Russia reveals shiny state secret: It's awash in diamonds

'Trillions of carats' lie below a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile-diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem. The Russians have known about the site since the 1970s.

By Fred Weir,?Correspondent / September 17, 2012

A giant Russian national flag is on display near the Kremlin in central Moscow March 6.

Thomas Peter/REUTERS

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Russia has just declassified news that will shake world gem markets to their core: the discovery of a vast new diamond field containing "trillions of carats," enough to supply global markets for another 3,000 years.

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Fred Weir has been the Monitor's Moscow correspondent, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, since 1998.?

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The Soviets discovered the bonanza back in the 1970s beneath a 35-million-year-old, 62-mile diameter asteroid crater in eastern Siberia known as Popigai Astroblem.

They decided to keep it secret, and not to exploit it, apparently because the USSR's huge diamond operations at Mirny, in Yakutia, were already producing immense profits in what was then a tightly controlled world market.

The Soviets were also producing a range of artificial diamonds for industry, into which they had invested heavily.

The veil of secrecy was finally lifted over the weekend, and Moscow permitted scientists from the nearby Novosibirsk Institute of Geology and Mineralogy to talk about it with Russian journalists.

According to the official news agency, ITAR-Tass, the diamonds at Popigai are "twice as hard" as the usual gemstones, making them ideal for industrial and scientific uses.

The institute's director, Nikolai Pokhilenko, told the agency that news of what's in the new field could be enough to "overturn" global diamond markets.

"The resources of superhard diamonds contained in rocks of the Popigai crypto-explosion structure are, by a factor of 10, bigger than the world's all known reserves," Mr. Pokhilenko said. "We are speaking about trillions of carats. By comparison, present-day known reserves in Yakutia are estimated at 1 billion carats."

The type of stones at Popigai are known as "impact diamonds," which theoretically result when something like a meteor plows into a graphite deposit at high velocity. The Russians say most such diamonds found in the past have? been "space diamonds" of extraterrestrial origin found in meteor craters. [Editor's note: The original version misstated the type of deposit needed to create impact diamonds.]

They claim the Popigai site is unique in the world, thus making Russia the monopoly proprietor of a resource that's likely to become increasingly important in high-precision scientific and industrial processes.

"The value of impact diamonds is added by their unusual abrasive features and large grain size," Pokhilenko told Tass. "This expands significantly the scope of their industrial use and makes them more valuable for industrial purposes."

Russian scientists say the news is likely to change the shape of global diamond markets, although the main customers for the super-hard gems will probably be big corporations and scientific institutes.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/21z8c0fgwUo/Russia-reveals-shiny-state-secret-It-s-awash-in-diamonds

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A military attorney's access to his Guantanamo client eroded

Pittsburgh native Barry Wingard, a military attorney representing prisoners at Guantanamo, said his access to clients has been reduced by the government

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard has spent four years fighting a losing battle.

Col. Wingard, a military attorney and Allegheny County public defender, represents Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti who has been held at Guantanamo Bay detention center since 2002.

In June, the charges against Mr. al-Kandari were dropped with no explanation. In just about any judicial realm, that's a victory.

In Guantanamo, it means instead that Col. Wingard's client is now in the group of prisoners on indefinite detention. Since the government planned no prosecution against his client, it saw no reason for Col. Wingard to work on the case.

Col. Wingard's access to Mr. al-Kandari was reduced. He can no longer travel to Kuwait or elsewhere to investigate the case. His correspondence with his client is reviewed. Government translators/interpreters are no longer provided to enable him to communicate with his client. He has regularly traveled to Guantanamo since taking the case, spending a week of each month there. His most recent planned military transport flight was canceled.

These restrictions began about the same time as a new protocol for civilian attorneys representing Guantanamo prisoners was put into effect. Lawyers were told they had to sign a memorandum of understanding in which they agreed to certain restrictions in order to continue to see their clients.

Col. Wingard, 45, long maintained that the charges against his client -- material support of terrorism and conspiracy -- were based on flimsy, third-hand evidence. But now that they have been dropped, his client's situation is worse, since there is now no real hope of a judicial proceeding, and his ability to advocate for Mr. al-Kandari is reduced.

Air National Guard Col. Wingard served in the Army and then as a U.S. Air Force JAG (Judge Advocate General) attorney. He prosecuted more than 100 cases in Iraq involving more than 170 individuals who had attacked coalition forces in Iraq. He also investigated various crimes in Bosnia during the conflict there.

Col. Wingard, of Dormont, is married and has two children, ages 3 and 5. He lives mostly in Washington, D.C., where he works in the Office of Military Commissions (the military judicial system in place to handle Guantanamo). He intends to return to his job as an Allegheny County public defender when his Guantanamo work is done. There is no set date for that, but the colonel hopes to finish next year.

Government rationale

Mr. al-Kandari is one of the 166 men still held at Guantanamo Bay. The prisoners now fall into three rough groups: those the government says can be tried; those that are cleared for release, but have not been released because there is nowhere for them to go; and the 40-plus who are to be detained indefinitely.

Since it opened as a detention center for terrorism suspects in 2002, Guantanamo has spurred a torrent of litigation. ("They litigate everything but the breakfast cereal down there," one Department of Defense official said -- off the record.)

At the heart of much of it is the question of whether the U.S. government can lawfully hold prisoners without charging them or giving them an opportunity to appear in a judicial proceeding to hear the evidence and defend themselves.

Department of Defense spokesman David Oten gave the rationale for the government's position: "The United States is detaining individuals at Guantanamo Bay pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, as informed by the law of war. Detention in wartime has long been recognized as legitimate under international law. We hold at Guantanamo detainees we assess as continuing to pose a threat in our ongoing armed conflict. And we will continue to hold these individuals in a manner that complies with our domestic and international obligations, and is consistent with our values."

Though President Barack Obama came into office saying he would shut the facility down, in the end his administration has taken much the same stance as that of the Bush administration regarding the need for the facility and the practice of indefinite detention for prisoners. It has vigorously defended a raft of legal challenges. Although detainees won a number of them -- gaining the right to make habeas challenges in U.S. courts -- the practical effect has been negligible. Only four men charged have been tried. Men cleared for release remain imprisoned. And the group of men the government says it doesn't plan to charge have no clear path to trial or release.

Of the review procedures for detainees, Mr. Oten of the Defense Department said, "As a discretionary matter, the United States has reviewed the cases of each individual at Guantanamo and determined that some could be eligible for transfer, pending appropriate, credible security assurances from receiving governments. Just as we do with prisoners of war in more traditional armed conflicts, we acknowledge that the threat they pose may change over time.

"In today's conflict, the threat posed by a particular detainee may be mitigated through participation in a reintegration program or through other focused measures to prevent re-engagement. That is why we have transfer policies in place and review mechanisms to ensure we only detain those whose threat cannot otherwise be mitigated."

Limiting access

But in claiming it has the right to restrict access to prisoners by their lawyers, the government was saying that it had control of how legal review of cases was to go forward.

