newegg also offers the OtterBox Reflex Case for iPhone 5 in Vapor, model no. 77-22692, or Coal, model no. 77-22683, for $9.95 with free shipping. That's $10 under our March mention and the lowest total price we could find by $11. This 2-piece case features access to all ports and buttons.
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Quarterback Tim Boyle fakes a hand-off to Cromwell running back Derrick Villard Jr. during practice at Xavier Thursday evening. Villard and Boyle are members of Team National Guard and will play in the Connecticut Military Bowl Saturday at 4:30 at Rentschler Field in East Hartford Photo by Catherine Avalone/The Middletown Press
MIDDLETOWN >> Despite averaging nearly 11 yards per carry and smashing career and single season school records for rushing yards, Cromwell?s Derrick Villard didn?t get many Division I scholarship offers. That?s sort of the deal when you play in the Pequot Conference.
So Villard will be playing football and taking AP courses as a post-graduate student at Trinity-Pawling (N.Y.) in September.
?I got some (Division I) looks during the season,? said Villard, who averaged 239.3 yards per game for the Panthers last fall. ?I really want to play at the next level. That?s the main reason for me going there.?
Before heading to New York, Villard will get another chance to showcase his abilities today in the inaugural Hall of Fame Classic Military Bowl at Rentschler Field. Kick-off is at 4:30 p.m.
Connecticut?s newest senior all-star football game pits the National Guard team versus the Marines team and National Guard head coach Jim Buonocore (Ledyard) is happy to have Villard on his side.
?(Derrick) stood out from the beginning at the combine in March,? said Buonocore. ?We identified him as one of the top backs there that day. We were very fortunate to be able to select him in the draft and he?s been doing a good job.?
Villard (6-1, 205) will be sharing the tailback duties with Justin Potts (Platt) and John Shannon (Bullard-Havens). The National Guard backfield also includes quarterbacks Tim Boyle (Xavier) and Mike Nicol (Wolcott), and fullback Austin Kingsbury (Windsor Locks).
?It?s fun and I like the atmosphere with all the players on the team,? Villard said. ?They have a different outlook on football in general. It?s a lot more competitive. Coming from my school our linemen are not as big as some of these kids. I think we have one kid who weighs 305 on this team, so there?s a big difference.?
Cromwell football coach Chris Eckert is one of Buonocore?s assistant coaches.
?It?s a unique opportunity for Derrick to be playing in the first game in this format,? said Eckert, who guided the Panthers to an 8-2 mark last season. ?I think it?s neat that he was recognized as one of the Top 100 players in Connecticut. The game is going to be a great experience for him. It will be something he?ll never forget.? Continued...
As a junior, Villard gained 2,125 yards and scored 27 rushing touchdowns while leading Cromwell to the Class S state championship game. His sensational 72-yard TD run helped Cromwell rally from a 13-0 deficit against Northwest Catholic in the Class S semifinals and propelled the Panthers to a 35-19 win.
Villard then gained 161 yards on 28 carries and scored three touchdowns against Holy Cross of Waterbury in the Class S finals. The Panthers, however, fell short 34-27 in a classic at Rentschler Field.
Villard?s senior year was equally impressive. He set a school record for most yards in a season with 2,393, surpassing 5,000 for his career, also a school record. Villard scored 22 touchdowns and was named to the New Haven Register?s All-State Third Team.
?He was our work horse,? said Eckert. ?A lot of times the staff and I said, ?let?s just put the ball in his hands and see what happens.? He definitely carried us. He?s going to be greatly missed.?
Added Buonocore, ?He?s a big, physical kid?a little bigger than I had thought in terms of what he looks like when the pads go on. He?s a hard worker. He?s picking up the offense. I think he?s going to have a big say in our success on Saturday.?
Source: http://middletownpress.com/articles/2013/06/29/sports/doc51ce4748afb8d776491916.txt
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20 hours ago
The Trekker camera backpack at work.
Google has been making much of its Street View feature coming to remote and inaccessible places like Antarctica and trails in national parks. But if you think a local feature needs the walk-through Google treatment, the company might be convinced to let you use its equipment to capture it yourself.
Google is kicking off a pilot program in which it plans to lend the "Trekker" backpack-mounted camera system to individuals and organizations who think they have something to add to the map.
It can't just be any old place, of course; Google is looking for things on the order of lush rainforests and majestic canyons. That said, there are still more of those locations than the company can look at with its own teams, so it's outsourcing the task to nature-minded people who wouldn't mind carrying a heavy pack for a few miles.
If you're interested, you just have to fill out this form explaining the place you want to catalog, whether you need special equipment or permissions, when you'd like to do it, and so on. There aren't many details beyond that, but you can expect Google to contact you if you have something that really should be documented.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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"Marriage should not flutter in and out like cellphone service. When it comes to federal programs, even if states are discriminating, the federal government should not." ? Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry after the U.S. Supreme Court extended federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
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"This is not a loss. This is a win. You know where I'm going. I'm going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love you all." ? Kimberly McCarthy, the 500th inmate executed in Texas since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
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"I truly believe the second yell for help was a yelp. It was excruciating. I really felt it was a boy's voice." ? Jayne Surdyka, a neighbor of murder suspect George Zimmerman, testifying about the struggle she said she saw between Zimmerman and 17-year-old victim Trayvon Martin.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/quotations-day-070627283.html
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16 hours ago
Jon Stewart is in the Middle East working on his first directorial project, but the host of "The Daily Show" took a few minutes to check in on his program via Skype Thursday.
Temporary host John Oliver told Stewart that not much had changed on the show since the now-director started his 12-week leave of absence.
"The only key things are we play softball against the Mets on Monday, and Bruce Springsteen comes to play every Tuesday night," Oliver jested. "We didn't think they'd be things you'd enjoy."
Turns out they are things Stewart would enjoy.
"What?! That's my favorite musician! What?! I wanna come hoooome!" Stewart jokingly cried.
Earlier, a newly bearded Stewart told Oliver that he was "doing a phenomenal job" holding down the fort, but that he wasn't tuning in every night.
"I don't watch it all the time because it's too weird," Stewart said. "It's like watching someone have sex with your wife's desk."
