Will Indigo Books and Music expand outside Canada?

During the annual meeting of the bookstore company, CEO Heather Reisman said 'the new Indigo will be a global company.'

By Molly Driscoll,?Staff Writer / June 27, 2013

Indigo Books and Music was founded in Canada in 1996.

Shaun Best/Reuters

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Is Canada?s Indigo bookstore chain crossing the border?

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Indigo CEO and founder Heather Reisman stated that ?our intention is that the new Indigo will be a global company? during the annual meeting of the company, according to the Globe and Mail. She declined to elaborate on where new stores might open.

She predicted that the expansion wouldn?t be happening for two years or so.

Indigo Books and Music (also known as? ?!ndigo?), is often described as the country?s leading bookseller and has gone through other changes recently, with stores selling items such as toys and home goods in an effort to appeal to more consumers. Their lines include Indigo Home, Indigo Tech, and Indigo Kids. The company will also increase sales of Apple products such as the iPad in its stores next year. (Currently only the company's Toronto store has an Apple section.) Reisman called the revamping of the stores ?a fundamental transformation.?

?The new physical format store will feel like you can meander through a series of shops, each one anchored by books,? Reisman said of the stores? multiple product lines.?

However, the CEO said books will remain Indigo?s priority.

?Books will remain at the heart and soul of this company, and as long as there are people on the planet who want to buy physical books, we are deeply committed to physical books, both in store and online,? Reisman said.

She stated that sales of merchandise that isn?t books increased during 2013 from 12 percent of the company?s sales to 22 percent.

Indigo had a loss of $8.2 million for the past quarter. For the same period, American bookstore chain Barnes & Noble reported a $118.6 loss.

Indigo was founded in 1996 and acquired the bookstore chain Chapters in 2001. Kobo Inc., the company which creates e-readers that are sold by many indie bookstores, was a division of Indigo Books until the subsidiary was sold to the Japanese company Rakuten in 2011.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/books/~3/5Yj0CKS9ihE/Will-Indigo-Books-and-Music-expand-outside-Canada

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President Obama reflects on Nelson Mandela?s legacy, South Africa?s past (Washington Post)

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Facebook implements new policy to crack down on objectionable ad material

No one really likes ads, but for better or worse, they're a sort of necessary evil when it comes to, you know, making money online. And while Facebook's not likely to stop sprinkling your stream with paid content, the social network announced a new plan today to tackle some of the more...questionable content that's made its way onto the site. Starting Monday, the service will implement a new review process for deciding which Pages and groups will get their own accompanying ads. That process will be manual to start, with an automated version in the future. Facebook plans to have all the offending violent, graphic and sexual content removed by the end of next week.

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California holds first gay wedding after ban

Gay weddings have begun again in California after a court lifted a ban on them. (AAP)

A lesbian couple who spearheaded a fight for same-sex marriage in California became the first on Friday to tie the knot hours after a ban was lifted, following a landmark US Supreme Court ruling.

Cheers erupted at San Francisco City Hall after Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier exchanged vows in a ceremony conducted by California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

"I now declare you spouses for life," said Harris, after the couple exchanged rings and vows in front of a hastily assembled gathering. "I could not be more honoured to stand here today."

"We have waited a long, long time for this day," said Stier after the ceremony, the first gay wedding since a brief period in 2008 when California allowed same-sex marriage but then banned it under a close-run referendum.

The ceremony came only an hour or two after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco lifted the ban on same-sex marriages, imposed under the so-called Prop 8 ballot measure, with immediate effect.

Many observers thought it could be several weeks before marriages would resume in the famously liberal western US state, but the appeals court announced the ban was lifted in a brief ruling posted online.

"The stay in the above matter is dissolved effective immediately," the ruling read, prompting an explosion of online celebration, and hasty wedding ceremony preparations.

Perry and Stier were the first to get married in San Francisco, but they were followed by a long line of other same-sex couples, who rushed to City Hall after news of the unexpectedly early court decision broke.

"Kris and I fell in love 14 years ago. We knew that our relationship would last ... and wanted our love to last and to be dignified by the institution of marriage," said Stier.

Perry told the crowd: "This is the first day of the rest of our lives together, and we could not be more elated by your being here."

Perry and Stier were the plaintiffs in the initial action challenging Prop 8, which wound its way through the legal system before eventually being heard by the top US court.

The Supreme Court ruled that supporters of Prop 8 lacked the proper standing to appeal a lower-court judgment that declared the measure unconstitutional.

The ruling essentially allowed the original federal court ruling to stand, striking down Prop 8.

Supporters of Prop 8 have vowed to pursue their efforts to have the ban - backed by 52 per cent of Californians five years ago, with 48 per cent against - re-enforced.

ProtectMarriage.com, the organisation which supported Prop 8, slammed Friday's court decision.

"This outrageous act tops off a chronic pattern of lawlessness, throughout this case, by judges and politicians hell-bent on thwarting the vote of the people to redefine marriage by any means, even outright corruption," it said.

It added: "The resumption of same-sex marriage this day has been obtained by illegitimate means. If our opponents rejoice in achieving their goal in a dishonourable fashion, they should be ashamed.

"It remains to be seen whether the fight can go on, but either way, it is a disgraceful day for California."

A short time after the San Francisco ceremony, the first gay wedding in Los Angeles was conducted by outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, with Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo exchanging vows in the city hall.

At one point, the beaming mayor paused as he read out the vows for the two men to repeat after him, telling them: "I don't know about you, but I got goosebumps."

"Let me pronounce you married," he said after the couple had exchanged rings, and before they kissed for the first time as newlyweds.

