Delegates of the Swiss Bible Society elected Seventh-day Adventist theologian Reto Mayer as the organization?s president during their May 24 meeting, making him the first Adventist appointed to the post in the society?s 58-year history.
Reto Mayer, right, was appointed as president of the Swiss Bible Society on May 24. The society promotes Bible translation and distribution in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. [photo courtesy SBS]
Mayer, associate treasurer of the Adventist world church?s Inter-European Division, based in Berne, Switzerland, has served as the society?s vice president since 2005. The Adventist Church joined the society in 1982.
?I hope that people see [the Bible] as an invitation from God, inviting them to live a personal relationship with Him,? Mayer told the Swiss Bible Society in a May 24 interview. ?The distribution of the Bible is close to my heart, so it's a pleasure for me to participate in this work."
The Swiss Bible Society was founded in in 1955 succeeding the former coalition of Swiss Bible Societies. Today, the society has 45 members, among others, cantonal evangelical-reformed churches, the Old-Catholic Church, independent evangelical churches, cantonal Bible societies, Christian societies and working groups in Switzerland that share the society?s charter of bible distribution.
The society promotes standards for translation, production and distribution of Bibles in Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein.
The Swiss Bible Society works with more than 146 national bible societies united as the global United Bible Societies to bring the Bible in easy and modern language and form closer to the people.
Parent input ignored in school closingsPublic release date: 30-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Muhammad Khalifa mkhalifa@msu.edu 517-432-9600 Michigan State University
EAST LANSING, Mich. Officials who close neighborhood schools in poor, urban areas often ignore parents' input, which only reinforces the "institutionalized racism that plagues U.S. schools," a Michigan State University scholar argues.
From Michigan to Texas, superintendents and school boards are closing dozens of urban schools based strictly on data such as low test scores and graduation rates and poor student attendance, Muhammad Khalifa, assistant professor of educational administration, found in his latest research.
What the officials fail to take into account are key factors such as teacher quality and lack of economic investment around the schools, Khalifa said. Further, when parents raise these and other concerns, their opinions frequently are ignored or discounted, he said.
"You can really see a trend across the country the areas where schools are being closed tend to be poorer areas with more minorities," said Khalifa, a former public school teacher and administrator in Detroit. "And the residents in these areas generally don't have a lot of political clout or money to get their voices heard."
Khalifa studied the proposed closing of a historically black high school in a large Southwestern city, interviewing both citizens and district officials, and found parents were not convinced by the administrators' "data-driven" plan to close the school.
According to the study, published in the research journal Urban Education, parents and administrators had vastly different ideas of what factors should be considered when closing a school.
Parents argued the school was an integral part of their neighborhood and that closing it would cripple an already vulnerable neighborhood. But when the residents expressed their concerns at community forums, district officials simply listened but did not respond, the study found.
Khalifa said the issue has flared in many other poor, urban areas where officials have closed or are trying to close schools with large minority populations, including Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit.
He said he's not suggesting struggling urban schools get a free pass. "You do have to hold schools accountable," he said.
But to do that, he said officials should consider a comprehensive set of factors including the voice of the community.
"When administrative decisions are made, those decisions should include more than just the data that historically has been considered," Khalifa said. "Those community voices that's also data. The underinvestment in the neighborhood is data. Teacher quality is data. And so on."
To help address the problem, Khalifa said school administrators should be trained to plan and communicate in a way that recognizes and respects all vested interests.
"To ignore community voices is to marginalize and delegitimize them," he writes in the study.
###
Khalifa's co-authors are Nimo Abdi from MSU and Michael Jennings, Felecia Briscoe and Ashley Oleszweski of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
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Parent input ignored in school closingsPublic release date: 30-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Muhammad Khalifa mkhalifa@msu.edu 517-432-9600 Michigan State University
EAST LANSING, Mich. Officials who close neighborhood schools in poor, urban areas often ignore parents' input, which only reinforces the "institutionalized racism that plagues U.S. schools," a Michigan State University scholar argues.
From Michigan to Texas, superintendents and school boards are closing dozens of urban schools based strictly on data such as low test scores and graduation rates and poor student attendance, Muhammad Khalifa, assistant professor of educational administration, found in his latest research.
What the officials fail to take into account are key factors such as teacher quality and lack of economic investment around the schools, Khalifa said. Further, when parents raise these and other concerns, their opinions frequently are ignored or discounted, he said.
"You can really see a trend across the country the areas where schools are being closed tend to be poorer areas with more minorities," said Khalifa, a former public school teacher and administrator in Detroit. "And the residents in these areas generally don't have a lot of political clout or money to get their voices heard."
Khalifa studied the proposed closing of a historically black high school in a large Southwestern city, interviewing both citizens and district officials, and found parents were not convinced by the administrators' "data-driven" plan to close the school.
According to the study, published in the research journal Urban Education, parents and administrators had vastly different ideas of what factors should be considered when closing a school.
Parents argued the school was an integral part of their neighborhood and that closing it would cripple an already vulnerable neighborhood. But when the residents expressed their concerns at community forums, district officials simply listened but did not respond, the study found.
Khalifa said the issue has flared in many other poor, urban areas where officials have closed or are trying to close schools with large minority populations, including Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit.
He said he's not suggesting struggling urban schools get a free pass. "You do have to hold schools accountable," he said.
But to do that, he said officials should consider a comprehensive set of factors including the voice of the community.
"When administrative decisions are made, those decisions should include more than just the data that historically has been considered," Khalifa said. "Those community voices that's also data. The underinvestment in the neighborhood is data. Teacher quality is data. And so on."
