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During the final years of Steve Job's life the former Apple CEO was in desperate need of a liver transplant but refused his successor Tim Cook when he suggested a partial one, reveals a new biography set for release on March 24. In the upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs , written by Brent Schlender and Fast Company Executive Editor Rick Tetzeli, Cook reportedly went through a series of tests and discovered that a partial liver transplant was feasible, but said Jobs heatedly turned him away. "Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them," Cook says in the book. Read the full excerpt here and check out the April edition of Fast Company for more. [ Fast Company ]
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An expensive BMW wouldn't be complete without a mouthful of a name, and the 2015 BMW 740Ld xDrive is certainly proof of that. Let's break it down, shall we? The letter "d" is relatively new for the 7 Series and designates what's under the hood: a 3.0-liter turbodiesel inline-six. The "L" means that this flagship sedan is a long-wheelbase model, and "xDrive" is BMW-speak for all-wheel drive. Add it up, and you get a spacious all-weather, luxury cruiser that tips the scale at 4,680 pounds. With stats like that, this engine had better be an overachiever. And an overachiever it is. Rated at 255 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque, this workhorse is also found in other diesel-powered BMWs, such as the 535d, where it provides a near-perfect combination of speed and efficiency. The engine has a more relaxed demeanor in the 7 Series, but it never struggles to get the hefty sedan up to speed. And like the 535d, the 740Ld xDrive is fitted with the quick-shifting, ZF-sourced eight-speed auto. Pushing this powertrain hard results in respectable numbers. Running to 60 mph, for example, takes 6.3 seconds, and completing the quarter mile requires 14.8 seconds. For comparison, the gas-powered 740Li xDrive, which packs a 3.0-liter I-6 rated at 315 hp and 330 lb-ft, is quicker based on BMW's 0-60 mph estimate of 5.4 seconds. Related Link: See buying specs on the 2015 BMW 7 Series Also quicker is the Audi A8 L TDI, the BMW's closest competitor. The big Audi runs to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and finishes the quarter mile in 14.5 seconds. Both cars are essentially matched in power, with the Audi making 240 hp and 406 lb-ft from a 3.0-liter V-6 turbodiesel. The Audi, however, is significantly lighter with a curb weight about 300 pounds less than the BMW. Despite its weight handicap, the BMW puts down a figure-eight time of 25.9 seconds, trumping the Audi by 0.6 second. How is that possible? Well, for starters our tester was fitted with Adaptive Drive, an optional package that includes active roll bars and dampers. The system constantly adjusts to keep the sedan flat and planted, making it nearly impossible to upset the chassis, whether it's an emergency braking situation or a quick maneuver to avoid one of L.A.'s many potholes. The system is a must-have and is well worth its $2,500 price tag. Big luxury cruisers are expected to erase the impacts of those nasty potholes, but the 7 Series occasionally struggles with that task. The most probable culprits are the optional 20-inch wheels that definitely look handsome but are fitted with run-flat Pirelli P Zero. Unfortunately, the 7 Series is only sold with run-flats. The steering feel could use work, too. Although nicely weighted and precise overall, on-center feel occasionally felt wonky and rubbery, requiring a few corrections to keep the big sedan in its lane. Related Story: 2015 Best Cars for Families If those issues were fixed, the 740Ld xDrive could be a near-perfect highway cruiser. It certainly has the range to do so, with a gigantic 21.1-gallon fuel tank, enough for more than 600 miles of cruising. Speaking of fuel, the EPA rates the 740Ld xDrive at 23/31/26 mpg city/highway/combined. Our Real MPG numbers, however, are up to 16 percent better, with the big 7 returning 24/36/28 mpg. We have yet to get Real MPG numbers on the Audi. But the A8 L TDI edges out the BMW with EPA estimates of 24/36/28 mpg. Real MPG numbers are also unavailable for the gas-powered 740Li xDrive, but its EPA numbers (19/28/22 mpg) aren't significantly lower than its diesel sibling. With a base price of $83,450, the 740Ld xDrive costs $1,500 more than the 740Li xDrive. It's not a sizable amount, but neither are the mpg benefits (based on EPA numbers). The gas-powered 7 looks even more attractive when you consider the diesel's slower straight-line performance. A diesel Mercedes-Benz S-Class doesn't exist (yet), so if you must have a large diesel-powered luxury cruiser, the Audi is the better choice. Although it's more expensive, ($86,025), the A8 L TDI is faster, smoother, quieter, relatively efficient, and has a much more special interior. The bottom line is that this current-gen 7 Series has been around since model year 2009, and it's starting to show. The good news is that prototypes for the next-gen model have already been spotted, which means the new 7 Series should arrive sooner than later. 2015 BMW 740Ld xDrive BASE PRICE $83,450 PRICE AS TESTED $101,850 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan ENGINE 3.0L/255-hp/413-lb-ft turbodiesel DOHC 24-valve I-6 TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,680 lb (51/49%) WHEELBASE 126.4 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 205.3 x 74.9 x 58.3 in 0-60 MPH 6.3 sec QUARTER MILE 14.8 sec @ 92.0 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 109 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.92 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 25.9 sec @ 0.80 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 23/31/26 mpg ENERGY CONS., CITY/HWY 164/122 kW-hrs/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.85 lb/mile
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North Korea fired seven surface-to-air missiles into the sea off its east coast on Thursday in an operation supervised by leader Kim Jong-Un at a time of heightened military tensions, South Korea's Defence Ministry said Friday. A ministry spokesman said Kim was understood to have been on hand when the rockets were fired early Thursday evening from a site near the eastern town of Sondok. The exercise came at a time of elevated tensions with North Korea's condemnation of annual US-South Korea military drills that Pyongyang views as rehearsals for invasion. "We see this as another show of force by the North related to the exercises," the spokesman told AFP. One of the joint drills, Key Resolve, wound up Friday, but the other, Foal Eagle, is set to continue until April 24. The annual exercises are always a particularly testing time for relations between the two Koreas, who remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. North Korea signalled its displeasure when this year's drills began by firing two short-range Scud missiles into the sea off its east coast. UN resolutions ban any ballistic missile test by North Korea. The defence ministry spokesman acknowledged that Thursday's surface-to-air missile tests were not a violation of the resolutions, but added that Pyongyang had failed to announce the firing in advance as a caution to shipping. 'Low-intensity' demonstration "This is a pretty low-intensity show of force, timed to coincide with the wrap-up of the Key Resolve exercise," said Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. Missile tests have long been a preferred North Korean method of expressing displeasure with what it views as confrontational behaviour by the South and its allies, though Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defence-based in nature. Although there is no doubt that North Korea has an extremely active ballistic missile development programme, expert opinion is split on how much progress it has made. In 2012, Pyongyang demonstrated its rocket capabilities by sending a satellite into orbit, but it has yet to conduct a test that would show it had mastered the re-entry technology required for an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). The other key question is how close the North is to being able to miniaturise a nuclear device that could be fitted on the tip of a missile. In a white paper published earlier this month, the South Korean defence ministry said the North had already taken its miniaturisation technology to a "significant" level. A US Defense Intelligence Agency report leaked in 2013 reached the same conclusion, although US officials at the time said it did not represent a consensus view of all the country's spy agencies. North Korea has carried out three nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009 and 2013. In January, the North offered a moratorium on further tests if this year's joint military drills were cancelled -- a proposal rejected by Washington as an "implicit threat" to carry out a fourth atomic detonation.
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Detectives in the East Texas town of Longview found the body of a 21-year-old man riddled with gunshots along a residential street pockmarked by forlorn homes. A few blocks away, they had earlier investigated the killing of a 30-year-old man. Nearby, another shooting left a man dead. In the first two months of 2015, the city of 81,000 has had six homicides more than it had all of last year. The recent spasm of violence has startled residents of the small oil-and-gas town and focused more attention on a police department already under scrutiny for the death of a 17-year-old with a history of mental illness. The girl, Kristiana Coignard, was fatally shot after charging officers in the lobby of the police station while carrying a knife, police said. Her death, captured in a widely circulated video, is still under investigation and not included in the police department's official homicide count. The local newspaper, the Longview News-Journal, noted that the rate of killings this year has already exceeded the national yearly average of 5.3 for homicides per 100,000 people. Last year, the city had five homicides. This week, a local church helped organize a march to bring attention to the slayings. "We're letting the neighborhood know this is an alert and we're going to take a stand and not be silent anymore," said LaDarian McGee, youth director for Bethel Temple of Longview. McGee said the march drew upward of 100 people. Some wore T-shirts displaying the broad smile of Da'Coreyan Blankenship, the 21-year-old who was shot several times on March 3, his body left behind in the street. "When you saw D, he was the kind of person who would walk into a room and just light it up," said McGee, who mentored Blankenship. Most of the killings have occurred in a low-income area south of downtown, and all but one of the victims was a minority. The neighborhood is marred by old, dilapidated homes that are now are shelters for drug dealers and their customers. "Longview is no different from a lot of communities," Mayor Jay Dean said. "A lot of these problems stem from the drug trade." City leaders are working to increase the number of police officers, from about 150 now to 172. At a recent news conference, officials announced a multi-layered effort to curtail violent crime. Police are boosting patrols in the area and officers are charged with getting out of their patrol cars and shaking the hands of residents not used to seeing officers as allies. Officials also want to use city and state laws to wipe away abandoned, blighted buildings while cracking down on landlords whose properties have become a haven for crime. Dean noted that landlords now have to be cited numerous times for violations before police become involved. He hopes the effort will attract businesses and provide residents more opportunities to earn an honest living. "We have all the incentive in the world to try to reduce crime," Dean said.
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A team led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen give a underwater tour of the sunken Japanese battleship Musashi. The ship was once one of the two largest warships in the world.
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Bigger is NOT always better … but sometimes it really is. Some may question the value of 200-inch-plus vehicles such as our long-term 2015 Kia K900 V-8, the Lexus LS , and the Mercedes-Benz S-Class , but it's tough to argue against the value of bigger infotainment screens. The Lexus and the Mercedes feature a 12.3-inch screen, and the Kia works with an already pretty big 9.2-inch screen. The challenge all three executive sedans face is helping users make the most of the infotainment systems. After all, how good is a gigantic screen if you lack easy-to-master controls to use it? In the Kia's case, now that I'm accustomed to the car, I've not had any real issues with the controls. Some of the center-console buttons that surround the black-topped central rotary knob are a bit spread out, but you get used to it. On my evening commute, when I change the screen from the photo screensaver I uploaded to the navigation map to check traffic, I can hit the "MAP" button without taking my eyes off the road because I know how far away the button is from the central knob. It's not a perfect infotainment solution, but it works. Related Link: Research the 2015 Kia K900 What makes the 12.3-inch screens of the more expensive cars worthwhile is the ability to simultaneously see the map as well as another bit of info (such as song, artist, and album information) without seriously compromising the display of either. Aside from the full-size LS and S-Class, the midsize 2015 Lexus GS 350, which retails in the $50,000-$60,000 range, can also be had with an enormous 12.3-inch screen. Thanks in part to the K900's large central control knob, the multi-camera parking system is one of my favorite features on the Kia. With a camera in the front, back, and on each side of the car, the Surround View Monitor system is awesome. It's difficult to imagine piloting a boat car this big without it. It's not just the technology itself but also how easy the system and the rotary knob make changing from one viewing mode to another for example, seeing the rear camera and bird's-eye views together or switching to the curb-side view to make sure your rear tire isn't resting against a red-painted no-parking curb. Too bad, then, that the feature is only offered as part of an expensive options package on the higher trim level. Related Story: Consumer Reports' 10 least reliable cars Because a loaded Kia K900 is still significantly less expensive than everything in its class except the Hyundai Equus, you might as well get the near-$70,000 version with the multi-camera parking system if that's in the budget. The technology isn't unique to Kia, but it's well-executed, and the screen is plenty big enough to display what the cameras are seeing.
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One daredevil decided to record his motorcycle ride through a crowded mall in Tarnow, Poland.
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While attempting to flip into a pool, one man took out a group of onlookers.
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Maybe the Yankees made the right decision about Masahiro Tanaka after all. For months, I'd believed the Yankees erred in their determination -- equal parts medical, financial and competitive -- that Tanaka ought to rehabilitate his partially torn elbow ligament rather than undergo Tommy John surgery. I'm not a doctor -- breaking news, I know -- but the plan seemed dubious: If the operation is inevitable, as many experts believe, why not have it now and give Tanaka the best chance to contribute during the latter years of his $155 million contract? But every ulnar collateral ligament is unique. So is every repertoire, every mind, and every major-league pitcher. And with two perfect innings Thursday against the Atlanta Braves, in only his third game since the injury was diagnosed last July, Tanaka appeared to be a healthy 26-year-old who can perform at an elite level for the foreseeable future. "He looks like he just came off a Cy Young, MVP, Rookie of the Year (season)," said Braves catcher Christian Bethancourt, whom Tanaka retired on a groundout in the second inning. "You can tell. I don't think he sweated a lot. "From my standpoint, as a player, I don't think he was putting so much effort on (his pitches), and he was really, really good. He was comfortable. I think he feels like, when he's on the mound, he owns it. And he does." Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer saw Tanaka pitch during the 2014 regular season, when Seitzer held the same position with the Toronto Blue Jays. Seitzer said the pitcher he saw Thursday was no different than the one who beat the Jays three times last year. "He was good -- down in the zone, mixed his pitches," Seitzer said. "He was throwing strikes. He only went a couple innings, but he had good command. Same as last year, it seemed like . . . He looked normal." So, is Tanaka back ? We can't be sure. We can't be sure about the health of anyone on a baseball field. Just ask the Blue Jays. Their ascendant ace, 23-year-old Marcus Stroman, was considered the best athlete on the team . . . and then tore the ACL in his left knee during a bunt-coverage drill earlier this week. He's out for the season. Tanaka, meanwhile, was so efficient in his spring debut -- 19 pitches, 15 strikes -- that he needed to throw 18 pitches in the bullpen afterward to reach his allotment for the evening. Tanaka threw several devastating split-fingered fastballs -- his signature pitch, and one that places particular torque on the compromised UCL. Fellow Yankees starter CC Sabathia said earlier Thursday that Tanaka has said continually this spring that he feels "fine." Well, he was better than fine against the Braves. He was dominant against six major-league hitters, which should allow the Yankees to dream a little about their chances in a winnable American League East. Sabathia is part of that optimism, too, after an encouraging 29-pitch simulated game of his own, hours before Tanaka took the mound. Yankees manager Joe Girardi said Sabathia was able to push off his lower body effectively, following the right knee surgery that ended his 2014 season. Sabathia, 34, said his body hasn't felt this strong in spring training since 2012. To the extent that Tanaka and Sabathia are the bellwethers for the Yankees' postseason hopes in 2015 -- as I believe they are -- Thursday was a rousing success. Yes, the day also included the disappointing news that No. 5 starter Chris Capuano is probably out for all of April with a quadriceps injury. But if Tanaka, Sabathia, Michael Pineda and Nathan Eovaldi can do a credible job in the top four spots, then Girardi should be able to negotiate April with Adam Warren or Esmil Rogers taking a semi-regular turn (thanks to off days and inevitable rainouts). The larger divisional landscape is favorable, too: Stroman's injury has muted much of the excitement over Toronto's bid to end a two-decade playoff drought . . . The Yankees hired away a top reliever (Andrew Miller) from the defending division champion Orioles . . . A healthy Tanaka is better than any pitcher on the rival Red Sox pitching staff. For months, the Yankees have received criticism for not signing Max Scherzer or trading for Cole Hamels. Thursday, the greatest prize of the previous offseason was on full display, just as good as he ever was.
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Brazil is bracing for a recession while the state-run oil company, Petrobras, has been hammered by a massive corruption scandal.
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US President Barack Obama says there is "no excuse" for criminal acts in Ferguson, Missouri, one night after two police officers at a protest were shot. He said the protesters had "legitimate grievances" but described the shooters as "criminals" who should be arrested. Wednesday's shootings happened during a demonstration after it was announced the Ferguson Police Chief would resign. Further protests late on Thursday passed peacefully. The two officers have been released from hospital. The protests are the latest of many in the city since a policeman shot dead Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, last year. Police Chief Thomas Jackson quit one week after a Justice Department report alleged widespread racial bias in his department and the city's court system. Protesters gathered outside the police station after Mr Jackson's resignation was announced. Late on Wednesday, one officer was shot in the face and the other was hit in the shoulder as protestors were heading home for the night. 'Worthy of protest' "I think that what had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable and was worthy of protest. But there was no excuse for criminal acts," President Obama said on the Jimmy Kimmel Live programme on ABC. "Whoever fired those shots shouldn't detract from the issue; they're criminals," he added. Tensions have been high in Ferguson since August and escalated in November after a grand jury declined to prosecute officer Darren Wilson for Brown's killing. On Thursday, protesters held a candlelight vigil for all victims of violence. They later marched to the police department while beating drums and chanting. Police on the scene kept their distance from protesters and avoided a large show of force, the BBC's Franz Strasser and David Botti in Ferguson reported. There were no rows of police officers in riot gear unlike previous demonstrations. Ferguson police temporarily ceded security responsibilities for the protests to state troopers and county police. The protests ended without a single arrest about 23:00 local time (4:00 GMT). Wednesday's shootings were the first time in eight months of protests that officers had been struck by gunfire, despite several instances of shooting at previous demonstrations. Earlier on Thursday, a tactical police unit descended on a home in the city and detained several people for questioning in relation to the police shootings. They have all since been released. Ferguson - key moments 9 August, 2014: White police officer Darren Wilson shoots dead unarmed black teenager Michael Brown 15 August: Authorities identify Mr Wilson, following days of protests and clashes with police 10-13 October: Activists from across US hold four days of rallies and vigils in Ferguson 24 November: Grand jury decides not to charge Mr Wilson, triggering further demonstrations 4 March: Department of Justice issues report alleging widespread racial bias in Ferguson police department 11 March: Police chief Thomas Jackson announces his resignation How Ferguson unrest spread Report on Ferguson police report - key findings Are you in Ferguson? What's your reaction to the news? You can share your experiences by emailing [email protected] . If you are available to speak further with a BBC journalist please include a contact telephone number. Or comment here.
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Oklahoma outscored Oklahoma State 43-23 in the second half to get a 64-49 win in Friday's Big 12 Tournament action. The Sooners take on Iowa State in the quarterfinals Friday.
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Al-Shabab fighter alleged to have planned Westgate Mall attack in 2013 reportedly killed after drone hits his car. A US drone strike in Somalia is believed to have killed a senior member of the al-Shabab who allegedly helped plan the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi, officials said. Adan Garar and two others are suspected to have been killed in Thursday's attack after their car was targeted near the town of Bardhere, the Kenyan and US officials said. The senior Kenyan official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorised to give the information to the media, says Garar is also suspected of planning failed attacks on Kenya's coast and in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, last year. Both Kenya, Somalia's neighbour to the South, and Uganda have troops in the Horn of Africa nation battling al-Shabab, an armed group affiliated to al-Qaeda and is blamed for a spate of attacks in Somalia and in Kenya. The US official also insisted on anonymity. Anti-terror police foiled a planned attack in the coastal city of Mombasa after they intercepted a car packed with explosives in March 2014, according to Kenyan authorities. According to police, al-Shabab fighters had planned simultaneous attacks on the international airport in Mombasa, the ferry crossing and a supermarket. The car laden with explosives was to be detonated on a ferry. Al-Shabab has vowed to inflict violent attacks on Kenya and Uganda because the two countries have contributed troops to the African Union force supporting the government in Somalia. Sixty-seven people were killed in the Westgate attack, which was carried out by four gunmen from al-Shabab.
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If anyone could make gold jewelry fashionable to Americans and Europeans, it's Apple Inc. U.S., U.K. and Italian demand for baubles made from the metal has been cut in half over the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the World Gold Council, as shoppers favored white-colored metals such as silver and platinum. Apple's status as the arbiter of cool means its new $10,000 gold watch and yellow iPhones and MacBooks may entice consumers to buy other gold ornaments, said Neil Meader, a precious metals consultant at Metallis Consulting Ltd. Apple, which called gold "uniquely luxurious" in its advertising, has a history of swaying consumer tastes with its designs for touch-screen phones and portable music players. While the watch won't move the price of gold, the publicity benefits the metal that in the U.S. and Europe suffers from a reputation as old-fashioned, Meader said. "If you were to gold plate a Ferrari, it would just end up tacky, but if you use gold in a high-technology product like this, it makes it seem more relevant to the younger customer," Scott Thomson, the managing director of Astley Clarke Ltd., which sells jewelry in retailers including Harrods and Selfridges, said by phone from London. "This is definitely a positive development." Popular culture has influenced jewelry fashions in the past. Colored gems got a boost after celebrities such as Kate Middleton, Jessica Simpson and Halle Berry wore engagement rings with sapphires, rubies and emeralds. High-quality emerald prices rose almost 15-fold from 2009 through 2014, according to Gemfields Plc. Apple this week unveiled the watch, which comes in cheaper models with cases made from aluminum and stainless steel, and lets consumers do everything from unlock doors, check into a flight and buy groceries with a tap on the wrist. The company paid for a 12-page advertising spread in Vogue magazine, and model Christy Turlington Burns is using it to train for the London Marathon. Not everyone is convinced. People won't buy more gold because of the Apple watch, and sales of the expensive device will be limited, according to Carole Ferguson, an analyst at brokerage SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP. It's likely that people who purchase it were already planning to buy a gold watch, so the overall increase in metal demand will be low, she said. "I'd be very skeptical this would make any difference to gold's image," Ferguson said by phone from London. "Women's fashion doesn't follow tech trends and jewelry in particular is a highly individual decision." While the gold model costs thousands more than other versions, the technology is the same. Demand for the watch will be greatest in China, where appetite for the metal is already near a record, according to Bart Melek, an analyst at TD Securities in Toronto. Meader said assuming there's 50 grams of gold in each watch and Apple sells 10,000 devices, the company would need about half a metric ton. That compares with 2,153 tons of global annual jewelry demand, according to the World Gold Council. While the amount of gold used to produce jewelry in the U.S. has plateaued since 2010, demand is still down 62 percent in the past decade, data from the gold council show. In Italy and the U.K., Europe's largest manufacturers, the collapse was at least 60 percent, according to the London-based lobbying group. Gold rose on Friday for the first time in two weeks on speculation the metal's longest run of losses in 17 years may encourage more purchases. Bullion for immediate delivery added 0.2 percent to $1,156.05 an ounce by 11:13 a.m. in London. "There is a lingering fear that gold is becoming granny's jewelry," Meader said by phone. "To see it getting used in such a strikingly modern context has to be positive for its image."