The Memorandum of Understanding requirement was challenged and on Sept. 5, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the government has no right to deny counsel access to detainees, issuing a stinging rebuke in his ruling. Writing that the federal government is confusing "the roles of the jailer and the judiciary," Judge Lamberth struck down the military's assertion that it could veto meetings between lawyers and detainees.

The judge said the government has the right to run the facility at Guantanamo, but that the courts have authority to make sure prisoners have access to the courts, and that can't happen unless they have access to their lawyers.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said, "We have no comment on whether the Department plans to appeal the Lamberth decision on counsel access to GTMO detainees."

The nature of restrictions on military lawyers like Col. Wingard is different, but the effect is the same.

"They say, 'We have no intention of prosecuting, so your request for travel is denied,' " he said.

Similarly, translators and interpreters are denied. Though Col. Wingard has top security clearance, his correspondence with his clients (he also represents an Afghani and a second Kuwaiti) is now being reviewed.

Mr. Oten said the detention of Mr. al-Kandari is legal -- he filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court and the court ruled he was legally detained. The U.S. Supreme Court declined further review of his case.

"There is no precedent for indefinite detention," said Col. Wingard. However, he said, "if the government says it can hold prisoners forever, don't they get a lawyer forever?

"I take the position that I am still their attorney."

He acknowledges his ability to act in his clients' behalf or take action to change his status is extremely limited.

"It's frustrating from our end. They are strangling our ability to do our jobs," he said. "We're pretty much on the ropes as far as defending these guys." But, he said, he and other attorneys in the defense section of the Office of Military Commissions are close to one another and united in what they are trying to do.

He has written opinion pieces for news organizations, including the Post-Gazette, and is active on social media in behalf of his clients and Guantanamo-related issues. What worries him most is what he sees as the acceptance within government and military circles of a situation that goes against basic American principles. "It has sunk in as the new norm."

Many people came into the military or into government positions after 9/11, he said. "For them Guantanamo, indefinite detention is the norm. They don't know another system."

Once people accept the concept, "putting people away forever is the easy part."

He said the debate has moved from whether it's legal or justified to detain foreign combatants on an indefinite basis to whether it's acceptable to do so to U.S. citizens.

"The scariest development in the indefinite detention battle is that under the National Defense Reauthorization Act of 2012 recently signed, you as an American citizen can be detained forever without trial, while the allegations against you go uncontested because you have no right to see them."

On Sept. 12, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest of New York ruled against the administration and the National Defense Reauthorization Act on the basis that the practice of indefinite detention violates the First and Fifth Amendments. On Sept. 17, Judge Raymond Lohier of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the ruling until Friday, when a 2nd Circuit motions panel took up the government's request for stay pending appeal.

His work as a military defense attorney has put him at odds with the military.

"Once I'm done here I will probably never get promoted. But what can you do? They hired me to represent these guys. I'm going to do it to the best of my ability," said Col. Wingard.

"In the big picture, it definitely looks like we're losing. [But] here's the deal: You don't fight on issues in hopes you'll win. You fight on whether they're right."

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/a-military-attorneys-access-to-his-guantanamo-client-eroded-655532

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Large Protestant march begins peacefully amid heavy police presence in Northern Ireland

LONDON - A large Protestant march through the heart of Northern Ireland's capital has begun peacefully amid a heavy police presence.

Tens of thousands are expected to participate in one of Belfast's biggest parades in years, and authorities have deployed in force to prevent street clashes with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority.

The Unionist marches date back to the 19th century and are a longstanding irritant between Northern Ireland's two main religious communities and show no sign of fading away, despite a successful peace process.

Nearly every aspect of the marches ? from the parade route to the music played ? is fought over by both sides.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/large-protestant-march-begins-peacefully-amid-heavy-police-133009294.html

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Corn Farmers Continue to Succeed Despite soaring price of farm ...

Corn grain price fluctuations during the peak harvest in Mindanao has dampened the spirits as well as the livelihood of many Filipino farmers. This sad development in the corn sector is aggravated by the unabated soaring cost of farm inputs, such as fertilizers.

Efren Sarto, a corn farmer from South Cotabato, in the midst of this entire dismal scenario still has a success story to share to his fellow corn farmers. Sarto is the candidate of Region 12 for the prestigious Gawad Saka Award given annually by the Department of Agriculture to technologically inclined and successful farmers in the country.

In December 2004, Sarto planted Pioneer hybrid 30M50. He harvested his corn crop and, to his satisfaction, he obtained a dried weight of 8,500 kilos per hectare. With a grain price of P8.25 per kilo, his gross income per hectare reached nearly P70,000. Even with the high input cost of around P26,000, he was able to net more than P40,000.

In March, corn grain prices fluctuated to an average low of P7.20 and average high of P8 per kilo. Fertilizer prices in the national level soared from 34.89% to 53.57% over the previous year. This farm input constitutes around 35% of the total corn production cost.

?

With this almost bleak landscape, corn farmers must be really wise in choosing the right technology as well as the right seed that will help them increase their production and realize the highest potential income from their livelihood.

Sarto is one of the many corn farmers who have tried and continue to plant Pioneer varieties because of the high yields and income they get from using these products. His confidence in choosing to plant corn instead of other crops was not shaken by recent developments. ?This season, I will be renting an additional seven hectares of land and plant it with the Pioneer hybrid 30Y50,? Sarto happily declared.

Pioneer hybrid 30Y50 is the Bt version of 30M50 which is enhanced with a naturally occurring protein from soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, which protects plants from the Asiatic corn borer (ACB). ACB is the most prevalent insect corn pest in the country and causes up to 80% damage and yield loss.

Sarto believes that this new technology is essential in his corn production especially since corn borer problems are prevalent in the area. ?I believe that with 30Y50, I will get even higher yield because it is corn borer protected,? he stressed.

Jet Parma, country manger of Pioneer Hi-Bred Philippines said ?The experience of Mr. Sarto and all the other corn farmers who have succeeded by using our products keeps Pioneer committed in its goal of helping Filipino corn farmers achieve their maximum profit.?

With the story of Mr. Sarto, it is envisioned that Filipino corn farmers will continue to hope for the best.

?

Source: http://www.agribusinessweek.com/corn-farmers-continue-to-succeed-despite-soaring-price-of-farm-inputs/

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Final score: Missouri 21, Central Florida 16.

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Romney memo seeks to lower debate expectations | MyFOX8.com ...

Washington (CNN) ? If it wasn?t already clear that Mitt Romney and his allies are trying to lower expectations heading into next Wednesday?s debate against President Obama in Denver, the campaign is now making it official.

In a memo about the debates distributed to campaign surrogates and provided to CNN on Thursday, longtime Romney adviser Beth Myers outlines a series of reasons why the president is likely to emerge as the winner of the first debate.

Myers argues that Obama will ?use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney.?

?We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent,? she writes in the memo.

