Saudi Arabia's First PSA For Violence Against Women - Business ...

Saudi Arabia is getting its first ever PSA about domestic violence.

While women still aren't allowed to drive in the country and must be under male guardianship, the powerful ad, made by the King Khalid Foundation (KKF), marks an important step in Saudi women's rights.

The poster shows a woman in a burqa that exposes her black eye. "Some things cant be covered," the text reads. "Fighting women's abuse together."

According to KKF's "No More Abuse" website, "The phenomenon of battered women in Saudi Arabia is much greater than is apparent on the surface. It is a phenomenon found in the dark." KKF hopes to bring the abuse to light.

Memac Ogilvy, Riyadh created the campaign:

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabias-first-psa-for-violence-against-women-2013-4

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International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) - ETF Daily News

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), the largest computer-services provider, has a long track record of beating or at least meeting the Street?s expectation for earnings. But in the first quarter, the company missed its earnings mark for the first time since 2005. T

he company also missed on the top line, in a quarterly performance that is sure to add to growing concerns about the market and the economy. IBM saw EPS of $3.00, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 6 cents per share. Revenues were also disappointing, with a year-ago decline of 5.1% and sequential downfall of 20.1%.

The lackluster performance was due to a hardware slump and failure to close large deals. Further, the weakness in the Japanese yen added to the woes as the falling yen translated into fewer dollars in sales in Japan.

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Overall, this miss was rare and shocking, and has come as a blow to the company?s stock price. IBM was down in double digits after the announcement of the first quarter results.

Though the first quarter was among the weakest in the company?s recent history, the outlook for IBM remains positive for the long run. The company expects to benefit from investments in growth initiatives and is focusing on growing its software business, which is considered more profitable than hardware.

Quite predictably, this led to mixed reactions in many technology ETFs. While the miss crushed some ETFs, the optimism surrounding its growth led to fast recovery. This has been true in particular for those funds that have major holdings in IBM, and those that have a big focus on large caps in general (read:?Is the Tech ETF Signaling Trouble Ahead?).

Given this, we have highlighted three of the biggest holders of IBM stock in ETF form and how they have held up in light of its terrible earnings report:

iShares Dow Jones US Technology ETF (NYSEARCA:IYW)

This is by far one of the largest and popular funds in the technology space having an impressive asset base of $1.8 billion. This fund tracks the Dow Jones US Technology index, holding 136 stocks in its basket while charging investors a higher fee of 46 bps a year.

Of the major holdings, IBM takes the fourth position in the portfolio, making up 8.45% of assets. The product is heavily skewed towards the technology hardware and equipment segments, as these make up for more than half of the portfolio. Software and computer services take the remaining portion in the basket.

Following the announcement, the fund finished the day down about 1.4% and has not been able to recover fully as the ETF is up just 0.49% year-to-date. IYW currently has a Zacks ETF Rank of #4 or ?Sell? with a high risk outlook, suggesting the fund will underperform its counterparts over the long haul.

First Trust NASDAQ Technology Dividend Index Fund (NASDAQ:TDIV)

This is one of the latest additions to the tech ETF space, focusing on technology companies that pay out dividends. This is done by tracking the NASDAQ Technology Dividend Index which is a broad benchmark of tech and telecom firms (weighted 80/20 in favor of tech) that have a yield of at least 0.5% and have not decreased dividends in the past one year.

In total, the fund holds about 79 securities in its basket. Of these firms, IBM takes the fourth spot, making up roughly 7.57% of the assets. From a sector perspective, semiconductors & semiconductor equipment takes the largest share of 22.54%, closely followed by computers & peripherals (14.10%) and diversified telecommunication services (13.48%).

Due to its exposure, TDIV has not fallen much with just 0.4% decline on the day of the IBM?s earnings release (read:?Three Tech ETFs Still Going Strong). The ETF is unpopular but it outpaced the popular IYW, adding 9.32% in the year-to-date timeframe. This is a high cost product in the tech space with AUM of $84.4 million.

iShares S&P Goldman Sachs Technology Index Fund (NYSEARCA:IGM)

This ETF follows the S&P North American Technology Sector Index and has amassed $486.3 million in its asset base. It holds 268 securities in total while charging 48 bps in fees and expense.

IBM takes the fourth position in the basket with 6.93% of the assets. All sectors make up for nice mix in the portfolio with software taking the top spot while IT services, computer & peripherals, and Internet software & services rounded off to the next three spots.

In terms of performance, IGM slumped roughly 1.4% on the day of IBM?s results but easily got rid out of the decline in the three trading sessions. The fund is up 5.26% year-to-date. The ETF currently has a Zacks ETF Rank of #2 or ?Buy? with medium risk outlook, suggesting that this product is expected to perform well over the long haul, when compared to the other funds in the sector.

Bottom Line

The performances of the tech ETFs are not tied to IBM alone but are largely dependent on the earnings of a few giants like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and IBM on a combined basis.

Currently, many tech firms are seeing weak overseas demand, overall reduction in global information technology spending, and a strong dollar just to name a few headwinds to global tech stocks.

However, the technology sector is clearly a long-term growth prospect for investors willing to wait out short term volatility. The sector should return to their market dominance over time, especially as the cloud computing and mobility segments grow in importance and offer up new avenues for growth in the sector.

This?article?is brought to you courtesy of?Eric Dutram?From?Zacks.

NASDAQ:TDIV, NYSE:IGM, NYSE:IYW

Source: http://etfdailynews.com/2013/04/28/international-business-machines-corp-ibm-earnings-put-technology-etfs-in-focus/

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Holocaust survivors, veterans gather at DC museum

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them are gathering for what could be their last big reunion at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Some 1,000 survivors and World War II vets are coming together with President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust activist and writer, on Monday when the museum marks its 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five years.

Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wiesel, who both dedicated the museum at its opening in 1993, will deliver keynote speeches. On Sunday night, the museum presented its highest honor to World War II veterans who ended the Holocaust. Susan Eisenhower accepted the award on behalf of her grandfather, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and all veterans of the era.

The museum also launched a campaign to raise $540 million by 2018 to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to combat anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and contemporary genocide. It has already secured gifts totaling $258.7 million. The campaign will double the size of the museum's endowment by its 25th anniversary. Also, a $15 million gift from Holocaust survivors David and Fela Shapell will help build a new Collections and Conservation Center.

Museum Director Sara Bloomfield said organizers wanted to show Holocaust survivors, veterans and rescuers the effort will continue to honor the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, in part by saving lives and preventing genocide in the future.

"We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together," Bloomfield said, "to not only honor them, but in their presence make a commitment to them that not only this institution but the people we reach will carry forward this legacy."

The museum continues collecting objects, photographs and other evidence of the Holocaust from survivors, veterans and archives located as far away as China and Argentina. Curators expect the collection to double in size over the next decade.