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After years in a Boko Haram camp, the children had forgotten their native language. They couldn't even remember their names. They just stared past Christopher Fomunyoh when he tried to engage them. It was a rare glimpse at the human toll left by the extremists who have been fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria and surrounding areas. Fomunyoh, regional director at the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, visited the children recently at an orphanage in the city of Maroua in northern Cameroon. They had been rescued by the country's military in November from a squalid Boko Haram encampment, 200 miles away, near the border with Nigeria. This is what he saw: One hundred children, aged 5 to 17, without shoes in an orphanage built for 20. Hard benches for sleeping. A shortage of rice. Boys who appeared to be speaking broken Arabic, rather than one of the many languages native to Cameroon. "There was a blankness in their eyes," he said. Boko Haram is now under siege by Nigerian and other African troops. If the insurgents are pushed back, hundreds more children like these could soon be found. But what condition will they be in? Fomunyoh and others working with the newly rescued children were left to unravel the mystery of what happened to them. Were they fighters or merely students? How long had they been captive? How had they forgotten their names? Where were their parents? No one knew. Last week, the small number of employees at the Institut Camerounais des Enfants was focusing on teaching them how to count to 10 in French. "Right now, there's not full comprehension of the damage of this crisis," said Fomunyoh, who is now trying to provide assistance to the children. "Even if kinetic operations were to end soon and Boko Haram was taken off the battlefield, it would take years to really address consequences in humanitarian terms." In April 2014, Boko Haram grabbed the world's attention when fighters abducted 200 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria. But it wasn't the first time the group conducted a mass kidnapping. The rate and scale of the group's abductions have increased steadily since 2013, according to a report from the U.S.-based Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. Many of the victims have been raped, and only a few have escaped, activists say. The group "forcibly converts the Christian women and girls they capture to Islam and often coerces them and other female abductees into marriage," said Watchlist's 2014 report. According to Human Rights Watch , Boko Haram has allegedly recruited boys as young as 12 years old to fight for the group. Still, Fomunyoh wasn't prepared for what he saw. And he worried about what would come next for the children. "Without substantive work to reeducate them and help them survive in a normal society, these are potential troublemakers," he said.
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Tropical Cyclone Pam, one of the strongest storms seen in the South Pacific in years, is triggering storm warnings in several island nations.
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President Barack Obama doesn't send text messages, rarely composes his own tweets, and isn't allowed to have a smart phone that contains a recording device, he said on Thursday. And don't ask him for Hillary Clinton's email address. He won't give it to you. "I do not physically tweet in general," the president said in an interview on the ABC program "Jimmy Kimmel Live." "I don't text. I email. I still have a Blackberry," he said. Obama said his teenaged daughters had smart phones and exchanged text messages with their friends, but he was limited for security reasons from having the latest technology. "I can't use phones with recorders in them. So a lot of the new fangled stuff, for security reasons, I don't get," he said. In a reference to the email controversy that has dogged Obama's former secretary of state, host Jimmy Kimmel asked the president if he had Clinton's new email address. "I can't share it with you. I don't think she'd want you to have it, frankly," Obama deadpanned. Clinton, the presumed frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination, has come under fire for using a private email account for official business during her time as the top U.S. diplomat. Asked generally about life at the White House, Obama said it had been a long time since he had cooked anything or driven a car, and he made a joking reference to people who believed he was not born in the United States. "In Kenya we drive on the other side" of the street, Obama said. The president was born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. (Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Richard Pullin)
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Australia's TPG Telecom announced Friday a Aus$1.4 billion (US$1.08 billion) bid for rival iiNet in a merger that would form the nation's second-largest Internet service provider. The two companies said in a joint statement that iiNet's board unanimously recommended the offer. "iiNet and TPG are highly complementary businesses in terms of geographic presence, market segments and corporate customer base," TPG's chief executive David Teoh said. "The combined businesses will provide broadband services to over 1.7 million subscribers and will be well-positioned to deliver scale benefits in an NBN environment." The NBN, or national broadband network, aims to connect most Australian homes to superfast Internet over the next few years. iiNet chairman Michael Smith said the offer was a "significant reward" for shareholders and described the Aus$1.4 billion price tag as a "tangible measure" of the company's value. Sydney-based TPG has 748,000 broadband customers and Perth-based iiNet has 975,000, which combined would push it ahead of Singtel Optus' almost one million estimated customers. Telstra, the country's dominant telecoms firm, has three million broadband customers. Under the proposed takeover, TPG will offer iiNet shareholders Aus$8.60 per share. The shareholders would also be entitled to TPG's latest 10.5 Aus cents interim dividend. TPG currently owns 6.25 percent of its rival. TPG shares surged 14.34 percent to Aus$8.85 in early trade, while iiNet stocks jumped 24.67 percent to Aus$8.49. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in a statement that it would undertake a public review of the merger proposal after submissions from the two firms. "The ACCC reviews mergers and acquisitions which have the potential to raise concerns under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010," the watchdog said in a statement.
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The flying Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton fought off a Ferrari challenge to post the fastest times in Friday practice for this weekend's Australian Grand Prix. Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen temporarily topped the charts in the second session before Rosberg and Hamilton grabbed back supremacy. Germany's Rosberg, last year's race winner, clocked the fastest time of one minute 27.697 seconds, ahead of British defending world champion Hamilton in 1:27.797. While Mercedes and Ferrari were laying down their markers for the season-opening race, Sauber, embroiled in a legal battle over their driver line-up, made a belated appearance. After skipping the first session, Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson entered the track during the second, timing 11th and 15th respectively. Sauber was earlier ordered to let Giedo van der Garde drive and is facing contempt of court action, which will now spill into Saturday, to enforce the Australian court ruling. It was unclear whether Sauber was in breach of the order by letting Nasr and Ericsson drive. Judge Clyde Croft urged both parties to have "very sensible" talks at the latest hearing. It turned out to be an eventful drive for Sweden's Ericsson, who reported "a really strange feeling on the brakes" into Turn 1 on his outlap and then had smoke coming from the left rear wheel, which indicating possible suspension failure. Australian hope Daniel Ricciardo also had his share of strife, sitting out the entire second practice session after he needed a change of Renault engine in his Red Bull car. Ricciardo, attempting to become the first Australian to win his home GP in 35 years, complained of "aggressive" throttle response from the RB11's Renault engine. Mercedes started the new season as they left off as Rosberg and Hamilton took charge, reinforcing the constructors champions' chassis and engine improvements. Vettel had an encouraging first day driving for Ferrari since his switch from Red Bull, and was third with a best lap of 1:28.412. The signs look good for Ferrari in Sunday's race with Raikkonen the fourth-quickest with 1:28.842. The second session was stopped when McLaren's Kevin Magnussen, deputising for Fernando Alonso after his crash in testing, came off into the gravel at Turn 6. Three-time race winner Jenson Button reported understeer problems with the other McLaren and Felipe Massa missed the second session due to a water leak in his Williams. The new Manor team had a catalogue of problems on the opening day with electrical software and computing problems confining its cars to the garage. Dutch teenager Max Verstappen, set to become the youngest ever Formula One driver at 17 years and 166 days in Sunday's race, was sixth fastest in the first session but down in 14th in later practice in his Toro Rosso.
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Police in Brazil arrested the Italian extremist and writer Cesare Battisti, who was convicted of murder in his home country and has been on the run for decades. Battisti, who faces deportation, was detained in Embu das Artes, a city in the state of Sao Paulo. Overnight Thursday he was released pending a decision on whether he is to be deported, his lawyer Igor Sant'Anna Tamasauskas. Battisti will be allowed to stay with his family, he added. The arrest came after a judge last week ruled that Battisti does not have the right to stay in Brazil, where he sought refuge after his conviction for murder in Italy blamed on an armed Marxist group active in the 1970s. Battisti spent some 30 years on the run in Mexico and France and came to Brazil in 2004, living in secret before being arrested in Rio de Janeiro. After four years in confinement, Battisti was released in 2011 and given permanent residency in Brazil. Prior to last week's ruling, the supreme court had turned down an Italian extradition request, sparking a diplomatic row, and former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also had said Battisti should not be extradited. Battisti says he is innocent and has no intention of leaving Brazil. During his life on the run he became an author of crime novels and other books about his experiences.
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If you figured the 2015 Lexus LS 460 rolls on four wheels and tires, you'd be wrong -- the flagship luxury sedan rides on a reputation built on solid build quality and comfort. Not the type of thing that lands a car on the cover of a Motor Trend print magazine, but still prized characteristics for some large luxury sedan buyers. The Lexus LS has carved out a niche specializing in a comfortable driving experience, and about 25 years after the first model shook up the U.S. luxury market, we got our hands on two new LS 460 sedans to determine how well the cars compete today. We tested two cars, a 2015 Lexus LS 460 F Sport beautifully finished in Matador Red Mica and a fade-into-the-background 2014 Lexus LS 460 in silver -- from 2014 to 2015, no significant updates were made to the 386-hp, 4.6-liter V-8 engine and eight-speed automatic transmission. The F Sport beefs up the LS' curb appeal and changes the driving experience. Updates include 19-inch forged wheels unique to the F Sport, an air suspension, five driving modes, Brembo six-piston caliper front brakes, a Torsen limited-slip rear differential on rear-drive models, and a few interior upgrades. So what effect does the $8,350 F Sport package have on the LS at the track? Matched against the comfort-focused LS, the LS 460 F Sport's upgraded brakes cut only 4 feet from the 60-0 mph stopping distance, but from behind the wheel you'll immediately notice a more sensitive brake feel. Around our figure-eight course, the LS 460 F Sport finished in 26.1 seconds at 0.87 g (average), a noticeable improvement from the non-F Sport's 27.2 seconds at 0.82 g (average). On the road, the LS 460 F Sport model's steering is quicker and more responsive, but the regular LS 460's steering -- and overall isolated feel -- should please luxury-sedan buyers. Neither car will tire driver or passenger on a long road trip, but the non-sporty LS we drove lacked an air suspension and rolled on 18-inch wheels that provided a more luxurious ride. Having said that, Lexus tells us that almost 80 percent of non-F Sport LS buyers in 2014 upgraded to 19-inch wheels and 11 percent of all LS buyers in the same year went F Sport. No matter what LS 460 you drive, the V-8's engine will quietly purr its way to 60 mph and beyond. If you're concerned with out-accelerating the Joneses' luxury sedans, perhaps another car would be more suitable. The silver LS 460 we tested sprinted to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds, the LS 460 F Sport getting there 0.1 second later. (Our more expensive F Sport tester weighed in at 4,569 pounds versus the other car's 4,466 pounds.) Almost no one test-driving an LS 460 is going to stab the throttle and say, "This car needs 70 hp more," but reasons for buying a full-size luxury sedan aren't always rational, are they? For comparison, we've track-tested a 2015 Kia K900 V-8 at 5.5-5.6 seconds, a turbo six-powered 2011 BMW 740i at 5.5 seconds (the 2015 model has an eight-speed auto instead of that car's six-speed unit), and a supercharged six-cylinder 2013 Audi A8 L at 5.3 seconds. As an added bonus, the six-cylinder BMW and Audi are both more efficient than the eight-cylinder Lexus, which allows them to travel farther on each tank of fuel. In Real MPG testing, our Lexus LS 460 F Sport tester performed well, at 15.4/24.8 mpg city/highway, straddling the EPA estimates of 16/24 mpg. The silver LS 460 riding on 18-inch wheels did even better in Real MPG tests, getting 16.9/27.1 mpg. Related Story: 2015-2016 New Cars: The Ultimate Buyer's Guide Move up to first-tier eight-cylinder competition, and the Lexus is at least 0.9 second slower to 60 mph than the equivalent BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, and Jaguar XJ, which is just fine considering the vast price difference. The eight-cylinder BMW, Audi, and Jaguar all start at nearly or just over $90,000, which makes the $73,445-to-start Lexus LS a value option, even though the Hyundai Equus and Kia K900 are even cheaper. And no, we haven't forgotten about the class-dominating Mercedes-Benz S-Class, a long-wheelbase-only sedan that starts in the mid-$90,000 range. So the Lexus isn't as quick or as efficient as most competitors (we'd like to see improvements on both on a next-gen car), but power is delivered smoothly, and the LS has one strength nothing else can match: a higher expectation of reliability. Although plenty of fancy electronic equipment could go wrong on any flagship luxury sedan, the Lexus LS has shown a consistent ability to ace evaluations by J.D. Power and Associates and Consumer Reports. Though some may question the methodology of those organizations, it's difficult for some consumers to ignore years of positive recognition. Inside both Lexus LS test cars, it's impossible not to be drawn in by the 12.3-inch infotainment screen. Like the two-screen solutions from Acura and the Infiniti Q50 or the 12.3-inch unit in the pricey S-Class, Lexus' singular gigantic screen allows the driver to simultaneously display a decently sized map as well as a second piece of info (song/musician details, HVAC controls, or mileage graphs over the past five minutes). The mouselike control worked for us during the two cars' stay but isn't for everyone. Less polarizing is the leather padding on the sides of the center console -- it's a great feature, as are the soft-close doors and heated/cooled seat controls that have an auto-heating setting. Instrument cluster gauges are bright and easy to read, though we wish the info screen could display redundant navigation controls because no head-up display is offered on the LS to fulfill the same purpose. Another feature we'd like improved is the electronic parking brake's auto-hold feature -- the system could release the brakes a tad smoother once you touch the accelerator pedal. We appreciated the blue and red lights in both LS sedans glowing in the instrument cluster, depending on whether you're in Eco, Normal, or Sport mode. Take a non-F Sport LS on winding roads, and, predictably, the Lexus' conservative stability control light will flicker at you and cut a little power. The LS 460 F Sport is more fun, but in our brief time in the 2015-model-year tester, we wouldn't mind even more aggressive transmission response in the F Sport-specific Sport + mode. On a future LS, we'd like to see an available panoramic sunroof, more advanced active safety tech, and a head-up display, and on the F Sport model, a fancy instrument cluster like the ones in the IS 350 F Sport and GS F. Buyers seeking a full-size luxury sedan today would be well-served by the 2015 LS, as long as they prioritize comfort over class-leading acceleration or fuel economy. Although the Lexus LS is no longer the game changer it was 25 years ago, the luxury sedan has evolved into a competent player. Until the name-brand competition can consistently outperform the LS in dependability surveys, though, there will probably always remain a place for the slightly lower-priced Lexus. Related Story: Luxury for Any Budget Related Link: Research the 2015 Lexus LS 2015 Lexus LS 460 F Sport 2014 Lexus LS 460 BASE PRICE $73,445 $73,050 PRICE AS TESTED $86,975 $75,550 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan Front-engine, RWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan ENGINE 4.6L/386-hp/367-lb-ft DOHC 32-valve V-8 4.6L/386-hp/367-lb-ft DOHC 32-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic 8-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,569 lb (52/48%) 4,466 lb (52/48%) WHEELBASE 116.9 in 116.9 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 200.0 x 73.8 x 57.3 in 200.0 x 73.8 x 58.1 in 0-60 MPH 5.7 sec 5.6 sec QUARTER MILE 14.2 sec @ 100.2 mph 14.1 sec @ 101.5 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 115 ft 119 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.87 g (avg) 0.82 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 26.1 sec @ 0.79 g (avg) 27.2 sec @ 0.68 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 16/24/19 mpg 16/24/19 mpg ENERGY CONS., CITY/HWY 211/140 kW-hrs/100 miles 211/140 kW-hrs/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.03 lb/mile 1.03 lb/mile
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WASHINGTON A Justice Department proposal that could make it easier to locate and hack into computers that are part of criminal investigations is raising constitutional concerns from privacy groups and Google, who fear the plan could have broad implications. Federal prosecutors say their search warrant proposal is needed at a time when computer users are committing crimes in online anonymity while concealing their locations. But civil libertarians fear the rule change, under consideration by a federal advisory committee, would grant the government expansive new powers to reach into computers across the country. The proposal would change existing rules of criminal procedure that, with limited exceptions, permit judges to approve warrants for property searches only in the districts where they serve. The government says those rules are outdated in an era when child pornographers, drug traffickers and others can mask their whereabouts on computer networks that offer anonymity. Such technology can impede or thwart efforts to pinpoint a suspect's geographic location. The Justice Department wants the rules changed so that judges in a district where "activities related to a crime" have occurred could approve warrants to search computers outside their districts. The government says that flexibility is needed for cases in which the government can't figure out the location of a computer and needs a warrant to access it remotely, and for investigations involving botnets networks of computers infected with a virus that spill across judicial districts. "There is a substantial public interest in catching and prosecuting criminals who use anonymizing technologies, but locating them can be impossible for law enforcement absent the ability to conduct a remote search of the criminal's computer," Justice Department lawyers wrote in one memo explaining the need for the change. The advisory committee considering the rule change is meeting this month. The proposal has generated fierce pushback from privacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which contend the rule change could violate a constitutional requirement that search warrant applications be specific about the property to be searched. They also argue the proposal is unclear about exactly what type of information could be accessed by the government and fails to guarantee the privacy of those not under investigation who might have had access to the same computer as the target, or of innocent people who may themselves be victims of a botnet. "What procedural protections are going to be in place when you do these types of searches? How are they going to be limited?" asked Alan Butler, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Another critic, Google, says the proposal "raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that should be left for Congress to decide." Privacy groups are also concerned that the proposal would lead to more frequent use by the FBI of surveillance technology that can be installed remotely on a computer to help pinpoint its location. Such tactics caught public attention last year when FBI Director James Comey acknowledged that in 2007 an agent posing as an Associated Press reporter had sent to a bomb-threat suspect a link to an article that, once opened, revealed to investigators the computer's location and Internet address. "To the extent that the government has been prevented from doing lots of these kinds of searches because they didn't necessarily have a judge to go to, this rule change raises the risk that the government will start using these dubious techniques with more frequency," said ACLU lawyer Nathan Freed Wessler. The Justice Department says such concerns are unfounded. It says the proposal simply ensures that investigators have a judge to go to for a warrant in cases where they can't find a computer, and that the proposal wouldn't provide the government with new technological authorities that it doesn't already have. It's hard to quantify the scope of the problem, though the Justice Department says their concerns are more than abstract. In 2013, a magistrate judge in Texas rejected a request to search a computer that the government said was being used to commit bank fraud but whose location was unknown. Prosecutors sought authority to install software on the machine that would have extracted records and location information. The judge, Stephen Smith, said he lacked the authority to approve the search for a computer "whose location could be anywhere on the planet" but said "there may well be a good reason to update the territorial limits of that rule in light of advancing computer search technology." The proposal is before a criminal procedure advisory committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. If approved, it will then be forwarded to the Supreme Court and ultimately to Congress, which does not have to approve it but can block it. It would take effect in December 2016. ___ Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
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SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star Kyrie Irving left his superstar teammate LeBron James in awe. His spectacular play overwhelmed the San Antonio Spurs. The guard collected a career-high and NBA season-high 57 points and his fadeaway 3 sent the emotional game into overtime where Cleveland rallied for a 128-125 victory over the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night. BOX SCORE: CAVALIERS 128, SPURS 125 (OT) "The kid is special, we all know it, we all see it," James said. "For him to go out and put on a performance like he did tonight was incredible." His 57 topped his own NBA-best 55-point game against Portland on Jan. 28. He scored nine points in the final minute of regulation to tie the game and added 11 more in overtime to snap San Antonio's six-game winning streak. "A few of those shots, it just left my hands and I kind of threw them up at the rim and I was lucky enough and blessed enough that they went in," Irving said. His point total was a Cavs record, too, topping James' 56 against the Raptors in 2005. James was back just in time from a one-game absence to be part of Irving's stellar night in what everyone said was one of the best NBA games this season. "It was such a fun game," Irving said. "The crowd was into it. They sold out, they came to see a great game and it was. Once Bron gets into those step-back 3s, we were just looking at each other, `Man, this is just so much fun.' " Irving hit a 3-pointer in the face of heavy defense from Danny Green to pull Cleveland to 110-107 with 31 seconds remaining in regulation. After the Spurs' Kawhi Leonard missed two free throws with 4.3 seconds left, Irving made his 3, falling to his right over Leonard to tie it at 110. "I know I lost the game," Leonard said, "but (missing free throws) happens to everybody. So, I've got to keep moving forward and know that I made big free throws and big shots before." Irving made all seven of his 3-point attempts, was 20 of 32 from the field overall, and made 10 free throws without a miss. "He was outstanding every time we had an opportunity to beat them," Manu Ginobili said. "He came up with crazy plays." James added 31 in his first game at the AT&T Center since being blown out in five games by San Antonio in the NBA Finals in his last games with the Miami Heat. He was 10 for 20 from the floor in a physical battle with Leonard, but his struggles were lessened by Irving's wild night. Tony Parker had 31 points for San Antonio and Leonard added 24 points. Irving scored 11 points in overtime, including a crossover, fadeaway 3-pointer against Boris Diaw with 1:20 remaining to give Cleveland a 122-118 lead. Green's 3-pointer gave San Antonio a 104-95 lead in regulation, prompting a timeout by Cleveland and a technical on James for arguing a non-call on an earlier miss. "We Just try to regain my composure, including myself, which we did," James said. "We had to get some timely shots and some timely stops." It was part of an emotional night for James, He and Leonard battled on both ends of the court, with King James nodding his head and Leonard staring at him defiantly after the two exchanged a series of elbows to the chest and pushes away from the ball early in the second quarter. TIP-INS Cavaliers: F Shawn Marion (left hip strain) did not play but was working out at full speed about 10 minutes before the game. ... The Cavaliers are 18-16 on the road. ... Cleveland was 12-1 in its previous 13 games against Western Conference teams, outscoring those opponents by 11.2 points. ... The Cavs are 34-5 when scoring at least 100 points. ... Tristan Thompson had four offensive rebounds in becoming the ninth player in team history with 1,000 career offensive rebounds. Spurs: G Manu Ginobili played even though he is still battling gastroenteritis that kept him out of San Antonio's previous game. Ginobili told the team he was OK to play after participating in warmups prior to the game. He finished with no points and just one field goal attempt in 10 minutes. ... The Spurs are 24-8 at home this season. ... Duncan, Parker and Ginobili have 718 career wins, leaving them within 11 of tying Boston's Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish for the most victories by a trio of teammates. UP NEXT Cavaliers: Visit Orlando on Sunday. Spurs: Host Minnesota on Sunday.