To help address the problem, Khalifa said school administrators should be trained to plan and communicate in a way that recognizes and respects all vested interests.
"To ignore community voices is to marginalize and delegitimize them," he writes in the study.
###
Khalifa's co-authors are Nimo Abdi from MSU and Michael Jennings, Felecia Briscoe and Ashley Oleszweski of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
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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.
May 30, 2013 ? Researchers from the Pasteur Institute, Lille, France have shown in a mouse model that interleukin-22 protects against bacterial superinfections that can arise following influenza. Their research is published in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Virology.
Influenza A viral infection can lead to primary pneumonia and, later on, to serious complications including secondary bacterial pneumonia and sepsis. Post-influenza bacterial superinfections that occur during seasonal epidemics and pandemics are of great concern to human health and impose a considerable socio-economic burden.
"It is therefore critical that we reach a better understanding of the causes of and potential treatments for post-influenza bacterial superinfection," says corresponding author Fran?ois Trottein.
"Mouse studies have revealed that impairment of the host innate immune defense, as well as lung damage caused by the virus are cardinal features of bacterial superinfection," says Trottein. The authors tested the hypothesis that interleukin-22, an important cytokine implicated in mucosal immunity, inflammation and tissue repair, might play an important role during influenza.
The authors show that several cell types belonging to the innate immune system produce interleukin-22 soon after infection. They also demonstrate that the lack of interleukin-22 aggravates the pathogenesis that develops in the lungs and in particular exacerbates epithelial damage caused by the virus. Furthermore, endogenous interleukin-22 displays a protective role during secondary bacterial (pneumococcus) infection in the mouse system.
Although the mechanisms sustaining the protective effect of interleukin-22 are not yet fully elucidated, the authors speculate that its beneficial effect is due to its role in the maintenance of epithelial integrity.
"If it works as well in humans, the production of interleukin-22 could confer a substantial benefit on patients having flu," says Trottein.
May 30, 2013 ? Leading world climate change experts have thrown cold water on the idea that planting trees can offset carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.
Professor Brendan Mackey of Griffith University Climate Change Response Program is the lead author of an international study involving researchers from Australia and the U.K. Their findings are reported in "Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy," published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
"While protecting and restoring natural forests is part of the solution, the reality is that for all practical purposes fossil fuel CO2 emissions are irreversible," Professor Mackey said.
The findings highlight the urgent need for policy-makers worldwide to re-think the issue as many decision-makers, national and internationally, assume that fossil fuel emissions can be offset through sequestering carbon by planting trees and other land management practices.
"There is a danger in believing that land carbon sinks can solve the problem of atmospheric carbon emissions because this legitimises the ongoing use of fossil fuels," Professor Mackey said.
The study found that protecting natural forests avoids emissions that would otherwise result from logging and land clearing while also conserving biodiversity. Restoring degraded ecosystems or planting new forests helps store some of the carbon dioxide that was emitted from past land use activities.
"These land management actions should be rewarded as they are an important part of the solution," Professor Mackay said.
"However, no amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves.
"Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia."
A major challenge facing tax reform that reduces itemized deductions to help pay for lower tax rates is that lots of middle-income people would lose at least some benefits, Gleckman writes.?
By Howard Gleckman,?Guest blogger / May 28, 2013
The exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building is shown in Washington. It is hard to imagine any base-broadening, rate-cutting tax reform plan that doesn?t include some cuts in preferences for middle-income taxpayers, Gleckman writes.
Susan Walsh/AP/File
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Two interesting new papers from the Congressional Research Service highlight a?major challenge faced by?any tax reform that reduces itemized deductions to help pay for lower tax rates?lots of middle-income people would lose at least some benefits from scaling back those deductions.
Skip to next paragraph Howard Gleckman
Howard Gleckman is a resident fellow at The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the author of Caring for Our Parents, and former senior correspondent in the Washington bureau of Business Week. (http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org)
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It isn?t a new lesson, but it is one that bears repeating. For instance,?a March 21 CRS paper?shows that in 2010 about 40 percent of all deductions were claimed by households making between $20,000 and $100,000, with 28 percent going to those making between $50,000 and $100,000. Nearly half of tax filers making between $50,000 and $100,000 claimed deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, and more than half deducted state and local taxes.
Those three deductions alone represent more than two-thirds of all itemized deductions. Thus, it is hard to imagine any base-broadening, rate-cutting reform plan that doesn?t include some cuts in those preferences. And taking that step threatens to make a lot of middle-income taxpayers very unhappy. As Bruce Bartlett (who tipped me off to the CRS papers in his?New York Times blog?this morning) notes, this may explain why so few tax reform plans ever identify a single tax preference they would target.
Of course, higher income people disproportionately benefit from many deductions. For instance, the Tax Policy Center?estimates?that households making $500,000 or more represent less than 1 percent of all taxpayers. Yet, CRS estimates they claim about 15 percent of all deductions.?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A privately owned asteroid mining firm, backed in part by Google Inc's founders, launched a crowd-funding project on Wednesday to gauge public interest in a small space telescope that could serve as a backdrop for personal photographs, officials said.
Planetary Resources, based in Bellevue, Washington, plans to build and operate telescopes to hunt for asteroids orbiting near Earth and robotic spacecraft to mine them for precious metals, water and other materials.
It also plans an educational and outreach program to let students, museums, armchair astronomers and virtual travelers share use of a telescope through an initiative on Kickstarter, a website used to raise funds for creative projects.
Planetary Resources aims to raise $1 million by June 30 to assess public appetite for participating in a space project. It expects to launch its first telescope in 2015.