Source: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1783720/California-resumes-gay-weddings-after-ban

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How hot is it in the western US? Real hot

Tourists hug close to misters keeping cool as they walk along The Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2013 in Las Vegas. Meteorologists are calling for highs at or above 112 through Wednesday in Las Vegas, and there isn't even relief when the sun goes down. After hitting a predicted high of 117 this weekend, Sunday night's low is forecast to be 92 degrees ? enough to make for a stuffy stroll down the Strip at whatever hour tourists leave the bar. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Tourists hug close to misters keeping cool as they walk along The Strip, Thursday, June 27, 2013 in Las Vegas. Meteorologists are calling for highs at or above 112 through Wednesday in Las Vegas, and there isn't even relief when the sun goes down. After hitting a predicted high of 117 this weekend, Sunday night's low is forecast to be 92 degrees ? enough to make for a stuffy stroll down the Strip at whatever hour tourists leave the bar. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

A couple bike along the ocean on a hot day in Santa Cruz, Calif., Thursday, June 27, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Two boys play along the surf on a hot day at Natural Bridges state beach in Santa Cruz, Calif., Thursday, June 27, 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

The heat wave that is gripping the western U.S. is one of the worst in years, with desert locations in the Southwest seeing temperatures approach 120 degrees. To give some perspective on the heat, here are five facts about the punishing nature of the heat wave.

DEATH VALLEY

The desert valley in California will see temperatures approach 130 degrees. The hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth occurred in Death Valley with a reading of 134 degrees, almost 100 years ago to the date in 1913. The park is dotted with locations such as Furnace Creek and Dante's View, and officials are urging people to exercise extreme caution during the heat wave. But sweltering heat is often a big draw for visitors to Death Valley National Park ? especially tourists from Germany and France ? with hotels already booked solid during the hotter months of July and August.

NO ESCAPE

The easiest way to beat the heat in cities like Phoenix is to flee the desert for higher-elevation mountain cities such as Flagstaff, Sedona and Prescott which typically are much cooler. But there won't be much of a break from a heat during this hot spell. Flagstaff could approach the record Saturday of 97 degrees, and Sedona could be in the 110 range.

BE CAREFUL

As if temperatures nearing 120 degrees weren't bad enough, it's even hotter yet inside cars and on concrete and asphalt roads and sidewalks. It can get to 200 degrees on asphalt during peak summer temperatures, presenting all sorts of hazards. Drivers should keep pets and children out of locked cars, and a person who suffers a fall on a sidewalk or a street could end up in the burn unit.

AIRLINES

Bigger jetliners can handle temperatures around 126 and 127 degrees, but airlines this weekend will be closely monitoring the conditions and smaller planes may have flights delayed. When the temperature gets real hot, the air becomes less dense and changes liftoff conditions.

THE BORDER

Immigrants are constantly crossing the border in Arizona regardless of the season ? sometimes with deadly consequences as they succumb to exhaustion and dehydration. At least seven bodies of immigrants have been found in the last week in Arizona, and agents in the Tucson sector rescued more than 170 people from the desert during a 30-day stretch in May and June when temperatures were even lower than expected in the coming days.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-28-US-Heat-Wave-How-Hot/id-1004afaa85984f489a2925453d7c104c

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Propeller Gets $1.25M From A16z, ffAngel, Everyone Good Basically

The app that allows you to create your own native apps,?Propeller, has raised $1.25 million from Andreessen Horowitz, ffAngel,?Menlo Ventures,?Foundation Capital,?Max Levchin,?Ashton Kutcher,?Keith Rabois,?Scott Banister,?Jason Portnoy,?Lee Linden,?Rothenberg Ventures and?Alfred Mandel.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/pfKFiwhA4Dc/

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Ex-Conn. church leader sentenced for fraud

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- A former Trumbull church leader has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for a scheme that authorities say defrauded investors of nearly $500,000.

Federal prosecutors said Julius C. Blackwelder of North Dakota, formerly of Stratford, was sentenced Thursday in New Haven to 46 months in prison for wire fraud and money laundering offenses.

Blackwelder was bishop of the Bridgeport ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Authorities say the 59-year-old Blackwelder misled investors including church members by saying he would invest their money in safe, long-term commodities futures contracts and, in some cases, guaranteeing a specific return on investment. Prosecutors say he used the money to pay back earlier investors, build himself a waterfront house in Stratford and repay personal bank loans.

Blackwelder sought 18 months, promising to make amends.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-conn-church-leader-sentenced-143055930.html

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Kremlin's hammer falls on first 'foreign agent' NGO

Russian authorities have ordered a six-month suspension for the independent election monitoring group Golos, the first of dozens of "political" nongovernmental organizations to be cited for refusing to register as "foreign agents" under a new law.

A statement by the Ministry of Justice Wednesday says the group's six-month shutdown applies to all activities, and if it does not register within that period it will proceed to the next step, which involves criminal penalties and permanent closure.

"Under the federal law on NGOs, an organization acting as a foreign agent whose operations have been suspended also faces the suspension of its rights as a founder of mass media sources. It is also banned from holding rallies or public events and from using bank accounts except for payments pertaining to economic operation, work compensation, damages, taxes, duties and fines," the statement says.

RECOMMENDED: Do you know anything about Russia? A quiz.

Golos was the first NGO to be prosecuted under the law, which prescribes an escalating sequence of fines followed by forced closure for groups that receive any degree of foreign funding and that refuse to don the "foreign agent" label ? which, critics say, is effectively a poison pill that implies "spy" and nothing else in the Russian language.

Lined up behind Golos, there are currently over 60 NGOs at various stages along the route to mandatory closure if they continue to reject the self-incriminating "foreign agent" registration.

The pro-Kremlin parliamentarians who drafted the law a year ago explicitly targeted Golos, and a few other groups, which they claimed were deceiving the Russian public by working on behalf of foreign interests under the guise of legitimate civil-society activity.

But activists argue the explanation for putting Golos at the head of the list is simpler: It was some 50,000 citizen election monitors, trained by Golos, who collected overwhelming evidence of mass electoral fraud in December 2011 polls ? which elected the current State Duma ? and in taking aim at the group the pro-Kremlin majority is seeking both revenge and the destruction of Russia's best organized grassroots machine for exposing electoral fraud in the future.

Activists with Golos say they are considering various response strategies, among which is a risky plan to officially disband the organization and recreate it under a new name.

"We are working on what to do," says Grigory Melkonyants, deputy director of Golos.

