News laws kick in around nation on July 1

Early July is about more than fireworks, cookouts and long weekends. It's also about hundreds of new state laws.

Around the nation, July 1 marks the start of new fiscal years and the date recently passed legislation goes into effect, although states often mark their independence by enacting new regulations on their own calendars.

The laws and effective dates vary somewhat from state to state, but an overview of legislation set to hit the books Monday shows that state lawmakers took positions on the following five topics of national debate:

? GUNS: State legislatures across the U.S. discussed gun laws in the wake of mass shootings that shocked the nation in 2012. Most efforts to pass restrictions faded amid fierce opposition. Only a handful of states enacted new limits, some of which go into effect Monday. Among them Colorado is notable for requiring background checks for private and online gun sales and outlawing high-capacity ammunition magazines. At least 18 states, however, have gone the other way and loosened gun laws. Kansas laws set to take effect will allow schools to arm employees with concealed handguns and ensure that weapons can be carried into more public buildings.

? TECH: Dozens of states examined technology laws. Recently passed legislation in eight states will prevent businesses from demanding passwords to social media sites as a condition of employment. The law in Washington state also stops employers from compelling workers to add managers as "friends" so their profile can be viewed. Four states updated tech laws to allow drivers to show proof of car insurance on an electronic device, such as a smartphone.

? CARS: A handful of states have restricted cellphone use while driving. Starting Monday in Hawaii and West Virginia motorists will have to put down handheld devices. Meanwhile, in South Dakota beginning drivers will face similar restrictions. Utah also enacted limits for newbies with a law that has already taken effect. A few states have banned texting while driving. Other state laws affecting drivers will make it illegal to smoke in a car with a child, raise highway speed limits, crackdown on drunken drivers and raise gas taxes.

? ABORTION: Nationally, state lawmakers proposed more than 300 bills that would have restricted abortions, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. At least 13 state legislatures passed new limits, though two are waiting for governors to sign off. Notably, a bill that would have closed almost every abortion clinic in Texas was dramatically defeated by a Democratic filibuster and a restless crowd in late June. The Texas governor, however, has ordered another special legislative session to push the bill through. North Dakota has passed the nation's strictest abortion law, which takes effect in August, banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

?DRONES: An Idaho law taking effect Monday forbids anyone from using an unmanned aircraft for spying on another. Virginia has passed a ban preventing authorities from using drones for the next two years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Four other states approved anti-drone regulations, though legislation aimed at law enforcement in Texas isn't effective until fall.

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Not all of the measures set to take effect were matters dominating national political discussion. The following five examples of recently approved legislation show state-level updates can cover a variety of topics:

? SEXIST LANGUAGE: Washington lawmakers are completing work to strip the state's books of sexist language. References to "his" will be changed to "his or her," college "freshmen" will become "first-year students" and "penmanship" will be called "handwriting."

? JACKPOT: Wyoming residents might soon consider 7, 1 and 13 as lucky numbers. A Cowboy State law kicking in Monday calls for the state to establish a lottery for the first time, leaving a dwindling list of only a handful of states without such a prize drawing.

? ELECTION DAY DRINKING: Kentucky has lifted a ban on election day drinking. It was one of the last states with Prohibition-era restrictions on the sale of alcohol while polls are open.

? EDIBLE LANDSCAPING: Maine lawmakers this session have directed officials to plant edible landscaping, such as fruit trees or berry shrubs, around the Statehouse.

? TANNING: Dozens of states this year considered keeping minors out of tanning beds. New Jersey and Nevada restrictions kick in July 1, and an Oregon limit takes effect in January. The home of MTV's reality series "Jersey Shore" and its famously bronzed cast, however, took the law beyond sun lamps to block anyone younger than 14 from getting even a spray tan.

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Associated Press writers Lauren Gambino in Salem, Ore., and Greg Moore in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news-laws-kick-around-nation-july-1-182155218.html

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'Dexter' needs more Masuka and detective skills

TV

Drusilla Moorhouse TODAY contributor

3 hours ago

Showtime

The cast of "Dexter" -- from left C.S. Lee as Vince Masuka, David Zayas as Angel Batista, Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, Jennifer Carpenter as Debra Morgan, James Remar as Harry Morgan and Desmond Harrington as Joey Quinn -- is back for the final season, but will everyone make it out alive?

For seven seasons, "Dexter's" titular avenging angel has been getting away with murder. But Dex (Michael C. Hall) is about to take his final bow as Showtime's award-winning drama launches its final season Sunday.

Will Miami's most prolific serial killer (a high honor, considering how many predators seem to be drawn to the Magic City) survive the season? Will he finally be arrested -- caught by his own colleagues or exposed by his guilt-ridden sister? Or could Dexter actually escape?

We can't predict Dexter's ultimate fate, but here are six things we'd like to see (or in some cases, not see) before we bid farewell to the blood-spatter -- and blood-spattering -- expert.

1. Hannah returns: Dexter and his femme fatale have wicked chemistry, and it would be tragic if she didn't return to water his plants. Actually, Yvonne Strahovski's return as Hannah in season eight has already been confirmed, but the circumstances remain a mystery. If she's wearing handcuffs, we hope it involves a tryst with Dexter instead of another arrest.

2. More Masuka: Miami's lead forensics investigator (C.S. Lee) is vulgar, perverted sexist, awkward and tactless, but his quotable quips always provide much-needed comic relief during the most horrific crime scenes. And his signature snicker -- heh, heh, heh -- always draws a laugh from us (if not his irritated colleagues).

3. Less Harry Morgan: The expiration date on Dexter's interfering dead dad (James Remar) is waaay overdue. To the tune of about seven seasons. Can't this grating ghost find another killer to carpool with? (P.S.: If we see LaGuerta's spirit, we might cancel our Showtime subscription.)

4. Miami Metro's Keystone Kops learn some detective skills: Dexter has been taking advantage of these blind buffoons for years, spotting or stealing evidence while his colleagues nurse hangovers or stare blankly at the empty thought bubbles above their heads. Batista, Quinn & Co. will never be Miami's Finest, but even fine would make Dexter's deductions less laughable. (Masuka obviously gets a pass here because he's awesome.)

