When you're Justin Bieber, there is no such thing as privacy. That's why you've got to instill some forced privacy of your own when it comes to doing "normal" things like throwing house parties and hanging out with your friends.
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QANTAS is underpaying flight staff and importing human rights violations, the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) says.
Shouting slogans that included "What's outrageous? Unsafe wages" and "Human rights on every flight", about 60 TWU members converged on Darwin International Airport on Wednesday.
The union is holding its annual council meeting in Darwin this week and the treatment of Qantas staff has been discussed.
TWU national secretary Tony Sheldon said Thai flight attendants were working on Qantas flights in Australia and only getting paid $246 per month.
"If you fly into our airspace in this country then you should have our rights," Mr Sheldon said.
He also said a partnership between Qantas and Emirates was concerning because of human rights issues in the Middle East.
"No one in this country should turn around and say that planes should be flying into our airspace and not having the same human rights that we enjoy in this country," Mr Sheldon said.
"We see Middle East carriers come in here and say that if you are a woman and pregnant, you get sacked," he told the rally.
The unionists at the airport walked through part of the facility while shaking placards and chanting.
Qantas was contacted for comment but could not immediately respond to the TWU claims.
A Qantas spokesman later said Mr Sheldon's comments about flight staff were "baseless and inaccurate".
"Jetstar cabin crew are paid at rates of pay based on where they live and work," the spokesman said.
He said Jetstar employees based in Australia were paid Australian rates, while those in Japan, Thailand or Singapore were paid on local terms and conditions.
The union has claimed Thai workers of Jetstar have been paid their home rates for several days after they arrive in Australia while they work on domestic flights.
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By Arshad Mohammed
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday and acknowledged there was considerable skepticism that the two sides would resume peace negotiations.
There were no signs of any breakthrough as Kerry visited Israel for the fourth time in his four months in office to try to revive a peace process that has been moribund for more than two years.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over Israeli construction of Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank land that the Palestinians want as part of their future state.
"I know this region well enough to know that there is skepticism. In some quarters there is cynicism and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," Kerry said as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed for pictures.
"It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay out a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people but certainly exhaust the possibilities of peace."
Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for lunch in the West Bank city of Ramallah and returned to Jerusalem to see Shimon Peres, who holds Israel's largely ceremonial post of president. He will have breakfast on Friday with Netanyahu.
Before their meeting on Thursday morning, Netanyahu said he wanted to restart peace talks.
"It's something I hope the Palestinians want as well and we ought to be successful for a simple reason - when there's a will, we'll find a way," Netanyahu said.
The two men discussed ways to advance peace, Kerry's ideas for an economic plan to boost Palestinian growth and the "escalating violence" in neighboring Syria's civil war, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters after the meeting.
Peres wished Kerry success in his mission but the U.S. top diplomat responded by saying success would be a prize for the adversaries, not his.
"You said that 'if you succeed' or 'if you fail' - I think it's not me, Mr. President. It really is a question of whether Israel and the Palestinians make the choices," Kerry told Peres and added that regional players had reached a "critical moment".
"This moment is a really critical moment for the region and particularly for Israel and for Palestine and for Jordan ... the importance of trying to resolve this in this moment, where there is a willingness for people to look for a way, can't be overstated," Kerry said.
SETTLEMENTS
Last week, Kerry telephoned Netanyahu to voice U.S. concern at Israel's plan to declare legal four unauthorized West Bank settler outposts.
Most of the world deems all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. Israel, which captured the land in the 1967 Middle East War, disputes this. There are about 120 government-authorized settlements in the West Bank and dozens of outposts built by settlers without official sanction.
The main issues that would have to be resolved in a peace agreement include the borders between Israel and a Palestinian state, the future of Jewish settlements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
In his visits to the region, Kerry is also trying to put together an economic package for the Palestinians to go alongside the U.S. political initiative.
European diplomats, in meetings with Palestinian leaders, have been trying to steer them away from any notion the European Union might present a peace plan of its own. British Foreign Secretary of William Hague also held talks with Netanyahu and Abbas on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jon Hemming)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-meets-israelis-palestinians-bid-revive-talks-115501517.html
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May 22, 2013 ? Translocation -- or moving animals to safer places -- is a vital tool for saving species from extinction. Many factors influence the success of these new populations, including habitat quality, predators, capture and release techniques, the number and sex of individuals, and their genetic diversity. Now new research, the first of its kind, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology suggests bird song could also be important.
Ecologists from the University of Waikato and Lincoln University in New Zealand studied the North Island k?kako, an iconic bird with a haunting, organ-like song. Once widespread in the North Island, loss of habitat by deforestation and predation by rats, possums and stoats decimated the population. By 1999, fewer than 400 pairs remained, and between 2001 and 2007, several pairs were moved from Te Urewera National Park to two other reserves: Boundary Stream Mainland Island and Ngapukeriki.
To find out how moving the k?kako has affected their song, the researchers made hundreds of recordings in the three populations and analysed differences in song using sonograms. They then used playback experiments to discover how birds from one population reacted to another populations' song.
They found the songs of translocated birds had diverged substantially from the source population, becoming less diverse with shorter and higher-pitched elements. According to Dr Laura Molles from Lincoln University: "Not only how k?kako sing in translocated populations, but also what they sing differs from k?kako in the source population."
The greatest changes were found in the population that had been translocated for longest, indicating the songs may become more different over time. But despite the divergence between each population's song, the playback experiments showed that the birds could not yet tell them apart.
"The songs diverge because birds such as k?kako learn their songs from parents, siblings and neighbours. As translocation usually involves only a small number of indivuals, they will take with them only a small portion of all the song elements in the larger source population. Subsequent variation in small populations will depend on that subset of songs and will then differ from the larger song pool in the source population," Dr Molles explains.
The study has important implications for conservation. Although in this study the k?kako populations have not been separated for long enough to cause song incompatibility, it will occur in time, the authors say. Once that happens, releasing additional birds into these populations could be problematic because song incompatibility could make interbreeding difficult.
As a result, says Dr Molles, conservationists should consider song variation as part of bird reintroductions: "We need to be aware that behavioural factors like song can also affect translocation success and recovery of endangered birds, and adapt our management of these populations accordingly. This means that we may have to work harder but the good news is that if we consider one more factor that we now know may also affect translocation, we will be more likely to succeed in conserving birds."
The North Island k?kako is one of New Zealand's most iconic bird species. The size of a common pigeon, both males and females have blue-grey plumage with black masks and striking bright blue wattles. Both sexes sing, and pairs duet, with a haunting voice and the birds' astonishingly varied organ-like notes can be heard over 1km away.
