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Against high Hill drama, SEC chief mum on Goldman

VIDEO: Happy Town's Geoff Stults: Mysteries Will Be Solved in Each Episode

Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington)

(TVGuide.com: Breaking News)

Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:34:58 PM

First of all, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro would not talk about Goldman Sachs. There was no drawing her out. The head of the agency that filed a civil fraud lawsuit charging that Goldman misled investors would not say a word about the case. Quite the opposite from the high-drama being played out at the same time on Capitol Hill where Goldman Sachs executives were facing the fusillade at a Senate hearing, where one senator kept repeating "shi--y deal." (There are two t's missing from that word). Schapiro in an interview at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit just was not

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going to go there. "I'm not going to comment on Goldman," she said before one reporter even got the question out. Even while responding to a tangential question, she began by saying "put the Goldman case aside," careful to make sure her answer would not be linked to the investment bank.

Asked whether this could be seen as the start of the SEC's war on Wall Street, Schapiro replied: "Well first of all, I'm not going to comment on Goldman. There is no war on anybody." She went on to say: "I guess what I would like to see is people take a big step backward

and think about who are we here to serve, and how do we best serve them?" She said innovation was a "remarkable quality" of the market and there had been a lot of "tremendous innovation" that had been good in the markets, but there also had been a lot of innovation for the purpose of generating fees and creating new structures to enhance return for the banks -- "I really question whether there's any benefit to that." "So I do think it's a time for soul -searching, really for all market participants, and regulators as well," she said. Wonder if she meant Goldman too? Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (protesters at Senate hearing on Goldman Sachs), Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Schapiro on Capitol Hill July 2009)

Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:49:00 PM

• Apr 27, 2010 11:49 PM ET • by Robyn Ross • The setting of ABC's new drama Happy Town(premieres Wednesday at 10/9c) may look quaint and picturesque, but Haplin, Minn. holds memories of a string of unsolved kidnappings. TVGuide.com spoke to star Geoff Stults about playing the son of a sheriff in a town filled with mystery and murder. Find out why Stults believes that, once the killer known as the "Magic Man" is revealed, viewers will look back and say, "I can't believe I didn't think of that!" Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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FDIC Chair Bair: think before you point that fingerâ&#x20AC;Ś

Al-Qaeda confirms loss of two senior leaders

Tabassum Zakaria (Front Row Washington)

(World News from Times Online)

Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:29:22 AM

The latest blame game circulating in Washington on financial regulation may end up with those who point fingers finding that they have three fingers pointing back. During the debate on tightening financial regulations, there have been some backhanded jabs at regulators with the implication that perhaps they were asleep at the wheel. Just this morning on NBC's "Today" show, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said Wall Street had been creating things just to bet on -- "they were like the casino, but they had less regulation than Las Vegas." Well hold on. Who's fault is that? We asked Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. She said when it comes to regulating many of the complex over-the-counter derivatives, the blame actually fell into the lap

of Congress which decided against putting them under the oversight of the SEC or CFTC or insurance regulators. And in fairness to Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury condoned that action, she said. "On derivatives, Congress did that," Bair said at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit. "That's all history now." The CFTC does regulate

exchange-traded derivatives such as futures and options, but it's the over-the-counter stuff that's unregulated. "There was a system-wide breakdown here," Bair said. "Everybody had a role in this crisis and let's just look forward and see if we can fix it." Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bair at Reuters summit)

Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy.To inquire about a licence to Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:01:00 PM reproduce material from Times Contact our advertising team Online, The Times or The for advertising and sponsorship Sunday Times, click here.This in Times Online, The Times and website is published by a The Sunday Times, or place m e m b e r o f t h e N e w s your advertisement. International Group. News Times Online Services: Dating| International Limited, 1 Virginia Jobs| Property Search| Used St, London E98 1XY, is the C a r s | H o l i d a y s | B i r t h s , holding company for the News Marriages, D e a t h s | International group and is S u b s c r i p t i o n s | E - p a p e r registered in England No 81701. News International associated VAT number GB 243 8054 69. websites: Milkround| Globrix Five Filters featured article: C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 0 T i m e s Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Newspapers Ltd. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, This service is provided on Term Extraction. Times Newspapers' standard

The Ultimate First Aid Quiz (HowStuffWorks Daily Feed) Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

Quick -- do you know how to perform CPR? Help someone who has just fainted? Get an insect out of a kid's ear? No? Well, read on. When you're

done with this quiz, you'll feel a lot more confident in emergency first-aid situations. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Wise Words: Eyes on the Prize WomansDay.com Editors (Daily Woman's Day Blog) Submitted at 4/28/2010 6:30:00 AM

Here's a little bit of inspiration

to make your day fun, fabulous â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Henry Ford and full of joy. How do you overcome Obstacles are those frightful obstacles you meet in life? things you see when you take Have a favorite quote? Send it your eyes off your goal. t o u s a t

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Russia releases secret papers on Katyn massacre signed by Stalin (World News from Times Online)

Katyn. There has been a sudden warming of relations after the plane crash in Smolensk that Submitted at 4/28/2010 6:48:31 AM killed President Lech Secret documents detailing the Kaczynski and 95 leading Polish Soviet leadership’s decision to figures as they travelled to murder 22,000 Polish officers c o m m e m o r a t e t h e 7 0 t h at Katyn were released to the anniversary of the tragedy. Russian public today on orders More than 100 volumes of from President Medvedev. documents relating to a criminal In an unprecedented step, the investigation into the Katyn Russian State Archive published massacre remain classified, documents showing how Soviet however, despite Polish requests leader Joseph Stalin approved for them to be released. Most of the World War Two massacre the information in the file proposed by his secret police published today has been made henchman Lavrenty Beria. public before. Other prominent members of But Russia has taken steps to the ruling Soviet Politburo also try to confront the past since this signed off on the slaughter. month’s plane crash, such as A four-page document sent to s c r e e n i n g P o l i s h d i r e c t o r Stalin by Beria, head of the Andrzej Wajda’s film about NKVD, the predecessor to the Katyn on state television for the KGB, sets out his proposal to first time. Mr Medvedev also “quickly examine the use of the attended Mr Kaczynski's highest means of punishment – f u n e r a l i n P o l a n d , w h e r e death by shooting”. Stalin’s Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz signature and a red “top secret” appealed directly to him to try stamp are visible on the front to resolve the countries’ difficult page. history. The release of File Number The head of the archive, Andrei One appeared to be a further Artizov, said that File Number attempt by Russia to resolve One disproved claims by bitter divisions with Poland over apologists for the Soviet regime

that the Polish prisoners of war were killed by the Nazis. The Kremlin maintained this lie for 50 years until the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Moscow’s responsibility in 1990. Mr Artizov said in a statement on the archive’s website: “The Russian side is demonstrating absolute openness as it is telling the story of what happened to Polish POWs in Katyn ... Access has been opened to the key documents highlighting this tragedy. “The public has been given access to the original copies of the Katyn documents, kept at the State Socio-Political History Archives. The Katyn documents have never been accessible online on government websites. We have posted them for the first time.” He said that File Number One had been held in secret Communist archives during the Soviet era under the control of the party’s general-secretary, who was effectively the head of state. It was last handed over to Boris Yeltsin as independent Russia’s first President and

Scifi Saved My Life Videos (HowStuffWorks Daily Feed) Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

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opened by a special commission in 1992. "It contained a letter, written by chief of the Soviet secret police Lavrenty Beria in March 1940, recommending that the Polish POWs be executed and their remains concealed. The letter carries Stalin and other Politburo members' original resolutions. Among those who signed it were Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan,” Mr Artizov said. “The file also holds the Politburo's Resolution of March 5, 1940, which gives the goahead to Beria's proposal to execute the Polish officers.” Other documents included a handwritten note from 1959 by the then KGB chief Alexander Shelepin, telling the Soviet leadership that files on the murdered Polish officers had been destroyed as part of efforts to cover up the crime. Mr Artizov said that notes on envelopes containing the documents made clear that every Soviet leader after Stalin had read the file and was familiar with what happened.

He added: “The envelopes were then sealed again and placed on the archive shelves.” He said that copies of the material were published in Poland after they were passed to President Lech Walesa in the early 1990s. Although declassified by President Yeltsin, access to the file in Russia was tightly restricted and specialist researchers had to obtain permission to view them. Mr Artizov said that Katyn also contained the graves of about 10,000 “ordinary Soviet citizens” who had been shot in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. He went on: “Using these same methods, this crime was brought to its perfection in relation to the Polish POWs.” He said that Russian and Polish investigators should carry out joint research on the lists of victims to “restore truth to every last surname and to find all those who were shot at killed at Katyn and other places”. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Have the Katyn files opened Pandora's Box? (World News from Times Online)

showing how the NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB secret police, proposed the coldSubmitted at 4/28/2010 8:47:24 AM blooded extermination of Polish The facts may be known to prisoners to Stalin, the man still many but it will still shock held in awe by many older Russians to see the actual Russians as the great war leader d o c u m e n t s s h o w i n g h o w who saved the nation from the casually Joseph Stalin and the N a z i s . T h e r e i s S t a l i n ’ s Soviet leadership dispatched signature of consent to a war 22,000 Polish prisoners to their crime. deaths at Katyn. Here is indisputable evidence President Medvedev’s order to too of the extent to which the publish the file comes at a Soviet regime lied and lied sensitive moment for Russia, again for half a century to cover just days before it celebrates the up responsibility for that crime. 65th anniversary on May 9 of Not only Stalin, but Nikita the Soviet defeat of Nazi Krushchev, the leader who Germany in the Great Patriotic denounced Stalin’s personality War, as the Second Wolrd War cult, to whom KGB chief is known here. Alexander Shelepin sent his The Kremlin has painstakingly elegantly handwritten letter in constructed a sense of Russian 1959 calmly recommending the national pride on t h e destruction of records to ensure foundations of the war victory, t h e K r e m l i n w a s n e v e r seeing it as one of the few embarrassed by the accidental historical achievements to r e l e a s e o f i n f o r m a t i o n survive the collapse of the contradicting the official version Soviet Union. Anything that of history. calls into question the heroism Russians will again be required of Russians in that period has to confront the cynicism of been fiercely challenged. Soviet rulers whose Yet here are documents propagandists shot grim

newsreels of bodies being exhumed over commentary that blamed the killings on the Germans. Now they must ponder whether any of their relatives took part in the calculated execution on Russian soil of the flower of Poland’s pre-war society. For once Russians admit that Stalin was guilty of this war crime, and that it was carried out by their ancestors, then they are forced to ask what other crimes were committed by the Soviet secret police or the Red Army during the momentous struggle to defeat Hitler? If they understand how Katyn poisoned relations with Poland, what reason is there not to examine the causes of bitterness in the Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia towards the Soviet occupation? Or of the present-day anger in western Ukraine over the extension of the lease for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea? This is painful territory, especially for the younger generation in pro-Kremlin groups such as Nashi who have

been raised to express unquestioning patriotism towards the war victory. Some are already dismissing today's documents from the State Archive as forgeries, preferring to retreat into implausible lies than confront unpleasant truths. Russians indeed have many reasons to take immense pride in the sacrifices made by their grandparents to defeat Hitler, but a full accounting of history has yet to take place here. In seeking to put to rest one of the darkest chapters of the war as a prelude to improved relations with Poland, Mr Medvedev may have opened Pandora’s Box. Other uncomfortable episodes from the Soviet era will have to be examined if Russia is to be at peace finally with all of its neighbours and with itself. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

A Week Ahead Of Election, UK PM Gordon Brown Makes Horrible Gaffe Caught On Camera Joe Weisenthal (The Money Game) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:33:00 AM

A week before the election, UK PM Gordon Brown has made a horrible, career-ruining gaffe caught on camera. Basically, after doing a little street-level chit-chat with an old lady, he gets into his limo and calls the woman bigoted, not realizing his mic was still on. Here's the video. The bigoted line comes at the very end. Photo from Tim Montgomerie, editor ConservativeHome.com Join the conversation about this story »

May TV Season Finale Schedule 2010 Elizabeth Chan (TV Squad)

warm at night. As the days get longer and warmer, it's that time Submitted at 4/28/2010 6:00:00 AM for TV fans to bid adieu to some The short winter days aren't so of our favorite shows for the b a d w h e n y o u h a v e y o u r summer. Think of it as the favorite TV shows keeping you television industry's way of

saying, "Hey! We're playing in

the sun. So should you!" Alas, Continue reading May TV this particular May finale season Season Finale Schedule 2010 will sting as we watch the clock Filed under: Programming stop on '24' and bid our final Permalink| Email this| | goodbyes to hopefully departed C o m m e n t s 'Lost' friends.

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Thailand protests turn violent once more (World News from Times Online)

demanding that Mr Abhisit resign and call a snap election, left their rallying point in the Submitted at 4/28/2010 5:32:31 AM centre of Bangkok in a convoy Thai soldiers reportedly killed o f p i c k - u p t r u c k s a n d one of their own comrades motorbikes. The security forces yesterday in a c h a o t i c attempted to stop them on a road c o n f r o n t a t i o n w i t h a n t i - passing through the city’s government Red Shirt protesters northern suburbs, close to the which left at least ten people former international airport. injured and brought further An advance party of about 100 e m b a r r a s s m e n t t o t h e demonstrators was stopped by a Government of the Prime line of soldiers who began by Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. firing into the air and attempting The Associated Press reported to disperse the crowd with that Thai security forces fired on shields and truncheons. After a group of motorbike-riding the Red Shirts responded with soldiers, apparently believing stones and sling shots, they them to be demonstrators began to fire directly at the e m b a r k e d o n a p r o t e s t crowd. procession along a Bangkok It was not immediately clear highway. After several of the whether they were using blank, motorbikes crashed, one of the rubber-tipped, or live rounds. soldiers was taken to hospital An army spokesman suggested with a head injury, where, t h a t t r o o p s w o u l d n o t b e according to Thai media, he discriminating in choosing later died. between live and non-lethal The incident occurred after rounds. “At this point, there is about 2,000 Red Shirts, who are too much chaos for anybody to

constantly report what kind bullets they are using,” Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd said. “We brought force out to stop them. At this point, society finds it unacceptable to have protesters travelling in a motorcade like this. We try our best to prevent losses.” Twenty-seven people have died in the violence so far, and close to 900 have been injured, most of them on April 10, when soldiers made a disastrously botched attempt to seize one of the Red Shirt strongholds. Since then, they have fallen back to the Ratchaprasong area, a district of five-star hotels, shopping centres and expensive shops, most of which have been closed indefinitely by the protest encampment blocking the streets. The authorities promise to clear the area under special powers granted under an ongoing state of emergency. The Red Shirts, who have shed their distinctive

colours to make themselves less recognisable, live in constant expectation of a second crackdown which, so far, has not come. Suthep Thuangsuban, Mr Abhisit’s deputy in charge of security, said: “It is clear the protesters are not gathering peacefully. We will not be lenient with these people any more.” But in an interview with CNN, Mr Abhisit, suggested that they would choose their moment. “We recognise that as every day passes by, the people of Thailand suffer, the country suffers, but we want to make sure that there is rule of law,” he said. “We will try to enforce the law with minimum losses and we will try to find a political resolution, but it takes time, patience and co-operation.” Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

First-time Homebuying 101 (HowStuffWorks Daily Feed) Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

The upside of a housing-market crash? Prices fall, making it a great time to buy. Add to that the$8,000 tax rebate for firsttime buyers, and lots of renters are looking to make the jump into home ownership. It's not a simple process, but it's entirely doable with a little preparation. Start to finish, you're looking at about seven major points on your to-do list. Where should you start when you're looking to buy your first home? Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Internet Brands Snaps Up ExpertHub Network Robin Wauters (TechCrunch) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:26:45 AM

Online media company Internet Brands(aka INET) today announced the acquisition of ExpertHub, a network of websites that connects consumers with attorneys and

other professionals. The network will get folded into the company’s Money and Business vertical. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is perfectly in line with Internet Brands’ growth-through-acquisition strategy. The INET CrunchBase

profile lists 10 small purchases in the last 3 years alone, and its portfolio of brands is currently 100+ strong. Its latest buy, startup ExpertHub, operates a network

that includes dozens of websites, s u c h a s CriminalDefenseLawyer.com, BankruptcyLawFirms.com, and LawFirms.com. Internet Brands also announced the acquisition of two websites in its Shopping vertical: DoDTracker.com– which

aggregates deals from major retailers – and PursePage.com, a designer handbag review site. CrunchBase Information Internet Brands ExpertHub Information provided by CrunchBase

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Texas gov. shoots, kills 'wily' coyote Ask.com Co-Founder during jog (AP) Joins Allvoices (Yahoo! News: Most Viewed) Submitted at 4/27/2010 6:55:10 PM

AUSTIN, Texas – Pistolpacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for wily coyotes out there: Don't mess with my dog. Perry told The Associated Press on Tuesday he needed just one shot from the laser-sighted pistol he sometimes carries while jogging to take down a coyote that menaced his puppy during a February run near Austin. Perry said he will carry his .380 Ruger— loaded with hollowpoint bullets — when jogging on trails because he is afraid of snakes. He'd also seen coyotes in the undeveloped area. When one came out of the brush toward his daughter's Labrador retriever, Perry charged. "Don't attack my dog or you might get shot ... if you're a coyote," he said Tuesday. Perry, a Republican running for a third full term against

Democrat Bill White, is living in a private house in a hilly area southwest of downtown Austin while the Governor's Mansion is being repaired after a 2008 fire. A concealed handgun permit holder, Perry carries the pistol in a belt. "I knew there were a lot of predators out there. You'll hear a pack of coyotes. People are losing small cats and dogs all the time out there in that community," Perry said. "They're very wily creatures." On this particular morning, Perry said, he was jogging without his security detail shortly after sunrise. "I'm enjoying the run when something catches my eye and it's this coyote. I know he knows I'm there. He never looks at me, he is laser-locked on that dog," Perry said. "I holler and the coyote stopped. I holler again. By this time I had taken my weapon out and charged it. It is now staring dead at me. Either me or the dog are in imminent danger. I did the

Zeroing In On the Best Energy Bars As a meal replacer, pre- or post

Curt Hopkins (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:00:00 AM

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appropriate thing and sent it to where coyotes go," he said. Perry said the laser-pointer helped make a quick, clean kill. "It was not in a lot of pain," he said. "It pretty much went down at that particular juncture." Texas state law allows people to shoot coyotes that are threatening livestock or domestic animals. The dog was unharmed, Perry said. Perry's security detail was not required to file a report about the governor discharging a weapon, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange. "People shoot coyotes all the time, snakes all the time," Mange said. "We don't write reports." The governor left the coyote where it fell. "He became mulch," Perry said. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Thai troop clash with protesters kills 1, wounds 18 (Reuters: Top News) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:56:13 AM

BANGKOK(Reuters) - Thai troops fired live rounds and rubber bullets at charging antigovernment protesters in a chaotic clash that killed a soldier and wounded 18 people on a congested highway in Bangkok's suburbs on Wednesday. World| Thailand The troops had formed a roadblock to stop about 2,000 "red shirt" protesters who left their main protest site in central Bangkok's shopping district on pickup trucks and motorbikes in defiance of a state of emergency and despite repeated warnings. About 100 protesters had moved ahead of the main convoy, charging at security forces, who at first used batons and shields to push them back, witnesses said. Some red shirts hurled stones, shot metal balls from sling-shots and launched fireworks at the soldiers. Troops fired back with rubber bullets followed by live rounds, at first in the air and then narrowly over protesters' heads, as onlookers dashed for cover in cars and buses in the trafficchoked area 40 km (25 miles) north of central Bangkok, Reuters photographers and witnesses said. Three rounds of fighting finally stopped when a powerful tropical rainstorm drenched the

area. By nightfall, troops had largely pulled out and many protesters returned to their 3 sqkm (1.2 sq-mile) fortified encampment in central Bangkok. The state-run Erawan Medical Center said at least 18 people were wounded and one soldier was killed. Witnesses said he was shot through his helmet, apparently caught in friendly fire. The fighting did nothing to end an impasse between protesters seeking elections and the embattled, military-backed government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva -- a sevenweek crisis that has killed 27 people, wounded more than 900, paralyzed Bangkok and hurt Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy. "The red shirts were testing the will of the security forces and now we saw that the government is getting serious about this," said Somjai Phagaphasvivat, a professor at Thammasat University. "But it's hard to pronounce victory for either side from the incident today. There is still a lot of uncertainty." WIDENING POLITICAL CHASM The protesters began the day in high spirits, honking horns and singing as they headed for a market 50 km (30 miles) away in a rowdy, provocative procession.

The violence stoked fears of more unrest ahead after grenade attacks last Thursday in Bangkok's business district killed a woman and wounded more than 80 people, and the military's failed attempt to disperse protesters on April 10 killed 25 people. The crisis is taking a deepening toll on Thailand's economy. Another three months of protests could shave 0.64 of a percentage point off Thailand's 2010 economic growth forecast of 4.5 percent, according to government forecasters. Tourism, a major industry that supports six percent of the economy and directly or indirectly employs 15 percent of the country, is crumbling in the face of travel warnings. Arrivals at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport have fallen by a third this month alone, government data show. Thailand's stock index, an emerging market darling over February and March, has lost more than 3 percent in April, when the protests turned violent, against a 1.8 percent rise in Asia's markets outside of Japan. The crisis has widened a political chasm between the rural masses and working poor that support the red shirts and what they call a "traditional elite" who have long run Thailand. Thais have rarely been so divided. Anger is building on both sides.

Analysts say a well-armed rogue military element led by retired generals is supporting the protesters and is allied with the red shirts' de facto leader, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup. Thai newspapers talk of a looming civil war if neither side backs down. WALL OF FIRE Fears of a military crackdown on the occupied shopping district spread almost nightly, only to be dismissed as empty rumors each morning, keeping the city of 15 million in a heightened state of anxiety. The red shirts' medieval-like, three-meter (10 ft) high barricade in the business district -- built of bamboo staves and tires -- as been doused with fuel so it can be turned into an explosive wall of fire should security forces try an assault. Hopes for a negotiated end to the crisis were dashed at the weekend when the British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit rejected a proposal by the protesters for an election in three months, saying he would not negotiate in the face of threats. Some within the powerful military appear reluctant to be dragged into battle with civilians, urging a political solution. Army sources say a crackdown on the red shirts could cause high casualties and spill into upscale residential

neighborhoods. The protesters are demanding immediate elections. Abhisit says he is willing to call elections in December, a year early. Both sides want to be in power during a September reshuffle of the country's powerful military and police forces. If Thaksin's camp prevails and is governing at the time of the reshuffle, analysts expect big changes including the ousting of generals allied with Thailand's royalist elite, a prospect royalists fear could diminish the power of the monarchy. With so much at stake, the deadlock could continue for weeks. The red shirts say Abhisit came to power illegitimately in 2008, heading a coalition cobbled together with the help of the military, after a pro-Thaksin government fell when a court dissolved a party affiliated with him. Thaksin, a former telecoms tycoon revered by the poor and reviled by Bangkok's elite, was convicted in absentia on corruption-related charges and lives abroad to avoid jail. (Additional reporting by Adrees Latif and Chalathip Thirasoonthrakul; Writing by Jason Szep; Editing by Bill Tarrant) Five Filters featured article: THAI page 12

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Pressure grows on Germany to back Greek bailout (Reuters: Top News) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:38:57 AM