For a pledge of $25, participants can make use of a "space photo booth" by sending a picture to be displayed like a billboard on the side of the telescope with Earth in the background. Its image would then be snapped by a remote camera and transmitted back.
Starting at $200, participants can use the telescope to look at an astronomical object.
The Kickstarter campaign complements the company's ongoing efforts to design and build its first telescope, called ARKYD. Investors include Google Chief Executive Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt, as well as Ross Perot Jr., chairman of the real estate development firm Hillwood and The Perot Group.
"All we are asking is for the public to tell us that they want something," company co-founder Eric Anderson told reporters during a webcast press conference on Wednesday.
"We're not going to spend our time and resources to do something if people don't want it and really the only way to prove that it's something people want is to ask them for money," he said.
Planetary Resources is not the first space startup to turn to crowd-funding. Colorado-based Golden Spike, which plans commercial human expeditions to the moon, has launched two initiatives on Indiegogo, another Internet-based funding platform.
Golden Spike exceeded a $75,000 goal to start a sister firm, called Uwingu, designed to funnel profits into space projects, but fell far short of a $240,000 target for spacesuits for Golden Spike's first moon run.
Hyper-V Technologies of Virginia turned to Kickstarter to raise nearly $73,000 to help develop a plasma jet electric thruster. STAR Systems in Phoenix, Arizona, raised $20,000 for work on a hybrid rocket motor for its suborbital Hermes spaceplane.
Last year, Washington-based LiftPort ended an $8,000 Kickstarter campaign with more than $100,000 to demonstrate how robots could climb a 1.2-mile long tether held aloft by a large helium balloon.
The company is working on an alternative space transportation system called a "space elevator" that uses tethers or cables instead of rockets.
"I think crowd-funding is a new kind of bike and people are trying and willing to ride it, some successfully, some not as successfully, but I think it's here to stay," said Golden Spike founder and planetary scientist Alan Stern.
"These companies like Kickstarter and Indiegogo and RocketHub, they seem to be some kind of marketing distribution system that lets people with an idea put it out there. Previously people didn't know how to do that except run an ad in a newspaper. It's a capability we just didn't have five years ago," Stern said.
TV evangelist Pat Robertson caused a stir this month when he told a female caller on "The 700 Club," who had been cheated on by her husband, that she should "stop talking about the cheating" and focus on why she's likely at fault for his infidelity.
Yahoo News asked women and men who have been cheated on (and who have cheated) to tell their stories and consider Robertson's remarks. Here are some excerpts from their first-person accounts they shared with us.
***
'A cheat is a cheat': In 2009, the job market was terrible in the United States, so my wife suggested I go back overseas. I had just come home from time in Iraq, and I didn't relish the idea of leaving my family again. But a man does what he has to. Feeding a family of eight isn't cheap.
We had been married for more than 20 years, and I trusted my wife. I knew she had cheated on me once in the time we had been married, but I had forgiven and moved on. I was a fool. A cheat is a cheat.
Six weeks before things fell apart, I had left the United States for a position in Kuwait. Then I got a phone call from my wife. She was filled with remorse. She told me she had not only cheated again but was in love and was going to see a lawyer about a divorce. She was sorry, never meant to hurt me, and it had just happened?all the usual stuff.
I listened to Pat Robertson's advice to a woman who called him about a cheating husband. In my educated opinion (my ex-wife educated me), Robertson's advice borders on insanity. His telling her to move on and forget may work (though I have doubts) if the marriage is important enough to both of them. His advice to make home so nice he won't do it again is lunacy. It's akin to your dog biting you, and you pet it and give it treats as a reward for misbehaving. Try this method and see if you don't get bit again. I did.
? Gregory Lovvorn, Alabama
***
Marriage now stronger after facing its ugly side: Pat Robertson says you should stop talking about adultery. Men are men and they will stray, and it is my job as a wife to keep them from straying.
Do I agree? In a way, I do agree with him. I do not agree that men are wanderers and we must entice them, but I do agree that it is important to stop talking about adultery.
I believe this because my husband cheated on me. I know the pain of betrayal, the embarrassment of being ashamed, and the anger that someone I loved could stab me in the back.
I remember the day I found out my husband had cheated on me. It was 1999, and I was 21, living in Joplin, Mo., and seven months into my first pregnancy. It was Thanksgiving night and I was forced to work. I do not remember the man's name, or even what he looks like. However, I will never forget what he said to me. I was working in a convenience store and he was a regular customer. He walked up to the counter and said, "You have always been so nice to me I feel I need to tell you the truth. My girlfriend is pregnant and your husband is the father."
That was what being nice got me?pain like I never knew. I felt as if I had been punched in the gut.
After I left Missouri with our 6-month-old son, I came to realize that I was also to blame. My husband felt as if he had failed me. His belief led him to wonder. We got back together in 2007. Accepting the truth, I was able to forgive him and trust him. I may never forget the pain I felt but I can say with all my heart that neither he nor I ever want to feel that pain again. Our marriage is stronger now because we faced the ugly side of life.
? Teresa McLaughlin, Missouri
***
Robertson's remarks are an embarrassment: First loves last forever, as far as I was concerned. It was 1980, and I was 16 and in love with a handsome 18-year-old Cuban. It seemed like a dream come true.
No hot steamy novel could compare to this. He was beyond handsome, with black soft curly hair, tanned skin that people pay for and a love of the wild side of life. As a quiet Catholic School girl who never indulged in the fast life or boyfriends, I thought there was no doubt he had my attention.
But since Day One, he had a roaming eye; his attitude was that a woman should only have one man, but a man?especially a Latin one?should have girlfriends on the side. It was almost like the "Goodfellas" movie in which the wife stays home with the kids and the hubby gets to go handle business with the "boys"?no questions asked.
