Cowboys, Romo agree on 6-year, $108M extension

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) ? Tony Romo has a chance to start for the Dallas Cowboys longer than Roger Staubach or Troy Aikman. The question is whether he will ever match their Super Bowl pedigrees.

Romo signed a six-year contract extension worth $108 million Friday, with about half of that guaranteed to make him the highest-paid player in franchise history.

The agreement, reported on the team's website, will lower the quarterback's salary cap number for 2013 by about $5 million, giving the team more room to sign free agents and draft picks.

Romo, who turns 33 next month and was entering the final year of his contract, gets $55 million guaranteed.

Super Bowl winner Joe Flacco got $52 million guaranteed in the six-year, $120.6 million contract he signed with Baltimore earlier this month.

"I think it's just exciting more than anything that you know you're going to be here the rest of my career," Romo said in a video on the team's website that showed owner Jerry Jones exchanging high-fives with Romo's nearly 1-year-old son. "We're a team on the rise and I think it's going to show here going forward."

Romo could be with Dallas through 2019, giving him a chance to be the starter longer than the 11 seasons of Aikman and seven of Staubach, who was a part-time starter his first four years with the Cowboys.

Aikman and Staubach won five Super Bowls between them, while Romo has just one playoff win in six full seasons as the starter. He had a gut-wrenching playoff loss the year he took over midseason in 2006, flubbing the hold after driving the Cowboys into position for the go-ahead field goal in the final minutes.

Romo alluded to changes "behind the scenes" in the interview on the team's website, and Jones said in a statement that his quarterback will have "a significant level of input and contribution to the planning and implementing of our offensive approach ? both in the meeting room and on the field."

"Tony is uniquely qualified to lead this team at the quarterback position for the next several years," Jones said. "He knows how to run an offense and run a team."

Romo lost playoff-or-bust games in regular-season finales the past two years. That included a loss to Washington last season when Romo threw an interception with a chance to tie or win the game with a drive in the final 3 minutes.

A former Romo rival, Donovan McNabb, questioned the deal on Twitter.

"Wow really, with one playoff win," McNabb wrote. "You got to be kidding me."

Dez Bryant, who teamed with Romo for career highs of 1,382 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns in 2012, tweeted, "Congrats Big Tony on the contract extension."

Romo is the franchise leader in touchdown passes and the single-season leader in touchdowns, passing yards, completions and attempts. He had a career-high 4,903 passing yards in 2012 but matched his highest interception total at 19 and had his lowest quarterback rating at 90.5 rating.

His best rating of 102.5 came in 2011, when the Cowboys lost to the New York Giants with a playoff berth on the line in the finale. His other best season was 2009, which included his only playoff win against Philadelphia.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cowboys-romo-agree-6-108m-extension-211647794--nfl.html

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Business, labor get deal on worker program

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Big business and labor have struck a deal on a new low-skilled worker program, removing the biggest hurdle to completion of sweeping immigration legislation allowing 11 million illegal immigrants eventual U.S. citizenship, labor and Senate officials said Saturday.

The agreement was reached in a phone call late Friday night with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, U.S. Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue, and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who's been mediating the dispute.

The deal resolves disagreements over wages for the new workers and which industries would be included. Those disputes had led talks to break down a week ago, throwing into doubt whether Schumer and seven other senators crafting a comprehensive bipartisan immigration bill would be able to complete their work as planned.

The deal must still be signed off on by the other senators working with Schumer, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, but that's expected to happen, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity. With the agreement in place, the senators are expected to unveil their legislation the week of April 8. Their measure would secure the border, crack down on employers, improve legal immigration and create a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already here.

It's a major second-term priority of President Barack Obama's and would usher in the most dramatic changes to the nation's faltering immigration system in more than two decades.

"The strength of the consensus across America for just reform has afforded us the momentum needed to forge an agreement in principle to develop a new type of employer visa system," Trumka said in a statement late Saturday. "We expect that this new program, which benefits not just business, but everyone, will promote long overdue reforms by raising the bar for existing programs."

Schumer said: "This issue has always been the dealbreaker on immigration reform, but not this time."

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, longtime antagonists over temporary worker programs, had been fighting over wages for tens of thousands of low-skilled workers who would be brought in under the new program to fill jobs in construction, hotels and resorts, nursing homes and restaurants, and other industries.

Under the agreement, a new "W'' visa program would go into effect beginning April 1, 2015, according to an AFL-CIO fact sheet.

In year one of the program, 20,000 workers would be allowed in; in year two, 35,000; in year three, 55,000; and in year four, 75,000. Ultimately the program would be capped at 200,000 workers a year, but the number of visas would fluctuate, depending on unemployment rates, job openings, employer demand and data collected by a new federal bureau pushed by the labor movement as an objective monitor of the market. One-third of all visas in any year would go to businesses with under 25 workers.

A "safety valve" would allow employers to exceed the cap if they can show need and pay premium wages, but any additional workers brought in would be subtracted from the following year's cap.

The workers could move from employer to employer and would be able to petition for permanent residency after a year, and ultimately seek U.S. citizenship. Neither is possible for temporary workers now.

The new program would fill needs employers say they have that are not currently met by U.S. immigration programs. Most industries don't have a good way to hire a steady supply of foreign workers because there's one temporary visa program for low-wage nonagricultural workers but it's capped at 66,000 visas per year and is only supposed to be used for seasonal or temporary jobs.

Business has sought temporary worker programs in a quest for a cheaper workforce, but labor has opposed the programs because of concerns over working conditions and the effect on jobs and wages for U.S. workers. The issue helped sink the last major attempt at immigration overhaul in 2007, which the AFL-CIO opposed partly because of temporary worker provisions, and the flare-up earlier this month sparked concerns that the same thing would happen this time around. Agreement between the two traditional foes is one of many indications that immigration reform has its best chance in years in Congress this year.

After apparent miscommunications earlier this month between the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce on the wage issue, the deal resolves it in a way both sides are comfortable with, officials said.

Workers would earn actual wages paid to American workers or the prevailing wages for the industry they're working in, whichever is higher. The Labor Department would determine prevailing wage based on customary rates in specific localities, so that it would vary from city to city.

There also had been disagreement on how to handle the construction industry, which unions argue is different from other industries in the new program because it can be more seasonal in nature and includes a number of higher-skilled trades. The official said the resolution will cap at 15,000 a year the number of visas that can be sought by the construction industry.