They have limited flying power, instead moving like squirrels through the branches and gliding from hill tops to valleys. They live in the temperate rainforest, feeding mainly on fruit and leaves. Once widespread, their numbers collapsed due to deforestation and predation by rats, stoats and possums, and by 1999 fewer than 400 pairs remained. Thanks to translocation to safe offshore islands, numbers have increased to around 800 pairs today.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/IyZIhnh9iHk/130521230046.htm
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City/Area: San Diego / College Area, CA, 92115
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Parking: Parking included
Source: http://www.westsiderentals.com/adref/RSSFeed/default.cfm?listing_id=1044874
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PHOENIX (AP) ? It was the customer service disaster heard around the Internet.
An Arizona restaurateur, fed up after years of negative online reviews and an embarrassing appearance on a reality television show, posted a social media rant laced with salty language and angry, uppercase letters that quickly went viral last week, to the delight of people who love a good Internet meltdown.
"I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE," read the posting on the Facebook wall of Amy's Baking Co. in suburban Phoenix. "YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD."
It was, to put it kindly, not a best business practice. Add to that an appearance earlier this month on the Fox reality television show "Kitchen Nightmares" ? where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay gave up on trying to save the restaurant after he was insulted ? and you have a recipe for disaster.
"That's probably the worst thing that can happen," said Sujan Patel, founder and CEO of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency in San Francisco.
In the evolving world of online marketing, where the power of word of mouth has been wildly amplified by the whims and first impressions of anonymous reviewers posting on dozens of social media websites, online comments, both good and bad, and the reactions they trigger from managers, can make all the difference between higher revenues and empty storefronts.
Hotels, restaurants and other businesses that depend on good customer service reviews have all grappled in recent years with how to respond to online feedback on sites such as Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook and Instagram, where comments can often be more vitriol than in-person reviews because of the anonymous shield many social media websites provide.
No matter how ugly the reviews get, businesses need to be willing to admit mistakes and offer discounts to lure unhappy customers back, digital marketing experts said.
"In the past, people just sent bad soup back. Well, now they are getting on social media and telling all their friends and friends of friends how bad the soup was and why they should find other places to get soup in the future, so it takes the customer experience to another level," said Tom Garrity of the Garrity Group, a public relations firm in New Mexico.
"The challenge becomes ? how do you respond when someone doesn't think your food or product is as great as you think it is?"
In Amy and Samy Bouzaglo's case, the bad reviews were compounded by their horrible reality TV experience. The couple said during a recent episode of "Kitchen Nightmares" that they needed professional guidance after years of battling terrible online reviews. They opened the pizzeria in an upscale Scottsdale neighborhood about six years ago.
"Kitchen Nightmares" follows Ramsay as he helps rebuild struggling restaurants. After one bite, he quickly deemed Amy's Baking Co. a disaster and chided the Bouzaglos for growing increasingly irate over his constructive feedback. Among his many critiques: The store-bought ravioli smelled "weird," a salmon burger was overcooked and a fig pizza was too sweet and arrived on raw dough.
"You need thick skin in this business," Ramsay said before walking out. It was the first time he wasn't able to reform a business, according to the show.
Amy's Baking Co. temporarily closed last week after the episode aired. A Bouzaglo spokesman said the couple was not available for an interview Monday. The restaurant's answering machine was full. Emails and Facebook messages were not returned.
A wall post published last week claimed the restaurant's Facebook, Yelp and Twitter accounts had been hacked, but hundreds of commenters expressed doubt. Social media sites show someone posting as a member of the Bouzaglo family had been insulting customers over negative reviews since at least 2010.
The story bounced across the Internet, generating thousands of comments on Facebook, Yelp and Twitter, and prompting nearly 36,000 people to sign a petition on Change.org that asks the Department of Labor to look into the Bouzaglo's practice of pocketing their servers' tips.
While many corporations hire communications experts to respond to every tweet, Facebook message and online review, the wave of digital feedback can be especially challenging for small businesses with small staffs, digital consultants said.
For one thing, there is so much online content to wade through. Roughly 60 percent of all adults get information about local businesses from search engines and entertainment websites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, according to a 2011 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
"Customer service is a spectator sport now," said Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, a social media marketing consultancy in Indiana. "It's not about making that customer happy on Yelp. That's the big misunderstanding of Yelp. It's about the hundreds of thousands of people who are looking on to see how you handle it. It's those ripples that make social media so important."
In their "Kitchen Nightmares" episode, Amy and Samy Bouzaglo are seen yelling and cursing at customers inquiring about undercooked food or long delays. They blame online bullies.
"We stand up to them," Amy Bouzaglo tells the camera at one point. "They come and they try to attack us and say horrible things that are not true."
That's exactly how businesses shouldn't respond, the digital experts said.
"If your policy is to berate the customer online, that doesn't create good public relations," Garrity said.
Baer said he tells clients to create a response matrix representing different potential complaints that staff can refer to whenever bad feedback arises. Creating the comment chart before the bad publicity hits helps ensure businesses aren't responding to angry or disappointed customers with their own anger or disappointment, Baer said.
A 2011 Harvard study found Yelp's 40 million reviews disproportionately affect small businesses. The research found a one-star increase in Yelp's five-star rating system resulted in a revenue jump of up to 9 percent for some restaurants, while chains with sizable advertising budgets were unaffected.
"You have to respond 100 percent of the time, whether you like it or not," Baer said. "Businesses need to assign someone to stay on top of it."
In Arizona, Amy and Samy Bouzaglo had planned a grand reopening ceremony and news conference for Tuesday, but the news conference was canceled late Monday after legal threats from Fox.
Fewer than a dozen people were waiting when the restaurant reopened Tuesday. Four guards blocked the door and turned reporters away. Inside, a smiling Samy Bouzaglo posed for pictures and told customers that the tension captured in the episode was staged. That was a disappointment for some.
"I wanted it to be dramatic and people yelling," said Ricky Potts, a 29-year-old blogger who ate at the restaurant for the first time Tuesday only to declare the food good and the service routine. "Basically, I wanted it to be the circus that the TV episode was."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/restaurant-learns-online-reviews-break-072759344.html
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court won't order new legislative elections in Mississippi over complaints about the timing of the state's redistricting.
The Mississippi NAACP had challenged the state's 2011 state elections because the Legislature did not immediately use the 2010 census to draw new district lines in 2011. The state House and Senate instead argued for several weeks before ending their 2011 session without adopting new maps.