Pushing back against emerging conventional wisdom, Myers concludes that the debates will not, in fact, decide the election: ?It will be decided by the American people,? she says.

From: Beth Myers, Senior Adviser
To: Interested Parties
Date: September 27, 2012

Re: 2012 Presidential Debates

In a matter of days, Governor Romney and President Obama will meet on the presidential debate stage. President Obama is a universally-acclaimed public speaker and has substantial debate experience under his belt. However, the record he?s compiled over the last four years ? higher unemployment, lower incomes, rising energy costs, and a national debt spiraling out of control ? means this will be a close election right up to November 6th.

Between now and then, President Obama and Governor Romney will debate three times. While Governor Romney has the issues and the facts on his side, President Obama enters these contests with a significant advantage on a number of fronts.

Voters already believe ? by a 25-point margin ? that President Obama is likely to do a better job in these debates. Given President Obama?s natural gifts and extensive seasoning under the bright lights of the debate stage, this is unsurprising. President Obama is a uniquely gifted speaker, and is widely regarded as one of the most talented political communicators in modern history. This will be the eighth one-on-one presidential debate of his political career. For Mitt Romney, it will be his first.

Four years ago, Barack Obama faced John McCain on the debate stage. According to Gallup, voters judged him the winner of each debate by double-digit margins, and their polling showed he won one debate by an astounding 33-point margin. In the 2008 primary, he faced Hillary Clinton, another formidable opponent ? debating her one-on-one numerous times and coming out ahead. The takeaway? Not only has President Obama gained valuable experience in these debates, he also won them comfortably.

But what must President Obama overcome? His record. Based on the campaign he?s run so far, it?s clear that President Obama will use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney. Since he won?t ? and can?t ? talk about his record, he?ll talk about Mitt Romney. We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent. If President Obama is as negative as we expect, he will have missed an opportunity to let the American people know his vision for the next four years and the policies he?d pursue. That?s not an opportunity Mitt Romney will pass up. He will talk about the big choice in this election ? the choice between President Obama?s government-centric vision and Mitt Romney?s vision for an opportunity society with more jobs, higher take-home pay, a better-educated workforce, and millions of Americans lifted out of poverty into the middle class.

This election will not be decided by the debates, however. It will be decided by the American people. Regardless of who comes out on top in these debates, they know we can?t afford another four years like the last four years. And they will ultimately choose a better future by electing Mitt Romney to be our next president.

Source: http://myfox8.com/2012/09/27/romney-memo-seeks-to-lower-debate-expectations/

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ADATA's got an 8.9mm thick portable USB 3.0 drive, limbos under the competition by a millimeter

When it comes to your device being the "world's thinnest" or not can be decided by a single millimeter. Just days after Toshiba unveiled its 9mm-thick 500GB external hard drive, ADATA has knocked a little more off its own enclosure and declared victory. It's releasing the DashDrive Elite HE720, a stainless steel USB 3.0 drive that measures in at 8.9mm-thick, and size is not the only department where it's making an end-run around ol' Tosh -- it's also $25 dollars cheaper, costing $90. In more mundane news, users who pick up the unit are entitled to snag a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security and it'll be available shortly.

Continue reading ADATA's got an 8.9mm thick portable USB 3.0 drive, limbos under the competition by a millimeter

Filed under: Storage

ADATA's got an 8.9mm thick portable USB 3.0 drive, limbos under the competition by a millimeter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Sep 2012 22:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/27/adata-dashdrive-he720/

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Building a CBS Show That Can Last

Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) and Joan (Lucy Liu) in Elementary

Photo by Giovanni Rufino/CBS.

Procedurals are the worker bees of television. The tireless toil of cops, doctors, lawyers, forensic scientists, and federal agents produces sweet ratings honey?seven of the 10 top-rated scripted shows in the 2011-12 season were procedurals?but no one pays them much mind. Every year, one drone rises above the rest to receive critical acclaim?currently The Good Wife is the critics? pet?but otherwise, they?re so plentiful and popular that their essential genius goes unappreciated.

CBS rules this niche?six of those seven hits air on the network?and this week it is introducing three new ones: Vegas, Elementary, and Made in Jersey. Their settings are rural, urban, and suburban; and their heroes are a modest Westerner, an arrogant foreigner, and a gregarious East Coaster; but all are attempts to find a formula that can be entertainingly repeated 24 times a year. Two of them are successful. One can?t crack the case.

In Elementary (Thursdays at 10 p.m.), Jonny Lee Miller?s Sherlock Holmes is a recovering drug addict whose post-rehab regime has him working as a consulting detective in present-day New York. His stylish partner in crimesolving is Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), a former surgeon who now spends her days as a ?sober companion,? a line of work that Holmes charmingly likens to ?a glorified helper monkey.? None of these departures from the Conan Doyle canon bothers me in the slightest. A female Watson feels fresh and full of potential; Holmes? powers of deduction should work just as well on this side of the Atlantic; and Benedict Cumberbatch has no monopoly on 21^st-century Holmesiness.

But that British version raises a red flag: The BBC has produced six episodes of Sherlock since 2010. Two, ?A Study in Pink? and ?A Scandal in Belgravia,? were superb. One, ?The Blind Banker,? was embarrassingly bad. And the other three, like the curate?s egg, were good in parts. If Britain?s finest TV writers can barely manage to stay above the Mendoza line, is there any hope that CBS scribes churning out two dozen episodes a year can consistently create Holmes-worthy logic puzzles?

Judging from the pilot, the answer is no. Miller and Liu are both captivating actors, and their damaged characters mesh together well, but the mystery?the show?s raison d??tre?is a disaster. Worst of all, it breaks the cardinal rule of the detective story, spelled out by P.D. James in her book Talking About Detective Fiction: The solution must be ?one which we the readers should be able to arrive at from evidence fairly presented.? Instead, Elementary?s first investigation depends on guesswork, coincidence, plot points that have been used so frequently they are now procedural clich?s, and the utterly unbelievable.

The first three of those sins are annoying, but the last is unforgivable. TV crime always requires a certain suspension of disbelief?suspects confess far too easily, DNA results appear in a flash?so I don?t care that Watson always finds street parking in Manhattan or that Holmes happens to find a decade-old case just like the one he?s currently investigating by flipping through files. But would an NYPD detective give a drug addict fresh out of ?junkie jail? unfettered access to his crime scene and interrogation room? By the mystery?s big reveal, a farce of technology that will make anyone who?s recently bought a cellphone scoff, I was near screaming with irritation.

Deb (Jessica Blank) and Bonnie (Erin Cummings) in Made in Vegas

Photo by Eric Liebowitz/CBS.