BERLIN(Reuters) - German politicians came under pressure Wednesday to cast aside their doubts over a bailout for Greece, with markets increasingly alarmed that Athens may default on its debt and trigger a meltdown elsewhere in Europe. Greece The heads of the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund were both due to brief German lawmakers about the growing crisis that is pounding global stocks and driving up borrowing costs for several euro zone countries. European Commission officials dismissed any talk of a restructuring of Greece's debt mountain, which totaled 115 percent of gross domestic product last year and is projected to push even higher as Athens struggles to tame its huge deficit. However, the spread between Greek and German bonds hit record highs Wednesday and the cost of insuring Greek debt rose above Venezuela's, according to CMA Datavision, suggesting the market believes Greece is more likely than not to default. Greece has asked for as much as 45 billion euros ($59.94 billion) in emergency loans

from its euro zone partners and the IMF. Investors, fearing the Germans in particular are dragging their feet, are urging swift implementation of a bailout. "The chances of a default by the Greek government are increasing not by the day but by the hour. If the IMF and European governments don't come up with something quickly, then I see the market going down further quite rapidly," said Koen De Leus, economist at KBC Securities. The euro hit a one-year low against the dollar while European stocks fell to a sevenweek low. Rating agency Standard and Poor's slashed Greek debt to junk status Tuesday and also downgraded Portugal, raising concerns the crisis may engulf other heavily indebted EU states. European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said EU governments must move rapidly to put their finances in order, adding that current fiscal policies were not sustainable. "The onus is now on governments to ensure that the crisis that initially affected the financial sector, and subsequently the real economy, does not lead to a full-blown sovereign debt crisis," Stark

said. "Averting it will require very ambitious and credible fiscal consolidation efforts. In fact, substantially stronger consolidation efforts than those conceived so far." EMERGENCY SUMMIT European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said he would convene a summit of euro zone countries around May 10 and insisted there would be no restructuring of Greek debt. "Our governments are fully committed to provide support for Greece to ensure the stability of the euro zone," Van Rompuy, in Tokyo for a EU-Japan summit, told a news conference. "I'm ... fully confident that an agreement will be reached in the coming days on a very strong and ambitious adjustment program which will set a credible, medium-term strategy for the Greek economy." Public opinion in Germany is particularly hostile to the idea of bailing out Greece, which has misled its partners in recent years about the gravity of its deficit and has failed to implement the sort of tough reforms Germany has undergone. Chancellor Angela Merkel's party risks defeat in a regional election on May 9 and has faced fierce pressure to cast Greece adrift, despite warnings that

could lead to market mayhem. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn will brief German leaders on the plans to help Greece and are due to hold a news conference around 1230 GMT. Merkel will make a statement at 1445 GMT.). France's Budget Minister Francois Baroin said Germany was moving toward acceptance that it had to offer Greece a lifeline. "Germany is removing its remaining doubts and questions over the German engagement and therefore Europe's engagement," he said, adding that Portugal was not in the same boat as Greece. "The situation in Portugal is not the same as in Greece. The debt level is important but the Portuguese did not lie." Members of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) have said they want to discuss forcing investors to take a discount on Greek debt. Such talk has effectively brought a halt to trading in Greek sovereign debt on secondary markets. Greece's securities regulator banned short-selling in shares on the Athens bourse until June 28 after investors responding to the deepening debt crisis ditched Greek assets. As market pressure on Greece

has intensified, signs have grown it needs much more than 45 billion euros. The Financial Times reported the IMF is considering raising its contribution by 10 billion euros to 25 billion. S&P cut its rating of Greek government debt by a full three notches to BB-plus, the first level of speculative status. The outlook is negative, meaning the agency could downgrade Greece again. The downgrade put Greece below Kazakhstan, Hungary and Iceland, the last of which rocked global markets when its main banks imploded at the start of the global financial crisis. Most Greeks disapprove of their government's decision to ask for financial aid, according to the first opinion poll since the request was made. Of 1,400 people surveyed, 60.9 percent said they were against the decision, said the poll, released on Tuesday by Greek Public Opinion for Mega TV. (Writing by Dominic Evans and Crispian Balmer; editing by Mark Trevelyan) ($1=.7508 Euro) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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UK's Brown calls voter "bigoted," apologizes (Reuters: Top News)

replayed to him during an interview with the BBC, said he Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:24:33 AM apologized "profusely. LONDON(Reuters) - British Labour, which has closed the Prime Minister Gordon Brown opposition Conservatives' lead was caught on tape describing a in the opinion polls over the last voter as "a bigoted woman" on few months, had high hopes for Wednesday after she confronted this week's campaigning, which him on immigration and the centres around Thursday's e c o n o m y i n a n e l e c t i o n economy focused television campaign walkabout in northern debate. England. The election takes place on World| Greece May 6. Brown made the unguarded The third and final leaders comment in his car as he drove debate, an opportunity for away from a visit designed to former finance minister Brown bring him into closer contact to highlight his experience in with the broader public rather handling the economy, is now than carefully staged party likely to be overshadowed. meetings. His Labour Party "It clearly won't play well in the t r a i l s t h e o p p o s i t i o n news today and it will dominate Conservatives and, in some the news when Labour wanted polls, the third force Liberal to be speaking about something Democrats. else," said Justin Fisher, "That was a disaster," Brown Professor of Political Science at was heard saying as he got into Brunel University. the car after an apparently The pensioner, who said she amicable parting with the 66- had voted Labour, had asked year-old woman. "Whose idea Brown how he would tackle the was that? It's ridiculous." country's record deficit as well When asked what she had said, as other issues ranging from east Brown, still wearing a broadcast E u r o p e a n i m m i g r a t i o n , m i c r o p h o n e , r e p l i e d : pensions, university tuition fees "Everything, she's just sort of a and anti-social behavior. bigoted woman." FINANCIAL CHAOS Brown, who was shown on Much of Wednesday's television with his head in his campaigning had been focused hands as the comments were on the economy and Britain's

record budget deficit. Vince Cable, treasury spokesman for Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, told Reuters all the big parties were agreed on the need to cut government borrowing, warning that failing to do so risked Greek-style financial chaos. Greece, which saw its debt downgraded to junk status by rating agency Standard & Poor's on Tuesday, is currently in talks with the IMF and the European Union on getting a 45 billion euro bail-out package to prevent a sovereign default. Greece's budget deficit last year stood at 13.6 percent of GDP, compared to a British deficit running at over 11 percent. Sterling fell to a three-week low against the dollar on Wednesday reflecting a growing concern about the state of the British public finances. Labour Business Minister Peter Mandelson said that likening Britain to Greece was "frankly ridiculous." "We are in a very, very different situation in Britain from that in Greece," he told reporters. Opposition Conservative leader David Cameron said that while there were many differences between the two countries, Britain should take note of

Greece's troubles. SPENDING SQUEEZE Opinion polls on Wednesday continued to point to a hung parliament, in which no one party wins an overall majority, but showed the Conservatives and Labour had regained some ground from the third force Lib Dems, who have enjoyed a ratings boost since the first TV leaders' debate. Britain has not had an inconclusive election since 1974 and both large parties have warned that a "hung parliament" would be bad for the country and its economy. Repairing the public finances will be the biggest domestic policy challenge for government emerges after the election, but the parties have been reluctant to risk voters' wrath by clearly identifying the extent of cuts. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said on Tuesday the impending spending squeeze would be the sharpest in at least 30 years and warned the parties would likely have to raise taxes more than they are prepared to admit. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Chrome Stable Update Fixes Three HighPriority Security Issues [Updates] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 4/28/2010 6:00:00 AM

Before you do too much browsing around this morning, you might want to hit Chrome's About menu and check for updates. Chrome's standard Stable release for Windows has an update out that fixes three security issues labeled as high priority, along with some Java and JavaScript tweaks. [ Google Chrome Releases via Ghacks] More Âť

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Sunni-backed vote winner seeks caretaker government (Reuters: Top News)

bloodshed and a fierce Sunni Islamist-led insurgency. Overall violence has fallen sharply since BAGHDAD(Reuters) - A Sunni its peak in 2006/07. -backed bloc that came out But the ballot produced no ahead in Iraq's election but outright winner, spawning a whose slim lead is threatened by protracted period of political efforts to disqualify candidates uncertainty as Shi'ite-led, Sunnicalled Wednesday for the backed and Kurdish factions creation of an internationally jostle for advantage in highm o n i t o r e d c a r e t a k e r stakes coalition negotiations. government. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri alWorld Maliki's State of Law coalition The Iraqiya list of ex-premier won two seats fewer than Iyad Allawi said parliament Allawi's Iraqiya in the next 325should be reconvened to seat parliament, and it s u p e r v i s e t h e S h i ' i t e - l e d successfully sought a recount of authorities until the results of votes in Baghdad that could the March 7 election are ratified, overturn Iraqiya's lead. and to prevent the "theft" of the In addition, a Shi'ite-led election and a spike in violence. commission whose purpose is to "We will not stay silent in the prevent sympathizers of fallen face of what is happening in the dictator Saddam Hussein's I r a q i p o l i t i c a l a r e n a w i t h Baath party from returning to attempts to marginalize and power is challenging votes cast exclude the Iraqiya list," Allawi for candidates with alleged told al-Sharqiya television Baathists links, most from station from outside Iraq. He Iraqiya. was in Egypt Tuesday. A review panel Monday Iraqis had hoped last month's discarded the votes of 52 parliamentary election would candidates. lay the ground for sustained That was the first of at least two peace and economic prosperity expected rulings that could seven years after the U.S.-led potentially cost Iraqiya some invasion unleashed sectarian seats and enrage minority Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:34:31 AM

Sunnis who backed it and regard its success as a vindication of their claim to have a greater say in the post-Saddam government. WARFARE RESURGENCE? Sunni outrage at their loss of power after the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam helped fuel the violence and could trigger a resurgence in sectarian bloodshed. A serious collapse in security could threaten U.S. plans to end combat operations in August ahead of a full withdrawal by the end of 2011. Iraqiya said in a statement it had examined its options for defending its electoral lead and concluded that the U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League should establish a caretaker Iraqi government and hold new elections. It said it would also ask Iraq's presidency council to reconvene parliament to monitor the executive branch and prevent any violations in the constitutional order. Allawi's election partner, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, summoned a meeting of the presidency council, of which he

is a member. Maliki's incumbent government is serving in a caretaker role that limits its powers quite substantially. It can pursue normal government business, such as paying public sector salaries, but cannot pass new laws or sign new contracts. It took Iraq five months after the last national elections in 2005 to form a government. That lengthy political vacuum allowed sectarian violence to take hold. U.S. Ambassador Chris Hill this week said current conditions were far removed from those of 2005. However, he said he was concerned about the length of time it was taking to certify the election result and urged Iraqi politicians to "get this show on the road." (Additional reporting by Khalid al-Ansary; Writing by Michael Christie; Editing by Samia Nakhoul) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Kaoiro emoticon stamp turns bureaucracy on its head Vladislav Savov (Engadget) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:35:00 AM

It's a well established norm in civilized geek society that visual representations such as "=)" can and should be used to substitute for the laborious exercise of expressing emotions through words or actions. Taking that notion to its logical extreme, the Kaoiro emoticon stamp comes with 7 rows of symbols that the hardworking digi-linguist can convert into an almost limitless variety of text-based visualizations. Just look above should you need inspiration. You'll need to pull together $51 to buy one, plus $18 for shipping, but that's surely peanuts to pay for having the ultimate document tarnisher around. Kaoiro emoticon stamp turns bureaucracy on its head originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink OhGizmo!| Japan Trend Shop| Email this| Comments

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Infochimps Release Twitter Data, "Trst.Me" App and API for Ranking Twitter Users Audrey Watters (ReadWriteWeb)

the 1.6 billion tweets created between March 2006 and March 2010. For $250 you can Submitted at 4/28/2010 12:08:00 AM purchase a dataset extracted Austin-based data aggregation from those same 1.6 billion service Infochimps released tweets with all mentions of several major sets of data s t o c k t o k e n s a n d r e l a t e d extracted from the Twitter API k e y w o r d s . today, as well as Infochimp's These datasets can provide first application and API based incredible insights into real-time on one of these datasets. trends and conversations, as Updating the "Twitter census" Twitter captures how we relate data it released in November to one another and what sort of 2 0 0 9 , t h e d a t a s e t s a n d information we share. While histograms Infochimps made information from Twitter has available today include ones that been culled to assess which track Twitter users by follower websites we'll like and which count and by profile page color movies will perform well, (used to make the visualization analysis from Twitter and from below). the expanding social graph is Sponsor really just beginning. Like, for "Fresh Twitter Data" example, the ability to track the While the two sets are among time and mention of stock those available for no charge, names. The new dataset of stock Infochimps sells the more in- i n f o r m a t i o n o f f e r e d b y depth and extensive datasets it's I n f o c h i m p s h o p e s t o derived from Twitter, proving demonstrate to the financial there's a continued marketplace industry what the music and for this sort of information. For film industry already know: big $300 you can buy the dataset data is a powerful prediction containing an hour-by-hour tool. breakdown of the occurence of Trst.me, a Page Rank for hashtags, URLs, and smileys in Twitter

In addition to releasing information about the counts and keyword content of our tweets, Infochimps offers a new analytical tool: Trst.me, a ranking system for Twitter users. Infochimps has taken 40 million Twitter users and assigned them a score from one to 10 using an algorithm similar to Google's pagerank calculations. The Trst.me application demonstrates what Sarah Perez wrote here last month: that Twitter influence is not solely based on follower count, but rather by the influence of your followers. In other words, your rank would increase far more by having Justin Bieber follow you than by having me do so. According to Infochimps co-founder Flip Kromer, the company plans on adding additional metrics to this tool so that responses and retweets, as well as influence around a particular topic, can be

taken into consideration. This "trst.me" rank - available as a dataset, an API, and an application - can be used by developers, researchers and businesses to target, rank and understand Twitter users. Access to the API will cost $150 per quarter, but could hold a lot of possibilities for developers wanting to be able to weight Twitter influence or filter those tweets around a particular stream. Kromer says the decision to build an API was a response from developers he talked to at Chirp, many of whom wanted a quick and agile tool for development, but not necessarily access to the full databases Infochimps can provide. The Future of Big Data In 2008, Infochimps released a scrape of Twitter data which was later taken down at the request of the microblogging site over user privacy concerns. But Kromer says Infochimps received Twitter's blessing at Chirp earlier this month for the release of today's datasets. In an interview today, Kromer said he

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Patent platforms give well-cut trousers a boost. Photo: Kelly Stuart Think you are Street Chic? E-

was excited about the potential for this and other social media information - most notably public Facebook data. He says he recognizes there are privacy concerns and that people "feel different" about their Facebook and Twitter data, but he argues that open data needn't be a "nightmare" and hopes to demonstrate the benefits of building "awesome stuff," including apps and analytics that can "democratize access" to information about users' interests and behaviors. As a recent article in The Economist observed, we are at the point of an "industrial revolution of data," with vast amounts of digital information being created, stored and analyzed. There seems to be ample opportunity in the fields of data aggregation, analysis, and visualization. With a corpus of over 1.6 billion tweets, Infochimps has certainly given us a lot of data to get started on. Discuss

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Sprint improves, but still sees losses Digital Sky buys AOL's ICQ (CNET News.com)

Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:20:59 AM

Sprint Nextel's road to recovery is paved with many potholes. The company did beat analysts' expectations for the first quarter of 2010, but high-value customers continued to depart, albeit at a slower rate. And its financial losses in the first quarter widened. Sprint lost 578,000 postpaid customers who are on a contract and pay monthly bills. This beat expectations, as analysts had expected the company to lose about 623,500 customers, according to Reuters. A year ago, Sprint lost 1.25 million postpaid customers. The company's net customer loss, including prepaid customers, was 75,000. A year ago, Sprint lost 182,000 total customers. Prepaid customers grew well during the quarter for Sprint. The company added 348,000 prepaid customers and 155,000 wholesale customers.

But overall, the company said it was generating less revenue on each of its subscribers. Due to flat-rate pricing on the postpaid side, Sprint's customers on average spent slightly less on their monthly bills than previously, with the average revenue per user at $55. Prepaid revenue also fell during the quarter. Sprint reported that it lost $865 million, or 29 cents per share, compared to a loss of $594 million, or 21 cents a share, during the first quarter a year ago. Excluding tax related charges, Sprint's loss was 17 cents a share, which is line with analysts' expectations. Revenue for the first quarter dipped 2 percent to $8.09 billion, compared with $8.21 billion last year, but it was better than analysts had expected. They had pegged revenue forecasts at $8.05 billion. The financial losses and the customer losses come as Sprint struggles to compete with AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint has aggressively priced its service plans with flat-rate pricing and it's been offering more compelling devices, such as new Android smartphones. It's also been focusing more on its prepaid businesses. Even though the company is still losing customers and its revenues were down, Sprint has been improving. What's more, Sprint isn't the only wireless provider that is finding it difficult to add valuable postpaid customers. With wireless market penetration in the U.S. over 90 percent, AT&T and Verizon Wireless also struggled to add new high-value customers in the first quarter. Sprint reiterated its forecast that subscriber losses would continue to improve in 2010. And it said it would spend $2 billion on its network in 2010. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Granola Scales Your CPU for Energy Savings [Downloads] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker)

it to render Gmail. System utility Granola scales back your processor at such times to save energy and money. More Âť

Submitted at 4/28/2010 5:30:00 AM

Windows/Linux: Your computer's processor may be able to handle 3D shooters and

complex rendering, but most of the time, you probably just need

(CNET News.com) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:07:04 AM

D I G I T A L S K Y TECHNOLOGIES TO ACQUIRE AOL'S ICQ INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE Moscow / New York - April 28, 2010 - AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST), the largest Internet company in the Russian -speaking and Eastern European markets, announced today that they have reached an agreement for DST to acquire ICQ - the leading instant messaging service in Russia and a number of other international markets for $187.5 million. ICQ was created in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis. AOL acquired the assets of Mirabilis, primarily ICQ, in June 1998. Available in 16 languages, ICQ has more than 32 million unique visitors per month.* Approximately 80 percent of ICQ users are between the ages of 13 and 29 and spend an average of more than five hours a day connected to the service, according to internal data. ICQ has built a successful presence in markets like Russia, Germany, Czech Republic and

Israel. "The acquisition of ICQ is a strategic enhancement of our business in Russia and Eastern Europe. ICQ's long-standing brand name and its sizeable loyal customer base together represent a very attractive opportunity to further strengthen our position in the region," said Yuri Milner, Chief Executive Officer of DST. "As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we're fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST," said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL. "DST is a leading innovator in the Internet investment space and has a significant presence in the markets where ICQ is strong. Founded and run in Israel, ICQ has been a revolutionary company on the Internet. We wish them great success as a part of DST and will be rooting for them going forward." *February 2010 comScore Media Metrix data Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Pirate Bay says acquisition claims are 'fraud' (CNET News.com)

unpaid taxes. The difference between then and now is that Pandeya has The operators of The Pirate Bay taken his show on the road. have denied claims that the According to an interview he Swedish BitTorrent index and did with me last February, search engine has been sold. Pandeya said he plans to operate Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global a digital-media operation here in Gaming Factory, appears to the United Sates. have brought his act to U.S. Here's where things really get shores.(Credit: Greg interesting. Last month, Pandeya Sandoval/CNET) paid $325,000 for Business The Pirate Bay was responding Marketing Services, a company to claims made on Tuesday by that makes wall calendars and Swedish businessman Hans trades its over-the-counter stock Pandeya, who announced he had on the OTC Bulletin Board paid $10 million to acquire The (OTCBB), according to the SEC Pirate Bay. The news was filing. According to the records, widely reported in Boston where the company owned little if any Pandeya now resides. assets and the previous majority "We have no deal with them," owner worked as a pit boss at said a note that was posted to gambling casino. The Pirate Bay's blog on It was Business Marketing you, it's probably because last collapsed in scandal after Wednesday. "We have not even Services that allegedly acquired year Pandeya whipped up plenty Pandeya's software company, talked to them. Since this is The Pirate Bay and issued the of media attention after claiming Global Gaming Factory X, was quite heavy fraud and we don't press release. he was prepared to acquire The booted off the Swedish stock want our users to buy shares or More to come Pirate Bay, one of the best exchange where its shares anything like that in a company Five Filters featured article: known and most controversial traded for providing "false that is claiming to work with us, Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: BitTorrent search engines, for information," and after Pandeya we just wanted to point out that PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, the equivalent of $7.8 million. failed to provide proof that he this is a lie." Term Extraction. Hollywood has long accused possessed enough funds to Pandeya did not respond The Pirate Bay of being a tool complete the deal and after immediately to an interview for online piracy. Swedish authorities seized his request. Pandeya's deal back then car, boat and motorcycle for If all this sounds familiar to Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:37:35 AM

Think Of The Children: Parents Television Council Finds iPhone Apps Too Saucy John Biggs (TechCrunch) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:35:59 AM

So you bought your child an iPhone and you gave him or her an iTunes account and password and told them that they can simply download as many apps as they want, 24 hours a day, even if they cost money. But what's this? Junior or Julia has started downloading saucy sex sensors and card games containing images of ladies in various states of undress? How did this happen? It's Apple's fault. The Parents Television Council(also known as Parents Against Adults) believe that Apple isn't doing enough to prevent underage children from downloading apps even though each app download requires a password to be tapped in and parental controls can prevent certain apps from appearing on the phone. After all, it's Apple's responsibility to ensure that kids don't see boobs, not yours.

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AOL's revenue tumbles 23 percent (CNET News.com) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:47:09 AM

Web advertising is back, but not at AOL: The company says revenue declined 23 percent in the last quarter, with ad sales dropping by 19 percent. The company reported earnings of 32 cents on revenue of $664 million. Add back one-time charges and you'd get earnings of 79 cents per share. The Street was looking for revenue of $679 million, and I've seen "consensus" expectations for earnings all over the map--ranging from 34 cents a share (including restructuring charges) to 80 cents (which excludes the charges). The just-announced sale of ICQ doesn't figure into the first-quarter results, and won't do so until the third

quarter. Here's Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney's ever-helpful "cheat sheet" to assist you in interpreting the numbers (click to enlarge): In the old days, you'd be able to say that AOL's results helped you understand the Web advertising market, a la earlier numbers from Google and Yahoo. But given that CEO Tim Armstrong is still rebuilding his company, that's not the case here. While both Yahoo and Google showed significant revenue growth, AOL is still shrinking. But Armstrong has had the job for a year, and didn't start his overhaul in earnest until last summer. So he still has a grace

period before investors expect to see results. How much longer does he have? AOL's public line is that there won't be much movement until the end of 2010. But privately they concede that they'll have to start impressing people this summer in order to justify expectations, which are surprisingly high--AOL shares are up by about 20 percent this year. AOL's earnings call starts at 10am eastern; I'll check back with them then. Story Copyright (c) 2010 AllThingsD. All rights reserved. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

How I Would Better Protect My Mint.com Account [Personal Finance] Jason Owens (Lifehacker) Submitted at 4/27/2010 5:00:00 PM

We're no strangers to paranoia and online personal finance, but popular webapp Mint still won us over in the long run. Security professional and blogger Jason Owens offers tips for how he'd add extra layers of security to

your sensitive Mint account. More Âť

The floppy disk is dead (and Apple helped kill it) Michael Grothaus (The It was FLOPPY 1997 and page Apple18had just Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))the iMac G3. It was a released Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:00:00 AM beautiful interesting computer: a

Google Adds Similar Page Suggestions to Search Results Mike Melanson (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 4/28/2010 10:11:31 AM

In its continued effort to custom tailor search results and suggest that what your searching for might actually be something else, Google has brought its similar page results onto the front page of your search results. You've likely seen the feature we're talking about before, but never clicked on it and now you won't have to, as it will be included directly at the bottom of your first search results page. Sponsor The feature follows along the lines of many other improvements the search engine has made recently, such as localizing its search suggestions list, adding search suggestions to Google Maps and even suggesting a suicide hotline number for select search phrases. While we've certainly taken some issue with Google's personalization of search results, there are obvious benefits to the user experience as a whole. The difference here is that Google is not, it would seem, making these suggestions as a result of studying your surfing history

and personal habits, but instead by analyzing linking structures. Google offers an example of how this new feature could prove to be handy to its users: For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the "Similar" link that's on the same l i n e a s t h e "www.directrelief.org/" URL, you'll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts. The feature seems to be rolling out in waves, so don't worry if you don't see it yet, it will be there soon. Discuss

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TUAW's Daily App: Darkroom Pro Mike Schramm (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:00:00 AM

Filed under: iPhone I've been a fan of the Darkroom app for the iPhone almost since the beginning, only because it contained a bit of functionality I think that should have been included in the device from the start: a steady mode. The original Darkroom offered up a steady-shot mode that let you press a shutter button at any time, but then waited to actually take a picture until the iPhone's accelerometer told it that the phone was steady in place. The iPhone's camera has gotten better over the years, but especially in low-light situations, making sure the camera is steady is reason enough to use this app. And newer versions (after a short buggy delay right around iPhone OS 3.0) have added even

your normal camera album if you'd rather upload them somewhere else. The latest update, released just this week, lets you tag your photos by place, so you can browse them later according to the location they were taken at. Darkroom Pro is definitely worth the 99 cent price if you do any regular photography with your iPhone at all. There's also a free version available, and while the functionality on that one is limited, it still does have a steady mode included, so you can TUAW TUAW's Daily App: more functionality, including a D a r k r o o m P r o o r i g i n a l l y fullscreen shutter mode (no appeared on The Unofficial toolbar, just press anywhere on Apple Weblog (TUAW) on the screen to shoot a picture) Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:00:00 and a timer mode as well. EST. Please see our terms for They've also added an online use of feeds. photo album into the app using Read| Permalink| Email this| StepCase's official service Comments (which I've never used), but you can also just funnel pictures into

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FLOPPY continued from page 17

sleek, all-in-one case, with something new called USB. One thing it didn't have was a floppy disk. At the time, many believed Apple was insane for leaving a floppy disk drive off the iMac, but did Steve Jobs care? Nope. The floppy was archaic technology to him. A CD-ROM drive was where it's at. Well, thirteen years later -almost a decade after most people stopped using floppy disks, Sony, the inventor of the floppy disk, has officially announced that they are killing the 1.44MB storage device. As of next year, Sony will no longer manufacture the floppy disk. Most of my Word documents are larger than 1.44MB nowadays and I can't think of a single file I've created on my computer that I would need to transport to another computer, that would even fit on a floppy. Now that I think about it, I haven't actually used my Superdrive for reading or writing any optical media since I bought my MacBook Pro two years ago either. In another ten

years, will optical media have gone of the way of the floppy? So, what have we learned? Steve was ridiculed for leaving the floppy off the iMac because he saw it as archaic. Now he gets to say "I told you so." If Steve does have the power to gaze into the tech future, Adobe should be worried about Flash going the way of the floppy, as Steve reportedly told the Wall Street Journal, dropping Flash is no different than the decision to drop the floppy drive from the iMac. Will he be right again? Only time will tell. TUAW The floppy disk is dead (and Apple helped kill it) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

their sovereign's problems, and the value of CDS is starting to widen as a result. From CMA Datavision: Check Out Who Else Gets Hammered In A Greek Default

> Join the conversation about this story Âť

Portuguese Bank CDS Go Vertical Gregory White (The Money Game) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:54:25 AM

Portugal's banks are starting to buckle under the pressure of

their state's fiscal crisis, as Greece's debt problems spread across the continent. It may have a smaller deficit, and it may have taken austerity are still feeling the pressure of measures, but Portugal's banks

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Weekly Poll: What Does VMforce Boy Scouts introduce Mean For Oracle, SAP and the Rest? videogame badge, other badges ask 'Really?' Alex Williams (ReadWriteWeb)

Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:52:20 PM

The VMforce news we've reported on today makes it likely game for our weekly poll. What we want to know is your view on how significant the VMforce platform will be for the market. The view from here: The alliance between Salesforce.com and VMware will depend on the Java developer community the two companies develop. So, in your opinion, what does VMforce mean for competing vendors such as Google, Amazon, Oracle and SAP? Sponsor What does VMforce mean for competing vendors such as Google, Amazon, Oracle and SAP? online surveys Dennis Howlett says it's an

opportunity for Salesforce.com to re-architect itself and position itself in the mid to high-end market:"Both Oracle and SAP are substantial Java shops. There have been concerns among Java fans that somehow, Oracle would mess up the open source Java community. VMForce spikes that because if Oracle chooses to play fast and loose then VMForce could become a natural safe haven. SAP on the other hand has been conflicted

over Java. Co-founder Hasso Plattner has said that he'd like to eliminate Java from SAP apps. That is neither realistic nor likely to happen. More recently, the company has been making fresh commitments to Java and Eclipse. Both SAP and VMForce/Salesforce.com like to talk about open-ness so this could present new opportunities for SAP developers to consider VMForce as a pathway to bringing cloud based apps into their environments where it makes sense to do so and where the VMForce platform provides what developers need." So what do you think? What does VMforce mean for competing vendors such as Google, Amazon, Oracle and SAP? Discuss

FamilySearch Beta Finds Historical Records on Your Family [Genealogy] Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) Submitted at 4/28/2010 5:00:00 AM

FamilySearch, the online arm of the Family History Library, that lets the public dig around to has a new beta search service find documents and facts on

their relatives and ancestors. It's a pretty huge index of data, and it's free. More »

Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:27:00 AM

Yes, really. The Boy Scouts of America have finally recognized that most important of modern children's pastimes with the creation of a "Video Games" belt loop and pin. However, our initial excitement on this momentous day is drastically lessened after reading how one goes about earning them. Here are the belt loop's three requirements: • Explain why it is important to have a rating system for video games. Check your video games to be sure they are right for your age. • With an adult, create a schedule for you to do things that includes your chores, homework, and video gaming. Do your best to follow this schedule. • Learn to play a new video game that is approved by your parent, guardian, or teacher. To go on and earn the pin, Scouts will need to teach adults how to play videogames, participate in a family gaming

tournament, and learn how to comparison shop for prices. In other words, the Boy Scouts aren't interested in how many digits you have in your Gamerscore, don't care how stuffed your Trophy Room is, and shun your techniques for surviving the latest Trials HD expansion. We, however, are all ears. Boy Scouts introduce videogame badge, other badges ask 'Really?' originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Gamesindustry.biz| Boy Scouts of America| Email this| Comments

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Smoothies from Consumer Reports

POLL: Which Location-Based Mobile App Do You Use Now? Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 4/28/2010 1:16:37 AM

Prior to SXSW, we polled you on what location-based mobile app you would use during the festival. Brightkite and Foursquare were the most popular picks, with Gowalla third. We also polled you a year ago about this class of app and at that time Brightkite was a clear favorite. As an attendee at SXSW, it seemed like Foursquare and Gowalla were the most used. Brightkite seemed to drop off the radar of SXSW attendees, but perhaps that was because Foursquare and Gowalla had the most press attention at that time.