So I asked no questions.
He roamed. I did not want to ever face the fact. He loved me too much, I thought. In his mind, he thought he was doing the right thing, the manly thing. It is a sad mindset that men to this day carry and share.
So, no, Pat Robertson, it was not my fault getting up every morning at 5 a.m. and cooking three squares, while taking care of two kids. I still can't figure out why he had to roam.
I am now happily married to a fireman. He has never given me any reason to doubt his fidelity or love. It is a relief to have him come straight home and not wander. It is a joy to have that romance in my life.
Robertson, shame on you; it's not the woman's fault. It's the fault of the cheater, who cannot keep his vows. Vows, to me, mean two people growing old together with no secrets and all loyalty and trust.
Robertson's remarks are an embarrassment to himself and to "The 700 Club." Still today it is perceived the little woman should remain home and not wonder, question, or think about where her husband is. After all, he is providing?or trying to in some cases. And if he happens to have a roaming eye or wanders, it's not his libido? It's something the little woman has done at home?
Apple is going to take the stage on June 10 at its Worldwide Developers Conference to announce a new version of iOS, the operating system that powers the iPhone and iPad.
This will be the first time we see an Apple event focused entirely on products since October. That's 230 days between product events, the longest gap in Apple's recent history.
The tech industry moves very quickly, and nothing proves that more than taking a look at how much has changed since Apple's last big product announcement.
PHOENIX (AP) ? Brittney Griner got the dunks in her debut, becoming the first WNBA player to do it twice in one game.
Elena Delle Donne had the better game and got the rout against the player picked ahead of her in the draft.
Delle Donne outplayed No. 1 overall draft Brittney Griner and had one of the best rookie debuts in WNBA history, scoring 22 points to lead the Chicago Sky to a 102-80 victory over the Phoenix Mercury on Monday.
"Today was absolutely amazing," said Delle Donne, whose debut was sixth-best in league history. "We came here to get a win and that's what we're leaving with."
The fans inside US Airways Center and on national TV tuned in to see Griner dunk and the Mercury's above-the-rim-playing center didn't disappoint, throwing down a one-hander early in the fourth quarter and a vicious two-handed in the closing minutes. That put her in select company, joining Candace Parker (twice) and Lisa Leslie as the only WNBA players to dunk in a regular-season game.
The double dunks turned out to be little more than a highlight-reel sideshow to the Sky's dominating performance.
Led by Delle Donne's 16 points, Chicago took advantage of Griner's early foul trouble and raced out to a 24-point lead halftime lead.
Even when Phoenix tried to make a run and Griner got her dunks, the Sky didn't fold, keeping the lead in double digits on the way to handing the Mercury their most lopsided home-opening loss.
Epiphanny Prince had 26 points and five assists, Courtney Vandersloot added 14 points and Delle Donne, No. 2 overall pick behind Griner, had eight rebounds for Chicago.
"I think it's a really good starting point for our team," Sky coach Pokey Chatman said.
Griner finished with solid numbers in her debut: 17 points, eight rebounds, four blocked shots and two history-making dunks.
The problem was that the 6-foot-8 center picked up her third foul with 2 1-2 minutes left in the first quarter and had with two points in nine first-half minutes.
Without Griner, the Mercury had trouble stopping Chicago inside and gave up too many offensive rebounds, allowing the Sky to build a huge lead that was never really threatened.
Diana Taurasi had 18 points and four assists, and Candice Dupree added 15 points for Phoenix.
"In the second half, she played well, but she can't do anything when she's on the bench," Mercury coach Corey Gaines said of Griner. "It's a learning experience."
Griner came into the WNBA with expectations unlike any other player in league history.
With a wingspan of 7-foot-4 and agility more like a much smaller player, Griner blocked more shots than anyone in NCAA history, man or woman, and changed the below-the-rim perception of women's basketball with 18 dunks.
Griner turned a national spotlight toward the WNBA and the Mercury in particular, adding a big piece to a team already loaded with stars like Taurasi, Penny Taylor and Dupree.
Griner's debut had downtown Phoenix buzzing with people and created an atmosphere inside US Airways Center like it was a playoff game.
Griner got off to a good start, racing past Chicago's Sylvia Fowles for a tip-in on the game's first possession and swatting Prince on a drive to the basket.
Delle Donne was the better player after that.
Griner didn't take another shot in the first half after picking up her third foul with 2 1-2 minutes left in the first quarter and sat the rest of the way.
Delle Donne showed off her versatility, scoring on drives, pull-up jumpers and a couple of 3-pointers, including one at the buzzer, to score 16 points by halftime.
Phoenix also had no answer for Prince, who hit 4 of 7 from 3-point range and had 14 points by halftime.
Chicago, taking advantage of Phoenix's shoddy defense and poor rebounding, hit 23 of 39 shots ? 6 of 10 from the arc ? and turning six offensive rebounds into 11 points for a 56-32 halftime lead.
"It was nice to see everybody come together and play very well," said Prince, who was 6 of 9 from 3-point range. "The passes went very well, we had assists, we had rebounds, we just clicked on everything."
The Mercury started to play better in the third quarter.
Griner scored on a three-point play with a turnaround to start the second half and swatted a shot in the post by Delle Donne. She scored again inside after missing an attempted skyhook ? a shot she learned from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ? and DeWanna Bonner hit a 3-pointer that cut Chicago's lead to 64-52 with 2 minutes left in the quarter.
The hole was just too big to come all the way back from.
Prince hit a couple more 3-pointers ? one set up by a wicked crossover ? and the Sky led 74-52 headed into the fourth quarter.