Schumer called White House chief of staff Denis McDonough on Saturday to inform him of the deal, the person with knowledge of the talks said. The three principals in the talks ? Trumka, Donohue and Schumer ? agreed they should meet for dinner soon to celebrate, the person said.

However, in a sign of the delicate and uncertain negotiations still ahead, Rubio sent a letter Saturday to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., calling for a deliberate hearing process on the new legislation and cautioning against a "rush to legislate." Rubio and a number of other Republicans are striking a tricky balance as they simultaneously court conservative and Hispanic voters on the immigration issue.

Separately, the new immigration bill also is expected to offer many more visas for high-tech workers, new visas for agriculture workers, and provisions allowing some agriculture workers already in the U.S. a speedier path to citizenship than that provided to other illegal immigrants, in an effort to create a stable agricultural workforce.

___

Follow Erica Werner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericawerner

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/business-labor-deal-worker-program-004139778.html

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MongoDB Gets Better Security, Text Search, Performance ... - InfoQ

MongoDB 2.4 was recently released with new features such as Text Search, hash-based sharding, better geo-spatial capabilities with GeoJSON support and several performance and tooling improvements. We also discussed with 10gen about what?s next on the roadmap.

Some of the key improvements are as follows ?

• Text Search is introduced as a beta-feature, supporting stemming and tokenization in 15 languages
• Hash-based sharding, for cases where data spread across any natural sharding key cannot be easily predicted
• Geo-spatial indexes with GeoJSON support
• Security Improvements ? new modular authentication system, integration with Kerberos, Role-based Access control
• Several Performance improvements, significant ones for some specific scenarios such as Count or Aggregation
• V8 as the default JavaScript engine in the mongo shell (replaces SpiderMonkey); leads to performance and concurrency improvements for JavaScript based actions
• Additional metrics for monitoring cluster status

10gen also introduced an enterprise version of MongoDB along with the 2.4 release.?

We got in touch with Kelly Stirman, director of product marketing at 10gen, to know more about the new features and what to expect next.

Kelly explains why collection-level locks may not make sense for MongoDB ?

The improvements to lock yielding in 2.2 provide substantial benefits to write throughput by reducing lock contention. There was a good write up on this subject by David Mytton.

MongoDB 2.4 does not include any additional granularity of locks beyond the improvements provided in 2.0 and 2.2. We are considering document-level locks for 2.6. The lock yielding improvements were substantial enough that collection-level locks might not provide a major additional improvement, and so document-level locks may be the next step.

About when to use range-based sharding instead of the the new hash-based sharding -

When using range-based sharding, if your application requests data based on a shard key range, then those queries will be routed to the appropriate shards, which is typically just one shard, or perhaps a few shards. The same query in a system that has used hash-based sharding will route the request to a greater number of shards, perhaps all the shards. Ideally, queries are routed to a single shard or as few shards as possible as this scales better than routing all queries to all shards. So, if you understand your data and queries well, it is possible range-based sharding is the best option.

With MongoDB 2.4, Counts can be up to 20x faster, and the Aggregation Framework is 3 - 5 times faster on average. Kelly explains that the improved count performance relies on some improvements to traversing the B-trees in MongoDB ? low cardinality index-based counts are where you see the biggest improvements. The improvements to the Aggregation Framework are a reflection of many smaller changes in MongoDB internal implementation that add up to big benefits.

On what?s coming next in the enterprise features ?

MongoDB 2.4 makes some major steps forward in the areas of security and monitoring, but we have much more planned for future releases. We think of security along the dimensions of authentication, authorization, and auditing. Future releases of MongoDB will continue to focus in these areas, and we will continue to enhance the tooling we provide with MongoDB. MongoDB Monitoring Service (MMS) has been hugely popular in the MongoDB community with over 15,000 users and growing quickly. We will continue to invest in MMS and to provide both free, cloud-based tools as well as on-prem offerings as part of our Enterprise subscriptions.

You can read more about the new features in MongoDB 2.4 in the release notes?as well as the overview.??

Source: http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/03/mongodb-2-4

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EPA proposes tighter fuel, emissions standards; could push price of gas higher

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Automobiles pass by giant wind turbines powered by strong winds in Palm Springs, Calif.

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

The Obama administration on Friday frustrated the oil industry by proposing tighter restrictions on sulfur in gasoline and pollution from cars and trucks ? rules that the government said would be equivalent to taking 33 million tailpipes off American roads but that angered the oil industry.

The?Environmental Protection Agency estimates the regulations would have almost no effect on the price of gas, but the industry, citing its own research, said the price could be driven higher by as much as 9 cents per gallon.

The proposed rules were reportedly delayed until after the election because of concern over their tricky politics.

Environmental groups called the restrictions a strong step to protect public health. The administration said the standards would prevent as many as 2,400 deaths a year and save $8 billion to $23 billion a year in health costs by 2030.

Car companies also support the restrictions in part because they create a nationwide standard for sulfur, cutting production costs.

?The only ones against these standards are the oil companies,? said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club.

The main trade group for the refiners, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said the standards were ?completely without merit? and too burdensome for the industry.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil companies, said the rules were part of a ?tsunami of federal regulations,? and would ultimately raise greenhouse-gas emissions because of the energy-eating equipment it will take to bring refineries in line.

?We urge the administration to bring common sense back into the regulatory process,? said Bob Greco, director of the API?s Downstream Group. ?Unnecessary regulations just mean higher costs and lost jobs.?

The Obama administration has already required the auto industry to double fuel efficiency by 2025.

In every state but California, gas can contain sulfur at a measurement of up to 30 parts per million. The proposed rule would reduce the nationwide limit to 10, bringing the other 49 states in line with California.

Sulfur in gas makes catalytic converters less effective, and when catalytic converters are less effective, cars produce more of the gases and fine particles that cause harmful smog and soot.

In addition, the EPA wants to reduce tailpipe emissions beginning in 2017 ? cutting certain smog-forming chemical compounds by 80 percent and harmful particulates by 70 percent.

Car prices could be driven higher by $130, the EPA estimated.

House Republicans lined up against the idea and vowed to review it. Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, chair of the House subcommittee on energy and power, said the administration ?cannot be more out of touch.?