Whatever the case, it was an inconclusive result at SXSW and there was a sense that none of the 3 leading location-based mobile apps 'won' that battle. It's now a month later, so we thought we'd poll you again to see which - if any - of these apps you use regularly now. Sponsor Please add your vote to the poll

below. You can also tweet your answer to @rww. Which location-based mobile app do you use THE MOST? online survey See also: • Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week • Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010, Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps Join us at the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7, in Mountain View, CA, to discuss location-based apps and other hot topics in Mobile. If you're in town for the Web 2.0 Expo that week, our Mobile Summit is the day after. We'd love to see you there! Register here. Discuss

Press Room (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 4/27/2010 9:00:59 PM

First Look at Fennec, or Firefox Mobile on Android [Screenshot Tour]

Smoothies - from Consumer Reports To see which smoothis are worth sipping, Consumer Reports' trained tasters tried twelve refrigerated products, Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) and sampled offerings from two smoothie chains for the May Submitted at 4/28/2010 4:15:00 AM issue. Smoothies - Podcast Android (2.0 and above): It's a Subscribe now! "pre-alpha build," but Firefox S u b s c r i b e t o Mobile, a.k.a. Fennec, is worth ConsumerReports.org for expert testing out on newer Android Ratings, buying advice and phones. It's a pretty neat reliability on hundreds of browser with a lot of potential, products. Update your feed as shown in our screen captures. preferences More »

Apple disses the desktop? Brett Terpstra (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

apps this year, instead only allowing submissions which are available on the App Store. This Submitted at 4/28/2010 10:00:00 AM obviously would make the Filed under: WWDC ADAs specific to iPod touch, Photo by Magic Madzik iPhone and iPad apps, As we noted, the WWDC 2010 d i s a l l o w i n g a n y o f t h e dates have been set, and the new magnificent software for the pages have been posted. Several d e s k t o p t h a t w e ' v e s e e n folks are noting with dismay, highlighted in years past. though, that the Apple Design I passionately support mobile A w a r d s a p p e a r t o h a v e development, but I can't say that completely forsaken desktop I do most of my computing on

ADA is a pretty big deal, especially for the independent developers who've been stars of the show previously. Without recognition, and the sales boost that goes with it, desktop developers will have one less reason to keep making great an Apple mobile device. software. I'm hoping I'm Desktop software still rules my missing some information here, computing world, and not but it looks pretty cut and dry to supporting its development me: Apple is shunning the seems to me to be a travesty. An developers who make the Mac

the great platform that it is. TUAW Apple disses the desktop? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

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AOLâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Total Revenue Drops To $664 Million For The First Quarter Robin Wauters (TechCrunch) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:16:33 AM

WWDC 2010 officially announced Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

wondered if Apple will be giving equal emphasis to traditional Mac development Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:45:00 AM versus the iPhone OS platform, Filed under: WWDC well, this picture says a At long last, the wait is over. thousand words. This is not a Apple has officially announced new OS X year but it is a big WWDC 2010. The "center of new iPhone OS device year and the app universe" will take place the conference schedule reflects from June 7th - 11th at Moscone that emphasis. West in sunny San Francisco, This is certainly the latest date California. that Apple has ever announced This year's event has five major its WWDC dates in recent years sessions and lab categories: (typically, it's announced in Application Frameworks, Core early March -- and once in late OS, Developer Tools, Graphics January). Developers will be and Media and finally Internet glad to know they can finally & Web. For those who have schedule the rest of their Spring

and Summer. Tickets are on sale now for US$1,599. Just remember, attendees must agree to the Registered Apple Developer Terms and Conditions as part of the conference ticket purchase process. We'll see you in June! TUAW WWDC 2010 officially announced originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

AOL just released its financial results for the first quarter of 2010, reporting another drop in total revenues. If revenue dropped 17% yearover-year in the last quarter of 2009 compared to the same period a year before, its total revenues for the past quarter were down a painful 23% compared to the first quarter of 2009. AOL has disclosed that it has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for$187.5 million in cash, and that it is still considering a sale or shutdown of social network Bebo this year. Zooming in on the advertising part of the equation, Q4 revenues on that level dropped 19% year-over-year, from $439.8 million in the first quarter of 2009 to $354.3

Cutest Kid of the Day: Hyrum WomansDay.com Editors (Daily Woman's Day Blog) Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

Each day we will post an adorable picture or video of one

of our readers' cute kids. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, While taking this picture, Term Extraction. Hyrum's mom was reminded of how hard it is to capture a baby smile when they are this young. Five Filters featured article: Thanks to Sabra for submitting. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools:

million in Q1 2010. Revenue from international display advertising, in particular, took quite a nosedive with a 29% drop year-over-year. Search and contextual advertising also took a hit: 27%. On a slightly more positive note, AOL has reduced costs in Q1 2010 as operating expenses declined $139 million versus the first quarter of 2009. The company had $262.4 million of cash-on-hand, or approximately $2.45 per share of cash, on its balance sheet on March 31, 2010. CrunchBase Information AOL Information provided by CrunchBase

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AOL Sells Instant TUAW Review: Real Racing HD Messaging Service ICQ To rocks the iPad tapping around, take a moment DST For $187.5 Million to enjoy it. The camera gently Dave Caolo (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

Leena Rao (TechCrunch)

sways back and forth. Your current car can be seen in a bay Filed under: Gaming Update: (more on that later). Light plays It’s done. AOL has officially What a to see a spiffy video of across the car in the foreground. sold instant messaging service Real Racing HD? Here you go. All right, enough of that. Let's ICQ to Russian investor DST I fell in love with racing games get behind the wheel. for $187.5 million. In a release, thanks to Ridge Racer for the Gallery: Firemint's Real Racing AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said w e r e f i r s t r e p o r t e d l a s t original Sony Playstation. I looks great, sounds great, HD “ A s A O L c o n t i n u e s i t s N o v e m b e r . W e ’ d h e a r d played the whole franchise, beat features well-conceived depth of TUAW TUAW Review: Real t u r n a r o u n d e f f o r t , w e ’ r e speculation that Naspers was every track and learned the play, effective use of the Racing HD rocks the iPad fortunate to find a great home interested last year but dropped intricacies of every car. Even accelerometer, customization originally appeared on The out of the bidding process. Back today I'll pull out the Playstation and more. In fact, it's one of the for ICQ with DST.” Unofficial Apple Weblog We originally reported that in December, we also heard Portable for a run around Ridge apps I use to show off the iPad. (TUAW) on Tue, 27 Apr 2010 DST was sniffing around ICQ G o o g l e a n d S k y p e w e r e City. Could another racer grab W h e n t h e g a m e i s f i r s t 19:00:00 EST. Please see our b a c k i n D e c e m b e r . T h e interesting in buying up ICQ. me the way RR had? launched, you're presented with terms for use of feeds. acquisition makes sense for The final price falls below Thanks to Firemint, the answer a cinematic* and then the Read| Permalink| Email this| DST considering that the instant AOL’s rumored asking price of is yes. Real Racing HD(RRHD) welcome screen. Before you go Comments m e s s a g i n g s e r v i c e h a s a around $200 to $250 million. significant Russian user base. DST has invested heavily in ICQ, which AOL acquired in Facebook, Zynga and most 1998 for $400 million, draws recently Groupon. The deeparound 32 million monthly pocketed investor has also unique visits. But over 25 funded Mail.ru and Astrum percent of those visits are from O n l i n e E n t e r t a i n m e n t . Jane Boursaw (TV Squad) his bed (without her bra on, Russia, where it holds the no. 1 CrunchBase Information ICQ Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:15:00 AM since she took it off in anger Messaging Information spot for instant messaging. before leaving the house!). And, Rumors of ICQ’s possible sale p r o v i d e d b y C r u n c h B a s e (S01E09) "Get it off me! Get it hello?!! Parents shouldn't let off!" - Adam, after discovering teens be alone in a bedroom that the Victoria's Secret bra is with the door closed. Ok, I feel his daughter's and not his wife's slightly better now. Well, I'm totally with Adam on Continue reading'Parenthood' this one. Sure, Haddie could 'Perchance to Dream' Recap wear the bra -- there's no crime Filed under: Other Drama in a girl wanting to feel pretty -Shows, Episode Reviews, but I wouldn't let her leave the standard! Drew didn't have half R e a l i t y - F r e e house with her shirt hanging off his underwear showing! Permalink| Email this| | her shoulder and her bra strap Besides that, Haddie and her C o m m e n t s showing. It's not a double boyfriend were making out on Submitted at 4/27/2010 7:00:00 PM

Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:18:32 AM

'Parenthood' - 'Perchance to Dream' Recap

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Texas Lawmaker to Introduce Anti -Immigration Bill

Klout Raises $1.5 Million To Measure Influence And Authority On Twitter

(Newsmax - Inside Cover) Submitted at 4/28/2010 3:58:52 AM

Leena Rao (TechCrunch) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:03:06 AM

Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, has secured $1.5 million in Series A funding from a number of investors, including Allen Morgan of Mayfield Fund, Nova Spivack of Lucid Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Paige Craig, Tom McInerney, Michael Yavonditte of Quigo Technologies, and Ofer Ronan. Klout, which recently released a new API, evaluates Twitter users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals and topics around the web. Since the company’s launch in 2008, Klout has registered over 250,000 users and over 300 API partners, including CoTweet, HootSuite, and the newly-

launched Tweetup, and is handling millions of API calls a day. The new funding will be used to scale product development and to launch a new web app that is more consumer-focused. With the large number of API partners, it’s clear that the Twitter influence startup is gaining traction, especially in third party Twitter clients. There’s always the risk that Twitter will develop its own measure of authority that can be used, but for now Klout seems to be leading the pack in terms of measuring influence on Twitter. CrunchBase Information Klout Information provided by CrunchBase

Nokia E72 gets white paint option, firmware update Vladislav Savov (Engadget)

sharing through Facebook. You know, for when you wanna let your hair down after a hard day You'd be hard-pressed to find a at the office. Internet radio of an more direct competitor to the unspecified variety has been BlackBerry businessphone included as well, along with hegemony than Nokia's E7x g e n e r a l p e r f o r m a n c e a n d series. It's therefore quite logical stability improvements. Both the that only a day after RIM chief white handset and new firmware Mike Lazaridis made the white are available through Nokia Bold official, Nokia is following today. up with its own pale-hued E72. Nokia E72 gets white paint Coming with a skinned UI to o p t i o n , f i r m w a r e u p d a t e match the externals, the new originally appeared on Engadget handset is being announced on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:14:00 alongside a firmware update (for EST. Please see our terms for E72s of all colors and creeds) use of feeds. Permalink| Nokia t h a t u p d a t e s O v i M a p s , Conversations| Email this| improves social networking Comments integration, and allows location Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:14:00 AM

A Texas lawmaker says she plans to push for a law similar to Arizona's get-tough immigration measure. San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle report Wednesday that Republican Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball says she will introduce the measure in the January legislative session. The new Arizona law would require local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status — and make it a crime for immigrants to lack registration documents. Riddle says if the federal government did its job "Arizona wouldn't have to take this action, and neither would Texas." Democrats say such legislation is misguided and predict it will hurt the GOP politically. © Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Quick Pork Dinners (Cooking Light: Editor's Picks)

Joby's Gorillapod Magnetic now sticking cameras in unexpected places worldwide Tim Stevens (Engadget) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:56:00 AM

Did you finally run out of precarious places to suspend your camera using an original Gorillapod? We find that hard to believe (did you try the chandelier?) but just the same are happy to inform you that a world of new possibilities is

now open with the Gorillapod Magnetic, which is shipping worldwide for $24.95. Sadly it still only manages to support a meager 11.5 ounces, so SLRtoting shooters will not want to rely on this lodestoneaugmented franken-pod, but those of you rocking compacts should be receiving theirs soon. We look forward to see what

new and exciting places people stick theirs too -- just note that the one wood has already been done, and so anyone looking to replicate that feat is a low-down, dirty copycat. Gallery: Joby Gorillapod Magnetic flexible tripod handson Continue reading Joby's Gorillapod Magnetic now

sticking cameras in unexpected places worldwide Joby's Gorillapod Magnetic now sticking cameras in unexpected places worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| | Email this| Comments

Time: 30 minutes Serve with Haricots Verts Salad: Cook ¾ pound trimmed haricots verts in boiling water 3 minutes or until crisp-tender. Drain and plunge beans into ice w a t e r ; drain. Place beans in a medium bowl; add ½ cup slivered red bell pepper. Combine 2 -tablespoons chopped fresh chives, 2 tablespoons minced shallots, 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, ½ t e a s p o o n salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle vinaigrette over bean mixture; toss to coat. Simple Sub: Regular greens beans will work great in the salad, but you’ll need to cook them a few minutes longer. View Recipe: Dijon Croque Monsieur • Watch Video Demo Next Ancho Pork and Hominy Stew Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Mega Buzz: Two 24 Deaths, Grey's Finale Disaster, and Vampire Diaries' Season 2 (TVGuide.com: Breaking News) Submitted at 4/27/2010 9:00:00 PM

• Apr 27, 2010 10:00 PM ET • by Mickey O'Connor and Adam Bryant • 24, Grey's Anatomy, Vampire Diaries Every week, editors Mickey O'Connor and Adam Bryant satisfy your need for TV scoop. Please send all questions to mega_scoop@tvguide.com. Since 24 is almost over, everyone is going to die now, right? — Mark G. MICKEY: Wow, that's a dark spirit you got there, fella. Welcome! The continuing movie talk has squelched the idea of Jack making the ultimate sacrifice in the series finale. But I do know of two surprising deaths that will take place before the show's May 24 finale. One will be shockingly emotional; the other will just be shocking. What do you guys know about the Grey's Anatomy season finale? — Stephanie ADAM: Here's what we know: The finale features a multi-car pileup that floods Seattle Grace with victims. Meanwhile, one of hospital's doctors will also have

to contend with a deadly fire in her home. "Fans should brace themselves. That's the only way to put it: Brace yourself," creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes tells us. "We're going to take you on a ride for the last two hours of the season, and when the ride is over, none of our characters are going to be the same. It's very different in comparison to the other finales." They wouldn't kill Alaric in the season finale of The Vampire Diaries, would they? Matt Davis is my favorite on that show! — Carrie MICKEY:"I had a lovely conversation with Kevin Williamson a week or so ago about the future of Alaric, and I must say, it looks bright," the artist formerly known as Warner Huntington III told us. So it seems he'll survive the season finale's apocalyptic Founder's Day celebration. In fact, we're hearing that Davis might be promoted to a series regular in the fall. How will Jane react to Kristina Frye this time around on The Mentalist? — Jake ADAM: The relationship really isn't much different, according to Leslie Hope. "They're essentially playing in the same ballpark. It's flirty," Hope says. "As determined as he is that she's a fraud, she's determined

Have you heard anything new about Tony and Ziva on NCIS? — Ashleigh ADAM: When Brian Dietzen joked with us that his character has no one in the office with whom to double date, he did make one clarification: after next week's episode, "I think Jimmy might be able to ask Tony if he wants to go double date," Dietzen says. We know that the episode sees DiNozzo taking interest in a reporter connected to a case, but could that be a red herring? "It might not be who it seems actually," that he's for real." Of course, that one couple gets engaged Dietzen says. one thing is different, Hope before Season 3 ends, but it OK, so they're going to Hawaii. says: "We definitely go on a sounds like there will be more What else is happening on date — twinkling lights, candles than one happy ending. "Almost Modern Family? — Meg on the table, fancy silverware everybody gets hooked up, but MICKEY: In the season finale, and everything. It's a real date." not necessarily with who you Claire will attempt to get the H o w w i l l D e s p e r a t e think they might get hooked up gang together for a family Housewives follow the serial to," Amy Brenneman tells us. "It portrait in which everyone is killer and Angie storylines? — k i n d o f r e m i n d s m e o f a supposed to wear white. Feel— Pilar Shakespeare play because most that is, Phil — will find himself MICKEY: Well, there's an e v e r y b o d y i s h o l d i n g in yet another compromising interesting pebble about to be somebody's hand by the end." position when he's alone with dropped into Fairview Pond, and Any 30 Rock scoop? — Gèrard G l o r i a . A n d a its effects will ripple outward MICKEY: The May 6 episode, miscommunication could lead to through next season. It seems a p p r o p r i a t e l y t i t l e d " T h e a kiss. that one of the Wisteria Lane Moms," will mark the return of Seems like Clois sex is on the offspring is not who he or she Elaine Stritch, Jan Hooks and table on Smallville. Is it going to seems — and no, I'm not talking Anita Gillette as the mothers of happen this season? — Erin about Eddie or Sam. J a c k , J e n n a a n d L i z , ADAM: As you point out, both Please give me some scoop respectively. Better yet, we'll Lois and Clark definitely seem about Private Practice's finale! meet Tracy's mom for the first up for it. As for whether they'll — Pauline time. Any guesses on who plays MEGA page 26 ADAM: We've already told you her?

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From Limos to Tattoo Parlors, TruTV Goes Behind The Scenes of Crazy Professions for New Series (TVGuide.com: Breaking News) Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:07:00 PM

• Apr 27, 2010 11:07 PM ET • by Kate Stanhope • Jesse Ventura and Ashton Kutcher TruTV is going undercover and behind the scenes of some of the country's craziest professions for its newest crop of projects. Among the cable channel's new series are Limo Bob, which examines life in Chicago through the eyes of the owner of one of the city's biggest limo fleets. Ma's Roadhouse will profile the family behind a oneof-a-kind Texas saloon, which serves as a motorcycle shop, bar and tattoo parlor. Putting a whole new spin on Undercover Boss is America's Toughest Boss, which will profile a steakhouse owner willing to spy on his employees and put them to extreme tests to get the results he wants. Check out photos from Punk'd America's Toughest Boss won't be the only TruTV show employing hidden cameras.

Exposed!, the latest comedy project from Punk'd producers Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, will catch unsuspecting people's reactions on camera when others take off their clothes in public. Hiddencamera show Rogue Society showcases individuals going undercover to get revenge on scam artists and crooked businessmen. TruTV's other new series include Disclosure, which looks at two people who have dedicated their lives to uncovering government secrets, and The Naked Office, which employs a very revealing form

of group therapy to keep employees productive and positive. In addition to the channel's new series, TruTV has ordered new seasons of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, Full Throttle Saloon, Black Gold, Las Vegas Jailhouse, and Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel. Will you tune into TruTV's new shows? Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

MEGA continued from page 25

actually seal the deal this year, there's just one little problem, according to executive producer Brian Peterson: "They keep trying, but sadly and ironically, the Blur has come between Lois and Clark [to prevent them from] ever consummating their relationship." I'll leave you to argue (cry?) about Peterson's use of the word "ever." I love Zoey on Nurse Jackie. What's coming up for her? — Amy Z. MICKEY: Zoey is thanking God that she isn't pregnant, but a "God" of a different sort will show her the light, especially when it comes to her flirtation with Lenny. Breaking Bad has been amazing. What's next? — Marty ADAM: Pardon the hyperbole, but this Sunday's episode features the greatest moment in this terrific series' history. (And it's not even the scene which will surely serve as Aaron Paul's Emmy tape.) All we'll say is

this: Hank finds himself unarmed at a very bad moment. Mickey's Mega Rave: I have fallen madly in love with Elizabeth Banks' "Money Bunny" Avery Jessup on 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy be damned. I love it when she talks dirty. "Slutty Grace Kelly" indeed! Adam's Mini Rant: I renew my objection to Desperate Housewives' lazy writing. Reader Quote of the Week:"No, Jay is not a boob. Everyone likes boobs." — ZigZagZoey, commenting on David Letterman's assertion (Additional reporting by Natalie Abrams and Robyn Ross) Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Sandra Bullock Files for Divorce; Adopts Baby Boy

'The Biggest Loser' 'Week Fifteen' Recap

(TVGuide.com: Breaking News)

Jason Hughes (TV Squad)

Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:42:00 AM

Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:09:00 AM

(S09E15) With the elimination of Victoria last week, it was suddenly two teams of two • Apr 28, 2010 09:09 AM ET versus three teams of one. • by Gina DiNunno Looking at those numbers, if • those teams of two united, the solo acts would be in trouble. Sandra Bullock and Jesse James Seven contestants left. It doesn't Sandra Bullock has filed for matter if you're best friends in divorce from Jesse James and is the whole wide world. When adopting a baby boy as a single you're this close to the end, you mom, she tells People. play the game. "Yes, I have filed for divorce," That's exactly what the the 45-year-old Oscar-winner contestants started doing this tells the magazine. "I'm sad and I am scared. home in January, but they opted everything bad coming my way" week, in a way more transparent Michelle "Bombshell" McGee to keep their new addition a The Monster Garage star, who than we've seen all season. apologizes to Sandra Bullock secret until after the Oscars. The publically apologized to Bullock Unfortunately, in that same The actress also announced she actress tells the magazine she is and his three kids for his "poor week they had to leave the is now the mother of Louis finalizing the adoption as a judgment" recently returned comfort of routine at the Bardo Bullock, 3½-month-old single parent. home from a treatment facility 'Biggest Loser' ranch and head boy born in New Orleans. Ten days after Bullock won her to deal with " personal issues," for the dude ranches of Texas. Alison Sweeney informed us "He's just perfect, I can't even best actress award for her role in according to People. describe him any other way," The Blind Side, James became Visit msnbc.com for breaking that five of the fattest cities in she says. "It's like he's always the center of a cheating scandal news, world news, and news America are in Texas, which means they need some been a part of our lives." i n w h i c h s e v e r a l w o m e n about the economy See how Bullock has changed claimed to have had affairs with Five Filters featured article: m o t i v a t i o n . through the years him — namely tattoo model Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: In honor of those five cities, Bullock says she and James, 41, Michelle "Bombshell" McGee. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, that motivation comes in the began the adoption process four Jesse James apologizes to Term Extraction. years ago and brought Louis Sandra Bullock: "I deserve

form of a 5k run the contestants will be doing with groups of Texans rallied through the radio. Get through that, corral some calves and get ready for a weigh -in where the temperature is only 34 degrees. Everything's ... colder in Texas? Continue reading'The Biggest Loser' - 'Week Fifteen' Recap Filed under: OpEd, The Biggest Loser, Episode Reviews Permalink| Email this| | Comments

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Have You Noticed That 'Modern Family' Is Oblivious To the Recession? Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 4/28/2010 10:07:00 AM

There's so much to like about ABC's award-winning new sitcom 'Modern Family' that it seems almost curmudgeon-like to complain. Nevertheless, you have to wonder where in the world'Modern Family' is located. No, not the place; it's clearly Southern California. No, it's the economy. 'Modern Family' resides in an economy unaffected by the recession. Everybody is doing well.