"We realize that just paying the fines that have been levied on us won't stop the authorities from closing down Golos and prosecuting its leaders. We are suing the prosecutor's office and the Justice Ministry, and we will take that all the way to the Constitutional Court if necessary. We're going to launch an appeal to the European Court," he says.

"But there is no doubt that the closure of Golos is a signal to the whole NGO community. The goal is to scare them," and make them stop any activities that irritate the authorities, in Moscow and around the country, he says.

So far no leading organization has agreed to wear the "foreign agent" badge, which all say would discredit them with the public and close the doors of officialdom to any kind of interaction ? which is the raison d'?tre of most civil society groups.

Among the NGOs on the list and facing suspension in coming weeks are some obvious Kremlin irritants, such as Russia's largest human rights organization Memorial; the Russian branch of the global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International; the legal activist group Lawyers for Constitutional Rights and Freedoms, JURIX; the Nizhni Novgorod-based Interregional Committee Against Torture, which deals mainly with allegations of police brutality; and the Goldman Prize-winning Baikal Environmental Wave, one of the country's most effective grassroots ecological groups.

But it's harder to explain why some completely non-political groups also seem to find themselves in the authorities' sights. These include the St. Petersburg Side-by-Side LGBT film festival; the Yaroslavl Regional Hunters and Fishermen Society; the Saratov-based Center For Social Policy and Gender Studies; the Kostroma branch of the Soldiers' Mothers, a group that has been praised both in Russia and abroad for its work on the painful issues of conscription and military reform; and the country's only independent pollster, the Levada Center.

"This campaign against NGOs is sadly predictable, and its effects are probably irreversible," says Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Mercator Group, an independent Moscow-based media consultancy.

"The authorities are aiming to discredit, frighten, destroy, and compel obedience from all far-flung sectors of society," he says.

But the net effect of the campaign will be to build up anger and resentment in the public, and remove the very civil society groups that should be dealing with problems at the grassroots level and mediating between authorities and society, he adds.

Mr. Melkonyants says a lot of social progress that's taken place in Russia since the USSR collapsed 22 years ago is being undone in a fit of bureaucratic pique.

"The worst thing here is that the state is driving a wedge between NGOs and society, and trying to convince the public that groups like ours are evil, the devil incarnate," he says. "Many Russian NGOs have worked for dozens of years to gain public trust, and now it's being swept away in a wave of official disinformation. They are making people look at us with suspicion, as though we are Western mercenaries."

RECOMMENDED: Do you know anything about Russia? A quiz.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kremlins-hammer-falls-first-foreign-agent-ngo-175000609.html

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Zach Braff to star in 'Bullets Over Broadway'

NEW YORK (AP) ? Zach Braff will make his Broadway debut next year in a musical adaptation of Woody Allen's crime caper "Bullets Over Broadway." The only person who might be more excited than Braff is his dad.

"If my father loved two things most, it was Woody Allen movies and Broadway musicals," Braff said by phone from Los Angeles. "When I called my father, I said, 'Are you sitting down?'"

Written by Allen and Douglas McGrath, the story follows a struggling young playwright who is forced to cast a mobster's talentless girlfriend in his latest drama. Braff will play the hero, portrayed by John Cusack in the 1994 film.

"It's thrilling," Braff says. "I keep waking up expecting it to be a dream."

Five-time Tony Award-winner Susan Stroman will direct and choreograph the show, which will start performances in March 2014 at the St. James Theatre. The show will feature a full orchestra playing music of the 1920s.

The musical sees Braff return to his acting roots: He played Allen's son in one scene when he was 18 in the film "Manhattan Murder Mystery" before going to Northwestern University to study film.

"If you would have asked me a couple months ago 'What are your dreams as an actor?' I would have said, 'I'd love to do a Broadway musical one day and I'd love to work with Woody Allen again.' When I got the call from Woody and Susan Stroman, my head sort of exploded."

The rest of the cast will be made up of Vincent Pastore ("The Sopranos"), Betsy Wolfe ("The Mystery of Edwin Drood"), Lenny Wolpe ("The Drowsy Chaperone") and Helene Yorke ("Grease").

Braff grew up in northern New Jersey and caught the performing bug from his father, a lawyer who did community theater for fun. Though he's never done musical theater professionally, Braff often sang as the daydreaming Dr. John "J.D." Dorian on "Scrubs" and he won a Grammy Award for best compilation soundtrack for "Garden State." He says he's already started working with a vocal coach.

After "Scrubs," Braff filmed the dark indie "High Cost of Living" and acted in the off-Broadway play "Trust" and had a part in Sam Raimi's "Oz the Great and Powerful."

Braff also penned a play of his own, "All New People," his first piece of original writing since the 2004 film "Garden State," his sweet ode to disillusionment starring himself and Natalie Portman. "All New People" had a run off-Broadway in 2011 and was later mounted in London, with Braff starring.

Braff this spring turned to the crowd-funding site Kickstarter to raise $2 million in three days to fund his film, "Wish I Was Here" a follow-up to "Garden State." He says he'll work on the film for the rest of the year before hitting Broadway, and he hopes "Wish I Was Here," which he co-wrote with his brother Adam, will be due out in the fall of 2014.

In the meantime, he has a date with Broadway. It's something his father might be interested in, too. "I said to Woody, 'He'll be there more than you.' I said, 'I might need a cot for my father between the matinees and the evening show.'"

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-06-27-Theater-Zach%20Braff/id-5434d5d92aef4a0aa9ebc768b4499d99

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3 Reasons to Doubt the TWA Flight 800 Conspiracy Theory

The official investigation into the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, which killed 230, concluded that a fuel tank had ignited from within, but never determined what sparked the explosion. (Dozens of airplanes have suffered similar events, and the safety regulations governing fuel tanks changed in 2008.) But now, all these years later, a new documentary, TWA Flight 800, claims that a missile or bomb took down the plane?and the U.S. government has been covering it up.

"It was either a terrorist attack that they wanted to ignore, or an accident as a result of a military operation that went wrong," Hank Hughes, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator and driving force behind the film, told ABC News.