This week, the museum is opening a special, long-term exhibit titled "Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity During the Holocaust." It includes interviews with perpetrators that have never been shown before, as well as details of mass killings in the former Soviet Union that were only uncovered in more recent years.

Curator Susan Bachrach said the exhibit and its research challenge the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Surveys at the museum show that's what most visitors believe.

"That's very comforting to people, because it puts distance between the visitors and who was involved," Bachrach said.

So, the museum set out to look at ordinary people who looked on and were complicit in the killing and persecution of millions of Jews through greed, a desire for career advancement, peer pressure or other factors. It examines influences "beyond hatred and anti-Semitism," Bachrach said.

Focusing only on fanatical Nazis would be a serious misunderstanding of the Holocaust, Bloomfield said.

"The Holocaust wouldn't have been possible, first of all, without enormous indifference throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe, but also thousands of people who were, say, just doing their jobs," she said, such as a tax official who collected special taxes levied against Jews.

In an opening film, some survivors recall being turned over to Nazi authorities in front of witnesses who did nothing. "The whole town was assembled ... looking at the Jews leaving," one survivor recalls.

Steven Fenves was a boy at the time. He recalled how in 1944, Hungary, allied with Nazi Germany, forced his family out of their apartment. The family was deported to Auschwitz, where Fenves' mother was gassed.

"One of the nastiest memories I have is going on that journey and people were lined up, up the stairs, up to the door of the apartment, waiting to ransack whatever we left behind, cursing at us, yelling at us, spitting at us as we left," he said in an interview with the museum.

The museum located images of bystanders looking on as Jews were detained, humiliated and taken away.

Non-Jews were also punished for violating German policies against the mixing of ethnic groups. For the first time, the museum is showing striking, rare footage of a ritualistic shaming of a Polish girl and a German boy for having a relationship. They are marched through the streets of a town in Poland, where the film was located in an attic. Dozens of people look on as Nazi officers cut the hair of the two teenagers. They are forced to look at their nearly bald heads in a mirror before their hair is burned.

"It's hard not to focus on the cruelty that's being perpetrated on this young couple," Bachrach said. "But what we really want people to look at ... is all the other people who are standing around watching this."

Other items displayed include dozens of bullets excavated from the site of a mass grave in former Soviet territory and registration cards from city offices in Western and Southern Europe labeling people with a "J'' for Jew.

The federally funded museum's theme for its 20th anniversary is "Never Again: What You Do Matters." The museum devotes part of its work and research to stopping current and preventing future genocides. A study released by the museum last month found that the longer the current conflict in Syria continues, the greater the danger that mass sectarian violence results in genocide.

Much more is still being learned about the Holocaust, as well, Bloomfield said. The museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all incarceration sites throughout Europe. When the project began, scholars expected to list 10,000 such sites. Now the number stands at 42,000.

The museum opened in 1993 as a living memorial to the Holocaust to inspire people worldwide to prevent genocide. A presidential commission called for such a museum in 1979. Since opening, it has counted more than 30 million visitors. The museum also provides resources for survivors. It has partnered with Ancestry.com to begin making the museum's 170 million documents searchable online through the World Memory Project.

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http://www.ushmm.org

___

Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/holocaust-survivors-veterans-gather-dc-135050784.html

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The EPA Just Shook Up the Debate Over Fracking

RELATED: EPA Passes New Fracking Rules

New estimates from the EPA indicate that methane leakage from natural gas production is substantially lower than previously believed. Or, translated to English: Natural gas may be a better solution to rampant global warming than anyone believed.

RELATED: EPA Proposes First Fracking-Related Pollution Rules

The recent boom in natural gas production ??largely a function of improvements in the process of hydrofracturing, or fracking ??has been seen as a mixed blessing by environmentalists focused on curbing the atmospheric warming created by greenhouse gases. One on hand, more natural gas extraction has led to lower natural gas prices, which has led to increased use of natural gas in electricity generation, which has led to lower emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, since natural gas burns more cleanly than coal. On the other hand, natural gas is comprised mostly of methane, a gas that is 21 times better at trapping atmospheric heat than carbon dioxide. When natural gas is produced, some of it escapes. If the amount that escapes is significant enough, the anti-warming benefit of adding less carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could be offset by adding a smaller amount of methane. That's the argument that was made by 350.org's Bill McKibben, a prominent environmental activist, last year.

RELATED: EPA's New Fracking Regulations Don't Go Far Enough

For years, environmental groups were torn on the merits of natural gas as what was called a "bridge fuel," a way to ease from heavy-carbon dioxide producing energy systems to clean, renewable ones. At one time, the Sierra Club advocated for increased use of natural gas; the Environmental Defense Fund (with an economic push from Michael Bloomberg) similarly pushes for increased gas use.

RELATED: How Not 'Awesome' Was Lisa Jackson at the EPA?

By revising its estimate of how much methane leaks at production sites, the EPA has substantially bolstered that middle ground. The AP reports on the change:

In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That's about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. The agency converts the methane emissions into their equivalent in carbon dioxide, following standard scientific practice.

The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990.

In other words, the EPA thinks the amount of methane leakage is only about 80 percent as previously thought, despite the boom in natural gas production.

RELATED: Why Obama Can't Say 'Frack'

This drop is significant, but hardly enough to quell all opposition. The EPA's new estimate doesn't come from field testing at production sites, prompting Cornell professor Robert Wowarth, author of a 2011 report suggesting that leakage was higher than believed, to say that he thinks "the EPA is wrong."

Howarth wrote that the EPA seems "to be ignoring the published NOAA data in their latest efforts, and the bias on industry only pushing estimates downward ? never up ? is quite real. EPA badly needs a counter-acting force, such as outside independent review of their process."

It's not only natural gas production that creates methane, as the detailed report articulates, though that is the largest contributor. The second-largest? "Enteric Fermentation" ??burps and flatulence from livestock.

Under the EPA's new estimate, methane now comprises nine percent of all of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2005, emissions have fallen 6.9 percent.

Photo: A worker checks a wellhead at a fracking rig. (AP)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/epa-just-shook-debate-over-fracking-160404677.html

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Owner of collapsed building captured in Bangladesh

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) -- The fugitive owner of an illegally constructed building that collapsed and killed at least 377 people was captured Sunday by a commando force as he tried to flee into India. At the disaster site, meanwhile, fire broke out in the wreckage and forced authorities to suspend the search for survivors temporarily.

Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested in the western Bangladesh border town of Benapole, said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, junior minister for local government. Rana was brought back by helicopter to the capital of Dhaka where he faced charges of negligence.

Rana's capture was announced by loudspeaker at the disaster site, drawing cheers and applause from those awaiting the outcome of a continuing search-and-rescue operation for survivors of Wednesday's collapse.