Nobody's worried about paying the mortgage, or - God forbid facing foreclosure. Things are going so well in 'Modern Family' world that the entire

clan is heading to Hawaii for a family vacation. Wow, remember when your family could afford to fly off for a holiday? It was probably some

time around the turn of the century ... 2000. Maybe 'Modern Family' is in a time warp because they're all checking into the Four Seasons Maui. It'll be the May 12 season finale, so tune in if you want to live vicariously. Continue reading Have You Noticed That 'Modern Family' Is Oblivious To the Recession? Filed under: OpEd, Awards, Reality-Free, Modern Family Permalink| Email this| | Comments

'V' - 'Heretic's Fork' Recap Jane Boursaw (TV Squad) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:12:00 AM

(S01E09) "What does this mean? I'm pregnant! What about the baby?" - Val to Ryan, after learning that he's a Visitor I guess it would be pretty startling to learn that the guy you've known for ten years, the guy who's the father of your baby, is an alien with a lizardlike body hiding under his human suit, or "meat suit" as the'Supernatural' boys call it. Poor Val. What a shock. And a

shock for Ryan when she tells him she doesn't want him getting on the train with her. In one way, I'm worried that she won't have Ryan to protect her, but in another way, she

might actually be safer without him. Either way, it's a dismal situation, and Anna won't stop until she has that "mongrel" baby. But doesn't it seem like there would be other half-breed

babies, since the Visitors have been living on earth for quite some time now? Anna better prime up some more soldiers, because they have their work cut out for them. Continue reading'V' - 'Heretic's Fork' Recap Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, V Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Staff Favorites: Quick Dinners (Cooking Light: Editor's Picks)

"My go to meal is taco salad made with ground chicken or turkey. Top with onion, sautéed bell pepper, reduced-fat sour c r e a m , and tomato.”—Tiffany Vickers Davis, Associate Test Kitchen Director Check out this salad for a similar version to Tiffany's that uses ground round and raw peppers. View Recipe: Quick Taco Salad Next Spicy Lemon Trout Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Jade for joy (The Economist: Daily news and views)

English auction house called Woolley & Wallis, in the southern town of Salisbury. A Submitted at 4/28/2010 3:41:16 AM year ago, he offered for auction Art.view How to satisfy the a Qianlong-period green jade insatiable demand from the buffalo that belonged to Lady mainland Diana Miller, daughter of the Apr 28th 2010 | From The 5th Earl of Yarborough. The Economist online buffalo had lain in a bank vault AS DEMAND for Chinese since the Battle of Britain in works of art continues to 1940 and was still wrapped in rise—with the top of the market wartime newspaper when Mr nowhere in sight—the supply of Axford saw it for the first time. top-quality pieces is becoming The internet has done much to increasingly rare. Dealers and change the auction business. No auction houses in all the major longer do small country auction centres, from New York to houses have to languish in Hong Kong, all repeat the same obscurity. Good photographs refrain: it is getting harder to posted on the web now reach find stock. potential buyers all over the Persuading collectors to part world. with their treasures takes skill. On the day of the sale last May, After first identifying who owns Woolley’s auction room was what, dealers or auction houses full of bidders who had made m u s t t h e n c o n v i n c e t h e s e the journey from London, and owners that the time is right to even from as far afield as Hong sell. Yet if the market is strong, Kong and mainland China. why shouldn't owners wait? Bidding for the buffalo opened Prices will only rise. at £150,000 ($230,000) and rose Even if a collector is willing to to £3.4m (£4.2m including sell, every dealer or auction commission and taxes). The house will be competing for the buyer was Daniel Eskenazi, the c o n t r a c t . W i n n i n g a son of London’s pre-eminent consignment takes patience, dealer in Chinese treasures, who hard work and luck. But those was bidding on behalf of Bruno who work hard tend to make E b e r l i , a S w i s s f o r e i g n their own luck. exchange specialist based in Take John Axford. New York. The sale brought Mr Mr Axford is head of the Asia Axford considerable publicity. department in a small provincial The 88-year-old Lady Diana

was delighted, and resolved to buy herself a racehorse. Over the past five years, sales of Chinese treasures have become increasingly dominated by buyers from the mainland who are keen to repatriate national art works. Every week sees a fresh flow of works to China from old European and American collections. Mr Axford is now planning another sale on May 19th. Lady Diana’s family has consigned a further 43 pieces from the earl’s collection (though none as important as the jade buffalo), and Mr Axford has managed to persuade two other collectors that the time is right for them to sell their works. The first, an elderly English collector in Monaco, was persuaded to use Mr Axford’s firm by an agent who had seen the success Woolley & Wallis had with Lady Diana’s buffalo. This collector had bought many of his pieces from Spink & Son, a once-important London firm that is now defunct. Luckily he had kept his receipts (provenance is important), for today Spink’s archive belongs to Christie’s, which denies other auction houses access to its papers. This collector consigned six important pieces, including a rare pale jade boulder carving

with an inscription. Estimated to fetch £20,000-30,000, the piece has already elicited considerable interest from mainland China. Mary Anna Marten’s consignment was on another scale altogether. The chatelaine of Crichel House in Dorset, which her family had owned since the mid-18th-century, Mrs Marten was the owner of an important collection of Chinese treasures, many of them bought by her father before the second world war. Mr Axford had displayed considerable acumen in marketing two of her pieces in his sale last year. A carved spinach-jade piece, known as the Buchanan-Jardine brushpot, sold for £460,000—nearly four times its top estimate—and a Chinese imperial spinach-jade bi disc fetched £290,000, more than ten times its pre-sale estimate. At the end of last year Mrs Marten decided to sell a pair of jade elephants that had once stood in Emperor Qianlong’s throne room. Then in January she died. Her executors took the opportunity to dispose of nine more pieces, but they insisted that Mr Axford’s firm, Woolley & Wallis, pitch for the contract in competition with Christie’s. Mr Axford proposed to market the collection in Taiwan, an important collecting centre, as

well as at the main art fair in southern China and the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht (TEFAF). He has advertised the collection in specialised magazines, including Arts of Asia, Orientations and Chinese Art News, known as CANs magazine. He also promised to show the pieces in a gallery next to Christie’s in London during the week of Asian sales in mid-May, as he did with Lady Diana’s jade buffalo. The executors were impressed and happy to offer the consignment to someone whose work had pleased Mrs Marten during her lifetime. They chose nine pieces, including the jade elephants and a rare imperial white jade bell of which only two others are known to exist. The estimates for both lots are £200,000, but Mr Axford hopes they might fetch a seven-figure price. If they do, other collectors will be happy to follow the lead set by Lady Diana and Mrs Marten. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Grilled squid (The Economist: Daily news and views)

Levin. The gruff Democrat went beyond the SEC’s complaint, accusing the firm of having Submitted at 4/28/2010 12:15:50 AM concocted several deals, not just The Goldman hearings A one, to profit from the collapse ghastly day on Capitol Hill for of the housing market, and also Goldman Sachs’s top brass of being riddled with “inherent Apr 28th 2010 | NEW YORK | conflicts of interest.” Not From The Economist online content merely to skewer “ONE of the worst days of my A m e r i c a ’ s p r e - e m i n e n t professional life” was Lloyd investment house, the senator Blankfein’s characterisation of harrumphed that its conduct April 16th, when the Securities “calls into question the whole and Exchange Commission function of Wall Street”—a (SEC) filed civil fraud charges market that, while supposedly against Goldman Sachs. The free, “isn’t free of self-dealing.” bank and an employee were His attack rested, in part, on accused of failing to disclose internal Goldman e-mails. In that a hedge fund that had o n e , a s e n i o r e x e c u t i v e influenced the composition of a d e s c r i b e d a G o l d m a n c o m p l e x m o r t g a g e - d e b t underwritten CDO as “one transaction was also shorting it. shitty deal”. In another, a April 27th was surely not much c o l l e a g u e a p p l a u d e d t h e better, either for the Wall Street structured-products team for firm’s boss or any of the six making “lemonade from some o t h e r c u r r e n t a n d f o r m e r big old lemons.” Goldman investment bankers The team’s representatives at who testified before the Senate the hearing squirmed in the Permanent Subcommittee on spotlight. Fabrice Tourre, the Investigations. The roasting, employee charged by the SEC, which lasted more than ten f i r m l y d e n i e d m i s l e a d i n g hours, was as dramatic as any investors. But he and his hearing focused largely on colleagues, coached by lawyers synthetic collateralised-debt in light of the SEC case and obligations (CDOs) could be. clearly fearful of committing a Goldman’s persecutor-in-chief legal faux pas, came across as was the panel’s chairman, Carl evasive. At times the dialogue

resembled a Pinter play: a question, then a long pause, followed by a spare, cryptic response. The firm’s senior executives put up a stronger, clearer defence. In response to Mr Levin’s assertion that Goldman had profited from others’ misery with a “big short”, David Viniar, the bank's chief financial officer, pointed out that its net revenues in mortgages were a mere $500m in 2007, with a loss of $1.2 billion in 2007 and 2008 combined. Mr Blankfein gurned incredulously at some of the senators’ questions, doubtless baffled that they would characterise as immoral profiteering what he viewed as nothing worse than prudent risk management. (He must have wondered if Goldman would have been better off from a public-relations point of view by incurring giant losses, like Citigroup.) But he also struck a conciliatory tone, expressing gratitude for support from taxpayers, who were “understandably angry” towards Wall Street, and declaring that everyone in the industry has to “ratchet up their standards”. Nevertheless, he argued that

criticism of Goldman’s motives rested on a misunderstanding of the market-making business. Unlike money managers, market -makers owe no fiduciary duty to clients, and offer no warranties; their only responsibility is to make sure those they serve are getting the risk exposures they seek. Ironically, Mr Blankfein was at his most uncomfortable when tackling questions about a disclosure the firm had made, rather than one it had not: its decision to release e-mails that happened to reveal details of Mr Tourre’s personal life, a move leading to speculation that the Frenchman was being, as one senator put it, “hung out to dry”. The hearing produced no smoking gun, but there was much that looked bad for Goldman. The reputational damage is hard to gauge, but it was not a good sign that Goldman was the butt of jokes this week at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, an annual gathering of businesspeople and policymakers in Los Angeles. One panellist even drew a parallel with Drexel Burnham Lambert, an investment bank that went from best to bust in a

matter of months 20 years ago. Some of Goldman’s institutional clients, such as CalSTRS, a Californian pension fund, have publicly expressed concern. It won’t help that shareholders have began filing suits this week. (As of mid-week, Goldman’s share price was 6% lower than when the SEC launched its case on April 9th.) Goldman’s grilling all but ensures the passage of the Volcker rule, clamping down on banks’ proprietary trading and investments in hedge funds and private equity, as part of a broader financial-reform law. It will also add to pressure for broker-dealers to act with the same fiduciary duties towards their clients as investment advisers, a move already being contemplated by lawmakers. No wonder the usually chirpy Mr Blankfein looked so drained by the time he was let go, after almost four hours in the hot seat. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Here's The Most Distressing Part Of AOL's Horrible Results: Cash Flow Collapsed Henry Blodget (The Money Game)

And there's not much the company can do about it. As the subscriber business Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:05:00 AM continues to decline, more of the AOL had another horrible search revenue will disappear. quarter, as expected. The good It's possible that Microsoft Bing news is that the quarter wasn't will come in later this year and much MORE horrible than pay a silly amount of money for expected. In fact, on a revenue AOL's remaining 3% of the and EBITDA basis, it was search market, but even this basically in line. won't likely restore AOL's However... search business to growth. So One metric that might slip the outlook for cash flow is under the radar but is likely to remain worse than it is nevertheless important is Free for revenue, even if AOL Cash Flow. Despite huge cost stabilizes its media business. cuts, AOL's Free Cash Flow On a positive note, AOL is tanked year over year--dropping finally starting to sell off nona sickening 55% ($153 million). core assets (ICQ). And it should This compares a revenue drop of s u b s c r i p t i o n r e v e n u e i s press release, its subscribers be able to raise a reasonable collapsing. But what fewer search much more frequently only 23%. amount of cash for doing so. Why did Free Cash Flow drop people understand is that the than its free media readers. See Also: Here's What AOL subscription revenue and search As the company loses those so much? Isn't Telling IPO Investors In part because much of the revenue are tightly linked, and subscribers, therefore, it also Join the conversation about this revenue that AOL is losing is they are both vastly more loses big chunks of search story » wildly profitable, while the profitable than AOL's media and revenue. And that search See Also: revenue is nearly 100% profit revenue it's keeping is low ad network business. • What AOL Won't Be Telling margin. Specifically, the high At first glance, the linkage (because Google serves the ads). IPO Investors margin revenue AOL is losing is between search and subscription The subscription revenue, • AOL's Asset Sales Should subscription revenue, which revenue seems counterintuitive: meanwhile, which is still Raise Another $1+ Billion Of declined 28% ($90 million) year As AOL focuses on growing its composed largely of dial-up Cash After IPO over year, and the search media properties, shouldn't subscribers who rarely use dial- • AOL Misses On Earnings, Ad revenue, which fell 27%, or $45 search revenue increase? In up, is also highly profitable. Revenues Tank Another 19% fact, the answer is "no." That's one of the hidden million. Now, everyone knows AOL's Because as AOL explains in its realities of AOL's business.

Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce (Simply Recipes) Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:22:32 PM

Many people are afraid of hollandaise sauce, are you? Some think eating it will make them fat. (It will if you eat it every day, so don't eat it every day.) If you are like me, the thought of making hollandaise conjures up visions of toque clad chefs with big bowls and even bigger whisks swearing because the beautiful sauce they have spent the last several minutes vigorously whisking has separated on them, "Merde!" Continue reading "Easy Blender Hollandaise Sauce" »

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Peter Boockvar: Greece Crisis Marks The Unwind Of The Largest Monetary Easing In History Joe Weisenthal (The Money Game) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:44:49 AM

Even if the Greece crisis doesn't turn into a major crisis for all of Europe and its banks, the economic implications are still signifianct, as Miller Tabak's Peter Boockvar nicely spells out in a morning note: Most European bond markets remain under pressure again. Whatever happens with Greece now, the cost of capital is going up for most of the Euro region and that has implications for companies and consumers that borrow in these markets. Death, taxes and easy money, the only certainties in life. Actually the last one is not always the case but REAL interest rates have been negative for 5 of the last 8 years and the FOMC will tell us today that they will remain that way for an 'extended period.' They will

tell us that inflation is benign, even as the Journal of Commerce index is up 9% from the last meeting at the highest level since Aug '08 and just 7% from a record high. There will be some coffee talk on selling their large pile of MBS at some point. Unwinding the largest monetary easing in the history of the

world will not be easy and the longer the Fed waits, the more rough it will be due to the misallocation of capital they have created, again. II: Bulls 54 v 53.3, highest since Dec '07, Bears 18 v 17.4 Join the conversation about this story Âť

Here's A Property Boom That Makes A Mockery Of America's (And It's Not China) Vincent Fernando, CFA (The Money Game)

bubble look tame in comparison. Two indices of American prices are shown, in light blue and Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:20:14 AM gray. T h e E c o n o m i s t h a s a n We've loved the little bit of interactive chart, where you can Australia we've seen, the quality compare housing trends for of life looks quite high there. countries around the world. The country is also surely The example we built below levered to China's strong growth shows how Australian property right now. But would you buy prices have doubled in a pretty into a property rise such as short period of time and are way below in dark blue? ahead of U.S. property over a Much more can probably be twenty year period. done with it, use the interactive It's shocking, the Australian chart here >> price rise, in dark blue, appears Join the conversation about this to make the American property story Âť

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Lost in the Details: Micro-View Blinds Scientists to Big Picture Jonah Lehrer (Wired Top Stories)

a portrait of the soul. It’s also false. In reality, huge swaths of the cortex are involved in every Submitted at 4/27/2010 7:00:00 PM aspect of cognition. The mind is Illustration: Markus Hofko a knot of interconnections, so A t y p i c a l e x p e r i m e n t i n interpreting the scan depends on functional magnetic resonance leaving lots of stuff out, sifting imaging goes like this: A subject through noise for the signal. We is slid into a claustrophobia- make sense of the data by inducing tube, the core of a d e l e t i n g w h a t w e d o n ’ t machine the size of a delivery u n d e r s t a n d . truck. The person is told to lie What’s disappointing here isn’t perfectly still and perform some just that these early fMRI task — look at a screen, say, or studies are overhyped or miss m a k e a d e c i s i o n . N o i s y important facts. It’s that this superconducting magnets whir. mistake is all too familiar. Time The contraption analyzes the and time again, an experimental magnetic properties of blood to gadget gets introduced — it determine the amount of oxygen d o e s n ’ t m a t t e r i f i t ’ s a p r e s e n t , o p e r a t i n g o n t h e supercollider or a gene chip or assumption that more-active an fMRI machine — and we’re b r a i n c e l l s r e q u i r e m o r e - told it will allow us to glimpse oxygenated blood. It can’t tell t h e u n d e r l y i n g l o g i c o f what you’re thinking, but it can everything. But the tool always tell where you’re thinking it. disappoints, doesn’t it? We soon Functional MRI has been used realize that those pretty pictures to study all sorts of sexy are incomplete and that we can’t p s y c h o l o g i c a l p r o p e r t i e s . reduce our complex subject to a You’ve probably seen the few colorful spots. So here’s a headlines: “Scientists Discover pitch: Scientists should learn to Love in the Brain!” and “This Is expect this cycle — to anticipate Your Brain on God!” Such that the universe is always more claims are often accompanied networked and complicated than by a pretty silhouette of a skull, reductionist approaches can highlighted with splotches of reveal. primary color. It’s like staring at Look at genetics: When the

Human Genome Project was launched in the early 1990s, it was sold as a means of finally making sense of our DNA by documenting the slight differences that encode our individuality. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the project has mostly demonstrated that we are more than a text, and that our base pairs rarely explain anything in isolation. It has forced researchers to focus on the much broader study of how our genes interact with the environment. This same story plays out over and over — only the nouns change. Once upon a time, physicists thought they had the universe mostly solved, thanks to their fancy telescopes and elegant Newtonian equations. But then came a century of complications, from the theory of relativity to the uncertainty principle; string theorists, in their attempts to reconcile ever widening theoretical gaps, started talking about 11 dimensions. Dark matter remains a total mystery. We used to assume that it was enough to understand atoms — the bits that compose the cosmos — but it’s now clear

that these particles can’t be deciphered in a vacuum. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what neuroscientists are coming to grips with. In the mid-’90s, Marcus Raichle started wondering about all the mental activity exhibited by subjects between tasks, when they appeared to be doing nothing at all. Although Raichle’s colleagues discouraged him from trying to make sense of all this noisy activity — “They told me I was wasting my time,” he says — his team’s work led to the discovery of what he calls the default network, which has since been linked to a wide range of phenomena, from daydreaming to autism. However, it can’t be accurately described with the kind of distinct spots of a typical fMRI image. There’s too much to see: It’s a network of colorful complexity. Thanks to the work of Raichle and others, neuroscience now has a mandate to forgo the measurement of local spikes in blood flow in favor of teasing apart the vast electrical loom of the cortex. God and love are nowhere to be found — and most of the time we have no idea what we’re

looking at. But that confusion is a good sign. The brain isn’t simple; our pictures of the brain shouldn’t be, either. Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, once divided the world into two categories: clocks and clouds. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be solved through reduction; clouds are an epistemic mess, “highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable.” The mistake of modern science is to pretend that everything is a clock, which is why we get seduced again and again by the false promises of brain scanners and gene sequencers. We want to believe we will understand nature if we find the exact right tool to cut its joints. But that approach is doomed to failure. We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds. Contributing editor Jonah Lehrer( jonahlehrer@me.com) wrote about the neuroscience of failure in issue 18.01. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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April 28, 2003: Apple Opens iTunes Store Brian Chen (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 4/27/2010 11:00:00 PM

2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store and starts to revolutionize the musicrecording industry, one song at a time. Between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the media were undergoing a massive conversion from analog to digital. The music industry hated it. Much to the chagrin of the Recording Industry Association of America, internet users quickly caught on to digital music as a free alternative to paying for albums. In fear of declining album sales, record labels filed lawsuit after lawsuit against online services Napster and MP3.com for hosting digital music, as well as Diamond Multimedia, a Korean company that released an MP3 player called the Rio. Clearly, for the recording industry, change wasn’t easy. In stepped Steve Jobs. The Apple CEO harbored a vision in 2002 of an online music store hosted by Apple that would be easy to use, complete in selection and reliable in performance. These factors, Jobs thought, would be enough to convince customers to pay for something they could otherwise obtain for free illegally. The store, then, would enable record

labels to compete with pirates rather than pursue a futile attempt to destroy them. But in order for online music to work, Jobs believed his store would have to allow customers to purchase music in a completely different way: a la carte. Convincing labels was hardly easy. “When we first approached the

labels, the online music business was a disaster,” Jobs told Steven Levy, author of The Perfect Thing. “Nobody had ever sold a song for 99 cents. Nobody really ever sold a song. And we walked in, and we said, ‘We want to sell songs a la carte. We want to sell albums, too, but we want to sell songs individually.’ They thought that would be the

death of the album.” Jobs started his talks with the big players first: Warner Music and Universal. Apple flew the firms’ teams up to Cupertino, California. In a boardroom at One Infinite Loop, Jobs proceeded to present his plan. Jobs first reeled in the labels with one crucial proposal: Apple would sell songs through

iTunes, music-player software that was then available only for Macs. After all, how could Apple, whose Mac operating system held only single-digit market share, ruin the record business if the iTunes Store took off? After a series of long and APRIL page 35

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Solar Charger Juices Your Gadgets, Rain or Shine Bryan Gardiner (Wired Top Stories) Submitted at 4/27/2010 7:00:00 PM

Solar Charger Juices Your Gadgets, Rain or Shine It's an unavoidable fact of life: Your gadgets need juice —like a preacher needs pain, like thunder needs rain. (Thank you, Bono.) And when it comes to portable power-ups, our new favorite flavor is Orange. The Joos Orange solar charger is the physical manifestation of simplicity. It's rugged, easy to store and carry, and (most importantly) quick to bestow a watt or two whenever you need it. Simply choose the correct adapter (the Orange comes with seven of the most popular ones), plug in your depleted phone or DS into the charger and let the life-giving juice flow. Yep, that's it. Weighing in at a pound-and-ahalf, the Orange is roughly the same size and weight as an iPad —and arguably a lot more useful. It can be completely submersed in water, dropped, kicked, and, in general, take the worst abuse man or nature can dish out.

Nestled inside its durable polycarbonate shell is a superefficient 5,400-milliamp-hour replaceable lithium-ion battery capable of holding its charge for years. In our tests, we managed to dole out four full charges to a completely depleted iPhone before the Orange needed a solar recharge. It even fully charged the notoriously fickle iPad. While PC owners will be able to download a standalone GUI for precise power metrics, the unit also has two LED status lights on the sides: one solar light (red) and other for the battery (green). When the Orange is running, the red light will blink rapidly to let you know you're getting juiced. Similarly, the green light spits out one blink for every 20 percent of the battery that's full. Four blinks and you know you have a battery that's between 60 and 80 percent full. Even better: the Orange comes with a pair of attachable reflectors that help collect somewhere between 2030 percent more power when affixed to both ends. No sun? No problem. While our test model wasn't equipped to

charge efficiently by USB, the folks at Solar Components assured us that production models can be refilled at the standard USB charging rate (500 milliamps at 5 volts or 2.5 watts). So go ahead and leave those outlets. Sucking down solar power has never been easier. WIRED Cheap. Crazy-durable. Comes with nearly all connector tips you'll need for your mobile gear (you can order specific ones from Solar Components if not). Two screw-in mirror panels beef up charging efficiency by 30 percent. Nuclear fallout blot out the sun? Charge up by USB. TIRED No Mac compatibility for GUI software. Deciphering the LED takes some getting used to. Screws for attachable mirrors are not ideal and are easily lost. • Electronics: Solar • Manufacturer: Joos • Price:$100 Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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painful negotiations, the two labels ultimately agreed they would play, but only after Apple agreed to bake in some restrictions (aka digital rights management): iTunes-purchased songs would be limited to being playable on three “authorized” computers, and a playlist could only be burned on a CD seven times. Labels BMG and EMI soon followed, and later Sony hopped on board. Apple opened the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with 200,000 songs. (Simultaneously, Apple released its third-generation iPod.) In the first week, iTunes Store customers bought more than a million songs. Six months later, Apple convinced the labels to allow iTunes to be shared with Windows users. Apple announced at its final Macworld show Jan. 6, 2009, that iTunes would cease selling songs encumbered by DRM restrictions. Though a significant step for Apple, Jobs was not present to make the announcement — he was on medical leave. The Wall Street Journal later revealed that Jobs successfully underwent a liver transplant. He resumed his post in June 2009. The iTunes Store has expanded to include movies, TV shows

and the App Store providing third-party software for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad customers. To date, the iTunes Store has served more than 10 billion songs, 200 million TV shows, 2 million films and 3 billion apps. Sources: The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, by Steven Levy; Wikipedia Photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs (June 2007) Jon Snyder/Wired.com See Also: • Apple’s Next Revolutionary Product: iTunes • Forget the Tablet — Apple Needs to Rebuild iTunes • Oct. 23, 2001: Now Hear This … The iPod Arrives • April 28, 1926: Waving Hello to a New Subatomic Theory • April 28, 1947: Kon-Tiki Sets Sail From Peru to Polynesia • Aug. 27, 2003: The Lights Will Stay On in Fairbanks Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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S.F. Computer Admin Guilty of Hijacking City Passwords

Dinner Diary: Cod with Leeks

David Kravets (Wired Top Stories)

WomansDay.com Editors (Daily Woman's Day Blog)

Submitted at 4/27/2010 7:00:00 PM

After a six-month trial, a San Francisco city admin was found guilty Tuesday of a sole felony count of hijacking the city’s computer system. Terry Childs, 45, was guilty of one count of locking out the city from its FiberWAN network containing city e-mails, payroll, police records, information on jail inmates and more — virtually an all-access pass to City Hall. Childs was arrested in July 2008 after refusing to hand over passwords to the Wide Area Network system he was accused of taking control of illegally. A San Francisco jury deliberated a week before reaching a verdict. Childs’ $5 million bail was set five times higher than most murder defendants’ because the authorities feared that, if released, he might permanently lock the system and erase records.