What would you have to believe to accept the idea of a 17-year-old sprawling government cover-up? We look back at the original NTSB report to see what it says, and who would have had to lie about forensic tests or doctored evidence. Here's a refresher on what the report says, why the original, simpler explanation is still the most likely.

Blast Holes

Investigators reconstructed and analyzed virtually the entire structure of the stricken airliner. The work revealed 196 blast holes in the airplane's structure. So how did the investigators figure that an internal gas tank explosion caused this damage, instead of a missile or bomb?

The NTSB's metallurgists requested that Boeing conduct the tests (and Boeing had no motive to reach the conclusion that a defect in its own equipment, rather than an act of violence, caused the blast). Its engineers created test plates and fired fragments at them at high and low velocities. An antiaircraft missile warhead detonates close to its target, spraying shrapnel at high speeds into the aircraft to destroy it. A bomb made with high-energy explosives would also hurl metal, this time from the inside out, at higher velocities than an inadvertent gas tank detonation.

These tests indicated that high-speed fragments leave particular signs behind, like deformations on the edges and melted parts of the walls of the hole. High-speed impacts leave little surface deformation. In the TWA 800 tests, all but two of the 196 holes exhibited signs of low-velocity penetration, and the remaining two holes showed signs of both. One of these mystery holes?just 3/16-inch diameter?was examined in the Safety Board's Materials Lab. "No evidence of melted and resolidified metal was noted on any portion of the hole wall," the report states.

All the holes near the wing, where the fuel tank that exploded was located, were low-velocity impacts. About 95 percent of the airplane was reconstructed, and the missing parts were too small to hide bomb or missile damage.

To fake these lab results would require a cadre of engineers at Boeing, as well as the NTSB to be in on the conspiracy or be willing to sit quietly as their tests were rigged. Either way, there is a slew of outside voices involved with the tests that could contradict the government's story.

Radar

The east coast of the United States is covered by plenty of radar. The area where TWA 800 went down was in the range of three long-range radar sites, each with a 200 nautical mile radius, as well as five airports and one radar operated by helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky in Shelton, Conn. The others used direct returns. NTSB investigators also used radar data from the U.S. Air Force's 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron.

There are two kinds of radar returns, primary and secondary. Primary returns mean the radar waves are reflected off the aircraft. Secondary means the signal came from the transponders in the aircraft. The one in Connecticut tracked only the doomed airliner's transponder signals; all the others were primary returns.

"The Safety Board's examination of all the available radar data revealed no sequence of primary or secondary radar returns that intersected TWA Flight 800's position at any time, nor did it reveal any radar returns consistent with a missile or any other projectile travelling toward the airplane," the report says.

A lot of radar means a lot of people sitting in front of screens. The data is all recorded, at each location. Hiding a military warship (deployment records indicate there were none around that night) or a missile track would mean somehow co-opting or coercing every radar operator on duty that night?a daunting task, especially if it was done to cover up an inadvertent military shoot down or unexpected terrorist attack.

To be fair, many conspiracy theorists have used the existing radar data to back up their own ideas of what brought the airplane down?especially the behavior of some boats and radar anomalies from one of the radar sites that registered objects in the area moving at high speeds, then vanishing. (These were judged to be phantom returns from building reflections.) None of these radar returns show anything in the air intersecting the path of the airliner, or any vessel behaving in an overtly suspicious way. (See pages 89?94 in the original report.)

Fuel Tanks

As scary as a missile or bomb attack might be, the idea that the fuel tank exploded on its own can be considered even scarier. The biggest leap for investigators back in 1996 was to prove that a fire in the central wing tank (CWT) could have caused an explosion that brought down the airplane.

First, those investigating the tanks had to rule out that the explosion started inside that tank, as opposed to a missile or bomb shrapnel piercing it from outside. There is no physical evidence of a bomb blast?no perforations of the fuselage, the fuel tank, or the bodies of the victims. Fragments of a missile warhead would not reach the fuel tank, and a joint NTSB and British Defense Evaluation and Research Agency investigation found there was no evidence of an explosive charge nested inside the tank by a saboteur. (Such a charge would produce hot gas damage and pockmarks that were not found.)

At the time, there was very little engineering work done regarding fuel tank flammability. The NTSB investigation spawned a team of experts dedicated to studying the issue, which within aviation circles was more heated than the conspiracy chatter: In the aftermath of the crash, any fix that investigators suggested could lead to regulations that cost millions to implement.

The investigators studied it all: the chemistry of the fuel, how the fuel/air vapor could ignite, how the flames could move through the wing after bursting from the tank. They established two independent models to simulate the pressure differences inside the wing, a key part of how the fiery fluid would spread. The Safety Board contracted the University of Nevada to analyze the properties of jet fuel vapor. The team ran hundreds of simulations, brought in Boeing engineers to assess the damage of the airliner's remains, and solicited the opinion of an explosives dynamics expert at the California Institute of Technology. There were flight tests done at the same temperature and conditions as TWA Flight 800 and full-scale fuel tank explosion tests conducted in England.

The litany above actually leaves out tests and academic efforts to understand what happened. All this is to say: The study of TWA 800 was not a sealed-off investigation done by a cadre of bureaucrats. The results were meant to be published, shared, and serve as the foundation of new regulations.

In the end, NTSB found that TWA Flight 800 would not have perished without a flammable fuel/air mix in its central wing tank, but investigators were never sure what sparked the explosion in the first place?the closest they got was "a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system."

The investigation into TWA 800 inspired new FAA regulations in 2008 that required passenger airplanes to have equipment that replaces oxygen inside fuel tanks with an inert gas, like nitrogen. To believe a cover-up implies that an entire industry was duped into believing fuel tanks could become bombs if the fuel/air mix was just right. Of course, there have been dozens of similar explosions before and (in foreign carriers) after TWA Flight 800, making the accepted theory all too believable.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/crashes/3-reasons-to-doubt-the-twa-flight-800-conspiracy-theory-15629315?src=rss

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Autism in children affects not only social abilities, but also a broad range of sensory and motor skills

June 25, 2013 ? A group of investigators from San Diego State University's Brain Development Imaging Laboratory are shedding a new light on the effects of autism on the brain.