The NAACP had asked for that election to be set aside and special elections to be held under a court-ordered plan. It said that using the old maps violated the one-person, one-vote principle by diluting African-American voting strength.
Courts affirmed a ruling that allowed state lawmakers to run in their old districts that year.
The justices, without comment, upheld the lower court rulings.
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At a first glance, the IF-world looks prosperous as ever. Double-digit profit increases like the 10.7% year-on-year surge Bahrain's Al Baraka Banking Group reported Sunday have become a familiar occurrence. According to Kuwait Finance House, global Sukuk outstanding reached $235.4bn in Q1, a 16.7% increase year on year. Egypt's president Mohammed Morsi signed the Sukuk bill into law, opening doors for the issuances of Islamic bonds in the biggest Arabic country by population. New markets combining the Koran with capital are emerging in Tunisia, Oman, Uganda, China and Tatarstan, to mention a few.
However, a closer look reveals some fractures in the shining fa?ade. Islamic financial institutions are in danger of becoming a victim of their own successes. Because "Wall Street is back", as The Economist says on the title of its latest issue, the non-interest, non-conventional, ethical style of Islamic investment industry faces a talent crunch.
"In times of bullish stock markets, rising investment banking profits and a new appetite for derivatives jobs at Islamic banks and insurance firms lose attraction," said Marcel Omar Papp, the head of Swiss Re's Islamic re-insurance division Retakaful in Kuala Lumpur. Selling insurances, Shari'ah-compliant or not, is like watching an oil painting drying, he added.
In addition, the IF-sector witnessed two prominent exits in New York and in Zurich. Rushdi Siddiqui left Thomson Reuters where he worked for four years as global head of Islamic Finance with a remit to push the firm's Islamic information tools and market data. According to insiders, Siddiqui never received the recognition at Thomson Reuters which he had at Dow Jones Indexes where in 1998 he invented and launched the first ever Shari'ah-compliant equity market measures, the Dow Jones Islamic Markets index series. Last month, Siddiqui, an American Muslim with Indian roots, co-founded Islamic private equity firm Azka Capital.
Meanwhile Standard and Poor's indices joined forces with Dow Jones Indexes and from the former 150 Dow Jones Indexes employees only 20 "survived" the merger.
Another prominent resignation happened at Switzerland's Bank Sarasin which is now Bank J. Safra Sarasin & Cie AG. Fares Mourad, the head of Islamic finance with Sarasin resigned in February this year after successfully lifting the Basle-based lender to being the only Swiss bank capable of providing the full range of Islamic wealth management tools, from trusts to treasury solutions.
In the Gulf region, Sarasin operates in a joint venture with Alpen Capital, led by founder Rohit Walia. Alpen Capital told AMEinfo.com on request that there were no plans to halt the joint venture and both sides would continue to develop and promote Islamic wealth management in tandem. However, it remains questionable how stable this partnership is after Sarasin merged with Brazil-based Banque Jacob Safra.
More worrying is that many Shar'iah-scholars (they may forgive me for my assessment) are approaching the age of retirement. Newcomers are rare. As Bahrain's respected (and still relatively young) Sheikh Nizam Yaqubi from Bahrain once said "we cannot produce Shari'ah scholars like mushrooms, their education takes up to 20 years."
The question must be asked of how the industry will cope with all these new banks in so many new IF-markets. While Sukuk and new market participants mushroom, Islamic finance standards - with the exception of accounting standards set by AAOIFI, remain opaque, a jigsaw of national Shar'iah-banking rules treating the label "halal" differently depending on their viewpoint.
Islamic finance is not "out". But the innovative industry has to watch its next steps closely.
Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/islamic-finance-industry-342436
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It's been eight years since Microsoft and Sony announced new consoles, and tastes have changed considerably. Back then, new gaming gear was launched at E3, or using Elijah Wood-fronted MTV specials, but this time around Microsoft is pitching a tent on its Redmond campus for the world's media to huddle under. With less than 24 hours before the next Xbox is revealed, it's high time we sifted through the leaks, rumors and prognostications to see what we know, or at least, what we think we know about a little box called "Durango."
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/8yc0fovrPJ0/
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Sometimes it's important to just take a moment and reflect on life. It can be a real relief to let go of technology for a moment and think about something else. History maybe. And there's no better way to slow down than by taking a walk with an eight-foot-tall, 1,000-pound robot that moves 10-feet per minute. Ahh, how quaint.
Gygan, also called Cygan and Mr. Moto, is one of the first robots, built in 1957 by Italian engineer Ing Fiorito and brought to London (somehow) in 1958. Now at 56, Gygan is on the move and will go on sale at Christie's "Out of the Ordinary" auction on August 5. The auction house projects that the humanoid robot will bring between ?6,000 and ?8,000.
It's unclear how much functionality Gyga has today, but in its heyday the robot could walk backwards and forwards, turn side to side, move its arms and hold/crush items in its "hands." Apparently it could even respond to spoken commands and other signals. So not exactly a return to simpler times. [The Telegraph]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/one-of-the-first-humanoid-robots-is-up-for-auction-508760204
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All sites can benefit from the ascending traffic that SEO produces, but it?s important that you do not dehumanize consumers in an attempt for higher profits. This article has some great tips to help you better your site?s visibility by applying techniques that work for you and search engines.
TIP! Keyword density is important when optimizing an internet page for various search engines. To avoid this, try to keep your total keyword content to under twenty percent of any given page.
To make your site more noticeable you should use a lot of keywords; even ones that are misspelled in the meta tag area. The larger the variety in your meta-tags the more likely it is that your website will be ranked high in a given search. For example, if you have a website about Maine Coon cats, then use ?Maine Coon? as well as ?Main Coon? and ?Mainecoon.?
To make the most out of search engine optimization efforts, write to match your goal. This means that keywords should be repeated as often as you can without making the flow of the writing stilted. When search engines can find and evaluate your keywords, you should see your rankings improve.
TIP! Consider pay-per-click arrangements as a means to lucrative affiliate marketing. Although this is the cheapest and easiest service affiliates can provide and the pay is modest, it can add up fast.
Boosting your site?s SEO takes time, so remember to be patient. Significant changes cannot happen over night. You may have to invest a few months into the process before you start to see big results. As in a business you would run on offline, your reputation will take time to build.
One of the first questions to ask is how many years of experience they have in SEO. Be sure you are aware of any risks, so that you are in a position to make a knowledgeable determination based on the facts.
TIP! Purchase a simple domain name that is pertinent to your niche and easy to remember. These are great for your viewers that locate your content through YouTube.
