydroelectric dams.


Hanergy’s purchase of the 100-employee MiaSolé, based in Santa Clara, Calif., follows its acquisition in September of the 400-employee thin-film solar unit of Q.Cells, an insolvent German solar company. The two deals have allowed Hanergy to acquire at low cost an array of patents developed for hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital investments.


“Going head to head against the Asian low-cost, mass-volume crystalline silicon manufacturers is not a wise strategy if you’re trying to produce an ultracheap module in the United States or in high-cost markets,” said Neil Z. Auerbach, managing partner of Hudson Clean Energy Partners, a SoloPower investor. “But if you’re adopting advanced technology, you have a niche strategy in which those incumbents do not have a competitive edge because they don’t really have a product that suits.”


The industry’s broad competitive challenges have prompted American investors to shun the sector. Last year, venture capital financing in the solar sector plummeted nearly 50 percent to $992 million in 103 deals from $1.9 billion in 108 deals in 2011, according to Mercom Capital Group, a clean-tech research and communications company.


Chinese regulators, too, have begun trying to deal with the overcapacity, discouraging their banks from making more large loans to the solar panel sector.


Li Hejun, the chairman of Hanergy, said at the news conference in Beijing that the company’s hydroelectric dams produce several hundred million dollars a year in free cash flow, so it can finance its own investments in solar, which already include six thin-film solar factories, plus three more under construction.


“Everyone knows about the overcapacity in solar energy industry in China, but for us industrial insiders, this overcapacity is but a relative one,” he said. “For those who have technology, the situation is the opposite.”


The thin-film technology championed by the Silicon Valley start-ups uses more exotic materials than conventional solar panels, which are made from crystalline silicon.


Most thin-film modules are slightly less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional panels, but they are much lighter, which makes them easier to mount in locations that may not support the weight of conventional panels.


Supporters of thin-film technology contend that it has the potential for considerable further efficiency gains that may not be possible for conventional panels, which have been researched for decades. And some research has shown that thin-film can outperform conventional silicon-based panels at high temperatures, such as in deserts, where solar farms are often located.


The technology’s promise attracted the attention of the Obama administration, which provided clean-energy grants and loans to some of the companies, although not to MiaSolé.


Diane Cardwell reported from New York and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Patrick Zuo contributed research from Beijing.



Read More..

Judge rejects bid to shut Oakland pot dispensary









OAKLAND — The nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary won a round in federal court this week, with a judge rejecting efforts by Harborside Health Center's landlords in Oakland and San Jose to immediately shut down operations.


The property owners have been under pressure since federal prosecutors last summer threatened to seize the buildings, arguing that pot sales were in violation of federal law. But in her ruling, Chief Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James said that "any argument about the urgency of stopping Harborside's activity rings hollow" — since the landlords had known for years that it was a medical cannabis dispensary.


Allowing Harborside to stay open while a fuller legal airing of the issues took place, James continued, would not cause the landlords irreparable harm.





In her ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, James also found that the property owners had no legal standing to seek an immediate end to sales at the dispensary by contending they violated the federal Controlled Substances Act.


Harborside — which serves more than 108,000 patients — now will have the opportunity to battle the federal civil forfeiture actions in court.


"We look forward to proving our case in front of a jury, and continue to believe we will prevail," Harborside's executive director, Steve DeAngelo, said in a statement.


The city of Oakland also has sued to prevent the property forfeiture, contending that federal prosecutors had missed a five-year statute of limitations and misled city officials with promises that they would not go after dispensaries complying with state and local laws.


In her ruling, James ordered Oakland's case be coordinated with the forfeiture cases.


Monday's ruling sets the stage for what could be a precedent-setting battle over clashing federal and state marijuana laws.


Cedric Chao, an attorney for Oakland, has argued that closure of the dispensaries would deprive the city of tax revenue and force Harborside's patients into the underground market, driving up crime.


"The city of Oakland could not be more pleased" by James' ruling, Chao said. "The patients can continue to get the medicine. They won't be thrown in the streets. There won't be an immediate public health crisis. There won't be a public safety crisis."


The U.S. attorney's office repeatedly has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Prosecutors have filed a motion to toss Oakland's suit, contending the city has no legal standing to weigh in. That issue will be heard at a hearing on Jan. 31.


lee.romney@latimes.com





Read More..

Live at CES: Day 4


Read More..

Founder of Montreux jazz fest in coma after ski fall






GENEVA (Reuters) – Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, one of Europe’s most prestigious summer music festivals, is in a coma after a cross-country skiing accident during the holidays, festival organizers revealed on Monday.