The team has identified that connectivity between the thalamus, a deep brain structure crucial for sensory and motor functions, and the cerebral cortex, the brain's outer layer, is impaired in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Led by Aarti Nair, a student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, the study is the first of its kind, combining functional and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine connections between the cerebral cortex and the thalamus.

Nair and Dr. Ralph-Axel M?ller, an SDSU professor of psychology who was senior investigator of the study, examined more than 50 children, both with autism and without.

Brain communication

The thalamus is a crucial brain structure for many functions, such as vision, hearing, movement control and attention. In the children with autism, the pathways connecting the cerebral cortex and thalamus were found to be affected, indicating that these two parts of the brain do not communicate well with each other.

"This impaired connectivity suggests that autism is not simply a disorder of social and communicative abilities, but also affects a broad range of sensory and motor systems," M?ller said.

Disturbances in the development of both the structure and function of the thalamus may play a role in the emergence of social and communicative impairments, which are among the most prominent and distressing symptoms of autism.

While the findings reported in this study are novel, they are consistent with growing evidence on sensory and motor abnormalities in autism. They suggest that the diagnostic criteria for autism, which emphasize social and communicative impairment, may fail to consider the broad spectrum of problems children with autism experience.

The study was supported with funding from the National Institutes of Health and additional funding from Autism Speaks Dennis Weatherstone Predoctoral Fellowship. It was published in the June issue of the journal, Brain.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/NQP8dzX2Rvk/130625141216.htm

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Analysis: Brazil riots raise questions over sporting mega-events

By Brian Homewood

BERNE (Reuters) - Brazilian anger against the cost of staging the World Cup could undermine the argument that host countries benefit from sporting mega-events as they become too big for most countries to handle.

UEFA's idea of splitting the Euro 2020 championship into mini-tournaments hosted in 13 different countries could be one of the alternatives which organizers could follow in the future, analysts say.

Brazil has been hit by a wave of nationwide protests as it hosts the eight-team Confederations Cup, a dry-run for next year's World Cup which will be staged in 12 different cities.

Although the protesters have a multitude of grievances, one of their main complaints has been the contrast between shiny new stadiums and shambolic state of public services including health, education and transport.

They are also angry that Brazil has broken a promise not to spend public money on stadiums, while failing to build many of the planned infrastructure projects.

"The stadiums for the World Cup will be built with private money," Orlando Silva, sports minister at the time, said in 2007 when Brazil was confirmed as the host nation. "There will not be a cent of public money for the rebuilding of the stadiums."

Instead, building work fell behind schedule and the state and federal governments had to come to the rescue.

Meanwhile, at least five host cities will miss out on promised bus lanes, metro lines or tram services and cities are now likely to declare public holidays on match days to reduce traffic, a move which critics says reeks of typical improvisation.

"What is happening right now in Brazil should be a watershed for FIFA and the World Cup," said Simon Chadwick, professor of sports marketing at Coventry University in central England.

"It should respond by working more strategically to ensure that future World Cups are not just two-week showcases, but have a longer-term legacy for host nations.

"It some ways, it's an acid test for FIFA and its ability as an organization to adapt, respond and learn."

SWISS REJECTION

"FIFA has never been especially open, direct or vociferous in accentuating legacy as an element of bidding and hosting," he added. "Such discussions are often centered on the number of people playing the game and the development of grassroots and competitions."

While Brazil, which also stages the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, struggles to cope with the World Cup, other countries appear to be losing the appetite to stage major sporting events.

Switzerland, one of the world's most prosperous countries, backed down from bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics after residents of the proposed host cantons voted against it in a referendum.

The 2020 Olympics games drew only five formal bids, from Istanbul, Madrid, Tokyo, Baku and Doha.

"It is showing that major sporting events have reached a point where you need to re-discuss what is being done and what is really a legacy," said Sylvia Schenk, senior advisor for sport at anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

"Even the bidding itself has become very expensive and costs millions of euros."

Chadwick warned of "industrial concentration" where "the same small group of nations repeatedly host sporting mega events."

"This clearly would not be good for the public and for democracy in sport," he said. "The global economic downturn of recent years needs to sharpen people's sense that sporting mega-events have spiraled out of control."

Last month, a UNESCO-organized meeting of sports ministers in Berlin issued a declaration which warned of the way events such as the World Cup, European championship, Olympics and winter Olympics were awarded and staged.

It said that "many oversized stadia are not financially viable post-event" and said increasing demands on host nations "may act as a disincentive to bid for major sport events and risk excluding certain countries from the bidding for or hosting of such events."

It also noted the trend of overbidding, described as "incurring higher costs than necessary in order to outbid competitors....and a corresponding escalation of hosting costs."

RADICAL MOVE

UEFA made a radical move after it received only three bids to host the 24-team European championship in 2020, instead deciding to stage the contest in 13 cities around the continent, each hosting three or four games.

"There are reasons to commend it, most notably the spreading of financial risk and cost," said Chadwick.

Host countries needed only one stadium, in some cases holding only 30,000 people. "It could be the right direction, even smaller countries usually have one stadium where they can stage two or three games," said Schenk.

FIFA, which has already awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and 2022 tournament to oil-rich Qatar, has more immediate worries, as it is seen as the villain of the piece in Brazil due to the conditions it has imposed on the host nation.

Countries can only stage the World Cup if they agree to tax exemptions and enforce FIFA's marketing rules, among other things. In Brazil's case, this has included lifting a ban on alcohol sales in stadiums, prompting former Brazil forward Romario, now a Congressman, to say that FIFA had set up "a state within a state."

"FIFA has been caught napping," said Chadwick. "The global political agenda has been turbulent for some time now.....FIFA should have seen what was coming. It has advertently, although entirely predictably, become embroiled in a geo-political debate."

(Reporting by Brian Homewood, editing by Justin Palmer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-brazil-riots-raise-questions-over-sporting-mega-022542615.html

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Prosecutors want to admit calls in Zimmerman trial

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? Past police dispatcher calls made by George Zimmerman should be presented to jurors at his second-degree murder trial since they show his state of mind and provide context to his fatal encounter with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a prosecutor argued Tuesday.

