'Come & Get It' singer details her Stars Dance World Tour for 'MTV First.'
By Christina Garibaldi
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707190/selena-gomez-tour-must-haves.jhtml
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ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - A New Mexico woman is accused of faking cancer and setting up a fake charity to raise money for others with the disease but then pocketing that money.
Elizabeth Bateman, a Los Alamos native, turned herself into the Steamboat Springs Police Department in Colorado Friday morning.
According to police documents Bateman told everyone she had terminal cancer.
"She said that she wanted to start an organization that helped young adults with terminal illnesses something similar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation," said Nicole Kofoed.
With the help of friends Bateman created the Friends Through the Fight Foundation.? A single fundraiser held in Colorado where Bateman was living last year raised $7,000.
It is money everyone thought was going to help others, but according to police Bateman was helping herself with the cash, going on cruises, skydiving and taking helicopter and hot air balloon rides.
"It was heartbreaking, ? I didn't know what to think at first," Kofoed said.
Kofoed grew up with Bateman in Los Alamos.
In an interview with KRQE News 13 she said she reached out to Bateman on Facebook when she learned of the cancer.? At the time, Kofoed's mother had recently died from the disease.
"Elizabeth seemed to ask me a lot of questions about what I had been through with my mom, and I was very open and honest with her because I thought I was helping," she said.
But now, Kofoed thinks Bateman was using those details to further her own story because the 34-year-old never had cancer.
According to court documents, Bateman made the story up going as far as shaving her head and pretending to have morphine injections.? The morphine turned out to be saline solution.
Another friend said she even took Bateman from Colorado to Chimay?.
"She wanted to go to get this sacred dirt so she could be healed," Michelle Beck said.
Bateman's con unraveled in March.? She was sick, and a friend took her to the hospital where Bateman claimed she had received treatment for her cancer.
However, the doctors said there was no record of her ever undergoing cancer treatment there.
At that point, Bateman bolted and according to her brother moved to Albuquerque.
"She's already in New Mexico like making new friends and talking to them and telling them God knows what," said Beck.
Police said Bateman also pulled the fake cancer scam in Texas.
According to friends there have been fundraisers for Bateman in New Mexico.
Source: http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/nm-woman-arrested-after-faking-cancer
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BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraqi officials say two gunfire attacks in and near Baghdad have killed four people and wounded three.
A police officer says gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an outdoor vegetable market in the town of Mishahda, killing three civilians and wounding three others. The town is 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the capital.
Also, police said drive-by shooters killed a police officer driving his car in Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Shaab.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Insurgents routinely target Iraqi police and security forces in an attempt to undermine Iraq's government. Attacks on civilians are often sectarian in nature.
Two health officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information to reporters.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-gunfire-attacks-kill-4-wound-3-iraq-145956082.html
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SAO PAULO (AP) ? The cars roll endlessly off the local assembly lines of the industry's biggest automakers, more than 10,000 a day, into the eager hands of Brazil's new middle class. The shiny new Fords, Fiats, and Chevrolets tell the tale of an economy in full bloom that now boasts the fourth largest auto market in the world.
What happens once those vehicles hit the streets, however, is shaping up as a national tragedy, experts say, with thousands of Brazilians dying every year in auto accidents that in many cases shouldn't have proven fatal.
The culprits are the cars themselves, produced with weaker welds, scant safety features and inferior materials compared to similar models manufactured for U.S. and European consumers, say experts and engineers inside the industry. Four of Brazil's five bestselling cars failed their independent crash tests.
Unsafe cars, coupled with the South American nation's often dangerous driving conditions, have resulted in a Brazilian death rate from passenger car accidents that is nearly four times that of the United States, according to an Associated Press analysis of Brazilian Health Ministry data on deaths compared to the size of each country's car fleet. In fact, the two countries are moving in opposite directions on survival rates ? the U.S. recorded 40 percent fewer fatalities from car wrecks in 2010 compared with a decade before. In Brazil, the number killed rose 72 percent, according to the latest available data.
Dr. Dirceu Alves, of Abramet, a Brazilian association of doctors that specializes in treating traffic accident victims, said poorly built cars take an unnecessary toll.
"The gravity of the injuries arriving at the hospitals is just ugly," he said, "injuries that should not be occurring."
Automakers in Brazil point out that their cars meet the nation's safety laws. Some said they build even tougher cars for the country because of its poorly maintained roadways and rejected any notion that cost-cutting in production leads to fatalities.
But the country's few safety activists perceive a deadly double standard, with automakers earning more money from selling cars that offer drivers fewer safeguards ? a worrisome gap for new middle-class households, whose surging spending power has outpaced consumer protections taken for granted in more developed countries. The problem extends beyond Brazil, with economic forecasts showing the majority of global growth in auto sales taking place in emerging-market nations as the world's auto fleet doubles to 1.5 billion by 2020.
"Entry-level cars in Brazil are incredibly dangerous, it can't be denied. The death rate from accidents is far too high," said Maria Ines Dolci, coordinator of the Rio de Janeiro-based consumer defense group Proteste. "The manufacturers do this because the cars are a little cheaper to make and the demands of the Brazilian consumers are less; their knowledge of safety issues is lower than in Europe or the U.S."