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Serena Williams lifted the lid on her 2001 Indian Wells final Thursday, calling it one of the darkest days in her professional tennis career. "I remember sitting down and praying," Williams said Thursday. "I think I was losing in the first set and I told myself I don't want to win this match. "I just wanted to get through this moment. Not win the match, get through and get off the court pretty much." The world number one said she is trying to forget the events of 2001, when the 19-year-old Serena was booed during the final by tennis fans who accused her and her sister Venus of rigging a match. Williams said Thursday at the Tennis Garden stadium that she had to let go of the past before she could allow herself to end her 14-year boycott of the Indian Wells tournament. "Before, I wasn't at a point where I was ready to come back to Indian Wells," Williams said. "I didn't think I would come back to be honest. I felt like I did what I needed to do. I had finished my career in terms of being here." Serena defended the sisters' sense of fair play, saying she has always tried to stick to the rules and is too good an athlete to need to take shortcuts to victory. - 'Tremendous amount of integrity' - "I was a teenager," Serena said of 2001. "I have had a tremendous amount of integrity from the day I stepped out on the court as a professional until today. "Even in doubles if Venus or I touch the ball we say, 'that's not our point'. "We clearly are incredible athletes and our whole career we have focussed on that." The reigning Australian Open champion and top seed is one of 32 seeded players who received a first-round bye at the joint ATP Masters and WTA tournament that runs for two weeks in the California desert. She will play her first match Friday night against Monica Niculescu. Serena is competing for the first time since her self-imposed exile began after she won that emotional final over Kim Clijsters 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. She also claimed the Indian Wells title in 1999. The 2001 drama began when Venus Williams pulled out of their highly anticipated semi-final at the last minute, complaining of a sore knee. Because most of the fans had already taken their seats, many reacted in anger, loudly booing the announcement. Serena was then booed during the final against Clijsters. Venus, who attended the match with her father Richard, was also jeered by the crowd. Even the peers of the Williams' sisters had their suspicions back in the day. Upon learning that Serena and Venus would square off in the semis, Elena Dementieva said at the time it would be Richard who would determine the winner of the match. Five-time grand slam winner Martina Hingis, who is competing in doubles in Indian Wells, used to say the outcome of their matches is a "family affair." Serena and Venus have met 20 times since Indian Wells in 2001 with Serena winning 13 matches. Venus won their most recent encounter last year in Montreal 6-7 (7/9), 6-2, 6-3. They have never had another walkover between them. - Be strong - Serena feels some of the criticism she has faced was racially motivated. "I look forward to stepping out on the court and letting the whole world know it doesn't matter what you face. If it is something that wasn't right, hurt you, hurt your family, you just come out and be strong." Friday will mark the first career meeting between Williams and Romania's Niculescu. Serena wondered Thursday what kind of reception she will receive from the crowd, but said that in the end, the most important thing was to accept herself. "I think it is really important for you to accept you for who you are. You are always going to have fans and always going to have people who aren't as big of a fan. "If you go through your life wanting everyone to accept you, that can cause a whole other set of issues."
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A bill introduced to the Texas House of Representatives would make it illegal for private citizens to record police within 25 feet. House Bill 2918 , introduced by Texas Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) on Tuesday, would make the offense a misdemeanor. Citizens who are armed would not be permitted to record police activity within 100 feet of an officer, according to the Houston Chronicle . Only representatives of radio or TV organizations that hold an FCC license, newspapers and magazines would have the right to record police. The legislator disagreed with people on Twitter who said he's seeking to make all filming of cops illegal. "My bill ... just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement," Villalba tweeted . The bill would go against precedent set in 2011 by an appeals court , which found that citizens are allowed to record police, according to the ACLU. Villalba's bill comes at a time of increased public scrutiny over the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others. In Garner's case, a grand jury didn't indict the police officer who put Garner in a chokehold before his death, but another grand jury did indict the man who filmed the incident on weapons charges. Last year, HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly and another reporter were detained and assaulted while attempting to film a swarm of police officers filling up a McDonald's in Ferguson, Missouri, the town where Brown was killed. That filming, as well as other recordings of police interactions by the public, are currently legal.
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CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) The Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in dense fog during a training mission in Florida was carrying seven special operations Marines forces based in North Carolina, along with four National Guard soldiers from Louisiana. All were killed. The salvage of the helicopter could begin Friday afternoon and is expected to take several hours. Also on Friday, military officials released the names of the Marines killed. All were from the 2nd Special Operations Battalion of the Marine Corps Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune. Here are some of their stories: ANDREW SEIF On March 6, just days before the helicopter crash, Staff Sgt. Andrew Seif was awarded the Silver Star Medal. Seif received the award for facing enemy fire to save a mortally wounded friend in Afghanistan in July 2012. The Camp Lejeune Globe reported that Seif was from Holland, Michigan. He grew up playing soldier in his backyard and joined the Marines just weeks after graduating from high school. By 2012, he was a critical skills operator with the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command. Seif and his teammate, Sgt. Justin Hansen, were closing in on one of western Afghanistan's bomb experts, according to the paper. They came under fire, and Hansen was hit. Seif moved Hansen to safer position, treated his teammate's wounds and returned fire. "The fact that (Seif) continued to fight through the objective to get Sgt. Hansen taken care of, putting himself in the line of fire, speaks volumes to who he is and demonstrates that he would never leave a Marine behind," said Maj. Gen. Joseph L. Osterman. Seif's wife was at his side when he received the medal. He was born in Fairbanks, Alaska. "I think sometimes the worst situations bring out the best in people, and that day a lot of people showed their worth," Seif told the newspaper. ___ TREVOR BLAYLOCK Staff Sgt. Trevor P. Blaylock was born in Lake Orion, Michigan, and swam on the varsity swim team. Upon graduation, he attended Henry Ford Community College. In 2006, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was previously stationed at Camp Pendleton in California. He served in Operation Iraqi Freedom in Al Anbar Province. ___ THOMAS SAUNDERS Born in Bonn, Germany, Master Sgt. Thomas Saunders enlisted in the Marines after graduating from high school in Virginia. Following basic training in 1999, he was assigned to Camp LeJeune. He deployed in Kosovo and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom with a special operations task force. ___ LIAM A. FLYNN Born in Reading, England, Staff Sgt. Liam Flynn moved to Queens, New York in 2002. He enlisted in the Marine Corps that year. After boot camp, he was assigned to Camp LeJeune. He served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. ___ STANFORD HENRY SHAW III Capt. Stanford Henry Shaw III was from Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and attended Ridge High School, where he was student government president and captain of the varsity lacrosse team. He attended the United States Naval Academy and upon his graduation in 2006 became a commissioned Marine officer. After graduating from the Infantry Officer Course, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. He served two tours of duty in Iraq, according to information provided by the Marines at Camp Lejeune. ___ MARCUS BAWOL Staff Sgt. Marcus Bawol from Warren, Michigan, "loved everything about the military," said his sister, Brandy Peek. "He couldn't wait to join. He wanted to fight for our country and was always striving to be the best Marine he could be." The 27-year-old graduated in 2006 from Warren Mott High School. Bawol played baseball and football and was a member of the school's swim team, according to district Superintendent Robert Livernois. Bawol attended Olivet College for a year, where he was a catcher on the baseball team. He had planned to marry his fiancée in October, Peek said. On Thursday, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts ordered flags in the city, just north of Detroit, flown at half-staff. ___ KERRY KEMP Staff Sgt. Kerry Michael Kemp was the proud father of a baby just shy of her first birthday and loved horsing around with his nephews. "He would wrestle with them. He really got into that, the wrestling and playing. He'd carry them around on his back," said his sister-in-law, Lora Waraksa. He was a "proud Marine, a loving husband and most wonderful father," she said. He also loved golfing and the ocean he often took his nephews out to hunt for sea shells. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Kemp met his wife, Jenna, at Port Washington High School in Wisconsin, where he was voted "best smile" by his senior class. He graduated in 2005. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. ___ Associated Press reporters Michael Biesecker in Raleigh, N.C.; Corey Williams in Detroit; Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
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BOISE, Idaho An Idaho sheriff says new evidence makes him confident there is no ongoing threat to the community following the arrest of a 22-year-old man connected to a triple killing. Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney gave few details Friday about the active investigation into the killing of an Arizona power company executive, his wife and their adult son but says a diamond engagement ring taken from the home where the killings occurred has been recovered. Detectives for several days had been trying to connect the ring to Adam M. Dees of Nampa. Prosecutors say when Dees was arrested Wednesday he had credit cards belonging to one or more of the victims. He's faces charges of grand theft and forgery, and is being held on $2 million bail. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. An Idaho sheriff has appealed for the public's help to determine what might connect a slain former Arizona power company executive, his wife and their adult son to a 22-year-old man who prosecutors say was arrested with credit cards belonging to one or more of the victims. Bail was set at $2 million Thursday for Adam M. Dees of Nampa, who faces three counts of grand theft, three counts of forgery and a misdemeanor count of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Prosecutors said a 9 mm handgun was found tucked into Dees' waistband. They didn't disclose whether it was linked to the killings. Dees is not charged with murder. The victims found Tuesday in a home in the foothills outside Boise have been identified as 80-year-old Theodore M. Welp, 77-year-old Delores Elaine Welp and their son, 52-year-old Thomas P. Welp. No motive or cause of death was released. Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney has said the killings were the most violent he had seen in three decades in law enforcement. Besides asking for help in uncovering any possible connection between Dees and the Welps, authorities were looking for information on a wedding ring they believe Dees tried to sell. They didn't know if it was linked to the killings. The Welps formerly lived in Arizona, where Theodore Welp was the chief of Tucson Electric Power Co. in the 1980s. Some blamed him for the company's financial downfall. The Arizona attorney general's office conducted an investigation into the financial dealings, but the probe did not result in charges. The killings took place in what records say is a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home on about 20 acres with a total value of about $800,000. Theodore and Elaine Welp owned the property, which also had horses and other buildings. "No words can adequately express the grief and despair we are feeling," the Welp family said in a statement issued through the sheriff's office. "These were kind, caring and generous people who meant so much to us and have been senselessly taken from us." Theodore and Elaine Welp were involved with charitable organizations, including one that funds research on vision impairment and blindness. Police arrested Dees on Wednesday at an electronics store. Prosecutors listed a handful of other sites where they said he used the credit cards, forged the names of the homicide victims, and later was identified by workers. Dees' father, Steve Dees, told the Idaho Statesman that his son told his family he found the credit cards. The young man wore restraints but appeared relaxed during his appearance in Ada County Court via a video feed from jail. In a clear voice, Dees said "no" when asked by Judge Theresa Gardunia if he would be able pay the bail. Defense attorney Isaiah Govia sought bail of $25,000, noting his client had no previous felony convictions. He also said Dees was put on suicide watch after being arrested because he is bipolar and schizophrenic and didn't have access to his medication. Gardunia ordered Dees to return to court March 26.
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The McLaren team said Friday they have found nothing wrong with the car that crashed during testing leaving Fernando Alonso concussed and out of this weekend's opening race of the season. The British team has been under fire over the circumstances surrounding the two-time world champion's accident, which has forced him to sit out the Australian Grand Prix on medical advice. Alonso crashed into a wall after completing just 20 laps on the final day of the second pre-season test in Spain and he was airlifted to hospital under sedation. McLaren has already denied that Alonso suffered an electric shock in the cockpit. There were also reports that the Spanish driver thought it was 1995 and he was still a go-karting racer when he regained consciousness. But team principal Eric Boullier said Alonso was on track to drive for McLaren at next week's Malaysian Grand Prix. "The normal process recommended by the doctor was for him to stay and rest at home for a few days so this is what he is doing," Boullier told the press in Melbourne Friday. "He has to start and train again with his recovery and training programme. Now it's up to the doctors and the FIA to decide if he will be ready to race in Malaysia or not." Boullier said tests have been carried out on the crashed car and nothing was found to be technically amiss. "Our first concern was for Fernando to be cared for by the doctors and as far as I know no one has access to his medical files except for his doctor," he said. "Technically we have conducted all the investigations on the car and very transparently with the FIA. "Everything we have conducted so far we couldn't find anything wrong or which has implied the (reason for the) accident. "So we are still looking for further investigations but we have given our report to the FIA and we are working with the FIA so nothing more can be said than this." The Alonso controversy has ramped up the pressure on a team that limped through pre-season testing, with the MP4-30 clocking only 30 laps during the final session -- the least of any team. The McLaren drivers, Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen, had more mechanical problems in Friday testing. Three-time race winner Button reported understeer problems with his car while Magnussen, deputising for Alonso, came off into the gravel at Turn 6 and retired during the second session. McLaren have renewed their association with Japanese engine supplier Honda, a partnership which conquered F1 from 1988 to 1991 with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost at the wheel.
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Let's say you're charged a higher interest rate on your credit card than the terms of your contract specifies, perhaps even higher than state limits. Or you're charged an obscure fee on your student loan or checking account. Or a payday lender raids your account without your permission. It's hard enough to take a financial provider to court over such claims, even under normal circumstances. But in a growing number of cases, consumers are barred from even that possibility. Mandatory arbitration clauses hidden in the fine print of credit card, banking, cell phone and payday loan contracts prevent consumers from access to the judicial system when a dispute arises, and make class action lawsuits over pervasive injustices impossible. Instead, consumers who feel wronged must submit to an extra-judicial process with an arbitrator paid by their lenders a playing field clearly tilted toward corporations. Related: You Can No Longer Take Your Company to Court Because the outcomes of arbitration cases are typically not public, we didn't know a lot about the scope of this system until this week. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, acting under a mandate from the Dodd-Frank Act, released a report to Congress on mandatory arbitration, one of the first empirical analyses of the practice. While CFPB did not attempt to evaluate its findings, the reality plainly shows through: Arbitration benefits corporations at the expense of their customers. One problem for consumers in pursuing arbitration is that they have no idea it exists. CFPB found that three out of four consumers were unaware of whether their financial products included a mandatory arbitration clause. Those clauses are everywhere, though: 53 percent of credit cards, 86 percent of private student loans, 88 percent of cell phones, 92 percent of prepaid cards and 99 percent of payday loans have them in their contracts. This revelation only comes up when people consider their options after being ripped off, or when the company takes them to arbitration over a debt. Knowing about the arbitration clause may not help much, either. Despite the tens of millions of consumers why operate under those arbitration rules, only an average of 600 arbitration cases got filed annually between CFPB's study years of 2010 to 2012, with one in five of those likely filed by corporations. Maybe consumers shy away from the option because corporations have the upper hand in arbitration: In a sample of 1,060 debt dispute cases, corporations were given seven times as much in financial awards as consumers. Related: The Sneaky Hidden Clause in Credit Card Agreements Of course, individual court cases are not such a boon for consumers either: Of 1,200 cases filed between 2010 and 2012, only two went to trial. The real reason corporations use mandatory arbitration is to prevent class action lawsuits. Those suits can cause real pain for corporations, including billions in damages. So they use the arbitration clause to block class action certification, given leeway to do this by a Supreme Court ruling, AT&T v. Concepcion . And 90 percent of all arbitration agreements studied by the CFPB prohibit even class action arbitration. In other words, financial services providers like their chances when going up against resource-starved individuals, but find themselves less advantaged when those individuals can band together as a group. It's the same impulse that makes corporations hostile to unions. Some lawmakers hope that CFPB's study is just a first step. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who has highlighted the arbitration issue in the past, reacted to the study by urging that CFPB establish rules to ban mandatory arbitration clauses. "A rule like that would go a long way toward keeping the big banks in line and making sure that justice is available to consumers who get swindled," Franken said in at a briefing yesterday in Washington. The Senator plans to reintroduce the Arbitration Fairness Act to eliminate arbitration clauses in consumer contracts. Americans for Financial Reform, a labor/progressive coalition, is also mobilizing for a new CFPB rule. The industry argues that these arbitrations are cheaper and more efficient for everyone involved, implying that they return those savings from reducing civil suit costs to their customers. But CFPB compared costs between companies with no arbitration clause and those with them, and found "no statistically significant evidence" of cheaper prices. Financial services providers simply pocket the savings they get from lowering their risk of exposure to legal action from their contract violations. "If tens of millions of consumer's rights are being trampled and it's not lowering costs, why do we have these agreements?" Franken asked yesterday. "It's so that big businesses can shield themselves from liability when they act against the consumer's best interest and that is just wrong." Related: The Hidden Risks in Your Credit Cards' Fine Print In a way, there's a parallel between corporations mandating arbitration cases and the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) process placed into international trade agreements. Under this process, corporations can sue sovereign governments if they believe regulations violate the terms of the trade agreement. Like arbitration, ISDS stays outside national courts, and corporations can win cash awards based on expectations of future profits lost through the regulatory changes. Private lawyers, not judges, hear the cases. So the lesson here is that corporations don't respect the judicial system as much as they want to bend it to their advantage. As 100 law professors wrote in a letter to Congress and the U.S. Trade Representative this week, ISDS "grants foreign corporations a special legal privilege," weakening the rule of law. You can say the same things about mandatory arbitration clauses. In both cases, corporations can step outside the legal system and into a process they feel they can control, whether to chill regulations or to stop individuals from suing for relief. Both ISDS and consumer arbitration have no appeals process. They feature no public oversight of the arbitrators. They create no precedent on corporations that they must follow. So there's no accountability, no review and no fairness. The only difference is that ISDS exists as an option for corporations; consumers have no alternative but arbitration. The good news is we have a consumer agency now that has managed to study arbitration, with a focus on how it affects ordinary people, not the financial industry. I hope they finish the job. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: The Long, Slow Death of Cable Just Reached a Tipping Point Get Ready for Another Real Estate Bubble The Biggest Money Scam on College Campuses
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Toyota Motor Corp. signed on as a worldwide Olympic sponsor Friday in a long-term deal reportedly worth nearly $1 billion. The deal starts globally in 2017 and runs through the 2024 Olympics, including the 2020 Games in Tokyo Toyota becomes the first car company ever signed up by the International Olympic Committee for its top-tier TOP sponsorship program. It joins as a sponsor in the "mobility category." Terms of the deal were not announced, but Japanese media reported Toyota will pay $835 million. IOC President Thomas Bach was in Tokyo to sign the agreement with Toyota president Akio Toyoda. "This is a very symbolic day," Bach said. "It is the first time in the successful history of the TOP program that we have had a mobility category." Toyota becomes the third Japanese company to become a worldwide Olympic sponsor after Panasonic and Bridgestone. Toyota also becomes the 12th TOP sponsor and third committed through 2024. Other TOP sponsors include Coca-Cola and McDonald's. The Toyota deal covers the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and the 2022 Winter Games and 2024 Summer Olympics. The host cities for the 2022 and 2024 games have not yet been selected. While Toyota will join the TOP program in 2017, it will have marketing rights in Japan with immediate effect. The IOC said Toyota will work with organizing committees to "provide sustainable mobility solution for the games to help with safer, more efficient mobility, including intelligent transport systems, urban traffic systems and vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems." Bach said the deal is in line with the Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms approved by the IOC in December. "We will do everything possible to fulfil our new role in The Olympic Partner Program and to justify the trust that the IOC has placed in us," Toyoda said. "The addition of the mobility category ... is important recognition for our entire industry." The head of the IOC's marketing commission is Tsunekazu Takeda, who is also president of the Japanese Olympic Committee and vice president of Tokyo's organizing committee. "This agreement is a powerful indication of the strength of the Olympic brand globally and the appeal of an association with the Olympic movement," Takeda said.
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Scalability is one of the most important factors for entrepreneurs considering starting a new business or hoping to take a current business to the next level. Successful business growth depends on a scalable business model that will increase profits over time, by growing revenue while avoiding cost increases. Keeping this low-cost, high-profit goal in mind, consider how the business model will affect the bottom line when you expand offerings. Does business output always require increased input in order to grow? Does the business need to hire more employees any time sales must increase? These are the first questions to consider when you're considering expanding your business. Linear growth can be slow and expensive. Did you answer "yes" to the questions above? Then your business model may not be scalable in a way that yields greater efficiency and profitability over time. Take a step back and decide whether investing in linear growth that consumes resources will be commensurate with the increased revenue. Businesses can grow without scalability, but they won't achieve the increased profit margins of nonlinear growth models. For example, if a business requires hiring more employees every time sales must increase, the business model may not disconnect sales growth from cost growth. Expansion means increasing costs to support the additional sales. The message here: Search for ways to avoid this linear model. Exponential growth can be the key to success. Highly scalable businesses grow exponentially. They are not weighed down by the same sales-cost growth relationship as linear models. Instead, as sales increase, costs stay flat, allowing for higher levels of profit over time. Businesses with high scalability grow with lower capital requirements, making them more efficient and more attractive to initial investors. Many technology companies, like Google, Apple and Microsoft, have perfected this type of scalable business model. Their initial costs for developing an advertising platform or operating system are high, but once it is on the market, they can sign up users or sell many copies of the related software with relatively minimal cost increases. In order to emulate the examples of such successful, highly scalable business models, consider adjusting your current business model so an initial investment in technology will support exponential sales growth down the road. Make adjustments. Of course not every business is designed for exponential scalability, and not every business model is easy to change. However, making a few key adjustments can improve the scalability of your company. First, trim the fat.Review business processes and try to find a way to reduce redundancies. Most often, this occurs in the production phase. If automating any of your production processes is possible -- as is decreasing the cost of producing units as more are ordered -- your business model can scale more efficiently. Are you in the business of providing services? Scalability here can be a little more difficult, but not impossible. Since services rely on the number of workers they use and the number of hours they work in the field, service-based business models tend to be more linear. The key for a service-based business is to find the processes that can be automated, or to find a value-added way to generate supplemental revenue without adding labor hours. A second strategy is to invest in automation.Make the business more scalable by supplementing its processes with software. For example, instead of relying solely on human capital to handle things like scheduling or data entry, invest in software that lightens employee loads and allows workflow to be more efficient. Software will be an upfront cost, but as the business expands, that software can minimize new hires, keeping costs down over the long term -- even as profits increase. Efficient and profitable business scalability is all about increasing output while keeping costs low. This type of business model will increase profits over the long term, increasing enterprise value. Rethinking the business model to make it more scalable may just give you the edge necessary to secure new customers and grow your business exponentially.