Citing EPA research, deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One that the impact on the price of gas would probably be a penny or less.

Trading that ?for tens of thousands fewer cases of respiratory ailments like asthma in children and thousands of lives saved is an indication that they?ve done a lot of work on this and a lot of analysis,? he said. ?But again, we?re in the proposal stage, not in the final rulemaking stage.?

The precise impact on the price of gas from the restrictions proposed Friday is impossible to predict, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service and GasBuddy.com, which tracks gas prices around the country.

Since the beginning of last year, refiners in North America have had it pretty good: They have enjoyed the cheapest natural gas in the world and, from Canada, cheap shale oil. That has meant fatter profit margins.

Several years ago, though, when prices were higher, refinery closures were common. And if refineries are under pressure as they are asked to convert to the new sulfur standards in five years, more could close.

That would leave the price of gas more vulnerable to price spikes.

?We?ve got plenty of time to prepare,? Kloza told NBC News. ?In truth, there are many, many moving parts in the oil business right now.?

Lately, the price of gas has been falling. Since rising almost 50 cents to an average of almost $3.75 a gallon, it has fallen steadily this month and is almost back to $3.60.

A senior administration official told The Associated Press that only 16 of the 111 refineries in the United States would need to invest in major equipment to meet the restrictions.

Of the remaining 95 refineries, 29 already meet the standards because they sell cleaner fuel in California or elsewhere in the world, and 66 would need to make more minor modifications, the AP reported.

?It?s been very prosperous,? Kloza said of the refineries. ?But history tells us it can turn very challenging very, very quickly.?

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:34 PM EDT

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2a24c354/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C290C175183510Eepa0Eproposes0Etighter0Efuel0Eemissions0Estandards0Ecould0Epush0Eprice0Eof0Egas0Ehigher0Dlite/story01.htm

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Navy IDs SEAL killed in Ariz. parachuting accident

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) ? Brett D. Shadle always had wanted to be a member of the Navy's most elite special forces unit. A year after enlisting, he made it happen and went on to become a highly decorated member of the Navy's famed SEAL Team 6.

U.S. military officials confirmed Saturday that Shadle, a 31-year-old special warfare operator chief, died Thursday when he and another SEAL collided in midair during a parachute training exercise over the rugged desert of southern Arizona.

Shadle was taken to University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson, where he was pronounced dead. The other SEAL ? an unidentified E-6 petty officer first class ? remained in stable condition Saturday at the Tucson hospital.

Military officials said the accident was under investigation.

Family members said Shadle, of Elizabethville, Pa., was stationed in Virginia. He was married and had a 2-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter.

His uncle Donald Shadle, 67, of Elizabethville, expressed disbelief, saying his nephew had been on many overseas missions only to come back and get killed during a training exercise.

"He was always a good kid, and he always wanted to be a Navy SEAL and that's what he did," Donald Shadle said.

Shadle enlisted in the Navy in July 2000. The following year he completed his SEAL training and was assigned to his first unit in early 2002.

Navy officials said Shadle had earned multiple Bronze Star Medals with Valor and several service ribbons. While details about his deployments were secret, officials confirmed he had served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shadle and a fellow SEAL were practicing "routine military free-fall training" when the accident occurred Thursday afternoon, said U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Kenneth McGraw. The SEALs collided in midair and landed in separate areas.

The command has a parachute testing and training facility at the Pinal Airpark northeast of Tucson, McGraw said. Training programs are operated there year-round.

The Navy's SEAL Team 6 gained international attention when it was revealed that members of the top secret unit had carried out a raid in Pakistan in 2011 in which Osama bin Laden was killed. Bin Laden became the most wanted man in the world after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

Team 6 was hit hard later that same year when 22 SEALs from the special unit were killed when the helicopter they were riding in was apparently hit by an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade. None of those killed on the helicopter was part of the bin Laden raid. Their deaths marked the nation's single deadliest day of the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

___

Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M., and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/navy-ids-seal-killed-ariz-parachuting-accident-150524067.html

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Source: http://www.9to6.com/2013/03/ryan-deiss-authority-roi-bonus-offer-ready-for-download-online-at-itrustnews-com/

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Governor signs bill for health insurance exchange

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- New Mexico can move ahead with establishing a state-run health insurance exchange under legislation signed into law Thursday by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez.

Martinez is one of a small number of GOP governors to opt for a state-run exchange under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. States had the option of establishing their own exchange, leaving it to the federal government or forming a state-federal partnership.

The new law takes effect immediately, and one of the next steps is the appointment of a 13-member governing board for the exchange.

The exchange is to serve as a marketplace for the uninsured to buy medical coverage. One of the early decisions for the board likely will be selecting a contractor to establish a computer system, which will allow individuals and small businesses to shop online for health care plans offered by private insurers.

Uninsured individuals and families can receive federal subsidies to reduce the amount they pay for insurance. Small businesses can be eligible for a tax credit to help provide medical coverage for workers.

New Mexico faces a tight deadline ?under federal law ? to have the exchange ready to enroll the uninsured starting in October and be fully operating in January.

It's estimated that about 200,000 New Mexicans may be able to buy health insurance through the exchange by 2020.

"As I said during my State of the State address, I didn't support Obamacare, but it is the law of the land. My job is to implement this law in a way that best serves New Mexicans," Martinez said in a statement.

The exchanges have placed Republican governors in an awkward position, given how much the party has opposed the health care law. Nevada and Idaho are taking the state-run exchange approach while Iowa is pursuing a partnership with the federal government. Utah already has an exchange but it doesn't cover individuals, as required by federal law.

The Martinez administration previously had taken steps to establish an exchange through an existing organization ? the New Mexico Health Insurance Alliance, which is a nonprofit public corporation established in 1994 to provide access to insurance for small businesses and some individuals.

However, work on the exchange was put on hold during the recent legislative session and because of the threat of a possible lawsuit challenging whether the governor could unilaterally create the new insurance marketplace. Attorney General Gary King contended that the Legislature had to change state law for the alliance to be able carry out federally managed duties of an insurance exchange.

Martinez and legislators eventually reached an agreement on legislation to create the framework for an exchange. One initial dispute was over the board's power, and whether it should be able to regulate what health insurance plans are offered to consumers. Federal law spells out minimum requirements for health coverage, and it will be up to the state insurance superintendent's office to determine whether plans meet qualifying standards.