The FiberWAN network system is the major backbone of the consolidated city-and-county government’s computing infrastructure, connecting hundreds of different departments and buildings to a central data center, and to each other. The FiberWAN system carries more than 60 percent of the network traffic for San Francisco’s government. Childs had worked as a computer technician with the city for five years before his arrest. He earned $126,000 in base pay, in addition to another $22,500 for being on call to

assist with network malfunctions. The city’s data system was restored after Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke with Childs in jail, where he finally gave the passwords to the mayor. Childs faces a maximum 5-year prison term when sentenced June 14. See Also: • San Francisco Admin Charged With Hijacking City’s Network • Experts Say Lax Security Allowed San Francisco Network Hijacking • San Francisco Held CyberHostage? Disgruntled Techies Have Wreaked Havoc Before • Court: Disloyal Computing Is Not Illegal • Prosecutor: Admin Rigged City Network for ‘Failure’

Submitted at 4/27/2010 3:00:00 PM

I bought this fish, wild Alaskan cod, in the frozen-food section of Trader Joe's; I mention this in such detail because the fish was wonderful, firm and moist and sweet. I could credit the generous amount of butter that went into the dish or the gentle steaming I gave it, but it really has to start with good fish. And this fish was good. The preparation is one of my favorites, too. I steam relatively thin fillets of firm, white fish on top of vegetables. This time I cooked leeks in butter until meltingly tender, then cooked cod fillets on top. I started with the leeks, discarding the tough green tops, then slicing the bottoms in half lengthwise and Five Filters featured article: chopping in 1-inch pieces. I Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: soaked the pieces in lots of PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, water, swishing to release the dirt between the layers and then Term Extraction. letting it sit for a while so the dirt would sink to the bottom of the bowl. After repeating that a couple times, I cooked the leeks in a generous tablespoon butter

in a deep skillet until tender. Then I placed thawed cod fillets on top and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. Covered the skillet and steamed about 12 minutes; served on a platter with the leeks and the juices poured over the top. Good bread is a plus to soak up the juices. More fish: Panko-Crusted Fish Sticks(If anyone tries the carrot ketchup, let me know how it is. I'm intrigued but skeptical) Tilapia and Vegetable Packets Tuscan Bass with Squash and Beans — Kim Walker Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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10 Unusual Items from McDonald's International Menu

Planet Doom

(HowStuffWorks Daily Feed)

Bradford Plumer (The New Republic - All Feed)

Unhealthiest Ads of AllTime

Submitted at 4/27/2010 11:00:00 PM

(Mensfitness.com)

more slowly. You may just be curious as to whether the "Pulp Fiction" As John Travolta says in "Pulp script is telling the truth: Can Fiction," it's the little differences y o u r e a l l y b u y b e e r a t that enrich us when we travel. M c D o n a l d ' s i n P a r i s ? D o S o w h y d o y o u g o t o countries that use the metric McDonald's abroad? Maybe system call the Quarter Pounder you're retreating to the Western a "Royale with cheese?" Not to bathrooms, the air conditioning, s p o i l y o u r f u n , b u t y e s , the familiar food or a place McDonald's in France -- and the where you can shirk the local Netherlands, Germany and language and just say "Big Austria -- serve beer. And Mac." Maybe you're operating across Europe, you can order a around the clock in a country R o y a l C h e e s e ( n o t e t h e that siestas or rushing around a spelling). If you're still curious, country and a people who move travel around the world with us Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

through a list of local foods on the McDonald's menu. We'll move you from east to west, from Australia all the way over to Mexico. And remember, for the gastronomically adventurous souls out there, you can always find authentic cuisine around the corner if you're looking to conduct an informal taste test. Bon voyage. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Snack Smart: Eat Like a Kid WomansDay.com Editors (Daily Woman's Day Blog)

always meant to be a health editor... Anyways, I recently tried a new Submitted at 4/27/2010 2:00:00 PM kind of cereal in the afternoon I have a (not-so-secret) cereal and I think I might be addicted. obsession. When I'm stressed or EnviroKidz Organic Peanut get the late night munchies, I Butter Panda Puffs are delicious, crave a crunchy bowl of cereal. low-calorie (3/4 cup is only 130 But, fortunately, for my body, I c a l o r i e s ) , g l u t e n - f r e e a n d actually prefer healthy, high- c o n t a i n n o a r t i f i c i a l fiber kinds instead of sugar- preservatives or additives. laden cereals. Yes, its true, Although one serving only stats and yummy taste make up while others devour brownies contains 2 g of fiber (less than for that. or sweets under pressure, I eat others since the cereal is for I'd love to know, what are your fiber cereal. Sigh. I guess I was kids), the rest of the nutrition favorite healthy cereals?

For most of the 2.5 million years that humans and their predecessors have been around, the Earth has been a volatile place. Subtle shifts in the planetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orbit have triggered large temperature swings; glaciers have marched across North America and Europe and then retreated. But, about 10,000 years ago, something unusual PLANET page 38

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happened: The Earth’s climate settled into a relatively stable state, global temperatures started hovering within a narrow band, and sea levels stopped rising and falling so drastically. Historians argue that this fortuitous geological period, known as the Holocene, allowed civilization to develop. Modern humans no longer had to pluck whatever they could from an unreliable environment and move on. The relatively predictable climate patterns allowed them to colonize coastal regions, clear forests for agriculture, and raise livestock. “Once you get stability, you can start planning for the future,” explains Sander van der Leeuw, who directs the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. “You’re no longer acting on the moment but acting with the future in mind. And that’s what our whole society is based on—being able to invest in the future.” (Click here to see a slideshow of the nine scenarios for imminent apocalypse.) Because of quirks in the Earth’s orbit, the planet would likely remain in this stable state for at least the next 10,000 years if left to its own devices. But the planet isn’t being left to its own devices. Humans are now drastically altering the natural world in so many ways—mowing down forests,

depleting freshwater supplies, fiddling with the planet’s thermostat—that some experts have recently begun arguing that we’ve left the Holocene and moved into an entirely new geological epoch of our own making, dubbed the Anthropocene. Global warming is the big change that tends to get all the attention. By now, it’s wellestablished that humans are adding heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Climatologists have assembled ample evidence that we run the risk of catastrophe if we add too much carbon dioxide to the air. Yet it may be too narrow to focus on climate change in isolation. In recent years, some scientists have begun casting a wary eye at all the other ways we’re upending the Earth’s natural state, from disrupting the planet’s nitrogen cycle to using up resources to dousing our rivers and oceans with new synthetic chemicals. Those researchers are starting to ask whether these trends, too, could have their own tipping points—whether, as with climate, there are boundaries over which we would be incredibly foolish to cross. And what they have found suggests that, by pushing the Earth outside of the state that has persisted for the last 10,000 years, we risk squandering the

stability that made civilization possible in the first place. The idea that there are “tipping points” in nature has been discussed by scientists since the 1970s. An ecosystem can change slowly and gradually over many years until, suddenly, it reaches a threshold, at which point rapid and potentially irreversible shifts ensue. One much-studied example is the Sahara Desert. About 6,000 years ago, the vast expanse of the Sahara was filled with lakes, wetlands, and a lush variety of species—ancient cave paintings in the region depict crocodiles. Then, some 5,500 years ago, the region became a massive desert over the relatively short course of about 200 years. “That sort of rapid change just doesn’t make sense,” notes Jonathan Foley, director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. “Unless, that is, you allow for non-linear systems in nature.” One hypothesis is that a slight change in Earth’s orbit led to a gradual decline in solar energy, which meant fewer monsoons hitting the region. The tipping point then came when a prolonged drought killed off the local vegetation that helped supply the area with moisture. At that point, a feedback loop kicked in, and the Sahara started drying of its own accord—more plants died off, which, in turn, made the region even more

parched—until the whole area desertified in remarkably short order. Over the last decade, a number of climate scientists have looked for tipping points that could be triggered by global warming. It’s worrisome enough that a warming world would produce steadily rising sea levels, droughts, and heat waves. But what keeps many researchers up at night is the idea of rapid, nonlinear changes that utterly transform the planet. To take one example, as Arctic sea ice begins melting, the dark water underneath starts absorbing a greater share of sunlight, which, in turn, causes the ice to melt even faster. Models suggest that this feedback could reach a point where the sea ice begins melting at an incredibly fast pace and essentially collapses—indeed, some Arctic researchers think we may have already crossed this threshold. Other possible scenarios include the disintegration of the ice sheet on Greenland, rapid dieoff of rain forests in the Amazon, or, even more extreme, a shutdown of the ocean currents in the Atlantic that maintain Europe’s livable climate. (Fortunately, that last one, while feasible, doesn’t appear likely anytime soon.) Scientists continue to a r g u e — s o m e t i m e s fiercely—over the details and precise timing of these dramatic

changes. But the prospect that global warming could produce non-linear disruptions has, understandably, helped inform many climate-policy goals. After all, it would be one thing for human civilization to adapt to sea levels that rose smoothly by, say, one centimeter a year. It would be another to deal with fast and unpredictable rises. That’s why the United Nations has recommended limiting warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels—above that point, we risk large-scale changes beyond our control. But it’s also true that scientists can’t be certain of where that threshold lies. James Hansen of NASA has famously argued that even the U.N. targets are too rash, and that we should limit atmospheric carbon dioxide to below 350 parts per million (a point we’ve already passed), based on his study of how quickly ice sheets reacted in prehistoric periods when the Earth’s temperature was just 1°C to 2°C warmer than today. Those discussions, meanwhile, have led some scientists to wonder if there might be other tipping-point thresholds lurking in nature. In 2008, Johan Rockström, the director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden, brought together two dozen experts across a variety of disciplines to see if they could PLANET page 39

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identify what they called “the rules of the game.” What are the natural boundaries that humanity should stay within if we want to keep the Earth in the stable state of the last 10,000 years? In a paper published last fall in the prestigious journal Nature, Rockström and his co-authors created, for the first time, a checklist of all the possible ways the planet is hurtling toward a potentially perilous new course. They identified nine boundaries concerning matters such as climate change, ocean acidification, extinction rates, land and water use, ozone depletion, and the disruption of the Earth’s nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. But what was most astounding was just how little we still know about the natural experiment our civilization is unwittingly conducting. Take, for instance, ocean acidification. Ocean chemists have long known that, as carbon -dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere rise, more and more of the gas gets absorbed by the ocean and lowers its pH level—in essence, making the waters more acidic. But, up until ten years ago, no one had seriously modeled this effect, and it was assumed to be negligible. “It hadn’t been on anyone’s radar screens,” explains Ellen Thomas, a Yale paleoceanographer. “The

thinking had been, ‘Well, the oceans are so huge, what can a little extra CO2 in the air really do?’” Then, in 1999, a climate modeler at Stanford named Ken Caldeira was asked by the Energy Department to study the effects of capturing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and injecting it deep into the sea as a way of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Caldeira studied the change in ocean pH and then, just for reference, compared it to what would happen if manmade CO2 levels kept rising. The latter proved shocking. Caldeira discovered that the oceans were already on pace to become more acidic than at any time in the past 300 million years. He published his results in 2003, coining the term “ocean acidification.” In the years since, scientists have realized that ocean acidification is, in fact, a huge deal—a problem as worrisome as many of the worst effects of global warming. The lower pH in the oceans will prevent marine organisms from building calcium-carbonate shells. That, in turn, has the potential to weaken or even wipe out many coral reef systems—and the millions of species that depend on them. And that could prove devastating. In Asia alone, some one billion people rely on reef fisheries for food or income. Local economies that rely on oysters, clams, or scallops could

go bust. Areas like Florida that depend on reefs as a bulwark against storms would find themselves more vulnerable to hurricane damage. And, while marine scientists still can’t pin down the exact point at which a global calamity would ensue, lessons from the past are unnerving. During the last major wave of ocean acidification, 55 million years ago, a vast array of deep-sea species were wiped out—which, in turn, upended marine ecosystems around the world. Given how heavily we rely on the ocean’s current food web, that’s a prospect we can’t dismiss lightly. Rockström’s group also identified a number of potential tipping points related to modern -day industrial agriculture. With nearly seven billion people on the planet and a growing demand for meat, farmers are razing forests and diverting freshwater for irrigation at a stunning pace. It’s not hard to see that we could soon reach the point where irreversible degradation becomes likely in many areas. The Aral Sea in Central Asia, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, has already become so drained that it is now largely desert, causing the area’s once-robust fishing economy to implode and leaving trawlers marooned on the sands. And Foley points out that, on some islands in Indonesia, destruction of rain forests has reached the

point where local weather patterns have been altered, drying out the area and, in turn, making the remaining trees more susceptible to forest fires. In Borneo, the black smoke has grown so thick that it has interfered with air and sea traffic and is causing widespread respiratory illnesses. Another unsustainable trend the group pinpointed involved our reliance on synthetic fertilizer. Ever since the early twentieth century, when German chemist Fritz Haber devised a method for capturing nitrogen from the air to make ammonia gas, humans have depended on artificial nitrogen fertilizer to boost crop productivity. It was a world-changing invention, enabling the planet to keep feeding itself even as the population ballooned. But the practice has also inflicted heavy damage on the water and soil we depend on. The vast bulk of the nitrogen and phosphorus used in artificial fertilizers makes its way into the rivers and oceans. In areas like the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea, the excess nitrogen has overstimulated the growth of algae, which chokes off the water’s oxygen and kills most other organisms in the vicinity. These vast floating “dead zones” are popping up around the world—areas the size of New Jersey where fish can’t survive. Beyond that, excess nitrogen has been found

to deplete organic carbon in the soil and decimate plant species in certain areas. In essence, we have overwhelmed the Earth’s nutrient cycle—Rockström’s group suggested that global nitrogen use was more than four times the “safe” threshold. Granted, some experts find the idea of a single boundary too simplistic. Stuart Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke, points to the paper’s discussion of biodiversity as an example. Throughout history, the normal “background” rate for extinction has been about one in a million species per year. In the modern era, thanks to activities like deforestation and overfishing, an average of about 100 species per million die off each year—a staggering rate that has the potential to collapse ecosystems. In response, Rockström’s group proposed a threshold limit of no more than ten species per million per year. “But that number was completely arbitrary,” Pimm says. What’s more, the idea of a single worldwide limit on extinction can obscure some important nuances. Since the 1960s, scientists have studied “keystone” species that prop up an entire ecosystem—if, for instance, starfish are removed from a bay, the local mussel population can explode and PLANET page 40

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drive out other species. “Some ecosystems can lose a number of species and be OK,” Pimm argues. “Others can lose just a few species and they’re manifestly not OK.” Still, the specific numerical thresholds proposed by Rockström’s group were, in some sense, a side issue. Experts will continue to haggle over whether, say, 350 ppm or 450 ppm is a “safe” limit for carbon dioxide in the air. But what was more notable—indeed, eerie—about the Nature paper was its emphasis on how little we can predict about the many dramatic changes underway. Consider the mounting evidence that aerosol pollution—such as sulfates—can alter local rainfall patterns. But, according to Kevin Noone, a colleague of Rockström’s at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, there simply aren’t enough data yet to be able to settle on a “safe” level of aerosol pollution that would avoid large-scale disruption of, say, the Asian monsoon cycle. Or take chemical pollution. Currently, there are more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals on the global market, and we know that many of them can harm human health or disturb the reproductive cycles of certain species (in much the same way DDT caused eggshell thinning among birds of prey). But no one knows whether there’s a point at which some

combination of chemical pollutants could throw largescale ecosystems out of whack. “There’s evidence out there that these artificial chemicals can have adverse effects, sure, but no one’s really looked at them yet from the perspective of global thresholds,” says Will Steffen, a climatologist at the Australian National University who contributed to the Nature study. “That was one where we couldn’t even guess a boundary.” Scarier still, many of these different processes can interact in unforeseen ways. The heavy use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers can cause soil to release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Overfishing can make coral reefs less resilient in the face of stresses like ocean acidification and warmer temperatures. Global warming can speed up the rate of extinction. “Once you have all of these dynamic processes in so many dimensions interacting with each other, we no longer have the capability to anticipate what will happen,” says van der Leeuw. “That then raises the possibility that these processes will start affecting each other in different ways that can quickly have cascade effects we can’t see right now.” And that creates a dilemma: Right now, too many environmental problems are studied in isolation. “Ever since

Newton, the tendency of science has been to slice the pie up smaller and smaller,” says Noone. As an illustrative example, he notes that scientific literature now boasts a Journal of Chemical Physics, a Journal of Physical Chemistry, as well as the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. Yet the research into planetary boundaries suggests that it may be impossible to deal with just one or two environmental issues at a time. At the moment, global warming gets the bulk of attention. But treating it as the only problem could lead to misguided solutions. For instance, in recent years, some researchers have broached the idea of geoengineering as a cure for climate change—one idea is that we would reflect some of the Earth’s sunlight in order to cool the planet down. If rising temperatures were our sole concern, that might not be a bad idea. But, of course, that solution would do nothing about the carbon-dioxide emissions that are acidifying the world’s oceans, or the frenetic pace of deforestation that could alter the Earth’s landscape irreparably. The Nature study, with its many visions of destruction, is enough to cause one to crawl into a cave and die. But the notion of planetary boundaries is also very different from past doomsaying. Inherent in the concept, in fact, is cause for

optimism. Back in the 1970s, the Club of Rome think tank commissioned an influential book titled The Limits to Growth, which predicted that the combination of a rapidly swelling world population and finite natural resources would put severe limits on economic growth. As it turned out, many of the book’s ominous predictions were mistaken—the authors had underestimated the ability of both markets and technology to overcome resource constraints. Similarly, an important lesson from recent history proves that it’s possible for humanity to stay safely within the Earth’s natural boundaries and still thrive. One threshold that Rockström’s group identified involved the stratospheric ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. As it turns out, this is the one known planetary boundary that we’re no longer in danger of crossing—but the story of how that came to pass is illustrative. In the 1970s, scientists were puzzling over the fact that readings of ozone concentration in the Antarctic region were much lower than anyone had expected. (The readings were so odd that, for nearly a decade, atmospheric scientists dismissed the data as due to instrument error.) At around the same time, scientists were discovering that concentrations of

chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners—were lingering in the atmosphere at high rates. In 1974, chemists Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland published a paper arguing that the two phenomena may be linked, although it was a difficult hypothesis to prove. DuPont, the world’s biggest manufacturer of CFCs, disputed the connection, and it wasn’t until the mid-’80s that hard evidence confirming the link came in—including the discovery of a gaping ozone hole over Antarctica. Looking back, it’s remarkable to ponder the serendipity of these discoveries—and how little margin for error we had. As luck would have it, DuPont had been using chlorine instead of bromine to produce CFCs. As far as anyone could tell, the two elements were interchangeable. But, as another prescient ozone researcher, Paul Crutzen, later noted, bromine is 45 times as effective at destroying ozone as chlorine. Had DuPont chosen to use bromine, the ozone hole could well have spanned the globe by the 1970s instead of being largely confined to Antarctica—long before anyone had a glimmering of the problem. It’s not hard to see what massive worldwide ozone PLANET page 46

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Sen. Graham Quits Immigration Reform (Newsmax - Inside Cover)

accused Mr. Graham of flipflopping from his stance just a month ago, and vowed to push The sole Senate Republican ahead with a floor debate working with Democrats on a anyway, though all sides have bipartisan immigration bill said acknowledged that passing Tuesday that the issue will have immigration will take bipartisan to wait until 2012, undercutting support and Mr. Graham had the drive to pass a law this year been the only Republican to step and setting up a partisan floor forward. s h o w d o w n t h a t a l l s i d e s "Others may have given up on acknowledge won't produce a immigration reform. I haven't," bill that can reach the president's Mr. Reid said. desk. The issue is among the most Pointing to Arizona's new law divisive facing Congress but c r a c k i n g d o w n o n i l l e g a l does not easily break down i m m i g r a n t s , S e n . L i n d s e y along party lines. Lawmakers Graham of South Carolina, who face fundamental competing had been trying to write a bill pressures between upholding the with Democrats, said it's clear rule of law and a desire to be that Americans do not think the welcoming to immigrants. border with Mexico is secure Immigrant rights groups and will not accept an already feel betrayed by immigration bill until that's President Obama, who they say fixed. promised to relax some He said trying to pass a bill in enforcement practices and to the face of that opposition will push for an immigration bill in doom immigration reform for his first year in office. On years to come and that the best Tuesday, 24 protesters were lawmakers can hope for right arrested for disorderly conduct now is to pass a bill in two in a Chicago suburb after they years, once the border is sat in a street to block a van secured. carrying illegal immigrants from "I believe we can do it by 2012, a federal detention center, the if we're smart and we address Associated Press reported. the big elephant in the room, " T h e c o m m u n i t y h a s h a d and that is that our borders are enough. We do not recognize broken," Mr. Graham told the country we are becoming. Homeland Security Secretary We want action, and we want it Janet Napolitano at a hearing on now," said Deepak Bhargava, Capitol Hill. executive director of the Center Senate Majority Leader Harry for Community Change, which R e i d , N e v a d a D e m o c r a t , is helping organize a series of Submitted at 4/28/2010 3:23:28 AM

nationwide rallies for May 1. He said blame extends to all parties â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from Mr. Obama and Democrats, who control Congress and should be able to get legislation enacted, to Republicans, who he said are playing political games to try to protect their vulnerable members. In the face of rising criticism, Mr. Obama has begun ratcheting up efforts for legislation this year, but Democrats need Mr. Graham and other Republicans to sign up if they are to overcome a certain filibuster in the Senate. Top House Democrats have said the House will act only after the Senate does. "There's only 59 of us," Mr. Reid said. Without a bipartisan bill, Mr. Reid's options are limited. He could bring up the 2006 bill that passed the Senate but never got a House vote, or the 2007 bill that didn't even earn majority support among senators, or he could try to craft his own legislation. But bills that fail can sometimes poison the well for a particular issue for years in Congress, as was the case with President Clinton's health care efforts in the early 1990s or the failed 2007 immigration bill. Mr. Graham warned Tuesday that that will happen again if Mr. Reid presses ahead. "I bet you everything I own, if

you bring it up in this environment, not having done anything that is going to reassure the American public that we won't have 20 million more [illegal immigrants], that you're going to crash and burn, and that [if] immigration comes up this year, it is absolutely devastating to the future of this issue," he said. Republicans said spillover violence from the battle between Mexican authorities and drug cartels threatens Americans, and they point to the deaths of three employees of a U.S. consulate and the killing last month of an Arizona rancher as evidence of the security threat on the border. Ms. Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, called the rancher's slaying "outrageous" but said by every measure the border is more secure. "The plain fact of the matter is â&#x20AC;Ś the numbers at the border have never been better," she said. "We need to keep working those efforts, sustaining those efforts, but at the same time, comprehensive immigration reform should be in our sights." Still, under questioning by Mr. Graham, she stopped short of saying the border is fully secure. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, Arizona Republicans, earlier this month called for Mr. Obama to deploy National Guard troops to the ArizonaMexico border, and a bipartisan group of House lawmakers is

making the same demand this week. Led by Rep. Ted Poe, Texas Republican, and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat, the House members will ask that the troops be armed and be authorized to defend themselves. Amid those calls, Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants continues to roil the debate across the country and in Mexico. The Mexican government issued a travel advisory to citizens visiting Arizona and to those in the U.S., while Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said he is considering a court challenge to Arizona statute. Ms. Napolitano said the law, which doesn't take effect for several months, could strain the resources of immigration authorities because the government is not prepared to detain, process and deport that many illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, national Hispanic groups have called for a boycott of Arizona businesses until the law is repealed. But the law has found favor among many Republicans. A former congressman who is running for governor in Georgia has promised a similar law in his state if he's elected. Mr. Obama last week tried to broaden his Republican outreach, placing calls to five SEN. page 43

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RNC Costs for Wooing Donors Disputed (Newsmax - Inside Cover)

wrong [because] it takes the revenues from just our majordonor program, but includes R e p u b l i c a n N a t i o n a l expenses from our entire finance Committee Chairman Michael department administrative costs, S. Steele's staff and some party postage, printing costs, etc.," officials are at odds over the Mr. Heye wrote in an e-mail organization's efforts to reel in response. money from high-dollar donors, Mr. Pullen's analysis concluded o f f e r i n g c o n f l i c t i n g that the committee lost $185,434 interpretations of the RNC's on the big-donor program, fund-raising effectiveness ahead spending $2,067,675 to take in of critical midterm elections. $1,882,241. But Mr. Heye A spreadsheet prepared last countered that, factoring in the month by RNC Treasurer Randy c o r r e c t e x p e n s e s f o r t h e Pullen found that in the first program, the RNC actually quarter of 2010, the party spent netted $322,589 from the major$1.09 for every $1.00 it raised donor outreach effort. from donors who give $1,000 or The conflicting interpretations m o r e — t h e h i g h - d o l l a r come amid continuing questions benefactors long considered the about the effectiveness of Mr. financial lifeblood of political Steele's RNC and its ability to parties. Mr. Pullen, a certified provide funding for critical public accountant and head of races this fall. Top Republicans the Arizona Republican Party, have expressed concerns about said his report calculated the RNC's internal financial revenues and expenses in the controls and at least some top way traditionally done by the GOP donors have said they will national party. give to other party organizations But other RNC officials close instead of the RNC. to Mr. Steele sharply disputed RNC Budget Committee the numbers, saying Mr. Pullen's Chairman Louis Pope, who figures for the cost of the r e c e i v e d M r . P u l l e n ' s funding-outreach effort were too spreadsheet, originally called high. the numbers "very The $1.09 figure — actually, disappointing" in a commentary $ 1 . 0 9 8 i n M r . P u l l e n ' s distributed to fellow Budget s p r e a d s h e e t — i s " b a d Committee members. i n f o r m a t i o n , " s a i d R N C "While senior staff continues to spokesman Doug Heye. evaluate this program to The spreadsheet number "is determine what corrective action Submitted at 4/28/2010 3:44:30 AM

should be taken, it is clear that major changes need to be made," Mr. Pope said. The RNC budget chief noted that part of the problem was that "programs which worked well during the Bush White House years are not effective in today's political reality of the Republican Party being in the minority." But after the RNC's fundraising operations came under public scrutiny, Mr. Pope this week sent a new e-mail communique to Budget Committee and other RNC members taking back his earlier criticism of the level of RNC expenses, saying he now thinks the administrative costs of the big-donor program had been incorrectly calculated. "Unfortunately, when the spreadsheet was prepared, the number for major-donor expenses apparently also included the actual administrative overhead for the department (salaries, office expenses, etc.), which should not have been included in the cost of fundraising numbers," Mr. Pope wrote in the new email. Mr. Pullen replied that, while he would not object to a change in the formula, his way of calculating has been standard operating procedure on the RNC for years, with no objections

from anybody. In his own note to the budget panel and RNC members, Mr. Pullen wrote, "I want to apologize beforehand about the confusion surrounding the allocation of administrative costs in the finance division on the spreadsheet for March. The allocation I used was provided by finance on a spreadsheet and is how they have been allocating admin/overhead costs for years in that division. If there was a need for a change in how costs are allocated, it was not brought to my attention while I was doing the analysis." The Democratic National Committee announced this week a $20 million-plus plan to aid congressional candidates this fall, but the expenses of both party headquarters operations have come under scrutiny in recent days. An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics — done for The Washington Post — estimated last week that overhead and expenses have so far come to $60 million for the DNC, or 59 cents out over every $1 raised. The number was even higher for Mr. Steele's RNC, which the report said has spent more than $74 million so far on administration and fund-raising costs, or 68 percent of its $109 million in revenues. In a political climate that seems

to be tilting toward Republicans, the RNC has held its own in the race for campaign cash, Mr. Heye contended. "Despite the advantage the Democratic National Committee holds by controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, the RNC has outraised the DNC in nine of the past 15 reported months," Mr. Heye said. "Moreover, when one factors in the DNC's lingering debt, the RNC has more available cash than the DNC. I would define that a success — and our majordonors program is an important part of that." But the DNC outpaced the RNC in the latest fundraising totals for March, $13 million to $11.4 million. According to a CQ Politics analysis, the DNC also did a better job at attracting the very top donors: Thirty-three individuals — author Stephen King among them — kicked in $30,400 each for the Democrats in March, the maximum under federal election law. Ten GOP donors gave the same maximum amount to the RNC. © Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Morning Bell: The Senate’s Goldman Kabuki Conn Carroll (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.)