The only thing left in doubt was whether Griner could get her dunk.
She brought the crowd to its feet with her first one, taking a pass from Charde Houston for a make-it-look-easy one-hander. Griner induced a roar with her next one, scooping up a loose ball and throwing down a two-hander, hanging on the rim for effect.
Exciting as it was, the second dunk only cut Chicago's lead to 22.
"I wish it was in a win, but whenever I can dunk, the crowd got into it," Griner said.
Turned out, it was about all they had to cheer about.
The two teams won't play again until Sept. 11 in Chicago.
Published: Tuesday, May 28, 2013, 4:41?a.m. Updated 46 minutes ago
A riderless horse solemnly reminded observers at White Oak's Memorial Day parade that many who fought the nation's wars did not return, and many who did come home are no longer with us.
One of those is Cheryl Fox's brother Daniel J. Tomko, a Vietnam veteran who died on Oct. 2, 2005, from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange.
It was to honor his memory and that of his countless comrades that Fox led her horse, Bear, through the borough's streets.
Tomko served in the Signal Corps, his sister said, and once rescued his entire unit during a battle.
?My brother was so well liked by everyone,? she recalled. ?He got the accommodation award.?
Her brother loved horses, one of the reasons she started bringing Bear to parades two years ago.
Another reason was the passing of a horse belonging to her friend Carol Duffy, a retired mounted police officer in Pittsburgh who led her horse in parades.
?The parade was coming up and I had assisted my friend with her horse,? Fox said. ?I was told by parade organizers I should take my horse and go to the White Oak American Legion.?
Bear turned 18 on Monday, Fox said.
?Eighteen for a horse is better than it used to be,? Fox said. ?If he was a person, 18 would be middle aged.?
Fox's husband Terry assists with Bear.
?He does all this with me,? Cheryl Fox said. ?He is a Navy veteran, and is on Bear's right side during the parade.?
The riderless horse represents one of the Army's oldest and most evocative traditions.
?The horse is led behind the caisson wearing an empty saddle with the rider's boots reversed in the stirrups,? the Army's website says.
That indicates a warrior never will ride again. Fox said the practice dates back to Greek and Roman times.
?The person who is leading the horse is leading the deceased, who is waving good-bye,? Fox said.
Bear led the parade last year but walked further back on Monday. On his saddle pack were patches worn by Tomko's Signal Corps brigade. Fox wore a jacket that her brother brought back from Vietnam.
Army tradition is that a caparisoned horse ? adorned with a special cloth ? follows the casket at any funeral for a commissioned Army or Marine Corps officer of colonel or higher rank.
Patrick Cloonan is a staff writer for Trib Total Media.
He can be reached at 412-664-9161, ext. 1967, or pcloonan@tribweb.com.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have indicted the operators of digital currency exchange Liberty Reserve, accusing the Costa Rica-based company of helping criminals around the world launder more than $6 billion in illicit funds linked to everything from child pornography to software for hacking into banks.
The indictment unsealed on Tuesday said Liberty Reserve had more than a million users worldwide, including at least 200,000 in the United States, and virtually all of its business was related to suspected criminal activity.
"Liberty Reserve has emerged as one of the principal means by which cyber-criminals around the world distribute, store and launder the proceeds of their illegal activity," according to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Officials said authorities in Spain, Costa Rica and New York arrested five people on Friday, including the company's founder, Arthur Budovsky, and seized bank accounts and Internet domains associated with Liberty Reserve.
Digital currency is made up of transferable units that can be exchanged for cash. Over the past decade, its use has expanded, attracting attention from the media and Wall Street. The most widely known digital currency is called Bitcoin. Liberty Reserve's currency was not connected to Bitcoin.
The indictment detailed a system of payments that allowed users to open accounts with little information and move money around with anonymity.
The U.S. Treasury named Liberty Reserve under the USA Patriot Act as a company "specifically designed and frequently used to facilitate money laundering in cyber space."
That designation, the first against a virtual currency exchange, prohibits banks or other payment processors from doing any business with Liberty Reserve, even if it should reopen under a new name.
In addition to pornography and drug trafficking funds, Liberty Reserve's virtual currency was also used to anonymously buy and sell software designed to steal personal information, according to a statement from the U.S. Treasury.
Users could also buy malware programs designed to assault financial institutions, as well as lists of information from thousands of compromised personal accounts, the Treasury said.
In addition to Budovsky, his deputy, Azzedine El Amine was arrested, as was co-founder Vladimir Kats, and two technology designers, Maxim Chukarev and Mark Marmilev.
Two more company employees were still at large in Costa Rica according to officials: Ahmed Yassine Abdelghani and Allan Esteban Hidalgo Jimenez. According to the indictment, almost all of the men used the alias, Eric Paltz.
None of the men could be reached for comment.
According to the indictment, Liberty Reserve's currency unit was called the "LR." Users opened accounts at Liberty Reserve giving only a name, address and date of birth that the company made no attempt to verify.
Once a user had a Liberty Reserve account, he or she could use cash to purchase LRs from third-party exchange merchants, which traded LRs with each other in bulk and charged fees to make the exchanges between LRs and hard cash.
Liberty Reserve users could transfer the digital currency units called LRs to each other, to be redeemed in different parts of the world for cash using the third-party exchange companies.
The third party exchange companies provided the gateway to more conventional payment systems. According to information Liberty Reserve's archived web pages, the company had relationships at one time with at least 35 different exchange companies, some of which transferred cash back and forth to customers using PayPal, Western Union, MoneyGram, credit cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and CitiBank Global Money Transfer.