5. Deb commits suicide: Debra Morgan's (Jennifer Carpenter) complicity in her brother's crimes was hard enough for the lifetime law enforcer to live with. Murdering her own boss at the end of last season will probably completely break her already fragile psyche this year -- and the result may not be a terrible thing. (We won't even mention the incest story line. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's adopted, but it's still too gross to contemplate.)

6. Dexter escapes: As exciting as it would be to see our protagonist go out in a blaze of glory, it's also a fairly predictable end. A more shocking and gratifying conclusion would be to see his colleagues, friends and family react to the terrible truth -- while Dex feeds Hannah a juicy bite of steak (holler to the opening credits!) under an Argentinian sunset.

However Dexter's journey ends, we are prepared to say goodbye -- on one condition: that the finale feature an homage to every single one of his kills over the years. It's the only fitting tribute to the killer, his victims ... and miles of duct tape and plastic wrap, and the countless olive-green henleys.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/what-final-season-dexter-needs-more-masuka-detective-skills-6C10486978

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Legion Baseball: Bare, South wins first half of doubleheader

LANDIS ? Faced with 18 innings of baseball on a hot summer day, Southern Rowan coach Ben Hampton thought he might have to use a lot of pitching.

But then he handed the ball to Aaron Bare. Overcoming some early adversity, Bare went six strong innings, fanning eight and securing a 9-4 home win over Concord in the first game of Friday?s doubleheader.

The win kept Southern in second place in the Southeast Division at 5-2, 14-8 with a showdown looming Friday night at Stanly County to settle post-season seeding. Concord will be the fourth seed in the first round as they fell to 2-5, 8-12. It traveled to Rowan Friday night to close out the Area III regular season.

Southern trailed 4-1 early but Bare righted the ship with his breaking ball and held off Concord until his offense could get untracked.

?Before the third inning I was throwing more fastballs and they were hitting those good,? Bare stated, ?So I switched it to more curveballs and that seemed to work well. I knew my team would get me back in it.?

Southern finally caught Concord in the fifth with a pair of walks off Post 52 starter Justin Green followed by a clutch double to right by catcher Matt Honeycutt that tied the score. They actually took the lead for good at 5-4 on a wild pitch against the next batter.

Southern then tacked on plenty of insurance with a single run in the seventh on Dylan Goodman?s RBI double.

The icing on the cake came in the eighth when Ben Gragg drove in one run with a single followed by a long homer to left by Dylan Carpenter to make it 9-4.

Bryson Prugh was another of the hitting stars for Southern with three hits, two RBI and a run scored.

He said no one panicked with the early deficit.

?Bare did a great job and the bullpen did great too,? Prugh said. ?I felt good at the plate today and everything look so big up there today.?

Gragg had two hits, three runs scored and stole three bases. Carpenter had two hits, including his homer, and Goodman drove in a pair of runs, stole two bases and had a single and double.

?Our guys settled down and made some adjustments at the plate,? Hampton said. ?We went backside a little bit and moved the runners. That was really good to see.?

But Hampton saved his highest praise for Bare and his pitching success.

?It had been a while since Bare pitched but he comes to work everyday ready to go,? Hampton said. ?If he gets that curve ball dialed in like he did today he can keep them off balanced.?

The eight strikeouts by Bare were a bonus for Southerhn since he normally is a ground-ball pitcher. But at one point in the middle innings, he struck out five in a row and retired nine of 10 batters.

Southern then got three solid innings of relief from three different hurlers. Billy Winecoff handled the seventh on one hit then Blake Cauble got three quick outs in the eighth. Austin Bracewell closed it out in the ninth, ending the game on a double play when he snared a line drive and whirled to catch the runner off second base.

Three errors by Southern?s defense helped Concord take its 4-1 lead in the third, as two of the runs were unearned. Jake Barbee and Parker Henderson had the key hits. But after that, the momentum swung completely back to the host team.

?We just put forth no effort,? Concord coach Tommy Smalls said of his team letting the lead slip away. ?We just came out here today and were just going through the motions. I hope they wake up and get ready for tonight at Rowan.?

?

NOTES: Both teams were forced to play two on the final day due to a rainout the night before. ... Southern?s second game at Stanly Friday night determined who would get second seed and home field advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

Source: http://www.salisburypost.com/article/20130629/SP02/130629692/1009/rss03/legion-baseball-bare-south-wins-first-half-of-doubleheader?source=RSS

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Afghan museum on the mend but long way to go

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Looters stole tens of thousands of artifacts from the National Museum of Afghanistan during the country's civil war in the 1990s, and then thousands more were destroyed by the Taliban when they took power.

Now the museum is slowly coming back to life, helped by millions of dollars in U.S. and other foreign aid. Every day 300 to 400 visitors a day come to see the collections of sculptures, jewelry, coins and other artifacts dating from the Stone Age through the 20th century.

A new exhibit, "The 1,000 cities of Bactria," focuses on a northern region of Afghanistan that accumulated great wealth, thanks to its location along the Silk Road and several other important trade routes from China and India.

But the exhibit won't include any of the legendary "Bactrian gold," a collection of tens of thousands of gold and silver coins, crowns and jewelry more than 2,000 years old ? because the museum lacks the security measures to keep it safe. Instead the collection travels the world, already displayed at the British Museum in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and other institutions. It is now at the Melbourne Museum in Australia.

"There were a lot of problems, but year by year we're trying to solve these," director Omra Khan Masoudi said on a tour of the museum on Friday. "Now it's starting to look like a museum."

The two-floor museum is across the street from Kabul's famous Darul Aman Palace, which still lies in ruins from fierce fighting in the area in the early 1990s during the civil war. The museum was also badly damaged in the fighting, and in the chaos some 70 percent of its collection ? about 70,000 pieces ? was lost to looting.

With the help of foreign governments, some 9,000 of those artifacts have been recovered so far from the U.S., Britain, Germany and elsewhere.

Despite the losses, the collection is still impressive.

At the front door, a second century limestone statue of a Kushan Empire prince greets visitors ? missing its head from devastation wrought under the Taliban in 2001 when they embarked on a campaign to destroy pre-Islamic art.

Five wooden sculptures from Nuristan dating to the 18th century, each about two meters (five to six feet) tall, loom over the end of the museum's great hall, and a special exhibit on Buddhism in Afghanistan contains some of the first examples of sculptures depicting Buddha.

"I believe the National Museum of Afghanistan can be one of the richest museums in the region, or in the world," Masoudi said.