finance works, Dorgan went on to say: “To bet against your clients, to bet against your Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:38:26 AM country, all for the sake of big The New York Times reports p r o f i t s . T h e t i m i n g i s this morning, “Politicians like serendipitous but it should nothing more than a convenient i n c r e a s e t h e p r e s s u r e o n foil, and Democrats locked in a Republicans.” Is Dorgan for s t u b b o r n i m p a s s e w i t h real? Does he really believe that Republicans over new rules to anyone who did not blindly keep govern Wall Street believe they inflating the housing bubble was have found a gold-plated one in “betting against your country”? Goldman Sachs. Democrats say Is it now unpatriotic to believe the convergence of their push that housing prices cannot for an overhaul of financial infinitely rise? regulation and a prominent The left would have us believe federal securities case against that the 2008 financial crisis was the prestigious investment firm all the fault of greedy Wall is a matter of coincidence, not Street bankers like those at planning.” Sen. Byron Dorgan Goldman Sachs who dared to ( D - N D ) a d d e d : “ I f t h e change their investment strategy disclosures at these hearings are on the belief that housing prices not the final nail that persuades were inflated. To protect against the American people to demand future financial meltdowns, the this be done now, I don’t know left wants to give more power to what would be.” the same federal regulators who But the big problem for the failed to recognize the systemic leftist majorities in Congress is risk caused by the very bubble that the American people just Goldman and others correctly don’t believe that Washington identified. In fact, one of the has any idea about why the main reasons for yesterday’s financial crisis happened or how hearing was to deflect attention to regulate our financial system. away from Washington’s role in A c c o r d i n g t o R a s m u s s e n creating the 2008 financial Reports, 64% of Americans are crisis. not confident that policymakers It was the government-created in Washington know what and subsidized Fannie Mae and they’re doing when addressing Freddie Mac that played leading the current economic problems roles in the markets at the center on Wall Street. Intent on of the housing storm. But the proving his ignorance of how left prioritized their political

goals over financial reality. Rep. Barney Frank told the House Financial Services Committee: “These two entities–Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” and “[t]he more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” And the author of thevery financial reform bill currently being debated in the Senate, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) , told CNN in July of 2008: “To suggest somehow that [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] are in trouble is simply not accurate.” Just two months later, completely overrun by bad debt, both companies were placed in conservatorship. So unable to acknowledge the government’s role in the last crisis, not only were Fannie and Freddie not mentioned at yesterday’s hearing, they are not included in Dodd’s financial regulation bill at all. Hence the need for a villain like Goldman. And what does Goldman think of the actual legislation the left is using them to pass? They are for it, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein confirmed yesterday. Quick Hits: • As Standard and Poor’s cut Greece’s credit rating to junk status, investors wonder if Portugal, Spain and even Ireland

can borrow the billions of dollars needed to finance their government spending. • Section 9006 of Obamacare force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. • Thanks to Governor Jan Brewer (R), Arizona became the first state to opt out of abortion coverage in any insurance exchanges created by Obamacare. • According to Democracy Corps‘ new analysis, Obamacare’s passage did not produce even a point rise in the president’s approval rating or affection for the Democratic Congress. • According to Rasmussen Reports, only 39% of voters favor legislation aimed at reducing global warming and 56% of Americans do not want to pay for it. Tags: financial markets, financial regulation, goldman sachs, Morning Bell You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

SEN. continued from page 41

Republican senators and sounding them out on joining the effort to pass an immigration bill. Those Republicans didn't reject the overture but said other issues have higher priority. "We really should be focusing on jobs right now. We've been doing everything but," said Sen. Scott Brown, Massachusetts Republican. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who had been writing a bill with Mr. Graham, said Tuesday that he is still talking with colleagues about the next step. But he declined to talk about his conversations with Mr. Graham. "I'm going to keep those to myself," he said. © Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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THE PICTURE: Ab Ex Dad Jed Perl (The New Republic All Feed)

moment of truth, which takes place off stage, involves discovering the work of Warhol Submitted at 4/27/2010 11:00:00 PM and Lichtenstein and realizing Red, the play starring Alfred that Rothko is old hat. Red ends Molina as Mark Rothko, is with Ken turning into the rebel bombastic stuff. Molina, bald with Pop Art as his cause. At and bespectacled, stalks around which point Rothko dismisses the stage like an angry drill him, but with an honorable sergeant. When he barks out discharge. The angry Ab Ex profundities about the tragic drill sergeant turns out to have a nature of art, he might as well heart, after all. be ordering the privates to clean The audiences who are packing the latrines. Actually, there is the Golden Theater, where Red only one private around. That’s has arrived from the Donmar the fresh-faced actor Eddie Warehouse in London, love this Redmayne, who plays Rothko’s s a c c h a r i n e s t u f f . P e o p l e studio assistant, Ken. And for succumb to Rothko’s boldface much of the interminable 90 p r o n o u n c e m e n t s , p e r h a p s m i n u t e s R e d t a k e s t o g o because they can see that all this nowhere in particular, Ken celebrity art worker wisdom cheerfully swallows whatever comes with learned footnotes. Rothko dishes out. After all, The Abstract Expressionists he’s lucky enough to be in basic really did talk about Nietzsche t r a i n i n g w i t h t h e G r e a t and the Birth of Tragedy and the American Artist. Ken may not Apollonian and Dionysian be required to tuck in the principles (although it’s never blanket on his cot just so, but been clear how much of it they there will be hell to pay if he actually read). And it is true that d o e s n ’ t s t r e t c h R o t h k o ’ s Rothko and his friends were canvases exactly right. And of furious when Sidney Janis, the course he can be sure that the dealer who was their meal resident middle-aged genius will ticket, began showing Pop Art. be plenty pissed off if Ken But John Logan, the writer forgets to replenish the studio’s responsible for stitching some supply of coffee, cigarettes, and perfectly creditable bits and booze. Ken keeps to the straight pieces of Abstract Expressionist and narrow. He aims to please. h i s t o r y t o g e t h e r i n t o a Until, that is, he decides he will simulacrum of a play, is unable no longer aim to please. His to shape these factoids into the

baroque monologues that might bring Rothko’s melancholy and grandiose personality to life. Molina—who was so remarkable in the role of the overbearing yet loving father in the recent movie, An Education—doesn’t really have much to work with here. And so the audience fills in the blanks. Although Rothko is still alive when Red finally grinds to a halt, theatergoers are all too well aware that the man committed suicide in his studio, which is the setting for the play, and you can almost feel them waiting for the blood to start spurting from his wrists. Instead, there is lots of red paint splattered around the stage. At one point, Ken discovers Rothko asleep over a bucket full of that blood red goop. We have already learned that poor Ken is an orphan, who as a boy discovered his mother and father murdered in their bedroom. Ken, you see, is a young man who is looking for a father. But Rothko, spouting dicta about the tragedy of art, is not exactly dad material. Or is he? I have rarely been as uncomfortable in a theater as I was at Red. It was not the inconclusive face-off between a damaged son and a domineering dad that had me squirming in my seat. I can tolerate a play

that amounts to little more than a series of questions, all pretty much left hanging. (Who will reach out? Who will respond? Will hurt bring about healing?) What turns this stupid event into a major affront is an act of theatrical aggression. John Logan uses the heroic drama of mid-twentieth-century American painting as a high falutin’ cover for what amounts to a series of utterly predictable skits about the never-ending warfare between fathers and sons. Strip away the hallowed names that are tossed around in the play—Michelangelo, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, de Kooning—and what you are left with is a tough-old-guy cliché and a tender-young-guy cliché, a couple of moldy scarecrows that Broadway producers have been trotting around for generations. Whoever Mark Rothko was and whatever his limitations as an artist and as a man, he does not deserve to be recycled as a swaggering bully in need of sensitivity training. At Red, art becomes kitsch right before your eyes. Jed Perl is the art critic of The New Republic. For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Girl Next Door: Melissa Melendez (Mensfitness.com) Submitted at 4/28/2010 2:00:00 AM

by Stephen Bailey | Photos by Paul Miller/ Bullz-Eye.com Print Article Email to Friend This adorable young thing was discovered at a photo shoot in Costa Rica. Her sweet smile and tight, tanned body are making her a favorite among swimsuit and lingerie photographers (and every other guy on the planet). Check out her hot gallery to see why she was a Bullz-Eye.com Girl Next Door. Click for Melissa's Photo Gallery For more hot photos galleries, check out Bullz-Eye.com [on Facebook, Digg, Reddit and more] Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Green or Not So Green? Nicolas Loris (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.) Submitted at 4/27/2010 4:23:38 PM

By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” Ecologist Kenneth Watt made that statement on the inaugural Earth Day in 1970. The “peak oil” warning has been going on long before that, but here we are ten years after Watt’s deadline and we’re globally consuming 85 million barrels of oil per day with increasing amounts of proven reserves each year. Three decades ago, proven oil reserves were 645 billion barrels; five years ago it was 1.28 trillion and in 2009 it was 1.34 trillion. Yet the push to transition to renewable, allegedly cleaner sources of energy has never been stronger. The question to ask is: why? A large part of the answer, and the justification for subsidies, tax credits and mandates for renewables, is that they will help cool our planet’s fever.

Setting aside the debate of whether our planet is in need of any remedy, the truth is what the government selects as green energy isn’t as green they promote. Robert Bryce, author of the new book, Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, explains: Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. Even an aging natural gas well producing 60,000 cubic feet per day generates more than 20 times the watts per square meter of a wind turbine. A nuclear power plant cranks out about 56 watts per square meter, eight times as much as is derived from solar photovoltaic installations. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of “energy sprawl,” including tens of thousands of miles of highvoltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities. Nor does wind energy substantially reduce CO2

emissions. Since the wind doesn’t always blow, utilities must use gas- or coal-fired generators to offset wind’s unreliability. The result is minimal — or no — carbon dioxide reduction.” But it’s actually worse than that. The intermittency of wind forces coal and gas-fired plants to operate inefficiently and actually increase emissions. This has proven to be the case in Colorado and Texas, two states that have adopted a renewable portfolio standard, which mandates that wind be included in the state’s electricity supply. A new study from the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States finds that: Coal-fired power plants are designed to run most efficiently at stable rates and are not wellsuited to accommodate the load variability imposed by the integration with wind generation. Cycling causes coalfired power plants to operate less efficiently, and reduces the effectiveness of their environmental control equipment, which together drive up emissions. Paradoxically, using wind energy in such a way

that it forces utilities to cycle their coal generation often results in greater SO2, NOX and CO2 emissions than would have occurred if less wind energy were generated and coal generation was not cycled.” Politicians can’t account for these unintended consequences that occur when trying to plan our nation’s energy future. And that’s reason enough not to do so. Tags: coal, oil, peak oil, renewable electricity standard, renewable portfolio standard, solar energy, wind energy One Response to “Green or Not So Green?” • Billie on April 27th, 2010 at 5:23pm said: there is nothing mankind can do to stop global warming and nothing they did to cause it. whether it’s coming to take us away or not, the survival will be the fittest not a carbon tax credit.

Google Search Unveils Upcoming Hulu App for Android Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) Submitted at 4/28/2010 2:27:04 AM

Can’t wait for an official Hulu application for your Android device? Perhaps you won’t have to wait too long. If you search Google for “Hulu Android,” a result from Hulu’s Labs page mentions a “Hulu App for Android devices” in the description. It could be some sort of a weird coincidence, but we’re inclined to believe that a Hulu app for Android (and possibly for the iPhone and iPod touch as well, You can follow any responses since these devices are also to this entry through the RSS 2.0 mentioned in the search result description) is indeed in the feed. Five Filters featured article: works, which is good news for Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: all you TV lovers in the U.S.. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, [via Engadget] For more mobile coverage, Term Extraction. follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: android, hulu, mobile apps, tv

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Economic Freedom: Key to PostConflict Recovery Anthony B. Kim (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.)

place, and activity flourishes from letting them all evolve and interact in the marketplace. It is Submitted at 4/27/2010 5:00:10 PM nearly impossible to predict In his latest article in Foreign what outcomes these activities Affairs, Carl J. Schramm, will bring beyond a broad trend president and CEO of the Ewing toward higher productivity, Marion Kauffman Foundation, rising standards of living, and c a l l s f o r “ e x p e d i t i o n a r y continued economic growth.” economics” a new strategy for Although there is no distinct reconstructing economies of formula through which to post-conflict countries. Pointing guarantee this “organic” but out that the current U.S. Army constructive process, a good S t a b i l i t y O p e r a t i o n s f i e l d way to start is to focus on manual “epitomizes the central- economic freedom. According planning mindset that prevails in to the Index of Economic the international development Freedom, countries with higher community,” Mr. Schramm levels of economic freedom are argues that a more strategic more prosperous, grow faster, attention should be paid to a and do a better job of reducing bottom up approach based on poverty. Economic freedom encouraging entrepreneurship allows individuals to maximize t h a t w i l l g r e a t l y e n h a n c e their creativity and productivity, reconstruction progress. fostering innovation. That is the According to Mr. Schramm, essence of entrepreneurship. “Entrepreneurial capitalism is Of course, America won’t have messy, since it is highly organic much credibility in promoting rather than centrally planned or freedom elsewhere if it is c e n t r a l l y m a n a g e d . M a n y contracting at home. As Mr. different people and entities Schramm articulates: bring the elements–from new Helping other countries’ firms to university research to economies grow may be the federally funded research–into United States’ most potent way

of projecting soft power. But such power will be effective only if what Americans have accomplished for themselves appeals to others.If the United States lets its economic performance slip or if it drifts away from the principles of entrepreneurial capitalism, it will endanger the standard that others view so highly and create the conditions for less Americafriendly views to prevail in the world. Regrettably, the ongoing retreat in America’s economic freedom is well documented, and an increasing “ culture of dependence” at home can hardly inspire others to greater selfreliance. Tags: dependency, economic growth, Index of Economic Freedom You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

PLANET continued from page 40

depletion would’ve meant. Punta Arenas, the southernmost town of Chile, sits under the Antarctic ozone hole, and skin cancer rates there have soared by 66 percent since 1994. If humans had destroyed stratospheric ozone across the globe, we would likely be unable to set foot outdoors without layers of sunscreen and dark shades to prevent eye damage. Worse, the excess UV rays could have killed off many of the single-celled organisms that form the basis for the ocean’s food chain and disrupted global agriculture (studies show that bean and pea crop yields decline about 1 percent for every percent increase in UV exposure). Happily, though, scientists did discover the ozone hole. And, despite industry warnings that abolishing CFCs would impose unbearable costs, world leaders

agreed to phase out the chemicals in 1987, and economic ruin never arrived. DuPont developed a substitute for CFCs, and ozone levels in the atmosphere have stabilized, with the hole over Antarctica expected to heal by 2050. A topic that once graced the cover of Time and generated heated congressional debates now barely gets mentioned. We learned to stay within one planetary boundary without impeding human prosperity. That should give us every reason to think we can respect the others we are now barreling past. Bradford Plumer is an assistant editor of The New Republic.

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Jeb Bush Opposes Arizona Immigration Law (Newsmax - Inside Cover)

racial discrimination and unfair targeting of Hispanics. "He said, 'My parents live here, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush my grandparents live here — s a y s h e o p p o s e s t h e n e w I'm Mexican-American. I could A r i z o n a i m m i g r a t i o n l a w , be picked up.'" making him the first top national The uproar that sparked the Republican figure to do so. Arizona bill is understandable, The new rules make policemen Bush says. But he maintains that c h e c k t h e s t a t u s o f a n y immigration should remain a immigrants they reasonably federal issue. suspect to be here illegally and "I don't think this is the proper arrest them if they can't prove approach," he said. they are here legally. Bush and his brother believe "I think it creates unintended comprehensive immigration c o n s e q u e n c e s , " B u s h t o l d reform is the way to go. Jeb Politico. "It's difficult for me to Bush favors tougher border imagine how you're going to security and permitting more enforce this law. It places a immigrants to become citizens. significant burden on local law He sees a bright spot in the enforcement and you have civil Arizona law, calling it "an l i b e r t i e s i s s u e s t h a t a r e opportunity, not a problem." significant as well." That’s because it makes clear Bush explains that after giving the need for a new federal a speech Monday night, a immigration law. Hispanic man expressed his Today Bush will be part of a concern that the law will foster conference call sponsored by Submitted at 4/28/2010 4:19:04 AM

Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform to push for such a law, The Washington Post reports. Carlos Gutierrez, who served as Commerce Secretary under George W. Bush, will also be on the call. Bush said it represents a "nationwide strategy call with key business and Evangelical leaders to share convictions around the need for immigration reform this year." Bush's comments Tuesday coincided with former Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio’s announcement that he too opposes the Arizona law. © Newsmax. All rights reserved. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Video of the Week: Billie Tucker’s Inspiring Tea Party Story Mike Brownfield (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.)

Coast Tea Party. On April 15, 2009, she and her compatriots planned for a gathering of 500, borrowed a flag and borrowed Submitted at 4/27/2010 4:30:13 PM Billie Tucker is a wife, a mom, some bunting. Five thousand a businesswoman, and now people showed up. And last she’s a Tea Partier. At last week, 7,000 attended. weekend’s Heritage Resource “The movement is growing, and Bank, she told an inspiring story don’t let anyone tell you it’s about her frustrations with the not,” she says. direction our country is headed Watch her phenomenal story and why she became motivated and tell us what you think. to make her voice heard. Tags: Billie Tucker, “All of a sudden I wake up, and conservative movement, First my country is in so much Coast Tea Party, tea party trouble,” she said. “It’s affecting You can follow any responses my kids and their future, and I to this entry through the RSS 2.0 gotta tell you, when they say feed. ‘You’re a bunch of angry Five Filters featured article: people,’ well wouldn’t it make Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: you angry?” PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Tucker was looking for a way Term Extraction. to channel that anger, so last year she joined together with five others to organize The First

Aflac Trading Slightly Higher Following Q1 Earnings Report Michael Fowlkes (BloggingStocks)

AFL) were slightly higher in after-hours trading Tuesday following the company's Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:00:00 AM announcement of better-thanFiled under: Earnings Reports, expected earnings for its first Forecasts, Good news, Wal- quarter. Mart (WMT), AFLAC Inc After the market close Aflac ( A F L ) , J a p a n S h a r e s o f posted earnings per share of insurance giant Aflac Inc. ( $1.35 for its first quarter, which

was slightly higher than the $1.32 that analysts had forecast

for the company's quarter. During the same period last year the company had earnings of $1.22 per share. Continue reading Aflac Trading Slightly Higher Following Q1 Earnings Report Aflac Trading Slightly Higher Following Q1 Earnings Report

originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Beware of Ad Creeps on the Golf Course Rick Barrack (Fast Company) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:16:44 AM

It's not news that sporting events have become increasingly branded over the years. We've come to expect a bombardment of advertisements and sponsorships at auto racing events and basketball, football, and baseball games--sports that are now modern-day billboards for advertisers like Nike, Fila, Budweiser, McDonald's, UPS, MasterCard, and Sprint, to name just a few. But from golf? For whatever reason, this pastime has always seemed more sacred than the others, more refined somehow. The serene courses, the crisp outfits, the elegant clubs, the clean-cut personas...all these elements combined to yield a sophisticated sporting experience. That all changed for me, however, while watching this year's Masters. Since when did Augusta become Times Square? Endorsements used to be limited to a single logo on a cap, golf shirt or pair of shorts, but in recent years, multiple logos have turned up on the bodies of golfers like Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Ian Poulter, Luke Donald, and K.J. Choi--so much so that they are starting to resemble Nascar drivers. And it seems to have finally reached a fever pitch. As I sat watching golf on a beautiful Sunday, one of my

opened the entire PGA tour up to ad creep. It was thrilling to watch him on the course, and all the buzz resulted in golf's viewership going through the roof. It also doesn't hurt that golf's biggest viewers are baby boomers--the dream target of every company. Older and more sophisticated, baby boomers are confident consumers who know what they like, have money to spend and subscribe to a "carpe diem" philosophy--see Fast Company's Business of Golf. Maybe this is why we're seeing ads for premium vodka, Lexus, and upscale travel destinations during golf events, as opposed to Nascarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ads for beer and Ford trucks? Of course, prestige advertisers aren't the only ones wanting to snag all that green stuff, which is resulting in all that aforementioned creep. Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-advertising; I make my living in marketing favorite marketing buzzwords universe where every inch of he's got enough to deal with and design, for goodness sake. comes to mind: ad creep. every space people pass through these days), but it's a known fact But I suppose that at the end of According to Wordspy.com, ad --and even the air itself--is that he changed the sport the day, I'm also a traditionalist creep is "the gradual expansion covered in advertising. The film forever. A kid whose star shone who holds certain things sacred, of advertising space to non- was set in the year 2054. Today, as brightly as young Michael and fears for what lay ahead. traditional surfaces such as as the proliferation of ads on the Jordan's, Tiger made golf Where will signage turn up next floors, bathroom walls, cars, and course proves, we're not that far accessible to people of all ages on the course: permanently the sides of buildings." The first off the mark. and bank accounts, and raked in tattooed on players' calves, time I heard the term, I was But why is ad creep is finding the highest contracts in golf forearms, necks and foreheads? reminded of Minority Report, its way into the most reserved history: $40 million with Nike, Or, floating in the air around the the Steven Spielberg film and conservative pastime? Well, $20 million with Titleist. In players, a la Minority Report? inspired by the Philip K. Dick not to blame things on Tiger turn, he invited in more viewers- As with Tiger's career, I guess BEWARE page 50 short story, which paints a Woods (because god knows, -viewers with deep pockets--and

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Apple Attorneys Requested Investigation of Possible iPhone Theft Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company) Submitted at 4/27/2010 9:21:44 PM

Disclosure: Up until a few months ago, I was employed by Gizmodo, but was not involved in any way with the iPhone leak. As part of an ongoing partnership, Fast Company sometimes syndicates Gizmodo stories and vice versa. First things first: for a primer on this whole situation, read our Start to Finish Timeline(which I will be updating further in just a minute!). It'll get you right up to date, from the moment Gray Powell left his iPhone on a barstool to the police seizure of equipment at a Gizmodo editor's house. Following the revelation that Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's house had been broken into by the police, lots of new and curious information came to light--not unexpected, since the interested parties in this case are our colleagues in the tech journalism field, a scrappy and able bunch. They found out that REACT, the specific

interdepartmental team that actually seized Chen's equipment, has a steering committee on which many prominent Silicon Valley companies sit--including Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, and, most importantly, Apple. Many have questioned whether Apple put pressure on REACT or on the San Mateo District Attorney's office to investigate the alleged theft of the iPhone

prototype. It was just talk, so far --while REACT has investigated based on queries from Microsoft and Adobe, Microsoft and Adobe also make probably the two most pirated pieces of software in the history of pirated software (Windows and Photoshop, respectively). Just because a company sits on the steering committee doesn't mean they're not also the victim of a crime, is what I'm saying.

On the other hand, we now have a statement that Apple did request the investigation that led to the seizure of four computers (and a broken front door) belonging to Jason Chen. From the San Jose Business Journal: Wagstaffe [the San Mateo County DA] said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last

week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated. The District Attorney’s office then referred them to the Rapid Enforcement and Allied Computer Team, or REACT, a multi-jurisdictional, high-tech crime task force that operates under the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office. That's confirmation from the source that Apple requested an investigation. It's odd that REACT was then called in afterwards, instead of Apple putting pressure on them first, but legally it's more sensible to go through the District Attorney. This doesn't indicate that the investigation was biased or otherwise compromised, but until now, we had no idea if Apple was involved at all. Now we know--they started the whole thing. Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one-you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

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Microsoft Bites at Apple, Licenses HTC Over Android IP Infringements Kit Eaton (Fast Company) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:09:49 AM

The smartphone wars have evolved from fighting for marketspace to battling over who stole whose IP in their phone designs. Now Microsoft's allying with HTC...while slightly dissing Android. Is the real target Apple? "Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s patent portfolio for HTCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform," explains Microsoft's press release. "Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC." While this apparently cements a "long-standing" business relationship, HTC has all but admitted that some elements of its Android smartphone repertoire step on patented IP owned by Microsoft, and rather

than engage in messy legal battles on the matter, HTC has merely agreed to push a few dollars to MS for every Android phone it sells. MS's deputy general legal counsel, Horacio Gutierrez tells CNet: "Competitors do not free ride on our innovations." The deal covers all Android phones made by HTC, including Google's

own-branded Nexus One. The implication is that MS is aggressively protecting its IP use, and may even go after other manufacturers who make Android phones. Apple, of course is also suing HTC for similar patent infringement--it, and MS, aren't targeting Google because while Google puts together the

Android OS itself, it's the implementation on touchscreen smartphones by HTC that infringes on their IP. So is the real target of the MS agreement with HTC actually Apple? By avoiding a complex legal battle and instead quickly settling on a licensing agreement, MS and HTC have effectively formed a smartphone

partners. As lead creative he is responsible for inspiring, directing and motivating the creative teams to develop powerful design solutions. Barrack has close to 20 years of experience in corporate identity

and consumer brand identity Barrack was a Senior Design design. He has led major design Director at FutureBrand and initiatives for companies such Design Director at LPK. as IBM, Hewlett Packard, PetroCanada, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, and Del Monte Foods. Prior to creating CBX,

BEWARE continued from page 48

we'll have to wait and see. Read Rick Barrack's X and Why blog Browse blogs by more Expert Designers Rick Barrack is the Chief Creative Officer/Partner at CBX and one of its founding

IP bloc. This supports further development of Android phones, as well as facilitating the entry of Microsoft's revamped Windows Phone 7 Series smartphones later in the year. And by slightly strengthening Android's position in the market, MS is helping challenge the absolute market dominance by the iPhone, which of course is good for its smartphone business too. As other evidence mounts that Android is beginning to chip away at the iPhone's lead, the HTC-MS deal could be seen as the further hints that the iPhone's dominance is showing a few cracks. To keep up with this news follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter. That QR code on the left will also take your smartphone to my Twitter feed. And if you really liked this story, you can re-Tweet too.