Many of those killed were workers at clothing factories in the building, known as the Rana Plaza, and the collapse was the deadliest disaster to hit the garment industry in Bangladesh that is worth $20 billion annually and is a mainstay of the economy.

The fire that broke out late Sunday night sent smoke pouring from the piles of shattered concrete and halted some of the rescue efforts ? including a bid to free a woman who was found trapped in the rubble.

The blaze was caused by sparks as rescuers tried to cut through a steel rod to reach the woman, said a volunteer, Syed Al-Amin Roman. At least three rescuers were injured in the fire, he said. It forced them to retreat while firefighters frantically hosed down the flames.

Officials believe the fire is likely to have killed the trapped woman, said army spokesman Shahinul Islam. Rescue workers had delayed the use of heavy equipment for several hours in the hope that she could be extricated from the rubble first. But with the woman presumed dead, they began using heavy equipment around midnight.

An exhausted and disheveled Rana was brought before reporters briefly at the Dhaka headquarters of the commando team, the Rapid Action Battalion.

Wearing a printed shirt, Rana was sweating as two security officers held him by his arms. A security official helped him to drink water after he gestured he was thirsty. He did not speak during the 10-minute appearance, and he is likely to be handed over to police, who will have to charge him and produce him in court within 24 hours.

A small-time politician from the ruling Awami League party, Rana had been on the run since the building collapsed Wednesday. He last appeared in public Tuesday in front of the Rana Plaza after huge cracks appeared in the building. Witnesses said he assured tenants, including five garment factories, that the building was safe.

A bank and some shops on the first floor closed Wednesday after police ordered an evacuation, but managers of the garment factories on the upper floor told workers to continue their shifts.

Hours later, the Rana Plaza was reduced to rubble, crushing most victims under massive blocks of concrete.

Rana's arrest was ordered by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the Awami League leader.

On Saturday, police arrested three owners of two factories. Also detained were Rana's wife and two government engineers who were involved in giving approval for the building design. Local TV stations reported that the Bangladesh High Court has frozen the bank accounts of the owners of all five garment factories in the Rana Plaza.

Three floors of the eight-story building apparently were built illegally.

A garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside when it fell. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.

Army Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the coordinator of the rescue operations, said the next phase of the search involved the heavy equipment such as hydraulic cranes that were brought to the disaster site Sunday. Searchers had been manually shifting concrete blocks with the help of light equipment such as pickaxes and shovels, he said.

The work will be carried out carefully so as not to mutilate bodies, he said. "We have engaged many private sector companies which supplied us equipment, even some heavy ones," Suhrawardy said.

In a rare bit of good news, a female worker was pulled out alive Sunday. Rescuer Hasan Akbari said when he tried to extricate a man next to the woman, "he said his body was being torn apart. So I had to let go. But God willing, we will be able to rescue him with more help very soon."

The collapse and previous disasters in garment factories have focused attention on the poor working conditions of workers who toil for as little as $38 a month to produce clothing for top international brands.

The death toll surpassed a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards. But since then, very little has changed in Bangladesh.

Its garment industry was the third-largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy, having grown rapidly in the past decade.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers.

Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

__

AP writers Farid Hossain and Gillian Wong in Dhaka contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/owner-collapsed-building-captured-bangladesh-184621056.html

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N.J. Girls Murder Video: 12-Year-Olds Suspended For Online "Hit List"

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/nj-girls-murder-video-12-year-olds-suspended-for-online-hit-list/

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Rays' Moore joins Buchholz as bigs' 5-game winners

By JACK McCARTHY

Associated Press

Associated Press Sports

updated 11:11 p.m. ET April 27, 2013

CHICAGO (AP) - Matt Moore keeps piling up wins and his current run shows no sign of abating.

Moore became the first Tampa Bay pitcher to win five games in April, helping the Rays snap a two-game skid with a 10-4 victory over the Chicago White Sox on Saturday night.

"I'm telling you, there's more in Moore," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "If his fastball continues to go where he wants it to go he could stay hot for a long time."

The left-hander joined Boston's Clay Buchholz as the only five-game winners this month. Moore allowed just three hits, one earned run and matched a season high nine strikeouts in six innings.

There were some worries about Moore in spring training but they've long since eased.

"He was not very sharp in camp," Maddon said. "But he's built on each outing. I know the last game he pitched eight (innings), but he has been just as good and maybe a little bit better tonight. I thought his overall command was even better tonight."

Moore's 1.13 ERA is second-lowest in the majors behind St. Louis right-hander Jake Westbrook (0.98). And Moore has frequently benefited from early offensive help, including a quick 2-0 led after a half inning on Saturday.

"It seems like every time we've been on the road I've had a lead going into the bottom of the first," Moore said. "That makes it so much easier for a starting pitcher to kill those nerves or anxiousness going out there. ... It's very encouraging seeing that happening in the top of the inning.

Tampa Bay, now 3-9 on the road, pounded out 19 hits - its most since June 26, 2011.

Kelly Johnson matched a career-high with four hits while driving home two runs. Evan Longoria also matched a career-best for hits, going 4 for 6 with two runs scored.

"Offensively it was a pretty good night up and down," Maddon said. "A lot of guys had great nights. ... It was a really interesting offensive night and hopefully we're going to gain some confidence from it."

The 19 hits and 10 runs allowed were a season-high against the White Sox, who lost a three-game winning streak.

For the second straight night the Rays jumped out to an early lead. Rays shortstop Ben Zobrist broke out of a 0-for-9 series slump with a two-run homer in the first inning. Zobrist took White Sox starter Gavin Floyd's 0-1 pitch and drove it to right to score Matt Joyce with one out for a 2-0 lead.

Floyd (0-4) left the game with two outs in the third with a right elbow strain. He threw just 47 pitches, gave up two hits and two earned runs.

Hector Santiago entered in early relief and was greeted by Longoria's double. He then scored on James Loney's single to left for a 3-0 lead.

White Sox DH Adam Dunn broke the shutout with two outs in the fourth with his second home run in three games to trim Tampa Bay's lead to 3-1.

Johnson's two-out single in the fifth inning brought Longoria home for the second time and opened a 4-1 lead.

Leadoff batter Desmond Jennings added a solo shot in the sixth for a 5-1 Tampa Bay lead. In the seventh, Jose Lobaton singled off reliever Donnie Veal and brought home Johnson, who had tripled with one out.

Lobaton later scored on Veal's wild pitch to make it 7-1. Johnson's two-out RBI single in the eighth brought home Loney for an 8-1 lead.

"Honestly, (Moore's) one of the better pitchers I've ever faced," White Sox third baseman Conor Gillaspie said. "He moves the ball both sides of the plate, throwing curve balls for strikes. Sometimes you're just going to run into that at this level, guys that are just on. He was on tonight. There's not much we can do."