The comedian said he missed his staff "like crazy cakes." Though he's enjoying his work on "Rosewater," an adaptation of Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari's best-selling memoir "Then They Came For Me," he called the experience "weird as hell."
The film and memoir tell the tale of Bahari's arrest by the Iranian government in 2009 while he was there covering the election results. He was tortured for 118 days. After his October release, Bahari appeared on "The Daily Show" in late November to share details of his captivity.
Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/jon-stewart-daily-show-i-wanna-come-home-6C10479750
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NEW YORK (AP) ? The Nets and Boston Celtics are discussing a deal that would bring Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn, a person with knowledge of the talks said Thursday.
On the day they hosted the NBA draft, the Nets were making much bigger noise with a potential transaction that would send the two perennial All-Stars to a new Atlantic Division home.
Yahoo Sports, which first reported the talks, said the Nets would also get veteran Jason Terry from the Celtics while sending Gerald Wallace, Tornike Shengelia, the expiring contract of Kris Humphries and three future first-round picks to Boston.
The person confirmed the talks to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the details were to remain private.
The deal would complete the breakup of the core that led Boston to an NBA championship and within a victory of another. The Celtics already let Doc Rivers leave after acquiring a draft pick from the Los Angeles Clippers.
Garnett would have to waive a no-trade clause, which he has been reluctant to do previously. But the Nets hope he would consider this time with Pierce joining him and the Celtics' best days seemingly behind them.
The Celtics tumbled down the Eastern Conference standings this season, falling all the way to the No. 7 seed and getting eliminated by the New York Knicks in the first round. They have been considering moving one or both of the veterans, and this would trigger the start of a true rebuilding process.
And it would provide a huge boost to the Nets at two of their weakest positions. They struggled to settle on a starting power forward all last season, and Pierce would be immune to the lengthy offensive slumps that plagued Wallace, the starting small forward.
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Today we are excited to announce that Geoff Beattie is joining our firm as Chairman.
Geoff is the former CEO of The Woodbridge Company, a privately held investment holding company for the Thomson family of Canada, where he served as president from 1998 through December 2012.? A well respected and experienced corporate director, Geoff has been a long-time advisor to Relay and was instrumental in the launch of our first mobile fund in 2008. Geoff currently serves on the boards of General Electric Company, Royal Bank of Canada, and? Maple Leaf Foods Inc. and is a trustee of the University Health Network in Toronto.? Geoff received a law degree from the University of Western Ontario and served as a partner in the Toronto law firm Torys LLP.
As venture capital has become a global business, we are intent on establishing Relay as Canada?s pre-eminent venture capital firm by ensuring longevity and sustainability of our brand.? Borrowing a page from large US Private Equity firms, we are working to lay the foundation of a firm that is more than the sum of the partners around the table.? To be a globally competitive Canadian-based venture capital firm, we need to establish a base of knowledge, expertise and contacts that will allow us scale into a larger sustainable business amid global competition.
Geoff has a wealth of knowledge and experience in strategy, governance and business operations that we intend to leverage for each of our portfolio companies on a day-to-day basis.? With more than 40 mobile start-ups in our portfolio, including many fast growth category leaders that could become public companies, Geoff?s insight, advice and network will help us strengthen our value proposition to the later stage companies in our portfolio.
Since launching Relay Ventures we have accomplished several industry firsts:
- We were the first (and still only) early stage venture fund in North America to exclusively focus on mobile computing. We fundamentally believe that we have a differentiated value proposition because of our industry focus which results in unparalleled? networks, knowledge and connections that we leverage every day for our portfolio companies.
- We are the only Canadian VC fund with a full-time presence in Silicon Valley.? Our office on Sand Hill Road, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is important for a number of reasons. First, you cannot effectively invest in the Bay Area without being in the Bay Area. Second, when we invest in Canada or in New York or Boston, we do so by using the Valley as a barometer or benchmark.? In a global technology industry, it is no longer ?good enough? to simply invest in the best company in a region.? You have to invest in the best ?global? opportunity (the best team, technology, business model and market opportunity) regardless of geography.? And third, when we invest in the best companies, many of which are based in Canada, we leverage our Silicon Valley footprint to help these companies establish relationships with channel partners, investors and future acquirers through our extensive network.
Today?s appointment of Geoff Beattie as our Chairman is another first. ?As a Canadian-based firm, and as one of the most active VCs in the mobile computing sector, we cannot rest on our past success.? We need to constantly re-evaluate assumptions, aggressively pursue opportunities and re-define how we accomplish our objectives.? These are the marks of successful start-ups and they are how we run our business.? Having Geoff on board is a critical step in our plans to establish Relay Ventures as a globally competitive Canadian-based venture capital firm.
Please join us in welcoming Geoff.
Source: http://relayventures.com/blog/relay-welcomes-geoff-beattie-as-chairman/
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- China's largest wind turbine company and three people are accused of trade secrets from a U.S. software company, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
An indictment handed up in Wisconsin alleges Sinovel Wind Group and the three individuals stole proprietary wind turbine software technology from Devens, Mass.-based AMSC, formerly known as American Superconductor Inc., cheating the American company out of more than $800 million.
It alleges the defendants stole software that was developed in Wisconsin by downloading it from an AMSC computer in Middleton, Wis., to a computer in Austria.
None of the individual defendants is in custody. The Justice Department said two of them are Sinovel employees who live in China, while one who now lives in Serbia formerly worked for an AMSC subsidiary in Austria.
The indictment charges Sinovel; Su Liying, 36, the deputy director of Sinovel's research and development department; Zhao Haichun, 33, a technology manager for Sinovel; and Dejan Karabasevic, 40, a former employee of AMSC Windtec GmbH, an AMSC subsidiary in Klagenfurt, Austria; with one count each of conspiracy to commit trade secret theft, theft of trade secrets and wire fraud.
Sinovel officials did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
AMSC issued a statement calling on the Obama administration and Congress to re-evaluate the U.S. trade relationship with China. It said the stolen software was used in four Sinovel turbines that have been installed in Massachusetts.
"The fact that Sinovel has exported stolen American intellectual property from China back into the United States ? less than 40 miles from our global headquarters ? shows not only a blatant disrespect for intellectual property but a disregard for international trade law," Daniel McGahn, AMSC's president and CEO, said in a news release.