There is nothing original about Made in Jersey (Fridays at 9 p.m.). Its setup?working-class Jersey girl shakes up snooty Manhattan law firm?is 20 percent My Cousin Vinny, 80 percent Legally Blonde. Let?s call it Legally Bayonned. But in the world of procedurals, a sturdy frame matters more than an original concept. Elementary is an architectural folly that can?t possibly stand up to the wear and tear of a season?s worth of cases; Made in Jersey on the other hand, is an unglamorous but solid split-level suburban that will have no problem passing inspection. In the opening episode, we meet ballsy new associate Martina Garretti (Janet Montgomery), the stuck-up lawyers and salt-of-the-earth paralegals she works with, and her chaotic-but-loving family over in the Garden State. Sherlock has his smartphone, but Martina?s army of human clue-droppers and intel sources are far more telegenic.

Subtlety isn?t among Made in Jersey?s attributes. The pilot?s first images are a suspension bridge and a subway tunnel, and in her red blazer and amazingly voluminous hair, Martina stands out from her sober-suited, sleek-coiffed colleagues at Stark & Rowan. She has much more in common with her clients than her co-workers, and that?s her biggest asset: She?s the plebe whisperer, able to explain the mysterious world of tight jeans and cheap hair dye to the children of privilege preparing the case for the defense.

Sheriff Ralph Lamb (Dennis Quaid) in Vegas

Photo by Cliff Lipson/CBS.

The charming Vegas (Tuesdays at 10 p.m.) follows Ralph Lamb (Dennis Quaid, looking mid-century manly), a taciturn rancher, as he reluctantly tackles the task of cleaning up the crime that the new casinos are bringing to 1960 Las Vegas. He?s the charismatic, enigmatic force that every procedural needs at its center, but he?s got family and friends to help with his investigations, and in Michael Chiklis? casino owner Vincent Savino, an enemy worth his time and trouble. Vegas relies on viewers recognizing clues from the future?not just the physical evidence, like that sign proclaiming ?Nuclear Test Site,? but also in the social mores of an era when parents had more control over their kids? lives and men over their womenfolk.

For all their apparent dissimilarities, testosterone-tinged Vegas and estrogen-infused Made in Jersey are both classic, well-made legal procedurals centered around family. The heroes?a fourth-generation rancher and the last in a long line of beauticians?are slowly moving away from the trades that have been in their blood for generations. And both wear a star: Ralph clips a metal one to his vest, while Martina gets one tattooed on her hip.

Thanks to nice touches like that star, no matter how dogged, diligent, and creative Martina is, her co-workers will never see her as anything other than a cut-rate upstart with trashy relatives. ?Don?t worry,? one WASPy colleague tells her, ?You lower expectations just by walking in the room.? In that sense, Martina is just like a procedural. Underestimated and unappreciated, she works hard and makes it look easy. And it doesn?t matter what the snobs think, because real people will love her.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=8222a7419e061202a9c5be5f0d38e81e

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AT&T outs U-verse Easy Remote app for iOS, uses voice and gestures to take control

Not that much time has passed since AT&T announced it was bringing Zuckerberg's social network right to your U-verse-equipped TV, and now those with an iOS device are in for yet another treat. The Rethink Possible company just outed its new Easy Remote application for Apple's mobile operating system, with the main feature being a Watson-powered one that lets U-verse users control their system via voice -- you know, things like picking a show to watch or even flipping through channels. That's not it, however, the app also brings other tidbits such as one-touch access to closed captioning and gesture-based commands. Unfortunately, AT&T's Easy Remote app is only available for iOS at the moment, though we can't imagine it'll be too long before the carrier launches one for folks on a different ecosystem. Either way, you can get a quick glimpse of the application right after the break, where a pretty edifying video awaits.

Continue reading AT&T outs U-verse Easy Remote app for iOS, uses voice and gestures to take control

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Software, HD

AT&T outs U-verse Easy Remote app for iOS, uses voice and gestures to take control originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/OcQrDXE10ys/

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Group claims Da Vinci painted early Mona Lisa work

GENEVA (AP) ? A Zurich-based foundation says it will prove to the world Thursday that Leonardo Da Vinci painted an earlier version of the Mona Lisa ? a claim doubted by at least one expert on the multifaceted Renaissance artist.

The Mona Lisa Foundation, which has been working with the anonymous owners of the "Isleworth Mona Lisa," says that after 35 years of research, experts believe it predates the famed 16th-century masterpiece by some 11 or 12 years based on regression tests, mathematical comparisons and historical and archival records.

"So far, not one scientific test has been able to disprove that the painting is by Leonardo," said art historian Stanley Feldman, a foundation member and principal author of a foundation book entitled "Mona Lisa: Leonardo's Earlier Version" to be released Thursday. "We have used methods that were not available to Leonardo 500 years ago."

"When we do a very elementary mathematical test, we have discovered that all of the elements of the two bodies ? the two people, the two sitters ? are in exactly the same place," Feldman told The Associated Press by phone. "It strikes us that in order for that to be so accurate, so meticulously exact, only the person who did one did the other ... It's an extraordinary revelation in itself, and we think it's valid."

The Isleworth painting ? likewise a portrait of a young woman with an enigmatic smile ? is slightly larger, was painted on canvas and has brighter colors than the famed Louvre Museum masterpiece painted on wood. The posture, folded hand positions, faces, expressions and clothing are similar, while the landscape in the background is different.

The foundation says the painting turned up in the home of an English nobleman in the late 1800s ? thus the connection to Isleworth ? and was shipped to the United States for safekeeping during World War I. After the war, it was analyzed in Italy, and eventually taken to Switzerland where it remained in a bank vault for the last 40 years, the group said.

The Isleworth Mona Lisa has been known publicly for generations ? if forgotten by the broader public ? and the book excerpts numerous news headlines about the painting and the possibility of its Da Vinci connection in the early 20th century.

Martin Kemp, an Oxford University professor and Leonardo expert, wrote in an e-mail that "the reliable primary evidence provides no basis for thinking that there was 'an earlier' portrait of Lisa del Giocondo" ? referring to the subject of the painting that's known as the Mona Lisa in English and La Joconde in French.

Kemp questioned the "debatable interpretations" of source material about the Isleworth painting, and said that scientific analysis cannot categorically deny that Da Vinci didn't paint it. However, he added: "The infrared reflectography and X-ray points very strongly to its not being by Leonardo."

"The Isleworth Mona Lisa miss-translates subtle details of the original, including the sitter's veil, her hair, the translucent layer of her dress, the structure of the hands ... " Kemp wrote. "The landscape is devoid of atmospheric subtlety. The head, like all other copies, does not capture the profound elusiveness of the original."

The Louvre Museum declined to comment.

Associated Press

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NATO: 2 service members killed in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A suicide attack on a NATO patrol in eastern Afghanistan killed two service members in the U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday, NATO and Afghan officials said.

The attack included small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and a man wearing a vest laden with explosives, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition.

The coalition gave no other details, but Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman in Logar province, said the suicide bomber, who was on foot, struck the international soldiers as they were patrolling a section of Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital.

The nationalities of the soldiers killed were not disclosed.

So far this year, 285 NATO service members have been killed in Afghanistan.