Prosecutor Richard Mantei told a Florida judge that the five calls are central to the prosecution's argument that he committed second-degree murder since it shows his growing ill will at people he viewed as suspicious who were walking through his neighborhood.

The calls made in the six months before Zimmerman fatally shot Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, reflect the neighborhood watch volunteer's growing frustration with repeated break-ins at his gated community of townhomes and plays into the prosecution's theory that his view of Martin as a suspicious character was "the straw that broke the camel's back," Mantei said.

Defense attorney Mark O'Mara argued that the calls were irrelevant and that no previous incidents matter except the seven or eight minutes prior to when Zimmerman fired the deadly shot into Martin's chest.

"They're going to ask the jury to make a leap from a good, responsible, citizen behavior to seething behavior," O'Mara said of the prosecution's depiction of Zimmerman's actions.

Judge Debra Nelson said she would make a ruling after reviewing prior cases. The lawyers presented their arguments with the jury out of the courtroom.

Zimmerman, 29, could get life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder for gunning down Martin as the black teenager, wearing a hoodie on a dark, rainy night, walked from a convenience store through the gated townhouse community where he was staying. Zimmerman is pleading not guilty, claiming self-defense.

The case took on racial dimensions after Martin's family claimed that Zimmerman had racially profiled the teen and that police were dragging their feet in bringing charges. Zimmerman, who identifies himself as Hispanic, has denied the confrontation had anything to do with race.

The prosecution began opening statements Monday in the long-awaited murder trial with shocking language, repeating obscenities Zimmerman uttered while talking to a police dispatcher moments before the deadly confrontation.

The defense opened with a knock-knock joke about the difficulty of picking a jury for a case that stirred nationwide debate over racial profiling, vigilantism and Florida's expansive laws on the use of deadly force.

Prosecutor John Guy portrayed the then-neighborhood watch volunteer as a vigilante, saying, "Zimmerman thought it was his right to rid his neighborhood of anyone who did not belong."

Defense attorney Don West told jurors a different story: Martin sucker-punched Zimmerman and then pounded his head against the concrete sidewalk, and that's when Zimmerman opened fire.

___

Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KHightower

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prosecutors-want-admit-calls-zimmerman-trial-083739961.html

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Ecuador: Decision on Snowden could take months

LONDON (AP) ? Ecuador could take months to decide whether to grant National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden asylum, and the country's relations with the U.S. would be one of the factors considered, an official from the Latin American country said Wednesday.

Speaking during a visit to Malaysia's main city, Kuala Lumpur, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino compared Snowden's case to that of Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, who has been given asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

"It took us two months to make a decision in the case of Assange, so do not expect us to make a decision sooner this time," Patino told reporters.

Asked if Ecuador would provide protection to Snowden while considering his request for asylum, Patino said through a translator that if Snowden "goes to the embassy, then we will make a decision."

Patino refused to say what criteria Ecuador would use to decide, but added that his government would "consider all these risks," including concerns that helping Snowden would hurt trade with the U.S. and damage his country's economy.

Snowden, who is charged with violating American espionage laws, fled Hong Kong over the weekend and flew to Russia. He booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't board the plane.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has since said that Snowden was still in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, a statement that did little to dispel speculation over what he was doing there and where he would eventually go.

WikiLeaks gave a terse update on Snowden's condition later Wednesday, saying in a statement posted to Twitter suggesting it had just received an update on Snowden and that he was "safe and well."

WikiLeaks has said that one of its staffers, Sarah Harrison, was traveling with Snowden, but the statement gave no indication if the update came from her, from Snowden, or from some other source. WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson did not immediately return a call and a text seeking further comment.

In a conference with reporters on Monday, Assange said that he was limited in what he could say about Snowden due to security concerns. He denied reports that Snowden was spending his time at the airport being debriefed by Russian spies.

In another development in the Snowden story, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon said Wednesday that he had decided not to represent the leaker. A statement from his law firm provided no further explanation.

Garzon, who has fought on WikiLeaks' behalf, became famous for indicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and trying to put him on trial for crimes against humanity. He was suspended from office in Spain for overstepping his powers by starting an investigation into killings committed on behalf of former Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-decision-snowden-could-months-112117863.html

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Ouya

By Will Greenwald

The Ouya is a story of an ambitious idea made manifest. After a successful Kickstarter to raise funds, this Android-based game system has finally seen release beyond development and backer-only versions. This little box is just $99.99 (direct) and comes with everything you need to play games on your HDTV. Sadly, it's also presently an ungainly mess of a consumer product that requires more work than it's worth to get the most out of it.

Before I go into the Ouya itself, an important note: Ouya plans regular software updates that could alleviate most complaints about the system. If those updates successfully fix the problems, we will re-evaluate the Ouya to reflect that. This review is based on the Ouya as it was released to the public at launch, with firmware from June 24, 2013.

Design
The Ouya is a tiny, 3-inch cube with corners that round inward near the base. It has grey sides and a black top with a circular power button with a glowing Ouya logo in the middle, which is the only button and indicator light on the device. The back side of the cube holds an HDMI output, micro and standard USB ports, a power port, and an Ethernet port if you don't want to use the built-in Wi-Fi.

The controller looks like a fairly standard gamepad, with two analog sticks, a direction pad, and four face buttons laid out in an Xbox 360 controller figuration, along with four shoulder buttons and a single Ouya button that serves as the menu button. Two AA batteries fit into cavities in the grips, covered by plastic plates that are held in place on the gamepad with magnets. There are no Start or Select/Back buttons, which I missed in certain games. Four lights on the top edge of the gamepad show if the controller is on and connected, and if multiple controllers are connected, which player that controller is. The middle of the gamepad holds a black rectangle that serves as a touchpad for controlling an on-screen cursor.