Manufacturers earn a 10 percent profit on Brazilian-made cars, compared with 3 percent in the U.S. and a global average of 5 percent, according to IHS Automotive, an industry consulting firm.
Only next year will laws require frontal air bags and antilock braking systems on all cars, safety features that have been standard in industrial countries for years. The country will also have new impact regulations on paper, at least; Brazilian regulators don't have their own crash-test facility to verify automakers' claims about vehicle performance, nor are there independent labs in the country.
Experts say those requirements alone are not sufficient to meet basic safety standards. Some models sold in Brazil, like the Chinese-made JAC J3, scored only one star in a recent crash test despite having air bags and antilock brakes.
An independent pilot effort known as the Latin New Car Assessment Program has run initial tests of Brazil's most popular car models, and the results are bleak.
The cheapest models of four of the five top-selling cars, made by General Motors, Volkswagen and Fiat, received a one-star rating, out of five stars, while other top sellers also scored poorly. Such a rating means cars provide little protection in serious head-on wrecks, compared to four- or five-star rated cars, which are virtually the minimum that consumers in the U.S. and Europe buy.
"The difference is you're talking about somebody dead in the vehicle or dying very quickly, or somebody being able to get out of the vehicle themselves," said David Ward, director general of the London-based FIA Foundation for auto safety, which supports the Euro and Latin NCAP programs. "It's definitely a difference between life and death."
The squat Ford Ka hatchback sold in Europe scored four stars when it was tested by Euro NCAP in 2008; its Latin American version scored one star.
Ford acknowledged that particular Ka is built on an outdated platform, and said it cannot be compared with the European version of the same name ? it's that different. The company said it aims to have all its cars produced in Brazil built on updated, global platforms by 2015.
The Mexico-produced Nissan March compact sold in Latin America received a two-star rating from Latin NCAP, while the version sold for about the same price in Europe, called the Micra, scored four stars. The crash tests found the Latin American model had a weak, unstable body structure that offered occupants little protection in even non-serious wrecks.
In an emailed statement, Nissan said the March sold in Brazil is "practically the same model" offered in Europe. "The difference in the results achieved in Europe and Latin America is due to variations in the NCAP tests applied in different parts of the world."
Not so, said Alejandro Furas, technical director for the Global NCAP crash test programs.
"We perform the frontal crash test exactly in the same way as the Euro NCAP," he said. "The March and Micra were tested in the same lab, with the same type of crash test dummies, under the same conditions with the same people running the laboratory."
The Euro NCAP tests are more complete. They include side-impact and other tests, while the Latin American version only records front-impacts. Each type of impact test is individually scored on a 16-point scale.
The March sold in Brazil obtained a 7.62 rating in its frontal-impact test. The Micra fared much better, 12.7 points.
Italian automaker Fiat said in an emailed statement that "in general, Brazilian projects receive more reinforcements" within the cars' bodies to fortify them against the nation's "harsher roads and terrain."
However, NCAP tests found that Fiat's best-selling car in Brazil, called the Novo Uno, had an unstable body structure and scored it just one star.
Crash-test footage shows the front of the car folding up like an accordion, giving it a 2.0 point rating, the second lowest of the 28 cars NCAP has examined. Consumers purchased nearly 256,000 Novo Uno's last year ? the second-most popular car in the country.
Renault's safety standards also vary. The French company builds its Sandero in Brazil, selling 98,400 cars last year. That car scored one star on the Latin NCAP test, but the model sold in Europe, made by Renault's Romanian subsidiary Dacia, scored three stars.
Renault said the safety record of the Sandero and its other cars were on par with autos of the same class in Brazil.
One of those is the VW Gol, Brazil's best-selling car for the last decade.
Volkswagen said it strives to maintain a global standard for body strength, putting the same number of welds on the same models regardless of where they're produced, and using high-strength steel in Brazilian cars. It added that since 1998 it's given Brazilian consumers the option of buying a car with air bags ? its Gol Trend model with two frontal air bags scored three stars, while the same model without air bags scored one star.
The company didn't respond to requests for figures on how many consumers requested air bags.
"Structural integrity during a crash is a global standard for Volkswagen," the company said in an emailed statement. "The passenger compartment for the Gol remained stable and thus guarantees survival space for occupants."
Latin NCAP has tested three VW models. The Gol and the Polo had stable bodies. The Bora sedan, however, was rated as unstable, though other factors helped it score three stars.
And then there are the cars the companies do not market outside Latin America, such as the Celta by GM. Celta is Brazil's No. 5 car in terms of sales, with 137,615 sold last year. It received one star after its door unhinged and the passenger cabin roof bent into an inverted V shape during its crash test.
General Motors had no comment other than to say that its cars in Brazil are legal.
An engineer for a major U.S. automaker, speaking only on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said he has watched for years as his company failed to implement more advanced safety features in Brazil, simply because the law did not require them.
""The automakers are pleased to make more profitable cars for countries where the demands, whatever they may be, are less rigorous," he said. "It happens everywhere ? India, China and Russia, for example."