Some $3 million from the Afghan government and another $5 million from the U.S. Embassy, as well as donations from Italy, Japan and the Netherlands, have helped bring the museum to the state it is in today.

Another $3 million project funded by the U.S. State Department involves experts from the University of Chicago helping to catalog and document all of the museum's inventory, after some 90 percent of object records were lost during the years of turmoil.

But restoration can only go so far. Frequent power cuts, issues with heating and lighting and ? above all else ? insufficient security mean the museum needs a new building, Masoudi said.

Plans are already drawn up, and the museum is planning on embarking next year on a capital campaign to raise the $30 million needed for the construction.

That's why the Bactrian gold, which had been hidden and thought lost until resurfacing in 2003, is currently more valuable abroad than at home, because it raises interest in the museum.

"This exhibits shows the other face of Afghanistan," Masoudi said. "It is an ancient civilization with its own unique art ? it opens a window for us to the other nations."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afghan-museum-mend-long-way-105952682.html

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the potential of collectible trading card games to teach business

I recently stumbled upon one of the latest entries to the Wizards of the Coast?s transmedial world that is the Magic: The Gathering franchise. I have a history with MtG, although it is a very small one. I have played the game for a year when I was about 13 years old. My impression of it was that it was a highly enjoyable and strategically deep game, that costed a ton of money (that I was not able to invest into it). Also, it is important to realize here that I played the game somewhat isolated since it was a very niche hobby in the part of Belgium where I lived, and there were no tournaments, trading events or shop selling single cards anywhere near. As a result, the only way I could ever get an elusive Black Lotus, for example, would be by finding it in a booster pack. So needless to say that MtG died out for me as I decided that there were more enjoyable games to spend money on (in my situation back then).

As time went on I played the 1997 Microprose game and the more recent Duel of the Planeswalkers for Playstation 3 a bit, but did not find them as fun as playing with actual people. I also wanted to give MtG: Online a try, but decided not to do so since I thought that it would cost a lot of money to build a reasonable deck. And then I saw MtG: Tactics on Steam and decided to have a quick peak, simply to see how well they managed to blend a turn-based tactics game (e.g. Heroscape, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.) with the original card game.

To answer that question briefly (because that is probably not why you are reading this considering the title of this post), they did a decent job. The card game part is brilliant, the tactics part is a bit thin and could be improved (e.g. by adding a more intuitive line of sight, diminishing the power of the random critical hits, etc.), but I would rate it an 8 out of 10 game, which matches its score on?Metacritic?if you?d deduct extra points for the terrible interface, outdated graphics and some annoying bugs. If you like mild tactics games and MtG then it is definitely work checking out. I would just give it a try to see the amazing MtG artwork come alive on the screen.

So what about the business skills, Bob? I am glad you asked. When I started playing the game, I liked it quite a bit, but I was still worried about the money it would cost me to keep playing. After all, free to play micro-payment games are seldomly, well? free to play. Reading the comments on Metacritic confirms this. For example, Aquila noted how:

?The free to play part is shockingly short. Dishonest marketing where people will trap for spending huge amounts of money. And a HUGE pay to win factor is present. So don?t trap for it people! But the game itself is fun if it was normally priced it will be a between 6 and 8. (Aquila, Metacritic)?

Normally, that would turn me away from the game, but I enjoyed the game enough to see if I could find a loop. After all, in Warstorm, another TCG I once played, I had managed to become a free player with a few competitive decks and that game sure was very tight in terms of its economic system. MtG: Tactics is a lot more flexible towards the amount of money a player needs to spend to enjoy the game. Here is what I found:

• In-game gold can be acquired by completing daily missions, up to 14 gold per day.
• Boosters can only be bought by paying $3.
• Boosters can also be acquired by defeating at least one opponent in a tournament that costs 20 in-game gold.
• Singles can be bought and sold in an auction house.
• Players are allowed to trade cards and in-game gold.

So that means that if you use tournaments as your main income of cards, that you can play a tournament every two days. The cards you win there can then be sold at the auction house for more in-game gold, potentially creating a positive feedback loop. Unfortunately, you have to defeat an opponent to convert 20 gold into a booster, so that will difficult without already having many good cards.

However, the MtGT community realized that this would make the game a lot less accessible for people who want to play it casually, and has made it very common for the winner of round one to refund the loser?s 20 in-game gold. After all, selling off the cards you do not need from your free booster easily nets more than 20 in-game gold.

Figuring all this out seems like an interesting exercise for economy students in secondary school. I?ll admit that this is not exactly the same as writing up a business model, but I do see some potential here. Another ? albeit more obvious ? application of the game is in its trading aspects. I have recently attended a session on negotation techniques at an empty moment at a conference, and it is remarkable how those techniques have paid off in MtG: Tactics.

So this could be an interesting topic for a master?s thesis or design research project. Based on my experiences with MtG: Tactics, I would therefore say that there is a lot of potential in developing a ?homework? trading card game for secondary school, in particular if the game itself could be a learning experience as well (such as?Elementeo). Economy teachers could use it to study the economic system that grows from within the game, art teachers could let students design their own cards, math teachers could use the game to teach probabilities, language teachers could let students write stories within the game world, and so on.

You can see more of Bob De Schutter?s writing?here

?

Tags: Belgium, Collectible card game, Elementeo, Final Fantasy Tactics, Magic The Gathering, Metacritic, Warstorm, Wizards of the Coast

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Source: http://aims.muohio.edu/2013/06/27/the-potential-of-collectible-trading-card-games-to-teach-business-and-negotiation-skills/

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U.S. suspends trade benefits for Bangladesh over safety

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama cut off long-time U.S. trade benefits for Bangladesh on Thursday in a mostly symbolic response to conditions in the country's garment industry that have cost more than 1,200 lives in the past year.

The U.S. move does not directly affect Bangladesh's multi-billion-dollar clothing exports, since garments are not eligible for U.S. duty cuts. But it could prompt the European Union into similar action, which would have a bigger impact as Bangladesh's clothing and textiles exports to the EU are duty-free.

"I have determined that it is appropriate to suspend Bangladesh ... because it is not taking steps to afford internationally recognized worker rights to workers in the country," Obama said in a statement.

The government in Bangladesh said it did not expect the move to have an immediate impact on business but feared it would hurt U.S. investment in the country over time.