Associated Press

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Dating and Priorities: So Much to Do, So Little Time!

College is a time for exploration. The last thing you would ever want to do is look back on a period of your life, labeled by many as the ?best four years? you?ll ever get, and ask yourself, ?What if??

What if I?d gone out for the football team freshman year and made it? What if I?d traveled abroad summer of sophomore year like I wanted to? What if I?d joined that fraternity that all my friends raved about? What if I?d actually shown up to class?

Life goes by so fast, especially when you have a lot going on. Every university in the country has a plethora of teams and organizations you can join from crew to sororities. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor even has a Harry Potter Appreciation club. All muggles are welcome.

Clearly, the interaction with new people, usually from all over the world, is the best part about college. Our relationships with others have the power to elevate life from average to extraordinary. Everything we accomplish is sweeter if we have someone to share it with and the hardships we endure are softened by caring, loving support of true friends. And nothing soothes quite like a very significant other with an outstretched hand to hold throughout it all.

So how do you prioritize? You don?t want to skimp on all the perks of attending a university but definitely want to make sure you figure out if Mr. Right may be among the other students. And then there?s that whole studying thing. Papers, projects, and presentations, oh my! Toss in a few exams and labs and you?ve got yourself a full plate while dining on academia alone.

So what happens when it?s your six-month anniversary, but your statistics midterm is the following morning? What happens when football season starts up and your boyfriend is literally spending more time with practice dummies than with you? What happens when you want to study abroad for the summer in Spain, but she just can?t stand being without you for three months? These are just a few of many difficult scenarios where both members of the relationship must make priorities very clear. The last thing you want to do is spend six months growing attached to someone, and then once debate team starts up, you?re torn apart.

As a junior at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, my academic pursuit is extremely important and I make this clear to anyone I may become romantically involved with. It may sound lame to a lot of guys, but if I have a paper due the next day or a huge test, I will not be available the night before. I don?t blow things off. I don?t compromise what?s important to me just to satisfy someone else?s needs.

Now there is this concept of ?give and take.? Certainly, if a relationship is supposed to work, there must be some form of commitment by both parties when issues like these arise.?The best thing you can do for yourself and for the other person is make your priorities entirely clear. Write out a list if you must. If he?s really a good match for you, he will support your passions and inquire how he can be a part of them or if the best thing he can do is let you do your thing and cheer from the sidelines.

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About CarlyKeyes (8 Posts)

Carly was born and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Carly began her collegiate career in the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania where she also played Division I soccer for the Quakers. A proud Michigander at heart, Carly transferred after her sophomore year to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she is double majoring in Psychology and Communications and minoring in Global Media Studies. She is an accomplished singer/songwriter who draws on her personal experience to compose and perform beautiful music. In her spare time, Carly likes to run, travel and play her piano and guitar. For more on Carly, click any of the icons.

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A Profusion of Philanthropists | Franklin & Marshall Magazine

Philanthropy thought leaders reveal why all of us have something to give

When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia from Boston in 1723, a 17-year-old printer?s apprentice on the lam, the first thing he did was to buy a meal of ?three great puffy rolls.? The second thing he did was to give two of the rolls to a woman and her child. It was the beginning of a lifetime of civic engagement that included the founding of a fire company, a lending library, a scholarly society and more than one college.

?You can make a lot of money and be a great philanthropist. You can make a little money and be a great philanthropist,? said Art Taylor, Esq., ?80, president and CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. ?We can all have an impact on the world.?

Taylor is among a growing number of influential alumni who, inspired by their Franklin & Marshall education and the College?s founding father, have placed philanthropy at the center of their lives. These philanthropy thought leaders insist that all of us have ample opportunity to become philanthropists.

Philanthropy by the Numbers

Andrew Carnegie gave the equivalent of $7 billion to philanthropic causes. Bill and Melinda Gates have contributed $28 billion. Warren Buffet has pledged $31 billion.

Many people probably wish they could offer that level of support. But, according to research into giving trends, a growing number of Americans understand they don?t need to be a John D. Rockefeller or an Oprah Winfrey to be a philanthropist.

Americans gave almost $300 billion to charity in 2011, according to Giving USA, an annual report on U.S. philanthropy published by the Giving Institute. Nearly three-quarters of that total? came directly from individuals, with bequests, foundations and corporations making up the rest.

Total giving grew by 4 percent, or just under 1 percent when adjusted for inflation. That?s on par with historic trends.

?Each year, Americans give about 2.2 percent of their gross national income to charity, and that hasn?t fluctuated much over time,? said Les Lenkowsky, Ph.D., ?68, clinical professor of Public Affairs and Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University.

Giving USA?s research is conducted by Indiana University?s Center on Philanthropy. The center also publishes a periodic panel study that tracks giving by U.S. households. ?The most important factor affecting charitable giving is growth in income or wealth,? Lenkowsky said. ?The economy was modestly better in 2011, and we saw a corresponding modest increase in charitable giving.?

Giving and Receiving

Philanthropy is a Greek term that translates in English to ?love of humans.? ??Voluntary action for the public good? is the definition we use,? Lenkowsky said.

Experts in philanthropy emphasize this emotional element of giving, saying it is about more than handing over large sums of money.

?Philanthropy is a pretty big word,? said Susan Washburn ?73, principal of philanthropic consulting firm Washburn & McGoldrick Inc. ?But philanthropy is simply how you demonstrate that you care about your fellow human beings.?

Talk to those in the philanthropy field about what they do, and words such as ?caring? and ?fellow humans? come up again and again. So does the notion of personal empowerment.

?To me, philanthropy is about helping people to realize their aspirations and to develop fulfilling and meaningful lives,? said Janet Haas, M.D., P?11, chair of the William Penn Foundation.

?Many Americans aren?t in a position to give substantial dollars right now,? Haas said. ?But most can volunteer. At F&M?s graduation this year, [New York City] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg offered thoughtful comments about finding ways to become involved in solving social problems. I was struck by his NYC Service program, which has mobilized more than 1.8 million volunteers.?

Successfully achieving this level of charitable engagement is distinctively American, according to Lenkowsky. ?Philanthropy is an expression of American pluralism, where people can choose where to give their money and which causes to support,? he said.

Matters of the Heart

No matter how you give, those with experience in philanthropy urge giving from the heart. ?Find something you really care about, that you want to invest your money or time in,? Washburn said. ?Philanthropy is about being engaged in something bigger than yourself. And it?s a joyful process. I?ve heard people use the expression ?Give till it hurts.? But I would say, ?Give till it feels great.??

How can you identify what you care about most?

?First, look at the organizations that have affected you personally,? Taylor said. ?Next, focus on the institutions that need to be around if our society and our communities are to thrive. Then find where those two things intersect.?

There are many paths to such an intersection. After graduating from F&M, Taylor took a job at a Big Eight accounting firm, where his first client was job-placement charity OIC of America. Years later he ran into OIC?s controller, who was about to leave the organization and suggested that Taylor apply for the job. Taylor became controller and later president of OIC, a career move that led to his current position.