___
About 40 million Brazilians moved into the middle class during the past decade with more income than ever to buy their first car. The growth potential is enormous: One out of every seven Brazilians owns a car, while the U.S. vehicle fleet covers nearly every American.
But as auto sales boom in Brazil, so have the number of accidents and deaths.
An analysis of Health Ministry data shows that 9,059 car occupants died in vehicle crashes in Brazil in 2010, according to the most recent statistics available. That same year, 12,435 people in the U.S. were killed in car crashes, though the U.S. passenger car fleet is five times larger than Brazil's. The result: Brazilian automobile crash victims died at four times the rate as those in the U.S.
The dangers come down to basics, engineers said: the lack of body reinforcements, lower-quality steel in car bodies, weaker or fewer weld spots to hold the vehicles together and car platforms designed decades before modern safety advances.
"The electricity used in building a car is about 20 percent of the cost of the structure," said Marcilio Alves, an engineering professor at Brazil's premier University of Sao Paulo and one of the few independent researchers in the nation looking at car safety.
"If you save on electricity, you save on cost. One way to save electricity is either reducing the number of spot welds or using less energy for each spot weld made. This affects structural performance in the event of a crash."
In a car with no air bags and an unstable body structure, a driver's biggest danger is the steering wheel.
A weak body structure and fragile steering column make it easier for the wheel to slam into the driver's chest and abdomen in frontal crashes, the deadliest and most common, causing serious damage to vital organs.
Ward talks of steering wheels that break off and "float" during wrecks in poorly made cars ? moving around the cabin in the driver's area. That means that even if an air bag is deployed, the steering wheel may go around or under it and directly hit the driver.
Many Brazilian car bodies also don't contain crumple zones, areas that absorb energy during wrecks. The omission endangers occupants' lower limbs, as foot wells rip off and expose feet and legs to car parts slamming into them from the front.
"If a car's body cannot absorb the energy of a crash, it will logically result in more damage, more injuries to passengers," said Alves, the doctor who specializes in traffic accident victims.
One auto engineer described the situation by sketching two car body designs with identical perimeters, but one depicted internal gaps ? missing body reinforcements.
He worked three decades for Volkswagen and spent the last 10 years as an independent engineering consultant for big automakers. He asked that his name not be published for fear of losing contracts and benefits.
"The secret of a car's body being able to withstand the crash test are the weld spots," he said.
"Let's say this is a German car," he pointed to the gapless sketch. "It's really sophisticated. Nothing is missing."
Then he pointed at the car made in Brazil, full of incomplete ink strokes.
"The Brazilian version looks the same from the outside, but it's missing pieces," he said. "In one version they include the reinforcement, in the other they don't. What's of interest is the final shape. What's inside, nobody can see."
___
In 2008, Carlos Alberto Lopes, then a 23-year-old waiter, was riding in a one-star car traveling about 50 mph on a rainy highway in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais when the road curved smoothly left. The car hydroplaned, skidded into an embankment and rolled several times down a long incline. Of the four occupants, Lopes was the only one with serious injuries, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
Lopes says the three-point seatbelt he was wearing didn't lock his body in place, allowing him to repeatedly hit the collapsing roof as the car rolled. He suffered a crushed vertebra.
"If the seatbelt had locked when the car rolled I wouldn't have hit my back. None of this would have happened," Lopes said.
A study by a chain of Brazilian rehabilitation centers where Lopes is being treated found that in 2011, 40 percent of the patients it worked with in Sao Paulo with serious spinal injuries were hurt in traffic accidents.
Lopes never considered a lawsuit. In fact, in more than a dozen interviews with accident victims left paralyzed after crashes, not one considered taking legal action against vehicle manufacturers.
That's in part a reflection of the lack of police investigations into car accidents, the majority of which, like Lopes', only result in simple "occurrence bulletins" that include minimal information.
But it's also indicative of the deference Brazil's new middle class consumers show to automakers and most other industries.
"We're 20 years behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of consumer awareness," said Dolci, coordinator of the Proteste consumer defense group. "The new, emerging middle class entering the market has little information on car safety. They think little of automobile security. It's this very class of consumer the automakers are targeting and to whom they're selling a mountain of cars."
Accidents like Lopes' involve more than a poorly built car.
Drivers fail to obey traffic laws, which many of the region's governments notoriously don't enforce. Cars must navigate crumbling roads and poorly designed highway systems that all but make gridlock and accidents unavoidable. And many drivers simply value perks such as alloy wheels and sound systems over unseen crumple zones.
In 1965, there were 47,089 motor vehicle fatalities in the U.S. That same year, consumer activist Ralph Nader's famous indictment of the auto industry was published, Unsafe at Any Speed. The book ignited a national discussion on auto safety and ultimately led to reforms that dramatically refashioned the industry's standards, helping lead to a 32 percent drop in deaths by 2011.
Nader said halting the growing number of auto deaths in Brazil would take "a public uproar, product liability lawsuits, selective boycotts by motorists or by mandatory Brazilian law equalizing safety standards with the safest engineering required in other countries."
"These responses in the past have worked in other countries confronted by auto industry double standards for protecting lives on the highway. Such actions are long overdue but now Brazilians know the truth in more detail," he said.