The indictment said Liberty Reserve did not collect any banking or transaction information from the third-party exchange companies. It also let its users hide their Liberty Exchange account numbers when making transactions, which offered another opportunity for the users to mask their true identities.
The company processed around 12 million financial transactions per year. Since it began operating in 2006, the indictment said, Liberty Reserve laundered over $6 billion in criminal proceeds.
On Tuesday, the company's website, www.libertyreserve.com, displayed the message: "This domain name has been seized by the United States Global Illicit Financial Team."
It was not clear whether the people arrested in Spain and Costa Rica would be extradited to the United States or when the two people arrested in Brooklyn, New York, would appear in court.
Regulatory obligations to combat money laundering have emerged as a major challenge to digital currency firms. The U.S. Treasury Department's anti-money laundering unit, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), issued guidance in March that labeled digital currency firms as money transmitters, thereby obliging them to enact anti-money laundering programs and register with FinCEN.
A top Bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, failed to register with FinCEN earlier this month and had its U.S. dollar accounts seized by authorities.
Over the past week, a Bitcoin unit has traded at around $130, according to the website Bitcoincharts.com.
(Reporting by Emily Flitter in New York; Additional reporting by Brett Wolf in St. Louis and Isabella Cota Schwarz in San Jose, Costa Rica and Matthew Goldstein in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Tim Dobbyn and Jan Paschal)
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) ? More than 4,000 Russian singers have performed outdoors in St. Petersburg with the aim of setting a world record for the largest choir.
The 4,335 singers of all ages and from nearly all of the city's professional and amateur choirs sang from the steps of St. Isaac's Cathedral before thousands of spectators under an intermittent rain.
The spectators, who closed their umbrellas with the start of Sunday's performance, sang along during the one-hour concert.
The 14 songs performed included some of the most popular and patriotic songs of Russia and the Soviet Union, including a hymn celebrating the country's victory in World War II.
Yulia Alshenina, whose daughter sang in the choir, said the concert was so moving she could not hold back her tears.
A federal court found that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio systematically violated the constitutional rights of immigrants through 'saturation' sweeps targeting Hispanics.
By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff writer / May 25, 2013
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks with the media in Phoenix in January. A federal judge ruled Friday that Arpaio's office systematically singled out Hispanics in its trademark immigration patrols.
Ross D. Franklin, File/AP
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A federal court on Friday found that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio systematically violated the constitutional rights of immigrants through "saturation" sweeps that ended up targeting people based on their appearance or perceived ancestry.
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The combative, colorful and controversial Mr. Arpaio has over the past decade come to define American anger over illegal immigration as he's aggressively pursued immigration lawbreakers in Arizona's most populous county, corralling a staggering 25 percent of all US immigration arrests per year.
But while Arpaio remains popular among many conservatives for stunts like investigating President Obama's birth certificate and issuing pink underwear to inmates, the court ruling can be seen as part of a broader pushback against aggressive immigration enforcement and growing momentum for a bipartisan solution to America's undocumented immigrant problem with implications both for illegal immigrants as well as Arpaio's own legacy.
The decision, which in essence agreed with an earlier lower court ruling, should be seen as "a warning to any agency trying to enforce 'show me your papers' [state laws] ? there is no exception in the Constitution for immigration enforcement," said Cecilia Wang, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, in a statement.
In the ruling, US District Court Judge Murray Snow told Arpaio and his deputies to stop using race and ancestry as reasons to stop or detain drivers in a tactic widely known as "saturation patrols."
"The great weight of the evidence is that all types of saturation patrols at issue in this case incorporated race as a consideration into their operations," Judge Snow said in a written ruling.
Tim Casey, the county's lawyer, maintained that race has never been the prevailing factor in making decisions about whom to stop.
"The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has always held the position that they never have used race and never will use race in making a law enforcement decision," Mr. Casey told Reuters, adding that Arpaio's office will "fully comply with the letter and spirit of this order."
But if the court ruling represents a victory for immigration advocates and a legal reversal for Arpaio, it's also clear that, even before the ruling, Arpaio had been losing support among more educated white voters even as opposition against him had galvanized among ascendant Hispanic voters, the Arizona Capital Times newspaper reported recently. Arpaio won reelection with only 50.7 percent of the vote last November, his lowest total.
?He was the most popular guy in the state, but he?s been on a long slow ride down,? Arizona political analyst Michael O?Neil told the newspaper.
Citing the bipartisan push for a federal solution to the undocumented immigrant problem as well as some states now moving toward allowing driver licenses for illegal immigrants, New York Times columnist Linda Greenhouse suggests that Arpaio, "representing for so long the leading edge of anti-immigration political activism, may by now have become the trailing edge."
But if Arpaio's law and order philosophy finds ultimate disfavor in the courts and society more broadly, he is also given wide credit for stepping up to push the porous border issue and in turn bolstering what has become a robust debate about one of the country's greatest conundrums.
In a 2011 debate with an immigration activist, Arpaio defended his enforcement of current immigration law, but also suggested that Washington get busy addressing reforms.
"If you don?t like the law, change the law,? Arpaio said at the time. ?Maybe more visas. Listen, my mother and father came here from Italy. People here from Mexico, South America and all over the world made this country great.?
Arpaio's embodiment of public anger about porous borders, notes Ms. Greenhouse, "has given way to "the (mostly) serious conversation going on now in Washington."
PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas (AP) ? Lindsey Wright didn't realize she finished with six straight 3s on her scorecard. She couldn't name the holes where she made her seven birdies on Saturday. She only knew she played some pretty good golf in the Bahamas LPGA Classic.
Wright had a 7-under 38 on the makeshift Ocean Club course and was atop the leaderboard midway through the second round.