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There are a few things that toddlers get a bad rap for (and for most of them, it's rightfully so): unpredictable temper tantrums, inexplicably erratic behavior, and finicky tendencies toward food. Sound like anyone residing under your roof? Then we've got a few tricks up our sleeves. While we make no guarantees (see: unpredictable), these 10 easy, approachable recipes are well worth a try and likely to yield some full little bellies. And if not? They're all pretty appealing for Mom and Dad's dinner, too. Cheesy Chicken Taquitos Mexican food is fun, but tacos and fajitas are a big handful for a little hand to scoop up. Weelicious's cheesy chicken taquitos are perfectly pint-size. Browse: Awesome recipes to cook with kids Peanut Butter Noodles Give your little PB&J addicts a more sophisticated spin on their favorite flavor combo with these ultraeasy peanut butter noodles. Also try: Peanut butter popcorn Wagon Wheels With Meatballs The trick here is in the shape of the pasta. What transportation-loving tot wouldn't love a plate full of wagon wheels ? Kids will also get a kick out of these eyeball meatballs Healthy Chicken Potstickers There's something that's very appealing about finger food for little kids (and understandably so). These chicken potstickers (surprisingly) contain all the makings of a complete meal and are fun to dip in soy or hoisin sauce. Related: Ditch the take-out: 24 Chinese recipes you can make at home Beef Noodle Stir-Fry If you're looking to add more iron to your kids' diets, beef noodle stir-fry is a great one-pot (or skillet) way to do so. Browse: Awesome one-pot meals Chicken Tenders With Greek Yogurt Ranch You didn't think that we'd write up a toddler-food story without including chicken fingers , did you?! Making them yourself (particularly when they're baked, not fried) is a healthier alternative to the freezer variety, and kids will love dipping them in a side of Greek yogurt ranch. Browse: More recipes with Greek yogurt Turkey and Zucchini Quinoa Meatballs Sneak in a dose of high-protein quinoa with these tasty turkey meatballs that can be served as shown, with lettuce wraps, or with a side of spaghetti. Browse: Popular quinoa recipes Zucchini-Corn Pancakes Pancakes for dinner are fun every now and then, but when they're covered with maple syrup and served with a side of bacon, it turns into more of an indulgence than a well-balanced meal. Try this savory, veggie-packed pancake alternative. Also try: Aromatic chicken pancakes Pizza Pockets Five-ingredient pizza pockets are a fun new alternative to the classic slice. Make an extra batch to keep in the freezer! Browse: Pizza recipes Little Ears Pasta With Peas, Mint, and Ricotta Ricotta and parmesan come together to make the creamy sauce for this delicious pasta recipe that's as appealing to adults as it is to kids. Watch: shapes and variations of pasta dough
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BOISE, Idaho An Idaho sheriff has appealed for the public's help to determine what might connect a slain former Arizona power company executive, his wife and their adult son to a 22-year-old man who prosecutors say was arrested with credit cards belonging to one or more of the victims. Bail was set at $2 million Thursday for Adam M. Dees of Nampa, who faces three counts of grand theft, three counts of forgery and a misdemeanor count of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Prosecutors said a 9 mm handgun was found tucked into Dees' waistband. They didn't disclose whether it was linked to the killings. Dees is not charged with murder. The victims found Tuesday in a home in the foothills outside Boise have been identified as 80-year-old Theodore M. Welp, 77-year-old Delores Elaine Welp and their son, 52-year-old Thomas P. Welp. No motive or cause of death was released. Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney has said the killings were the most violent he had seen in three decades in law enforcement. Besides asking for help in uncovering any possible connection between Dees and the Welps, authorities were looking for information on a wedding ring they believe Dees tried to sell. They didn't know if it was linked to the killings. The Welps formerly lived in Arizona, where Theodore Welp was the chief of Tucson Electric Power Co. in the 1980s. Some blamed him for the company's financial downfall. The Arizona attorney general's office conducted an investigation into the financial dealings, but the probe did not result in charges. The killings took place in what records say is a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home on about 20 acres with a total value of about $800,000. Theodore and Elaine Welp owned the property, which also had horses and other buildings. "No words can adequately express the grief and despair we are feeling," the Welp family said in a statement issued through the sheriff's office. "These were kind, caring and generous people who meant so much to us and have been senselessly taken from us." Theodore and Elaine Welp were involved with charitable organizations, including one that funds research on vision impairment and blindness. Police arrested Dees on Wednesday at an electronics store. Prosecutors listed a handful of other sites where they said he used the credit cards, forged the names of the homicide victims, and later was identified by workers. Dees' father, Steve Dees, told the Idaho Statesman that his son told his family he found the credit cards. The young man wore restraints but appeared relaxed during his appearance in Ada County Court via a video feed from jail. In a clear voice, Dees said "no" when asked by Judge Theresa Gardunia if he would be able pay the bail. Defense attorney Isaiah Govia sought bail of $25,000, noting his client had no previous felony convictions. He also said Dees was put on suicide watch after being arrested because he is bipolar and schizophrenic and didn't have access to his medication. Gardunia ordered Dees to return to court March 26.
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Did the pill really impact her judgment?
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Microsoft is working on an advanced version of its competitor to Apple's Siri, using research from an artificial intelligence project called "Einstein." Microsoft has been running its "personal assistant" Cortana on its Windows phones for a year, and will put the new version on the desktop with the arrival of Windows 10 this autumn. Later, Cortana will be available as a standalone app, usable on phones and tablets powered by Apple Inc's iOS and Google Inc's Android, people familiar with the project said. "This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame," said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. The plan to put Cortana on machines running software from rivals such as Apple and Google, as well as the Einstein project, have not been reported. Cortana is the name of an artificial intelligence character in the video game series "Halo." They represent a new front in CEO Satya Nadella's battle to sell Microsoft software on any device or platform, rather than trying to force customers to use Windows. Success on rivals' platforms could create new markets and greater relevance for the company best known for its decades-old operating system. The concept of 'artificial intelligence' is broad, and mobile phones and computers already show dexterity with spoken language and sifting through emails for data, for instance. Still, Microsoft believes its work on speech recognition, search and machine learning will let it transform its digital assistant into the first intelligent 'agent' which anticipates users needs. By comparison, Siri is advertised mostly as responding to requests. Google's mobile app, which doesn't have a name like Siri or Cortana, already offers some limited predictive information 'cards' based on what it thinks the user wants to know. Microsoft has tried to create digital assistants before, without success. Microsoft Bob, released in 1995, was supposed to make using a computer easy, but ended up being the butt of jokes. The Office Assistant nicknamed 'Clippy' suffered a similar fate a few years later. "We're defining the competitive landscape... of who can provide the most supportive services that make life easier, keep track of things, that complement human memory in a way that helps us get things done," said Horvitz. Outside his door stands "The Assistant", a monitor showing a woman's face that can converse with visitors, has access to Horvitz's calendar and can book meetings. On his desktop, Horvitz runs 'Lifebrowser', a program that stores everything from appointments to photos and uses machine learning to identify the important moments. A keyword search for his university professor instantly brings up photos and video from the last time they met. Cortana could tell a mobile phone user when to leave for the airport, days after it read an email and realized the user was planning a flight. It would automatically check flight status, determine where the phone is located using GPS, and checking traffic conditions. None of the individual steps are a breakthrough, but creating an artificial intelligence that can stitch together the processes marks a breakthrough in usefulness, Microsoft says. Rivals are on the same track. Google's latest mobile app uses the predictive power generated from billions of searches to work out what a user is doing, what they are interested in, and sending relevant information, such as when a favorite sports team is playing next. Apple is also pushing Siri, which uses Microsoft's Bing search engine in the background, into new areas with its CarPlay and HomeKit platforms, as well as the recently unveiled Apple Watch. The key to Cortana's success will be knowing where a user is, what time it is, and what they are trying to do. Albert Einstein's work on the relationship between space and time gave rise to Microsoft's secret project name, said Horvitz. "Einstein was brilliant about space and time," he said. "It's using brilliance about space and time generally in our agents." (Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Peter Henderson and John Pickering)
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LONDON (AP) Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will be out for up to four weeks with a hamstring injury, which is set to rule the midfielder out of two upcoming England games. Oxlade-Chamberlain, who recently returned to the Arsenal team, pulled up with the injury during Arsenal's 2-1 win over Manchester United in the FA Cup on Monday. Wenger says the 21-year-old Oxlade-Chamberlain will be out for ''three weeks, four weeks maximum.'' England plays a European Championship qualifier against Lithuania on March 27 and a friendly with Italy in Turin four days later. Wenger says Jack Wilshere will miss a few more weeks while he recovers from minor ankle surgery. Arsenal plays West Ham in the Premier League on Saturday.
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Next summer is looking like the best time to take that European vacation you've been thinking about. That's because the euro has already fallen to a 12-year low of $1.06 , and should keep falling for at least another year. In fact, it shouldn't be long until the dollar is worth more. A brief history The last time the dollar was worth more than the euro was all the way back in December 2002, just three years after the common European currency came into existence. But in the years after that, the Euro gained strength as the continent imported less and exported more. The euro soared to an all-time high of $1.59. It was enough that, in 2007, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan wondered if the euro would replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency--in other words, the benchmark that everyone uses in case of emergency--and even supermodel Gisele Bundchen reportedly insisted on being paid in euros rather than dollars. That's quite a consensus. But it turns out that these reports of the dollar's death were greatly exaggerated. Since then, the euro has fallen 24 percent against the dollar in less than a year, and made everyone forget its grand ambitions. What happened? Robert Frost can help us here. Two monetary policies have diverged in, well, not a wood, and Europe has finally taken the path well traveled by. Specifically, to boost Europe's extraordinary weak economy, the European Central Bank is buying bonds with newly-printed money, aka quantitative easing, while the Federal Reserve is far enough along that it's getting ready to raise rates . That means interest rates are falling, sometimes into negative territory, in Europe, and, at least on the short end , rising in the U.S. Think about it like this. Would you rather buy a German 10-year bond that pays 0.25 percent or a U.S. 10-year bond that pays 2.1 percent? Investors, especially big European ones , are answering that by moving their money out of euros and into dollars. And voilà, the euro has fallen from $1.39 last year to $1.06 today. The simpler way to think about this, though, is that the U.S. economy is in a lot better shape than Europe's. Unemployment is 5.5 percent here and falling fast, while it's 11.2 percent there and barely falling at all. Now a stronger economy should mean a stronger currency, because it needs higher interest rates to keep inflation in check which should make it a more attractive place to put money. But, as Europe has found out, the opposite isn't true. Higher rates don't make your economy strong if it's actually weak. And even though that will push your currency up in the short run, it will make it fall even more in the longer one. That's the mistake the ECB made twice, actually ! in 2011, when it raised rates to fight some fleeting oil inflation. The result was a double-dip recession that almost tore the common currency union apart, and has only just ended. To make up for that, the ECB has had to do more than it otherwise might have, cutting interest rates into negative territory and buying €60 billion of bonds a month. The euro, in other words, is falling so much more today, because it didn't fall like it should have yesterday. The U.S., meanwhile, has been printing money like it should have, at least most of the time. It started QE in 2008, expanded it in 2009, restarted it in 2010, and re-restarted it in 2012 with a promise to keep going until unemployment came down. It worked. Now all these starts and stops are why the dollar kept going up and down and up again these past few years, but now that it's over, it's only going up. Indeed, the Fed is done buying bonds, and, unlike almost every other central bank, is preparing to raise rates. That's pushed the dollar up against every currency, but especially the euro now that the ECB is printing them. How low will the euro go? That depends on how much, if at all, the Fed raises rates, and how long the ECB buys bonds. On the one hand, there's no sign of any inflation or bubbly behavior that would force the Fed to raise rates. But on the other, the Fed has been pretty clear that it wants to start normalizing policy in June because unemployment is already normal-ish. And on top of that, New York Fed President William Dudley has even said they might have to hike rates in quick succession if long-term rates don't go up too which seems pretty likely with Europe's low bond yields pushing ours down. The ECB has promised to keep buying bonds until at least September 2016, and even longer than that if inflation is still too low. Now Europe's inflation numbers are already p icking up a little bit, but, as Paul Krugman points out, markets seem to believe it will be a good while longer before Europe's economy and by extension, its monetary policy is anywhere close to normal. Add it all up, and Deutsche Bank expects the euro to keep falling to $0.90 by the end of 2016 and $0.85 by the end of 2017. So now you know when to buy those tickets.
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These are boom times for congressional caucuses the groups lawmakers form to support an industry or cause. The number of officially registered "congressional member organizations" and informal analogues has mushroomed in recent decades, from roughly 100 in the early 1990s to 350 in the mid-2000s to 739 in the last Congress. And, as of then, no one belonged to more of them than Rep. Loretta Sanchez. (Paul Hoppe illustration.) The Democrat from Orange County, California who was unaware of her status until I called her office earlier this month was a member of 140 caucuses by the close of last session, according to the Congressional Yellow Book, the directory of lawmakers and staff that I used to perform my unofficial tally of affiliations. Sanchez's legislative portfolio is heavy on foreign affairs, and to some extent, her memberships reflect that: For example, she tells me, she belongs to the caucus on Romania "because it's a NATO ally." Her geopolitical pursuits also explain her association with the Kurdish-American Caucus, the Korea Caucus, and the Friends of Scotland Caucus (which she cochairs out of interest in the cache of nuclear weapons there). In addition, she goes to weekly meetings of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition. Other affiliations include the Wine Caucus (where members hear from the industry while tasting its Pinots and Cabernets), the Oral Health Caucus (dedicated to dental research, and, of course, flossing), and the Electromagnetic Pulse Caucus (which raises awareness about the risk of an infrastructure apocalypse). The Diabetes Caucus the most popular of the groups on the Hill counts Sanchez among its 316 members, as does the Women in the Military Caucus, which she founded. In general, if a colleague approaches her, Sanchez says, "I'm like, 'Oh, yeah. Yeah, put me on that caucus it just meets once a year.' " Some caucuses, such as the powerful Congressional Black Caucus, or the new House Freedom Caucus, unite members with similar politics. The vast majority, however, simply allow lawmakers to bond over their hobbies (see: Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer's Congressional Bike Caucus) or to engage in polite, usually bipartisan displays of solidarity. Caucus membership "is more symbolic than anything else," says Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, cofounder of the Congressional Bourbon Caucus. The average group "is not a huge commitment," he says. "It's not really any commitment." Membership can serve some useful functions. Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, by my count last session's caucus-joining runner-up to Sanchez he was in 136 says he joined most of them because constituents asked him to. Agreeing is a way to serve them, he says and it's also a handy signifier. It suggests that he knows enough about, say, steelworkers, or Italy, to address voters' concerns. For example, since he cochairs the Bulgaria Caucus, he says, people know that, "if they bring up an issue, I won't look at them funny and say, 'Sofia? Where's that?' " But the lengthening of the caucus rosters may be, more than anything, a symptom of both Congress's current malaise and lawmakers' frustration with it. A recent Congressional Research Service report theorizes a link between the growth in the number of caucuses, the rise of the constant campaign, and the decline in legislative opportunities for rank-and-file members. Says former Rep. Connie Morella of Maryland, who now teaches at American University, "Frankly, I'd much rather see them introduce legislation. … That's not happening as much now, and I think that has something to do with the proliferation of caucuses." Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who cochairs the Progressive Caucus, paints a similar picture. The more active caucuses are places "where ideas that might be dismissed in committee or ignored on the floor suddenly have equal and respected standing," he says. "If it was the regular order of 20 years ago … when their ideas, in the regular order, were being looked at, taken seriously, and in some cases integrated into legislation, that would be ideal." But in the current ultra-partisan, all-but-gridlocked environment, caucus meetings may be the only place on the Hill that a lawmaker's ideas ever get truly heard. For at least one member of Congress, the decision not to join any caucuses is its own kind of statement. Republican Rep. John Mica of Florida has been in office since 1993. When he was first elected, many caucuses were paid for by special interests (since 1995, the groups have been forbidden to take outside funding or money from congressional offices), and Mica campaigned on a pledge that he would never join one. He has kept to the promise, rule change notwithstanding. Some caucuses still charge dues which members pay with their own money to support a staff, do research, and compete for policy clout. A seat on the Congressional Progressive Caucus costs $2,000, and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition charges between $850 and $2,000, according to BuzzFeed News. Members tend to be choosier about those groups: When the LGBT Equality Caucus announced it was imposing a $400 fee, nearly half of its 114 members dropped out. Sanchez tells me the value of her many affiliations goes beyond symbolism. "We're generalists, as congresspeople," she says. "I'm so much more educated because I'm in those caucuses." She tells me she's planning a diplomatic visit through the Scotland caucus, and is researching immigration policy as a task-force cochair in the Hispanic Caucus. She doesn't plan to let opportunities like those slip through the cracks. Although she's back down to about 85 memberships now her staff reviews and culls the list at the beginning of each Congress that number is likely to grow. "I told my staff to get me a list of all my caucuses," she says. "I don't want to be missing any that are important. There's a Library of Congress Caucus that I don't think my staff has re-signed me up for, and I feel like I'm missing some dinners, and a great speakers series." She cheerily observes, "You could meet to death in D.C. if you wanted to."
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Google Flight Search can send you to a random spot on the globe, and now it'll tell you if that fare offers WiFi too. Through a partnership with flight-rating service Routehappy , the search giant will populate your queries with amenity information like the aforementioned internet availability , in-seat power outlets, media streaming to your own device and seat type. Since trips on Virgin America's kitted out planes aren't exactly feasible for every trip, Google's new tools should make it easier to see what flights offer a somewhat comparable experience before you board. PR Newswire
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Lawyers for jailed South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius have lost a bid to prevent prosecutors from appealing against his acquittal on murder charges. Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled in the Johannesburg High Court that the application be rejected. Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the lesser charge of culpable homicide, or manslaughter. After a short hearing, Judge Masipa said procedure did not allow her to grant or refuse the application. "In my view, to entertain this application will be tantamount to reviewing my own decision," she said. "'For one thing there is really nothing new in the submissions by council for the applicant." The double amputee athlete was acquitted by Judge Masipa of both premeditated murder and the lesser murder charge of dolus eventualis, also known as common-law murder. In South African law, this charge applies if the accused knew they might kill someone but still went ahead with their course of action. Prosecutors are pushing for the appeal because they believe that a full bench of judges in the Supreme Court of Appeal will agree with them that Judge Masipa misinterpreted the principles of dolus eventualis and will both convict him of murder and impose a longer sentence, says the BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.
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As the weather (finally) warms up, most of us are ready to leave hibernation and enjoy some activities the winter weather may have discouraged us from doing. You may think it is time to get out and spend, but really, the better weather and your renewal of positive energy can help you save . As you shed the winter coat, consider the below ways to spring clean your finances , boost savings and have more money by summer. 1. Create a Target Whether you want to have a great spring break trip on a budget, need to contribute more to your retirement fund , or just think your checking account could use some TLC, it's a good idea to first set attainable goals. Take a look at your current credit standing (you can get two free credit scores, updated every 30 days , on Credit.com), check your credit reports and evaluate your budget. Look for areas you can cut back, set a target you want to reach by June and write it down (to help keep you accountable!). Consider using financial tools and making savings automatic to really ramp up your accounts and see quick growth. 2. Know What to Buy & When While the goal is to cut back on spending and ramp up on savings, there are certain items that make more financial sense to buy in the spring. It's important to do your research to find the items that are on sale or at their lowest price in March, April, May and June. You may also want to look into winter gear for next year now end-of-season sales can have winter boots and coats at a deep discount. If you are looking to buy a home , spring is usually when inventory is highest. 3. Tune Up Your AC With spring cleaning and warmer weather come some opportunities to save money by cutting back on energy use. One tip experts often cite is keeping your air-conditioning filters clean. This will improve your air quality and utilize your system as efficiently as possible. You can also check other features like coolant levels. Consider hiring a professional if your system needs maintenance so you are not wasting money on an overworked AC when it really heats up. It can also be a good idea to think about making an investment in a programmable thermostat that controls temperature and, in turn, cooling costs. 4. Take Advantage of Windfalls If you are lucky enough to collect some "found money" this spring, don't be tempted into spending it all in one place. Tax refunds, inheritances or bonuses from work can instead be put toward emergency funds or retirement nest eggs. 5. Find Low-Cost Fun The better weather is not an excuse to spend on lavish courtyard meals and expensive vacations. Instead, try playing sports in the park, picnicking, hiking, planting a vegetable garden or even just going for a walk in your neighborhood. These options take advantage of the spring weather without costing a fortune. This article originally appeared on Credit.com .
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Ashley Webster has the details
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Swedish prosecutors on Friday offered to go to London to question Julian Assange over rape allegations that have driven the controversial WikiLeaks founder to hole up in the Ecuadorean embassy in the British capital to avoid arrest and extradition. Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange in 2010 over accusations by two women of rape and molestation. But the 43-year-old has refused to return to Sweden to refute the charges, fearing that Stockholm would extradite him to the US to be tried for his role in WikiLeaks' publication of classified US diplomatic, military and intelligence documents.
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You've already guessed it, the concept of beauty isn't limited to having high cheek bones, whopper boobs or more timely, that perfect thigh gap. Outer beauty does matter, though. It really is as brutally simple as that. Telling ourselves it doesn't is counterproductive - and an outright lie. Beauty impacts the course of our careers, the size of our salaries, the attractiveness of our partners - and all too often our own self-esteem. But the term beauty doesn't only encompass the visual. "If you know and love the entirety of a person - their face, body and soul - the outside beauty perhaps becomes less relevant and a different kind of attractiveness overshadows the rest," philosopher Tobias Hürter tells Life Links. Still, it would be narrow minded to strictly separate internal from external beauty. If you want to attain one, you also need to take the other into account: "As a model, I was busy trying to fix beauty on the outside. As a psychologist, it's about fixing the beauty from the inside. But really they are connected. Inner beauty is often reflected in how we present ourselves to the world," says Vivian Diller, a New York-based former model and dancer turned psychologist with a research focus on the psychology of beauty. But it seems not everyone shares that perspective: #dropdeadgorgeous' Isis lives in Brazil, the world leader in plastic surgery. So it's no real surprise the 23-year-old has already undergone two plastic surgeries in an attempt to strengthen her self-esteem. With us all being hopeless romantics and ideologists, we thought there must be another way: just imagine a world where people put as much time and effort into working on their inner beauty. With this in mind, we compiled a little step-by-step guide to add to your daily inner #beautyroutine. This list is subject to trial (the whole team is undergoing internal aesthetic surgery as we speak!) but you're welcome to board the same train and join us on our journey towards silicone-free paradise. 1. #youaremorethanyourlooks: It's not about the physical features (alone) Here's some theory to kick us off: As a model, Vivian Diller met many women who "had perfect bodies and could do amazing things with them", but didn't necessarily feel beautiful. Why? It's because "beauty doesn't depend upon perfect sizes or shapes, but on the kind of attitude one has towards one's body." 2. #faceoftheday: You and the mirror Diller's comments are all fine in theory, but where does this leave us when we wake up feeling the very opposite of #dropdeadgorgeous? Look in the mirror. It might come as a shock that we are talking about inner beauty and yet our first advice is to concentrate on your face, but with this guide we're not going to be advising you to become a hippie and move into the Norwegian wilderness so that you'll never come across a reflective surface again! So, now that's straightened out - just look right into the mirror. But instead of just taking a quick glance to check your hair or make sure that annoying blemish has disappeared, "look at the best aspects of who you are," Diller recommends. "Instead of finding fault with your image, focus on your three favourite features." Once you have passed the initial awkwardness that comes with staring at yourself, talk to your mirror self, just as you would with your best friend. Chances are you won't say "Oh my God! Your hair is a nightmare today!" but "Whoa, you look stunning." Speaking from experience (we've recently been doing a lot of mirror talk at Life Links), this actually works. Then, if you're feeling even more conscientious, why don't you try to boost your happy levels even further by putting on a smile while staring into that looking glass. It's scientifically proven that the human brain cannot differentiate between a genuine and a fake smile. This is good, because as it turns out a smile not only makes your brain think you are happy, but it also makes you appear more attractive, too. So it's worth trying to persuade your face of its loveliness each morning - and wait for it to gradually sink in. 3. #shinebrightlikeadiamond: Eliminate negativity But it's not only about complimenting yourself in the morning, or whenever you pass the windows of a shiny Porsche, it's also about eliminating negativity from your whole life. In a 2011 survey of the magazine Glamour, women were found to have on average 13 negative thoughts about their body - daily. It might not sound like a huge amount, but focusing on such ideas can warp the perspective you have of yourself. "Researchers in the field of neuroscience have found that whatever you focus on shapes your brain. If you are constantly thinking negative thoughts about your body, the neural pathway becomes stronger, and those thoughts become automatic and habitual. The basic idea is that 'neurons that fire together, wire together'," Ann Kearney-Cooke, psychologist and designer of the Glamour survey told Darling Magazine. The good news is that in reverse, a positive attitude towards yourself can go a long way to fixing your self image: "This inner dialogue is the language we use to speak to ourselves. It's how we regard ourselves, it's at the very root of self-esteem. If your dialogue is kind and gentle versus critical and harsh, that more than anything will dictate how you feel," Diller explains. That does not only make you feel more confident emotionally, but change the way you're perceived by people around you. 4. #happyface: Head up, gorgeous! Speaking of confidence - once you've braved the mirror and deleted discouraging words from your mental vocabulary, try standing taller. Work on your posture, put on a smile and make sure you're able to look people in the eye. This has tangible effects thanks to the "feedback loop". Sometimes "behaving as if you had confidence can make you feel more confident," Diller says. "When someone walks into a room with their head held high, smiling, establishing eye contact and giving you a firm handshake, you will immediately find them more beautiful than someone with 'perfect' features who doesn't have that air. Interestingly, when people receive positive feedback, it makes them stand even taller and smile more, so the loop continues." Turns out no breast surgery or nose job can replace that feeling of being a content person with a beautiful, genuine smile - still, it's not like that's any less work, sometimes! 5. #livelovelaugh: Develop your other interests While your brain is recovering from so much pep talk, why not take a swift detour to other beautiful things that make you, you? Things that don't have anything to do with silicone, mirrors or anything else to do with our looks. If we stopped being so busy shopping for anti-aging products, perhaps we'd have a little more time to develop our careers, dust off those rusty piano-playing skills, and work on our true friendships and family bonds. "We often don't think that these less 'visible' features contribute to feeling beautiful but they become part of the entire package, especially as our looks change," says Diller. What are you passionate about? Is there a degree or online course that could help you sharpen your skills and make your eyes shine with fascination as a result? Could you do with a bit of yoga - (quite possibly after that exhausting mirror talk we've just had). Or do you fancy a late night swim to calm your head? And when was the last time you had a decent champagne brunch (or beer-induced football match, depending on your style) with your favourite people? All that matters. All of that gives you confidence and helps you realize that everything you need to be happy and beautiful is already inside you. Apart from the beer, maybe. 6. #loveyourfriends: Nourish your (beautiful) friendships We just touched on that a little, but it's oh so important and therefore gets another mention. Make your friendships beautiful. That doesn't mean you should cut people off if they don't have big boobs, skinny legs or a six-pack! What it actually means is that you should work on nourishing your friendship, learning to inspire but also challenge, each other - not to mention also kicking each other's butts when you get too caught up in self-doubt again. Invest time, money and energy in the people that make you glad to be alive. Building meaningful relationships and friendships often doesn't come easy, in fact it's a lot of work. But maintaining them through the difficult times, developing a history of trust and support, and knowing about each other's worth is priceless. Still, it's not just about your close friends. In case you feel stuck in a psychology lecture, here's a practical application: Spread the love! Tell a stranger their smile has made your day, tell your colleague they did an excellent job (instant ego boost!), tell someone you love them even if they already know, compliment someone's clothing style - because really, you'd have no clue how to pull off that onesie, right?! In case you lack some of those creative genes needed here, check out the Emergency Compliment generator, for when you're stuck on a date there's the Compliment Bot, the weird science generator one for all you lovely nerds or, a personal favourite, the Kanye West swagger machine. Talk about good deeds... that will surely get us all straight into heaven. 8. #plasticfantastic: Is cosmetic surgery a bad idea? But where's the line between enjoying beauty and being content with yourself? What about Life Links' Isis and all that silicone? Have the 1.5 million people who underwent cosmetic surgery in Brazil in 2013 made an unwise decision? As we've been trying to tell you - beauty is more than just looks and physical features. The way we view ourselves is a decisive factor in how beautiful people think we are - both inside and out. Getting a nose job doesn't automatically make you happier - and there are health risks in Brazil and all over the world. In the UK, a quarter of everyone who underwent cosmetic surgery didn't check "their surgeon's credentials and over a fifth are not aware of the risks associated with their chosen procedure," the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons (BAPRAS) found in February 2015. But that's only one side of the story. "If there is a physical feature that has bothered you for a long period of time, that interferes with looking as good as you feel, then take time to research a good surgeon and take advantage of safe procedures that can help," Vivian Diller advises. Turns out in some cases surgery dealing with an issue you have with your physical self can actually help you feel more beautiful on the inside - which then adds to the feedback loop (just checking you've paid attention!) and reflects back on your whole appearance. But now over to you, happy mirror talking and complimenting strangers everyone! Author: Caroline Schmitt Editor: Gianna Grün & Louise Osborne
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There was puke, but no rally. Butler's Bulldog mascot lost its lunch or maybe it was dinner on the court at Madison Square Garden Thursday night, and while the team got off to a hot start, they couldn't hold Xavier down and blew it, losing 67-61 in overtime . The pooch's handler, Michael Kaltenmark, told CBS Sports that the three-year-old Blue III was overcome with "sheer excitement. And he was pulling (on his leash) too hard," which led to the upchuck. RELATED: SYRACUSE BAN KEEPS OTTO THE ORANGE OUT OF ACC MASCOT GAME Kaltenmark also runs the @ButlerBlue3 Twitter account, and he was spewing updates about the English Bulldog's condition throughout the night.