The Brazilian government says its new laws mandating frontal air bags and anti-lock brakes will dramatically improve safety, as will new impact standards. But because there are no independent crash-test centers in Brazil, companies will not face the same scrutiny as elsewhere. They will run the impact tests themselves and present the results to the government for approval. Because there is no "conformity of production" clause in the Brazilian legislation, cars won't be spot-checked to ensure they meet safety laws.
Alexandre Cordeiro, the top government minister overseeing auto safety laws, acknowledged that the government doesn't have its own crash-test center ? but said Brazil will monitor crash tests conducted outside the country.
"Regarding front- and rear-end crash tests, our cars are as secure as European or American cars," Cordeiro said.
However, when asked about the stark differences in performance that the NCAP tests document between Brazilian and European cars, Cordeiro acknowledged improvements need to be made, saying "we need to evolve and we're working on it."
Over the years Ward said he has watched the same battles play out over auto safety ? the only thing that changes is the location.
"The sad thing is, this has been the experience in the 1960s in the U.S., in the 1990s in Europe and now in Latin America," Ward said. "The industry does the least it can get away with until they're forced to do something different. It's maddening."
http://www.latinncap.com/en/
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-cars-made-brazil-deadly-180411170.html
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In honor of Mother's Day, Slate revisits a classic, tender story about love and family, originally published in 2009.
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
Shortly after my husband John and I were married, on a day he was at work and I was home moving my things into his house, I opened a cardboard box in the attic. It was filled with photos of his other married life, the one he'd had with his first wife, Robin Goldstein. She was 28 when they got married, and six months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband was nursing her at home when she died just after her 34th birthday. The box contained wedding photos, honeymoon photos, and random snapshots of parties and birthdays. As I excavated, I could chart her illness by her hair?a cycle of dark waves, then wigs and scarves. After I'd looked at them all, I closed the box and cried for her, and for my guilty awareness that her death allowed me, five years later, to marry the man I loved.
When our daughter was born, one of the sweetest gifts we got was a tiny chair with her name painted on the back. It was from the Goldstein family. How final it must have felt to them to send this acknowledgement of John's new life. Robin had wanted children, but her long illness and the brutal treatments made that impossible.
All of us exist because of a series of tragedies and flukes. I'm here because 80 years ago my grandfather's wife, Ruth, died suddenly of the flu, leaving him a young widower with a toddler and an infant. (They say he had to be restrained from jumping into her grave.) Eventually he remarried to my grandmother, and my mother was born. My grandmother banished all traces of Ruth. Her sons had no contact with Ruth's relatives, displayed no photos of her. It was as if she never existed. At the end of my grandfather's long life?he lived to be 95?his distant past became more present to him, and he began to tell stories about Ruth. My grandmother was more incredulous than angry. "Can you imagine?" she told me. "Do you know how long she's been dead?"
Maybe when my husband and I get old, memories of his life with Robin will become even more vivid than our years together. If so, I hope I'll welcome those memories. I'm grateful to Robin, not jealous (even if she left it to me to convince our joint husband that the laundry hamper was invented for a reason). I knew my husband for only four months before we got married. But I heard from others how protective, tender, and devoted he was to her. Because of their relationship, I knew that this was a man who could be trusted, who stayed, for better or worse. I also knew that it's possible to have more than one love of your life. I am the love of his, and so was she.
Robin was born in Newark, N.J., in 1955. She was a striking, slender young woman with huge dark eyes. She started her career as a city reporter in a small New Jersey town, and both the cops and the mobsters she covered had crushes on her. When she reported on a trial of the Genovese family the judge threatened Robin with jail for protecting one of her sources, a mobster turned government witness, and her case became a test for a newly passed press shield law.
She was just as brave about her illness. After the first surgery, radiation, and chemo, it looked as if she'd be OK, as if the diagnosis might be just some ghastly glitch. But a year later the cancer came back, and for the next five years she endured everything the doctors threw at her, while convincing other people not to pity her.
Robin decided that for however long she had, she would make it a normal life. She kept working and traveling?there were many vacation photos in that box?and when the cancer spread to her bones, she went to the office on crutches. She had to stop when it got to her brain. In her final week, at the hospital, she still got excited about fixing up a radiation technologist she liked with a bachelor journalist friend.
Although they spent their entire marriage moving toward her death, my husband says they didn't spend much time talking about this destination. A therapist once told him those discussions were like "looking at the sun" ?something one could do only glancingly because of the pain. At the end, Robin told him she wanted him to have a child. She made him promise he would do that, because she knew how much he wanted children. In their conversation Robin acknowledged that if he did it would mean he had found a new wife; she said that was harder for her to think about, but she wanted him to find love again. I asked him what he said when she told him this. He told her, "I can't imagine life without you."
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=2754fcfc28f02e8715b819091d76a00c
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MADRID (AP) ? Top-ranked Serena Williams will have a chance to win her 50th career title after beating Sara Errani of Italy 7-5, 6-2 Saturday to reach the final of the Madrid Open.
After a skittish start, Williams dominated Errani and broke her final service game in both sets.