McGahn said more than 500 AMSC employees around the world have lost their jobs because of Sinovel's actions.
AMSC said it filed four civil actions against Sinovel in China in March 2011 after the company abruptly broke several contracts, and that it asked Chinese police to bring criminal cases against Sinovel and some of its employees after it discovered the theft a few months later, all without any apparent success.
"The allegations in this indictment describe a well-planned attack on an American business by international defendants ? nothing short of attempted corporate homicide," John Vaudreuil, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Wisconsin, said in a news release.
According to the indictment, the AMSC software was designed to regulate the flow of electricity from wind turbines to electrical grids and to keep wind turbines operational when there is a temporary dip in the flow of electricity in the grid.
If convicted, Sinovel faces a maximum penalty on each count of five years of probation and fines on each count of up to $1.6 billion, the Justice Department said. Su, Zhao and Karabasevic each face a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the conspiracy charge, 10 years in prison for theft of a trade secret and 20 years in prison for wire fraud.
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Online
AMSC: http://www.amsc.com
Sinovel's English site: http://www.sinovel.com/en/index.aspx
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-firm-accused-stealing-us-011930626.html
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Jon Corzine once saw a boutique brokerage called MF Global as his best hope to rescale the heights of Wall Street he'd once occupied as head of Goldman Sachs.
Now, MF Global is bankrupt. And Corzine faces a lifetime ban from the futures industry.
On Thursday, federal regulators sued Corzine, a onetime U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey. They allege that he was responsible for the misuse of customer money while CEO of MF Global, which collapsed in 2011.
A civil lawsuit filed in Manhattan by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission seeks to restrict Corzine's ability to trade investments and demands he pay unspecified penalties.
The suit charges that MF Global violated U.S. laws in the weeks before it collapsed by using customer funds to support its own trading operations. About $1.2 billion in customer money vanished when the firm collapsed.
Corzine bore responsibility for the unlawful acts by MF Global because he controlled the firm and its holdings and "either did not act in good faith or knowingly induced these violations," the lawsuit says.
In a conference call with reporters, CFTC Enforcement Director David Meister said Corzine failed to do enough to "prevent the firm from dipping into customers' funds to stay afloat."
MF Global has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty as part of a settlement announced Thursday. The money will come from bankruptcy proceedings.
Corzine has disputed the allegations by the CFTC, which regulated New York-based MF Global. He did so again Thursday through his lawyers.
"Mr. Corzine did nothing wrong, and we look forward to vindicating him in court," attorney Andy Levander said in a statement.
James Giddens, the court-appointed trustee overseeing MF Global's bankruptcy, called the settlement with the CFTC "appropriate." He said the $100 million penalty will be paid only after the firm's customers and creditors have received all their claims.
The CFTC also filed civil charges against Edith O'Brien, the firm's former assistant treasurer. Last year, O'Brien was summoned to a congressional hearing into what happened in MF Global's final days. She declined to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Attorneys for O'Brien didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.
The lawsuit seeks to bar Corzine and O'Brien from working for any firms that trade commodities or other investments regulated by the CFTC. Corzine and O'Brien would also be barred from trading any such investments on their own. They could still trade stocks and bonds.
Thursday's lawsuit is striking in that regulators have seldom charged individuals with financial crisis-era misdeeds. They have instead imposed fines and penalties against companies, often with no one having to admit blame.
Nearly 90 percent of the money belonging to the firm's U.S. customers has been recovered. Many farmers, ranchers and business owners used futures contracts through MF Global to hedge their risks against fluctuating crop prices. A futures contract allows someone to agree with someone else to buy or sell something ? corn, say, or gold ? at a set price at some point in the future.
The CFTC need not show in court that Corzine personally authorized the use of customer money, said Anthony Sabino of the New York law firm Sabino & Sabino, which specializes in white-collar crime. Top executives can be liable for "failure to maintain internal controls" or "failure to supervise," Sabino said.
Under a 2002 anti-corporate fraud law ? which Corzine co-wrote as a U.S. senator ? CEOs of public companies must personally certify the accuracy of their company's financial statements.
"When the Titanic went down, you didn't blame the cook; you didn't blame the guy in the engine room," Sabino said. "You blamed the captain. And Corzine is the captain of the ship called MF Global."
The CFTC has "a very substantial case" against Corzine and MF Global, Sabino said.
Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor, predicted that Corzine and the CFTC would eventually settle but not before a drawn-out battle.
That the CFTC filed suit against such a major defendant signals confidence that they have a strong case, he suggested.
"A defeat in a case like this, in such a high-profile setting, would come at some cost to the reputation of the agency," said Mintz, now at McCarter & English in New Jersey.
It isn't clear how much money Corzine is worth. He spent roughly $100 million of his fortune to win a U.S. Senate seat and the New Jersey governorship. In 2005, the last full year that he was a U.S. senator, he was estimated to be worth between $125 million and $175 million.
MF Global sought bankruptcy protection in 2011 after a disastrous bet on European countries' debt. Under Corzine's leadership, the firm bet $6.3 billion on bonds issued by Italy, Spain and other nations with deeply troubled financial systems. Those bonds plummeted in value in the weeks before MF Global's failure as fears intensified that some European countries might default.
The firm's $41 billion bankruptcy was the eighth-largest in U.S. history. It was also the first collapse of a Wall Street firm since the 2008 financial crisis ended. Critics have long complained that regulators have failed to aggressively pursue much bigger financial firms, whose high-risk bets nearly toppled the financial system.
Corzine, 66, had been a CEO of Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs before entering politics in 2000. He served as a Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey and later governor of the state. He took the top job at MF Global in March 2010 after losing his 2009 bid for re-election as governor to Chris Christie.
MF Global was a small commodities broker when Corzine arrived. His vision was to transform the firm into a full-scale investment bank, similar to Goldman. The CFTC's lawsuit says he sought to do so by generating revenue from aggressive trading strategies.
The plan worked for a while even as the firm's investments grew increasingly risky, the lawsuit said. In the second half of 2011, its investments put heavy strains on its cash flow and capital. By October 2011, the lawsuit says, sources of cash were drying up.