Severe flooding earlier in the week left so much of the golf course under water that the LPGA Tour's only chance to finish the inaugural event was to use 12 holes over three rounds to reach the 36 holes necessary to make it official.
"I didn't know what was going on," Wright said. "I just play. That's probably how we should do it all the time."
Wright was at 8-under 82, a score that won't be found at any other golf tournament. What mattered was that it was the lowest one posted as the other half of the field was making their way around the jumbled route on a steamy day near Caribbean waters.
With everyone starting on the 10th hole, the final tee time was 4:20 p.m. EDT. It was critical to get the second round ? all of 24 holes ? completed to be able to finish on Sunday. Several players have U.S. Women's Open qualifying early next week.
Wright was one-shot clear of Eun-Hee Ji, who had a 5-under 40. Cristie Kerr hit the ball better and relied on her putting for a 5-under 40 that got her back into the mix. Kerr was two shots out of the lead, while Paula Creamer (42) was another shot behind.
Because of the severe flooding ? a foot of rain in about five hours Tuesday evening ? two holes were reduced to par 3s. The LPGA Tour considered returning No. 4 to its usual length of a par 5, and No. 2 back to a par 4. But the bunker right of the green on the fourth was still in poor shape, and officials thought it best to let the players continue on the same setup for two rounds.
The tour was considering replacing one hole with the par-5 18th.
Wright was asked about her birdies and went blank, so she summoned her caddie for details. The round was simple enough. The Australian hit the ball close and made a bunch of putts from the 12-foot range and closer, along with a chip-in from 25 feet left of the green on the 14th. She finished her round with a birdie on the par-4 eighth along the ocean when her ball struck the flag stick.
"I thought for a moment it had gone into the bunker, but it came straight down," she said of the tap-in birdie to close her day.
It hasn't been the smoothest week, though the tour wanted to at least try to play with two new sponsors ? Pure Silk and the Bahamas Tourism Ministry. Before heading out to her afternoon round Saturday, Catriona Matthew of Scotland said she used only six of her 14 clubs in the opening round.
"Look, the way I see it, it's the same for everyone," Wright said. "There's always complaining. You just can't have a tournament without that. I think it's a shame, because the course on Monday, Tuesday, it was brilliant. It's a shame we're playing 12 holes, but I think for the Bahamas and for Pure Silk, it's the right thing to do. We're here to play golf. We're not here to party. Do that early on in the week."
Kerr is coming off a win two weeks ago in Kingsmill and hopes to keep the momentum going as the tour heads into a big part of the season. There's three majors in the next few months, capped by a return to St. Andrews.
"It feels like a shootout," Kerr said. "We only have 12 holes every day, and you've got to go as low as you can. I did my job today."
Google Glass isn't even on sale yet and there is already a noticeable backlash against Google's first experiment in wearable computing. It's odd to see a product that was greeted with so much hype a year ago endure the love-hate cycle so quickly - even though there are only a few thousand units in the wild. Sure, we've done our share to popularize "glasshole" as a way to describe its users, but the backlash seems to go beyond the usual insidery tech circles.
It's not Dotcom's first foray into music. You might remember that star-studded MegaUpload song that was way, way catchier than it had any right to be. His verse in that is probably still the peak of his musical career, but this new jam is definitely...a song.
It's a bizarrely combative tune. Sure, it's not the first song to come with some "let me see your fucking hands"s or "get your ass out on the floor"s, but damned if these don't sound particularly and earnestly threatening; the annunciation on that f-bomb is crystal clear. Otherwise, it's no Daft Punk-style insta-classic, but it's not exactly unlistenable either. Oh and what the hell is up with that vocal fry? "Hands in the aiiiiiirrrrrr." What are you doing, man?
Whatever the case, I just hope that the classic Dotcom GIF makes it into the inevitable music video. By itself. On repeat. Forever. [Gizmodo France]
Google has been busy pushing ahead with plans to be a wired internet provider in the US with Google Fiber, and it looks like it's intent on being a major player in the wireless network business elsewhere in the world as well. According to a report out today from The Wall Street Journal, Google is currently in the midst of a "mutipronged effort" that would "fund, build and help run wireless networks in emerging markets such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia."
That effort would reportedly involve partnerships with local companies, and an emphasis on delivering wireless access to residents outside major cities, where wired internet remains unavailable -- Google, and Eric Schmidt in particular, have repeatedly talked about reaching the next five billion people. According to the WSJ, Google would provide its own "recently developed wireless technologies" for at least some of the networks, some of which are said to involve TV whitespace technology. For its part, Google is remaining mum on the matter, and it's not clear when we can expect the networks to actually roll out.
Gaucher disease causes debilitating and sometimes fatal neurodegeneration in early childhood. Recent studies have uncovered a link between the mutations responsible for Gaucher disease and an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease later in life. New research published online on May 23 in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism indicates that the neurodegeneration found in Gaucher disease stems from defects in processes that break down and remove unwanted material from cells. This defective trash removal in cells can lead to the toxic build-up of proteins found to be responsible for neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease, providing insight into the link between the two diseases.
Investigators found that in Gaucher disease, defects in the cell's trash removal processes lead to a build-up of dysfunctional mitochondria, the energy-producing components of cells. Without an effective source of energy, neurons cannot function normally and eventually die. The failure to remove unwanted cellular material also causes the build-up of a protein called alpha synuclein, which accumulates in a toxic form in the brain's nerve cells of patients with Parkinson's disease. "The findings may help to explain the increased risk of Parkinson's disease amongst people carrying Gaucher's gene defects," says senior author Dr. Michael Duchen of University College London in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Duchen and his colleagues made their discoveries by studying the properties of neurons in a mouse model of severe neuropathic Gaucher disease. "Our data show that routine clearance of dysfunctional mitochondria is a critical aspect of normal cell health, and the failure of this pathway initiates a destructive cycle that culminates in the accumulation of damaged mitochondria," says Dr. Duchen. The researchers suggest that these damaged mitochondria generate increased amounts of free radicals instigating a domino effect that causes further damage to the remaining mitochondria.