Moore left after six innings. Reliever Jake McGee worked out of a seventh-inning jam after loading the bases with two singles and a walk, then struck out De Aza.

The White Sox loaded the bases again in the eighth with one out on Rays reliever Kyle Farnsworth and scored twice on singles form Alexei Ramirez and Gillaspie.

Reliever Joel Peralta came in and struck out Tyler Flowers for a second out, but then walked Jordan Danks to force in another run. He struck out De Aza to escape the inning. Tampa Bay replied with two runs in the top of the ninth.

"They were locked in," Santiago said. "It was like, you made a good pitch and they blooped it or fouled it off and then you made another good pitch and they got another hit. It was like it was just their night."

Rays starting catcher Jose Molina left the game with one out in the fourth after Floyd hit him with a pitch, causing a right quad contusion. Lobaton came in as a pinch runner and took over behind the plate.

Tampa Bay sends left-hander David Price (0-2, 2.52 ERA) against Chicago right-hander Dylan Axelrod (0-1, 3.80 ERA) in Sunday's series finale.

NOTES: Tampa Bay shortstop Yunel Escobar missed his third straight game Saturday and remains day to day with right hamstring tightness. ... Price and Alex Cobb took batting practice Saturday The two are scheduled to pitch in Colorado in an upcoming interleague series.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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At their best beyond nine

Extra-innings seem to suit the Diamondbacks just fine, as Arizona improved to 6-0 in extra-inning games this season on Saturday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51690802/ns/sports-baseball/

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A Case of You Movie Review | Video - PopSugar

by Maggie Pehanick 0

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Justin Long plays a guy who memorizes a pretty barista's (Evan Rachel Wood) Facebook profile in hopes of winning her over in the film A Case of You. The movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where I got a peek. Is the movie worth seeing for its huge list of cameos (Sam Rockwell, Sienna Miller, Vince Vaughn, Peter Dinklage) alone? Find out.

View Transcript?? Transcript

Source: http://www.popsugar.com/Case-You-Movie-Review-Video-29907108

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Peaches Geldof Welcomes Second Son On Late Mother?s Birthday

Peaches Geldof Welcomes Second Son On Late Mother’s Birthday

Peaches Geldof welcomed a baby boy, her second son with her husband Thomas Cohen. The 24-year-old socialite gave birth to Phaedra on what would have been the 54th birthday of her late mother, Paula Yates. Peaches Geldof gave birth via cesarean section on April 24 and is overjoyed to be a mommy again. Peaches, the ...

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/04/peaches-geldof-welcomes-second-son-on-late-mothers-birthday/

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Karen Dennis Power Trainer Speaks On Health & Fitness Why ...

Karen Dennis power trainer from Teaneck, New Jersey and will be speaking to women at the upcoming Agape Women?s conference to be held from Friday May 3^rd to Sunday May 5^th at the Agape Church located at 76 Ward Street, Paterson, New Jersey on the topic of Why Exercise and Staying Fit is of Utmost Importance to Minority Women.

As a working married mother of five, Dennis understands first hand what women in the African American community deal with having an enormous amounts of stress: being heads of households, pursuing career goals, having self image and esteem issues and just overall struggling in trying to do it all. ?Dennis knows that proper diet and regular exercise can transform a person into having a much more fulfilled life.

As a speaker, Dennis will share and demonstrate stress relieving exercise as well as drive home the importance of women committing to a life that includes physical fitness. Karen Dennis is scheduled her for two (2) 40 min. sessions on May 4 between the hours of 9 - 11am.

For information about our conference find "Agape Christian Ministries Church of Paterson, NJ? on Facebook or call 973.278.4390.

The $60.00 registration will be donated to charities in Africa, drilling water wells for villages, shoes for children and coats for the poor.

Source: http://thealternativepress.com/articles/karen-dennis-power-trainer-speaks-on-health-and-fit

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Thanks to rare alpine bacteria, researchers identify one of alcohol's key gateways to the brain

Thanks to rare alpine bacteria, researchers identify one of alcohol's key gateways to the brain

Friday, April 26, 2013

Thanks to a rare bacteria that grows only on rocks in the Swiss Alps, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the Pasteur Institute in France have been the first to identify how alcohol might affect key brain proteins.

It's a major step on the road to eventually developing drugs that could disrupt the interaction between alcohol and the brain.

"Now that we've identified this key brain protein and understand its structure, it's possible to imagine developing a drug that could block the binding site," said Adron Harris, professor of biology and director of the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction at The University of Texas at Austin.

Harris and his former postdoctoral fellow Rebecca Howard, now an assistant professor at Skidmore College, are co-authors on the paper that was recently published in Nature Communications. It describes the structure of the brain protein, called a ligand-gated ion channel, that is a key enabler of many of the primary physiological and behavioral effects of alcohol.

Harris said that for some time there has been suggestive evidence that these ion channels are important binding sites for alcohol. Researchers couldn't prove it, however, because they couldn't crystallize the brain protein well enough, and therefore couldn't use X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of the protein with and without alcohol present.

The advance came when Marc Delarue and his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute sequenced the genome of cyanobacteria Gloeobacter violaceus. They noted a protein sequence on the bacteria that is remarkably similar to the sequence of a group of ligand-gated ion channels in the human brain. They were able to crystallize this protein. Harris saw the results and immediately got in touch.

"This is something you never would have found with any sort of logical approach," he said. "You never would have guessed that this obscure bacterium would have something that looks like a brain protein in it. But the institute, because of Pasteur's fascination with bacteria, has this huge collection of obscure bacteria, and over the last few years they've been sequencing the genomes, keeping an eye out for interesting properties."

Harris and Howard asked their French colleagues to collaborate, got the cyanobacteria, changed one amino acid to make it sensitive to alcohol, and then crystallized both the original bacteria and the mutated one. They compared the two to see whether they could identify where the alcohol bound to the mutant. With further tests they confirmed that it was a meaningful site.

"Everything validated that the cavity in which the alcohol bound is important," said Harris. "It doesn't account for all the things that alcohol does, but it appears to be important for a lot of them, including some of the 'rewarding' effects and some of the negative, aversive effects."

Going forward, Harris and his lab plan to use mice to observe how changes to the key protein affect behavior when the mice consume alcohol.

They're also hoping to identify other important proteins from this family of ligand-gated ion channels. In the long term, he hopes to be involved in developing drugs that act on these proteins in ways that help people diminish or cease their drinking.

"So why do some people drink moderately and some excessively?" he said. "One reason lies in that the balance between the rewarding and the aversive effects, and that balance is different for different people, and it can change within an individual depending on their drinking patterns. Some of those effects are determined by the interactions of alcohol and these channels, so the hope is that we can alter the balance. Maybe we can diminish the reward or increase the aversive effects."