The 76-year-old Swiss, who has lured some of the world’s greatest artists to Montreux – including Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Prince – was operated on in a Swiss hospital after his fall, it said.






“He has remained to date in a state of unconsciousness. His condition requires further additional tests,” the festival board said in a brief statement.


The accident occurred on Christmas Eve while skiing near his home in the village of Caux overlooking Montreux and Lake Geneva, festival secretary-general Mathieu Jaton told Reuters.


Nobs launched the festival in 1967 while working at the resort’s tourism office. He became known as “Funky Claude”, from a line in the song “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, about a fire which burned down Montreux casino during a Frank Zappa concert in 1971.


Despite heart surgery some six years ago, he remains festival director, a position he shared during the 1990s with American producer Quincy Jones who returns each year from Los Angeles to introduce new talent.


Nobs often joined musicians on stage, playing harmonica, sometimes accompanied by his dogs.


Sold-out highlights last July included concerts by Bob Dylan, American chanteuse Lana Del Rey and British actor and musician Hugh Laurie.


Jaton is assuming Nob’s responsibilities and will ensure smooth management of the 47th edition of the festival set for July 5-20, the statement said.


(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Paul Casciato)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Founder of Montreux jazz fest in coma after ski fall
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/founder-of-montreux-jazz-fest-in-coma-after-ski-fall/
Link To Post : Founder of Montreux jazz fest in coma after ski fall
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.




1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets


1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained


1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd


1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley


3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed


1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice


3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar


6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil


Salt and freshly ground pepper


1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.


2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.


3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.


Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish


Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.


Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


Read More..

A Bold Dissenter at the Fed, Hoping His Doubts Are Wrong





RICHMOND, Va. — Jeffrey M. Lacker, the Federal Reserve’s most persistent internal critic, does not much resemble a firebrand. He is personally cheerful, professionally inclined to see both sides of an issue and quick to acknowledge he may not be right. He says he would rather be wrong.







Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Jeffrey M. Lacker questions the Fed's tack.







But for the last several years, Mr. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, has warned repeatedly that the central bank’s extraordinary efforts to stimulate growth are ineffective and inappropriate and, worst of all, that the Fed is undermining its hard-won ability to control inflation.


Last year, Mr. Lacker cast the sole dissenting vote at each of the eight meetings of the Fed’s policy-making committee, only the third time in history a Fed official dissented so regularly.


“We’re at the limits of our understanding of how monetary policy affects the economy,” Mr. Lacker said in a recent interview in his office atop the bank’s skyscraper here. “Sometimes when you test the limits you find out where the limits are by breaking through and going too far.”


As the Fed enters the sixth year of its campaign to revitalize the economy, the debate between the Fed’s majority and Mr. Lacker — whose views are shared by others inside the central bank, as well as some outside observers — highlights the extent to which the Fed is operating in uncharted territory, making choices that have few precedents, unclear benefits and uncertain consequences.


The economy continues to muddle along, shadowed by the threat of another government breakdown, and the crisis of high unemployment is only slowly receding. But in trying to address those problems by suppressing interest rates, the Fed risks the unleashing of speculation and inflation.


It is basically a matter of disposition: is it better to risk doing too much, or not enough?


Mr. Lacker, 57, often uses the word “humility” in describing his views. He means that the Fed should recognize that its power to stimulate the economy is limited, both for technical reasons and because it should not encroach on the domain of elected officials by picking winners and losers.


As he sees it, the Fed’s current effort to reduce unemployment by purchasing mortgage-backed securities crossed both lines. He sees little evidence that it will help to create jobs. And he says that buying mortgage bonds is a form of fiscal policy, because it lowers interest rates for a particular kind of borrower.


But Mr. Lacker is at pains to emphasize that his disagreement with the other 11 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, who supported the purchases, is not about the need for help.


“It’s very unfair to think of me as not caring about the unemployed,” he said. “It just seems to me that there are real impediments, that just throwing money at the economy is unlikely to solve the problems that are keeping a 55-year-old furniture worker from finding a good competitive job.”


That sense of caution is deeply frustrating to proponents of the Fed’s recent efforts. The economists Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer wrote in a paper published last month that such pessimism about the power of monetary policy is “the most dangerous idea in Federal Reserve history.”


“The view that hubris can cause central bankers to do great harm clearly has an important element of truth,” wrote the Romers, both professors at the University of California, Berkeley. “But the hundred years of Federal Reserve history show that humility can also cause large harms.”