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I recently read How to Be A Power Connector by Judy Robinett and was blown away. As someone who considers herself a gifted connector, I wrote to Robinett and told her,"It's as though you took my brain and put it on paper, but added strategy, statistics and anecdotes and said it much better than I ever have." I then decided to weave together both Judy's and my overlapping beliefs on networking to convey to readers how better to be a power connector. So, first, let's start with the basics, which entails combining my own theories and teachings on networking with Robinett's, augmented by some quotes she shares in her book. 1. Be authentic. Like attracts like: If you want a strong and powerful network, you need to be those things, too. Plus, it's not fun to live up to a façade you create. You want people to like you and connect with you because you're being genuine. 2 . Genuinely care. You must genuinely care for and want to help others. Develop an insatiable curiosity about other people. Kathy Caprino of Elia Communications, quoted in Robinett's book, shares this: "When you come from a place of service (instead of thinking of 'me, me, me'), help and support are returned to you a hundredfold." 3. Be open. Always seek out and be open to new relationships because you know there is value to be found. If someone you trust connects you, trust and respect that person enough to explore the proposed relationship. The individual connecting you puts himself or herself out there for you. So make them this introducer look good and keep him or her in the loop. 4. Follow up and follow through. Be diligent about quick, regular and consistent follow-up. Your follow-through is essential: Do what you say you'll do, and then some . There is no use in simply collecting business cards; rather, follow up within 24 hours by sending a personal LinkedIn invite and getting on this person's calendar if that seems appropriate. 5. Offer value first (and do it over and over again). Focus tirelessly on offering value to others first. Leverage your skills and resources to do this. And, do so with zero expectation of getting anything in return. Remember: No strings attached! 6. Value, value, ask, value. When it does come time to ask for help from your network, do so only after you've added value … and then add more value. Keep in mind this rule of thumb: Offer twice as much value as you seek in return. 7. Show your appreciation. Let people know the impact they've had on you. Keep them in the loop and share your appreciation. 8. It's not a matcher's game. It's best to understand that when you help person X, you may ultimately get help from person Y (and never from person X). That's absolutely okay. 9. Stay in it for the long haul. See the longevity in relationships, understanding that they're not transactional, and build trust over time by consistently adding value and staying in touch. 10. What's in It for you? The biggest value in connecting authentically and offering resources to others is the happiness and fulfillment these actions give you. Power connectors create strong communities that lead to wealth, abundance and success over time. 11. Start where you are today. Networks snowball, so start where you are and grow. Even if you're just entering the workforce or making a career change, you already have a network of family, friends and people you've met along your journey. 12. "How can I help you?" Always start a relationship by asking: "How can I help you?" Everyone has problems that need assistance. You and your contacts can help -- you just have to ask. Try to put yourself in other people's shoes and figure out how you can help them achieve their goals. It can be a fun game to try to piece together your network to find someone who can help. Also, always be prepared with an answer should the question be turned around on you. 13. Be in the right places. It's one thing to be in any room. It's another to be in the right room. Know what your goals are so you can identify where to be spending your time. Make sure you're connecting in the right rooms. 14. People are the resources you need. The resources we all need are attached to people. Create and maintain relationships in order to tap into these resources. If you don't have a powerful network, you won't ever know that certain opportunities even exist. 15. Judge based on character. Robinett said it best: "Measure your contacts' value by their integrity and character, not their title or wealth." 16. Don't be afraid of strangers. Everyone was a stranger to you at one time, until you met. But when you're at a networking event, people are there with the hopes of meeting new people. So, don't fear introducing yourself. 17. Know, like and trust. You must know, like and trust someone first before developing a relationship. It takes a long time to develop all three of these qualities, but seconds to destroy that hard work. The best way to get someone to like you immediately is to a find a commonality. 18. Be a connector. There is great power in curating win-win introductions for people. Always be on the lookout for ways to do this for people in your network. Never underestimate the value your seemingly small gesture can have on someone else's life. Strive to be someone who creates an ecosystem where you can help others genuinely, with mutually beneficial introductions, and see that your contacts trust you enough to respond quickly and openly. You'll feel great for having done it, and you'll have deepened your relationships and clout . Personal introductions allow third parties to utilize the credibility of the introducer and build a kinship because they already have the introducer in common. 19. Be strategic. Robinett talks about strategizing your network with her 5+50+100 rule. Research shows you can maintain a maximum of 150 relationships, and she breaks down how to map that out and maximize those relationships. As she shares: "What you know is important, but it's whom you know which gives you instant credibility." 20. Network out up, down and sideways. Don't just create a network at your level or industry. Be intentional about bringing in those above and below you and from a variety of sectors. Every new contact opens up a whole new network of his or her contacts to you. 21. Do some housekeeping. Be strategic about whom you invite in and keep in your network. If you wouldn't want someone as a friend, that person won't fit for business either. One of my favorite sayings is that you are the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time (a paraphrase from Jim Rohn). Even more so: The world sees you through the lens of the company you keep. Adding one bad person to your network can damage your reputation and social capital. 22. Redefine the word "networking." Networking's bad rap comes from "'takers," meaning those who seek things or people for their own benefit and tap their own networks only when they need something. This concept comes from Adam Grant's Give and Take, a book I love, and one which Robinett also weaves throughout her work. People think networking is manipulative because of takers who use it for their own good. But Jason Best, co-founder and principal of Crowdfund Capital Advisors, also quoted in Robinett's book, says, "Networking is yucky -- but meeting cool people and being open with introducing others to your folks is fun and exciting." 23. What if you're shy or introverted? Even if you're shy or introverted, you just have to engage with people. Try to emulate someone you admire in these situations until that becomes natural for you. Robinett is called the "woman with the titanium Rolodex" because she's one of the most connected women on the planet, yet she admits to being an introvert who was initially uneasy about networking. Hopefully, that encourages you that you can do it, too! 24. Not everyone is a match. Not everyone you meet will be a match for you and your network. Part with those people, leaving them with a good experience. It's important not to burn bridges with new or existing contacts. I love a quote from Robinett's book that comes from Mike Muhney, co-founder and co-inventor of ACT! Says Muhney: "Both B2B and B2C are dead. It is now the age of P2P [people to people]." We live in an era where your identity is fluid between business and personal, and it's important to be authentic and genuine in both spheres, understanding the power and value of that overlap. If you're not yet convinced of the importance of building a powerful and strategic network, perhaps author Jane Howard's words will convince you: "Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."
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By Steve DelVecchio One of the reasons LeBron James chose to return to Cleveland is Kyrie Irving. On Thursday night, we saw exactly why. Irving scored a career-high 57 points in an exciting overtime win against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs. He put the Cavaliers on his back, converting all seven of his 3-point attempts and getting it done defensively with four steals. LeBron took note. "The kid is special, we all know it, we all see it," James told reporters after the game . "For him to go out and put on a performance like he did tonight was incredible." Irving's 57 points were the most in an NBA game this season. Ironically, he broke LeBron's Cavs record of 56 points in a game, which James set against the Toronto Raptors in 2005. Irving credited LeBron for fueling his energy level. "It was such a fun game," he said. "The crowd was into it. They sold out, they came to see a great game and it was. Once Bron gets into those step-back 3s, we were just looking at each other, 'Man, this is just so much fun.'" Teams that are led by LeBron are typically at their best when LeBron doesn't have to do it all. He's not like Carmelo Anthony and other pure scorers in that James loves getting teammates involved and creating scoring opportunities for others. If he and Irving can continue to improve their chemistry, the Eastern Conference is in trouble.
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The Norwegian Arctic islands of Svalbard are discouraging last-minute visitors for a rare solar eclipse next week, warning that hotels are full, it will be freezing cold and polar bears are on the prowl. Christin Kristoffersen, mayor of Svalbard's main settlement Longyearbyen, told Reuters an expected 1,500 visitors for the eclipse, on top of about 2,500 residents, meant the usually welcoming archipelago had reached a maximum safe limit. "Safety comes first, even before the eclipse," she said. "We need to take care of people. It's terribly cold in March and we have the challenge with polar bears." A bear killed a British teenager on Svalbard in 2011, the most recent fatality. On average, three bears a year are shot by people in self-defense on Svalbard. A total eclipse, when the moon blocks the sun and its shadow falls on the Earth, will sweep across the Atlantic on March 20 but from land will only be visible from Svalbard and the Faroe Islands. A partial eclipse will be seen in north Africa, Europe and north Asia. In London, for instance, 84 percent of the sun will be covered by the moon. Hotels in both Svalbard and the Faroe Islands have been booked for years although the Faroe Islands still has some places to stay, including private homes. In the best of cases, with clear skies, the northern lights may also be visible during the morning eclipse. Skies on Friday are likely to be partly cloudy with a temperature of -17 degrees Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) in Longyearbyen and 3 Celsius (37) in Torshavn, the capital of the Faroes, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute indicates. The Faroe Islands, a self-governing nation within Denmark, expects 8,000 visitors to swell its population of about 50,000, said Torstein Christiansen, tourism and business manager of Visit Torshavn. It will be the first total eclipse on the islands since 1954, with the next expected in 2245. Faroese camping sites, which usually only open in May, will open early for hardy visitors. "And we don't have polar bears," Christiansen told Reuters. (Editing by Catherine Evans)
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Kia is recalling nearly 209,000 Souls because the gas pedals can bend or break. The recall covers certain Soul and Soul electric vehicles from the 2014 and 2015 model years. If the gas pedal bends or breaks, it can be hard to accelerate the SUVs, increasing the risk of a crash. Kia Motors America says in documents filed with the government that an unsupported section of the pedal can bend if a driver stomps on it too hard when the vehicle isn't moving. The problem was discovered through warranty claims. Kia says no crashes or injuries have been reported. Dealers will add rubber supports beneath the pedal stopper at no cost to owners. The recall is expected to start on March 24.
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There's something massive in the water. Animal expert Jeff Corwin found what might be the world's biggest stingray in Thailand's Mae Klong River. The 14-foot long and 8-foot wide freshwater ray could be the largest freshwater fish ever captured, Corwin said on Facebook. The giant creature weighs an estimated 700 to 800 pounds, National Geographic reported . That means it would beat out the current record, a Mekong giant catfish that weighs 660 pounds and also live in Thailand. The catch was filmed for an episode of Corwin's "Ocean Mysteries." The nature team measured and microchipped the ray for tracking, and then they released it back into the river. [email protected]
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World oil prices sank Friday after the International Energy Agency warned over the price outlook amid bulging global supplies. In midday London deals, European benchmark Brent North Sea crude for April delivery fell 57 cents to $56.51 a barrel. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for April shed 72 cents to $46.33 a barrel. "Crude oil prices extended losses ... as investors remained cautious following the bearish IEA oil monthly report, high levels of crude oil inventories and the strong US dollar rally," said Sucden analyst Myrto Sokou. The Paris-based IEA energy watchdog warned Friday that the recent rebound in oil prices was built on flimsy foundations. Prices collapsed by 60 percent to about $40 between June and late January due to global oil oversupply, a weak world economy and the strong dollar. However, the market has since rebounded somewhat following a slowdown in US oil-drilling activities. "Behind the facade of stability, the rebalancing triggered by the price collapse has yet to run its course, and it might be overly optimistic to expect it to proceed smoothly," said the Paris-based IEA, which advises energy consuming nations. It noted that a key driver in the recovery in oil prices has been drops in the number of rigs drilling for shale oil in the United States. "Yet US supply so far shows precious little sign of slowing down. Quite to the contrary, it continues to defy expectations," said the IEA in its monthly report, which sharply revised up output estimates for the end of last year and forecasts for the start of 2015. The IEA hiked its demand forecasts for every quarter this year, with the annual 2015 figure bumped up by 100,000 barrels per day to 93.5 mbpd, compared with its previous forecast given last month. In earlier Asian trading, the oil market had risen on news of a deal to end a strike at US refineries. Crude futures had fallen Thursday after a government report showed surging US stockpiles, adding to a global oversupply. The US Department of Energy on Wednesday said inventories hit a fresh record high of 448.9 million barrels last week, while stockpiles at the Cushing terminal hub in Oklahoma -- the price settlement point for WTI -- also increased. Bloomberg News meanwhile reported the United Steelworkers union representing 30,000 US oil workers had reached a tentative deal on a four-year contract with Royal Dutch Shell that could see a mass walkout brought to a close. Another development affecting the market was an announcement on Monday by the US Energy Information Administration raising its crude production forecast this year to 9.35 million barrels per day from 9.30 million.
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This threatens to be a messy tax season, particularly for last-minute filers. Citing budget constraints, the IRS has warned taxpayers that it will probably answer only about half of the phone calls from taxpayers seeking help this year. Meanwhile, new filing requirements mandated by the Affordable Care Act could create extra work for tax preparers, making it more difficult to get help at the midnight hour. Don't miss the following changes. 1. Zombie tax breaks To the surprise of no one, Congress waited until December to revive some tax-saving provisions that expired at the end of 2013. The tax breaks that refuse to die include a deduction for state and local sales taxes that you can take instead of the write-off for state income taxes. This deduction primarily benefits residents of the nine states that have no income tax . But residents of states with low income taxes, as well as older residents of states that offer special breaks on retirement income, could also nab a bigger tax break by deducting sales taxes, says Greg Rosica, contributing author to the EY Tax Guide 2015. Go to the IRS Sales Tax Deduction Calculator to figure out how much you can deduct in sales taxes, based on your income and your state and local sales tax rates. If you bought a car, boat or airplane last year, you can add the sales tax you paid to the amount shown by the IRS calculator. Congress also resuscitated a provision that allows some homeowners to deduct mortgage insurance premiums. Lenders typically require home buyers who put less than 20% down to buy private mortgage insurance. You're eligible for this tax break if you took out your loan after 2006 and if your 2014 adjusted gross income was $109,000 or less. Finally, Congress reanimated a provision that allows taxpayers who are 70½ or older to transfer up to $100,000 directly from their individual retirement accounts to charity. The transfer counts as your required minimum distribution and isn't included in your adjusted gross income. Reducing your AGI could help you avoid or reduce taxes on your Social Security benefits and stay below the cutoff for the Medicare high-income surcharge. If you squeezed in a direct transfer to charity during the two weeks between when Congress revived this break and New Year's Eve (or took a chance and did it earlier, when the provision was still in limbo), you're in luck. But if you took your RMD and donated part or all of it to charity, you'll have to report the full RMD and then deduct your contribution. Congress declined to make these tax breaks permanent or even extend them through 2015. The soon-to-be Republican-controlled Congress wanted the flexibility to revise the tax code this year, which could involve scrapping some tax breaks in exchange for lower tax rates, says Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting US. (Both parties remain far apart on how to accomplish that goal.) 2. Taxes on investment income If the economic recovery or bull market enhanced your balance sheet last year, you may have to pay a new 3.8% surtax on your investment income. The surtax, which arrived in 2013 as part of the Affordable Care Act, affects single taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, and married taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of $250,000 or more. The surtax is based on your investment income or the amount by which your modified AGI (which includes investment income) exceeds the threshold, whichever is less. If you are blindsided by the surtax this year, it's not too early to start making your portfolio more tax-efficient for 2015. Tax-exempt interest, for example, avoids the surtax as well as the regular income tax. 3. Check the box on health care The health care law's tax requirements represent the most significant change in this year's forms. Most taxpayers, though, will simply have to check a box on their tax returns. If you and other members of your household had health insurance through your employer throughout 2014, check the box at line 61 on Form 1040. You can also check the box if you or other members of your household received health insurance through Medicare, Medicaid or a program such as Tricare, which covers members of the military, says Mark Ciaramitaro, vice-president of health care services at H&R Block. You may receive a Form 1095-C from your employer confirming your coverage, but that's not required for 2014, so you don't need one to be able to check the box. If you bought health insurance through one of the state exchanges, you will have more work to do. By now, you should have received Form 1095-A from the exchange. This form shows your monthly premium and the amount of any subsidy you received. You can't complete your return without this statement, so if you didn't receive it, log on to your health care marketplace Web site and look for an electronic version. Use this information to fill out Form 8962, which is used to determine whether your subsidy (based on the estimate you provided of your 2014 family income) was too large or too small. If you overestimated your income, you'll receive a credit in the form of a larger tax refund or smaller tax bill. If you underestimated, the opposite will occur: The excess subsidy will eat into your refund or hike the tax due with your return. Taxpayers who were uninsured for part or all of the year may, for the first time, have to pay a penalty. The penalty for 2014 is $95 per person or 1% of your household income above the filing threshold, whichever is higher. The law provides a long list of exemptions from this requirement, so check them out before you pay. For example, taxpayers who went without coverage for less than three consecutive months won't be penalized. You can find the full list of exemptions at www.healthcare.gov ; type "exemption" in the search box. 4. Trimming the bill Even at this late date, you can take steps to reduce your 2014 tax bill. Contribute to a traditional IRA. You have until April 15 to make a 2014 contribution to your IRA. The IRA deduction is "above the line," which means you can claim it even if you don't itemize on your tax return. It will reduce your adjusted gross income on a dollar-for-dollar basis, which could also make you eligible for other tax breaks that are tied to AGI. If you're not enrolled in a 401(k) or some other workplace retirement plan, you can deduct an IRA contribution of up to $5,500 ($6,500 if you're 50 or older) no matter how high your income. But if you have a company plan, the right to the IRA deduction is phased out as 2014 income rises between $60,000 and $70,000 on a single return or between $96,000 and $116,000 if you're married and file jointly (see 7 Things You Must Know About Funding IRAs ). If your spouse is covered by a workplace-based retirement plan but you are not, you can deduct your full IRA contribution as long as your joint modified AGI doesn't top $181,000 for 2014. You can take a partial tax deduction if your combined income is between $181,000 and $191,000. Contribute to a SEP IRA. If you or your spouse earned self-employment income last year, you can shelter even more income with a SEP IRA. In 2014, you can contribute up to 25% of net self-employment income (business income minus half of your self-employment tax), up to a maximum of $52,000. You have until April 15 (or October 15 if you file for an extension) to set up and fund a SEP. Fund a health savings account. You also have until April 15 to set up and fund a health savings account for 2014. To qualify, you must have had an HSA-eligible insurance policy--with a deductible of at least $1,250 for individual coverage or $2,500 for family coverage--at least since December 1. You can contribute up to $3,300 if you had single coverage or $6,550 if you had family coverage (you can contribute an additional $1,000 if you were 55 or older in 2014). Money you invest in a health savings account will reduce your AGI on a dollar-for-dollar basis. More on MSN Money: 6 Ways Chasing Credit Card Rewards Can Backfire 50 Affordable Places to Buy a Retirement Home 5 Ways Filing Your Own Taxes Will Boost Your Finances
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St. Louis Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock picked up his 700th regular-season win of his career on Thursday night. Let's see what Hitchcock had to say about his accomplishment.