###

University of Texas at Austin: http://www.utexas.edu

Thanks to University of Texas at Austin for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127966/Thanks_to_rare_alpine_bacteria__researchers_identify_one_of_alcohol_s_key_gateways_to_the_brain

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PFT: Rodgers gets extension, reportedly five years

AP

The Jets used a high second-round pick on quarterback Geno Smith.? G.M. John Idzik said that this development has only one meaning for Mark Sanchez.

?What this means for Mark is competition,? Idzik told the media on Friday night.

But are there plans to cut him, as reported by Adam Schefter of ESPN?

?There are plans to let him compete,? Idzik said.

Still, Idzik declined to say that this means Sanchez will get a chance to compete in training camp.? ?I look at that one day at a time,? Idzik said.

That?s a message Sanchez possibly hasn?t gotten from Idzik, because Idzik said the Jets haven?t talked to Sanchez on Friday, either before or after drafting a quarterback in round two.? (This directly conflicts with comments from Sanchez?s brother/agent, Nick, to Sal Paolantonio of ESPN.)

So the incumbent starting quarterback once again has been undermined via the acquisition of a new quarterback.? And the General Manager won?t commit to Sanchez being on the team when camp opens.

This may not end well, but it sure feels like, sooner than later, Sanchez?s time in New York will end.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/26/report-aaron-rodgers-gets-110-million-over-five-years/related/

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Iraqi soldiers regain control of Sunni town

(Ends first round) NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) - Selections in the first roundof the 2013 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday (picknumber, NFL team, player, position, college): 1-Kansas City, Eric Fisher, offensive tackle, Central Michigan 2-Jacksonville, Luke Joeckel, offensive tackle, Texas A&M 3-Miami (from Oakland), Dion Jordan, defensive tackle, Oregon 4-Philadelphia, Lane Johnson, offensive tackle, Oklahoma 5-Detroit, Ezekiel Ansah, defensive end, Brigham Young 6-Cleveland, Barkevious Mingo, linebacker, LSU 7-Arizona, Jonathan Cooper, guard, North Carolina 8-St. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraqi-soldiers-regain-control-sunni-town-100552489.html

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Senate passes bill to ease FAA furloughs

WASHINGTON (AP) ? With flight delays mounting, the Senate approved hurry-up legislation Thursday night to end air traffic controller furloughs blamed for inconveniencing large numbers of travelers.

A House vote on the measure was expected as early as Friday, with lawmakers eager to embark on a weeklong vacation.

Under the legislation, which the Senate passed without even a roll call vote, the Federal Aviation Administration would gain authority to transfer up to $253 million from accounts that are flush into other programs, to "prevent reduced operations and staffing" through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

In addition to restoring full staffing by controllers, Senate officials said the available funds should be ample enough to prevent the closure of small airport towers around the country. The FAA has said it will shut the facilities as it makes its share of $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts ? known as the sequester ? that took effect last month at numerous government agencies.

The Senate acted as the FAA said there had been at least 863 flights delayed on Wednesday "attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furlough."

Administration officials participated in the negotiations that led to the deal and evidently registered no objections.

After the vote, White House press secretary Jay Carney said, "It will be good news for America's traveling public if Congress spares them these unnecessary delays. But ultimately, this is no more than a temporary Band-Aid that fails to address the overarching threat to our economy posed by the sequester's mindless, across-the-board cuts."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a key participant in the talks, said the legislation would "prevent what otherwise would have been intolerable delays in the air travel system, inconveniencing travelers and hurting the economy."

Senate approval followed several hours of pressure-filled, closed-door negotiations, and came after most senators had departed the Capitol on the assumption that the talks had fallen short.

Officials said a small group of senators insisted on a last-ditch effort at an agreement before Congress adjourned for a vacation that could have become politically problematic if the flight delays continued.

"I want to do it right now. There are other senators you'd have to ask what the hang-up is," Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said at a point when it appeared no compromise would emerge.

For the White House and Senate Democrats, the discussions on legislation relating to one relatively small slice of the $85 billion in spending cuts marked a shift in position in a long-running struggle with Republicans over budget issues. Similarly, the turn of events marked at least modest vindication of a decision by the House GOP last winter to finesse some budget struggles in order to focus public attention on the across-the-board cuts in hopes they would gain leverage over President Barack Obama.

The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, a union that represents FAA employees, reported a number of incidents it said were due to the furloughs.

In one case, it said several flights headed for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York were diverted on Wednesday when a piece of equipment failed. "While the policy for this equipment is immediate restoral, due to sequestration and furloughs it was changed to next-day restoral," the union said.

It added it was "learning of additional impacts nationwide, including open watches, increased restoration times, delays resulting from insufficient funding for parts and equipment, modernization delays, missed or deferred preventative maintenance, and reduced redundancy."

The airlines, too, were pressing Congress to restore the FAA to full staffing.

In an interview Wednesday, Robert Isom, chief operations officer of US Airways, likened the furloughs to a "wildcat regulatory action."

He added, "In the airline business, you try to eliminate uncertainty. Some factors you can't control, like weather. It (the FAA issue) is worse than the weather."

In a shift, first the White House and then senior Democratic lawmakers have signaled a willingness in the past two days to support legislation that alleviates the budget crunch at the FAA, while leaving the balance of the $85 billion to remain in effect.

Obama favors a comprehensive agreement that replaces the entire $85 billion in across-the-board cuts as part of a broader deficit-reduction deal that includes higher taxes and spending cuts.

One Senate Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, noted that without the type of comprehensive deficit deal that Obama favors, a bill that eases the spending crunch at the FAA would inevitably be followed by other single-issue measures. She listed funding at the National Institutes of Health as one example, and cuts that cause furloughs of civilians who work at military hospitals as a second.

At the same time, Democratic aides said resolve had crumbled under the weight of widespread delays for the traveling public and pressure from the airlines.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., involved in the discussions, said the issue was big enough so "most people want to find a solution as long as it doesn't spend any more money."

Officials estimate it would cost slightly more than $200 million to restore air traffic controllers to full staffing, and another $50 million to keep open smaller air traffic towers around the country that the FAA has proposed closing.

Across the Capitol, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said, "We're willing to look at what the Senate's going to propose."

He said he believes the FAA has the authority it needs under existing law to shift funds and end the furloughs of air traffic controllers, and any legislation should be "very, very limited" and direct the agency to use the flexibility it already has.

In a reflection of the political undercurrents, another House Republican, Rep. James Lankford of Oklahoma, said FAA employees "are being used as pawns by this (Obama) administration to be able to implement the maximum amount of pain on the American people when it does not have to be this way."