"This may not be a perfect solution, but it is a start that helps keep New Mexico on the path toward the creation of a unique solution for New Mexicans," said Sen. Benny Shendo Jr., D-Jemez Pueblo, a sponsor of the measure.

The law requires a Native American service center to ensure the exchange's services are accessible for members of New Mexico's Indian tribes and pueblos.

The governor will name six board members, including the secretary of the Human Services Department, and legislative leaders will appoint six members. The state superintendent of insurance also is on the board but will vote only to break ties. The board must include two insurance industry representatives as well as a health care provider and consumer advocate.

___

Follow Barry Massey on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bmasseyAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/governor-signs-bill-health-insurance-135455846.html

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Nicki Minaj's 'High School' To Premiere On Tuesday: Watch A Sneak Peek Now!

Video will debut at 10:53 a.m. ET during 'MTV First,' Nicki will sit down for an interview right after on MTV.com.
By MTV News Staff

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1704607/nicki-minaj-high-school-music-video-teaser.jhtml

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10 Celebs Who Look Younger Than They Are!

Carly Rae Jepsen: 27

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/celebrities-ages-stars-who-look-younger-they-are/1-a-530218?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acelebrities-ages-stars-who-look-younger-they-are-530218

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The irrelevant IRA | Bankers Anonymous

Please see my earlier post on The Humble IRA.

?

Does the humble and homely Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) matter to well-paid people?

I remember being shocked in the late 1990s when my mentor Jim on the bond trading floor at Goldman declared ?I don?t bother with IRAs because nobody?s getting rich investing through an IRA.?

I eagerly sought out wisdom on personal finance at the time, so I was struck that such a clear tax-advantaged vehicle could be overlooked by a financially savvy professional like Jim.

He was a Vice President at the time and made a good salary and bonus, with bright prospects.? He then became a partner about 6 years later, wholly and thoroughly justifying his scorn for the lowly IRA as a wealth-building vehicle.

His example stuck in my head over the years because ? more than the stark irrelevance of an IRA for his own personal situation ? I?ve realized that he?s basically right ? upper income and wealthy people as a whole really have no use for the IRA.? It?s a waste of time for them.? This is true for a number of reasons.

1. The maximum tax deductibility limit of $5,000 doesn?t get you very far if you have many multiples of that amount to invest.? In the 1990s, when my mentor made his scornful statement about not getting rich from an IRA, contribution limits were stuck at $2,000 ? making his scorn even more justifiable.? But even with the upward adjustment to $5,000 in 2012 and $5,500 in 2013, that still doesn?t provide much tax advantage.

2. Most highly compensated people have access to a 401K or a similar saving plan which offers many times the tax-advantaged contributions of an IRA.? If you own your own business, or if you work for a high-paying salary, you could put away at least $17,000 pre-tax in 2012, in addition to larger amounts through employer profit-sharing, leaving the homely and humble IRA in the dust.

3. If you have access to a much better, bigger employer retirement plan like a 401K, as most highly compensated people do, suddenly you?ve lost the $5,000 IRA tax deductibility if you make more than $68K individually, (or $112K if you file with your spouse.)

The end result: my mentor Jim was right.? Upper income people really can?t be bothered with the IRA, and I can?t fault their logic.

All of the above is particularly ironic to me because I?ve spent the past month arguing, pleading, berating, and otherwise pestering the undergraduates to whom I teach personal finance into opening and funding their first personal IRA.

I?ve taught them about the key building-block concepts of compound interest, and understanding wealth, and how to budget and save money.

I?ve argued that opening and funding their first IRA ? which I assigned as mandatory homework to them this week ? is a key culmination of everything I?ve taught them.

And I do believe in the value of the IRA for them in particular, as I assume they will not be highly paid in their first years out of college, nor will many of them have access to a 401K right away.? So an IRA makes a ton of sense for them.? At least for now.

What I haven?t told them is that as soon as they?re well-paid and wealthy they can forget all about the IRA, with my financial blessing.? But please don?t let them know this yet.

First they have to open the IRA, before they can forget all about it.

?

Please see the earlier post:

The humble IRA

and upcoming related posts on the personal IRA:

A rebuttal: The curious case of Mitt Romney

The magic trick of the Roth IRA ? inter- generational wealth transfer

The DIY movement comes to the IRA

?

? Post read (90) times.

Tags: compound interest, individual retirement arrangement, ira, wealth

Source: http://www.bankers-anonymous.com/blog/upper-income-people-cant-be-bothered-with-the-ira/

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Libya considers aid for Egypt, no decision yet: PM

DOHA (Reuters) - Libya is considering extending financial aid to Egypt to help its North African neighbor overcome a severe economic crisis, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zaidan said on Wednesday.

Egypt, which has endured more than two years of political instability since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, is struggling with sliding currency reserves, falling tourism and a soaring budget deficit.

OPEC-producer Libya is itself rebuilding after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Several newspapers had reported this week that Libya will deposit $2 billion at Egypt's central bank to support the economy but Zaidan said nothing had been decided yet.

"It has been under consultation. This issue has not been decided yet," Zaidan told reporters in the Qatari capital Doha when asked about the reports. He declined further comment.

A Libyan central bank official also told Reuters that Tripoli with its sovereign wealth fund would continue to look for investment opportunities in Egypt.

"Libya owns stakes in three banks in Egypt and companies in various sectors. We will invest whenever these companies need liquidity, debt repayments and capital for operation," he said, declining to be identified.

"Our investments in Egypt are very strategic and we will do what's needed to support that. Egypt's security and stability are as important to us as our own," he added.

Earlier, Libya said it would provide Egypt with the equivalent of one million barrels of crude per month at world prices to support the economy, according to Libya's state news agency.

(Reporting by Regan Doherty and Mirna Sleiman in Doha; Writing by Ulf Laessing in Cairo; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/libya-considers-aid-egypt-no-decision-yet-pm-174638548.html

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Apple updates Find My Friends with new UI, more in-depth location controls

We haven't seen many changes to Apple's location-based Find My Friends app since it debuted on iOS 5 more than a year ago. Cupertino must have realized it's time for an update; the company just overhauled the feature to include a new UI and more accurate location-based alerts. The app will now let you define the distance from a location for receiving notifications -- so you can get a ping when a friend arrives at the campus library rather than the dorms, for instance. The redesigned app also simplifies the notification process to fit on one page, with options to receive alerts when your friends arrive at or leave a specific place, along with settings for notifying others based on your location. The update is available now for users running iOS 6.1 or later.