Many philanthropists first became engaged in giving while in college. Washburn became involved in philanthropy through her work-study job at F&M. ?I worked in the public relations office, so I had exposure to alumni and others who gave to the College,? she said.

She later took full-time jobs on the development office staff, where she helped raise funds to build the Steinman College Center. Washburn has been involved in higher-education fundraising ever since. But she points out that philanthropy exists beyond the fundraising offices on college campuses and extends into curriculum and student groups as ?more and more colleges and universities are seeking to establish a culture of philanthropy on campus."

Lenkowsky?s early engagement with philanthropy reflects this. ?I was in the College Scholar program, which was an interdisciplinary major,? he recalled. ?My primary focus was government, but I was also interested in philanthropy.? Lenkowsky helped to establish some of the first public- engagement organizations on campus. He has now been teaching philanthropy and nonprofit management for 20 years.

For Haas, it was her upbringing in a family that ?taught me the importance of doing what I could for others,? she said. ?We volunteered for service projects, and I saved a little money from my allowance to give to charity. Later I was introduced to more formal philanthropy by my husband and his family.? She is married to John Otto Haas, grandson of William Penn Foundation co-founders Otto and Phoebe Haas.

But being a philanthropist need not involve a career in philanthropy. ?Young people sometimes believe they have to make a choice to either make a lot of money or save the world,? Taylor said. ?But that?s a false choice. It?s important for both students and alumni to realize that even if they don?t work for a nonprofit as part of their career, there are still many opportunities to be philanthropic.?

Philanthropy Through Education

That may be particularly true for those with a liberal arts education. ?A liberal arts education lets you know there?s a bigger world than the one in which you operate,? Taylor said. ?We?re connected to the fates of people in our community and around the world who have less than we do.?

Such an education brings with it certain responsibilities, in Taylor?s view. ?You have been imbued with this wonderful education, and at some point you will be called upon to lead,? he said. ?It may not be as president of the United States. But it may be as the senior warden of your church, or as the leader of a community group, or as the chair of a charitable board. We expect that of the people in whom we have invested a liberal arts education.?

An example of that principle in action is Jessica Fuhrman ?12, who spearheaded a project that raised funds to build a school in Cambodia. Fuhrman majored in government at F&M and was a champion for human rights during her time on campus.

?The impetus was when [author and New York Times columnist] Nicholas Kristof spoke at F&M,? Fuhrman said. ?I had been reading his columns, and they opened my eyes to gender imbalance in the international community.?

The project was organized through the International Women?s Outreach Committee, of which Fuhrman was vice president at the time (she later became president). The group raised funds for American Assistance for Cambodia, a nonprofit that builds public schools in rural Cambodia. ?Only 25 percent of the population over age 15 in our district in Cambodia is literate,? Fuhrman said.

Fuhrman devoted a year to evaluation and planning before she began fundraising. She also sought guidance from professors

and administrators such as Kent Trachte, F&M?s dean of the College, and Susan Dicklitch, associate dean of the College and director of the Ware Institute for Civic Engagement.

Fuhrman and fellow students held fundraisers, such as Asian-themed dinners, throughout 2010 and 2011. They were assisted by F&M?s Human Rights Initiative, which aims to raise awareness about the need to improve educational conditions worldwide. Donations to the project topped $13,000, which was matched by the World Bank.

The result was a coeducational school in the Kampong Speu province in south-central Cambodia, ?in a tiny village a couple of hours? drive over dirt roads? from Phnom Penh, as Fuhrman described it.

Construction was completed in fall 2011. The following spring, Fuhrman visited the school to meet the principal, teachers and students. Today, 486 children receive their primary education there.

But work at the school is hardly done, which is driving further efforts to fuel engagement through philanthropy. Fuhrman plans to raise money outside F&M, and F&M students continue to raise funds on campus. ?We want to hire an English teacher for the school,? Fuhrman said. ?We also want to acquire computers and better textbooks.?

Fuhrman is an example of the passionate philanthropist who pursues her philanthropic activities independent of her professional work. She is an intern at a Long Island magazine and is applying for graduate-school fellowships. Her plan is to study journalism, with a focus on civil rights.

?Don?t let anyone convince you that you can?t do it,? she advised others who would become involved in philanthropy. ?Had I listened to how impossible it would be to build a school in Cambodia, it wouldn?t be there today. But I was confident I would get it done, no matter how long it took. And now there are 486 students who have a school who wouldn?t have one otherwise.?

Charitable Accountability

Americans are becoming increasingly engaged in charitable giving, many philanthropy experts agree. As their affinity for giving has grown, so has their demand for greater accountability from the causes they support.

?Some have suggested that Americans are becoming less involved in their communities,? said Sue Washburn ?73, principal of philanthropic consulting firm Washburn & McGoldrick Inc. ?But I simply don?t see that. More young people and retirees are getting involved locally. Schools, colleges and universities are emphasizing civic engagement. Younger people want to be more engaged in their giving. They think in terms of being investors in philanthropy. They don?t just want to give; they also want to see the impact of their giving.?

And it?s not just young people. The biggest trend in philanthropy is that donors want to know that their charitable dollars are being put to good use, according to Les Lenkowsky, Ph.D., ?68, clinical professor of Public Affairs and Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University. ?But it can be difficult to measure the impact of charities,? he said. ?If you give toward a new building at F&M, you can watch the building go up. But if you give to support F&M?s overall mission, how would you measure the results??

Evaluating charities is the purview of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, but President and CEO Art Taylor, Esq., ?80, agreed there are limits to what can effectively be measured. ?Our reports tell donors whether a charity meets our standards in areas such as governance and financial management,? he said. ?But we don?t try to evaluate something like how effective a job-placement charity is at placing people in jobs.?

If I Had a Million Dollars

We asked our experts what they would do with $1 million. Here?s what they said:

?First I would give to my college, which gave me my intellectual strength. Second I would give to my church, which gave me my spiritual strength.?

Art Taylor, Esq., ?80 is president and CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance (www.give.org), which evaluates national charities against a set of accountability standards. He is a member of the F&M Board of Trustees and chair of OIC of America, a national nonprofit that offers job training and placement to disadvantaged people.

?I would fund a college course where students could learn how to become philanthropists.?

Les Lenkowsky, Ph.D., ?68 is clinical professor of Public Affairs and Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University. He was appointed by President George W. Bush as CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a position he held from 2001 to 2003. In 2010 he was awarded the David R. Jones Leadership in Philanthropy Award from the Fund for American Studies.

?I would give to anything that provides greater access to education, because education is transformational.?

Sue Washburn ?73 is principal of Washburn & McGoldrick Inc., an international philanthropic consulting firm specializing in higher education. She is vice chair of the F&M Board of Trustees and former chair of the board of trustees of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

?Sometimes the most important thing philanthropy can do is to take a stand on a thorny issue. The William Penn Foundation is focusing on turning around Philadelphia?s failing schools.?