The findings suggest that treatment strategies that target the trash removal and mitochondrial functions of cells might be developed to benefit patients with Gaucher and Parkinson's diseases.
###
Cell Metabolism, Osellame et al.: "Mitochondria and quality control defects in a mouse model of Gaucher disease - links to Parkinson's Disease."
Cell Press: http://www.cellpress.com
Thanks to Cell Press for this article.
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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? The Senate has approved a proposal to expand the state's network of virtual school courses online and allow it to include more private courses.
The measure cleared the House earlier this month. It passed the Senate 26-5 late Wednesday night, but with modifications that will send it back to the House.
Supporters say it increases educational opportunities for students, especially those in small school districts who will be able to take courses online that aren't offered in their areas.
Opponents, including some teachers groups, worry the measure is really a voucher bill ? funneling public school funding to private interests ? because it allows for-profit companies to offer online courses.
But it contains limits on how many online courses students' can take and districts would have to pay for.
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Toronto-based startup MyShoebox is facing a time in which photo sharing announcements are thick and deep; Google unveiled its updated Google+ photos experience last week at I/O, and this week we seen pretty big announcements from Yahoo! around Flickr. Does that intimate MyShoebox, a photo-focused startup launching its version 2.0 product on the tail of those bits of news? Not really, says MyShoebox founder and CEO Steve Cosman.
May 23, 2013 ? Magnetars -- the dense remains of dead stars that erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation -- are some of the most extreme objects known in the Universe. A major campaign using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other satellites shows magnetars may be more diverse -- and common -- than previously thought.
When a massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses to form a neutron star, an ultradense object about 10 to 15 miles wide. The gravitational energy released in this process blows the outer layers away in a supernova explosion and leaves the neutron star behind.
Most neutron stars are spinning rapidly -- a few times a second -- but a small fraction have a relatively low spin rate of once every few seconds, while generating occasional large blasts of X-rays. Because the only plausible source for the energy emitted in these outbursts is the magnetic energy stored in the star, these objects are called "magnetars."
Most magnetars have extremely high magnetic fields on their surface that are ten to a thousand times stronger than for the average neutron star. New observations show that the magnetar known as SGR 0418+5729 (SGR 0418 for short) doesn't fit that pattern. It has a surface magnetic field similar to that of mainstream neutron stars.
"We have found that SGR 0418 has a much lower surface magnetic field than any other magnetar," said Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Science in Barcelona, Spain. "This has important consequences for how we think neutron stars evolve in time, and for our understanding of supernova explosions."
The researchers monitored SGR 0418 for over three years using Chandra, ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Swift and RXTE satellites. They were able to make an accurate estimate of the strength of the external magnetic field by measuring how its rotation speed changes during an X-ray outburst. These outbursts are likely caused by fractures in the crust of the neutron star precipitated by the buildup of stress in a relatively strong, wound-up magnetic field lurking just beneath the surface.
"This low surface magnetic field makes this object an anomaly among anomalies," said co-author GianLuca Israel of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. "A magnetar is different from typical neutron stars, but SGR 0418 is different from other magnetars as well."
By modeling the evolution of the cooling of the neutron star and its crust, as well as the gradual decay of its magnetic field, the researchers estimated that SGR 0418 is about 550,000 years old. This makes SGR 0418 older than most other magnetars, and this extended lifetime has probably allowed the surface magnetic field strength to decline over time. Because the crust weakened and the interior magnetic field is relatively strong, outbursts could still occur.
The case of SGR 0418 may mean that there are many more elderly magnetars with strong magnetic fields hidden under the surface, implying that their birth rate is five to ten times higher than previously thought.
"We think that about once a year in every galaxy a quiet neutron star should turn on with magnetar-like outbursts, according to our model for SGR 0418," said Jos? Pons of the University of Alacant in Spain. "We hope to find many more of these objects."
Another implication of the model is that the surface magnetic field of SGR 0418 should have once been very strong at its birth a half million years ago. This, plus a possibly large population of similar objects, could mean that the massive progenitor stars already had strong magnetic fields, or these fields were created by rapidly rotating neutron stars in the core collapse that was part of the supernova event.
If large numbers of neutron stars are born with strong magnetic fields then a significant fraction of gamma-ray bursts might be caused by the formation of magnetars rather than black holes. Also, the contribution of magnetar births to gravitational wave signals -- ripples in space-time -- would be larger than previously thought.
The possibility of a relatively low surface magnetic field for SGR 0418 was first announced in 2010 by a team with some of the same members. However, the scientists at that time could only determine an upper limit for the magnetic field and not an actual estimate because not enough data had been collected.
SGR 0418 is located in the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of about 6,500 light years from Earth. These new results on SGR 0418 appear online and will be published in the June 10, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.
For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra
For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit: http://chandra.si.edu
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Toronto-based startup MyShoebox is facing a time in which photo sharing announcements are thick and deep; Google unveiled its updated Google+ photos experience last week at I/O, and this week we seen pretty big announcements from Yahoo! around Flickr. Does that intimate MyShoebox, a photo-focused startup launching its version 2.0 product on the tail of those bits of news? Not really, says MyShoebox founder and CEO Steve Cosman.