The White House and congressional Democrats vociferously dispute such claims.

___

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy, Henry C. Jackson and Alan Fram in Washington and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-passes-bill-ease-faa-furloughs-005441034--politics.html

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Scientists detect 'dark lightning' energy burst linked to visible lightning

Apr. 24, 2013 ? Researchers have identified a burst of high-energy radiation known as 'dark lightning" immediately preceding a flash of ordinary lightning. The new finding provides observational evidence that the two phenomena are connected, although the exact nature of the relationship between ordinary bright lightning and the dark variety is still unclear, the scientists said.

"Our results indicate that both these phenomena, dark and bright lightning, are intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning," said Nikolai ?stgaard, who is a space scientist at the University of Bergen in Norway and led the research team.

He and his collaborators describe their findings in an article recently accepted in Geophysical Research Letters -- a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.

Dark lightning is the most energetic radiation produced naturally on Earth, but was unknown before 1991. While scientists now know that dark lightning naturally occurs in thunderstorms, they do not know how frequently these flashes take place or whether visible lightning always accompanies them.

In 2006, two independent satellites -- one equipped with an optical detector and the other carrying a gamma ray detector -- coincidentally flew within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of a Venezuelan storm as a powerful lightning bolt exploded within a thundercloud. Scientists were unaware then that a weak flash of dark lightning had preceded the bright lightning.

But last year, ?stgaard and his colleagues discovered the previously unknown gamma ray burst while reprocessing the satellite data. "We developed a new, improved search algorithm?and identified more than twice as many terrestrial gamma flashes than originally reported," said ?stgaard. He and his team detected the gamma ray flash and a discharge of radio waves immediately preceding the visible lightning.

"This observation was really lucky," ?stgaard said. "It was fortuitous that two independent satellites -- which are traveling at 7 kilometers per second (4.3 miles per second) -- passed right above the same thunderstorm right as the pulse occurred." A radio receiver located 3,000 kilometers (1864 miles) away at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina detected the radio discharge.

The satellites' observations combined with radio-wave data provided the information that ?stgaard and his team used to reconstruct this ethereal electrical event, which lasted 300 milliseconds.

?stgaard and his team suspect that the flash of dark lightning was triggered by the strong electric field that developed immediately before the visible lightning. This strong field created a cascade of electrons moving at close to the speed of light. When those relativistic electrons collided with air molecules, they generated gamma rays and lower energy electrons that were the main electric current carrier that produced the strong radio pulse before the visible lightning.

Dark and bright lightning may be intrinsic processes in the discharge of lightning, ?stgaard said, but he stressed that more research needs to be done to elucidate the link.

The European Space Agency is planning on launching the Atmospheric Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) within the next three years, which will be able to better detect both dark and visible lightning from space, said ?stgaard, who is part of the team that is building the ASIM gamma-ray detector.

Dark lightning has remained a perplexing phenomenon due to scientific limitations and a dearth of measurements, ?stgaard explained.

"Dark lightning might be a natural process of lightning that we were completely unaware of before 1991," he noted. "But it is right above our heads, which makes it very fascinating."

A grant from the European Research Council and the Research Council of Norway funded this research.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Geophysical Union.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. N. ?stgaard, T. Gjesteland, B. E. Carlson, A. B. Collier, S. Cummer, G. Lu, H. J. Christian. Simultaneous observations of optical lightning and terrestrial gamma ray flash from space. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50466

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/xhX8u93o0HY/130424210319.htm

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New battery design could help solar and wind power the grid

Public release date: 24-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andy Freeberg
afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-4359
DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.

"For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient," said Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a SLAC/Stanford joint institute. "We believe our new battery may be the best yet designed to regulate the natural fluctuations of these alternative energies."

Cui and colleagues report their research results, some of the earliest supported by the DOE's new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research battery hub, in the May issue of Energy & Environmental Science.

Currently the electrical grid cannot tolerate large and sudden power fluctuations caused by wide swings in sunlight and wind. As solar and wind's combined contributions to an electrical grid approach 20 percent, energy storage systems must be available to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this "intermittent" power storing excess energy and discharging when input drops.

Among the most promising batteries for intermittent grid storage today are "flow" batteries, because it's relatively simple to scale their tanks, pumps and pipes to the sizes needed to handle large capacities of energy. The new flow battery developed by Cui's group has a simplified, less expensive design that presents a potentially viable solution for large-scale production.

Today's flow batteries pump two different liquids through an interaction chamber where dissolved molecules undergo chemical reactions that store or give up energy. The chamber contains a membrane that only allows ions not involved in reactions to pass between the liquids while keeping the active ions physically separated. This battery design has two major drawbacks: the high cost of liquids containing rare materials such as vanadium especially in the huge quantities needed for grid storage and the membrane, which is also very expensive and requires frequent maintenance.

The new Stanford/SLAC battery design uses only one stream of molecules and does not need a membrane at all. Its molecules mostly consist of the relatively inexpensive elements lithium and sulfur, which interact with a piece of lithium metal coated with a barrier that permits electrons to pass without degrading the metal. When discharging, the molecules, called lithium polysulfides, absorb lithium ions; when charging, they lose them back into the liquid. The entire molecular stream is dissolved in an organic solvent, which doesn't have the corrosion issues of water-based flow batteries.

"In initial lab tests, the new battery also retained excellent energy-storage performance through more than 2,000 charges and discharges, equivalent to more than 5.5 years of daily cycles," Cui said.

To demonstrate their concept, the researchers created a miniature system using simple glassware. Adding a lithium polysulfide solution to the flask immediately produces electricity that lights an LED. (see video)

A utility version of the new battery would be scaled up to store many megawatt-hours of energy.

In the future, Cui's group plans to make a laboratory-scale system to optimize its energy storage process and identify potential engineering issues, and to start discussions with potential hosts for a full-scale field-demonstration unit.

###

SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit http://www.slac.stanford.edu.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

Citation: Yuan Yang, Guangyuan Zheng and Yi Cui, Energy Environ. Sci., 2013 (10.1039/C3EE00072A)

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 24-Apr-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andy Freeberg
afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu
650-926-4359
DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.

"For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient," said Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a SLAC/Stanford joint institute. "We believe our new battery may be the best yet designed to regulate the natural fluctuations of these alternative energies."

Cui and colleagues report their research results, some of the earliest supported by the DOE's new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research battery hub, in the May issue of Energy & Environmental Science.

Currently the electrical grid cannot tolerate large and sudden power fluctuations caused by wide swings in sunlight and wind. As solar and wind's combined contributions to an electrical grid approach 20 percent, energy storage systems must be available to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this "intermittent" power storing excess energy and discharging when input drops.