"We are desperately trying to upgrade the situation of our garment factories and we expect assistance, not punitive action," said H.T.Imam, government adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The factories came under scrutiny after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in April that killed 1,132 people and the Tazreen factory fire in November that killed 112.

"This was not a decision taken lightly," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters. "Our goal, of course, is not only to see Bangladesh restore its eligibility for (the trade) benefits, but to see Bangladeshi workers in safe, appropriate work situations."

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said the decision sent an important message to countries that receive duty-free access to the U.S. market under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program.

"Countries that tolerate dangerous - and even deadly - working conditions and deny basic workers' rights, especially the right to freedom of association, will risk losing preferential access to the U.S. market," Trumka said.

It also puts American companies on notice they must take meaningful steps to improve conditions for Bangladesh's factory workers, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement.

"No one will want to wear clothing that is ?Made in Bangladesh' if it is made on the blood of workers. It's time for American industry to show leadership and work with their European counterparts on a global standard for safety."

U.S. HEAVILY TAXES CLOTHING FROM BANGLADESH

Suspending Bangladesh from the GSP program will increase U.S. duties on an array of products the country exports to the United States, such as tobacco, sporting equipment, porcelain china, plastic products and a small amount of textile products.

"I wonder why the U.S. government does not ask U.S. buyers to offer us a better price instead of deciding to squeeze us further," said K.M.Iqbal Hossain, general secretary of the Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

"This will only make things worse for workers even in other sectors." Hossain said taxes for the plastics industry would rise by 10 percent. Bangladesh exports plastic accessories such as garment clips and hangers among others.

The GSP program was created in 1976 to help economic development in the world's poorest countries and to reduce import costs for U.S. companies.

In 2012, Bangladesh was spared about $2 million in U.S. duties on about $35 million worth of goods under the GSP program, but it paid about $732 million in U.S. duties on $4.9 billion of clothing exports not covered by the program, said Ed Gresser, a trade analyst with the GlobalWorks Foundation.

An EU decision to suspend trade benefits would have far more impact. EU officials raised the possibility of suspension in early May in the hope of prodding Bangladesh into action.

The EU imported roughly 9.2 billion euros ($12.13 billion) of goods from Bangladesh last year, according to data from the EU's executive branch, the European Commission.

Clothing and textile products ranging from towels and bedding accounted for almost 93 percent of those goods.

EU and Bangladeshi officials will meet in Geneva in July for talks aimed at improving safety conditions in Bangladesh and preserving the country's trade benefits.

Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association President Mohammad Atiqul Islam said it was struggling to improve working conditions in the country and hoped for a better judgment from the European Union.

PETITION FILED IN 2007

The United States' own review dates back to 2007, when the AFL-CIO, the main U.S. labor group, first filed a petition asking that Bangladesh's trade benefits be revoked.

Despite the relatively small volume of trade affected by the U.S. decision, Froman said Bangladeshi officials put great value on remaining in the program.

"We will be staying very much in direct and continuous contact with the government of Bangladesh as they take additional actions on workers rights and workers safety," Froman said. "We'll review their status at the appropriate time."

European retailers have responded to the two tragedies by signing an agreement to promote worker safety in Bangladesh, but many U.S. retailers have balked at accord, saying it gives unions too much control over ensuring workplace safety.

They have been working instead with former Maine U.S. senators George Mitchell, a Democrat, and Olympia Snowe, a Republican, on an alternative plan to improve fire and safety regulations.

The effort is being coordinated by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

"At this point only a few final details remain to be worked out and agreed upon," BPC President Jason Grummet said earlier this week in an email. "We remain on track to complete the process by early July."

(Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir and Nandita Bose in Dhaka; Editing by Vicki Allen, Mary Milliken and Nick Macfie; doug.palmer@thomsonreuters.com; 202 898 8341; Reuters Messaging: doug.palmer.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-suspends-trade-benefits-bangladesh-over-safety-071700173.html

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Imagination can change what we hear and see

June 27, 2013 ? A study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows, that our imagination may affect how we experience the world more than we perhaps think. What we imagine hearing or seeing "in our head" can change our actual perception. The study, which is published in the scientific journal Current Biology, sheds new light on a classic question in psychology and neuroscience -- about how our brains combine information from the different senses.

"We often think about the things we imagine and the things we perceive as being clearly dissociable," says Christopher Berger, doctoral student at the Department of Neuroscience and lead author of the study. "However, what this study shows is that our imagination of a sound or a shape changes how we perceive the world around us in the same way actually hearing that sound or seeing that shape does. Specifically, we found that what we imagine hearing can change what we actually see, and what we imagine seeing can change what we actually hear."

The study consists of a series of experiments that make use of illusions in which sensory information from one sense changes or distorts one's perception of another sense. Ninety-six healthy volunteers participated in total.

In the first experiment, participants experienced the illusion that two passing objects collided rather than passed by one-another when they imagined a sound at the moment the two objects met. In a second experiment, the participants' spatial perception of a sound was biased towards a location where they imagined seeing the brief appearance of a white circle. In the third experiment, the participants' perception of what a person was saying was changed by their imagination of a particular sound.

According to the scientists, the results of the current study may be useful in understanding the mechanisms by which the brain fails to distinguish between thought and reality in certain psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Another area of use could be research on brain computer interfaces, where paralyzed individuals' imagination is used to control virtual and artificial devices.

"This is the first set of experiments to definitively establish that the sensory signals generated by one's imagination are strong enough to change one's real-world perception of a different sensory modality" says Professor Henrik Ehrsson, the principle investigator behind the study.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Karolinska Institutet.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christopher?C. Berger, H.?Henrik Ehrsson. Mental Imagery Changes Multisensory Perception. Current Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.06.012

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/SDPHCPJBUGM/130627125156.htm

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Large dead zone forming in the Gulf

June 27, 2013 ? Ocean experts had predicted a large "dead zone" area in the Gulf of Mexico this year, and according to the results from a Texas A&M University researcher just back from studying the region, those predictions appear to be right on target.

Steve DiMarco, professor of oceanography and one of the world's leading experts on the dead zone, says he and a Texas A&M team surveyed areas off the Texas-Louisiana coast last week and found large areas of oxygen-depleted water -- an area covering roughly 3,100 square miles, or about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

"We found hypoxia (oxygen-depleted water) just about everywhere we looked," DiMarco reports.