Filed under: GPS, Software, Mobile, Apple

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/XoCCDTkHctM/

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France's Bruni makes emotional defense of husband Sarkozy

PARIS (Reuters) - Former French first lady Carla Bruni took up a passionate defense of her husband Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday, saying it was unthinkable he could have tricked an old lady out of millions of euros.

In a blitz of interviews with French media, Bruni said a formal investigation of the ex-president opened last week for allegedly exploiting the mental frailty of 90-year-old L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt was causing her great pain.

"It's impossible to imagine that this man could have abused the frailty of a lady the age of his mother... It's unthinkable," Bruni told RTL radio in a shaky voice.

Sarkozy, who retreated from front-line politics after losing his re-election bid last May, rejects accusations that he took advantage of Bettencourt, France's richest woman, in 2007 to raise funds for his first election campaign. He wrote on Facebook this week that the probe against him was "unfair and unfounded".

The case could scupper any political comeback for Sarkozy, whose remains a popular figure for center-right voters and has said he would consider running for president again in 2017.

His lawyer, Thierry Herzog, has said he would seek to have the case thrown out on grounds that the investigation conducted by judge Jean-Michel Gentil was biased against Sarkozy.

Singer-songwriter and former model Bruni played a restrained role as first lady while Sarkozy was in power but has since returned to the media spotlight, performing last week at the ECHO Music Awards in Berlin.

Her public defense of Sarkozy coincides with her promotion of a new album due for release on April 1.

Bruni's 2008 marriage to Sarkozy after a whirlwind courtship irritated many French people who felt the high-profile romance blurred the lines between the president's private and public lives.

Asked if she was tempted to fight back publicly against the accusations and "show her claws", Bruni said: "Yes, I want to but I don't dare. It is difficult for me to talk about this, it's painful for my family."

(Reporting by Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Toby Chopra)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/frances-bruni-makes-emotional-defense-husband-sarkozy-115732062.html

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Boeing CEO urges FAA to return 787 to service, delays continue

By Alwyn Scott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - - Boeing Co Chief Executive Jim McNerney on Thursday urged regulators reviewing battery problems on the company's grounded 787 passenger jet to let the plane back into service, saying he was confident the redesigned battery was safe.

He would not specify when he expected the jet to be flying customers again other than saying "sooner rather than later."

Separately, the airplane leasing company that is the world's biggest buyer of 787s said it expects its first delivery of the high-tech jet to be delayed to summer from spring, but that getting the plane restored to service will "go quickly."

The Federal Aviation Administration and its administrator Michael Huerta "have been champs here," McNerney told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce aviation summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. (For event video, click: http://link.reuters.com/juf96t )

"They have put us through our paces and they have America's best interests in mind. They have the safety of the public in mind as I hope we do, which I think at this point means let's get this thing back into service and get on with it."

Regulators worldwide banned flight of the 787 after lithium-ion batteries overheated on two of the aircraft in January. The grounding is costing Boeing an estimated $50 million a week in lost income and compensation payments to airlines.

McNerney said the grounding has been a "frustrating experience," but he had high confidence that the proposed fix for the battery system will work. Boeing is now running test flights to prove the safety of the system, which includes a steel box to prevent fire and contain explosion. McNerney said he expected the plane to be in service "sooner rather than later," though he was not more specific.

Shares of Boeing fell 0.5 percent to $85.76 in morning trading. The stock is up 16 percent since the plane was grounded, most of which came over the last month as the 787 moved closer to flying again.

Meanwhile, speaking in the sidelines of the conference, the president of Boeing's biggest 787 customer said he expects approving and installing a fix for the battery will "go quickly."

"I think it is going to go quickly now," said Fred Cromer, president of International Lease Finance Corporation, which has ordered 74 Boeing 787s. "The FAA is interested in getting the plane back in the air as soon as possible."

Boeing and the FAA have "a very good partnership," he said, and are working to make sure the fix "is a solution that all sides agree is the right thing to do."

AIG unit ILFC is due to receive its first five 787s this year. Cromer said there was no formal word from Boeing about when the first of the jets would be delivered, but that the schedule had shifted to summer from spring. The first jet is leased to Norwegian Air Shuttle , he said.

McNerney said recent corporate changes at Airbus parent EADS would make the European competitor a "stronger company."

"Airbus can figure out for themselves what they want to be, but I think the model does move a little closer towards -- I think the word (EADS chief executive) Tom (Enders) uses is -- a normal company. I know that has a special meaning in Germany, but I think that will create a stronger competitor, which I think is good for the industry."

EADS shareholders on Wednesday approved sweeping changes in control that the company says will prevent interference, despite coinciding with a rise in European state shareholdings triggered by Germany's decision to buy a stake from carmaker Daimler

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Tim Hepher, Ben Berkowitz and David Gregorio)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boeing-ceo-urges-faa-return-787-delays-continue-182220187--finance.html

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Rapper Gucci Mane denied bond in assault case

FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2010 file photo, rapper Gucci Mane arrives on the red carpet for the BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta. An arrest warrant has been issued for Gucci Mane after a fan accused the rapper of hitting him in the head with a champagne bottle at a downtown Atlanta nightclub, Saturday, March 23, 2013. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2010 file photo, rapper Gucci Mane arrives on the red carpet for the BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta. An arrest warrant has been issued for Gucci Mane after a fan accused the rapper of hitting him in the head with a champagne bottle at a downtown Atlanta nightclub, Saturday, March 23, 2013. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)

ATLANTA (AP) ? Gucci Mane has been denied bond on charges stemming from a fan's accusation that the rapper hit him in the head with a champagne bottle at an Atlanta nightclub.

A fan says the rapper, whose real name is Radric Davis, hit him in the club's V.I.P. area March 16 while he tried to take a picture with Gucci Mane. The fan, James Lettley, says he needed 10 stitches.

Davis was in custody on a charge of aggravated assault with a weapon and appeared in court Wednesday.