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Android Jumps Past iPhone in US Mobile Web Use Dan Nosowitz (Fast Company)

online mobile traffic, compared with Apple's 39%. The other players, by the way, don't even Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:32:57 PM enter the picture. RIM's Android is still lagging behind BlackBerry phones are in third the iPhone in marketshare, with place, with 7%, and Palm's only 9% market penetration in struggling WebOS only eked the US (iPhone is around 25%). out 3% despite a recent Verizon But according to new numbers launch. from online ad giant AdMob, AdMob goes even further and Android actually passed the separates out the individual iPhone in mobile web use this devices using both Android and month. iPhone OS. Motorola's T h i s i s a l l U S - o n l y - - blockbuster Droid snagged 32% internationally, the iPhone is of the Android traffic, followed much better established than b y t h e o l d e r H T C H e r o . Android. But here in the States, Embarrassingly, Google's own Android accounted for 46% of Nexus One managed only 2% of

US Android traffic--that might be the stat that allows us to say definitively that the Nexus One has officially bombed. As far as iPhone OS, the aging

Before the Bell: Futures Advance Ahead of Fed Statement Melly Alazraki (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:30:00 AM

Filed under: Before the Bell, International Markets, Market Matters, Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Dow Chemical (DOW), Economic Data After slumping earlier in the morning, U.S. stock futures turned higher Wednesday. Perhaps following Tuesday's steep sell-off this may have been expected. Still, as earnings season rages on, investors remained highly concerned about debt problems in Europe

and awaited a statement and an interest-rate decision from the Federal Reserve. U.S. stocks fell sharply Tuesday after Standard & Poor's downgraded Greece's debt rating to junk and downgraded Portugal's rating. The Dow Jones Industrial Average

plummeted 213 points, or 1.9%, the Nasdaq Composite lost 51 points, or 2%, and the S&P 500 fell 28 points, or 2.3%. Continue reading Before the Bell: Futures Advance Ahead of Fed Statement Before the Bell: Futures Advance Ahead of Fed Statement originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

iPhone 3GS had 39% of its OS's traffic, followed by the 2nd-gen iPod Touch at 25% and the iPhone 3G at 20%. This is great news for Android,

and more specifically Google-while it may not have as many users as the iPhone, those users are highly active mobile internet users. Google, which owns AdMob (these numbers are independent, however), is in a position to capitalize on these active users. Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one-you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Sprint Nextel FirstQuarter Net Loss Widens Mark Fightmaster (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 4/28/2010 10:00:00 AM

Filed under: Earnings Reports, Sprint Nextel Corp (S) Sprint Nextel ( S) reported Wednesday that its first-quarter net loss increased due to 1.5% lower revenue. The telecom giant's loss checked in at 29 cents per share, 8 cents wider than last year's same-quarter loss. Removing charges stemming from an increased valuation allowance for deferred tax assets

from the equation, Sprint lost 17 cents per share. The post-charge loss matched the consensus estimate. Sprint's revenue totaled $8.09 billion, better than the expected SPRINT page 52

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SPRINT

U.S. Steel: A Buy After Q1 Earnings?

continued from page 51

Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:30:00 AM

Filed under: Earnings Reports, U.S. Steel (X), Nucor Corp (NUE) United States Steel Corp. ( X), whose colleagues include AK Steel ( AKS) and Nucor Corp. ( NUE), was sold off by investors on Tuesday after the company released its first-quarter results. The stock dropped $3.44, or 5.7%, to $56.63. Volume was strong. The company is definitely far away from the 52-week low, but it unfortunately is also significantly under the 52-week high of $70.95. The one-year chart shows an up-and-down pattern that isn't necessarily for every investor. Indeed, the most recent price action has been decidedly in the downward direction. Of course, that might

mean the business is worth a look, especially when you take into account the ultimate bias towards an upward trend. Let's check out the Q1 numbers. Continue reading U.S. Steel: A Buy After Q1 Earnings? U.S. Steel: A Buy After Q1 Earnings? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Microsoft's Marc Whitten on Xbox 360's Project Natal Stephanie Schomer (Fast Company)

buttons. Natal solves that by using 3-D sensors and cameras that let you be the controller. If Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:07:58 AM you want to do the spin-kick Photograph by Annie Marie serve, no programmer has to Musselman implement the spin-kick-serve Marc WhittenGeneral Manager, button. You just do it, and it Xbox 360, Microsoft Redmond, works. Washington But Natal isn't just about Whitten, 39, heads Microsoft's gaming -- it's about all livingeffort to revolutionize the home- room experiences. Imagine a entertainment experience with sporting event -- Natal could Project Natal, which tracks your know which team you're for every move. because it sees your jersey, or "If you counted the number of knows you thought a bad call buttons in your living room, it was made when you yell 'boo.' It would send a chill down your learns about you and gets spine. A lot of people can play smarter to create a more tailored games amazingly well, but entertainment experience." others feel locked out if games involve a bunch of triggers and

revenue of $8.05 billion. Sprint added that it lost 75,000 net subscribers during the quarter. But when the company compared the results to a year ago, the telecom firm's improvement in post-paid gross subscriber additions and prepaid gross subscriber additions were the highest in five years. Continue reading Sprint Nextel First-Quarter Net Loss Widens Sprint Nextel First-Quarter Net Loss Widens originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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What does car seat “side-impact protection” really mean? Artemis Dibenedetto (Consumer Reports)

new Air Protect system. But the truth is that the words can mean different things to different Submitted at 4/28/2010 1:59:59 AM manufacturers, so the claims What does car seat “side-impact d o n ’ t n e c e s s a r i l y s h o w protection” really mean? consumers how products would The recent release of Air perform against one another. Protect™ technology from Current U.S. child car seat manufacturer Safety 1st may standards only include a frontal make parents wonder, what do impact test. side-impact protection claims by The benefits of child restraints child car seat manufacturers at reducing death and injury for such as Safety 1st, Britax, children is well documented Recaro, and Graco really mean? (71% for infants younger than 1 As car seats’ frontal crash year old and 54% for children protection improves, side- between 1 and 4 years of age), impact crash protection seems to but there is still room for be the next big area where child improvement in those numbers. restraint designs can improve to And specific statistics on sidebetter protect children in all impact crashes are even less t y p e s o f c r a s h e s . T h i s encouraging. Some data show opportunity also makes for a key that only 1 in 4 passenger marketing opportunity for vehicle crashes are side impacts, manufacturers, as side-impact but they account for more p r o t e c t i o n b e c o m e s m o r e injuries than frontal impact i m p o r t a n t t o p a r e n t s a n d crashes. caregivers. (See our child car According to data reported in seats buying guide and Ratings.) the Child Passenger Safety Fact Current and perhaps familiar and Trend Report issued by the marketing strategies that tout a C h i l d r e n ' s H o s p i t a l o f seat’s side-impact capability Philadelphia and State Farm include Britax’s True Side Insurance in 2007, side-impact Impact Protection; Recaro’s crashes account for about oneclaims that their seats are side- quarter of all crashes (23.6 impact tested at international percent) but result in higher laboratories; Graco’s claims of injury rates than frontal or rear its seats being “side-impact i m p a c t s c o m b i n e d . O n l y tested”; and now Safety 1st’s rollover crashes produce more

injury to children than side impacts. It’s also more complicated to simulate side-impact crashes for testing purposes than frontal tests. That’s because sideimpact crashes have the potential for injury not only from the forces exerted on occupants from the crash forces (such as whiplash, and other injuries), but from contact with the oncoming vehicle or interior surfaces of the vehicle cabin hitting the passenger. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been doing a great deal of research in the area of side-impact protection for children. But it will take some time to phase-in and implement. In the meantime: • Know that the manufacturers’ marketing claims for sideimpact protection are not always

comparable to each other, as each manufacturer may test differently. Also, know that those differences do not currently reflect a seat’s performance to a standardized test.• If possible, install your child’s car seat in the center rear seat position in the vehicle, which is considered the safest position, since it is furthest from potential impact sites. (For a child car seat installation site near you, go to NHTSA's database.)• Keep smaller children rear-facing as long as the weight and height limits of their rear-facing seat allow. Consumer Reports recommend keeping children rear-facing up to 23 months of age in both infant and convertible car seats, as research has shown that rear facing has a benefit in protecting children in side impacts as well as frontal impacts.

—Jennifer Stockburger, vehicle and child safety program manager Subscribe now! S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences

Just In: 2010 Ford Flex Limited with EcoBoost V6 Consumer Reports Shopping Blog (Consumer Reports) Submitted at 4/28/2010 1:59:59 AM

Just In: 2010 Ford Flex Limited with EcoBoost V6 Those of a certain age will remember ads for Reese’s peanut butter cups in which an unexpected encounter causes chocolate to impact peanut butter, bringing two great tastes together. Our Ford Flex with EcoBoost brings those ads to mind. Clearly, we really like the Flex. Its boxy (if polarizing) styling yields a cavernous interior, yet the vehicle doesn’t handle like a barge. We also really like the twin-turbocharged EcoBoost V6 powertrain that was in our Lincoln MKS and MKT, even if we weren’t so enamored by those cars overall. The EcoBoost engine uses direct injection and twin turbochargers to optimize horsepower while also providing decent fuel JUST page 54

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economy. Bringing the two together seems natural, especially since the Flex is built on the same platform as the MKS and MKT. So we bought a Flex Limited with the EcoBoost engine. All turbo Flexes use all-wheel drive, which makes sense for putting down 355-hp to the pavement. Our 2009 Flex with AWD and a 3.5-liter normally-aspirated V6 returned 17 mpg overall in our fuel-economy tests. We’ll see how this EcoBoost version compares with that as we proceed with testing. Like all Flexes, our 2010 got a telescoping steering wheel, which the 2009 model lacked. The EcoBoost version also has different suspension tuning, electric power steering, and standard 20-inch wheels. In order to get the EcoBoost engine, you have to buy a wellequipped Flex. We couldn’t find a mid-level SEL with the turbo, hence the Limited. It has a

standard navigation system and driver-seat memory feature, among many other features. Our Flex also has a giant panoramic vista roof and a trailer tow package with electronic trailer sway control. With this model, we’re getting our first exposure to Ford’s “Active Park Assist,” a $550 self-parking system that is a whole lot cheaper (and in our early experiences, a lot quicker to use) than the system in the Lexus LS. The MSRP on our Flex was $46,720, but incentives and haggling saved us more than $5,000. At that price point our Flex occupies something of a unique place in the market. Other than the hybrid version of the Toyota Highlander, most other threerow family hauling SUVs don’t offer an uplevel engine choice. That gives them lower prices when similarly-equipped. On the other hand, our Flex costs considerably less and has

Teams arrive in Michigan to begin X Prize competition

more room (and even more power) than most luxury threerow SUVs that surpass $50,000. Our first impressions are that many of us would happily skip a premium nameplate and go with Consumer Reports Shopping the Flex. Blog (Consumer Reports) — Tom Mutchler Next Steps Submitted at 4/27/2010 2:55:02 PM • SUV Buying Advice: • Types of SUVs| Teams arrive in Michigan to • SUV Features| begin X Prize competition • SUV Brands Today the race for 100-mpg cars officially began. Teams All SUV Ratings Subscribers can view and compare all SUV competing in the Automotive X Ratings. Recommended SUVs P r i z e b e g a n a r r i v i n g a t Look at the ones that we chose M i c h i g a n I n t e r n a t i o n a l as the best of the best. Subscribe Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich., for the shakedown stage of the now! S u b s c r i b e t o competition. CR’s own Jeff ConsumerReports.org for expert Bartlett and Mike Quincy are on Ratings, buying advice and hand as well. reliability on hundreds of The cars first have to pass a products. Update your feed technical inspection to verify that they are safe to drive on the preferences track and that they meet all the rules of the competition. Then, they will begin running through various tests they have to pass in order to continue in the competition. The shakedown gives teams an opportunity to run through the tests without fear of elimination; if a car fails any of the tests, the team has until June 6 to make

improvements before the knockout qualifying stage begins. There are currently 46 teams competing for the final X Prize. Half will run through the shakedown stage this week and the other half next week. We’ll keep you apprised of developments here in the blog and on our X Prize Hub as we learn more about each of the competitors.— Eric Evarts Subscribe now! S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences

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Major food companies commit to cutting salt

If Kobe Won't Shoot, L.A. Has No Shot

rss@consumerreports.org (Consumer Reports)

Jay Mariotti (FanHouse Main)

foods is a great way to get us all to more healthful levels. Right now, most Americans consume Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:41:21 PM more than double their daily Major food companies commit recommended level of sodium, to cutting salt If you’re which is 2,300 milligrams concerned about the amount of (approximately one teaspoon) of salt in some of the packaged and salt per day for most restaurant foods you eat, 16 adults—and 1,500 milligrams food companies are working to for more at-risk groups. As we lessen your concern—and your plans to work with chefs and await the federal government’s sodium intake. This week n u t r i t i o n i s t s t o d e v e l o p decision on regulating sodium companies including Boar’s microwavable Smart & Simple levels, we can take comfort in Head, Heinz, FreshDirect, 4-Minute-Meals that are under knowing a handful of major Subway®, and Starbucks joined 500 calories and lower in fat and food companies are making a efforts with the National Salt sodium. Likewise, Heinz will smart, healthy move in the right Reduction Initiative(NSRI). reduce sodium by 15 percent direction. NSRI is a partnership of more across its base Ketchup line. Do you agree? than 45 cities, states, and And Starbucks will reduce — Ginger Skinner national health organizations calories, and lower the levels of To cut down on salt at home, committed to reducing the sodium in their food. take a look these easy tips. Almost 80 percent of the Subscribe now! amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent sodium in our diets comes from S u b s c r i b e t o gradually over the next five packaged and restaurant foods ConsumerReports.org for expert and it’s not always lurking in Ratings, buying advice and years. As part of the initiative, the the extra-salty foods you’d reliability on hundreds of companies will not only cut suspect. For instance, a muffin products. Update your feed sodium in their foods, but plan can pack as much salt as a preferences to develop healthier options as whole bag of potato chips. well. For example, FreshDirect Cutting sodium in these types of

Submitted at 4/27/2010 10:25:00 PM

Filed under: NBA LOS ANGELES -- So all the celebrities and the wannabes and the mere California common folk can stop dryheaving for a day or two. Game 5 was over before the sun fell over the ocean, meaning Team Hollywood will not expire later this week in Oklahoma, incongruous as that imagery is. Turns out the best entertainment value Tuesday night was Hugh Hefner, sandwiched between two bimbos inside a Staples Center suite, laughing as he received pecks on the cheeks during the Kiss Cam segment. This on the same day when he paid almost a million bucks to help save the HOLLYWOOD sign from being devoured by urban sprawl. No jokes just yet, please, about Hef having more virility than the Lakers. Yet we'd be foolish not to wonder, even if they go on to survive the Thunder, if they're capable of winning another NBA championship in seven weeks when a battered Kobe Bryant barely can get through a day. This is a man with a right

knee that swells more than George Clooney's ego, limiting how high he can lift on simple jumpers. This is a man whose broken right index finger finally has healed, or so he says, but who still wears a splint on the digit because arthritis is in a joint. This is a man whose left ankle is in pain and who probably isn't telling us about numerous other aches. This is a man who is 31 on his driver's license but at least 35 in basketball years, having played more than 45,000 minutes over 14 seasons -- think about that -when counting postseasons and the Olympics.

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Kentucky Derby Fever Grips Joe Torre Lisa Olson (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 4/27/2010 6:05:00 PM

Filed under: MLB, Horse Racing NEW YORK -- Joe Torre is talking about his favorite doubleheader. It was beyond fine, with champagne corks popping in the late afternoon and then again a short time later, bubbly spraying everywhere. All doubleheaders ought to be like this, he remembers thinking, but odds were a day this sweet comes only once in a lifetime. The date was Oct 4, 2008, and Dodger fans might remember it as the first time the team won a postseason series in 20 years. Hadn't swept one in 45 years, either, but a clean 3-0 whitewash of the Chicago Cubs tipped off the kind of celebration Torre had grown used to in his years with the Yankees. Only this one was wildly unique, because earlier in the afternoon Torre was part of a ridiculously astonishing parlay when Vineyard Haven, the thoroughbred he co-owned, won the Champagne Stakes just

Dallas Breaks Out the Big D in Game 5 Rob Peterson (FanHouse Main)

So, somewhere between the end of Game 4 and on the brink of elimination, Carlisle noticed Submitted at 4/27/2010 9:20:00 PM some numbers that did work: 15 Filed under: Mavericks, Spurs, -4; as in the Mavs' record when hours before the Dodgers dugout and sighs. In about an Playoffs Brendan Haywood started, clinched the NLDS. hour, Torre's Dodgers will take Dallas coach Rick Carlisle including a 12-4 record when "That was just unbelievable. We on the Mets in a twin bill, and doesn't seem like the kind of Haywood joined the quartet of had a two-games-to-none lead no offense to baseball in April, guy who has many "Eureka!" Jason Kidd, Caron Butler, and we were playing at home. I but the manager's second love moments. He has the face of an S h a w n M a r i o n a n d D i r k watched the race and said, keeps creeping into his thoughts. accountant, and for the past N o w i t z k i . 'Wow, luck might be with me,' This Saturday another horse he three games in the first round That record improved to 16-4 and we popped a bottle and then partly owns will run in the series between his Mavs and the on Tuesday as Haywood's not long after that we popped crown jewel of all races, the Spurs, he coached like an defensive energy fueled a 103again," Torre says. "It was Kentucky Derby, but this time accountant, too. 81 poleaxing of the arch-rival Champagne, champagne. I'll the rail gods aren't inclined to be All the No. 2 pencils have been Spurs in Dallas. Game 6 is never forget it." so kind. sharpened, aligned and ready to Thursday in San Antonio. He leans back in the visitor's scribble. All the actuarial sheets "Eureka!" indeed. Then again, were blank and ready to be Carlisle undersold the process of filled. Every number has been how the lineup change came methodlically checked and a b o u t . I t w a s n ' t e x a c t l y double-checked. Yet, for Games Archimedes leaping naked out 2, 3 and 4, no matter how he of a tub. crunched the numbers, Carlisle saw the results add up to a loss.

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LeBron Dismisses Concern Over Elbow Pat McManamon (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 4/27/2010 8:30:00 PM

Coyotes' Dream Season Ends With Thud

Filed under: Cavaliers, Playoffs CLEVELAND -- He held his right arm like a chicken wing for the last four minutes of a closeout playoff game -- and with 7.8 seconds left, LeBron James took a free throw lefthanded because he couldn't shoot it with his right. After the game James used words that sent chills down the backs of Cleveland fans when he said in the past couple days he had an MRI and X-rays on his sore right elbow. But James also tried to calm nerves by saying there was nothing structurally wrong, he expected to keep on playing and Cleveland fans had no reason to worry. "I just want to try to get a better

'Infinity Ward Employee Group' lawsuit documents: see them here Ben Gilbert (Joystiq) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:33:00 AM

Yesterday's news that a third lawsuit had originated from the ongoing Infinity Ward / Activision breakup wasn't exactly a shocker, and a handful A.J. Perez (FanHouse Main) the team in town. Tuesday, it of revealing tidbits have sense of what it may be," James surfaced from the depths of the was Detroit's veterans like Submitted at 4/27/2010 7:52:00 PM said after the Cavs had beaten legalese. We retrieved a copy of Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel the Chicago Bulls 96-94 the latest lawsuit's full Filed under: Coyotes, Red Datsyuk and rookie goalie Tuesday night. "Cleveland fans complaint document (found Wings, Western, NHL Playoffs Jimmy Howard who weren't have nothing to be worried below in the gallery) and spent At least this Phoenix Coyotes quite as hospitable. about. I'm healthy. I'm ready, the evening scouring it for farewell is only temporary. "It was more like a hurricane and we are looking forward to d e t a i l s o n y e s t e r d a y ' s The Detroit Red Wings than a storm," said Dave the second round. dispatched the Desert Dogs, 6-1, Tippett, who replaced Wayne allegations. "They don't have any reason to For instance, approximately 21 in Game 7 of the first-round Gretzky as the Coyotes' coach panic." series at Glendale's Jobing.com just before the start of the of the 38 members of the Arena, a place where for preseason and led the franchise "Infinity Ward Employee stretches over the past 12 to a record 107 points. "We 'INFINITY Group" have already left IW, continued from page 57 months it looked like it would didn't get the pace of the game. with the remaining 17 still n o l o n g e r h o u s e a n N H L Their players came out and we sales since it debuted last participation" from MW2's employed at the studio (or being franchise. had no answer for them. They November -- a percentage "sister games," which includes " h e l d h o s t a g e , " a s t h e i r claimed to have been worked not just Call of Duty: Modern The NHL, area politicians and a were relentless." out previously between said IW Warfare - Reflex, but also complaint document puts it). All bankruptcy judge helped clear Red Wings win series, 4-3 38 group members are seeking the way for local ownership -Red Wings 6, Coyotes 1: employees and Activision, Modern Warfare 3, "if MW3 is anywhere from 10.8% ($98 likely White Sox and Bulls Recap| Box Score| Series Page u n d e r t h e " B o n u s P o o l u l t i m a t e l y d e l i v e r e d a n d million) to 13.6% ($123 million) Agreement" (the "BPA" is said m a r k e t e d . " owner Jerry Reinsdorf -- to keep to be "based on incomes earned Additionally, the suit alleges of the $900 million in profit the from MW2," though nothing that, on March 26 of this year, suit claims Activision has more specific is spelled out). Activision "made a partial earned on Modern Warfare 2 Furthermore, the group is 'INFINITY page 58 'INFINITY page 57 seeking "bonus/royalty/profit

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'INFINITY continued from page 57

It's been pretty hard, but after 45 straight minutes of arguing with ourselves, we were able to pull away from Imagine Babyz long enough to get some work done. And who woulda guessed it, the very first post we sit down to write happens to be about the upcoming Login Conference in Seattle, an event which includes not just one but two panels specifically dedicated to video game addiction. Author and psychotherapist Hilarie Cash will be presenting the (tautologically delicious) "Games and Addiction: The Addictive Power of Games," a panel that examines the correlation between addictive

gameplay and "something that is truly addictive." The second panel again features Cash, this time alongside Entertainment Science's Darion Rapoza, with discussion moderated by EEDAR's Geoffrey Zatkin, and will further discuss the first panel's subject. For those of you looking to attend (and not stand up and shout during either of the panels), more information can be found on the conference's official website. [Via GamePolitics] LOGIN conference hosting two panels on game addiction originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

payment of Infinity Ward's Fourth Quarter of 2009 Bonus Payment" (an undisclosed amount). When asked by employees "how much payments would have been had Activision not fired West and Zampella," representatives said they "would have received approximately 2.5 times the amount they were paid." This stands in stark contrast to claims made recently that IW employees who stay with the studio would receive larger bonuses. Gallery: Infinity Ward Employee Group v. Activision (complaint) Ben Gilbert (Joystiq) board of directors, where he'll 'Infinity Ward Employee Group' serve as vice chairman. In so lawsuit documents: see them Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:35:00 AM many words, rather than talking here originally appeared on We know, we know -- you read about games that aren't out yet Joystiq on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 that headline too quickly and on the phone with investors, 09:33:00 EST. Please see our immediately went into shock, he'll be spending more time terms for use of feeds. worried that the value of your doing that in private. Oh, and Permalink| Email this| mint Topps 2007 Bobby Kotick h e ' l l b e w o r k i n g o n " k e y C o m m e n t s G a m e I n d u s t r y E x e c u t i v e initiatives and projects" to the collectible card just plummeted. tune of $250K each year. Relax, folks, we're talking about Activision Publishing CEO the Activision Publishing CEO r e s i g n s , b e c o m e s V i c e Mike Griffith, known best for Chairman of Activision Blizzard lending his dulcet tones and originally appeared on Joystiq vision for the future to quarterly on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:35:00 investor calls (we'll miss him EST. Please see our terms for so!). use of feeds. According to a report at Edge Read| Permalink| Email this| Online, Griffith will be moving Comments over to the Activision Blizzard

Activision Publishing CEO resigns, becomes Vice Chairman of Activision Blizzard

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Jason Rohrer Anthology gravitating to DSiWare JC Fletcher (Joystiq) Submitted at 4/28/2010 10:00:00 AM

Diamond Trust of London, the strategy title about the diamond trade, isn't the only game from Sleep is Death designer Jason Rohrer headed to the Nintendo DS. The ESRB lists an "AltPlay: Jason Rohrer Anthology" featuring three of Rohrer's previous games, published by Sabarasa Entertainment. Included in the set are Gravitation, the two-player Between, and Rohrer's bestknown game Passage, which is also available on iPhone. This DS collection, then, will be another option for those who

want to feel terrible about their mortality on the go. Sabarasa's recent press releases list the Alt-Play collection as an "upcoming project," and confirm that it's being made for the DSiWare platform. It certainly makes sense as a download: it may be three games, but those are three very brief games. Jason Rohrer Anthology gravitating to DSiWare originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Transformers: War for Cybertron video shows Jazz, Demolishor and Shockwave in action David Hinkle (Joystiq) Submitted at 4/28/2010 1:30:00 AM

Joystiq would never condone violence; however, when it comes to robot-on-robot violence, we're all for it. It's not like they can feel anything, right? So we'd like to bring your attention to some pre-order bonuses for High Moon Studios' upcoming not-a-movie-game Transformers: War for Cybertron. Should you decide to enlist in the robo-wars early, you can nab yourself an exclusive character: Jazz, if you pre-order through Best Buy, Demolishor, should you go through Amazon, and Shockwave, if you go the GameStop route. Check out a

video of Demolishor above and be sure to head past the break to catch a glimpse of the other two. Continue reading Transformers: War for Cybertron video shows Jazz, Demolishor and Shockwave in action Transformers: War for Cybertron video shows Jazz, Demolishor and Shockwave in action originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

What it means to be a blogger (Scripting News) Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:27:42 PM

WHAT page 60

The Next iPhone Will Probably Debut on June 7 Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) Submitted at 4/28/2010 8:05:53 AM

Apple just put up details about its WWDC conference(Apple Worldwide Developers Conference) on their site. Given the recent iPhone 4G leak and Apple’s usual timing when it comes to iPhone

announcements, it’s very likely that Apple will officially announce the next version of iPhone at the conference, which is being held from June 7-11 in San Francisco. Since the leaked prototype that ended up in the hands of tech blog Gizmodo was obviously very real, we don’t expect too

many surprises. The iPhone 4G (as it’s likely to be called) will

likely feature two cameras (with the back camera improved compared to the one in iPhone 3GS), an improved display, microSIM support and metal details on the case. We don’t doubt, however, that a wave of rumors will precede the official announcements; after all, we’re talking about Apple, one of the

most secretive companies in the world. You never know what it might be hiding up its sleeve. [via The iPhone Blog] For more Apple coverage, follow Mashable Apple on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: 4G, apple, iphone, wwdc

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I think it's time to write this piece, after many many years of doing this. People debate my "review" of netbooks as compared to Apple's iPad. Who is the iPad for? I should know it's not for me (even though Apple was happy to take my money). I should evaluate it based on its intended "audience." I should think about them before I write my blog post. I should write the post they would write. I should forget about what I see with my own two eyes. That's nonsense. It's ridiculous. I am a blogger, not a reviewer. I'm telling a story from my point of view. There's a totally implicit YMMV on everything that appears on this blog. You have a different experience?