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Davidson was already on the basketball map when Stephen Curry got there. Lefty Driesell had taken care of that. But Curry shot the Wildcats into the Final Eight in 2008. He might have done the same thing in 2009, had Davidson won the Southern Conference tournament. Bob McKillop's club lost to Charleston instead and, despite a 26-7 record, was banished to the NIT. This is what happens in the "one-bid leagues," where teams are guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of the NCAA selection committee. That's why Stephen F. Austin's season really starts tonight, in the Southland Conference tournament. Nobody who saw SFA beat Virginia Commonwealth in last year's NCAA tournament doubts its worthiness. This season the Lumberjacks are 24-4 against Division I teams and played Northern Iowa, Baylor, Xavier and Memphis during non-league season. BRACKETOLOGY: Projecting the field of 68 But Sam Houston State won 20 games against Division I teams, and the Lumberjacks might find it hard to beat the Bearkats for a third time if they meet in the Southland final. SFA comes into the Southland tournament with an RPI ranking of 46. That's fine for "power conference" teams, because their strength-of-schedule is artificially pumped up by conference games. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. SFA's non-conference strength of schedule is ranked only 174th, but the major-conference teams would rather eat their shoe contracts than make a trip to Nagodoches, Texas. The Lumberjacks choose not to jet around the nation to play the big boys without a home-and-home guarantee, and good for them. Imagine how Lumberjacks coach Brad Underwood feels when he sees Texas on the fringe of NCAA contention despite 12 losses. Texas played 13 games against Big 12 teams that had RPI ranks of 50 of lower. The Longhorns went 2-11. Didn't really matter. Which brings us back to Davidson. The Wildcats joined the Atlantic-10 this year, a strong second-tier league that was supposed to swallow them alive. Instead Davidson finished first in the conference with a 14-4 record. It will have no worries on Selection Sunday. No more guilt by association. Stephen F. Austin is unquestionably one of the nation's best 68 teams. But if it isn't the best team in its backyard this weekend, will it matter?
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CNBC consumer reporter Kelli Grant gives viewers tips on how to avoid paying too much in taxes.
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MADRID (AP) A Spanish judge has indicted Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu and his predecessor, Sandro Rosell, for tax fraud and fraudulent administration in a probe centering on the signing of Neymar. Investigative magistrate Pablo Ruz accused the club and its management of fabricating a labyrinth of contracts to hide the real cost of signing the Brazil striker in 2013. The judge says Neymar cost at least 83.3 million euros ($88 million), while Barcelona insists it paid 57 million euros (then $74 million). Bartomeu took over when Rosell resigned in January 2014 after being named a suspect in the case and investigated for misappropriating funds to hide the transfer cost. No trial date has been set.
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How do you take it when your rap star husband writes a song professing that you "look too good to be at work"? Do you blush profusely, pop a bonbon in your mouth, and thank your lucky stars there's no prenup? Or, do you smack him upside the head and remind him that you've got a multimillion-dollar brand, thank you very much? Only Kim Kardashian West knows for sure. The reality star is the muse behind Kanye West's new track, "Awesome," which is equal parts sweet and eye-rollingly sexist, based on its lyrics . Loverboy gets props for telling his wife to ignore the haters and "don't let nobody bring you down." Maybe that'll help her overlook the bits about coming inside her (ew barf ew) and calling her "dessert." The song also seems to include a dig at Kris Jenner's expense. "You don't need to listen to your manager / You're way too hot for them to handle you" that's all well and good until you remember that Kris is her momager. Then again, being mentioned in a Kanye song for whatever reason seems like just the sort of thing KJ would put on her tombstone. Judge for yourself whether "Awesome" is worth swooning over. The leaked track is below.
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This Re/code series of contributed essays from Kauffman Fellows will provide stories from their on-the-ground view of technology entrepreneurship today, and its implications for the future. Founded in 1994, Kauffman Fellows is a Silicon Valley-based leadership program for venture capitalists and innovators. The more than 400 graduates from this two-year apprenticeship, collectively known as the Kauffman Fellows Society, now lead venture capital, government, corporate, university and startup innovation in over 50 countries around the world. Reach them @KauffmanFellows . When venture capitalists talk about Cuba as the next Promised Land, they note foremost the very real political hurdles that remain, both on the island and in the United States. The biggest obstacle, however, may be smartphones the dearth of them. Even as Cuba is a bright spot in the developing world for its top-notch health care and education systems, it remains in a technological dark age. Its communication systems, in particular, are almost as ancient as the Packards and Hudsons that putter around Havana. Mobile phone penetration (about one in 10 Cubans have one) is the lowest in Latin America, the country's Internet is slow and government-censored, and owning a computer was illegal until eight years ago. All of which makes it especially exciting to be a venture capitalist pondering the possibilities for funding companies in Cuba today and tomorrow. If VCs, particularly angel investors, can become involved soon, they will be getting in not at the proverbial ground floor but while the blueprints are being drafted. Cuba, to be sure, has much to gain from the opening of its economy. For instance, it is one of the few places in the world where organic or non-GMO products, beloved by Americans, exclusively are grown. An export opportunity likely lies there. And then, of course, there is the Cuban cigar. And certainly, the challenges for the first wave of early-stage VCs who hit the ground in Cuba are myriad. But we have made inroads before into early-stage economies: Iran, Yemen and Myanmar, to name a few. Our fundamental role as VCs will be to support the creation of a new Cuban economy one wanted by Cubans, not necessarily one desired by the U.S. or the outside world. Then we will back the local entrepreneurs who will build it. A probable priority for Cuba: Telecom. Much of the island's telephone connection with the rest of the world moves through an old undersea coaxial cable system. Banking networks and other infrastructure needed for e-commerce are just as antiquated. Our fundamental role as VCs will be to support the creation of a new Cuban economy one wanted by Cubans, not necessarily one desired by the U.S. or the outside world. Then we will back the local entrepreneurs who will build it. The easing of sanctions announced by President Obama in recent months should make it more practicable for U.S. companies to export technology and consulting services to Cuba. There is the potential for leapfrog telecom networks, skipping over the wired and maybe even cellular network stages, going right to satellite technology. The timing is excellent for VCs seeking partnerships in Cuba, as a new investment law , introduced in Cuba in March 2014, opens opportunities in agriculture, infrastructure, sugar, nickel mining, building renovation and real estate development. Rodrigo Malmierca , minister for foreign trade and investment, believes Cuba needs to attract $2 billion to $2.5 billion in foreign direct investment per year to reach its economic growth target of 7 percent. To that end, in November 2014, the Cuban government appealed to international companies to invest more than $8 billion in 246 specified development projects. The 168-page Portfolio of Opportunities for Foreign Investment is available online and in English. "We have to provide incentives," Malmierca said. All this follows an initial effort four years ago by Cuba to make it easier, somewhat, to start a company, an initiative that hundreds of thousands of budding businessmen seized upon, taking their first steps into state-sanctioned capitalism. Still, much more needs to be done and faster by both Cuba and the U.S. Congress for VC roots to take hold soon. A recent Heritage Foundation report ranked only North Korea lower in labor freedom, respect for the rule of law and lack of corruption. Moreover, Cuba has repudiated or delayed debt payments to other nations and corporations; it also wants the U.S. to leave the Guantanamo Naval Base, which has proven to be problematic. Meanwhile, in the U.S., resistance to normalization although it's lessening remains problematic, as many Republicans, and especially Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the son of Cuban exiles, are unalterably opposed. Many Cuban exiles want reparations or the return of seized property and businesses, an unlikely scenario. Startups can catch fire in Cuba. The literacy rate is higher than in the U.S. And there's a strong culture of collaboration and support two of the basic tools entrepreneurs use to meet challenges large and small. But the energetic, animated, conversations of the older generation Cuban exiles, often over a colada in Versailles or La Carreta restaurant in Miami, contrast with those of a new generation of Cuban Americans who want a different way forward and to play an active role in the rebuilding of their parents' home country. At the same time, American nationals continue to become more curious about Cuba, its people, its music and business opportunities. The rest of the world also has much to gain from Cuba's expertise in medical-related fields; the country's infant mortality rate is one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, and there's a high-functioning universal health-care system. Startups can catch fire in Cuba. And why shouldn't they? Necessity is the mother of invention, and Cubans certainly have had a tough time in recent decades. The literacy rate, however, is high higher than in the U.S. Cuba also has a strong culture of collaboration and support , two of the basic tools entrepreneurs use to meet challenges large and small. Starting a business is human nature, too. The desire to prosper from trade has existed since antiquity. Holding back this instinct forever is impossible it's like stopping rain; eventually, it falls and things begin to grow. Such will be the case in Cuba. Ramphis Castro no relation to the Cuban leaders lives in Puerto Rico. He is a Kauffman Fellow and founder of Mindchemy , a startup specializing in bringing technology entrepreneurship into the developing world. Reach him @jramphis .
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A four-month-old oil deal between Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region is close to unraveling after payments from Baghdad dried up, prompting Arbil to threaten to sue buyers and ramp up independent oil exports. The dispute highlights fundamental differences between the two sides over who controls oil resources and revenues and will reinforce the views of many Iraqi watchers that Kurdistan would seek bigger if not full independence from Baghdad one day. Baghdad cut budget payments to the Kurds in January 2014 as punishment for their attempts to export oil independently, plunging the semi-autonomous region into economic crisis and forcing it to seek loans at home and abroad. Under a new deal, the Kurds committed to export an average of 550,000 barrels per day in 2015, in exchange for Baghdad resuming budget payments of over $1 billion a month to Kurdistan in 2015. The agreement was hailed as a breakthrough that would help Iraq increase oil exports at a time when revenues are strained by low global prices and the cost of financing a war against Islamic State insurgents in the north and west. But so far this year, Baghdad has paid only a fraction of the money, arguing that the oil handed over to SOMO does not match the expected volumes. For its part, Kurdistan insists it has supplied almost 97 percent of the agreed volumes and is working to raise volumes further despite receiving no payments. Sources in Arbil are saying they will use all possible means to recoup the money. "We are not being treated as part of the country but as a commercial oil producer," said a high-level Kurdish oil source. "In case we don't get the payments, we will have to go after the buyers because this crude still belongs to us." In the past few months, SOMO sold Kurdish crude to buyers including Turkey's Tupras, Swiss-based trader Litasco, Spain's Repsol, Italy's Eni and BP. Last year, SOMO threatened to sue direct buyers of Kurdish oil and has successfully stopped some sales. The Kurd's latest threat to do the same may pose legal challenges for companies who have bought oil through SOMO because the deal between Baghdad and Arbil was preliminary and did not give clarity over who owns the oil. According to shipping documents seen by Reuters, oil transferred to SOMO still belongs to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Another potential legal pitfall is that oil sold by SOMO from the Turkish port of Ceyhan is being marketed as Kirkuk under the name of the same field in northern Iraq. However, only a third of oil in the pipeline is Kirkuk while the rest is different grades from other KRG new fields. The preliminary deal in December also did not address debts owed to listed oil companies like Genel which helped Kurdistan develop its fields. Baghdad sees those contracts as illegal even though SOMO is currently selling crude from those deposits to buyers in Europe and beyond. PUNISHMENT Tensions spilled into the open this week at a forum in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah, where Iraq oil minister Adel Abdel Mehdi said Kurdistan had handed only some of the oil it pumped to Ceyhan over to SOMO and was exporting the rest independently. Kurdish minister Ashti Hawrami said the region was committed to the deal, but since Baghdad was not sending enough money, the heavily indebted region was forced to sell some oil to repay creditors. "Can somebody please explain to me why we are still being punished?" Hawrami asked. "If we continue receiving this little, what will happen to this relationship?" Both tried to end on a conciliatory note saying they would make the deal work. Kurdistan has seen an inflow of over a million refugees from Iraq and Syria and had to raise billions of dollars via loans and oil export pre-payment deals with oil firms, trading houses, banks and Turkey to cover its budget shortfalls. If the oil deal between Baghdad and Arbil collapses, the chances are high the KRG, which under the December deal currently sells 80,000-100,000 bpd independently from SOMO, will be moving back to ramping up independent sales. "After April, the KRG would be technically able to export 825,000 bpd via its own pipeline system," a source in the KRG said. "We would be able to fully cover our budget needs with those exports by tightening our spending and providing our fighting forces their salaries on time." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Susan Thomas)
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Since a massive credit card reform was done in 2009 (the CARD act), credit card companies in the United States have become a lot more predictable, transparent, and just plain better to deal with. For example, the law greatly limits these companies' ability to make unfair rate hikes, to market to those who could have trouble repaying, and increases the amount of time the card issuer must give you to pay after issuing your statement. However, there is still one bad practice in the credit card industry that you should be aware of. Aside from what the law prohibits, credit card companies can (and do) change certain terms whenever they want to . Here's what your credit card company can do, and what you can do about it. They can change your interest rate First off, the law prohibits your credit card company from increasing the interest you pay on your current balances, unless a promotional rate runs out or you pay your bill late. However, credit card companies are allowed to change your interest rate from a fixed rate to a variable one, and can raise your interest rate on future purchases as long as they give you 45 days' notice and it's been more than a year since you opened your account. You should also be aware that the CARD act doesn't impose a cap on how high rates can go. If your interest rate increases along with the rest of the market, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, that's the point of a variable rate. However, if you are unhappy with the rate increase, the law also states that you are free to cancel your account without penalty if your interest rate is going up. Fees can increase A credit card issuer can increase the fees attached to your account for any reason, and this is especially common with annual fees. Credit card companies are competing to offer the most appealing perks to their cardholders, and tend to (at least somewhat) pass on the added expense to consumers. For example, American Express recently increased the annual fee on its Delta SkyMiles Platinum card from $150 to $195. As long as the benefits associated with the card make the fee worth paying, this isn't such a bad thing. However, if your credit card no longer makes good financial sense to you with the higher fee, it may be a good idea to look elsewhere for a less expensive card that meets your needs. Your credit limit can be lowered This was much more common in the years immediately following the financial crisis, but a credit card company still has the ability to lower your available credit line at any time and for any reason. Even though this is less common than it was in say, 2009 when 58 million cardholders saw their limits drop, it still happens. Also, you're not immune even if your credit is excellent. Sometimes banks simply want to decrease their risk level, and one way to do that is to reduce the amount of credit available to customers. Another common reason is if your account has been inactive for some time. According to myFICO.com , three fourths of customers whose credit lines were slashed on inactive accounts had no other possible triggers on their credit reports (such as late payments, new credit inquiries, or collection accounts). What to do if you're affected Fortunately for consumers like you, the credit card business is a competitive one at the present time. Many of the big U.S. card issuers such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America are actively trying to build up their credit card businesses. What this means is that the average cardholder has substantial room to negotiate for better terms. If your credit card company decides to increase your rate or fees, or lowers your limit, call the company and ask to have the change reversed. If you have been a customer for a long time and have an excellent payment history, use that information to your advantage. In today's competitive market, card issuers have been known to offer pretty generous deals in order to retain business. There are enough "0% interest" and low fixed-rate credit card offers available that consumers shouldn't need to put up with any unfair changes, so if your card issuer won't budge, maybe you're better off looking elsewhere. Bank of America + Apple? This device makes it possible. Apple recently recruited a secret-development "dream team" to guarantee its newest smart device was kept hidden from the public for as long as possible. But the secret is out , and some early viewers are claiming it's destined to change everything from banking to health care. In fact, ABI Research predicts 485 million of this type of device will be sold per year. But one small company makes Apple's gadget possible. And its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors. To be one of them, and see Apple's newest smart gizmo, just click here ! The article The Single Worst Practice of the Credit Card Industry originally appeared on Fool.com. Matthew Frankel owns shares of American Express and Bank of America. The Motley Fool recommends American Express, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America and Wells Fargo and has the following options: short April 2015 $57 calls on Wells Fargo and short April 2015 $52 puts on Wells Fargo. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days . We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . Copyright © 1995 - 2015 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
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Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday he believes his pontificate will be short and that he would be ready to resign like his predecessor rather than ruling for life. In the long interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa, released on the second anniversary of his surprise election, Francis also said he "did not mind" being pope but would like to be able to go out in Rome unrecognized for a pizza. "I have the feeling that my pontificate will be brief - four or five years, even two or three. Two have already passed. It's a somewhat strange sensation," he said, according to a Vatican translation from Spanish. "I feel that the Lord has placed me here for a short time," the Argentine-born pontiff said. Francis, apparently in good health at 78, said "I share the idea of what Benedict did." In 2013, former Pope Benedict became the first head of the Roman Catholic Church in 600 years to resign instead of ruling until he died. "In general, I think what Benedict so courageously did was to open the door to the popes emeritus. Benedict should not be considered an exception, but an institution," Francis said. However, he said he did not like the idea of an automatic retirement age for popes, such as at age 80. In the 17-page interview, Francis also said the fact he is the first pope from Latin America compelled him to speak out on behalf of migrants and the poor because his ancestors had to move from Italy to Argentina to find work. "People are being discarded and forced to seek employment elsewhere," said Francis, whose first trip after his election was to the Italian island of Lampedusa to pay tribute to thousands of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe. Francis, who in the past has called for more regulation of markets, denounced "the injustice of wealth," saying it was a mortal sin to give someone an unjust salary or for the rich to take advantage of the poor. On the lighter side, Francis said "I do not mind," when asked if he liked being pope. "The only thing I would like is to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza," he said, adding that he missed his days as a bishop in Buenos Aires, when he could move about the city freely. "In Buenos Aires, I was a rover," he said. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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Rare sighting at beach in Ventura, California
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Microsoft is working on an advanced version of its competitor to Apple's Siri, using research from an artificial intelligence project called "Einstein." Microsoft has been running its "personal assistant" Cortana on its Windows phones for a year, and will put the new version on the desktop with the arrival of Windows 10 this autumn. Later, Cortana will be available as a standalone app, usable on phones and tablets powered by Apple's iOS and Google's Android, people familiar with the project said. "This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next rollout of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame," said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. The plan to put Cortana on machines running software from rivals such as Apple and Google, as well as the Einstein project, have not been reported. Cortana is the name of an artificial intelligence character in the video game series "Halo." They represent a new front in CEO Satya Nadella's battle to sell Microsoft software on any device or platform, rather than trying to force customers to use Windows. Success on rivals' platforms could create new markets and greater relevance for the company best known for its decades-old operating system. The concept of 'artificial intelligence' is broad, and mobile phones and computers already show dexterity with spoken language and sifting through emails for data, for instance. Still, Microsoft believes its work on speech recognition, search and machine learning will let it transform its digital assistant into the first intelligent "agent" that anticipates users' needs. By comparison, Siri is advertised mostly as responding to requests. Google's mobile app, which doesn't have a name like Siri or Cortana, already offers some limited predictive information "cards" based on what it thinks the user wants to know. Microsoft has tried to create digital assistants before, without success. Microsoft Bob, released in 1995, was supposed to make using a computer easy, but ended up being the butt of jokes. The Office Assistant nicknamed 'Clippy' suffered a similar fate a few years later. "We're defining the competitive landscape … of who can provide the most supportive services that make life easier, keep track of things, that complement human memory in a way that helps us get things done," said Horvitz. Outside his door stands "The Assistant," a monitor showing a woman's face that can converse with visitors, has access to Horvitz's calendar and can book meetings. On his desktop, Horvitz runs "Lifebrowser," a program that stores everything from appointments to photos and uses machine learning to identify the important moments. A keyword search for his university professor instantly brings up photos and video from the last time they met. Cortana could tell a mobile phone user when to leave for the airport, days after it read an email and realized the user was planning a flight. It would automatically check flight status, determine where the phone is located using GPS, and check traffic conditions. None of the individual steps are a breakthrough, but creating an artificial intelligence that can stitch together the processes marks a breakthrough in usefulness, Microsoft says. Rivals are on the same track. Google's latest mobile app uses the predictive power generated from billions of searches to work out what users are doing and what they are interested in and sending relevant information, such as when a favorite sports team is playing next. Apple is also pushing Siri, which uses Microsoft's Bing search engine in the background, into new areas with its CarPlay and HomeKit platforms, as well as the recently unveiled Apple Watch. The key to Cortana's success will be knowing where a user is, what time it is, and what they are trying to do. Albert Einstein's work on the relationship between space and time gave rise to Microsoft's secret project name, said Horvitz. "Einstein was brilliant about space and time," he said. "It's using brilliance about space and time generally in our agents." (Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Peter Henderson and John Pickering)
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The Dearborn man who killed a referee during a soccer game last year was sentenced Friday to 8 to 15 years by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cameron Bassel Saad, 36, had struck a plea deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter for punching referee John Bieniewicz, 44, during a game last summer in Livonia. He died July 1, two days after he was hit by Saad. Judge Cameron said Friday to Saad: You "personify everything that is wrong" with the "escalation of violence in sports." Saad had earlier faced a second-degree murder charge. In 2005, he had assaulted a soccer player in a separate incident. Saad, an immigrant from Lebanon, could face deportation after serving his sentence. Family members of the victim addressed the court before the sentencing. They described him as a man close with his family, warm and generous. He called his mother every day. "The senselessness is staggering," said a sister of Bieniewicz. "He killed John. He killed our joy. "The pain of losing John is indescribable." Saad told the court: "I'm so sorry."
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Dravyn Johnson receives rare, live-saving heart transplant
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While you might have a drawer full of denim cutoffs, there's one pair that's better than all the rest. They lift your booty and emphasize your curves, and whenever you wear them, the compliments roll in. Why? These cutoffs were made for your body type, even if you slashed and distressed them yourself. But if you're not sure what style of shorts should be your go-to, we've got the answer. Whether you're long and lean, petite with toned legs, or curvy, there's a silhouette that will flatter your butt, make for the best foundation to your outfit, and ultimately give you a major confidence boost. And when it comes to finding the right jeans, that's what's most important. Keep scrolling for the basics. Apple Shaped If you've got a rounder shoulder line and good legs, a superfrayed hemline in a slouchy style is right up your alley. These Free People Jagger shorts ($198) will form to your booty and strong legs, so you'll be wearing them - they won't be wearing you. Plus, you'll feel most comfortable and look your best in denim that's a little loose, not skintight. Petite If you're petite, tiny white shorts with a folded hem like these Paige Jimmy Jimmy shorts ($129) will instantly make your legs appear longer and your booty look perky - just make sure they're tight enough to hug your curves. These shorts make for a crisp foundation to an outfit, whether it's preppy or bohemian. Long Torso If you've got a long torso, balance it out with denim shorts that hit you midthigh like this Current/Elliott boyfriend pair ($346). A cuffed hem and a few rips will put the focus on your legs. Wear them with strappy heels for the ultimate effect: balance. Your goal is to make your thighs look long, and with a lot going on - like ankle straps and shreds - you can't go wrong. Long and Lean We can't lie - the bermuda short was made for a gal who has legs for days. Gams that are long and lean look all the more toned in formfitting denim. Get ready for these 7 For All Mankind shorts ($158) to become your weekend staple this season. Athletic Build If you're solid all around, there's no doubt you'll want to show off your strong legs. A cropped, cuffed pair of denim shorts like this Hudson Hampton style ($158) will emphasize your toned body from all angles, cinching your upper thighs and drawing attention to your most toned area. Toned Tummy Got a breezy crop top you can't wait to wear? These Topshop Moto Mom shorts ($58) are for you. They're high-waisted, so you won't reveal too much tummy, but even so, your tiny waist will take center stage. Feel free to go for shredded and ripped details, and let your inner boho queen out to play. Long Legs With a Shorter Torso Got long legs? Lucky you! Experiment with stripes - whether vertical or horizontal - and don't be afraid that they'll make your legs look short. In fact, these classic striped Levi's shorties ($30) will elongate your overall look, drawing attention to your gams and away from your midsection. Long Legs Long legs are for showing off. Walk loud and proud in these fun bleached cutoffs from Forever 21 ($30), and you'll never look back. Why? The bleached section creates an ombré effect that bleeds right into the hemline and elongates your stems. Take a tip and pair these shorts with stripes or a blazer to pull together your look with a classic twist. Pear Shaped If your hips are slightly broader than your waist, you'll look great in cutoffs that are short and come with exposed pockets. The higher hemline on these shorts creates the illusion of longer legs, while the exposed pockets provide just a bit more coverage on your upper thighs. Tucking in your shirt helps to draw attention to your slim waistline. Just call this Rag & Bone Mila style ($154) your brand-new Daisy Dukes. Slim With Less Curves Girl, you can experiment all you want with prints and patterns. Mix it up and try these Tory Burch Amanda floral-print shorts ($175). The graphics on each side will draw the eyes to each side of your hips, creating the illusion of supersexy curves, a rounded booty, and toned legs. Hourglass If your hips are rounded and you've got a small waist, a silhouette that fans out but cinches you at the waist is always your best bet. So, make sure you belt your cutoffs or tuck in your top. With shredded shorts that look off-duty cool - like these cutoffs from Denim & Supply ($80) - your outfit will appear totally effortless and your body's best assets, like your strong legs and midsection, will be on full display.