"The most intense area is where you would expect it -- off the Louisiana coast south of Atchafalaya Bay and Grande Isle, La. But we also found significant amounts off High Island and near Galveston. The farther south we went, the less we found hypoxia in the water column, but we still found plenty of depleted oxygen waters up to just west of Freeport.

"There is no doubt there is a lot of hypoxia in the Gulf this year."

Hypoxia occurs when oxygen levels in seawater drop to dangerously low levels, and persistent hypoxia can potentially result in fish kills and harm marine life, thereby creating a "dead zone" in that particular area.

Such low levels of oxygen are believed to be caused by nutrient pollution from farm fertilizers as they empty into rivers such as the Mississippi and eventually into the Gulf, or by soil erosion or discharge from sewage treatment plants. The size of the zone has been shown to be influenced by the nutrient runoff, volume of freshwater discharged, and prevailing winds, which controls the freshwater river plume's movement.

The Mississippi is the largest river in the United States, draining 40 percent of the land area of the country. It also accounts for almost 90 percent of the freshwater runoff into the Gulf of Mexico.

Last year, with much of the Midwest suffering through its worst drought in 100 years, the dead zone measured only 1,580 square miles.

DiMarco's research on the dead zone is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), as part of its long-term commitment to advancing the science to inform management practices aimed at mitigating the hypoxic zone.

"While we await additional data from the entire summer, these early findings start to validate our prediction that we could see one of the largest dead zones ever in the Gulf of Mexico this July," said Robert Magnien, Ph.D., center director at NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.

"This is further confirmation of the link between upstream nutrient management decisions and the critical habitats and living resources in the Gulf."

DiMarco has made 28 research trips to investigate the dead zone since 2003. His cruise this year carried 10 investigators from Texas A&M and Texas A&M at Galveston and included two research scientists, Matthew Howard and Ruth Perry, five graduate students, Laura Harred, Jordan Young, Yan Zhao, Heather Zimmerle, and Nicole Zuck, and two marine technicians, Eddie Webb and Andrew Dancer (Geochemical and Environmental Research Group). On shore investigators include Lisa Campbell, Wilford Gardner, Shari Yvon-Lewis, and Ethan Grossman , all from Texas A&M, and Antonietta Quigg from Texas A&M-Galveston.

DiMarco says the size of the dead zone off coastal Louisiana has been routinely monitored since 1985. Previous research has also shown that nitrogen levels in the Gulf related to human activities have tripled over the past 50 years.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/mi_4sUh8--0/130627161358.htm

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Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play edition hands-on (video)

It's probably not a huge stretch to say that Samsung's Galaxy S 4 running stock Android was the biggest surprise to come out of Google I/O last month. The handset -- officially called Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play edition -- is now on sale in the Play store for $649 alongside a special version of the HTC One. Spec-wise, the phone is identical to AT&T's 16GB model and supports the same bands (including LTE). It's powered by Qualcomm's 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor with 2GB or RAM and features a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, 13-megapixel camera with flash, removable 2600mAh Li-ion battery and microSD expansion. While we briefly handled the phone at I/O, it wasn't until yesterday that we got to spend some quality time with it. Hit the break for our first impressions and hands-on video.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play edition hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, Google

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/26/samsung-galaxy-s-4-google-play-edition-hands-on-video/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Compulsory insurance products and you - Vanguard News

By ROSEMARY ONUOHA

The National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, in 2010 came up with the Market Development and Restructuring Initiative, MDRI, as part of efforts to boost insurance penetration in the country. Part of the objectives of the MDRI is to enforce the compulsory insurance under the Insurance Act of 2003. But so far, greater number of the general public is yet to buy into the initiative.

The reason is not farfetched.? The Nigerian public to a very large extent has a negative perception about insurance. Although the sector is changing for the better, it has not been easy to convince Nigerians.

Unfortunately though, this poor perception is negatively affecting the growth of the sector, it is high time Nigerians began to see insurance in a new light.

*Pensioners queuing for verification

Oftentimes, Nigerians say that there is no value attached to insurance, but the truth is that insurance offers a lot of value.

Take for instance, people think that putting on the seat belt in a car is to prevent law enforcement agents from arresting them, whereas the purpose is to save lives.

There is no gainsaying the obvious that the loss of confidence from the general public in the insurance sector is as a result of indiscipline.

Insurance operators on their part, know that indiscipline and unprofessionalism have impacted negatively on their businesses over the years, as such, are employing all positive means to? win back the confidence of the general public.

An insurance practitioner once said ?We insurance practitioners are not disciplined professionals and as long as we remain indisciplined, some of those practices that we come out and criticise openly and go back to? privately will continue.?

The compulsory insurances
Compulsory insurances are those classes of insurance made compulsory by law, with the objective of providing protection to third parties and the general public.? The following types of insurance are compulsory in Nigeria:

. Builders Liability ? under the Insurance Act 2003/under the Lagos State Building Control Law 2010
. Construction All Risks
. Occupiers Liability ? under the Insurance Act 2003 and Lagos State Law
. Employers Liability ? (Group Life) ? under the Pension Reform Act 2004
. Healthcare Professional Indemnity ? under the NHIS Act 1999
. Motor Third Party Liability ? under the Insurance Act 2003

Builders Liability Insurance
This type of insurance requires that all owners or contractors of buildings under construction (more than 2 floors), must purchase to provide compensation in event of bodily injury, death and property damage to workers at construction sites and affected members of the public in the event of collapse of the building and other construction risks. The penalty for non-compliance is N250, 000 plus three years imprisonment. Record of conviction, sealing-off and demolition of the building are the penalties provided under the federal and Lagos State laws.

Occupiers Liability Insurance
This type of insurance requires that all owners or occupiers of public buildings, whether private or public, to provide under the National Insurance Act 2003 and the Lagos State Building Control Law 2010. A ?public building? is any building that is not 100 per cent used by the owner for residential purposes. Public buildings include tenement houses, hostels, residential buildings occupied by tenants, lodgers or licensees, and any other building to which members of the public enter and exit for the purpose of educational, recreational or medical services (e.g. schools, cinemas, hospitals, malls, petrol stations, etc).