Corzine and other employees communicated with one another, by email and sometimes on recorded phone lines, about the firm's "dire situation," the lawsuit says.
It says a treasurer of the firm's parent company, MF Global Holdings Ltd., told a chief financial officer and another employee in a recorded conversation on Oct. 6, 2011, that "we have to tell Jon that enough is enough. We need to take the keys away from him."
Corzine "disparagingly nicknamed the Global treasurer 'the Gravedigger,'" the lawsuit says
Corzine stepped down as MF Global chief in November 2011, a few days after the firm filed for bankruptcy protection.
Three reports on MF Global's collapse, by a House panel and two court-appointed trustees, placed most of the blame on Corzine. It said his risky strategies caused the failure.
Shareholders of MF Global have sued Corzine and other top managers. The investors say they lost about $585 million in just a week as the firm foundered. They accuse MF Global and the executives of making false and misleading statements about the firm's financial strength.
Giddens, the trustee, also joined a lawsuit filed by MF Global customers against Corzine and the other top executives.
Corzine testified at three hearings of House and Senate committees in December 2011 after lawmakers subpoenaed him. It was a rare sight in Washington: A former member of Congress being called by former colleagues to testify publicly about potential violations of law.
Corzine's testimony offered little to satisfy lawmakers or MF Global customers who lost money. Yet his explanations would be hard to disprove, legal experts said.
He said he never intended to "misuse" client money or to order anyone else to do so. Corzine also rebuffed an assertion that he knew about customer money that might have been transferred to a European affiliate just before MF Global collapsed.
O'Brien, the former assistant treasurer, was subpoenaed to testify at a hearing last year about an email she sent that appeared to contradict testimony from Corzine. The email said Corzine ordered a transfer of customer money to cover an overdraft in the firm's bank account in London.
"On the advice of counsel," she told Congress, "I respectfully decline to answer based on my constitutional right."
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Neumeister and Rexrode contributed from New York.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-agency-sues-corzine-over-failure-mf-global-185641107.html
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Two men hold hands while walking on Castro Street in San Francisco, Thursday, June 27, 2013. The Supreme Court issued rulings Wednesday that struck down a provision of a federal law that denies federal benefits to married gay couples and also cleared the way for state laws that recognize marriage equality. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Two men hold hands while walking on Castro Street in San Francisco, Thursday, June 27, 2013. The Supreme Court issued rulings Wednesday that struck down a provision of a federal law that denies federal benefits to married gay couples and also cleared the way for state laws that recognize marriage equality. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Alexander Hanna, left, and Yon Hudson were denied a marriage license by Santa Fe County Clerk at the County Clerk's Office, in Santa Fe, Thursday June 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Albuquerque Journal, Eddie Moore)
Alexander Hanna, left, and Yon Hudson are denied a marriage license by Santa Fe County Clerk Geraldine Salazar at the County Clerk's Office, in Santa Fe, Thursday June 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Albuquerque Journal, Eddie Moore)
Across the country, this week's landmark Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage have energized activists and politicians on both sides of the debate.
Efforts to impose bans ? and to repeal them ? have taken on new intensity. Likewise a spate of lawsuits by gays demanding the right to marry.
The high court, in two 5-4 decisions Wednesday, opened the way for California to become the 13th state to legalize gay marriage. It directed the federal government to recognize legally married same-sex couples.
But the rulings did not impose a nationwide right for gays to marry. They set the stage for state-by-state battles over one of America's most contentious social issues. Already, some of those battles are heating up.
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12 hours ago
Fed speakers could shape the trading day Thursday, starting with New York Fed President William Dudley who speaks just after the stock market open.
Markets have been fixated on Fed commentary this week, after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week said that the Fed could begin to wind down its $85 billion monthly bond purchases before the end of the year. That sent already rising yields higher, and stocks have been on a roller coaster ride. With the prospect of higher rates and a firmer dollar, gold has plunged to a near three-year low.
(Read More: Why Bond Selling Hysteria Is Overdone)
Stocks took flight Wednesday, with the Dow ending up 149 points at 14,910, after a surprising downward revision to first quarter GDP made traders doubt that the Fed will be too aggressive in moving to slow bond purchases. Economists had expected 2.4 percent growth, but the number was 1.8 percent instead.
The stock market's bullishness has been penned in by the Fed's tapering plans, which Bernanke said would be dependent on improvement in the economy. The S&P 500 Wednesday rose 15 to 1603, the center of what had been a supportive range before the market fell through it last week. The 10-year Treasury yield, meanwhile, fell to 2.54 percent from 2.61 percent, as investors stepped in to buy bonds
"People are still looking at GDP which is very much yesterday's data. That kind of revision makes people say that it makes it harder for Bernanke to taper," said Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations at the NYSE. On Tuesday, stocks went higher but that was after better-than-expected economic data on housing and durable goods. Tuesday's move was also driven by comments from the People's Bank of China that helped soothe global market concerns about a credit crunch in China.
Dudley speaks at 10 a.m. ET on the regional economy and the labor market for college graduates, and while those topics are not about Fed policy, traders have been speculating his speech would be worth watching.
"That will be a real focus. People will be watching. They think if anybody's a spokesman for Bernanke, it's him," said Cashin.
(Read More: The Real Reason 1Q GDP Took a Hit)
Dudley is a key member of the Fed's core, and no one other than Bernanke, or Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen, possible successor to Bernanke, has as much credibility when it comes to conveying what direction the Fed might take.
"That will be an important speech. He is in the center of the committee, or one of those towards the center for the committee and aligned with Chairman Bernanke, so it will be interesting to hear how he discusses the outlook, what he says about tapering and how he's interpreting the recent data," said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays. Traders also want to hear what he says about the violent reaction in markets since the Fed meeting last week.
Maki said the markets may have become confused when Bernanke signaled during his press conference that the unemployment rate would be the most important variable to determine when the Fed will taper its bond buying. Bernanke said the Fed would reduce its purchases in "measured steps" and that it would be done with purchases by the middle of next year, when the unemployment rate should be about 7 percent.
"We think that's (7 percent) going to be achieved by the first quarter, so that's why even though growth will be sluggish, we think the Fed will be tapering," said Maki. Maki said he expects the Fed to begin cutting back on its purchases in September.