The rapper's attorney, Drew Findling, tells WSB-TV (http://bit.ly/XdhFoP ) that Davis' criminal history made it difficult for a judge to set bond. Fulton County jail records show Davis has been arrested 10 times since 2005.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-28-Gucci%20Mane-Assault/id-2fcc0945c4874185a719726878413888

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Imaging methodology reveals nano details not seen before: Understanding nanoparticles at atomic scale in 3-D could improve materials

Mar. 27, 2013 ? A team of scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Northwestern University has produced 3-D images and videos of a tiny platinum nanoparticle at atomic resolution that reveal new details of defects in nanomaterials that have not been seen before.

Prior to this work, scientists only had flat, two-dimensional images with which to view the arrangement of atoms. The new imaging methodology developed at UCLA and Northwestern will enable researchers to learn more about a material and its properties by viewing atoms from different angles and seeing how they are arranged in three dimensions.

The study will be published March 27 by the journal Nature.

The authors describe being able to see how the atoms of a platinum nanoparticle -- only 10 namometers in diameter -- are arranged in three dimensions. They also identify how the atoms are arranged around defects in the platinum nanoparticle.

Similar to how CT scans of the brain and body are done in a hospital, the scientists took images of a platinum nanoparticle from many different directions and then pieced the images together using a new method that improved the quality of the images.

This novel method is a combination of three techniques: scanning transmission electron microscopy, equally sloped tomography (EST) and three-dimensional Fourier filtering. Compared to conventional CT, the combined method produces much higher quality 3-D images and allows the direct visualization of atoms inside the platinum nanoparticle in three dimensions.

"Visualizing the arrangement of atoms in materials has played an important role in the evolution of modern science and technology," said Jianwei (John) Miao, who led the work. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA and a researcher with the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

"Our method allows the 3-D imaging of the local structures in materials at atomic resolution, and it is expected to find application in materials sciences, nanoscience, solid state physics and chemistry," he said.

"It turns out that there are details we can only see when we can look at materials in three dimensions," said co-author Laurence D. Marks, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

"We have had suspicions for a long time that there was more going on than we could see from the flat images we had," Marks said. "This work is the first demonstration that this is true at the atomic scale."

Nanotechnology expert Pulickel M. Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice University complimented the research.

"This is the first instance where the three-dimensional structure of dislocations in nanoparticles has been directly revealed at atomic resolution," Ajayan said. "The elegant work demonstrates the power of electron tomography and leads to possibilities of directly correlating the structure of nanoparticles to properties, all in full 3-D view."

Defects can influence many properties of materials, and a technique for visualizing these structures at atomic resolution could lead to new insights beneficial to researchers in a wide range of fields.

"Much of what we know about how materials work, whether it is a catalyst in an automobile exhaust system or the display on a smartphone, has come from electron microscope images of how the atoms are arranged," Marks said. "This new imaging method will open up the atomic world of nanoparticles."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. Chien-Chun Chen, Chun Zhu, Edward R. White, Chin-Yi Chiu, M. C. Scott, B. C. Regan, Laurence D. Marks, Yu Huang, Jianwei Miao. Three-dimensional imaging of dislocations in a nanoparticle at atomic resolution. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12009

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

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/KCt2vVQ9aYc/130327144122.htm

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Engineers enable 'bulk' silicon to emit visible light for the first time

Mar. 27, 2013 ? Electronic computing speeds are brushing up against limits imposed by the laws of physics. Photonic computing, where photons replace comparatively slow electrons in representing information, could surpass those limitations, but the components of such computers require semiconductors that can emit light.

Now, research from the University of Pennsylvania has enabled "bulk" silicon to emit broad-spectrum, visible light for the first time, opening the possibility of using the element in devices that have both electronic and photonic components.

The research was conducted by associate professor Ritesh Agarwal, postdoctoral fellow Chang-Hee Cho and graduate students Carlos O. Aspetti and Joohee Park, all of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Their work was published in Nature Photonics.

Certain semiconductors, when imparted with energy, in turn emit light; they directly produce photons, instead of producing heat. This phenomenon is commonplace and used in light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which are ubiquitous in traffic signals, new types of light bulbs, computer displays and other electronic and optoelectronic devices. Getting the desired photonic properties often means finding the right semiconducting material. Agarwal's group produced the first ever all-optical switch out of cadmium sulfide nanowires, for example.

Semiconducting materials -- especially silicon -- form the backbone of modern electronics and computing, but, unfortunately, silicon is an especially poor emitter of light. It belongs to a group of semiconducting materials, which turns added energy into heat. This makes integrating electronic and photonic circuits a challenge; materials with desirable photonic properties, such as cadmium sulfide, tend to have poor electrical properties and vice versa and are not compatible with silicon-based electronic devices.

"The problem is that electronic devices are made of silicon and photonic devices are typically not," Agarwal said. "Silicon doesn't emit light and the materials that do aren't necessarily the best materials for making electronic devices."

With silicon entrenched as the material of choice for the electronics industry, augmenting its optical properties so it could be integrated into photonic circuitry would make consumer-level applications of the technology more feasible.

"People have tried to solve this problem by doping silicon with other materials, but the light emission is then in the very long wavelength range, so it's not visible and not very efficient and can degrade its electronic properties," Agarwal said. "Another approach is to make silicon devices that are very small, five nanometers in diameter or less. At that size you have quantum confinement effects, which allows the device to emit light, but making electrical connections at that scale isn't currently feasible, and the electrical conductivity would be very low."

To get elemental, "bulk" silicon to emit light, Agarwal's team drew upon previous research they had conducted on plasmonic cavities. In that earlier work, the researchers wrapped a cadmium sulfide nanowire first in a layer of silicon dioxide, essentially glass, and then in a layer of silver. The silver coating supports what are known as surface plasmons, waves that are a combination of oscillating metal electrons and of light. These surface plasmons are highly confined to the surface where the silicon dioxide and silver layers meet. For certain nanowire sizes, the silver coating creates pockets of resonance and hence highly confined electromagnetic fields -- in other words, light -- within the nanostructure.

Normally, after excitation the semiconductor must first "cool down," releasing energy as heat, before "jumping" back to the ground state and finally releasing the remaining energy as light. The Penn team's semiconductor nanowires coupled with plasmonic nanocavities, however, can jump directly from a high-energy excited state to the ground state, all but eliminating the heat-releasing cool-down period. This ultra-fast emission time opens the possibility of producing light from semiconductors such as silicon that might otherwise only produce heat.