"I feel I played solid," Williams said. "In the second set more than in the first, I made a few less errors, which is something I needed to do."
The defending champion improved to 5-0 against the seventh-ranked Errani and to 30-2 overall this year.
Williams will play the winner of the other semifinal between second-seeded Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic. If Sharapova makes the final, the No. 1 ranking will also be at stake.
Williams said either opponent would pose a difficult challenge.
"I feel this whole tournament I have only played clay-court opponents," said Williams. "All have been smaller than me. Tomorrow will be a different game, more power."
Later Saturday, Rafael Nadal played fellow Spaniard Pablo Andujar and Tomas Berdych faced Stanislas Wawrinka in the semifinals of the men's event.
Williams struggled with her shot-making early, uncharacteristically misfiring on three smashes in the first set, which she still managed to pull out after falling behind 3-1.
The 15-time Grand Slam winner then started clicking with her serve and held two games to love, but she needed four set points before finally breaking Errani with a forehand winner placed just inside the line to grab the lead.
Ahead a set, Williams pressed her advantage and eased through the second.
On Sunday, Williams will play her first final on red clay since 2002. Last year's trophy at the Caja Magica came on the experimental blue clay surface that was removed following players' complaints it was too slippery.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/serena-williams-beats-errani-reach-madrid-final-110811163.html
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Published on:
?Global smartphone applications processor market showed a robust 60 percent year-on-year growth in 2012 to reach $12.9 billion, according to Strategy Analytics.
According to a Strategy Analytics report, Qualcomm maintained its lead in the smartphone applications processor market with 43 percent revenue share in 2012. Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors gained acceptance across multiple smartphone price tiers and helped Qualcomm to maintain its number one spot.
Some of the highlights of this Strategy Analytics report:
According to Sravan Kundojjala, Senior Analyst, "Qualcomm continued its dominance in the smartphone applications processor market with 43 percent revenue share in 2012. Qualcomm strongly participated in the high-end market in 2012 with its LTE Snapdragon processors and APQ series stand-alone processors. Strategy Analytics believes that the year 2012 saw Qualcomm's rise as a high-end player in the smartphone applications processor market, thanks to its in-house CPU and graphics technologies. The new Snapdragon 600 and 800 chips will help Qualcomm move further ahead of the competition."
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Tags: [apple]? [qualcomm]? [samsung]?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cellular-news/LmiX/~3/uK-IOvgjQCs/59946.php
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ??Oil industry associations have accused federal land managers of blocking new energy development in California by postponing all oil and gas lease auctions until October.
John Felmy, the chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's recent announcement that it will put off leasing public lands in the state is preventing job creation.
BLM says the decision was forced by budget problems, and the toll of environmental litigation over parcels near the Monterey Shale, one of the nation's largest deposits of shale oil.
BLM's state director Jim Kenna says the agency will concentrate on enforcement of existing leases.
The decision also came after a federal judge ruled last month that BLM violated a key environmental law when it auctioned certain drilling rights before performing a sweeping environmental review.
?2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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President Barack Obama turns around and pauses before entering his car at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Thursday, May 9, 2013, in Austin, Texas. Obama visited Austin to give talks on technology development and the economy at Manor New Tech High School and Applied Materials. (AP Photo/Marisa Vasquez, The Daily Texan)
President Barack Obama turns around and pauses before entering his car at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Thursday, May 9, 2013, in Austin, Texas. Obama visited Austin to give talks on technology development and the economy at Manor New Tech High School and Applied Materials. (AP Photo/Marisa Vasquez, The Daily Texan)
President Barack Obama tours Applied Materials Inc., with Rick Gesing, left, Mike Splinter, center, and Mary Humiston, right, during a visit to the facilities in Austin, Texas, Thursday, May 9, 2013. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Rodolfo Gonzalez, Pool)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is launching a new effort to rally the public around his hotly disputed health care law, a strategy aimed at shoring up key components of the sweeping federal overhaul and staving off yet another challenge from Republicans.
The president will specifically target women and young people, groups that backed him overwhelmingly during his presidential campaigns. During a Mother's Day-themed event at the White House on Friday, Obama will promote the benefits of the law for women, including free cancer screenings and contraceptives, and ask moms to urge their uninsured adult children to sign up for the health insurance "exchanges" that open this fall.
The exchanges are the centerpiece of the landmark overhaul of the nation's health insurance system. Three years after it became law, the measure widely known as "Obamacare" remains controversial, with GOP lawmakers resolving anew to overturn it and many Americans unsure how they'll be affected.
White House advisers acknowledge they struggled in explaining the complex law to the public when it passed in 2010. Now, with the final components being implemented, Obama allies see a fresh opportunity to sell the American people on the merits of measures that will be central to the president's legacy.
"We're in the phase for the actual meat of the law to come online," said Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, a liberal group aligned with the White House. "It's important for the public to recognize that the law has tangible benefits to people so they feel comfortable enrolling."
Beginning Oct. 1, consumers can enroll in coverage through health insurance marketplaces called "exchanges" established by the states or the federal government. Coverage under the private plans begins Jan. 1, and nearly 30 million uninsured Americans are eventually expected to take part.