Occupiers Liability Insurance provides compensation in events of bodily injury, death and property damage to the business users and members of the public in the event of building collapse, fire, earthquakes, storm or flood. The penalty for non-compliance is N100, 000 plus one year imprisonment, and sealing-off or demolition of the building under the federal and the Lagos State laws.

Employer?s Liability (Group Life) Insurance
This type of insurance requires that all employers of labour with more than four employees are required to have under the Pension Reform Act 2004. The law requires the employers have insurance that will provide for compensation in the event of death, disappearance, disability, or critical illness suffered by staff while in service and to subsidize pension provision in the event of mental or physical disability.

This law applies to both public and private sector employees. This means that employees (and their families) have the right to demand compensation and payment from their employers in the event of injury or death. The penalty for non-compliance with this law is N250,000, record of conviction, and in addition the place of business may be sealed up.

Healthcare Professional Indemnity Insurance
This type of insurance requires that all licensed health care providers and medical practitioners (such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc) are required to have under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) 1999. The law? have insurance that will protect their patients in case of accidents or fatalities (death) resulting from professional negligence.

This type of insurance provides compensation to patients and their relatives in the event of involuntary murder, disability, shock and injury suffered by patients as a result of the negligence of Health Care Providers. The penalty for non-compliance with this law is a possible revocation of licence by the National Health Insurance Council, a record of conviction, and sealing-off of the premises.

Third Party Motor Liability Insurance
This is the minimum insurance that all owners and drivers of motor vehicles, motorcycles and special type vehicles plying the Nigerian roads are required to have under the National Insurance Act 2003. The third party motor liability insures the motor vehicle against liability as to death, bodily injury or damage to property of a third parties arising from the use of the vehicle. The penalty for non-compliance is a fine of up to N250,000 plus one year imprisonment.

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/06/compulsory-insurance-products-and-you/

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Paul Ryan: 'Legal immigration is good for America' - TODAY'S TMJ4

By Associated Press and Jaclyn Brandt

CREATED Jun. 25, 2013 - UPDATED: Jun. 25, 2013

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Paul Ryan says the Senate's advancement of stronger border security provisions makes it more likely that immigration reform will pass the House and become law.

The House "will do its own legislation," Ryan said, and won't take up the Senate bill if it is passed this week. But the Wisconsin Republican said the stronger border measures the Senate advanced Monday are more in line with the views of House Republicans.

Ryan told CBS' "This Morning" on Tuesday that "the majority of Republicans support the border security."

Monday's Senate advancement of a provision doubling the number of border patrol agents and calling for hundreds of miles of new fencing along the border with Mexico "helps make this final passage even more likely," Ryan said.

He told the CBS show that, "legal immigration is good for America."

Source: http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/212891771.html

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Fact and Fiction in the NSA Surveillance Scandal

Protesters supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency, hold a photo of himduring a demonstration in Hong Kong on June 13, 2013. Snowden's made a splash in the media, but has he told the truth?

Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters

For years the National Security Agency has successfully shielded its surveillance programs from any real public scrutiny. But in the past few weeks, its controversial spying efforts have been thrust into the international spotlight following an unprecedented leak of top-secret documents.

Many important details have been disclosed?so many, in fact, that you might have lost track. We have learned that the NSA is collecting millions of Americans? phone records on a daily basis, that it operates a program called PRISM involving the surveillance of Internet communications, and that in some cases the agency can ?incidentally? sweep up Americans? emails and phone calls without a specific warrant and store them for up to five years.

But parts of the initial reports have changed, some details are disputed, and a number of follow-up stories have included crucial facts that have not received as much attention as the big scoops by the Guardian and the Washington Post.

Below, you can find a list of some of the key revelations along with an analysis of the current status of each?including claims, counterclaims, and everything in between. We will update this page with the latest in order to keep as comprehensive a record as possible. If there are any particular details we?ve missed that you think are worth inclusion, please add suggestions in the comments.

Claim: The NSA has ?direct access? to tech companies? servers (the Washington Post and the Guardian, June 6).

Status: There have been several clarifications to this key claim since the initial reports. It was derived from leaked secret NSA PowerPoint slides that said a program named PRISM had enabled emails, chats, and other private user data to be collected for surveillance ?directly from the servers? of companies including Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. This seemed to imply that the NSA had unfettered covert access to sift through these companies? servers whenever it felt like it.

But following a string of ?direct access? denials from the named companies, it now appears that PRISM instead functions as a portal used by the NSA to request that companies turn over specific data about particular overseas groups or individuals under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Google, for instance, says it transfers the data to the NSA using a fairly conventional file transfer system or by hand. It is still not clear exactly how much data is turned over, but Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook have published vague details suggesting several thousand user accounts could be implicated in FISA-PRISM surveillance during any given six-month period.

Edward Snowden heads (out of five): Two and a half. The initial reporting over-egged the scale of the NSA?s PRISM program, but the story has had a powerful and valuable impact by boosting surveillance transparency and exposing the companies helping the agency tap into foreigners? data.

The claim: The NSA is collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily, including location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls (the Guardian, June 5).

Status: Many more key details have since emerged since the publication of this report, the first story in the Guardian?s explosive ?NSA Files? series. The British newspaper revealed the existence of a secret court demanding a business subsidiary of Verizon to turn over the daily phone records of all of its customers over a three-month period from April 25 through July 19. But follow-up reporting by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal has revealed that the Verizon court order was not a one-off. It was in fact issued as part of a broader program that has been ongoing for seven years, reportedly since May?24, 2006, and that also involved Sprint Nextel, AT&T, and Bell South. The NSA stores the billions of phone records on a database called MAINWAY, the Washington Post reported, though intelligence officials say the agency chooses not to collect location data. The agency also does not gather records directly from Verizon Wireless or T-Mobile because of their foreign ties, but believes it is able to capture and store ?99 percent of U.S. phone traffic because nearly all calls eventually travel over networks owned by U.S. companies that work with the NSA,? according to the Wall Street Journal. This means that the NSA collects Verizon business customers? records directly, but collects Verizon Wireless customers? data by proxy by getting the information as it passes over other networks.