This is easily done through a robots. txt file and having it placed in the root directory. This makes certain files found on your website inaccessible to the search engine.
Try to avoid using a lot of symbols like underscores in a URL. Certain language can confuse a search engine, which is why each URL should have a meaningful name, as well as pertinent keywords.
TIP! To hide something, create a robots. txt file and adding it to your root directory.
Using a product feed will give your business a more visible presence and help draw more potential customers to your website. Feeds like this detail your services and products with images, descriptions and prices. Present these to search engines as well as to websites that list comparison shopping. A feed reader allows customers to subscribe easily to your feed, too.
TIP! Spiders do not recognize session id names or dynamic language, so make sure you?re aware of this as you create URL?s for your different web pages. Therefore, you should come up with a relevant name for each URL.
Adding a site map to your website is a highly important search engine optimization step. Site maps make it significantly easier for search engine crawlers and spiders to access every webpage on your website. The larger the site, the more maps it needs. There should be a maximum of 100 links at most on every site map.
Website owners often overlook the important task of proofreading. Make certain that your site is easy to read for both human visitors and search engines. If your content is poorly written and is full of spelling and grammatical errors, your website will not rank well by search engines, if at all.
TIP! Become an expert in your field. This is a great Internet tool.
The way you optimize your own business for your customers is the same logic you should use in optimizing it for search engines. This fact gets overlooked by more than a few companies.
Use plurals and longer forms of words for keywords to create more hits on a search engine. Keyword stemming is utilized by many search engines. For example, if you use ?accountant? as your keyword, then any searches for ?accountants? or ?accounting? may not have your site listed in the results. Use the keyword stemming technique by choosing longer form keywords; for example, using ?accounting? can also grab readers who were searching for ?accountant.?
TIP! While proofreading is often overlooked, it?s vital to the quality and respectability of all websites. Dedicate resources to making your site readable, both to search engines and to visitors.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone searching for your site, and then choose keywords based on which terms they would use. While you want to make those keywords present in your titles and in the content of your articles, you need to take caution. Using the same keyword too often can flag your site as spam, and that will really hurt your rankings.
TIP! Generate a keyword-oriented site map for added SEO optimization. A site map basically shows all the areas available to viewers on your websites, and provides an easy access point to find what they are looking for.
To improve your search engine optimization efforts, think about becoming a member of the BBB (Better Business Bureau), as well as the Chamber of Commerce in your area. These sites typically will have a link to your website, and this can help if someone does a local search. You also get the added benefit of trust and legitimacy by maintaining a good rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Try basing your articles on keywords to help improve SEO of your articles. Coordinate your keywords with your article topics. This makes it easier for search engines to index your work. Good keywords help make your articles more visible. Be sure to include the keyword in the article?s title and summary. You should also use it a few times in the body of the article.
TIP! It is essential to regularly add new content and publish fresh articles. Set a goal of how many stories you will publish per day or per week, and commit to it.
Social media sites are a valuable tool in search engine optimization. You can interact directly with clients through Facebook and Twitter, while YouTube makes it easy to promote products through instructional videos.
If you are on a shared server, ensure that no banned sites are on your proxy. If not, you may appear as a spammer which can hurt your ratings and traffic.
TIP! Link to high-quality content on other sites to improve your search engine rankings. Choice linking is an extremely significant part of SEO.
Used domain names may already have a reputation you can trade on. If you have a domain name that has been around a while (at least for two years), it will be given more attention by the search engines. Look for domains that were dropped recently and determine if any of them is a fit for your site.
There are both good and bad techniques. These tips should have provided you with ways to boost your traffic and how to be able to avoid search engine blocks.
TIP! If you want to improve your search engine ranking, writing unique, interesting content should be your number one priority. To attract traffic, you need to provide information that is different from that on other sites and other Web pages.
Get your free website analysis (valued at $97) ? 1-888-513-5974 (tell us that you seen our ad on the website)
Source: http://4thgc.com/who-said-search-engine-optimization-isnt-easy-try-these-tips-for-the-best-results/
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DAMASCUS, Va. (AP) ? Authorities believe the driver who plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Virginia mountain town parade suffered from a medical condition and did not cause the crash intentionally, an emergency official said Sunday.
Officials did not have a formal confirmation or any specifics on the condition, but based on the accounts of authorities and witnesses on the scene, they are confident the issue was medical, according to Pokey Harris, Washington County's director of emergency management. "There is no reason to believe this was intentional," she said.
In what witnesses called a frantic scene at the parade, about 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to superficial Saturday. No fatalities were reported. Three of the worst injured were flown by helicopter to area hospitals.
Two people were kept at hospitals overnight, but their injuries were not critical as of Sunday, Harris said. "For the most part, everyone was treated and released," she said.
The crash happened around 2:10 p.m. Saturday during the Hikers Parade at the Trail Days festival, an annual celebration of the Appalachian Trail in Damascus, near the Tennessee state line about a half-hour drive east of Bristol.
Damascus Police Chief Bill Nunley didn't release the driver's name or age but said he was participating in the parade and he had traversed the Appalachian Trail in the past. Several witnesses described him as an elderly man.
Nunley said the man's 1997 Cadillac was one of the last vehicles in the parade and the driver might have suffered an unspecified medical problem when his car accelerated to about 25 mph and struck the crowd on a two-lane bridge along the town's main road. The driver was among those taken to hospitals.
"It is under investigation, and charges may be placed," Nunley said Saturday.
On Sunday, festival events were continuing as scheduled, Harris said. Mayor Jack McCrady had encouraged people to attend the final day.
"In 27 years of this, we've never had anything of this magnitude, and is it our job to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.
Harris said that the incident left a "sad heart and black cloud" over the event and that people were proceeding with "heightened awareness." But she emphasized the crash was an accident and said no additional security measures were taken.
On Saturday, Rudolph "Chip" Cenci, 64, of Minoa, N.Y., told The News-Item newspaper in Shamokin, Pa., that he heard people yelling "get out of the way" and turned around to find the car was about to hit him. He jumped onto the hood and held onto the gap at the base of the windshield near the wipers. He said the driver had a blank stare on his face.
"I bet you that man never realized someone was on his hood," Cenci said.
Cenci said he had a bump on his knee but was otherwise OK. He added that his wife, Susan, 63, narrowly missed being hit.
Amanda Puckett, who was watching the parade with her children, ran to the car, where she and others lifted the car off those pinned underneath.
"Everybody just threw our hands up on the car and we just lifted the car up," she said.