But in order to keep insurance premiums down, young, healthy people will have to join up in order to counteract the costs from seniors and others with health problems.
The uncertainty surrounding the exchanges has many Democrats nervous, including retiring Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the architects of the overhaul. He said last month that the health care law is heading for a "train wreck" because of a bumbling implementation.
The president conceded last week that there would be "glitches and bumps" as the final phases of the health care law ? formally the Affordable Health Care Act ? are rolled out. But he said most people will be unaffected by the changes that are still to come.
"For the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, this thing has already happened," Obama said. "Their only impact is that their insurance is stronger, better, more secure than it was before. Full stop. That's it. They don't have to worry about anything else."
Many Republicans strongly disagree, saying the full impact of the law will ripple throughout the economy. House Republicans announced this week that they planned to hold a vote on repealing the overhaul ? the 37th time the House has voted to repeal all of part of the law. The Democratic-controlled Senate has ignored those votes each time.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, acknowledged that the move was largely political, noting that there were 70 new members of the House this year who haven't had an opportunity to register a vote against the health law. As for why Republicans are intent on repealing the law rather than trying to amend its pieces, Boehner said, "I don't believe there is a way to fix this and make it acceptable to the American people."
Administration officials insist it's bad politics for Republicans to keep pressing for repeal. They say the American people don't want to harp on old issues, and cite the law's popularity among young people, blacks, Hispanics and women ? all demographic groups the GOP has struggled to attract in recent elections.
"It just demonstrates again how out of touch with what the American people want the House Republicans have become," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday.
In reality, a massive number of people are actually uninformed about the provisions of the law. A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed more than 4 in 10 Americans didn't know the Affordable Health Care Act was still law or was being implemented. About half feel they don't have enough information about the law to know how it will affect them.
Under the law, virtually all Americans must carry health insurance starting next year, although most will just keep the coverage they now have through their jobs, Medicare or Medicaid.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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By Michael Georgy
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped the son of a former Pakistani prime minister on Thursday as a letter from the leader of the Pakistani Taliban revealed plans for suicide bomb attacks on election day.
Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, in a message to the group's spokesman, outlined plans for the attacks, including suicide blasts, in all four of the country's provinces on polling day on Saturday.
"We don't accept the system of infidels which is called democracy," Mehsud said in the letter, dated May 1, and obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
Since April, the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban have killed more than 100 people in attacks on election candidates and rallies, particularly those of secular-leaning parties, in a bid to undermine elections they regard as un-Islamic.
The polls, already Pakistan's most violent, will mark the first time a civilian government has completed a full term and handed over to another administration.
The attacks have prevented candidates from the three main parties in the ruling coalition from holding big rallies. Instead, they have relied on door-to-door campaigning or small meetings in homes or on street corners.
Gunmen kidnapped the son of Yusuf Raza Gilani, former prime minister and stalwart of the outgoing Pakistan People's Party (PPP), as he headed for a small political gathering in the central city of Multan, police said.
Ali Haider Gilani's secretary and guard were shot dead in the attack.
"If we don't get my brother by this evening I will not let the elections happen in my area," said his brother, Musa, in televised comments.
Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan denied responsibility in a telephone call to Reuters.
MILITANTS SPARE MAIN OPPOSITION PARTY
The Pakistan Taliban are blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the country, a nuclear-armed strategic ally of the United States.
But they have not attacked the main opposition party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which has courted support from groups accused of supporting militancy.
Sharif, who is seen as favorite to become the next prime minister, says Pakistan should reconsider its support for the U.S. war on Islamist militancy and suggests he would be in favor of negotiations with the Taliban.
Nor have the Taliban attacked former cricketer Imran Khan's party, which advocates shooting down U.S. drones and withdrawing the Pakistani military from insurgency-infested ethnic Pashtun areas along the Afghan border.
The military said on Thursday it would send tens of thousands of troops to polling stations and counting centers to prevent the Taliban from disrupting the election.
The military has ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 66-year history, either through coups or from behind the scenes.
Army spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said 300,000 security officials, including 32,000 troops, had been deployed in Punjab, the most populous province. Another 96,000 security forces would be deployed in the northwest.
"Definitely they have reports and obviously they have made a plan to counter that," newspapers quoted him as saying, referring to security agencies getting threats of violence from the Taliban.
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League has capitalized on widespread frustrations with the outgoing government led by the Pakistan People's Party.
(Editing by Nick Macfie)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pakistani-army-vows-protect-voters-landmark-election-055604472.html
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Everyone remembers it, the scene in "Psycho" that made you scared to shower without checking your doors. The scene that forced you to make sure there was no one else in the bathroom with you; we?re talking about the infamous shower. An unsuspecting victim, the water draining, shower curtain falling, and that very long knife ? the scene is as iconic and its director, Alfred Hitchcock. However, it was Saul Bass who created the storyboard for it.
While it is Mr. Hitchcock who receives the fame and glory for that unforgettable scene, it was Mr. Bass who styled it in the first place. The contrast between the scene and the storyboard show that Hitchcock changed a few things as he saw fit. But, the vital parts of the scene are pure Bass.