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The world's biggest mobile tech show has just finished. You were probably poring over all those new big-screened smartphones, but you still remember what came before those all-screen oblongs, right? When was the last time you saw a flip phone being used? Not a Nokia clamshell buried away in a drawer, or a Motorola RAZR dusted off by an older relative who charges it once a month, but in a train station, at a bar -- in public. For me, it was a few hours ago. I live in Japan ( Hi !), and people here still carry a torch for the feature phone -- or at least, their version of it, the gara-kei , short for Galapagos keitai . ("Galapagos" refers to Japan's curious tech ecosystem that gave birth to devices that only seemed to appeal to its home country. Oh, and keitai means phone.) Last year, shipments of feature phones increased , while smartphone figures fell. Experts said this was more a one-last-hurrah boom than a new trend, but still, over 10 million of these simpler phones shipped in 2014. How are these phones clinging on in the face of obviously superior hardware and functionality? And who's still buying them? KDDI, one of the three major mobile carriers in Japan, continues to sell enough Galapagos phones that it warranted teaming up with Sharp to create the AQUOS K -- a top-end flip phone with LTE, a quad-core processor and a touch panel; it's even capable of running applications, including Japan's dominant messaging app, Line. (This is very important.) However, it still looks a lot like the hundreds of flip phones that have lined the shelves of Japanese phone shops for years. The AQUOS K is the result of nine months of careful planning and surveying why many customers were sticking to their flip phones. KDDI told me that it wanted to bring some of the major benefits of smartphones, but keep it within the familiar confines of a feature phone. A spokesman explained: "Customers wanted a better camera, something that took pictures comparable to the smartphone. And some people wanted to use Line just like their friends." (While feature phones could previously access Line through a browser portal, they were just skeletal versions of the smartphone app.) "Typically the apps we've focused on are ones that the customers are already using," the spokesman added. So there are weather, news and puzzle apps -- but it's not a smartphone-like selection. "If a customer wants to [use] a large selection of apps ... we'd advise a smartphone over the AQUOS K. A lot of customers love their flip phones -- the keitai is tied to [the] culture of Japan." There's even such a person in my office. Meet Ouki Chiba. He loves his feature phone. The Japanese editor-in-chief of our sister site Autoblog JP was eventually browbeaten by coworkers (and this guy) into buying an iPhone, but his eyes light up when we ask him about the gara-kei thing. Why do you love these phones? "It's light," he says. "It's small; it's easy to type on, easy to talk into." He then flips one open, adding, "It's cool." He flips it shut. What has he gained from the upgrade to a smartphone? He's silent: He doesn't use the map app, and says the camera on his flip phone was good enough. I'm at a loss for words. Would he go back to a feature phone? "I just bought this thing," he says as heaves the iPhone 6 up, "but maybe." Feature-phone users still want certain features to be offered on smartphones: infrared transmitters for sharing phone numbers and contact details, keeping the "easy to type" buttons. This also extends to things that are pretty confusing to anyone who's used a smartphone for years (like me). There's an array of menu buttons above the keypad that act as navigation keys, shortcuts and confirmation buttons. These are apparently what the company's research suggests customers want. According to KDDI: "We want to transfer the way people used their beloved phone, but add some modern benefits from smartphones." There's also another benefit that I wasn't aware of: A lot of feature-phone users became such capable typists (and most of these phones stick to the numerical keyboard layout) that they can hammer away at emails and text messages on feel alone. The physical feedback is more than enough -- something that smartphones (even with haptic feedback) can't offer, at least not yet . Unlike prior feature phones, there's also 4G this time around. Gara-kei typically came with last-generation networks; they didn't need high-speed data. However, the network is limited as to what it can access, which leads to another reason why feature phones hang on: They don't use much data, so they're cheap -- or at least cheaper than smartphones. If businesses or older users who aren't dead-set on having apps or the expanded capabilities of smartphones -- if they see a phone that's substantially cheaper -- it's another reason to buy that new flip phone. And there's been no shortage of options over the last decade. In KDDI's HQ, the company houses most (but not all) of the phones it's sold over the last two decades. According to the display, in 2008, it fielded 24 different phone models. Many had unusual designs and often unique (read: borderline ridiculous ) hardware features. One model packs a department-store-like barcode scanner, while another phone is plated in a solar panel to recharge itself. Another phone, from Sony Ericsson, had an (at the time?) "innovative" hinge that let the phone swing open both vertically and horizontally, for TV viewing and old-fashioned, on-the-phone talking. Despite the low technical specifications in comparison to smartphones, many of these phones were, even a decade ago, able to pick up TV broadcasts from all the major channels through the country's One-Seg TV signal. Who needs YouTube? If you're asking older phone users, still enraptured with their feature phone -- they probably don't. These phones had (and often still have) features that your smartphone doesn't. Do you need these features? Maybe not. But that's not to say else someone doesn't . "The keitai (mobile phone) is tied to the culture of Japan." There's also the sheer, downright ruggedness of a feature phone: You're unlikely to crack the screen on a Japanese feature phone because it's both small and, usually, flipped away. And for all the benefits of the smartphone, there's one benchmark where it's bested by the feature phone: battery life. Sure, you're probably doing less with a flip phone, but from our unscientific survey of people we spotted using flip phones, that predictable, lengthy battery life was another reason many Japanese weren't looking to move on to a smartphone. It's pretty hard to get a stranger to talk about their feature phone, but one " salaryman " said he gave up on his iPhone, returning to his feature phone because he just didn't trust the phone's battery to last through the day. For him, he just wanted to make phone calls and send text messages -- things that his gara-kei can certainly do. He can survive without an app store, LTE or a touchscreen. Even if we can't.
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Frustrated by guerrilla tactics from Islamic State militants, Iraqi forces paused for reinforcements on Friday in a major offensive to take back the city of Tikrit. The operation appeared to have stalled for the time being, two days after Iraqi security forces and their mainly Shi'ite militia allies pushed into Tikrit, the home city of executed ex-president Saddam Hussein. A source in the military command said Iraqi forces would not move forward until reinforcements reached Tikrit, of which Islamic State still holds around half. If government forces wrest full control, it will be the first time they have won back a city from Islamic State since it over-ran large areas of the country last year and declared an Islamic caliphate in territory it is holding in Iraq and Syria. From there it has spread fear across the region by beheading Arab and Western hostages and killing or kidnapping members of religious minorities like Yazidis and Christians. In Tikrit, the militants have deployed snipers and turned streets into a labyrinth of home-made bombs and booby-trapped buildings. Forces loyal to powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and known as the 'Peace Brigades' appeared to be positioning themselves to join the government offensive. Up to 1,500 fighters had reached the sacred Shi'ite city of Samarra, south of Tikrit, a source in Sadr's provincial office told Reuters. The deployment came days after Sadr announced the "unfreezing" of his forces' participation in battles against the militants. He had suspended their actions after allegations of abuses committed by other Shi'ite militias during recent operations. One official said he was told that the Peace Brigade fighters intend to push north toward Tikrit on Saturday. Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Shi'ite paramilitary Badr Organization and now one of the most powerful men in Iraq, said the outcome of the battle for Tikrit was in no doubt, but Iraqi forces needed time. "We are not in a hurry, but we have a plan and we are following it," Amiri told state television from the frontline. "Even if the battle drags on for two, three or four days that is okay. We will celebrate the liberation of Tikrit from the enemy." IRANIAN ROLE A victory in Tikrit would give Iraqi forces momentum for the next stage of the campaign to retake Mosul, the largest city under control of Islamic State. But the involvement of Iran, which backs some of the Shi'ite militia at the forefront of the campaign and is also playing a direct role, is a source of unease for some Sunnis in Iraq and across the wider region. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani has been spotted on the battlefield overseeing the Tikrit offensive. The foreign minister of Sunni Saudi Arabia, Saud al-Faisal, last week said the battle for Tikrit showed how Iran was "taking over" Iraq. Islamic State fighters overran the city last June during a lightning offensive that was halted just outside Baghdad. They have since used the complex of palaces built in Tikrit under the late Saddam as their headquarters. The insurgents were still in control of the presidential complex and at least three other districts in the center of Tikrit on Friday. Iraqi special forces attacked a medical college in southern Tikrit at dawn, but the militants managed to fend them off, killing three soldiers, according to the military command source. A further six people were killed when a Humvee vehicle packed with explosives rammed into an outpost of the Iraqi forces to the west of the city. More than 20,000 Iraqi troops and Shi'ite militias, supported by local Sunni tribes are taking part in the offensive, which began 11 days ago. OFFENSIVE AROUND KIRKUK Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said in an audio-recording published on Thursday that its fighters remained "steadfast" and were growing in strength, dismissing its enemies claims of gains in Tikrit as "fake". Adnani warned followers of the danger posed by Shi'ites, using a derogatory term to refer to them: "The rejectionists have entered a new phase in their war against the Sunni people: they have begun to think of taking and controlling the Sunni areas," he said. "They have come to take your homes and belongings, kill your men and rape and enslave your women." Even if the militants are routed from the city, they still hold a vast area straddling the Syrian border where they are likely to regroup, and Iraqi forces have previously struggled to hold ground they have retaken from the extremist group. Islamic State is on the back foot in the north, where Shi'ite militia and Kurdish forces known as peshmerga went on the offensive around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Friday. The peshmerga began attacking IS positions near Kirkuk on Monday and have retaken territory and a number of villages to the southwest. Kurdish commanders said they had faced relatively weak resistance, but were being held up by homemade bombs. (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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A recent study by RAND Europe and the University of Oxford found that neighbourhood patrols by mounted police in the U.K. are associated with comparatively higher levels of public trust and confidence than patrols by police on foot, as measured by population-representative surveys in the areas where patrols were deployed. Careful observations of what happens when people encounter mounted police could help to explain why. Police on horseback are 12 feet tall and a relative novelty in urban neighborhoods. We might therefore reasonably expect more people to notice police horses than foot patrols. There is strong evidence from prior research that police visibility is linked to trust and confidence. We might in turn conclude that mounted police are simply a higher-visibility policing option, and that any effort to get people to notice police would have a similar trust-enhancing effect. However, the reason the presence of police horses in neighborhoods influenced trust and confidence in the police how people felt about the broader police service they'd received in the neighbourhood may be slightly more complex than sheer visibility. Moreover, these effects were recorded after a rather small amount of mounted police activity in the areas where horses were deployed none of the areas surveyed saw more than 20 hours of mounted police patrols in the entire one-month experimental period. So how can we explain this effect on trust and confidence from such a small "dose" of mounted policing? To help better understand the differences between mounted and foot patrols, the researchers followed these patrols during their public duties. In the course of doing so they recorded what may be an important difference between foot and mounted patrols beyond the visibility of the latter. Specifically, the researchers found that members of the public engage with mounted police over six times as much as they engage with police on foot , across similar time periods. In this context, engagement can be anything from a simple greeting to an extended conversation. It appears that while mounted police and police on foot generate about the same number of extended interactions with citizens during their patrols, mounted police generate substantially higher numbers of brief casual engagements waving, people pointing to and talking about the police, saying hello to the officer, children patting the horse and so on. More substantive engagements with mounted police also tended to be slightly more positive overall than engagements with police on foot, but by and large engagements between police and the public in this study were positive in tone, whether there was an equine presence or not. It seems, therefore, that it is not simply visibility but also the volume of (broadly positive) engagement that makes the difference here. These research results may tempt policymakers to believe that any police visibility is good, or conversely that these results are only relevant to police on horseback. Certainly, there is something unique about policing on horseback and this contributes to the volume of engagement. However, we wish to draw out a broader principle about police visibility in public spaces. Specifically, this research suggests that it is the coupling of police visibility with the potential for positive engagement that underpins the effects of these patrols. That police can be seen, and seen as approachable, would both appear to be important factors that influence public opinion of the police. Chris Giacomantonio is an analyst at RAND Europe with interests in criminal justice and social policy. Ben Bradford i s departmental lecturer in criminology at the University of Oxford, researching issues of trust and legitimacy in the criminal justice system. This article first appeared on the website of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation .
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Monte Morris drained a buzzer-beater on Thursday night to lift Iowa State past Texas 69-67. The Cyclones will face Oklahoma on Friday night in the semifinals.
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The Internet may be flooded with data tools of every size and shape but not all data tools are built equal. Because there is no single analytics tool that covers all marketing needs, you'll have to use several to best understand every part of your business or website. Make sure you have your business KPIs thought through before diving into all the tools, otherwise you will be overwhelmed by all the data. To get started, here are 10 data tools every marketer should know. 1. Intercom Intercom is perhaps best known as a tool for a having conversations with users, but when used to its full potential it can quickly become a valuable data insights machine. Using events and segments can quickly lend insight into the product's most active users, allowing marketers to target various users differently. You can A/B test different messages within their easy-to-use portal, and have the option to either send messages through an in-app messenger (which is slick and a must-see) or through traditional email. Tip: Intercom is also really good at dog-fooding their product. Once you start using it, notice the way they use it to communicate with you. You can get a lot out of it by adapting their practices for your business. 2. Google Analytics Google analytics is a great tool that fits in the click stream analysis category. Google analytics is a great way to understand what people are doing on your site and get an overall understanding of traffic, demographics and acquisition. It's one of the oldest tools around for web analytics and has evolved a lot since its early days. You can also set up events and customize goals. It is also worth checking out Kissmetrics, which has more of a user focus, Mixpanel, which will help you get retention analysis, and Omniture, for enterprises. Tip: Especially before diving into Google Analytics, make sure you define your key KPIs otherwise you're likely to get lost in all the available data. 3. Qualaroo On-page site surveys are a good way to target users and get their immediate feedback. Previously known as KissInsights, Qualaroo has non-intrusive surveys, in which you can ask users anything ranging from NPS to simple questions like if they found what they were looking for. You can target certain sections of the traffic like returning visitors, visitors who remained on a page after 10 seconds, or visitors who met custom criteria outlined in an event. Tip: Think through the audience you are targeting, as easy as surveys are easy to set up sometimes can be hard to get actionable data. 4. Optimizely Testing and optimizing your funnel is a huge part of being a marketer. Optimizely is one the best tools in this category. Not only does Optimizely help you run A/B and multivariate tests easily, but it also helps you calculate the statistical significance of the results. Tests can be run without the engineering bottleneck. Quickly adapt to the winning results and develop them later. Tip: Another tool which is similar in this category is Unbounce which is designed to test and create new landing pages as opposed to Optimizely which is testing variations of the existing page. 5. UserTesting A great way to easily get qualitative feedback without surveys is by usability tests. This is whereUserTesting comes in. Within a day you can get working and see up to 15-minute videos on how your customers are using and interpreting your site. It will help you pinpoint issues with usability and user experience, and address them. Tip: The downside of UserTesting is that if you have a niche business, the right audience/persona may be hard to find. 6. Buffer Try using Buffer for all your social media management and analysis. You can see how your posts performed so you can improve your social media content. Tip : Check out this article for other social media tools to use to analyze your social media profiles. 7. Crazy Egg Crazy Egg is a good tool to see how people view your site how they click and scroll as well as what actions they are drawn to on a page. You can set up multiple pages on your site and see how customers engage with them on a high level. Tip: Take advantage of their 30 day free trial. 8. Heap Analytics Relatively new on the scene, Heap Analytics helps you track and define events easily. It's easy to use for marketers, and instead of providing a long list of events with code snippets to the engineering team, you can easily start tracking events yourself. Once events are defined, you can see retroactive stats on each interaction and segment various users based on events. The best part is that you can easily set up events for your iOS app to capture any interaction. Tip: Check out their retention reports. You can do time based cohort analysis and also visualize retention across different segments. 9. Custora Used by a number of e-commerce sites, Custora is great for understanding your customer lifecycle value (CLV). You can segment users based on their lifetime value and market them differently. They also offer some predictive lifetime segmentations so you can identify early-on which customers will be the most valuable. Tip: Take a look at some of their featured case studies to understand how different businesses have gotten value from Custora. 10. Segment In marketing you will experiment and test a lot of tools before you find the ones that work for you and your business. Segment helps you move quickly and manage all your integrations without consuming precious engineering time for installing and maintaining analytics tools. Tip: Take a look at their integrations; they provide integrations with all the commonly used marketing tools out there.
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From the outside, I look like the worst stereotype of a VR user as I walk around the Virginia Tech Cube . Not only am I blindfolded by an Oculus Rift as I feel my way around, the headset is sporting a 6-inch-high, slightly wobbly 3D-printed antenna. The Rift isn't wireless, so I'm tethered to a laptop, which a research assistant is carrying around behind me. My gait lurches from tentative single steps to single-minded strides to sudden stops sometimes because I've clipped through a wall in virtual reality, sometimes because I'm about to run into one in real life. A 50 x 40-foot box isn't even big enough to fit the scoreboard in Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium. But for me, the room looks like the giant venue, full of 60,000 spectators in the midst of evacuating. The audience is represented by tiny boxes, torrents of them streaming through a simple replica of one wing, mixing and jostling each other as they pass. If I walk slowly, I can match their pace. A little faster, and my speed multiplies, until walking briskly in the Cube shoots me through the stadium and straight into empty blue space. These digital seven-league boots are just one piece of the massive puzzle that Benjamin Knapp, director of Virginia Tech's Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT), and other researchers are trying to put together. In most of the tech world, virtual reality is slimming down and becoming more accessible, as developers learn to create simple experiences that anyone can enjoy. Inside the Cube, it's messy, complicated, and ambitious. The Cube is a new initiative, but it fits with Virginia Tech's long history of virtual reality research. In the mid-'90s, the school unveiled a CAVE (a recursive acronym for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), a 10 x 10-foot enclosure with stereoscopic 3D images projected on every side. A successor to the CAVE now called the Visionarium VisCube is still around on campus, and two Cube researchers have previously worked on Visionarium projects. Originally built as a black-box theater, the Cube is shared between ICAT and Virginia Tech's Center for the Arts, used for both art projects and scientific research. This doesn't necessarily have to involve VR; in 2013, the Cube theater hosted a live performance called Operacraft , where K-12 students used Minecraft avatars projected onto a wall to perform an opera sung by Virginia Tech musicians. One of the Cube's biggest selling points is its sound system, which creates deafening 360-degree audio with 124 standard speakers, four subwoofers, and nine additional speakers that project hyper-targeted sound, like the aural equivalent of a spotlight. It's possible to create things that could never be replicated with an ordinary sound system, like an experimental composition by ICAT media engineer Tanner Upthegrove that sends metal and chainsaws whirling around the room and wouldn't feel out of place in Hellraiser . Close your eyes in another demo a recording from inside a tornado and you can almost feel the tremors as wind rips away nails and wood. The Oculus Rift tracks head movement with a single webcam, which reads an array of LEDs embedded in the headset. Alongside the speakers, though, the Cube is lined with 24 cameras, which read up to 24 rigid-body targets small constellations of dowels and reflective balls. Tape one to a tablet or headset, and the wall cameras will be able to "see" visitors as they explore anything from a very large molecule to a very small tornado, mapped onto the dimensions of the room. "The beauty of the space is that you now move through a virtual world by walking," says Knapp. "I can explore this area in this space, and the model in this space, with you in there and with anybody else." A non-VR project called FutureHaus, for example, uses an old augmented reality trick : by holding up a tablet, you're given a window into a simply rendered three-story home, its dimensions mapped roughly to the room. Unlike most other virtual rooms, though, whole groups of people can mill around the house, where they'll appear as Prisoner-esque white spheres. FutureHaus drives home the loose connection between physical and virtual space in an almost eerie way. You can explore the house by climbing virtual staircases, sending your avatar up or down while you traverse the exact same space in the Cube. If you head to another floor and a companion stays behind on the lower level, you could hold hands and chat while your avatars walk several stories apart. A tornado visualization tool unrelated to the audio installation works with space in another way. Put on the Rift and you're standing in a room about the size of the cube, getting a bird's-eye view of a flat map. Instead of empty space, though, you're looking at a bright, abstract funnel made of reds and yellows, representing the temperature of the air as a tornado sweeps across the ground. You can walk through it or kneel and see tiny topographic lines, while rocks and wind whirl around you in a small artistic flourish. Right now, it processes pre-recorded weather data, but one day it could provide a live feed, creating a real-time record of a disaster. The most interesting part, though, isn't the image, which feels about as informative as a normal 3D render. It's the sense of place. The simulation represents users as hovering green pyramids, tipped forward like an arrow. As I stood on the map, another pyramid floated toward me, representing Virginia Tech Department of Geography head Bill Carstensen. When Carstensen pointed out the eye of the storm by staring at it, he could have been poking at a screen, or drawing a red line in MS Paint. But actually peering through the 3D landscape, I could respond with the most intuitive interface of all: my own body. The demo was simplistic, but where so much VR feels like a blown-up version of a thing I could get on a screen, it gave me a real reason to use it. Designing for the Cube, though, presents its own set of challenges. There's a tremendous amount of space to track, and since everything has to be portable, you can't rely on having a super-high-powered PC to render environments. Normally, being able to walk around is a great way to avoid motion sickness. But the clunky FutureHaus demo sometimes ran at only a few frames per second, and the Lane Stadium evacuation simulator could get nauseatingly laggy. The Oculus Rift is currently hooked to a ThinkPad, which must be carried around, open, at all times. The next step will be putting the ThinkPad into a backpack, and after that, the team is looking at streaming video through a Raspberry Pi, which would make the headsets truly mobile. If you want to track fine motion, like hands, you'd have to strap on a Leap Motion or some other controller. For now, walking around in the Cube in a headset feels simultaneously retro and futuristic: you're using a system that overwrites real space in a way that Valve and Oculus and Sony will never match, but in a bulky, awkward format straight out of a '90s X-Files episode. Knapp is aware of these limitations. But even as researchers work to fix them, he's imagining huge conceptual leaps. One Virginia Tech student, for example, is working on a system that could detect muscle movement and translate it into motion controls instead of having to look for a gesture, the room would know that you'd flexed to pick up a cup. And unlike Oculus and many others, Knapp doesn't just want virtual or augmented reality glasses to get smaller. He wants them to disappear altogether. "The crazy distant future is to shine laser light into the eyes themselves," he says, while we're talking about interfaces. At first, this sounds like a virtual retinal display, the same technology that's thought to be used in Microsoft's Hololens and the mysterious Magic Leap headset. In reality, it's a lot weirder: putting projectors on the walls, not a headset and using sophisticated tracking to beam images directly into your eyes. "Just like the aural environment doesn't touch you you don't have to wear anything to get the aural environment wouldn't it be neat if you didn't have to do that with the visual environment? Right now we've moved [from a] screen onto commercially available devices like the Oculus," or next-generation headsets like Magic Leap. "But the eventual goal is to move all of that off-body." Is that the future? A virtual reality theater where speakers are targeted to your precise location and sensors track your muscles, while the walls shine lasers into your eyes? Not for most people. Maybe not for anybody. But as far as wild VR experiments go, things don't get much better than this.