Keith Neumann, a hiker from South Carolina, said he was part of the group that scrambled around the car. They pushed the car backward to free a woman trapped underneath and lifted it off the ground to make sure no one else was trapped.
"There's no single heroes," he said. "We're talking about a group effort of everybody jumping in."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/official-va-driver-likely-had-medical-condition-151815237.html
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When you book a limousine service Fort Worth to get you from A to B, you expect and should receive much more than a taxi journey. You are paying for the services of a professional driver to be your personal chauffeur. The vehicles used to provide these type of luxury services are high end motors, customized to provide clients with a five star luxury experience on wheels. The luxury limousine service can add that extra something special to any business or social event.
Business users find that using a limousine service when necessary, can be more cost effective for the organization. They are often used to pick up clients and potential customers. They can be used rather like a reward for being a good customer or as an incentive to get prospective clients to commit to a deal. They can be used to provide senior company executives with the opportunity to work while traveling.
Many businesses find it cheaper in the long run to use limousine services to transport their executives and clients. The practice of employing a chauffeur to drive a company vehicle is no longer an option for many businesses. They may not be able to fully employ a chauffeurs time, or they may have too much demand on their time and would need to employ additional drivers and vehicles.
Hiring limousines and chauffeur have become very popular for weddings, christenings and other family events. The fact that many providers rent out stretch limousines for private social hires make them a great choice for transporting groups of around twenty people. They have an advantage over other top of the range luxury vehicles and vintage cars, because they can hold more people. Although Rolls Royce, Mercedes and Daimler vehicles also remain in great demand.
Demand to transport groups of up to twenty people to sporting events and concerts have also seen a rise in the demand for stretch limousines. The group can take the opportunity relax with a drink from the built in bar. They can watch a film or listen to music and chat while they get in the party mood.
Other popular social events that see groups using stretch limousines are graduations, proms, birthday parties or simply as a special treat. A range of entertainment options can be booked for the trip, such as for kids parties, or pampering sessions as a special gift for the women in your life. Entertainment and activities usually need to be booked at the same time as the hire booking is made.
Clients can usually choose from a range of trip itineraries, leaving the provider to make all the arrangements. Alternatively, for social and leisure events clients can agree the trip arrangements with the provider at the time of booking. Unless you have a business account with the service provider, you will need to pay a deposit at the time of booking.
Booking a taxi will work out a lot cheaper, but there is nothing special or luxurious about it. However, it can save money for organizations, and help to build good-will for the future. A limousine service Fort Worth, is a luxury that everyone should sample at some time in their life.
You can visit the website www.planotaxicab.org for more helpful information about Experience A Limousine Service Fort Worth
Source: http://oregonattractions.net/travel-leisure/experience-a-limousine-service-fort-worth/
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? Less than 10 months after three tickets split a world-record lottery prize, the jackpot for Saturday's Powerball drawing was nearing historic territory once again.
Should nobody pick the correct six numbers, the prize money will roll over to next week's drawing and almost certainly eclipse the $656 million doled out to winners in Illinois, Kansas and Maryland in the Mega Millions game in March 2012.
But the record could fall Saturday night too if a flurry of last-minute ticket purchases pushes the jackpot much above its current $600 million level. Since the previous drawing on Wednesday, it had grown by at least $236 million.
"If there was no chance, you wouldn't do it," said New Jersey attorney Rubin Sinins, who represented five construction workers who claimed a colleague cheated them out of a share of a multimillion-dollar lottery jackpot.
It seems simple enough: Just correctly pick five white balls out of a drum of 59 and one red one out of a drum of 35.
However, the odds of a single $2 ticket hitting the correct combination are about 1 in 175.2 million. That's slightly less likely than randomly drawing the name of one specific female in the United States: 1 in 157 million, according to the last census.
With such an astronomic payoff available for the lucky ticket holder, some buyers are content to settle for just a share of the winnings.
In Houston, city firefighter John Paetow and a dozen of his colleagues kicked in $10 each for the drawing, as they do occasionally when a the stakes soar into the lottery stratosphere.
"With firemen it's a camaraderie thing," said Paetow, 59. "It just makes sense to pool our money; it buys more tickets, gives us a better chance of winning."
Even if Saturday's drawing doesn't top last year's Mega Millions jackpot, it's already the highest in Powerball history, surpassing that game's $587.5 million record set in November 2012.
A major reason for the sales surge is that last month, Powerball landed the nation's most populous state as California joined 42 others that offer the game. California lottery director Robert O'Neill said the state had brought "sunshine and good fortune" to Powerball.
The Multi-State Lottery Association conducts the drawing live Saturday night from Tallahassee, Fla. The balls are weighed and X-rayed, and there are practice runs before the official televised version.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/powerball-jackpot-closing-another-record-084632540.html
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PHOENIX (AP) ? The immigration debate in Arizona reached a boiling point in 2007 when the state passed a groundbreaking law targeting those often blamed with fueling the nation's border woes: Employers who hire immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The law marked a bold step by a state into an area that had long been the domain of the federal government, and it paved the way for Arizona's landmark 2010 immigration law. It also represented a key moment in the immigration battles that continue today as Congress mulls a proposed overhaul of the immigration system.
But an examination of the law by The Associated Press found that it has done little to crack down on problematic employers. Only three of the state's 147,000 employers have been brought to civil court on illegal hiring allegations, while several hundred employees who are living in the U.S. illegally have been arrested under a section of the law that made it a felony to use fake or stolen IDs to get jobs.
While the law has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and hailed as a tool for states to confront illegal immigration, it has faced several problems:
? Hundreds of immigrant workers arrested under the law have spent months in jail on ID theft charges, while only two businesses ? a sandwich shop and now-defunct amusement park ? had their business licenses suspended for several days. The case against the third business, a custom furniture maker, is still pending.
? A high legal standard for proving violations by businesses and a lack of subpoena power in getting employment records are almost insurmountable barriers to making cases against employers.
? Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office is the only police agency in the state that has raided businesses in enforcement of the employment law. It has arrested hundreds of workers in 72 business raids since 2008. The office has since been accused by the U.S. Justice Department of discriminating against Latino workers, allegations the sheriff denies.
? Despite the small number of cases against employers, the county prosecutor's office in metropolitan Phoenix has spent $4.5 million since 2008 investigating businesses suspected of hiring workers who aren't in the country legally and to pursue criminal ID theft cases against employees. Nearly a third of the money ? $1.4 million ? was given by the prosecutor's office to Arpaio's agency to investigate such cases.