It also makes an interesting contrast with Mr. Lacker’s personality. His favorite escape is driving a Porsche Boxster racecar; a model sits on a shelf at his office. He jokes that the track is the only place that people don’t ask him about interest rates — although, he adds, they do care about fuel prices.


And at the Fed, an institution that likes consensus, dissenting also requires a certain amount of boldness. Mr. Lacker has now said no at 13 of the 24 regular policy meetings he has attended as a voting member, one-third of all dissents since Ben S. Bernanke became the Fed’s chairman in 2006. He voted in 2006, 2009 and 2012 as part of the regular rotation of reserve bank presidents.


Even some who sympathize with his concerns doubt the efficacy of such public stands.


Read More..

Banks, regulators reach mortgage settlements









In two of the biggest civil settlements since the financial crisis, the nation's biggest banks agreed Monday to cough up nearly $19 billion to resolve federal allegations of mortgage misdeeds.


Bankers saw the settlements as a major step in providing more certainty for their balance sheets and possibly foreshadowing an end to the era of billion-dollar mea culpas and open-ended regulatory probes.


In one case, 10 banks settled with regulators for $8.5 billion. In the second, Bank of America Corp. agreed to pay almost $10.4 billion to Fannie Mae, the giant loan buyer that the U.S. seized and propped up with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.





The deals come three years after prosecutors dropped criminal investigations against such subprime-mortgage kingpins as Countrywide Financial Corp.'s Angelo Mozilo in favor of pursuing civil fines.


"I'd have to say we're at least 75% of the way through with this process," said SNL Financial analyst Nancy Bush, arguing that it's time to concentrate on rebuilding the dysfunctional U.S. mortgage system. "The bankers are going to have to stop complaining about the government, and we'll have to stop this endless calling for someone to go to jail."


Housing advocates welcomed payouts for homeowners but asserted that the banks and bankers have gotten off easy, given the enormity of the economic damage to Main Street.


"When you think about $8.5 billion, and you know trillions of dollars in wealth have been lost by communities, it's not enough at all," said Sasha Werblin of the Greenlining Institute. "But some money is better than nothing."


The Bank of America settlement ends a bitter standoff between BofA, once the largest seller of home loans, and Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage buyer.


The deal ends Fannie's demands that BofA buy back a mountain of soured loans issued by Countrywide, the high-risk Calabasas lender BofA acquired in 2008. BofA Chief Executive Brian Moynihan characterized the deal as "a significant step in resolving our remaining legacy mortgage issues."


BofA agreed to buy back $6.75 billion in residential mortgage loans sold to Fannie Mae and pay it an additional $3.6 billion in cash.


Moynihan had agreed previously to tens of billions of dollars in Countrywide-related claims. Those include shouldering the lion's share of last year's $25-billion settlement that five banks reached with the Obama administration and state attorneys general over so-called robo-signing of foreclosure paperwork and other abuses.


BofA still faces billions of dollars in claims from plaintiffs, including major insurers, the U.S. attorney's office in New York and the federal regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and fellow mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac.


But the bank has reached a tentative $8.5-billion settlement with holders of certain Countrywide mortgage bonds and another pending settlement for $2.4 million over its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., also in 2008.


Because Countrywide left Bank of America with so many mortgage-related headaches, many view BofA's tangles with regulators as a barometer for the whole mortgage industry, SNL's Bush said. And as bank stock prices recovered over the last year, BofA led the way with a 109% gain for 2012.


The $8.5-million settlement with 10 banks Monday represented an acknowledgment by bank regulators that a previous attempt to review millions of foreclosures for bank wrongdoing had failed. Instead, they took a streamlined approach — the lump sum — in getting relief for troubled borrowers. Four other banks opted out of the settlement.


The settlement replaces a failed process that started in April 2011. In that arrangement, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve required the 14 big providers of mortgage customer service to hire consultants to review foreclosures from 2009 or 2010, potentially affecting 4.4 million borrowers. Nearly half a million borrowers signed up for the free reviews, which were supposed to lead to compensation in cases of bank misconduct.


But the consultants' tab totaled $1.5 billion as last year ended — without a single penny of relief going to borrowers. So the regulators and 10 of the banks, including mortgage giants Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., agreed to a plan for more direct aid.


The 10 banks will pay $3.3 billion to 3.8 million borrowers, who could receive amounts ranging from a few hundred dollars to $125,000 depending on evidence of wrongdoing. Reviews continue at the four banks that opted out of the new approach.