The controller sounds nice on paper, but it's sadly close to being outright junk. The touchpad is the worst touchpad I've ever used. It's over-sensitive but unresponsive, making the cursor fly around the screen with only little concern for what my finger is doing. It doesn't click, and it takes patience to tap the touchpad just right to make it register as a tap and not a swipe. The face buttons are nice and responsive, but the shoulder buttons and direction pad feel wiggly, and the analog sticks are overly loose and prone to dead zones and snapback. Ouya is planning an update that will allow the analog stick to control the on-screen cursor instead of the touchpad, which could greatly improve Web browsing and other cursor-based software.

You can connect other Bluetooth controllers to the Ouya, but the support and compatibility for them is inconsistent. I could pair the Moga Pro to the Ouya as an HID device, but that disables the right analog stick and makes the left analog stick act like a digital direction pad. I couldn't connect it in its full, non-HID mode.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/8vkBqL_qpkc/0,2817,2420825,00.asp

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The Real Housewives of Miami Season 3 Preview: Double the Drama!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/the-real-housewives-of-miami-season-3-preview-double-the-drama/

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Sony's SmartWatch 2 Promises to Be Better This Time

We really wanted to love Sony's SmartWatch last year, but we couldn't. Which is to say, it made us want to bite our own arms off. Sony is back at it again, though, and thankfully the sequel looks like a real improvement over the previous generation.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/3JVIXScJcaM/sonys-smartwatch-2-promises-to-be-better-this-time-569157265

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Immigration bill clears Senate test

FILE - In this April 18, 2013 file photo, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. At the start of a crucial week for far-reaching immigration legislation backed by the White House, the Senate headed Monday for the first test vote on the measure offering the prize of U.S. citizenship to millions and pouring new technology and manpower into the border. (AP Photo/Molly Riley, File)

FILE - In this April 18, 2013 file photo, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. At the start of a crucial week for far-reaching immigration legislation backed by the White House, the Senate headed Monday for the first test vote on the measure offering the prize of U.S. citizenship to millions and pouring new technology and manpower into the border. (AP Photo/Molly Riley, File)

FILE - In this June 21, 2013 file photo, Sen. John Hoeven, N.D., leaves the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington. At the start of a crucial week for far-reaching immigration legislation backed by the White House, the Senate headed Monday for the first test vote on the measure offering the prize of U.S. citizenship to millions and pouring new technology and manpower into the border. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Historic immigration legislation cleared a key Senate hurdle with votes to spare on Monday, pointing the way to near-certain passage within days for $38 billion worth of new security measures along the border with Mexico and an unprecedented chance at citizenship for millions living in the country illegally.

The vote was 67-27, seven more than the 60 needed, with 15 Republicans agreeing to advance legislation at the top of President Barack Obama's second-term domestic agenda.

The vote came as Obama campaigned from the White House for the bill, saying, "now is the time" to overhaul an immigration system that even critics of the legislation agree needs reform.

Last-minute frustration was evident among opponents. In an unusual slap at members of his own party as well as Democrats, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said it appeared that lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle "very much want a fig leaf" on border security to justify a vote for immigration.

Senate passage on Thursday or Friday would send the issue to the House, where conservative Republicans in the majority oppose citizenship for anyone living in the country illegally.

Some GOP lawmakers have appealed to Speaker John Boehner not to permit any immigration legislation to come to a vote for fear that whatever its contents, it would open the door to an unpalatable compromise with the Senate. At the same time, the House Judiciary Committee is in the midst of approving a handful of measures related to immigration, action that ordinarily is a prelude to votes in the full House.

"Now is the time to do it," Obama said at the White House before meeting with nine business executives who support a change in immigration laws. He added, "I hope that we can get the strongest possible vote out of the Senate so that we can then move to the House and get this done before the summer break" beginning in early August.

He said the measure would be good for the economy, for business and for workers who are "oftentimes exploited at low wages."

As for the overall economy, he said, "I think every business leader here feels confident that they'll be in a stronger position to continue to innovate, to continue to invest, to continue to create jobs and ensure that this continues to be the land of opportunity for generations to come."

Opponents saw it otherwise. "It will encourage more illegal immigration and must be stopped," Cruz exhorted supporters via email, urging them to contact their own senators with a plea to defeat the measure.

Leaving little to chance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced it was launching a new seven-figure ad buy Monday in support of the bill. "Call Congress. End de facto amnesty. Create jobs and economic growth by supporting conservative immigration reforms," the ad said.

Senate officials said some changes were still possible to the bill before it leaves the Senate - alterations that would swell the vote total.

At the same time, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who voted to advance the measure during the day, said he may yet end up opposing it unless he wins a pair of changes he is seeking.

Senate Democrats were unified on the vote.

Republicans were anything but on a bill that some party leaders say offers the GOP a chance to show a more welcoming face to Hispanic voters, yet tea party-aligned lawmakers assail as amnesty for those who have violated the law.

The party's two top Senate leaders, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, voted against advancing the measure. Both are seeking new terms next year.

Among potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was an enthusiastic supporter of the bill, while Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were opposed.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the legislation will reduce the deficit and increase economic growth in each of the next two decades. It is also predicting unemployment will rise slightly through 2020, and that average wages will move lower over a decade.

At its core, the legislation in the Senate would create a 13-year pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. It also calls for billions of dollars to be spent on manpower and technology to secure the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, including a doubling of the Border Patrol with 20,000 new agents.

The measure also would create a new program for temporary farm laborers to come into the country, and another for lower-skilled workers to emigrate permanently. At the same time, it calls for an expansion of an existing visa program for highly-skilled workers, a gesture to high tech companies that rely heavily on foreigners.

In addition to border security, the measure phases in a mandatory program for employers to verify the legal status of potential workers, and separate effort to track the comings and goings of foreigners at some of the nation's airports.

The legislation was originally drafted by a bipartisan Gang of 8, four senators from each party who negotiated a series of political trade-offs over several months.

The addition of the tougher border security provisions came after CBO informed lawmakers that they could potentially spend tens of billions of dollars to sweeten the bill without fearing higher deficits.

The result was a series of changes negotiated between the Gang of 8 and Republican Sens. John Hoeven of North Dakota and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Different, lesser-noticed provisions helped other lawmakers swing behind the measure.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, likened some of them to "earmarks," the now-banned practice of directing federal funds to the pet projects of individual lawmakers.