Janet Haas, M.D., P?11 is chair of the William Penn Foundation, which focuses on improving quality of life in the greater Philadelphia region by supporting educational, cultural and environmental initiatives. She is a trustee with the Wilderness Society, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania and Morris Arboretum.

?I would invest more in the primary school we built in Cambodia. I?d also like to build a secondary school in the region. I?d also like to offer adult-learning classes at the school. I?d like to create a scholarship fund to allow one student a year coming out of the school to attend F&M. I?d like to start a for-credit program that would allow F&M students to teach enrichment courses at the school. I think I?ve probably already spent the million dollars.?

Jessica Fuhrman ?12 is former president of the International Women?s Outreach Committee at F&M. She is the 2012 recipient of the College?s Muhlenberg Goodwill Award, presented to a senior who is dedicated to improving social conditions in the larger community. During her junior and senior years at F&M, she led an effort to raise funds to build a primary school in Cambodia.

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Source: http://magazine.fandm.edu/2012/09/25/a-profusion-of-philanthropists/

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Georgia's richest man runs for country's top job

In this photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, Georgia's billionaire and opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks during his interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia's richest man, multibillionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili is on a collision course for political power with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime close friend and ally. Ivanishvili was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

In this photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, Georgia's billionaire and opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks during his interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia's richest man, multibillionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili is on a collision course for political power with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime close friend and ally. Ivanishvili was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

In this photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, Georgia's billionaire and opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks during his interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia's richest man, multibillionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili is on a collision course for political power with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime close friend and ally. Ivanishvili was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

In this photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, Georgia's billionaire and opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili speaks during his interview with The Associated Press at his home in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia's richest man, multibillionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili is on a collision course for political power with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime close friend and ally. Ivanishvili was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

In this photo taken Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, the house of Georgia's billionaire and opposition leader Bidzina Ivanishvili is seen in Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia's richest man, multibillionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili is on a collision course for political power with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime close friend and ally. Ivanishvili was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

UREKI, Georgia (AP) ? Georgia's richest man, billionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili seems to have it all ? a head-spinning fortune, the respect of his country and gleaming, art-filled palaces across the globe, including one where zebras and pink flamingoes roam.

What else could he want?

Political power, it turns out, and that has put him on a collision course with President Mikhail Saakashvili ? his onetime friend and ally.

Since announcing his ambitions a year ago, Ivanishvili has been stripped of his Georgian citizenship and hit with fines of tens of millions of dollars. But he is undeterred in leading his Georgian Dream party into parliamentary elections next week that he hopes will make him prime minister, set to become the country's most powerful job after legislative changes next year.

The outcome will have profound consequences for this small but strategically located South Caucasus nation, which has been the West's most loyal ally in a troubled, energy-rich region.

The 56-year-old Ivanishvili, worth an estimated $6.4 billion, was an early supporter of Saakashvili after he came to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution demonstrations that drove out the corruption-riddled regime of Eduard Shevardnadze. But Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia, gradually became disenchanted and began to fear that his disagreements with Saakashvili could imperil his future.

In an interview with The Associated Press, he suggested that his entry into politics was at least partly to shield him from government pressure.

"When you enter politics, it gives you some kind of protection," he said in his residence outside the Black Sea resort of Batumi. But he insists that his rags-to-riches story also points to a deeper drive to help his country: "A smart, gifted person can do things for himself, but also for his friends, for his village, for his country."

Ivanishvili was the youngest of five children in a hilltop village so poor and remote that a rickety old truck brought supplies just once a month. He often had no shoes and dreamt of owning a bicycle. After earning an engineering degree in the capital Tbilisi, he moved to Moscow, where he received a Ph.D. in labor economy.

When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev launched his perestroika campaign and gradually allowed private entrepreneurship, Ivanishvili and a friend seized the spirit of the times. They began importing personal computers ? rarities in the Soviet Union that cost the equivalent of two or three cars. Sometimes he would approach foreigners at cafes and plead with them to bring computers on their next visit.

In 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed, Ivanishvili and his partners amassed enough money to start a bank, Rossiyskiy Kredit, which became a leading financial institution. Its first office was at a kindergarten, and foreign partners coming for meetings stumbled over miniature toddler toilets. As his bank expanded, Ivanishvili started buying into mining and metals plants across Russia, and then reselling the shares at huge profit.

Skeptics wonder whether it was possible to amass such a fortune honestly, but Ivanishvili insists that he always ran a clean business.

"I never violated any laws," he said. "I never betrayed or deceived anyone."

For years, Ivanishvili was a quiet benefactor of thousands of his impoverished countrymen and also of Saakashvili's government, building schools and hospitals, buying new boots and blankets for the military and, he says, even paying for Saakashvili's inauguration. He also collected art and exotic animals and erected futuristic residences across the country, like a glass-and-steel fortress nestled on a hilltop in the capital Tbilisi.

But Ivanishvili says he broke off ties with Saakashvili after the leader cracked down on opposition protests in 2007, tightened control over media, and Georgia found itself in a brief but disastrous war with Russia in 2008. Saakashvili's government was further tainted in recent days when TV channels funded by Ivanishvili released videos of inmates at a Tbilisi prison being beaten and raped with objects, which sparked angry street protests.

"He has built a tough, authoritarian government while at the same time trying to prove to Europe and America that he is building democracy," Ivanishvili said. "The people have been deceived, including me."

The two men's feud seems highly personal.

Saakashvili denounces Ivanishvili as a Russian stooge, referring to his Georgian Dream coalition as "forces of darkness." The president's camp also accuses Ivanishvili of corrupting Georgian politics and voters with his wealth ? which is equivalent to roughly half of Georgia's GDP.

Ivanishvili, in turn, portrays Saakashvili as a dim-witted former protege who used to call him a "hundred" times a day to ask for advice on running the country.

An August opinion survey by U.S.-based National Democratic Institute suggested that Saakashvili's United National Movement leads the polls with 37 percent support, while Georgian Dream has 12 percent. But Ivanishvili claims he has momentum on his side, with support surging since the release of the prison rape video.

So far Ivanishvili's political career brought him nothing but trouble.

He was stripped of Georgian citizenship a year ago, shortly after he announced his entry into politics. The official reason was that he also had a French passport ? and Georgia prohibits dual nationality. Even though parliament then adopted a law allowing Ivanishvili to run for office as an EU citizen, Ivanishvili said the loss of Georgian citizenship was deeply upsetting, especially considering the $1.5 billion he says he has spent on charity here.

The government then followed by fining him tens of millions of dollars over campaign funding violations, saying that distributing satellite TV dishes and offering a fleet of cars to his party amounts to vote-buying according to recently passed electoral laws that ban corporate donations to parties.