Edward Snowden heads: Five. This program, conducted in secret for years, affects hundreds of millions of Americans, and the public interest in its disclosure was huge. It could eventually be ruled unconstitutional, and the revelations about its existence have exposed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to the accusation that he lied to Congress when he publicly claimed the NSA was not collecting any data on millions of Americans.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/06/edward_snowden_fact_checking_which_surveillance_claims_were_right.html

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Supreme Court to issue gay marriage decisions Wednesday in last session before summer break (Star Tribune)

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Court strikes part of Voting Rights Act

Holding signs with images of murdered civil rights workers, demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court??

President Barack Obama and his attorney general said they were "deeply disappointed" with the Supreme Court's decision to?strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that helped dismantle decades of discriminatory voting restrictions in the South when it passed 60 years ago. The vote was split 5-4, with the court's liberal justices dissenting.

The decision drastically scales back the federal government's power to reject state laws it believes discriminate against minority voters, which include some efforts to tighten identification requirements and limit early voting hours at the ballot box. A wave of such laws swept 30 states over the past few years, and the Obama administration has aggressively fought them in court.

The president said he was "deeply disappointed" with the decision in a statement Tuesday. "While today?s decision is a setback, it doesn?t represent the end of our efforts to end voting discrimination," Obama said. "I am calling on Congress to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls."

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, reauthorized by Congress for an additional 25 years in 2006, gives the federal government the ability to pre-emptively reject changes to election law in states and counties that have a history of discriminating against minority voters. The law covers nine states and portions of seven more, most of them in the South. The formula used to decide which states are subject to this special scrutiny (set out in Section 4 of the law) is based on decades-old voter turnout and registration data, the justices ruled, which is unfair to the states covered under it. States that had a discriminatory poll test in the 1960s and low turnout among minority voters must seek special permission from the federal government to change their election laws, even though many of these states now have near-equal voter turnout rates between minorities and whites.

"The coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion. "Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."

The Justice Department used Section 5 of the law to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina last year, and it also struck down early voting restrictions in five counties in Florida. (Minority voters are more likely than white voters to vote early in person, and they are less likely than whites to have a government-issued photo ID.) Some Democrats argued that these laws were intentionally trying to suppress minority turnout in order to benefit Republicans.

The court has effectively now put the ball back in Congress' court, writing in its decision that it is up to Congress to write a new formula that is based on current data. Though it seems unlikely that Congress, which is now more partisanly divided than in 2006, would tackle the challenge of creating a new rubric to find and eradicate racial discrimination at the polls. The president called on Congress to pass legislation addressing the ruling in a statement Tuesday.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes the "sad irony" of Roberts' decision is that it strikes down the key part of the Voting Rights Act because it has been so successful at preventing racial discrimination. "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet," she writes. Ginsburg also slams the court's majority for relying on turnout and registration rates "as if that were the whole story" and ignoring so-called second-generation laws and regulations designed to make it harder for minorities to vote. (One such Mississippi regulation sought to cancel a local election in 2001 because a large number of black candidates announced their intention to run.)

Civil rights groups warned that the decision will negatively affect minority voters who live in the covered jurisdictions. "This is a sad day for democracy," said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice advocacy center. "The Voting Rights Act is a needed and instrumental tool in our fight to eradicate racial discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision today has made it much harder to utilize this tool effectively." Wade Henderson, the President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that Congress should act to draft another coverage formula. "We urge Congress to act with urgency and on a bipartisan basis to protect voting rights for minorities," Henderson said. Brennan Center President Michael Waldman said Congress had a "duty" to update the formula.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, said in a statement that "as long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don't have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance."

Court watchers predicted the decision, given the conservative justices' comments on the law during oral arguments and in other cases. Justices in the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, including Roberts, expressed reservations that the nine Southern states covered by the law still required the same degree of federal oversight that they did 60 years ago. "Voter turnout and registration rates [between blacks and whites] now approach parity," Roberts wrote in a decision in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."

Another argument against Section 4's constitutionality was that it's unclear whether minority voters in Southern states are more likely to face discrimination at the polls than they are in other states. Voter ID laws, for example, have passed in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Because those states do not have a history of voter discrimination?and are not covered by the act?their voter ID laws did not have to first pass federal inspection. That said, Southern states covered under the act were much more likely to pass a voter ID law than other states. Seven of the nine states covered in full under the act adopted such a law, compared with 12 noncovered states.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/news/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-141205218.html

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China businessman assures Nicaragua canal success

BEIJING (AP) ? The Chinese businessman behind plans to build a waterway across Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal said Tuesday that his ambitious project is no joke and is backed by experienced consultants, despite skepticism that the 40-year-old can deliver the $40 billion project.

"We don't want it to become an international joke, and we don't want it to turn into an example of Chinese investment failures," Wang Jing, chairman and owner of Hong Kong-based HKND Group, told a news conference in Beijing.

Wang, a relative newcomer whose business history prior to 2010 is virtually unknown, got approval from Nicaragua's government earlier this month for HKND to study, and possibly build and run a shipping channel across the Central American country. Some Nicaraguan lawmakers and residents have expressed reservations about the company's competence.

"The world trade has been so developed today that it needs a new canal," Wang said. "The Panama Canal is not enough for the trade conducted currently between East and West."

Early assessments of the project have been favorable, taking into account future economic growth of the U.S. and China as well as the enormous Chinese appetite for mineral resources from Latin America, Wang said.

"There has been a huge amount of data and business modeling, and the results are considerably optimistic," he said. "The return is sure to make every investor smile broadly."

Wang said his consultants on the project have rich experience and include U.S.-based McKinsey & Co. and China's biggest construction firm, the state-owned China Railway Construction Corp.

He said his team is proposing ways to minimize risk, for example by routing the canal through the middle of Nicaragua to avoid any potential border dispute with neighboring Costa Rica. Wang said that he hopes to deliver the feasibility report a year from now, and that the project would break ground by the end of 2014 and be completed in less than six years.

Wang offered little new information about himself, saying that he comes from an ordinary Chinese family in Beijing and that he studied traditional Chinese medicine before becoming a businessman.

He has invested in several industries, including telecommunications and mining. In 2010, Wang invested in the medium-sized Chinese telecommunications company Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group. Since then he has been credited with turning it around financially, partly by expanding into overseas markets, including Nicaragua, where Xinwei was granted an operating license last November.

The company builds telecom networks and develops wireless communication technology ? though its patent technology McWiLL is considered obscure. In Cambodia, Xinwei has become the latest player in the country's telecommunication market by offering phone and data services that are now available in Phnom Penh, the capital, with plans to expand nationwide.