Great! Blog it. And stop trying to tell me what to say. Further, there's a myth that reviewers are omniscient and have infinite resources and know what everything's intended purpose is. That's also nonsense. The people who review these things for the newspapers and magazines would do better to just tell us what their experience is and who they are and let us sort it all out. In other words, imho, we could use more honest bloggers and less reviewers. Anyway what I said happened really did happen. I had some pictures in my camera and if I had had my netbook they really would have gone to Flickr and because I had my iPad they didn't. Really. It really

happened. Not the end of the world, or even particularly important, but I didn't say it was. There's no point arguing because unless you were one of the two other people there you couldn't possibly know. I don't claim there's any global significance to what I write here. I claim these are my own experiences, related as clearly as I know how to relate them. That's all. Nothing more. Blogging has been going on for a long time. There really is no excuse for not knowing the difference between a blog post and a review. Think about it.

Nokia N8 Captures Amazing Videos Sodium and Your Health Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) Submitted at 4/28/2010 5:29:22 AM

After going official yesterday, Nokia’s next flagship phone, the N8, keeps coming up from every corner. First, the folks at Nokia reprimanded whoever gave away a prototype of the device, (note that their reaction is pretty mild compared to Apple’s reaction to their missing iPhone prototype), warning that that particular device was a “a very early, pre-production

prototype with dated software that is not yet ready.” Now, they’re giving away some proof of the N8’s greatness in the form of a HD video captured

with the device (embedded below). Nokia claims the video has not been enhanced or tweaked in any way, warning however that this video was also taken by a device that wasn’t running final software. In any case, the video does look impressive; check it out below in all its 720p glory. Nokia N8 first HD video sample from Nokia Conversations on Vimeo. Tags: hd, N8, Nokia, trending, video

(Cooking Light: Editor's Picks)

its suspected link to obesity. Salt, meanwhile, continues Tom Collicott/Masterfile to get away with, well, murder. Click to Enlarge Like sugar, sodium chloride is a Sugar hides in plain view on common food additive, but you many food labels, as honey, don’t hear the public outrage dextrose, high-fructose corn about sodium excess that you syrup, and any number of do for added sugars. This is an n u t r i e n t - p o o r , unhealthy side effect of focusing calorie-rich, so-called “natural” on sugar and, of course, fat: We sweeteners. And sugar has good s t i l l h a v e n ’ t g o t t e n t h e reason to hide: It’s the target of message that slashing sodium big public health campaigns, intakes is crucial to better soda-taxing schemes, and antiSODIUM page 61 fructose agitation, the result of

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health. On average, we consume about 1½ times more sodium p e r d a y than the 2,300 milligrams (the amount in one teaspoon of table salt) allotted by the Dietary Guidelines. This o v e r c o n s u m p t i o n is about 10 to 20 times more than our body’s need for water balance and electrolyte function. Too much sodium is linked to high blood pressure, a major cause of heart disease. Aside from the direct link to hypertension, having a serious salt habit may up your body’s needs for potassium, calcium, m a g n e s i u m , or other nutrients to balance the load. You’re perpetually compensating for a nutrient imbalance. In part, the Dietary G u i d e l i n e s recommend generous servings of low-fat dairy products, fruits, and vegetables to provide muchneeded nutrients that offset the effects of processing excess sodium. Nor do population studies reveal the salt equivalent of the French Paradox, in which other nutrients seem to negate fat-rich diet risks. People who consume loads of salt pay a price. “In

China we see that high sodium intakes in a lean society is a deadly combination,” says Linda Van Horn, PhD, RD, and nutrition committee chairperson of the American Heart A s s o c i a t i o n . (Cardiovascular disease is estimated to account for 33 percent of deaths in China.) Meanwhile, the Yanomami Indians of Brazil, who consume less than 1,000 milligrams of sodium a day, do not experience age-related blood pressure increases (like Western populations do) and have lower heart disease risks. Though lifestyle or genetic factors may be involved, Van Horn notes this group proves that extremely low sodium intakes can support a healthy body. Even if you are healthy and have normal blood pressure, slashing sodium intakes is important, according to the l a n d m a r k 1 9 9 0 s DASH study (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension). “The study was valuable because it provided conclusive evidence that lowering sodium and increasing fruit and vegetable intakes had a

significant blood pressure response,” says Van Horn. Even participants with normal blood pressure lowered their blood pressure during the study. “This is huge because the results i l l u s t r a t e that what we call normal in this country is abnormal,” Van Horn says. “Blood pressure doesn’t need to increase with age.” It would be tough for any American to consume 1,000 milligrams of sodium a day, especially with our dependence o n p r o c e s s e d foods and meals eaten away from home, which contribute nearly 80 percent of dietary sodium. Manufacturers make c o n v e n i e n c e foods with—in chemistry speak—lots of sodium “salts,” from sodium citrate to sodium phosphate. It’s not just to add f l a v o r : “Sodium is soluble, and it’s often used to help mix or dissolve other ingredients in recipes,” says Mary Ellen C a m i r e , P h D , spokesperson for the Institute of Food Technologists. What’s attached to sodium is often the magic-maker, yielding a firmer canned bean or a crispier

cracker. If we all need to cut sodium, how do we do it? First, hold off on the salt shaker. Watch for sodium on food labels; make l o w e r - s o d i u m and no-salt products your default choices. (Swanson was ahead of the trend when the company introduced lowers o d i u m c h i c k e n broth in 1987. Now shelves are stocked with lower-sodium soy sauce, crackers, tomato juice, and deli meats.) Add fruits, v e g e t a b l e s , and low-fat dairy products to your diet. Become sodiumaware in restaurants as well— understand the levels in soy s a u c e s , ham, and cheeses. The point is not to become saltphobic. A little bit—about the amount of 1 teaspoon of table salt a day—is OK for your health. But when it comes to sodium, less is certainly more. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Supplement Guide: Glutamine (Mensfitness.com) Submitted at 4/28/2010 4:00:00 AM

An in-depth look at the popular amino acid by Lisa Freedman Print Article Email to Friend Where it comes from: Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body—despite the fact that it's not essential. Most glutamine is stored in muscles followed by the lungs, where much of the glutamine is made. It's involved in many metabolic processes, and is the principal carrier of nitrogen in the body and is an important energy source for many cells. What it'll do for you:"Glutamine has become increasingly popular among athletes, as it is believed that it helps prevent infections following athletic events and speeds post-exercise recovery," explains registered dietitian and American Dietetic Association spokesperson Jim White. Doctors use glutamine when men are in a catabolic state of injury or after surgeries. In the commercial world, glutamine is also marketed as a supplement used for muscle growth in bodybuilding and demanding SUPPLEMENT page 62

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sports. Here, a more detailed look at what it can do: • Ease trauma and burns A double-blind study published in 2003 looked at 45 adults with severe burns—some were given glutamine supplements and others were given a control mixture. The researchers reported that glutamine supplementation in adult burn patients reduced blood infections by a factor of three, prevented a certain pathogen and reduced mortality rates. • Speed wound healing in postoperative patients In a 2001, a study looked at patients who underwent elective surgery. Those who were given glutamine supplements intravenously showed improvement in nitrogen balance throughout their body, a corrected decreased glutamine concentration in the skeletal muscle amino acid pool and enhanced protein synthesis. Other randomized blind trials reported a decreased length in hospital stay in postoperative patients receiving glutamine supplementation. • Halt the breakdown of

muscles and stimulate new growth Amino acids form the proteins that help build much of the body's tissue—including muscle. During intense exercise blood and muscle levels of glutamine tend to fall. Additionally, studies have proven that, after a hard workout, muscles are torn down. To reverse this effect, nutrients must be fed to the muscles and protein synthesis must be stimulated to build new muscle. "If we supplement our body with glutamine before an intense training we allow our body to keep a high supply of glutamine in the muscles and stop them from breaking down," White explains. "This means the body can use the glutamine in the muscles to synthesize protein and build muscle mass." • Helps relieve treatmentrelated side effects of cancer Doctors often prescribe glutamine supplements to cancer patients to help treat diarrhea, inflammation of the mouth lining, sore throats and tingling fingers and toes. Positive results have been found with patients receiving radiation therapy,

bone marrow transplants and certain chemotherapies.

bonded to other amino acids. Most supplement takers prefer glutamine peptides, which are Suggested intake:"The body bonded to other amino acids and can make enough glutamine for are more stable and better its regular needs," says White. a s s i m i l a t e d b y t h e b o d y . Because the body synthesizes it, However, most studies showing glutamine deficiency is not very t h e b e n e f i t s o f g l u t a m i n e common. Glutamine is also supplements use L-glutamine found in plant and animal and not peptides. proteins such as beef, pork and Associated risks/scrutiny: poultry, milk, yogurt, ricotta and Glutamine supplements are cottage cheese, tofu, beans, considered possibly safe for eggs, raw spinach, raw parsley most men when taken orally, but and cabbage. the potential side effects of For those looking to take glutamine are unknown. Related glutamine for muscle mass, note articles: t h a t a d u l t s s h o u l d a v o i d Supplement Guide: Fish Oil ingesting more than 40 grams Supplement Guide: Coenzyme per day. Q10 Supplements are available in Supplement Guide: Creatine powder or capsule form. The [on Facebook, Digg, Reddit and powder form is often preferred more] by customers because the Five Filters featured article: dosage is bigger in one small Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: scoop compared to a few PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, capsules. When mixed with Term Extraction. liquids, glutamine powder is virtually tasteless. There are two types of g l u t a m i n e supplements—glutamine peptides and L-glutamine. Lglutamine is "free form" and not

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Success Story: Jim Murphy (Mensfitness.com)

allowing his faulty ticker to pump only about 8% of his blood. The doctors thought This strongman always had Murphy, then just 25, should heart. Just not a healthy one. have died. "They told me that The transplant he underwent l i f t i n g i n t h e g y m w a s barely slowed him down. completely out of the question by Collin Orcutt and that I just had to rest," he Print Article Email to Friend says. JIM MURPHY Handfuls of pills lowered his Hometown: Lynnfield, Mass. blood pressure and slowed his Age: 29 heart rate, Weight: 215 lbs but the meds left Murphy so Height: 5' 11" groggy, he slept up to 18 hours a Jim Murphy pulled a 65,000- day. He had a pacemaker pound dump truck, completed implanted, but his condition an 895-pound deadlift, and won worsened. Murphy needed a t h e M a s s a c h u s e t t s S t a t e new heart. Strongman Championships three He got lucky. Just four days years in a row. But when he after going on a waiting list, he helped a friend move into her got a call at 4:30 a.m. telling apartment five him one was available. "I was years ago, he felt light-headed very excited," says Murphy. "I while carrying a mere 19-inch didn't have time to get nervous TV up a few or scared because it happened so flights of stairs. He felt faint fast." again a week later during a set Four days after the transplant, of deadlifts, then again the next despite a chest full of cracked week while training. That's ribs, Murphy gingerly walked when Murphy rushed to the around the recovery room. "I hospital to get checked out. felt great," he recalls. "I knew I The results weren't good: wouldn't run into problems." M u r p h y h a d In just three months, Murphy cardiomyopathy—an enlarged was lifting, and six months later, and weakened heart. He'd also he took developed a clot that was fifth in the New Hampshire Submitted at 4/28/2010 4:00:00 AM

strongman competition. "I drove home with a big smile on my face," he remembers. Today, Murphy's the same guy he was before his old heart started to fail him, except for the scar on his chest and a new lowsodium diet. He's returned to work at his family's fireprevention business, and he's grateful to be back working out in the gym as well. "Every time I look in the mirror and see the scar," he says, "I just think 'miracle.'" Jim's Tip: Be Your Own Man "I don't want to be normal. When I think of myself, or when other people think of me, I don't want the word normal attached to my name. Not everybody can do what I do, and not everybody has gone through what I've gone through. It's just my state of mind, I guess." Related articles: Success Story: Eric Trevino Success Story: Chad Sargent Success Story: Justin Petruzziello [on Facebook, Digg, Reddit and more] Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Politics colored glasses Sarah Pulliam Bailey (GetReligion)

March 2000, Democrats made clear that he wasn’t their pick. A top Democratic spokeswoman Submitted at 4/27/2010 1:00:26 PM called the decision to appoint Maybe it’s the nature of the him—made unilaterally by thenbeast that when you write a Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Rprofile of the House chaplain, Ill.)—“a graceless, tactless, you have to give the run-down partisan maneuver.” between who appointed who Ten years later, Coughlin is still after who got mad at who. But it in the job, and there is ample would be nice to see fewer evidence that the rancor that s t o r i e s t h a t c o m e o u t o f accompanied his selection has Washington filtered through an d i s a p p e a r e d : L a s t w e e k , almost completely political lens. lawmakers from both parties Here we have an interesting streamed onto the House floor to profile of chaplain Daniel honor his decade of service. Coughlin by the Washington As the Post explains, Hastert Post. was planning to appoint another In the beginning, there was Protestant to the position, but partisanship. ended up choosing Coughlin When Daniel Coughlin was after some Democrats suggested chosen to be the first-ever POLITICS page 64 Catholic House chaplain in

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there was an anti-Catholic bias among Republicans. Indeed, listening is Coughlin’s most important task, as lawmakers, aides and other members of the congressional flock regularly visit the chaplain in his comfortable, woodpaneled office in the basement of the Capitol. Although Coughlin is the first Catholic to hold the post after 58 consecutive Protestants, his door is open to all faiths. (According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 55 percent of House members are Protestants, while 30 percent are Catholic and 8 percent are Jewish. The chamber includes nine Mormons and two Muslims.) I’d be curious how House members viewed this switch. Perhaps no one saw a difference if chaplains are seen more as a counselor than someone who gives directives from the pulpit. Still, I’d be curious what House members of other religious traditions had to say. The story also could have been a little more specific about his

religious duties. Here’s what we know: In addition to spiritual guidance, lawmakers seek out Coughlin to discuss their families, their health and even their career decisions. Beyond counseling, Coughlin’s office helps organize regular Bible study groups, as well as Torah study and a Muslim prayer service. C-SPAN viewers probably know Coughlin best for his delivery, spelled by the occasional guest chaplain, of a prayer to open each day’s House session. Coughlin often tailors his words to the season and the events of the day, whether they’re hopeful or somber. What’s unclear in the story is whether Coughlin acts as a priest to the Catholic members of the House. Does he administer the sacraments? Hear confessions? Since being nonpartisan in Washington is seen as a virtue, it’s good to see reporter Ben Pershing drawing out some tension between what’s going on politically and Coughlin’s

beliefs. Coughlin’s prayers are studiously nonpartisan, though observers may occasionally read more into his words than intended. When he delivered a recent ode to the beginning of spring, Coughlin said some Democrats thought he was referring to health-care reform. “They heard it with a slight twist that I was not really addressing,” he said. Being nonpartisan meant not weighing in even when the Catholic Church became a central player in the health-care debate and the divisive subject of abortion funding. Though his personal views are clear — “I accept wholeheartedly the teachings of the church” — Coughlin said he was able to counsel members on all sides of the debate, particularly those who were struggling with how to vote on reform. The reporter adds a little bit about his background in Chicago. Coughlin has also been mostly quiet on another controversial topic — the clergy abuse

scandals that have rocked the Catholic church in the United States and around the world. As vicar for priests in Chicago, Coughlin sometimes counseled members of the clergy who had been accused of sexual impropriety. He did the same during an earlier stint as director of the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House, a facility near Chicago that has served as a rehabilitation facility for troubled priests. I wonder what the reporter means by “mostly quiet.” What did he say, if anything? It would also be nice to get some more background information, like how Coughlin became a priest in the first place. Politically focused or not, it’s a good to see the priest in the House basement profiled. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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When to use that disputed f-word tmatt (GetReligion) Submitted at 4/28/2010 6:11:13 AM

Anyone who has followed this weblog for very long knows that, from the get-to, we have been rather upset that legions of reporters insist on ignoring the wise guidance offered by the Associate Press Stylebook concerning when to use, and when not to use, the hot-button label “fundamentalist.” All together now, let’s rise and quote the passage in question: “ fundamentalist: The word gained usage in an early 20th century fundamentalistmodernist controversy within Protestantism. In recent years, however, fundamentalist has to a large extent taken on pejorative connotations except when applied to groups that stress strict, literal interpretations of Scripture and separation from other Christians. “In general, do not use fundamentalist unless a group applies the word to itself.” So, with that in mind, let’s consider a very odd — in not bizarre — thing that happened the other day in The Politico. Yes, it has finally happened. What we have here is a case in

which a news organization had every right to use this term from American Protestant history and — gasp — failed to do so. In fact, this is a case in which the word “fundamentalist” needed to be used to add clarity to the story. Here is the top of the story: A top administrator at Bob Jones University, one of South Carolina’s most prominent conservative Christian institutions, plans to endorse a

controversial campus. Suffice it to say that the word “fundamentalist” was tossed around quite a bit in the mainstream-media coverage of that event. The key here is that Bob Jones University has always proudly claimed the fundamentalist mantle for itself, with leaders in previous Jones generations openly separating themselves from leaders — the Rev. Jerry Falwell leaps to mind — who formed public-square alliances with members of other Christian flocks. Thus, the Rev. Bob Jones, Jr., once called Falwell “the most dangerous man in America” among compromised Christian leaders. Now, does the university’s current leadership still embrace p r i m a r y c h a l l e n g e r t o active political engagement. the “fundamentalist” label? Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, Taylor, who also serves as vice That’s an interesting question. If POLITICO has learned. chairman of the Greenville City Politico folks have any fresh Robert Taylor, the dean of the C o u n c i l , e n d o r s e d f o r m e r insights into that question, then G r e e n v i l l e - b a s e d s c h o o l ’ s M a s s a c h u s e t t s G o v . M i t t by all means they need to be College of Arts and Sciences, Romney for president, even as shared. That’s a big news story. plans to throw his support to Romney’s Mormon faith raised Wait! Someone at BJU Spartanburg County Solicitor c o n c e r n s a m o n g s o m e endorsed Romney? Stay tuned. Trey Gowdy at a public event e v a n g e l i c a l v o t e r s . Five Filters featured article: within the next week. As the story noted, then-Texas Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: Bob Jones University holds an Gov. George W. Bush aroused PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, i c o n i c s t a t u s a m o n g controversy during the 2000 Term Extraction. c o n s e r v a t i v e r e l i g i o u s race for the White House by institutions, and has a history of delivering a speech on this

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CNN: Don’t reproduce or multiply Mollie (GetReligion) Submitted at 4/27/2010 5:02:17 PM

I know CNN fancies itself as a serious news source relative to other cablers, but imbalanced stories such as this one don’t exactly help them int he claim. In a puffy piece that ran on Earth Day, we got this advice on how to have a “green” love life: Hop on your bike for your next date and leave your car at home. (That means saying “adieu” to long-distance relationships.) Stop excessive spending on Valentine’s Day. (It produces way too much trash anyway.) Wear comfy bamboo underwear. Don’t be so keen on having babies. How about adopting a child instead or implementing a one-child policy? Yes, this is one of many ridiculously inane stories that one can seen on CNN in particular and the cable and interweb universe in general. But shouldn’t some copyeditor at CNN understand the difference between, say, buying only one box of chocolates instead of two and implementing a brutal policy that uses forced abortions,

infanticide and compulsory sterilization to accomplish its goals? Do they know what a one -child policy is or what it means in practice? Not to mention that procreation is an integral part of at least some religious adherents’ beliefs. It’s a good example of the religion ghosts in environmental stories such as these. And it’s not just CNN. A

GetReligion reader and mother of three sent in this story from the Portland Tribune that ran last month. It’s about an environmentalist couple that adopted some children so as not to have more than one biological child. And it engages very serious value claims without having a serious discussion about where these values could lead:

Last year, Oregon State University statistics professor Paul Murtaugh tapped into a hornet’s nest when he published a study measuring the environmental consequences of having a baby. His conclusion jarred many: that having a child is the singleworst thing a person can do for climate change, considering the carbon emissions that offspring and their descendants will produce in their lifetimes. You don’t have to be leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, to think of environmentalism as a new religion that offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.” There are religious values (sometimes competing, sometimes not) on all sides here. Let’s get beyond jokes about policies that result in killing children and into some substance. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

HOW TO: Secure Your WordPress Blog Christina Warren (Mashable!) Submitted at 4/28/2010 9:07:25 AM

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here. WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for selfhosted blogs and websites. It’s what we use here at Mashable, and it’s a terrific tool. While WordPress is pretty secure out of the box, there are always going to be individuals who want to make trouble by finding a way to crack into accounts or sites to cause damage or inject hidden spammy links. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your WordPress installation is as secure as possible. Here are some of our tips for keeping your WordPress website or blog more secure and less susceptible to malicious attacks. 1. Update, Update, HOW page 67

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Update No software system is immune to bugs and vulnerabilities. Security holes will be discovered and bad guys will do their best to exploit them. Keeping your software up-todate is a good way to stave off attacks, because reliable software vendors will fix their products once security holes are found. For web-based software, staying on top of updates is a must. Lots and lots of WordPress users learned that the hard way last September when a wave of attacks spread across sites not running the latest version of the software. Fortunately, keeping your WordPress site up-to-date is one of the easiest things you can do. For the last few versions, WordPress has included the ability to install automatic updates. Not only that, but sites are notified every time a new upgrade becomes available. If you aren’t running the latest version of WordPress, upgrade now. Leaving your site on an old version is like keeping your door unlocked when you leave for vacation. 2. Use Strong WordPress Account Passwords In addition to adding a secret key to your wp-config.php file,

also consider changing your user password to something that is strong and unique. WordPress will tell you the strength of your password, but a good tip is to avoid common phrases, use upper and lowercase letters, and include numbers. It’s also a good idea to change your password regularly — say once every six months. If you use a program like 1Password for Mac or Windows, you can store your password in your browser securely and also generate complex and secure passwords on the fly, which makes changing your passwords less of a chore. 3. Use Secret Keys in your WP-Config File In WordPress, the wpconfig.php file is the file that stores the database information that WordPress needs to connect its circuit, so-to-speak. This file contains the name, address and password of the MySQL database that stores all of your user info, blog posts and other important content. Using a secret key, you can make it even more difficult for someone to gain access to your account. G o t o https://api.wordpress.org/secretkey/1.1/ and copy the results

into this section of your wpconfig.php file if you haven’t already set up a secret key. 4. Keep Your Htaccess File in Check Using a .htaccess file, you can set access limits to certain directories. You can tie those limits to a specific IP address, which means that only people from that location can access your information. .Htaccess stuff gets pretty complex, but AskApache has the Ultimate Tutorial for all things .htaccess. This post from WPTavern also has some good tips (see tip #5). 5. Know Your File Permissions Often, hackers are able to gain access to your site because you’ve left files or folders with permissions that are simply too liberal. Depending on how you have installed WordPress, or the default practices from your webhost, the permissions for files and folders on your WordPress install may not be appropriate. The WordPress Codex has an outline of what permissions are acceptable. File and directory permissions can be changed either via an FTP client or within the administrative page from your web host.

This page details more about how file permissions work and how to change them using a number of different systems. Your Tips This guide ins’t meant to be allinclusive, but an overview of things you can do to make your WordPress blog more secure. Share your own security best practices in the comments. Safe blogging! For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Series supported by Rackspace Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why. Tags: blog, blogging, BLOGS, security, web admin, Web Development, web development series, Wordpress, wordpress security

AOL Sells ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies Stan Schroeder (Mashable!) Submitted at 4/28/2010 7:33:11 AM

It was no secret that AOL was looking for a buyer for ICQ for quite a while now, and it found one in Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies. The company already owns a portion of Facebook and Zynga. ICQ is a bit of a fallen legend; the Israeli-based company Mirabilis created it in 1996, setting the standards for desktop -based instant messaging. Still, it became quite bloated over the years, prompting many users to switch to lightweight alternatives such as Miranda, Digsby and Gtalk. AOL acquired Mirabilis on June 8, 1998, for $407 million; now it sold it for less than half the amount: $187.5 million. The full announcement is below. D I G I T A L S K Y TECHNOLOGIES TO ACQUIRE AOL’S ICQ INSTANT MESSAGING SERVICE AOL page 68

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Moscow / New York – April 28, 2010 – AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST), the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking and Eastern European markets, announced today that they have reached an agreement for DST to acquire ICQ – the leading instant messaging service in Russia and a number of other international markets – for $187.5 million. ICQ was created in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis. AOL acquired the assets of Mirabilis, primarily ICQ, in June 1998. Available in 16 languages, ICQ has more than 32 million unique visitors per month.* Approximately 80 percent of ICQ users are between the ages of 13 and 29 and spend an

average of more than five hours a day connected to the service, according to internal data. ICQ has built a successful presence in markets like Russia, Germany, Czech Republic and Israel. “The acquisition of ICQ is a strategic enhancement of our business in Russia and Eastern Europe. ICQ’s long-standing brand name and its sizeable loyal customer base together represent a very attractive opportunity to further strengthen our position in the region,” said Yuri Milner, Chief Executive Officer of DST. “As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we’re fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

“DST is a leading innovator in the Internet investment space and has a significant presence in the markets where ICQ is strong. Founded and run in Israel, ICQ has been a revolutionary company on the Internet. We wish them great success as a part of DST and will be rooting for them going forward.” *February 2010 comScore Media Metrix data For more business coverage, follow Mashable Business on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Tags: aol, icq, im, instant messaging