There was some controversy after Hitchcock's death as Bass claimed that the late filmmaker had allowed him to direct the scene. Janet Leigh, star of Psycho, contradicted Bass's claims. However, it has been noted that perhaps what Bass meant when he said "directed," referred to his influence over the scenes. It was, after all, filmed with his storyboard "direction."?
Bass also created the title sequence for "Psycho." In fact, Bass created the idea of title sequences as we know it today specifically for Hitchcock. Bass's first title sequence was Otto Preminger's "The Man with the Golden Arm," however, it was the revolutionary font typography that he created for "North by Northwest" that cemented his place in movie history. He specifically created a style that he would carry on to other Hitchcock films and revolutionized titles.?Before Bass, the titles of films were static. In fact, titles were often shown on the curtains of the theater. The curtains were only raised right before the first scene in a movie. ?Bass changed all of that with his minimalist style and inclusion of the title sequence into the movie.
Bass went on to work on movie titles for more than 40 years. His influence can still be seen to this very day; Mad Men, for example, borrows from Bass?s style. His revolutionary techniques for titles and penchant for creating luring scenes fostered a longer and prosperous career.
For more tech news follow Aimee on?Twitter,?@aimee_ortiz?
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[prMac.com] Market Harborough, United Kingdom - Slide Swipe App Development has announced Quiltography V1.0 for the iPad. Quiltography is a unique, time and money saving mobile digital quilt design tool for the modern quilter. Reduce the need to buy expensive quilt patterns, limit fabric wastage and make it quick and easy to search and audition fabrics to help design your next quilt.
Key Features:
* Store fabric in the local database.
* Tag fabric for easy searching.
* Create a photoQuilt pattern from any image / photo.
* Create detailed quilt patterns as a PDF from any photoQuilt.
* Includes 180 block templates.
* Customize blocks with personal fabric.
* Automatically detect the top 5 colors from fabric images.
* Filter and search blocks and fabrics.
* Design and share high quality quilt designs.
* Quilt options: border, sashing, cornerstones and more...
* Create placeholder fabric from any color.
Detailed Features:
photoQuilt
* Image Converter:
Quiltography will deconstruct any image and create amazing quilt patterns and report information as to the total size, number of pieces and more. You can customize the amount of detail in the final quilt and restrict the amount of colors to be used.
* Export To PDF:
Once you have a great photoQuilt pattern. Quiltography will create a printable and sharable PDF pattern.
Fabric Database
* Quick Import:
Found fabric online? Taken photos of all your stash? Your'e one step closer to adding your first fabric to your personal database. Use the built in camera roll or on board camera to add fabric to Quiltography.
* Colorful Fabric Creation:
Don't have your fabric to hand but want to add a simple block color? Use the quick color palette or chose a custom color with the Hue, Saturation or Brightness sliders to get just the color you wanted. We even have an option to blend your color with a gorgeous linen texture for that added level of realism.
* Dynamic Tag Filter:
Tap on any field when adding fabric and Quiltography lists the last few tags used. As you type the list filters, tap on the one you want to instantly tag your fabric. Less typing, more time for you.... now put on that kettle, mine's a tea.
* Automatic Color Detection:
Import your fabric from the library or camera, Quiltography will instantly detect up to 5 of the top colors within the image and add them as tags to the database entry for the corresponding fabric. This feature is great for saving time and allows for fast and easy searching of fabrics by color.
Block Designer
* Template Blocks:
Choose from over 180 template blocks (With many more to come) to to customize and audition your fabric.
* Fast and Easy:
Quiltography's block designer is created to be extremely fast and easy to use. Highlight the pieces that you want to change and select the fabric to use. It's as easy as that. The link tool will automatically select all pieces with a matching color or fabric, to help to save you time.
* High Resolution and Detailed Block Creation:
The block designer uses the high resolution images that you imported to create amazingly detailed blocks with subtle shading between pieces; to help make your blocks look that bit more realistic.
Quilt Creator
* Detailed and Zoomable:
Use your high resolution, custom designed blocks to create amazing and unique digital quilts, all without the need to take a single bolt of fabric off the shelf. Zoom in to get a closer look at your work and when you are done, be sure to share with your friends.
* Border, Sashing, Cornerstones and More:
Not every quilt you want to design is as simple as a couple of blocks, so, we have options to customize your quilt settings and see the results in real time. Want to make your quilt blocks on point? You're just a tap away.
Device Requirements:
* iPad 2nd Generation and Newer
* iOS 6.0 and Later
* 35.6 MB
Pricing and Availability:
Quiltography V1.0 is available worldwide through the Apple's App Store in the Lifestyle section for $14.99 (USD) in the U.S. and is priced accordingly in other regions.
Located in Market Harbourough, UK. Slide Swipe App Development specialising in iOS Apps. All Material and Software (C) 2013 Christopher Oxley / All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.
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Source: http://prmac.com/release-id-57298.htm
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In this Thursday, March 28, 2013, photo, a woman shops at a Nordstrom store in Chicago. The Federal Reserve reports how much consumers borrowed in March on Tuesday, May 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
In this Thursday, March 28, 2013, photo, a woman shops at a Nordstrom store in Chicago. The Federal Reserve reports how much consumers borrowed in March on Tuesday, May 7, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Americans cut back on using their credit cards in March, suggesting many were reluctant to take on high-interest debt to make purchases.