Among the most promising batteries for intermittent grid storage today are "flow" batteries, because it's relatively simple to scale their tanks, pumps and pipes to the sizes needed to handle large capacities of energy. The new flow battery developed by Cui's group has a simplified, less expensive design that presents a potentially viable solution for large-scale production.

Today's flow batteries pump two different liquids through an interaction chamber where dissolved molecules undergo chemical reactions that store or give up energy. The chamber contains a membrane that only allows ions not involved in reactions to pass between the liquids while keeping the active ions physically separated. This battery design has two major drawbacks: the high cost of liquids containing rare materials such as vanadium especially in the huge quantities needed for grid storage and the membrane, which is also very expensive and requires frequent maintenance.

The new Stanford/SLAC battery design uses only one stream of molecules and does not need a membrane at all. Its molecules mostly consist of the relatively inexpensive elements lithium and sulfur, which interact with a piece of lithium metal coated with a barrier that permits electrons to pass without degrading the metal. When discharging, the molecules, called lithium polysulfides, absorb lithium ions; when charging, they lose them back into the liquid. The entire molecular stream is dissolved in an organic solvent, which doesn't have the corrosion issues of water-based flow batteries.

"In initial lab tests, the new battery also retained excellent energy-storage performance through more than 2,000 charges and discharges, equivalent to more than 5.5 years of daily cycles," Cui said.

To demonstrate their concept, the researchers created a miniature system using simple glassware. Adding a lithium polysulfide solution to the flask immediately produces electricity that lights an LED. (see video)

A utility version of the new battery would be scaled up to store many megawatt-hours of energy.

In the future, Cui's group plans to make a laboratory-scale system to optimize its energy storage process and identify potential engineering issues, and to start discussions with potential hosts for a full-scale field-demonstration unit.

###

SLAC is a multi-program laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. Located in Menlo Park, California, SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. To learn more, please visit http://www.slac.stanford.edu.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

Citation: Yuan Yang, Guangyuan Zheng and Yi Cui, Energy Environ. Sci., 2013 (10.1039/C3EE00072A)

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/dnal-nbd042413.php

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Dems, GOP talk up deficit reduction, but don't act

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Liberals' loud objections to White House proposals for slowing the growth of huge social programs make it clear that neither political party puts a high priority on reducing the deficit, despite much talk to the contrary.

For years, House Republicans have adamantly refused to raise income taxes, even though U.S. taxes are historically low, and the Bush-era tax cuts were a major cause of the current deficit.

And now, top Democrats are staunchly opposing changes to Medicare and Social Security benefits, despite studies showing the programs' financial paths are unsustainable.

Unless something gives, it's hard to see what will produce the significant compromises needed to tame the federal debt, which is nearing $17 trillion.

"There's not much of an appetite for deficit reduction," said Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition, which pushes for "responsible fiscal policy."

There might be a few small steps this year, he said, when the government again needs to raise its borrowing limit. But a "grand bargain" involving significant spending cuts and revenue increases seems unlikely, Bixby said.

He added, "It's a little depressing to hear the reactions to the president's budget, from both sides."

There was nothing surprising about Republican denunciations of Obama's proposed tax increases, which he wants to combine with spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

The newer wrinkle was the left's sharp criticism of his proposals to slow the growth in Medicare and Social Security benefits, provided Republicans agree to new revenues. Obama has offered Republicans such a deal before. But this month's budget proposal gave it a new imprimatur.

The group MoveOn.org said Wednesday that supporters "who are outraged at President Obama's proposal to cut Social Security benefits will protest and deliver petitions" this week.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent from Vermont, is leading a similar petition drive, opposing "any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid." The deficit, his letter says, "was primarily caused during the Bush years by two unpaid-for wars, huge tax breaks for the rich and a prescription drug program" for Medicare, funded through borrowing. He suggests that higher taxes on the wealthy are the fairest way to tackle the deficit.

Democrats cite several reasons to raise taxes on high-income households. Obama campaigned for such tax increases in 2008 and 2012 but accomplished them only partially with the "fiscal cliff" resolution of Jan. 1.

Major tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 played big roles in turning a federal budget surplus into soaring deficits, according to research by the Congressional Budget Office and others. And by many measures, the U.S. tax burden in near historic lows.

Households earning roughly the national median income paid, on average, 11.1 percent of their income in total federal taxes in 2009, the most recent year for such data. That's the lowest level in more than 30 years, the CBO says.

Nonetheless, House Republicans have placed their highest priority on refusing to raise income tax rates, effectively ranking it above all other goals.

"The president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is fond of saying. It's a reference to the $620 billion in new revenues, over 10 years, that Republicans were unable to stop because of the "fiscal cliff" law, resolved on New Year's Day.

If it's easy to make a case for higher revenues, the same is true for slowing the growth of Social Security and Medicare benefits. For decades, studies have warned of approaching trouble in these popular but costly programs, as health care costs rise and baby boomers begin to retire.

"Both Medicare and Social Security cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing, and legislative modifications are necessary to avoid disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers," the Social Security Administration says, summarizing findings by the two programs' trustees.

"The early detection light has been going on for a while, and there has been a failure to act," Social Security trustee Charles P. Blahous recently told a House panel. If lawmakers are to preserve the programs for future retirees, he said, they will have to accept much more "political pain" than officials endured during a 1983 overhaul that included "several extremely controversial measures."

Obama has proposed an often-discussed step, which deals with government accounting in general, not just entitlement programs. If Congress agrees to higher tax revenues, the president said, he would back a slower growth calculation for cost-of-living increases for Social Security benefits, plus higher Medicare premiums for higher-income seniors.

Interest groups have criticized both ideas. AARP calls the slower cost-of-living formula a "harmful change," and urges seniors to oppose it.

American voters can largely blame themselves when Congress is more talk than action on deficit reduction. Americans routinely say they want a smaller federal debt, but not at the cost of programs they hold dear ? including Social Security and Medicare.

A CBS News poll in March found that most Americans want to cut spending and raise taxes to reduce the deficit. But 4 in 5 oppose cuts to Social Security or Medicare. And two-thirds are unwilling to have their own taxes raised in the name of deficit reduction.

When Pew Research asked which was more important ? reducing the national debt or keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are now ? the public sided with safeguarding the benefits programs, 53 percent to 36 percent.

The deficit-spending partisanship continued Wednesday. On a party-line vote, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans passed a bill to protect Social Security recipients and investors in Treasury bonds if the government hits its borrowing limit and can't pay all its bills later this year. Democrats say if the federal government starts reneging on any obligations ? even if it pays bondholders ? financial markets will lose faith and the economy will tank.

Some Democrats fear a lose-lose situation if they support Obama's proposals. First, they could be attacked from the left for tweaking the programs that many Democrats see as their party's greatest legacy. And second, Republicans might accuse them of "raiding Medicare" in next year's congressional elections. That battle cry proved effective in 2010 after Obama's health care overhaul bill was passed.