He said the Fed confused the markets by pinning a 7 percent unemployment rate target on the quantitative easing program, while it has also said a trigger to raise short-term rates could be when unemployment reaches 6.5 percent.
(Read More: New Math Makes It Easier to Lower the Unemployment Rate)
"I think the problem is by tying tapering and the first rate hike to the unemployment rate when the Fed moves up the timing on tapering, it seems reasonable to many market participants that the Fed may be also raising rates sooner than it otherwise might have," said Maki. The Fed forecasts hiking the Fed funds rate, now zero, in 2015 but some traders see it happening sooner.
"It's an odd time for the Fed to be talking about tapering when GDP growth is slowing, job growth is slow?and inflation is about half the rate they expect it to be," said Maki. He expects 1.5 percent growth in the second quarter, and 2 percent growth for the balance of the year, while the Fed sees growth picking up to 3 percent later this year.
Other Fed speakers Thursday include Fed Gov. Jerome Powell, who speaks at 10:30 a.m. on non-conventional monetary policy, and Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, a non-voting member, speaks at 12:30 on the economic outlook.
Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota told CNBC's senior economic correspondent Steve Liesman, in an interview Wednesday on "Squawk Box" that the Fed needs to be clearer in its communication on the Fed funds target rate, and the market reaction to Fed tapering has been "out-sized."
"There continues to be a great deal of uncertainty about what the Fed is going to do with the Fed Funds rate, our main policy instrument, as the economy recovers more," he said. The Fed did repeat that it would not raise rates until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent or lower, providing the outlook for inflation stays under 2.5 percent.
"We sort of take for granted that people understand that we're going to be in the business of [rate] accommodation for long after asset purchases end," Kocherlakota said. "We're in the business of accommodation as the economic recovery strengthens."
Besides the Fed, traders will be focused on data, including weekly jobless claims and personal income and spending at 8:30 a.m. ET, and pending home sales at 10 a.m. The Treasury auctions $29 billion in 7-year notes at 1 p.m.
The auction follows a $35 billion 5-year auction Wednesday and a $35 billion 2-year auction Tuesday, both with weakish results. "The results for the 2- and 5-year do not bode well for the 7-year tomorrow," said Ian Lyngen, senior Treasury strategist at CRT Capital. "There's limited risk appetite ahead of the end of the quarter. "
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The fashions of the 1990s weren't always the most flattering, but Jennifer Aniston has always looked good in everything, right? Likewise, what teenage girl circa 1991 didn't wish she was BFFs with Tiffani Thiessen (aka: Kelly Kapowski) from Saved By The Bell, scrunchies and all? And let’s face it, with artists like Whitney Houston blowing up the charts, who didn’t want to party like it was 1999?
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See Inside Surgery in blind children from India allows them to see for the first time and reveals how vision works in the brain
SCHOOLS FOR THE BLIND in India have helped find children eligible for vision-correcting surgery.
My mother used to keep a small blue glass bowl of change near the door of our house in New Delhi. When she went out, she would take a few coins as alms for the poor that one inevitably sees on the city's streets. Given how quickly you can become desensitized to the abundance of human misery in India, I was always impressed by her unwavering adherence to this ritual.
The bowl lay unused for several months as my mother battled cancer. When I went back to India in 2002, a year after her death, I noticed that it was one of the few items of hers that my father had saved. Little did I realize that it was going to change my life.
This article was originally published with the title Once Blind and Now They See.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/biology/~3/3hdOdDqJyv8/article.cfm
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June 20, 2013 ? Does your salad know what time it is? It may be healthier for you if it does, according to new research from Rice University and the University of California at Davis.
"Vegetables and fruits don't die the moment they are harvested," said Rice biologist Janet Braam, the lead researcher on a new study this week in Current Biology. "They respond to their environment for days, and we found we could use light to coax them to make more cancer-fighting antioxidants at certain times of day." Braam is professor and chair of Rice's Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.
Braam's team simulated day-night cycles of light and dark to control the internal clocks of fruits and vegetables, including cabbage, carrots, squash and blueberries. The research is a follow-up to her team's award-winning 2012 study of the ways that plants use their internal circadian clocks to defend themselves from hungry insects. That study found that Arabidopsis thaliana -- a widely used model organism for plant studies -- begins ramping up production of insect-fighting chemicals a few hours before sunrise, the time that hungry insects begin to feed.
Braam said the idea for the new research came from a conversation with her teenage son.
"I was telling him about the earlier work on Arabidopsis and insect resistance, and he said, 'Well, I know what time of day I'll eat my vegetables!' Braam said. "That was my 'aha!' moment. He was thinking to avoid eating the vegetables when they would be accumulating the anti-insect chemicals, but I knew that some of those chemicals were known to be valuable metabolites for human health, so I decided to try and find out whether vegetables cycle those compounds based on circadian rhythms."
Arabidopsis and cabbage are related, so Braam's team began their research by attempting to "entrain" the clocks of cabbage in the same way they had Arabidopsis. Entrainment is akin to the process that international travelers go through as they recover from jet lag. After flying to the other side of the globe, travelers often have trouble sleeping until their internal circadian clock resets itself to the day-night cycle in their new locale.
Using controlled lighting in a sealed chamber, Rice graduate student and study lead author Danielle Goodspeed found she could entrain the circadian clocks of postharvest cabbage just as she had those of Arabidopsis in the 2012 study. Following the success with cabbage, Goodspeed and co-authors John Liu and Zhengji Sheng studied spinach, lettuce, zucchini, carrots, sweet potatoes and blueberries.
"We were able to entrain each of them, even the root vegetables," Goodspeed said. She and Braam said the findings suggest that storing fruits and vegetables in dark trucks, boxes and refrigerators may reduce their ability to keep daily rhythms.
"We cannot yet say whether all-dark or all-light conditions shorten the shelf life of fruits and vegetables," Braam said. "What we have shown is that keeping the internal clock ticking is advantageous with respect to insect resistance and could also yield health benefits."
In the cabbage experiments, Braam, Goodspeed and Rice co-authors John Liu, Zhengji "Jim" Sheng and Wassim Chehab found they could manipulate cabbage leaves to increase their production of anti-insect metabolites at certain times of day. One of these, an antioxidant called glucoraphanin, or 4-MSO, is a known anti-cancer compound that has been previously studied in broccoli and other vegetables.