He cited a provision creating a $1.5 billion jobs fund for low-income youth and pair of changes to benefit the seafood processing industry in Alaska. Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., issued a statement on Friday trumpeting the benefits of the first; Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat, took credit for the two others.

Grassley also raised questions about the origin of a detailed list of planes, sensors, cameras and other equipment to be placed along the southern border.

"Who provided the amendment sponsors with this list?" asked Grassley, who is a member of the Judiciary Committee that approved an earlier version of the bill. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano "did not provide the committee with any list. Did Sikorsky, Cessna and Northrup Grumann send up a wish list to certain members of the Senate?"

Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrup Grumann, said in an email the firm has "not had the opportunity to review the comments nor... provided the committee a 'wish list' of its systems to consider."

Officials at the other two companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-06-24-Immigration/id-c80adce2aa334cc099bfc1b298b57a3b

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Hong Kong says Snowden has left for third country

HONG KONG (AP) ? A former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing highly classified surveillance programs has been allowed to leave for a "third country" because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law, the territory's government said Sunday.

Hong Kong's government did not identify the country. Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks since he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs, has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland.

However, Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency cited an unidentified Aeroflot official as saying Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela. The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group tweeted that Snowden was "over Russian air space" and later said in a statement he was bound for an unnamed "democratic nation via a safe route for the purpose of asylum."

The White House had no immediate comment about Snowden's departure, which came a day after the United States made a formal request for his extradition and gave a pointed warning to Hong Kong against delaying the process of returning him to face trial in the U.S.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement that Snowden left "on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel."

It acknowledged the U.S. extradition request, but said U.S. documentation did not "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." It said additional information was requested from Washington, but since the Hong Kong government "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."

The statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure. It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden had revealed.

WikiLeaks said it was providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from the group. Its founder, Julian Assange, who has spent a year inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about sex crime allegations, told the Sydney Morning Herald that his organization is in a position to help because it has expertise in international asylum and extradition law.

Snowden's departure eliminates a possible fight between Washington and Beijing at a time when China is trying to deflect U.S. accusations that it carries out extensive surveillance of American government and commercial operations. Hong Kong, a former British colony, has a high degree of autonomy and is granted rights and freedoms not seen on mainland China, but under the city's mini constitution Beijing is allowed to intervene in matters involving defense and diplomatic affairs.

Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., but the document has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political.

The Obama administration on Saturday warned Hong Kong against delaying Snowden's extradition, with White House national security adviser Tom Donilon saying in an interview with CBS News, "Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case."

Snowden's departure came as the South China Morning Post released new allegations from Snowden that U.S. hacking targets in China included the nation's cellphone companies and two universities hosting extensive Internet traffic hubs.

He told the newspaper that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." It added that Snowden said he had documents to support the hacking allegations, but the report did not identify the documents. It said he spoke to the newspaper in a June 12 interview.

With a population of more than 1.3 billion, China has massive cellphone companies. China Mobile is the world's largest mobile network carrier with 735 million subscribers, followed by China Unicom with 258 million users and China Telecom with 172 million users.

Snowden said Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese University in Hong Kong, home of some of the country's major Internet traffic hubs, were targets of extensive hacking by U.S. spies this year. He said the NSA was focusing on so-called "network backbones" in China, through which enormous amounts of Internet data passes.

The Chinese government has not commented on the extradition request and Snowden's departure, but its state-run media have used Snowden's allegations to poke back at Washington after the U.S. had spent the past several months pressuring China on its international spying operations.

A commentary published Sunday by the official Xinhua News Agency said Snowden's disclosures of U.S. spying activities in China have "put Washington in a really awkward situation."

"Washington should come clean about its record first. It owes ... an explanation to China and other countries it has allegedly spied on," it said. "It has to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine hacking programs."

____

Sylvia Hui in London and Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-says-snowden-left-third-country-081745849.html

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Chairs Designed By Little Kids Are Hideously Adorable

An eye for good design isn't something you're born with; you've got to learn it. But everyone has to start somewhere, and this is what it looks like when kids take their very first awkward stabs at furniture design. The results are sort of horrifyingly cute.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/_4txZrK-T1A/chairs-designed-by-little-kids-are-hideously-adorable-540484298

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Heidi Klum and the Crew Have a Park Day

Heidi Klum enjoys a family outing! Plus, see more photos of celebs spending time with their loved ones.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/star-snapshots-celebrity-kids-and-family-photos-2012/1-b-462723?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Astar-snapshots-celebrity-kids-and-family-photos-2012-462723

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GCHQ taps cables, shares with NSA - Guardian

LONDON (Reuters) - GCHQ has tapped fibre-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the U.S. National Security Agency, the Guardian newspaper said on Friday.

The paper, which has in recent weeks been publishing details of top-secret surveillance programs exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said on its website Snowden had shown it documents about a project codenamed "Tempora".

Tempora has been running for around 18 months and allows GCHQ to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days, the paper said.

The story is likely to put further pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron's government to reassure the public about how data about them is collected and used.

Earlier this month, in response to questions about the secret U.S. data-monitoring program PRISM, Foreign Secretary William Hague told parliament that GCHQ always adhered to British law when processing data gained from eavesdropping.

He would not confirm or deny any details of UK-U.S. intelligence sharing, saying that to do so could help Britain's enemies.

"In line with longstanding practice we do not comment on intelligence matters," a GCHQ spokesman said on Friday.

"It is worth pointing out that GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously. Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight."

The Tempora operation involves attaching intercept probes to transatlantic cables where they land on British stores from North America, the Guardian said.

This was done with the agreement of unnamed companies, who were forbidden from revealing warrants that compelled them to allow GCHQ access, it added.

Snowden made world headlines earlier this month when he provided details of NSA surveillance programs to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

In Washington, Snowden's disclosures have ignited a political storm over the balance between privacy rights and national security, but the NSA has defended the programs, saying they have disrupted possible attacks.

(Reporting by Rosalba O'Brien and Michael Holden; editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gchq-taps-cables-shares-nsa-guardian-181421521.html

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