Democrats call such tactics shamelessly hypocritical. Republicans, they note, have long called for reining in entitlement spending.

Boehner rebuked a top GOP campaign figure for hinting at a renewal of the "raiding Medicare" attacks. But Reince Priebus, the national Republican Party chairman, seemed eager to revive the question of whether Democratic trims to Medicare's costs amount to an unfair cut in benefits.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-25-Budget%20Impasse/id-1c2bbd5f0fa8425582882f41f673ffeb

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Collapsed factory building in Bangladesh kills 87

A man who was trapped in an collapsed eight-story building housing several garment factories is reccued in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)

A man who was trapped in an collapsed eight-story building housing several garment factories is reccued in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)

Bangladeshi soldiers use an earthmover during a rescue operation at the site of a building that collapsed a building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. An eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed near Bangladesh?s capital on Wednesday, killing dozens of people and trapping many more under a jumbled mess of concrete. Rescuers tried to cut through the debris with earthmovers, drilling machines and their bare hands. (AP Photo/A.M.Ahad)

People and rescuers gather after an eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)

Relatives mourn a victim at the site after an eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)

People and rescuers gather after an eight-story building housing several garment factories collapsed in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Dozens were killed and many more are feared trapped in the rubble. (AP Photo/ A.M. Ahad)

SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) ? Rescuers tried to free dozens of people believed trapped in the concrete rubble after an eight-story building that housed garment factories collapsed, killing at least 87. Workers had complained about cracks in the structure before it came tumbling down, but were assured it was safe.

Searchers cut holes in the jumbled mess of concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights to those pinned inside the building near Bangladesh's capital of Dhaka.

"I gave them whistles, water, torchlights. I heard them cry. We can't leave them behind this way," said fire official Abul Khayer. Rescue operations illuminated by floodlights continued through the night.

The disaster came less than five months after a factory fire killed 112 people and underscored the unsafe conditions in Bangladesh's massive garment industry.

Workers said they had hesitated to go to into the building on Wednesday morning because it had developed such large cracks a day earlier that it even drew the attention of local news channels.

Abdur Rahim, who worked on the fifth floor, said a factory manager gave assurances that there was no problem, so employees went inside.

"After about an hour or so, the building collapsed suddenly," Rahim said. He next remembered regaining consciousness outside.

On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and "the culprits would be punished."

Among the textile businesses in the building were Phantom Apparels Ltd., New Wave Style Ltd., New Wave Bottoms Ltd. and New Wave Brothers Ltd., which make clothing for major brands including The Children's Place, Dress Barn, and Primark.

Jane Singer, a spokeswoman for The Children's Place, said that "while one of the garment factories located in the building complex has produced apparel for The Children's Place, none of our product was in production at the time of this accident."

"Our deepest sympathies go out to the victims of this terrible tragedy and their families," Singer said in a statement.

Dress Barn said that to its knowledge, it had "not purchased any clothing from that facility since 2010. We work with suppliers around the world to manufacture our clothing, and have a supply chain transparency program to protect the rights of workers and their safety."

Primark, a major British clothing retailer, confirmed that one of the suppliers it uses to produce some of its goods was located on the second floor of the building.

In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, Primark said it was "shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling incident." It added that it has been working with other retailers to review the country's approach to factory standards and will now push for this review to include building integrity.

Meanwhile, Primark's ethical trade team is working to collect information, assess which communities the workers come from, and to provide support "where possible."

John Howe, Cato's chief financial officer and executive vice president, told The Associated Press that it didn't contract with any of the factories directly but it's currently investigating what its "ties" were.

Howe said that one of Cato's domestic importers could have used one of the factories to fulfill some of the orders the retailer had placed. It's expected to have more information by Thursday.

Spanish retailer Mango denied reports it was using any of the suppliers in the building. However, in an email statement to the AP, it said that there had been conversations with one of them to produce a batch of test products.

Kevin Gardner, a spokesman at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the second-largest clothing producer in Bangladesh, said the company is investigating to see if a factory in the building was currently producing for the chain.

"We remain committed and are actively engaged in promoting stronger safety measures, and that work continues," Gardner added.

Workers said they didn't know what specific clothing brands were being produced in the building because labels are attached after the products are finished.

Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, which has an office in nearby Dhaka, says his staff is investigating the situation. He's hoping his team, working with local workers' groups, will be able to find out which brands were having their products made at the time of the collapse.

"You can't trust many buildings in Bangladesh," Kernaghan said. "It's so corrupt that you can buy off anybody and there won't be any retribution."

Sumi, a 25-year-old worker who goes by one name, said she was sewing jeans on the fifth floor with at least 400 others when the building fell.

"It collapsed all of a sudden," she said. "No shaking, no indication. It just collapsed on us."

She said she managed to reach a hole in the building where rescuers pulled her out.

Reports suggested the death toll was likely to rise.

"We sent two people inside the building, and we could rescue at least 20 people alive. They also told us that at least 100 to 150 people are injured and about 50 dead people are still trapped inside this floor," said Mohammad Humayun, a supervisor at one of the garment factories.

Tens of thousands of people gathered at the site, weeping and searching for family members. Firefighters and soldiers with drilling machines and cranes worked with volunteers to search for survivors.

An enormous section of the concrete structure appeared to have splintered like twigs. Colorful sheets of fabric were tied to upper floors so those inside could climb or slide down and escape.

Rescuers carried the body of a young boy from the building, but it was not immediately clear what he had been doing inside. The building, in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, housed a bank and various shops in addition to the garment factories.

An arm jutted out of one section of the rubble. A lifeless woman covered in dust could be seen in another.

Rahim said his mother and father, who worked with him in the factory, were trapped inside.

Mosammat Khurshida wailed as she looked for her husband. "He came to work in the morning. I can't find him," she said. "I don't know where he is. He does not pick up his phone."

Zahidur Rahman, a spokesman for Enam Medical College and Hospital, said Wednesday evening that 87 people had been confirmed dead. Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder said 600 people had been rescued.

The morgue of the medical college echoed with the sobs of people waiting for the bodies of their loved ones. "Where's my mother? Where's my mother? Tell me, tell me, oh Allah, oh Allah!" Rana Ahmed cried.

The November fire at the Tazreen garment factory drew international attention to working conditions in Bangladesh's $20 billion-a-year textile industry. The country has about 4,000 garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers. The industry wields vast power in the South Asian nation.

Tazreen lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built. Surviving employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go back to work after the fire alarm went off.

___

AP Retail Writer Anne D'Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-24-Bangladesh-Building%20Collapse/id-e719ec33dfb44be9a493a1cff133ed8e

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