Braam's team has already begun follow-up research, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, into whether light and other stimuli, like touch, may be used to enhance pest resistance of food crops in developing countries.
"It's exciting to think that we may be able to boost the health benefits of our produce simply by changing the way we store it," Goodspeed said.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oP-99pOM4Yg
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/jCOBude4zvE/130620132324.htm
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June 20, 2013 ? Neuroscientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have filled in a significant gap in the scientific understanding of how neurons mature, pointing to a better understanding of some developmental brain disorders.
In the new study, the researchers identified a molecular program that controls an essential step in the fast-growing brains of young mammals. The researchers found that this signaling pathway spurs the growth of neuronal output connections by a mechanism called "mitochondrial capture," which has never been described before.
"Mutations that may affect this signaling pathway already have been found in some autism cases," said TSRI Professor Franck Polleux, who led the research, published June 20, 2013 in the journal Cell.
Branching Out
Polleux's laboratory is focused on identifying the signaling pathways that drive neural development, with special attention to the neocortex -- a recently evolved structure that handles the "higher" cognitive functions in the mammalian brain and is highly developed in humans.
In a widely cited study published in 2007, Polleux's team identified a trigger of an early step in the development of the most important class of neocortical neurons. As these neurons develop following asymmetric division of neural stem cells, they migrate to their proper place in the developing brain. Meanwhile they start to sprout a root-like mesh of input branches called dendrites from one end, and, from the other end, a long output stalk called an axon. Polleux and his colleagues found that the kinase LKB1 provides a key signal for the initiation of axon growth in these immature cortical neurons.
In the new study, Polleux's team followed up this discovery and found that LKB1 also is crucially important for a later stage of these neurons' development: the branching of the end of the axon onto the dendrites of other neurons.
"In experiments with mice, we knocked the LKB1 gene out of immature cortical neurons that had already begun growing an axon, and the most striking effect was a drastic reduction in terminal branching," said Julien Courchet, a research associate in the Polleux laboratory who was a lead co-author of the study. "We saw this also in lab dish experiments, and when we overexpressed the LKB1 gene, the result was a dramatic increase in axon branching."
Further experiments by Courchet showed that LKB1 drives axonal branching by activating another kinase, NUAK1. The next step was to try to understand how this newly identified LKB1-NUAK1 signaling pathway induced the growth of new axon branches.
Stopping the Train in Its Tracks
Following a thin trail of clues, the researchers decided to look at the dynamics of microtubules. These tiny railway-like tracks are laid down within axons for the efficient transport of molecular cargoes and are altered and extended during axonal branching. Although they could find no major change in microtubule dynamics within immature axons lacking LKB1 or NUAK1, the team did discover one striking abnormality in the transport of cargoes along these microtubules. Tiny oxygen-reactors called mitochondria, which are the principal sources of chemical energy in cells, were transported along axons much more actively -- and by contrast, became almost immobile when LKB1 and NUAK1 were overexpressed.
But the LKB1-NUAK1 signals weren't just immobilizing mitochondria randomly. They were effectively inducing their capture at points on the axons where axons form synaptic connections with other neurons. "When we removed LKB1 or NUAK1 in cortical neurons, the mitochondria were no longer captured at these points," said Tommy Lewis, Jr., a research associate in the Polleux Laboratory who was co-lead author of the study.
"We argue that there must be an active 'homing factor' that specifies where these mitochondria stop moving," said Polleux. "And we think that this is essentially what the LKB1-NAUK1 signaling pathway does here."
Looking Ahead
Precisely how the capture of mitochondria at nascent synapses promotes axonal branching is the object of a further line of investigation in the Polleux laboratory. "We think that we have uncovered something very interesting about mitochondrial function at synapses," Polleux said.
In addition to its basic scientific importance, the work is likely to be highly relevant medically. Developmentally related brain disorders such as epilepsy, autism and schizophrenia typically involve abnormalities in neuronal connectivity. Recent genetic surveys have found NUAK1-related gene mutations in some children with autism, for example. "Our study is the first one to identify that NUAK1 plays a crucial role during the establishment of cortical connectivity and therefore suggests why this gene might play a role in autistic disorder," Polleux says.
He notes, too, that declines in normal mitochondrial transport within axons have been observed in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. "In the light of our findings, we wonder if the decreased mitochondrial mobility observed in these cases might be due not to a transport defect, but instead to a defect in mitochondrial capture in aging neurons," he said. "We're eager to start doing experiments to test such possibilities."
The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01AG031524 and 5F32NS080464), ADI-Novartis, Fondation pour la Recherche Medicale, and the Philippe Foundation.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/c9O4LePge8o/130620132108.htm
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By Jethro Nededog and Jeff Sneider
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Additionally, "Black Swan" director Darren Aronofsky left the project earlier this year.
According to an individual with knowledge of the negotiations, FX is eyeing a pickup of the project.
HBO and FX declined to comment for this article.
Formerly, Aronofsky was attached to direct, which would've been his first foray into television.
Co-written by Michael Chabon ("Wonder Boys") and his wife Ayelet Waldman, the pilot follows a group of conmen and magicians who use their skills of deception to help take down Adolf Hitler and the Germans during World War II.
Some in the media have compared the project to "Inglourious Basterds" with magic.
In addition to co-writing the pilot project, Chabon and Waldman will executive produce along with Le Grisbi Productions' John Lesher and Adam Kassan.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hbo-passes-hobgoblin-pilot-fx-eyes-project-exclusive-225923288.html
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By Amena Bakr
DOHA (Reuters) - A fresh effort to end Afghanistan's 12-year-old war looked in trouble on Thursday after a diplomatic spat about the Taliban's new Qatar office delayed preliminary discussions between the United States and the Islamist insurgents.
A meeting between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban had been set for Thursday in Qatar but Afghan government anger at the fanfare surrounding the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf state threw preparations into confusion.
The squabble may set the tone for what could be arduous negotiations to end a conflict that has torn at Afghanistan's stability since the U.S. invasion following the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets.
Asked when the talks would now take place, the source in Doha said "There is nothing scheduled that I am aware of", and confirmed that meant they would not happen on Thursday.