In addition, the 10 banks agreed to provide $5.2 billion in foreclosure prevention assistance to borrowers at risk of losing homes, including mortgage modifications or forgiveness of judgments against them.


Comptroller Tom Curry, the nation's top bank regulator, said the switch was a "significant change in direction." But he said it met the original objectives "by ensuring that consumers are the ones who will benefit and that they will benefit more quickly and in a more direct manner."





Read More..

Live at CES: Day 3

The Great Late-Night CES Pizza Hunt



It’s late. I’m tired. My feet hurt.


But damn, I could really go for some pizza. Dragging Nate with me.


Here we go…



12:15am: there’s supposed to be pizza at the mall across the street. It looks closed.




12:17am: Yeah it’s closed. Moving forward for pizza.



12:24am: $18 for a personal pizza? Hahahahahaha, no.



12:45am: Just hit the wall. So tired. To hell with pizza. We found Mexican food.



12:49am: Nate just got the largest order of quesadillas fries ever. It’s a half order.


Read More..

Matt Dallas comes out as gay






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Matt Dallas appeared to come out of the closet on Sunday night. The star of the former ABC Family series “Kyle XY” (2006-2009) said on his Twitteraccount that he was engaged to marry his boyfriend musician Blue Hamilton.


In addition to a picture of Hamilton lounging on a couch with a dog, Dallas tweeted the following: “Starting off the year with a new fiancé, @bluehamilton. A great way to kick off 2013!”






Dallas’ publicist did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment.


The actor does not appear to have commented publicly on his sexuality before, but the gay news blog “After Elton” reports that Dallas was the target of Perez Hilton, who openly speculated about his sexual orientation. Hilton reportedly dubbed the star “Kyle KY,” in reference to the lubricant.


Hilton did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on Dallas’ announcement.


Dallas’ tweet follows a string of similar low-key announcements by the likes of Frank Ocean, Zachary Quinto and Jim Parsons, who said they were gay or had relationships with men in personal blogs or as a casual aside in interviews. This trend is a sign of shifting attitudes towards homosexuality. It is in marked contrast to the media-blitz that greeted Ellen DeGeneres more than a decade ago when she announced on the cover of Time that she was a lesbian.


In addition to the supernatural show “Kyle XY,” Dallas appeared on the 2009 TV series “Eastwick” and recently joined the cast of ABC Family’s “Baby Daddy.”


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Matt Dallas comes out as gay
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/matt-dallas-comes-out-as-gay/
Link To Post : Matt Dallas comes out as gay
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Vital Signs: Perceptions: Babies Seem to Pick Up Language in Utero

A new study suggests that babies learn bits of their native languages even before they are born.

A baby develops the ability to hear by about 30 weeks’ gestation, so he can make out his mother’s voice for the last two months of pregnancy. Researchers tested 40 American and 40 Swedish newborns to see if they could distinguish between English and Swedish vowel sounds. The study is scheduled for future publication in the journal Acta Paediatrica.

The scientists gave the babies pacifiers that counted the number of sucks they made. As the babies sucked, they listened to Swedish and English vowel sounds; the more they sucked, the more the sounds were played. The researchers inferred the babies’ interest in the sound by the amount of sucking.

American babies consistently sucked more often when hearing Swedish vowel sounds, suggesting that the infants had not heard them before, and Swedish babies sucked more when hearing English vowels.

Learning so quickly after birth was unlikely, the researchers concluded, so the babies’ understanding the difference between native and nonnative sounds could be attributed only to prenatal learning.

“Even in late gestation, babies are doing what they’ll be doing throughout infancy and childhood — learning about language,” said the lead author, Christine Moon, a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University.



The researchers set up a system to test how well an infant recognizes vowel sounds. They measured the number of times a baby sucked on a pacifier that triggered various vowel sounds. The babies tended to suck faster on their pacifier when they heard the vowel sounds of a foreign language as opposed to the one their mother’s spoke.
Read More..

Japan’s Cleanup After a Nuclear Accident Is Denounced


Ko Sasaki for The New York Times


Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.







NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.








Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Workers reflected in the glass of the Naraha-Minami Elementary School






But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha’s landscape like funeral mounds.


More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.


Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.


Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.


“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace,” said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. “We’ve been ready to help for ages, but they say they’ve got their own way of cleaning up,” he said.


Shiga Toso’s technology was tested and identified by government scientists as “fit to deploy immediately,” but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.


Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.