Some observers said the changes were necessary. Others, including Maina Kiai, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights, said the legislation was aimed at preventing "certain individuals" from running in the upcoming vote ? an apparent reference to Ivanishvili.

Ivanishvili bristles at Saakashvili's accusations that if elected he would serve Russia, not Georgia ? calling such suspicions "laughable." Ivanishvili renounced his long-held Russian citizenship before launching his political career and has sold off his Russian assets to sever his financial ties with Moscow. Most of his assets are now in Western banks and about $1 billion in art.

Some experts agree that he's his own man, pointing to the fact that he had funded Saakashvili, the Kremlin's arch-foe, for years.

"All the evidence suggests that he is no one's project but his own," said Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert with the Carnegie Endowment. At the same, time the Kremlin is likely to court Ivanishvili, eager to have someone unseat Saakashvili.

Ivanishvili promises aggressive and quick reforms that would strengthen democratic institutions and prompt foreign and local businessmen to invest in the economy. He intends to pursue a pro-Western policy and one day bring Georgia into NATO, while at the same time unfreezing economic ties with Russia ? something he himself acknowledges would be a very complicated task. "You just need to wait for the right time and without doubt improve relations with Russia," Ivanishvili said.

Ivanishvili vows that he will not be corrupted by power, noting that as a businessman he only promoted those who were not afraid to argue with him. But when describing how he would reform Georgia, he revealed some monarchic overtones.

"In such small countries," Ivanishvili said, "everything depends on one person, everyone else follows immediately."

Associated Press

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Wearable sensor system automatic maps building while wearer is moving

ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2012) ? MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving. The prototype system, described in a paper slated for the Intelligent Robots and Systems conference in Portugal next month, is envisioned as a tool to help emergency responders coordinate disaster response.

In experiments conducted on the MIT campus, a graduate student wearing the sensor system wandered the halls, and the sensors wirelessly relayed data to a laptop in a distant conference room. Observers in the conference room were able to track the student's progress on a map that sprang into being as he moved.

Connected to the array of sensors is a handheld pushbutton device that the wearer can use to annotate the map. In the prototype system, depressing the button simply designates a particular location as a point of interest. But the researchers envision that emergency responders could use a similar system to add voice or text tags to the map -- indicating, say, structural damage or a toxic spill.

"The operational scenario that was envisioned for this was a hazmat situation where people are suited up with the full suit, and they go in and explore an environment," says Maurice Fallon, a research scientist in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and lead author on the new paper. "The current approach would be to textually summarize what they had seen afterward -- 'I went into this room on the left, I saw this, I went into the next room,' and so on. We want to try to automate that."

Fallon is joined on the paper by professors John Leonard and Seth Teller, of, respectively, the departments of Mechanical Engineering and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and EECS grad students Hordur Johannsson and Jonathan Brookshire.

Shaky aim

The new work builds on previous research on systems that enable robots to map their environments. But adapting the system so that a human could wear it required a number of modifications.

One of the sensors that the system uses is a laser rangefinder, which sweeps a laser beam around a 270-degree arc and measures the time that it takes the light pulses to return. If the rangefinder is level, it can provide very accurate information about the distance of the nearest walls, but a walking human jostles it much more than a rolling robot does. Similarly, sensors in a robot's wheels can provide accurate information about its physical orientation and the distances it covers, but that's missing with humans. And as emergency workers responding to a disaster might have to move among several floors of a building, the system also has to recognize changes in altitude, so it doesn't inadvertently overlay the map of one floor with information about a different one.

So in addition to the rangefinder, the researchers also equipped their sensor platform with a cluster of accelerometers and gyroscopes, a camera, and, in one group of experiments, a barometer (changes in air pressure proved to be a surprisingly good indicator of floor transitions). The gyroscopes could infer when the rangefinder was tilted -- information the mapping algorithms could use in interpreting its readings -- and the accelerometers provided some information about the wearer's velocity and very good information about changes in altitude.

Adjudicating the data from all the other sensors is the camera. Every few meters, the camera takes a snapshot of its surroundings, and software extracts a couple of hundred visual features from the image -- particular patterns of color, or contours, or inferred three-dimensional shapes. Each batch of features is associated with a particular location on the map.

Seeing is believing

If the person wearing the sensors returns to an area that he or she has previously visited, the system's location estimate could be off: For instance, its compensation for the tilt of the rangefinder might not have been perfect, and a wall now looks several feet farther away than it did, or its inference of position from accelerometer data could be off. In such cases, a fresh snapshot and a comparison of the visual features with those already stored can help correct its location estimate.

The prototype of the sensor platform consists of a handful of devices attached to a sheet of hard plastic about the size of an iPad, which is worn on the chest like a backward backpack. The only sensor whose volume can't be reduced significantly is the rangefinder, so in principle, the whole system could be shrunk to about the size of a coffee mug.

Wolfram Burgard, a professor of computer science at the University of Freiburg in Germany, says that the MIT researchers' work is on the general topic of SLAM, or simultaneous localization and mapping. "Originally, this came out as a problem of robotics," Burgard says. "This idea of having a SLAM system that is attached to a human's body, for figuring out where it is, is actually innovative and pretty useful. For first responders, a technology like this one might be highly relevant."

"With a robot, we typically assume that the robot lives in a plane," Burgard continues. "What they definitely tackled is the problem of height and dealing with staircases, as the human walks up and down. The sensors are not always straight, because the body shakes. These are problems that they tackle in their approach, and where it actually goes beyond the standard 2-D SLAM."

Both the U.S. Air Force and the Office of Naval Research supported the work.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Larry Hardesty.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/tE2RJwT1_vc/120924144755.htm

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97% Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

"Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" is an insightful, engaging and inspiring documentary about the activist and famed artist. That having been said, I am sure there are some people who might find it strange that I use the word inspiring for an artist who makes his art from smashing antique vases and pointing his middle finger at landmarks, especially Tiananmen Square.(By the way, does anybody know if there are any photos of his middle finger in front of Yankee Stadium?) I think both are symbolic of how nothing is sacred, especially the Chinese government who he is in a running battle with to gain transparency into the inner workings of its bureaucracy. After they shut down his blog, he went on Twitter and distributed his documentaries for free over the internet. His style is definitely confrontational, as somebody says he reminds him of a hooligan, but in a good way.(As Ani DiFranco once sang, being nice is overrated.) Remember, we are all hooligans, right now. Ai Weiwei's activism hit a critical point when he criticized the treatment of the poor during the 2008 Olympics and the response to the Sichuan earthquake which killed several thousand children in faulty construction that has been compared to tofu. As New Yorker magazine correspondent Evan Osnos points out, Ai Weiwei was initially inspired politically by the Iran Contra hearings when he was living in the United States that sought to hold a government responsible but did not work as well as some of us would have liked. So, instead of the fortune his son would inherit, he will have something much more precious to leave him. Now, if I can only figure out if the cat opening the door is supposed to be a metaphor or just darn cute.

September 4, 2012

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ai_weiwei_never_sorry_2012/

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