The opening of the office was a practical step paving the way for peace talks. But the official-looking protocol surrounding the event raised angry protests in Kabul that the office would develop into a Taliban government-in-exile: A diplomatic scramble ensued to allay their concerns.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday night and again on Wednesday morning in an effort to defuse the controversy, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen appeared to side with Karzai by pointing out that alliance leaders at NATO's Chicago summit last year had made clear that the peace process in Afghanistan must be "Afghan-led and Afghan-owned".
"Reconciliation is never an easy process in any part of the world," Rasmussen told reporters after talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels with Bulgarian Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski.
Nevertheless, Rasmussen said peace talks could reinforce security gains in Afghanistan and contribute to long-term security and unity. "So I hope such talks will start sooner rather than later," he said.
A Taliban flag that had been hoisted at the Taliban office in Qatar on Tuesday had been taken down and lay on the ground on Thursday, although it appeared still attached to a flagpole.
A name plate, inscribed "Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" had been removed from the outside of the building. But a similar plaque fixed onto a wall inside the building was still there on Thursday morning, witnesses said.
Asked whether the Taliban office had created any optimism about peace efforts, the source replied: "Optimism and pessimism are irrelevant. The most important thing is that we now know the Taliban are ready to talk, and sometimes talk is expensive."
Word of the U.S.-Taliban talks had raised hopes that Karzai's government and the Taliban might enter their first-ever direct negotiations on Afghanistan's future, with Washington acting as a broker and Pakistan as a major outside player.
Waging an insurgency to overthrow Karzai's government and oust foreign troops, the Taliban has until now refused talks with Kabul, calling Karzai and his government puppets of the West. But a senior Afghan official said earlier the Taliban was now willing to consider talks with the government.
PRISONER SWAP
Pakistan's powerful military played a central role in convincing the Taliban to hold talks with Washington, U.S. and Pakistani officials said, a shift from widely held U.S. views that it was obstructing peace in the region.
A prisoner swap is seen as likely to happen as the first confidence-building measure between the two sides, said one Pakistani official, who declined to be named.
But he said there were many likely spoilers in the peace process who would want to maintain the status quo to continue to benefit from the war economy and the present chaotic conditions.
"The opening of a Taliban office and the American readiness to hold talks with the Taliban is a forward movement. What happens next depends on the quality of dialogue and political will of the interlocutors," he said.
Pakistan has been particularly critical of Karzai, seeing him as an obstacle to a peace settlement.
In its talks with the U.S. officials, the Taliban was expected to seek the return of former commanders now held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, a move opposed by many in the U.S. Congress, as well as the departure of all foreign troops.
The United States wants the return of the only known U.S. prisoner of war from the conflict, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who is believed to be held by the Taliban.
The protocol dispute burst into the open on Wednesday when Karzai said his government would not join U.S. talks with the Taliban and would halt negotiations with Washington on a post-2014 troop pact.
Officials from Karzai's government, angered by the official-sounding name the Taliban chose for its political office in Doha, said the United States had violated assurances it would not give official status to the insurgents.
"As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar," Karzai said in a statement, referring to a body he set up in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban.
A statement on Qatar's foreign ministry website late on Wednesday clarified that the office which opened was called the "Political Bureau for Afghan Taliban in Doha".
The source familiar with the matter said: "The Taliban have to understand that this office isn't an embassy and they are not representing a country."
The dispute over the Taliban office after months of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to restart the peace talks underscored the tensions between Karzai and the Taliban.
Fighting continued in the war-damaged nation. Four U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack on the heavily fortified Bagram base near Kabul late on Tuesday.
Underlining the importance of the peace process to Washington, the State Department said Kerry would travel to Doha for meetings with senior Qatari officials on Friday and Saturday. But U.S. officials said he would not meet with Taliban representatives.
(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Dubai, Miriam Arghandiwal, Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton in Berlin, Adrian Croft in Brussels, Phil Stewart in Washington, and Frank Jack Daniel, Mahreen Zahra-Malik and Matthew Green in Islamabad; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Paul Simao)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-taliban-talks-qatar-not-expected-thursday-source-063921843.html
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It seems like the backlash was too much for Microsoft: Yesterday, President Don Mattrick wrote a blog post officially walking back the changes the company had made to game DRM for the Xbox One, citing ?user feedback.?
?While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content,? Hattrick wrote.
Here?s a summary of the changes:
Essentially, the Xbox One now, for all intents and purposes, operates the same way that the Xbox 360 does today ? no cloud, no sharing, and no Internet.
This extensive rollback of all of Microsoft?s changes to the console has lead fans to call it the ?Xbox 180? ? and has divided a gaming community that is now suddenly confused about how to feel towards the Xbox One.
The change hasn?t necessarily won back the hearts of gamers automatically ? some in the community are now reacting towards Microsoft?s seemingly ?all-or-nothing? behavior that sacrifices all of cloud gaming and sharing properties to bring offline play to the table.
A popular infographic posted onto /r/ gaming, entitled ?What We Want Xbox One,? shows how Microsoft could divide DRM based on media choice and gives a pretty clear indication that the only thing gamers want in this instance is choice. The choice to play into the DRM measures that unlock the access to the cloud, and the option to play offline at another time.
Still others are involved in the backlash to the second backlash, defending Microsoft and deriding others for complaining about the features in the first place. One notable person in this camp is Gears of War?creator?Cliff ?CliffyB??Bleszinski, who expressed concerns on Twitter that walking back the DRM meant Microsoft left small-time developers out in the cold and prey to the resale industry.
?I want *developers* who worked their asses off to see money on every copy of their game that is sold instead of Gamestop. F*ck me, right?? Bleszinski tweeted.
And, still others are concerned that Microsoft refuses to address the level of data collecting and privacy implications of the system itself, and continue to press the company on unveiling more information about the system as a whole.
Plenty of memes?still poke at Xbox One?s?other mandatory feature, the Kinect.?SlashGear has also reported that the Xbox Kinect may have to come with a warning sticker that announced the government may have access to the device if a new bill, entitled the ?We Are Watching You? Act, passes congress.?Microsoft has done very little to allay concerns about privacy, which still has the potential to turn away a large section of the fanbase.