Backers contend the enforcement numbers tell only a piece of the story. They say the law has helped combat identity theft and prompted immigrants living in the country illegally to leave Arizona. They also believe that the fear of business raids has caused employers to follow the rules.
"We are never going to get 100 percent compliance, but we have made a difference," said former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, the driving force behind the employment law and the state's 2010 immigration law that requires police officers, while enforcing other laws, to question people's immigration status if they are suspected of being in the country illegally.
The number of immigrants living in Arizona without permission to be in the U.S. declined by 200,000 from 2008 to January 2011, when the total estimated number stood at 360,000, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report. While the law's backers say the decrease shows the state's immigration laws are working, other factors contributed to immigrants leaving the state, such a construction industry that hemorrhaged jobs during that period.
Democratic state Sen. Steve Gallardo of Phoenix, an opponent of the law, said the imbalance in the number of cases against employers versus workers is a reflection of legislators who wanted to appear tough on illegal immigration but gave employers plenty of wiggle room.
"You have an employer sanctions law that doesn't go after the employers," Gallardo said. "We should call it the employee sanctions law."
More than 500 immigrants who weren't authorized to be in the country have been arrested on charges of using forged documents or stolen identities to get jobs at businesses raided by Arpaio's office since 2008. An unknown number of additional ID theft arrests were made by other police agencies, which don't raid businesses in enforcing the law but make cases when people complain that their identity has been stolen.
Lawyers for immigrants accused of ID theft say their clients used fake or stolen identities to get jobs, not to rack up debt under another person's name. Their clients spend months in jail without the chance of getting a bond set, because a voter-approved law denies bail to people who aren't in the country legally and are charged with serious felonies, such as murder, sexual assault and aggravated identity theft.
Immigrants desperate to earn money to support their families often plead guilty to felony charges to get out of jail, walking away with time-served but often facing deportation and unable to ever again enter the U.S. legally, their lawyers said.
The law's backers say illegal immigrants who steal identities to get jobs are still committing a crime. Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the top prosecutor for the state's most populous county, said identity theft victims may get a letter saying they owe back taxes for jobs they've never held, could have problems getting loans and face hassle in untangling the mess.
While most of the ID theft cases end in guilty pleas, one case that went to trial last year ended with an acquittal, even though the man from Costa Rica told jurors he used someone else's Social Security number to get a job.
Walter Flores-Garcia, a 47-year-old concrete company worker, told jurors that he didn't return to Costa Rica after he overstayed his visa because his daughter wouldn't get the same type of treatment for her cerebral palsy back home. He also told jurors he used someone else's information on work documents to get a job and had no intention to defraud the true Social Security number holder.
Jury forewoman Marilee Avina said jurors concluded Flores-Garcia wasn't leeching off others and took all possible steps to be legitimate. "One specific juror said, 'This could have been me,'" Avina said.
The chief difficulty in making cases against employers is that it's not enough to prove a business hired an illegal immigrant. To prove a case, prosecutors say they need a confession from an owner or hiring manager, or a recording of an owner admitting to breaking the law ? all of which are difficult to come by.
Another barrier is the law doesn't give prosecutors civil subpoena power to make suspected violators hand over records while the case is being investigated.
Business owners say the law puts them in a tight spot. They note they aren't document experts, and insist they would open themselves up to civil rights lawsuits if they were to inquire too deeply into whether a prospective employee is in the country legally.
"It's not the employer's job to be the Border Patrol," said Marion "Mac" Magruder, an opponent of the law who runs a human resource business and grew so frustrated with Arpaio raids that he resigned as a volunteer in one of the sheriff's posses.
The sheriff stands by his raids and fake ID arrests, saying there's no rationalization for stealing a person's identity and that his officers aren't raiding businesses with the goal of seeing if workers are here illegally.
"I am going in there to lock these people up. They just happen to be here illegally. That doesn't change that they are violating the law with fake IDs," Arpaio said.
The sheriff said he's bothered that so few employers have been brought to court and called the law's penalties for employers weak. "I would love to catch the employers," Arpaio said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/problems-surface-over-ariz-2007-immigration-law-083201899.html
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? First lady Michelle Obama has some advice for some Tennessee high school graduates: strike your own path in college and life and work to overcome inevitable failures with determination and grit.
Mrs. Obama spoke for 22-minutes to the Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Magnet High School in Nashville in her only high school graduation speech this year.
The first lady told the 170 graduates that she spent too much of her own time in college focusing on academic achievements. She said while her success in college and law school led to a high-profile job, she ended up leaving to focus on public service.
Mrs. Obama had this message for the graduates: "Do not waste a minute living someone else's dream."
Mrs. Obama later presented graduate diplomas on stage.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/first-lady-high-school-grads-live-dreams-192454000.html
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May 16, 2013 ? In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. While "artificial leaf" is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an "artificial forest."
"Similar to the chloroplasts in green plants that carry out photosynthesis, our artificial photosynthetic system is composed of two semiconductor light absorbers, an interfacial layer for charge transport, and spatially separated co-catalysts," says Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, who led this research. "To facilitate solar water- splitting in our system, we synthesized tree-like nanowire heterostructures, consisting of silicon trunks and titanium oxide branches. Visually, arrays of these nanostructures very much resemble an artificial forest."
Yang, who also holds appointments with the University of California Berkeley's Chemistry Department and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in the journal NANO Letters. The paper is titled "A Fully Integrated Nanosystem of Semiconductor Nanowires for Direct Solar Water Splitting." Co-authors are Chong Liu, Jinyao Tang, Hao Ming Chen and Bin Liu.
Solar technologies are the ideal solutions for carbon-neutral renewable energy -- there's enough energy in one hour's worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year. Artificial photosynthesis, in which solar energy is directly converted into chemical fuels, is regarded as one of the most promising of solar technologies. A major challenge for artificial photosynthesis is to produce hydrogen cheaply enough to compete with fossil fuels. Meeting this challenge requires an integrated system that can efficiently absorb sunlight and produce charge-carriers to drive separate water reduction and oxidation half-reactions.
"In natural photosynthesis the energy of absorbed sunlight produces energized charge-carriers that execute chemical reactions in separate regions of the chloroplast," Yang says. "We've integrated our nanowire nanoscale heterostructure into a functional system that mimics the integration in chloroplasts and provides a conceptual blueprint for better solar-to-fuel conversion efficiencies in the future."