The construction companies have the great advantage of available manpower. Here in Naraha, about 1,500 cleanup workers are deployed every day to power-spray buildings, scrape soil off fields, and remove fallen leaves and undergrowth from forests and mountains, according to an official at the Maeda Corporation, which is in charge of the cleanup.


That number, the official said, will soon rise to 2,000, a large deployment rarely seen on even large-sale projects like dams and bridges.


The construction companies suggest new technologies may work, but are not necessarily cost-effective.


“In such a big undertaking, cost-effectiveness becomes very important,” said Takeshi Nishikawa, an executive based in Fukushima for the Kajima Corporation, Japan’s largest construction company. The company is in charge of the cleanup in the city of Tamura, a part of which lies within the 12-mile exclusion zone. “We bring skills and expertise to the project,” Mr. Nishikawa said.


Kajima also built the reactor buildings for all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading some critics to question why control of the cleanup effort has been left to companies with deep ties to the nuclear industry.


Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.


At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.


Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Tokyo.



This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 8, 2013

Earlier versions of this article misspelled the name of the construction company in charge of the cleanup of the city of Tamura. It is the Kajima Corporation, not Kashima.



Read More..

From gang member to team player









SAN FRANCISCO — Luis Aroche learned about violence at Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School, across from the projects where his friend Carl lived.


He remembers sitting down at his desk and seeing his teacher, Mrs. Foster, in tears. His class had just finished the Pledge of Allegiance.


"Carl was playing on the swings and got shot," Aroche said. "And died. Kindergarten. He got found laying in a pool of blood in the park," Aroche paused. Swallowed. Started up again. "He was my desk buddy. He would go with me to the bathroom. And now, Carl wasn't there.





"That was my first experience of loss. And I didn't understand it. To this day, I don't understand it."


Aroche since has become something of an expert on violence — as victim, perpetrator and now as part of a hoped-for solution. Last year, San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascon hired the former gang member to be his office's first "alternative sentencing planner," part of an effort to keep offenders from ending up back behind bars.


The position, criminal justice experts say, has no equivalent in any prosecutor's office in the country.


And Aroche is as singular as his job. An Aztec skull tattoo stretches down his right forearm to his hand, its grimace partly wiped away by laser removal. The day his juvenile record was sealed, he says, was the happiest of his life.


Today, he helps prosecutors figure out who among San Francisco's low-level offenders deserves a jail cell and who deserves a second chance.


He knows a lot about both.


::


If you were Aroche, 12 years old and living in the Mission District in 1990 — when gangs and crack cocaine meant funerals were as commonplace as quinceañeras — you got a tattoo, cut school and drank beer. You thought a stint in Pelican Bay State Prison was like going off to "Stanford or Yale." You practiced how to sit and talk and smoke like the toughest prisoners.


"We would learn how to iron our clothes using a comb, 'cause that's how you iron your pants in prison," Aroche said. "You iron it with the teeth of the comb … and then you put it underneath the mattress."


Aroche's first tattoo was a small cross on his left hand, in the soft web between thumb and forefinger. He got it in an alleyway not far from the studio apartment where he slept on the floor with his five brothers, three sisters, the occasional niece or nephew. His parents got the bed in the corner.


His Salvadoran mother was a chambermaid at a Fisherman's Wharf motel, his Puerto Rican father a security guard in the Navy shipyards.


And his older brothers? They would disappear for years. Aroche didn't know why until his father took him to visit San Quentin State Prison. They were "main men" in a notorious Northern California prison gang. When they were out, they were "the mayors of the Mission."


By the time Aroche was 15, he was drinking so much and incarcerated so often that he gave himself a test every night before he went to sleep. If he put out his hand and felt warm, smooth drywall, he knew he was home. If he felt cold, slick concrete, he was in custody.


One night he ended up in the hospital. He'd been drunk, hanging out in Lucky Alley, when a car drove up and the doors flew open. Aroche saw his friend get sliced with a machete. Gunshots rang out.


"And I remember some guy grabbing me and hitting me with a crowbar and stabbing me in my stomach," he said. "And I could feel the pierce of my stomach, just ripping me open.... And I thought, this is it. This is it. This is my life."


::


At the computer in his spartan office at the Hall of Justice, Aroche is poring over the official tale of another life in the balance: a 28-year-old woman on a downward spiral.





Read More..

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Jan. 7











Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.


SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!


Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.


And now, without further ado, we give you…


TODAY’S PUZZLE:



Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.




Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.



Read More..