"If we can make the carriers recombine immediately," Agarwal said, "then we can produce light in silicon."

In their latest work, the group wrapped pure silicon nanowires in a similar fashion, first with a coating of glass and then one of silver. In this case, however, the silver did not wrap completely around the wire as the researchers first mounted the glass-coated silicon on a sperate pane of glass. Tucking under the curve of the wire but unable to go between it and the glass substrate, the silver coating took on the shape of the greek letter omega -- ? -- while still acting as a plasmonic cavity.

Critically, the transparent bottom of the omega allowed the researchers to impart energy to the semiconductor with a laser and then examine the light silicon emitted.

Even though the silicon nanowire is excited at a single energy level, which corresponds to the wavelength of the blue laser, it produces white light that spans the visible spectrum. This translates into a broad bandwidth for possible operation in a photonic or optoelectronic device. In the future, it should also be possible to excite these silicon nanowires electrically.

"If you can make the silicon emit light itself, you don't have to have an external light source on the chip," Agarwal said. "We could excite the silicon electrically and get the same effect, and we can make it work with wires from 20 to 100 nanometers in diameter, so it's very compatible in terms of length scale with current electronics."

The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Institutes of Health.

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Journal Reference:

1. Chang-Hee Cho, Carlos O. Aspetti, Joohee Park, Ritesh Agarwal. Silicon coupled with plasmon nanocavities generates bright visible hot luminescence. Nature Photonics, 2013; 7 (4): 285 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2013.25

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/U1h28iUkbn4/130327133517.htm

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GOP moves to catch up with Democrats on technology

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Republicans are moving aggressively to repair their technological shortcomings from the 2012 election, opening a new tech race to counter a glaring weakness against President Barack Obama.

With the blessing of party leaders, a new crop of Republican-backed outside groups is developing tools to improve communication with voters, predict their behavior and track Democratic opponents. After watching Obama win re-election with the aid of an unprecedented technological machine, GOP officials concede an urgent need for major changes in the way they reach voters. They are turning to a younger generation of tech experts expected to play a bigger role in the 2014 midterm elections and beyond.

"I think everybody realized that the party is really far behind at the moment and they're doing everything within their realistic sphere of influence to catch up," said Bret Jacobson, a partner with Red Edge, a Virginia-based digital advocacy firm that represents the Republican Governors Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Heritage Foundation.

Alex Skatell, former digital director for the GOP's gubernatorial and Senate campaign operations, leads a new group that has been quietly testing a system that would allow Republicans to share details about millions of voters ? their personal interests, group affiliations and even where they went to school. Democrats began using related technology years ago, giving Obama a significant advantage last fall in personalizing communication with prospective supporters.

With no primary opponent last year, Obama's re-election team used the extra time to build a large campaign operation melding a grass-roots army of 2.2 million volunteers with groundbreaking technology to target voters. They tapped about 17 million email subscribers to raise nearly $700 million online.

Data-driven analytics enabled the campaign to run daily simulations to handicap battleground states, analyze demographic trends and test alternatives for reaching voters online.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, in contrast, had only a few months after a lengthy primary fight to try to match Obama's tech advantage. He couldn't make up the difference. Romney's technology operation was overwhelmed by the intense flow of data and temporarily crashed on Election Day.

A 100-page report on how to rebound from the 2012 election, released last week by Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, includes several technology recommendations.

"The president's campaign significantly changed the makeup of the national electorate and identified, persuaded and turned out low-propensity voters by unleashing a barrage of human and technological resources previously unseen in a presidential contest," the report said. "Marrying grass-roots politics with technology and analytics, they successfully contacted, persuaded and turned out their margin of victory. There are many lessons to be learned from their efforts, particularly with respect to voter contact."

Skatell, 26, is leading one new effort by Republican allies to fill the void. His team of designers, software developers and veteran Republican strategists is now testing what he calls an "almost an eHarmony for matching volunteers with persuadable voters" that would let campaigns across the country share details in real time on voter preferences, harnessing social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Other groups are working to improve the GOP's data and digital performance.

The major Republican ally, American Crossroads, which spent a combined $175 million on the last election with its sister organization, hosted private meetings last month focused on data and technology. Drawing from technology experts in Silicon Valley, the organization helped craft a series of recommendations expected to be rolled out later this year.

"A good action plan that fixes our deficiencies and identifies new opportunities can help us regain our advantage within a cycle or two," said Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio.

A prominent group of Republican aides has also formed America Rising, a company that will have a companion "super" political action committee that can raise unlimited contributions without having to disclose its donors. Its purpose is to counter Democratic opposition research groups, which generated negative coverage of Romney and GOP candidates last year.

America Rising will provide video tracking, opposition research and rapid response for campaign committees, super PACs and individual candidates' campaigns but does not plan to get involved in GOP primaries. It will be led by Matt Rhoades, who served as Romney's campaign manager, and Joe Pounder, the research director for the Republican National Committee. Running its super PAC will be Tim Miller, a former RNC aide and spokesman for former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.

Romney and several Republican candidates were monitored closely by camera-toting Democratic aides during the campaign, a gap that Miller said American Rising hopes to fill on behalf of Republicans.

Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said his party has "a several years' lead on data and analytics infrastructure and we're not standing still."

Of the GOP effort, Woodhouse said, "We don't see them closing the gap anytime soon."

___

Peoples reported from Boston.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-moves-catch-democrats-technology-065816379--election.html

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Senate candidates in Massachusetts spar on abortion, gay marriage

By Scott Malone

NEEDHAM, Massachusetts (Reuters) - The five candidates running for Massachusetts' open seat in the U.S. Senate sparred on social issues on Wednesday, staking out opposing views on abortion and gay marriage in the first debate to feature candidates from both parties.

But even those who took more conservative stances tried to draw a line between their personal beliefs and existing laws, in a nod to the liberal views of many of the New England state's voters.

On the Republican side, former Boston U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan was the one candidate to express opposition both to abortion and gay marriage - the latter issue the topic of Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Massachusetts in 2003 became the first U.S. state to legalize gay marriage.

On the Democratic side, U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch said he opposed abortion, though he said he regarded the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized it, as "established law" not likely to be overturned.

"Attacking Roe v. Wade won't make abortions go away, it'll just change the setting ... to one that is more dangerous for women," said Lynch.