When sunlight is absorbed by pigment molecules in a chloroplast, an energized electron is generated that moves from molecule to molecule through a transport chain until ultimately it drives the conversion of carbon dioxide into carbohydrate sugars. This electron transport chain is called a "Z-scheme" because the pattern of movement resembles the letter Z on its side. Yang and his colleagues also use a Z-scheme in their system only they deploy two Earth abundant and stable semiconductors -- silicon and titanium oxide -- loaded with co-catalysts and with an ohmic contact inserted between them. Silicon was used for the hydrogen-generating photocathode and titanium oxide for the oxygen-generating photoanode. The tree-like architecture was used to maximize the system's performance. Like trees in a real forest, the dense arrays of artificial nanowire trees suppress sunlight reflection and provide more surface area for fuel producing reactions.
"Upon illumination photo-excited electron?hole pairs are generated in silicon and titanium oxide, which absorb different regions of the solar spectrum," Yang says. "The photo-generated electrons in the silicon nanowires migrate to the surface and reduce protons to generate hydrogen while the photo-generated holes in the titanium oxide nanowires oxidize water to evolve oxygen molecules. The majority charge carriers from both semiconductors recombine at the ohmic contact, completing the relay of the Z-scheme, similar to that of natural photosynthesis."
Under simulated sunlight, this integrated nanowire-based artificial photosynthesis system achieved a 0.12-percent solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency. Although comparable to some natural photosynthetic conversion efficiencies, this rate will have to be substantially improved for commercial use. However, the modular design of this system allows for newly discovered individual components to be readily incorporated to improve its performance. For example, Yang notes that the photocurrent output from the system's silicon cathodes and titanium oxide anodes do not match, and that the lower photocurrent output from the anodes is limiting the system's overall performance.
"We have some good ideas to develop stable photoanodes with better performance than titanium oxide," Yang says. "We're confident that we will be able to replace titanium oxide anodes in the near future and push the energy conversion efficiency up into single digit percentages."
This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/-H0oY-bg1xo/130516142654.htm
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May 16, 2013 ? Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab.
That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light.
According to the scientists' calculations, these short-lived droplets are the size of three to five protons. To provide a sense of scale, that is about one-100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom or one-100,000,000th the size of a virus.
"With this discovery, we seem to be seeing the very origin of collective behavior," said Velkovska, professor of physics at Vanderbilt who serves as a co-convener of the heavy ion program of the CMS detector, the LHC instrument that made the unexpected discovery. "Regardless of the material that we are using, collisions have to be violent enough to produce about 50 sub-atomic particles before we begin to see collective, flow-like behavior."
These tiny droplets "flow" in a manner similar to the behavior of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter that is a mixture of the sub-atomic particles that makes up protons and neutrons and only exists at extreme temperatures and densities. Cosmologists propose that the entire universe once consisted of this strongly interacting elixir for fractions of a second after the Big Bang when conditions were dramatically hotter and denser than they are today. Now that the universe has spent billions of years expanding and cooling, the only way scientists can reproduce this primordial plasma is to bang atomic nuclei together with tremendous energy.
The new observations are contained in a paper submitted by the CMS collaboration to the journal Physical Review D and posted on the arXiv preprint server. In addition, Vanderbilt doctoral student Shengquan Tuo recently presented the new results at a workshop held in the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas in Trento, Italy.
Scientists have been trying to recreate the quark-gluon plasma since the early 2000s by colliding gold nuclei using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. This exotic state of matter is created when nuclei collide and dump a fraction of their energy into the space between them. When enough energy is released, it causes some of the quarks and gluons in the colliding particles to melt together to form the plasma. The RHIC scientists had expected the plasma to behave like a gas, but were surprised to discover that it acts like a liquid instead.
When the LHC started up, the scientists moved to the more powerful machine where they basically duplicated the results they got at RHIC by colliding lead nuclei.
In what was supposed to be a control run to check the validity of their lead-lead results, the scientists scheduled the collider to smash protons and lead nuclei together. They didn't expect to see any evidence of the plasma. Because the protons are so much lighter than lead nuclei (they have only one-208th the mass), it was generally agreed that proton-lead collisions couldn't release enough energy to produce the rare state of matter.
"The proton-lead collisions are something like shooting a bullet through an apple while lead-lead collisions are more like smashing two apples together: A lot more energy is released in the latter," said Velkovska.
Last September, the LHC did a brief test run to make sure it was adjusted properly to handle proton-lead collisions. When the results of the run were analyzed, team members were surprised to see evidence of collective behavior in five percent of the collisions -- those that were the most violent. In these cases, it appeared that when the "bullet" passed through "apple" it released enough energy to melt some of the particles surrounding the bullet hole. They appeared to be forming liquid droplets about one tenth the size of those produced by the lead-lead or gold-gold collisions.
However, the initial analysis was limited to tracking the motion of pairs of particles. The researchers knew that this analysis could be influenced by another well-known phenomenon, the production of particle jets. So, when the scheduled proton-lead run took place in January and February, they searched the data for evidence of groups of four particles that exhibit collective motion. After analyzing several billion events, they found hundreds of cases where the collisions produced more than 300 particles flowing together.
According to Tuo, only two models were advanced to explain their observations at the workshop. Of the two, the plasma droplet model seems to fit the observations best. In fact, he reported that the new data is forcing the authors of the competing model -- color glass condensate, which attributes the particle correlations to the internal gluon structure of the protons themselves -- to incorporate hydrodynamic effects, meaning that it is also describing the phenomenon as liquid droplets.
U.S. members of the CMS collaboration are supported primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/W__Q1GhXYaw/130516200641.htm
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Google impressed a lot of people when it debuted its Grand Canyon Street View imagery in October. The Trekker backpack used to capture that imagery, which is essentially a backpack-mounted version of the same all-seeing eye that sits atop the Google Street View car.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/dncyjZwpgfU/
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Pegg sounds like he's dutifully defending his lucrative paycheck.
Personally, after seeing the film, me and two friends were immediately laughing about the lens flares, and another friend happened to be a manager at the theater who hadn't seen the film yet. He ducked into the end of a showing, and after about ten minutes, he came out saying, "Yeah, I just counted 12."
Unlike Spielberg, who only used flare shots sparingly, in specific scenes to heighten a similar sense of awe, Abrams deserves the scorn precisely because it's a "throw away artistic choice" that he saturated his film with. It would be equally valid criticism against anyone who indulged a single effect, as a cheap artifice. "It's clever"? How? Because the "subliminal sense of documentary realism"? Why didn't he just frame the boom mic in over 1,000 shots? (A: Because it's a BS rationale) It's not clever, it's gratuitous, and the truth hurts sometimes, Simon.