In Nicaragua, a Xinwei contract to invest as much as $700 million to improve the country's telecom system has so far shown little sign of any spending, leading to skepticism among many residents about Wang's competence to build a canal. "It's all a lie," opposition Nicaraguan congressman Eliseo Nunez said earlier this month.

Ji Yongqing, a Chinese information technology commentator, said Xinwei apparently has fit into the strategic push by China's government to help developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America with projects sourced with Chinese products.

"Personally, I think Xinwei's success has a lot to do with China's strategy to go out and use Chinese products in its aid projects," Ji said.

Xinwei's website has pictures of Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, visiting the company, indicating its likely solid government connections ? a boon for any business in a country where the government controls key resources and much of the economy.

Wang said Tuesday that the project is purely a business venture with no connection to the Chinese government. China has no diplomatic relationship with Nicaragua.

___

Associated Press writer Sopheng Cheang in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-businessman-assures-nicaragua-canal-success-085331031.html

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Kenyan teachers to strike, ignoring calls for wage restraint

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The Kenyan union representing more than 200,000 state school teachers on Monday said it will go on strike over payment of allowances, adding to the government's woes as it struggles to put a lid on wages and keep control of the budget.

President Uhuru Kenyatta said days after his inauguration in April that the state could not afford a bigger wage bill. But he faced almost immediate calls from members of parliament for higher salaries, fuelling concern that other state workers could follow suit.

Analysts have said other state employees may be inspired to push for better terms after already well-paid MPs secured generous benefits even if their salary demands were not met.

"The strike will start immediately after midnight," Wilson Sossion, Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) chairman, told the union's top officials. "We have negotiated enough and signed an agreement. This time we must reach the promised land."

Thousands of secondary school teachers began strike action last week. The latest announcement means that action will become nationwide and will include primary schools.

The union has demanded that the state body responsible for teachers' pay agree to implement what they say is a 1997 deal for housing, medical and transport allowances.

"The discussions between the teachers union and government have not broken down," said government spokesman Muthui Kariuki, adding the government sought an "amicable solution".

The government says teacher demands are unsustainable. The president wants to cut a public sector wage bill that is now 50 percent of annual tax revenue, while the International Monetary Fund puts the global benchmark at about 35 percent.

Inflation is running at about 4 percent in Kenya.

Teachers' salaries range from about 16,000 Kenyan shillings per month to 142,000 shillings. They are seeking extra allowances on top of those salaries.

Kenyatta on Friday directed government agencies and teachers unions to negotiate, the second directive in a week after the initial deadline lapsed without any development.

Teachers went on strike in September demanding more teachers be hired to cope with a surge in student numbers after then President Mwai Kibaki introduced free primary and secondary education.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyan-teachers-strike-ignoring-calls-wage-restraint-152829448.html

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Aerialist to cross gorge near Grand Canyon

LITTLE COLORADO RIVER GORGE, Ariz. (AP) ? Daredevil Nik Wallenda is using the Navajo Nation as a backdrop to one of his most ambitious feats yet ? crossing a tightrope 1,500 feet above the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon.

The 34-year-old Sarasota, Fla., resident will set out Sunday on a quarter-mile cable stretched over the gorge that was eyed by another high-wire performer decades ago. The stunt comes a year after he traversed Niagara Falls earning a seventh Guinness world record. He'll be using the same 2-inch-thick cable he used to cross the falls, only this time he won't be wearing a safety harness.

After saying a prayer, "I give my wife and kids a hug and a kiss and tell them I'll see them in a bit," he told reporters Friday in Flagstaff.

Wallenda is a seventh-generation high-wire artist and is part of the famous "Flying Wallendas" circus family ? a clan that is no stranger to death-defying feats and great tragedy.

His great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, fell during a performance in Puerto Rico and died at the age of 73. Several other family members, including a cousin and an uncle, have perished while performing wire walking stunts.

Nik Wallenda, who was born a year after his great-grandfather died, began wire walking at the age of 2, on a 2-foot high stretched rope. He grew up performing with his family and has dreamed of crossing the Grand Canyon since he was a teenager.

French high-wire walker Philippe Petit had that same desire and set up a cable above the Little Colorado River, but Navajo officials said he never went through with the stunt and left his equipment there only to be taken down recently by Wallenda's crew.

"I don't understand why he didn't," Wallenda said. "It's a site that works, makes sense. He clearly failed at it, so I want to do it successfully."

Petit didn't return messages left by The Associated Press.

The Discovery Channel will broadcast Wallenda's walk on live television after 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday with a 10-second delay. Wallenda will be wearing two cameras, one looking down on the dry Little Colorado River bed and one facing straight ahead. His leather shoes with an elk-skin sole will help him keep a grip on the steel cable as he moves across.

Should wind gusts that are expected to be around 30 mph threaten to throw him off, Wallenda said he'll grab hold of the wire and wait it out if possible. A paramedic will be looking up at him from the river, he said.

Wallenda is highly confident in his ability to reach the other side, having walked in 52 mph wind gusts during Tropical Storm Andrea with a torrential downpour and training with wind machines that simulated 45-55 mph gusts. The only thing that would stop him entirely is lightning within a 15-mile radius, he said.

The more than 2-hour broadcast also will showcase the Navajo landscape that includes Monument Valley, Four Corners, Canyon de Chelly and the tribal capital of Window Rock.

"When people watch this, our main thing is we want the world to know who Navajo people are, our culture, traditions and language are still very much alive," said Geri Hongeva, spokeswoman for the tribe's Division of Natural Resources.

The stunt is touted as a walk across the Grand Canyon, an area held sacred by many American Indian tribes, and the fulfillment of a dream. Some local residents believe Wallenda hasn't accurately pinpointed the location and also say that the Navajo Nation shouldn't be promoting the gambling of one man's life for the benefit of tourism.

"Mr. Wallenda needs to buy a GPS or somebody give this guy a map," said Milton Tso, president of the Cameron community on the Navajo Nation. "He's not walking across the Grand Canyon. He's walking across the Little Colorado River Gorge on the Navajo Nation. It's misleading and false advertising."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/aerialist-cross-gorge-near-grand-canyon-222733046.html

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Can Democrats Win Back the Deep South? (Atlantic Politics Channel)

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