In the long term, it?s hard to imagine that Microsoft has alienated its entire community wholesale, and that its snap-decisions will drastically affect the Xbox One or future consoles from the company. However, what this proves is that forced DRM by requiring a constant online connection or server check-ins will never fly with the core gaming fanbase. When purchasing a game, players want to feel a sense of choice and of ownership ? that the game is theirs. Microsoft?s DRM undermined ownership, so the community complained.
I believe that there is a way to successfully implement a cloud-based system, but the next company to take a crack at it needs to listen to the gamers. Because really, all they want is the option. Is that too much to ask?
Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/06/20/after-microsoft-hits-reset-on-its-xbox-drm-policies-gamers-react/
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investigators have found what they believe are human remains in a search of the former home of late New York mobster Jimmy Burke, suspected mastermind of the 1978 Lufthansa cargo heist, New York City Medical Examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told Reuters on Thursday. She said the medical examiner's Office is checking material FBI agents scouring the Queens home found a day earlier, and it appears they are human remains. "I think they are," Borakove said, declining to comment further. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-u-more-fight-climate-change-142519446.html
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There?s nothing worse than being stranded at the beach with a dead battery. But this summer, thanks to a pilot program sponsored by AT&T, no New Yorker will go without Snapchat again. The program will install 25 charging stations across the city, including parks and beaches, in a Parks Department-approved strategy to improve public infrastructure in New York.
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Rick Perry, the Texas governor and 2012 "oops" presidential candidate, is spending the beginning of this week in Connecticut. Perry, as the governor of Texas, has little on-its-face reason to be in Connecticut. Except, of course, for one: Texas's unemployment rate, which at 6.4 percent in April is significantly lower than the national average, is still not quite ideal. Perry wants to bring jobs to his state. And, as he sees it, some of those jobs could come from Connecticut.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-official-says-nsa-programs-helped-foil-nyse-150557149.html
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You've got emails to check, bills to pay, coffee to drink. That mole still needs checking out. Your hairline has ceded yet more ground to your scalp. You know what's better than all that? Touring a world of unrivaled Lego treasures. Like, say, this one.
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A poll by Northwestern in Qatar, due out tomorrow, shows growing trust in regional news outlets across the Arab world.
Palestinian journalists are seen through a glass window at the offices of the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 2009. Arabs say the quality of their regional media is on the rise, led by Al Jazeera, which is making inroads in the US as its profile soars, a new poll shows.
Fadi Arouri/Reuters/File
EnlargeAlthough American trust in media has plummeted according to poll after poll, Arabs say the quality of their regional media is on the rise, led by Al Jazeera, which is making inroads in the US as its profile soars.?
Skip to next paragraph Ariel ZirulnickMiddle East Editor
Ariel Zirulnick is the Monitor's Middle East editor, overseeing regional coverage both for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She is also a contributor to the international desk's terrorism and security blog.?
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According to a sweeping Arab world public opinion survey by Northwestern University in Qatar that will be released tomorrow, 61 percent of respondents said that the "quality of reporting in the Arab world" has improved in the last two years. But while regional media basks in goodwill, less than half of respondents (48 percent) consider their own country's media credible and only 43 percent say the media can report without interference.
Twenty-six percent of respondents ranked Al Jazeera as their top news source. Broadcaster Al Arabiya trailed at 15 percent. After that, news consumption fragments to a handful of international and local news organizations.?
Northwestern in Qatar's first major regional survey since opening its doors in 2008, polled roughly 1,250 people in eight countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates) on issues of the Internet and the media in the Arab world. The findings will be presented at the International Communications Association conference in London tomorrow.?
Northwestern in Qatar receives funding from the Qatar Foundation, founded by Qatar's ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who also funds Al Jazeera.
Everette Dennis, dean and CEO of Northwestern in Qatar, said that he has seen the regional media improve by leaps. Major broadcast networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are "doing a more detailed job of covering their own region" and "Some of the newspapers that were more kept cats or very cautious, subsidized media, are doing a better job, a more transparent job."
What propelled them forward may have been the arrival of hordes of members of the international media during the Arab uprisings, which exposed regional and local journalists to high-quality coverage on a part of the world they knew well, Mr. Dennis says.
"When you see outsiders doing a better job covering your region than yourself, that's embarrassing," he says.?
Even before then business magazines, which used to be filled with press releases and "self-serving puffery" had become more critical, he says.?The wealthier Arab countries are becoming much more a part of the global economy, but they couldn't be there if their business publications were not publishing more accurate information, he says.?
The survey also shed light on the region's complicated opinions on freedom of expression.?Sixty-one percent of respondents agreed with the statement "It is okay for people to express their ideas on the Internet, even if they are unpopular," but?less than half (46 percent) think they should be able to criticize their government online.?
While people in the region may agree with freedom of expression on the internet in the abstract, practically speaking many support greater regulation. Half (51%) of the participants in the study believe there is not enough awareness of the ?laws, regulations and moralities that control one?s activities on the internet?, and, perhaps consequently, half (50%) also feel the internet in their country should be more tightly regulated than it is now.
Perhaps even more telling, only 16% overall disagree that the internet in their country should be more tightly regulated, ranging from a low of 7 percent disagreement in Egypt to a high of just 25 percent disagreeing in Bahrain. These low levels of disagreement suggest that there is no strong opposition to internet regulation in any of the eight countries under study.
"There is a paradox between?people saying they wanted almost absolute freedom of expression online ... and at the same time saying there ought to be regulation in some instances," says Dennis.?
While poll respondents often favor something in the abstract, when it is brought down to a personal level the answer often changes, he says. And it comes down to more than that in this region, he says.?
"The meaning is much deeper in the Arab world," he says. "I?think it's a tension between tradition and modernity."
"The younger, presumably more modern people do tend to favor almost unlimited expression online. They say ?Let it rip.? ? Their?parents, people who are older, tend to say yes, there should be a lot more freedom, but not in the case of criticizing Islam, for example.?
The survey did not include followup questions that allowed the university to get at the root of the contradictions; Dennis says they plan to explore it in a future survey.
After tomorrow, an interactive website with the full survey results can be found at?menamediasurvey.northwestern.edu.
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