Early polls show Lynch trailing fellow Democratic Representative Edward Markey among decided voters, though they also show that a large portion of the electorate has not yet determined how they will vote in the April 30 primary and June 25 special election to fill the seat formerly held by Secretary of State John Kerry, a Democrat.

Markey, who also holds a lead over Republican contenders in early polls, said that access to abortion "has to be protected at all costs."

Sullivan's Republican rivals, Daniel Winslow, a state representative, and Gabriel Gomez, a private equity executive, said they supported gay rights, positions at odds with many members of their party. Gomez opposes abortion rights, while Winslow supports them.

"If two people are in love they should be able to get married. I support repealing DOMA," said Gomez, in reference to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, a law signed by former President Bill Clinton that prevented same-sex couples from obtaining federal benefits.

Sullivan called himself a "traditionalist" on marriage, telling reporters after the debate "marriage is between one man and one woman."

However, noting that he believed states should determine laws regarding marriage, he said he also supported the repeal of DOMA, adding that he believed that same-sex couples married in Massachusetts should enjoy "all the same benefits" as heterosexual couples.

Winslow supported both gay marriage and abortion.

"I am a big-tent Republican when it comes to social issues," he said, referring to party members who have an inclusive view. "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the United States and I support a women's right to choose."

One-third of the Senate is up for re-election in 2014. The Republicans now have 45 Senate seats, the Democrats 53, and there are two independents.

Massachusetts' Democratic Governor Deval Patrick in January named his former chief of staff, William "Mo" Cowan, to serve as interim senator until the election. Cowan is not running in the special election.

(This story has been corrected to show Gomez opposes abortion)

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-candidates-massachusetts-spar-abortion-gay-marriage-012110843.html

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Samsung Galaxy S 4 expected to launch on T-Mobile on May 1st

Here at T-Mobile's "UnCarrier" press conference, we've heard loads of pricing and availability details for the carrier's new LTE-enabled handsets. Well, here's one more tidbit: the Galaxy S4 is expected to hit T-Mo on May 1st. If that sounds like soft, tentative language on our part, it's because Legere said the phone will arrive "about May 1st," so it's possible it could arrive, you know, on May 3rd instead. That said, it's coming, and soon. As for pricing, nothing's been confirmed, but we already know T-Mobile's other LTE phones (the iPhone 5, HTC One, etc.) will go for $100 plus monthly payments of $20 for two years, so we wouldn't be surprised if the same were true here.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, T-Mobile

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/26/galaxy-s4-expected-to-launch-on-t-mobile-on-may-1st/

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Fieldrunners 2 coming soon to Android, beta testers wanted

The popular tower defense game Fieldrunners HD will have a proper sequel on Android in April, if everything goes to plan. Fieldrunners 2, which launched on iOS mid last year, is almost ready to go on the Android side but last minute kinks are still being worked out. The new version of the game naturally brings new weapons, towers, and levels -- with 20+ hours of gameplay in just the campaign alone. There are also new Time Trial, Sudden Death and Puzzle maps available for even more gameplay.

The developer Subatomic Studios is looking for a handful of users with "a variety of Android devices" to test the game in closed beta before it releases. Stick around after the break to read the full press release and follow the source link to enter for a closed beta spot of your own.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/R6j0o50RfCI/story01.htm

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Uncovering Africa's oldest known penguins

Mar. 26, 2013 ? Africa isn't the kind of place you might expect to find penguins. But one species lives along Africa's southern coast today, and newly found fossils confirm that as many as four penguin species coexisted on the continent in the past. Exactly why African penguin diversity plummeted to the one species that lives there today is still a mystery, but changing sea levels may be to blame, the researchers say.

The fossil findings, described in the March 26 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, represent the oldest evidence of these iconic tuxedo-clad seabirds in Africa, predating previously described fossils by 5 to 7 million years.

Co-authors Daniel Thomas of the National Museum of Natural History and Dan Ksepka of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center happened upon the 10-12 million year old specimens in late 2010, while sifting through rock and sediment excavated from an industrial steel plant near Cape Town, South Africa.

Jumbled together with shark teeth and other fossils were 17 bone fragments that the researchers recognized as pieces of backbones, breastbones, wings and legs from several extinct species of penguins.

Based on their bones, these species spanned nearly the full size spectrum for penguins living today, ranging from a runty pint-sized penguin that stood just about a foot tall (0.3 m), to a towering species closer to three feet (0.9 m).

Only one penguin species lives in Africa today -- the black-footed penguin, or Spheniscus demersus, also known as the jackass penguin for its loud donkey-like braying call. Exactly when penguin diversity in Africa started to plummet, and why, is still unclear.

Gaps in the fossil record make it difficult to determine whether the extinctions were sudden or gradual. "[Because we have fossils from only two time periods,] it's like seeing two frames of a movie," said co-author Daniel Ksepka. "We have a frame at five million years ago, and a frame at 10-12 million years ago, but there's missing footage in between."

Humans probably aren't to blame, the researchers say, because by the time early modern humans arrived in South Africa, all but one of the continent's penguins had already died out.

A more likely possibility is that rising and falling sea levels did them in by wiping out safe nesting sites.

Although penguins spend most of their lives swimming in the ocean, they rely on offshore islands near the coast to build their nests and raise their young. Land surface reconstructions suggest that five million years ago -- when at least four penguin species still called Africa home -- sea level on the South African coast was as much as 90 meters higher than it is today, swamping low-lying areas and turning the region into a network of islands. More islands meant more beaches where penguins could breed while staying safe from mainland predators.

But sea levels in the region are lower today. Once-isolated islands have been reconnected to the continent by newly exposed land bridges, which may have wiped out beach nesting sites and provided access to predators.

Although humans didn't do previous penguins in Africa in, we'll play a key role in shaping the fate of the one species that remains, the researchers add.

Numbers of black-footed penguins have declined by 80% in the last 50 years, and in 2010 the species was classified as endangered. The drop is largely due to oil spills and overfishing of sardines and anchovies -- the black-footed penguin's favorite food.

"There's only one species left today, and it's up to us to keep it safe," Thomas said.

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Journal Reference:

1. Daniel B. Thomas, Daniel T. Ksepka. A history of shifting fortunes for African penguins. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/zoj.12024

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