May 16 - 07:31 AM
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927471/news/1927471/
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? Insurance agent Joe Williams is trying, like so many others, to get lucky with Powerball.
Williams, of Middleton, Wis., won $500 several years ago and now wants to score a little higher. He'll have his chance Wednesday with the latest drawing for the Powerball jackpot. It's ballooned to an estimated $360 million, with a cash value of $229.2 million, making it the third largest Powerball jackpot and the seventh largest jackpot ever.
Williams doesn't necessarily spend more when the prize is high. But his $4 investment in the quick-pick option means he does spend.
"I know rationally it makes no sense," he said. "But at the same time, without a ticket, I have zero chance."
Ervin Torok, a truck driver from Sioux Falls, S.D., also is looking for his second chance. He won a $500 prize a few years back.
"You never know," Torok, 52, said while checking some lottery tickets from a gas station. "Maybe one day you'll get lucky and win."
Thanks in part to a game redesign in January 2012, players don't necessarily have to strike big to get lucky. A $1 increase and new $1 million and $2 million prizes means the odds of winning something have increased. Just last Saturday, there was no Powerball jackpot winner, but more than a dozen tickets won $1 million prizes in 10 states.
The "cross-selling" of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets in January 2010 began the jump to bigger jackpots because more people had access to tickets, said Mary Neubauer, spokeswoman for the Iowa Lottery. Iowa is one of the founding Powerball states.
Neubauer called large jackpots "the new normal" and said she expects them to keep surpassing all-time jackpot records set years ago.
In fact, more than half of the all-time jackpot records have been reached in the last three years. The top two all-time jackpots ? $656 million from a Mega Millions jackpot and $587.5 million from a Powerball jackpot ? were achieved in 2012.
"It usually took a handful of months, if not several months, for a jackpot to reach this large amount," Neubauer said. "Now it's achieving that within a handful of weeks. I think the redesign is achieving exactly what we had wanted it to achieve, which is the bigger, faster-growing jackpot."
The last major jackpot win came when a New Jersey man won a $338.3 million jackpot on March 23. It is now considered the fourth largest Powerball jackpot in history.
Tom Powers, 52, a janitor from Omaha, Neb., bought several tickets Tuesday from a convenience store. He said he would definitely walk away from work if he won the jackpot, but he's not sure how he would spend all the winnings.
"It's really unfathomable the amount of money this is putting out," Powers said.
The next drawing is scheduled for Wednesday night.
___
Associated Press writers Kevin Wang in Madison, Wis., Kristi Eaton in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Josh Funk in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.
___
Follow Barbara Rodriguez at http://twitter.com/bcrodriguez .
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-estimate-powerball-jackpot-360m-200237427.html
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The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday approved a five-year farm bill that reveals a new consensus on crop and nutrition policy, but it emerged over the objections of three Republican senators from the Plains?Pat Roberts of Kansas, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, and John Thune of South Dakota?who offered amendments on food stamps and commodities that a majority of the panel rejected.
The bill will be on the Senate floor next week, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said late Tuesday. The House Agriculture Committee has a farm-bill markup scheduled for Wednesday. Farm leaders in the House and Senate are trying to send a farm bill to President Obama before Sept. 30, when the current extension of the 2008 farm bill expires.
Stabenow has advertised the legislation as first and foremost a reform bill. The new Senate bill would cost $955 billion over 10 years but $23 billion less than if the programs in the 2008 farm bill were extended, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The Senate bill eliminates the $4.9 billion in direct payments that crop farmers have been getting whether prices are high or low; consolidates conservation programs; and makes a $4 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, which is projected to cost more than $700 billion over 10 years.
The new Senate consensus is based on the relatively small cut to food stamps and the bill?s offering crop farmers a choice between two commodity-support programs: the Agricultural Risk Coverage Program, which would make payments to farmers for shallow losses that are not covered by crop insurance; and the Adverse Market Payments Program, which would make payments to farmers when prices fall below certain targeted levels. Northern farmers like what?s becoming known as ARC because it tops off the crop-insurance program they participate in, while Southern farmers, particularly rice and peanut growers, like AMP because they find it difficult to make crop insurance work for them.
The impact of the shift in ranking member from Roberts, who held that position last year, to Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., could be felt throughout the markup. Last year, Roberts went along with Stabenow?s proposal for the small cut in food stamps by eliminating eligibility for lottery and gambling winners and raising the amount of money that states must pay low-income people in heating assistance to qualify them for higher food-stamp payments. But this year, Roberts introduced his own bill for food-stamp cuts that would total more than $30 billion over 10 years. Johanns and Thune also offered amendments to cut food stamps.
Mississippi has one of the highest food-stamp participation rates in the country, and Cochran opposed the Roberts, Johanns, and Thune amendments. Noting his experience as Agriculture secretary, Johanns offered an amendment to end ?categorical eligibility,? a policy under which states can qualify people who receive other welfare benefits for food stamps without going through the entire application process. Johanns said some states were taking advantage of the system, but Cochran said, ?What the amendment will do as a practical matter is that it changes the categorical eligibility for the supplemental nutrition program and limits to those defined in the [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families] program. It has the potential of displacing 1.8 million people who are currently eligible as program participants.? Cochran also said it could affect the free meals of 280,000 children and would hamper the states? ability to administer the program. The amendments for further cuts to food stamps were voted down.
When Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said they disliked all cuts to food stamps, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., signaled unity between Northern liberals and the Southern states that have some of the highest food-stamp usage by saying he is concerned about the nutrition cuts that are in the bill and would like to find a way to eliminate them.
When the commodity title came up, Roberts, Johanns, and Thune also objected to the new target-price proposal that had not been included in the bill last year when he was ranking member. Roberts made the case that target prices are out of date in a market-oriented era and that the target prices that have been set for rice and peanuts are too high. He and Johanns also said they fear that other countries could challenge the program in the World Trade Organization. Thune proposed eliminating target prices for all crops except rice and peanuts, because those target prices are needed to guarantee the bill?s passage. Yet other committee members rejected all those proposals.
The committee passed the bill on a roll-call vote of 15-5. Roberts, Johanns, and Thune voted against the final bill. They were joined by Gillibrand, who decided to leave her fight over that issue for the floor. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also voted against the bill, but he did not attend the markup and voted by proxy.
It was odd to see the three Northern Plains Republicans cast as too fiscally conservative and market-oriented for the rest of the committee. And it will be interesting to see what role they play as the bill proceeds. It?s normal for senators from states where agriculture is the most important industry to be outliers on the farm bill.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-agriculture-committee-plows-forward-farm-bill-082332201.html
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