Calvin Harris returns to top of British album chart






LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish producer and singer Calvin Harris returned to the top of the British album charts with “18 Months” in the first week of 2013, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.


The release, his third studio album, had hit the number one spot on its debut in November, and climbed from seventh place to regain the best sellers’ crown.






Singer Emeli Sandé slipped one notch to number two with “One Version of Events”, while Ed Sheeran jumped to third place from number 13 with his debut album “+”, now in its 69th week in the charts.


James Arthur, winner of the British version of the “X Factor” TV talent show last year, held onto first place in the singles rankings with “Impossible”.


“Scream and Shout” by U.S. producer will.i.am, featuring Britney Spears, stayed at number two, while Korean singer Psy’s global video hit “Gangnam Style” held steady in third place.


(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Jason Webb)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Calvin Harris returns to top of British album chart
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/calvin-harris-returns-to-top-of-british-album-chart/
Link To Post : Calvin Harris returns to top of British album chart
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Alarm in Albuquerque Over Plan to End Methadone for Inmates


Mark Holm for The New York Times


Officials at New Mexico’s largest jail want to end its methadone program. Addicts like Penny Strayer hope otherwise.







ALBUQUERQUE — It has been almost four decades since Betty Jo Lopez started using heroin.




Her face gray and wizened well beyond her 59 years, Ms. Lopez would almost certainly still be addicted, if not for the fact that she is locked away in jail, not to mention the cup of pinkish liquid she downs every morning.


“It’s the only thing that allows me to live a normal life,” Ms. Lopez said of the concoction, which contains methadone, a drug used to treat opiate dependence. “These nurses that give it to me, they’re like my guardian angels.”


For the last six years, the Metropolitan Detention Center, New Mexico’s largest jail, has been administering methadone to inmates with drug addictions, one of a small number of jails and prisons around the country that do so.


At this vast complex, sprawled out among the mesas west of downtown Albuquerque, any inmate who was enrolled at a methadone clinic just before being arrested can get the drug behind bars. Pregnant inmates addicted to heroin are also eligible.


Here in New Mexico, which has long been plagued by one of the nation’s worst heroin scourges, there is no shortage of participants — hundreds each year — who have gone through the program.


In November, however, the jail’s warden, Ramon Rustin, said he wanted to stop treating inmates with methadone. Mr. Rustin said the program, which had been costing Bernalillo County about $10,000 a month, was too expensive.


Moreover, Mr. Rustin, a former warden of the Allegheny County Jail in Pennsylvania and a 32-year veteran of corrections work, said he did not believe that the program truly worked.


Of the hundred or so inmates receiving daily methadone doses, he said, there was little evidence of a reduction in recidivism, one of the program’s main selling points.


“My concern is that the courts and other authorities think that jail has become a treatment program, that it has become the community provider,” he said. “But jail is not the answer. Methadone programs belong in the community, not here.”


Mr. Rustin’s public stance has angered many in Albuquerque, where drug addiction has been passed down through generations in impoverished pockets of the city, as it has elsewhere across New Mexico.


Recovery advocates and community members argue that cutting people off from methadone is too dangerous, akin to taking insulin from a diabetic.


The New Mexico office of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes an overhaul to drug policy, has implored Mr. Rustin to reconsider his stance, saying in a letter that he did not have the medical expertise to make such a decision.


Last month, the Bernalillo County Commission ordered Mr. Rustin to extend the program, which also relies on about $200,000 in state financing annually, for two months until its results could be studied further.


“Addiction needs to be treated like any other health issue,” said Maggie Hart Stebbins, a county commissioner who supports the program.


“If we can treat addiction at the jail to the point where they stay clean and don’t reoffend, that saves us the cost of reincarcerating that person,” she said.


Hard data, though, is difficult to come by — hence the county’s coming review.


Darren Webb, the director of Recovery Services of New Mexico, a private contractor that runs the methadone program, said inmates were tracked after their release to ensure that they remained enrolled at outside methadone clinics.


While the outcome was never certain, Mr. Webb said, he maintained that providing methadone to inmates would give them a better chance of staying out of jail once they were released. “When they get out, they won’t be committing the same crimes they would if they were using,” he said. “They are functioning adults.”


In a study published in 2009 in The Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, researchers found that male inmates in Baltimore who were treated with methadone were far more likely to continue their treatment in the community than inmates who received only counseling.


Those who received methadone behind bars were also more likely to be free of opioids and cocaine than those who received only counseling or started methadone treatment after their release.


Read More..