Consumer borrowing rose just $8 billion in March from February to a seasonally adjusted $2.81 trillion, the Federal Reserve said Tuesday. It was the smallest increase in eight months.
The gain was driven entirely by more loans to attend school and buy cars. The category that measures those loans increased $9.7 billion to $19.6 trillion.
A measure of credit card debt fell $1.7 billion to $846 billion. That's 17.2 percent below the peak of $1.022 trillion set in July 2008.
Since the recession, consumers have been more cautious about using credit cards. Economists believe consumers will stay cautious this year, in part because of an increase in Social Security taxes that has reduced tax-home pay for most Americans.
Cooper Howes, an economist at Barclays, said consumers have been trying to get better control of their debts since the recession hit and he predicted this trend will continue.
While the Fed does not release a breakdown between auto and student loans, Howes said his analysis of the Fed data indicates that almost 80 percent of the March increase reflected student loans. That would continue a pattern seen in recent years: Americans who lost jobs or recent graduates who can't find work have returned to school and are taking out loans to pay for their education.
According to quarterly data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has been the biggest driver of borrowing since the recession ended in June 2009. Student loans reached $966 billion in last year's fourth quarter. That's up from $675 billion in the second quarter of 2009, when the Great Recession was ending.
Consumers increased their spending from January through March at the fastest pace in more than two years. However, they had to trim the pace of their savings to finance the faster spending. Their after-tax income dropped by the largest amount since the final three months of the recession in 2009. Part of the drop in after-tax income reflected the increase in Social Security taxes that took effect on Jan. 1.
A person earning $50,000 a year will have about $1,000 less to spend this year. A household with two highly paid workers will have up to $4,500 less.
Solid hiring could offset some of the drag from the tax increase. The economy added 165,000 jobs in April and hiring in the two previous months was better than previously reported. That helped drive the unemployment rate down to a four-year low of 7.5 percent in April.
The Federal Reserve's borrowing report covers auto loans, student loans and credit cards. It excludes mortgages, home equity loans and other loans tied to real estate.
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Mites, diseases, and pesticides are all suspected of contributing to bee colony collapse disorder. The bees are dying at such a fast rate that farmers who rely on bees for pollination are now reserving them five years in advance. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Almost a third of America's honeybee colonies bit the dust last winter, according to a bellwether survey of bee health. But the deaths didn't fit the typical pattern for colony collapse disorder, the mysterious malady that wipes out bunches of bees all at once. Instead, researchers suggest that last summer's drought and other common-sense factors were to blame.
The annual survey of beekeepers, conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership and the Apiary Inspectors of America, found that 31.1 percent of the colonies were lost over the winter of 2012-2013. That compares with a loss of 22 percent during the previous winter, which was exceptionally mild. It's also slightly higher than the six-year average of 30.5 percent in colony losses.
The past?winter's bee death rate was roughly as high as it was during the winter of 2006-2007 ??when colony collapse disorder, or CCD, was at its peak. But this time, most colonies "dwindled away rather than suffering from the sudden onset of CCD," Jeff Pettis, a U.S. Department of Agriculture bee expert who worked on the survey, said in a news release announcing the results.
University of Maryland entomologist Dennis vanEnglesdorp, who directs the Bee Informed Partnership, listed several likely causes for last winter's spike. One prime reason is the drought that swept over the Midwest last year. "When there's a drought, the bees are in poor shape with the food," California beekeeper Randy Oliver told NBC News in March.
Honeybees may have had to rely on irrigated crops rather than wildflowers for their nectar, which could have increased their exposure to pesticides, vanEnglesdorp said. He said last year's rising corn prices led farmers to replace prairie and shrubs with cornfields, further limiting the bees' foraging areas. And for part of the year, beekeepers lacked an effective treatment for Varroa mites, a type of bee parasite that was cited last week as the biggest factor behind the nation's bee die-off.
VanEnglesdorp said all these factors left bee colonies in a weakened state for the tough winter of 2012-2013. He said the beekeepers who took their hives to California in February to pollinate almond trees suffered especially high losses. Nearly 20 percent of those beekeepers said they lost 50 percent or more of their colonies over the winter.
Pettis noted that the survey stopped tracking losses at the end of April. As a result,?"the 31 percent figure likely underrepresents the losses, as we saw many weak colonies that were not actually dead," he said.
Beekeepers rebuild their colonies in the spring, so a 31.1 percent loss rate isn't quite as catastrophic as it sounds. Nevertheless, vanEngelsdorp said high winter losses are changing the way commercial beekeeping is done. "All the money you're going to make in honey goes to replacing dead colonies and keeping your colonies alive," he said. "Any money you make [as profit] will be from pollination."
More about the bees:
The winter colony loss survey was funded by USDA. The 6,287 U.S. beekeepers who responded to the survey managed nearly 600,000 bee colonies at the start of the survey period, or about 23 percent of the country's estimated 2.6 million colonies. A complete analysis of the survey data will be published later this year.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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