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The party of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will contest the general election this year even if there is no change in the constitution to allow the Nobel laureate to become president, one of the party's top leaders said on Friday. The National League for Democracy would have more power to push for an end to the military's veto over charter changes and remove the obstacles to her presidency if it wins the election, NLD Central Executive Committee Secretary Nyan Win said. "We are going to compete," he told Reuters in an interview. "First, we need the majority in parliament. After that, we will be in a stronger position and we hope we can change the constitution." The NLD had not previously committed to competing in the election, prompting speculation Suu Kyi was using participation as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the government. Without Suu Kyi, who spent nearly two decades under house arrest for campaigning for democracy, the election would have lacked international legitimacy. Foreign governments lifted sanctions after 49 years of military rule ended in 2011 on condition of further democratic reforms. The NLD and the government have been in a standoff over the constitution, which reserves a quarter of parliamentary seats and key government posts for the military and bars Suu Kyi from the presidency because her sons are foreign nationals. Barring Suu Kyi from the presidency made no sense, U.S. President Barack Obama said in November. The U.S. has said it wants to see free and fair elections in Myanmar this year, but that was impossible without constitutional change, Nyan Win said. "The election may be free, but it won't be fair," he said. The NLD is considering alternative candidates for the presidency but has yet to decide on one, he said. It would not back former general Shwe Mann, the speaker of parliament and chairman of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), to avoid angering the NLD's rank and file, he said. Party aides told Reuters last year the party might support him due to a lack of NLD alternatives. "We don't want to see an army man in the top post," Nyan Win said. "We have many people in the party qualified." The party hoped younger members of the armed forces might be more reform minded, he added. It would need at least one member of the military in parliament to amend the constitution. "We will say to them: 'Please, finally, think of the country'," he said. (Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Az.) and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, are both leaving the door open to running for office someday. CBS News asked the couple in a Friday interview if they harbor political ambitions and would consider running for election. "Maybe," said Giffords. "You never say never," added Kelly. "It's not something I have planned. You know, right circumstances, I might consider it." Giffords was shot in the head in a mass shooting in 2011 that killed six people and seriously injured 11 others. She stepped down in 2012 to focus on her recovery. Former Rep. Ron Barber (D-Az.), who was also wounded in the shooting, succeeded Giffords in the House, but lost the seat in the closest election of 2014 to now-Rep. Martha McSally (R-Az.). Giffords and Kelly have stayed in the spotlight by pushing for gun control reform. Both are active gun enthusiasts, but say laws need to be strengthened to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
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Lt. Col. Oliver North says terror group wants 'impression of global reach'
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The International Energy Agency says the oil market has further to drop as supplies from the U.S. show no sign of slowing. The watchdog that represents the world's main oil-importing nations says in a monthly report that the recent stabilization in oil prices is "precarious." "Behind the facade of stability, the rebalancing triggered by the price collapse has yet to run its course," it said in the report, published Friday. The price of oil fell on Friday in the wake of the report. The U.S. contract was down $1.02 at $46.02. The contract slumped from over $100 a barrel last summer to around $47 in January before stabilizing around $50 a barrel in recent weeks.
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Mohamed Nasheed convicted on terrorism charges by criminal court's three-judge bench. Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed has been convicted of a terrorism charge by a criminal court and sentenced to 13 years in prison. The three-judge bench on Friday unanimously found Nasheed guilty of ordering the arrest of a chief judge in January 2012 when he was leader of the Indian Ocean island nation. "Nasheed is found guilty of arresting and illegally detaining judge Abdulla Mohamed," judge Abdulla Didi told the court in a verdict just before midnight. Nasheed was then taken to Dhoonidhoo prison, near the capital Male. Nasheed has denied ordering the arrest. His supporters say the charges are aimed at eliminating him as a challenger against incumbent President Yameen Abdul Gayoom in the 2018 presidential election. A statement released by his office on Friday called the trial "blatantly politicised". "President Nasheed was repeatedly denied legal representation, denied the right to appeal, his defence witnesses were prevented from taking the stand, and prosecution witnesses were routinely coached by the judges and the police," it said. At court, the former president called on Maldivians to "confront the dictatorial power of this regime". "The Maldivian judiciary is full of corruption and disgrace. Judges are routinely accepting the vile money of bribery," said Nasheed. "These judges have no fear of the day of judgment, and no shame in this world. The consequence of their actions is injustice to the public, and the thwarting of this country's development." Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) said the verdict dealt a blow to the young democracy seven years after it embraced multi-party elections following three decades of rule by former strongman Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. "Democracy jailed for 13 years on March 13, 2015," declared MDP spokeswoman Shauna Aminath. "Nothing good will come out of this. It's a sad, sad, sad day for the Maldives," she added. The ruling came four days after Nasheed's lawyers quit in protest against what they called a biased trial aimed at destroying his political career. Nasheed, the country's first democratically elected leader, was originally cleared of the charge last month but a few days later the prosecutor general had him re-charged and arrested under tough anti-terror laws. Before the brief hearing in February in which the court denied him bail, police forcibly dragged Nasheed into court, refusing him to speak to journalists and ignoring his plea to be allowed to walk in himself. Global concern The United States and regional power India had voiced concern over the charges and attempts to keep him out of politics. The controversial trial went on despite widespread criticism, with current President Abdulla Yameen denying that the move was politically motivated. Hundreds of supporters have been protesting in the capital island Male on a regular basis since Nasheed's arrest last month. Nasheed resigned as Maldives leader in February 2012 after a mutiny by police and troops that followed weeks of protests over the arrest of judge Mohamed on corruption allegations. He has maintained that he was innocent and he was wrongfully charged. Nasheed was denied medical attention while in police custody, his party has said. The judge was arrested after he released a detained opposition politician, and Nasheed's administration accused him of political bias and corruption.
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Hot Tip From a Hot Golfer: Natalie Gulbis on Phil Mickelson's Short Game Drill
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Mitch Olivier may have one of the world's most unusual hotel jobs. For the past three years, he's managed the falconry mews at the Banyan Tree Al Wadi Resort in Ras al-Khaimah home to an intensive two-day falconry course, the kind of activity you'd expect to try at a castle in southern England . The United Arab Emirates property, located on a nature reserve, is the only hotel in the country to offer this kind of course, despite falconry's deep roots in Bedouin culture. "The majority of our activities are nature based," says Olivier. "We use traditional Arabic and modern Western techniques in our training methods." It's also a commitment: The class costs $1,200 and includes 16 hours of training more time than you might spend to learn how to skydive for the first time. "People are attracted to the level of interaction they have with falcons," he says. "Guests are involved to the point where these birds are flying directly to them." Olivier spoke to Condé Nast Traveler about the class, sightseeing in Dubai, and why you should never try to take food away from a falcon. How many birds are part of the program? We have a selection of desert eagle owls, barn owls, four different species of falcons, Harris's hawks, and possibly an opportunity to experience working with a greater spotted eagle. What will a guest learn over the two days? The course is tailored to the individual, but depending on their level of experience, if any. They will become knowledgeable on theoretical topics, including history, species identification, housing, husbandry, as well as [glean] insight into health, disease, and food preparation. They will also have experience in handling, hooding, creance work [training the hawk on a leash of sorts], and high-tech radio tracking. What happens if one of the birds don't like the guests? I've never encountered a problem with birds not liking guests; the birds we are using have been conditioned to be completely relaxed and familiar with their surroundings. It's more a case of the guest sometimes being a bit nervous around the birds, but we soon remedy that. What's the most bizarre question a guest has asked? Someone wanted to know what falcons taste like and if they are tasty to eat. What ruffles the birds' feathers? Never take food away from a falcon and always feed them sufficient amounts. Be aware of their body language. They cannot tell you what they are feeling but their body language always will. And not giving them the attention they deserve. What are some cool facts people would be impressed to know? The falcon is the fastest animal alive. Their vision is eight times more powerful than our vision. They can eat up to 20 percent of their own body weight in one sitting. Have you ever had a falcon fly away? I've been extremely fortunate as I have always retrieved falcons that flew away. This does not happen often, but is a part of falconry. Has a guest ever insisted on leaving with one? No. Especially after they see how protective I am. They are my babies, and they would not be allowed to take them home. What suggestions can you make for tourists to experience when traveling in Dubai? The skydiving is a must for an awesome perspective, and a trip to the top of the Burj Khalifa tower is also a treat. More from Conde Nast Traveler: 10 Travel Gear Fails: They're So Bad, They're Genius The 50 Best Travel Films of the Past 50 Years 10 Things Not to Do in Paris Top 25 Cities in the World
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Tyler Kalinoski glanced at the clock and knew it was time to make something happen. Davidson only had a few seconds left to avoid being one-and-done in its first Atlantic 10 tournament and having a nervous wait until selection Sunday. Kalinoski beat the clock with a driving, left-handed scoop to cap a crazy comeback and No. 24 Davidson slipped by La Salle 67-66 in the Atlantic 10 quarterfinals on Friday. The top-seeded Wildcats (24-6) trailed almost the entire game and were down nine after Jerrell Wright's dunk for the Explorers with 4:45 left, but ninth-seeded La Salle (17-16) didn't score another point. Kalinoski started the rally with a 3 and then finished it by cutting through the Explorers and finding room to flip a shot high over the outstretched arms of the 6-foot-8 Wright. ''I don't know if I was going for glass or not,'' Kalinoski said. ''One thing we do in practice a lot is coach always tells us to shoot it high, because if you shoot it high it gives it a better chance to go in the basket. And when I saw the shot-blocker coming over I definitely knew I had to get it as high as I could.'' ''I knew it had a chance to go in.'' The ball bounced on the rim and through the net as the clock ran out. The Wildcats rushed the floor, their costumed mascot making a head-first slide onto the hardwood, and mobbed Kalinoski as the Explorers trudged off. ''I was surprised that shot went in,'' La Salle coach John Giannini said. ''I thought we had them out of rhythm a little bit. It looked like the ball was thrown towards the rim and not shot as well as they normally do. It just kind of took a couple of bounces and went in.'' Steve Zack dominated inside for La Salle with a career-high 24 points and 15 rebounds. ''I can't even think about that right now,'' said Zack, a senior. ''My career's over on a buzzer-beater.'' Wright had 19 points for La Salle. Jack Gibbs led Davidson with 22 points and had a chance to tie with 1:19 left when he hit a 3 and was fouled, but missed the free throw. Kalinoski finished with 18 points and helped the Wildcats avoid an uncomfortable few days until the NCAA field of 68 is set. ''The last game-winner I think I had was in middle school,'' Kalinoski said. The Wildcats were surprise winners of the A-10 in their first season in the conference after moving from the Southern Conference, where they made the NCAAs in five of the last nine seasons, most notably with Steph Curry. The step up to the A-10 was supposed to lead to a step back this season. Instead, Davidson finished the regular season with nine straight wins and a regular-season title. The Wildcats' resume lacks big nonconference victories, though, making them less than a lock for an at-large NCAA bid if they would have been upset at Barclays Center. ''I've been with this team six, seven months and after all we've been through I'm still shocked at the performance that we had, to come back like we did today,'' said coach Bob McKillop, who is in his 26th season as coach of the Wildcats. Now Davidson should be able to relax and play Saturday when it faces the winner of Richmond and VCU in the semifinals. La Salle used its height advantage and some especially sharp outside shooting to build an 18-point first half lead. Zack, 6-foot-11, and Wright muscled through the Wildcats and combined for 14 for 16 shooting and 31 points in the first half. The Explorers were also 5 for 11 from 3-point range. Davidson righted itself late and cut the lead to a more manageable nine with back-to-back 3s by Brian Sullivan to end the half. The Wildcats cut the lead to four early in the second half on a 3 by Kalinoski that had McKillop pumping a clenched fist and imploring his team to step it up on the defensive end. But they had a difficult time finding an answer for Zack on the defensive end. On one possession, the senior was able to post up the 6-4 Jordan Barham and easily turned and scored to make it 59-49 with about nine minutes left. When Cleon Roberts dropped in a 3 for the Explorers with 6:30 left, La Salle's lead was 64-54 and the large contingent of Davidson fans who made the trip from North Carolina were nervously quiet. Davidson, the highest scoring and most-accurate shooting team in the conference, scored 13 points below its average and made only 39 percent of its shots - including the biggest shot of the day.
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Just call them your friendly neighborhood, artisan coffee shop. At least, that's what it seems Starbucks is aiming for. The transformation began with the opening of the reserve tasting room in Seattle and the introduction of a subscription service for the chain's high-end reserve coffee. Now, just in time for warmer weather, the largest coffee chain in America has introduced iced cold brew coffee , a trend that has exploded in smaller coffee shops, home to hipster coffee connoisseurs. The cold brew coffee is steeped using cold water, instead of just by brewing hot coffee and pouring over ice. The result, according to Starbucks, is a richer, more robust flavor profile than a traditional iced coffee. The coffee actually brews for 20 hours to achieve the right taste. "Our cold brew blend is smooth and rich, it's very refreshing with chocolate and light citrus notes," said Michelle Sundquist, a member of the research and development team. "Our goal was to find the perfect spot where the coffee was rich, dense and slightly sweet. We found that 20 hours was the right balance of sweetness with citrusy and chocolate notes." You'll be able to find cold brew coffee at select Starbucks shops in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, and Northeastern regions starting March 31.
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Building a smart portfolio on your own is not hard to do The good news: When it comes to securing a successful retirement, you're not on your own. The bad news: One can easily feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of building and maintaining an investment portfolio. Many products feed off this feeling, annuities chief among them. Numerous predators will charge you an arm and a leg, thus securing their own financial future at the expense of your own. Be forewarned and forearmed: Look every so-called gift horse in the mouth. But you can corral a solid overall portfolio -- or complement the one you currently have -- on your own. It's not hard to do. It's not expensive. And the reward ought to be not just happier returns but more restful days and nights. Fidelity has been in the 401k business since its inception. It also has led the charge for low-cost investment products whose managers and performance records have rivaled the best of any breed -- from ballyhooed hedge funds and smarty-pants institutional endowments to soporific index funds and ETFs. But not all Fidelity managers nor all Fidelity funds are created equal. I examine the world of Fidelity funds in my Fidelity Investor service , and several funds stand head and shoulders above not only their market benchmarks and internal peer groups -- but compared to lions like Warren Buffett, George Soros and the now tainted Bill Gross. As I cast my eye down not just 2015's road, here are the 10 best Fidelity funds for navigating the twists and turns in your 401k's road. Read more: How to Double Your Vanguard and Fidelity Returns Blue Chip Growth (FBGRX) Manager: Sonu Kalra Expenses: 0.8%, or $80 annually for every $10,000 invested Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund (MUTF:FBGRX) manager Sonu Kalra invests in blue-chip companies that he believes have above-average potential for earnings growth. Battleship balance sheets are the best way to play 2015's charted and uncharted waters -- you never know when the seas will turn turbulent, but you can rest reasonably assured that when they do, bigger will either be better or become so. There are plenty of technology and healthcare names in this fund: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:GILD), among others. The top three sectors are information technology (33.2%), consumer discretionary (23.1%) and health care (16.4%). Foreign holdings make up 10.2% of the investments. Contrafund (FCNTX) Manager: Will Danoff Expenses: 0.64% Will Danoff has been managing Fidelity Contrafund (MUTF:FCNTX) for almost 25 years. He invests in companies believed to be undervalued or whose potential is not recognized by the public, or whose potential is assumed to be fully realized. My view that FCNTX is among the best Fidelity funds is based on Danoff's performance over meaningful time periods. He is trailing a bit this year. Noted. But his three-, five- and 10-year numbers, as well as those of his overall tenure, make this a solid choice for time in the markets, not market timing. Like Blue Chip Growth, FCNTX is heavy on technology (26.3%), with healthcare (18.9%) and financials (16.9%) making up other major weightings. Foreign investments are similar too at 9%. Top holdings include Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B), Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC), Apple, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google. International Growth (FIGFX) Manager: Jed Weiss Expenses: 1.04% Jed Weiss' Fidelity International Growth Fund (MUTF:FIGFX) invests in companies from around the globe that he believes shows above-average potential for growth. Jed looks for multiyear structural growth stories and high-barriers-to-entry businesses at attractive valuations on his earnings forecast. Currently, more than half of FIGFX's holdings are in Europe, though the top country representation is the United States at 20%. The U.K. follows at a 14.8% weighting, Switzerland at 13.2% and Sweden at 5.6%. Healthcare (16.9%), consumer staples (15.6%) and consumer discretionary (15.4%) are the highest-weighted sectors in the fund, reflected in top holdings such as Roche Holdings (OTCMKTS:RHHBY), Anheuser Busch Inbev SA (ADR) (NYSE:BUD) and Novartis AG (ADR) (NYSE:NVS). A couple other notes: FIGFX began trading in November 2007 and has a market value of over $700 million. Japan Smaller Companies (FJSCX) Manager: David Jenkins Expenses: 1% Manager David Jenkins invests in Fidelity Japan Smaller Companies' (MUTF:FJSCX) clever namesake, smaller-cap Japanese companies. The key to understanding this fund's focus and scope comes down to understanding the "er." The market caps are similar to those of companies found in the Russell/Nomura Mid-Small Cap Index; a lot of room to maneuver toward more unproven, smaller-cap growth plays or toward more established, real-product, real-earnings, real-market-share, real-management mid-caps. Current top holdings are Daiichikosho, JSR and Lintec, and more than half the fund is dedicated to just three sectors -- industrials (23.1%), consumer discretionary (20.8%), and information technology (12.7%). Low-Priced Stock (FLPSX) Manager: Joel Tillinghast Expenses: 0.82% Still inimitable, still head and shoulders above even the best crop of giants you can find in the space, lead manager Joel Tillinghast is about as far a cry from leveraged stocks as you can get. Fidelity Low-Priced Stock (MUTF:FLPSX) invests in low-priced stocks, which for his purpose are stocks $35 or less. While that sounds like a gimmick, it's the secret to this fund's genius, and was Joel's brainchild, making him of one of the best managers of any generation. It can lead to a small-/mid-cap tilt, but it also can lean toward even mega-caps in ultra-bear markets (like the one we got in 2008). FLPSX began trading in December 1989 and has a market value of over $30 billion. The fund is heavily weighted toward consumer discretionary (26.1%), with ample weight given to information technology (19.2%) and financials (11.8%). Top holdings for now are UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX) and Next plc. It's noteworthy that of the funds we've discussed so far, FLPSX is the only one with more than 5% of the fund currently in cash (9.4%). Joel is a stock picker's stock picker; if he's around the water cooler, other managers are keen to hear what he has to say. While unsung by the media, he is a manager that compares with Peter Lynch, his mentor while Joel was learning the trade. His stealth advantage: He's always been a global investor. I continue to think the best way to pursue foreign stock opportunities is through managers with longstanding expertise in the foreign stock arena as part and parcel of global funds. So, if you're looking at the best Fidelity funds for your 401k, any list must include Joel Tillinghast and Low-Priced Stock. Mega Cap Stock (FGRTX) Manager: Matt Fruhan Expenses: 0.68% There are a lot of funds out there that sound like they're buying the big boys, but few actually do just that. Not so with Fidelity Mega Cap Stock Fund (MUTF:FGRTX). Manager Matthew Fruhan invests more than 70% of the fund in companies with mega-cap capitalizations of the battleship balance sheet variety -- these are Texas-sized dividend producers with more cash than they can count let alone spend, and are emerging-market-capable. You could contrast FGRTX with Vanguard Dividend Growth Fund (MUTF:VDIGX), which invests about 40% of its assets in mega-cap companies. Fruhan can reach across the pond, but prefers U.S. battleships. Top holdings include Apple, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), reflecting the heavy weightings given to information technology (24.5%) and financials (18.2%). Select Health Care (FSPHX) Manager: Eddie Yoon Expenses: 0.77% Fidelity Select Health Care Portfolio (MUTF:FSPHX) invests in companies involved in numerous parts of the healthcare industry -- so that's pharmaceuticals, medical instruments, biotechs and hospitals, among others. This nearly $10 billion fund's top holdings include Actavis plc (NYSE:ACT), Medtronic PLC (NYSE:MDT), McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK), Amgen, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN). This also is a very international-heavy fund at 31.6% of FSPHX's investments. I like Select Healthcare for reasons that follow this refrain: Healthcare provides necessary goods and services for huge, worldwide demographics that are aging and whose collective demand isn't slowing. Eddie Yoon invests with an eye on the necessary demographic trends and stories of aging boomers needing a youth-inducing crutch, as well as on the emerging-market theme of new consumers demanding better healthcare. Strategic Dividend & Income (FSDIX) Manager: Joanna Bewick Expenses: 0.74% Income investors need three types of income. They need to have good bond income, they need to have some inflation protection and they need to have non-bond income in the form of a less interest-rate-sensitive capital appreciation opportunity. That's where Fidelity Strategic Dividend & Income Fund (MUTF:FSDIX) comes in. FSDIX invests in a mix of approximately 50% stocks, 15% real estate investments, 15% convertible securities and 20% preferred stocks. (The current mix is 50.1%, 16.5%, 7% and 18.2%). From a stocks perspective, top holdings include dividend stalawarts Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM), Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) and Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE:PG). However, it's financials that make up the biggest portion of the fund's holdings, at 29%. Healthcare (10.2%) and consumer staples (10%) are far leaner as Nos. 2 and 3. Strategic Real Return (FSRRX) Manager: Joanna Bewick Expenses: 0.77% Primary manager Joanna Bewick and her team again use an investment allocation guide for Fidelity Strategic Real Return Fund (MUTF:FSRRX). The fund invests roughly 30% in inflation-protected investments, 25% in floating-rate bonds, 25% in commodities and related investments and 20% in REITs or other real estate investments. (Current mix is 27.6%, 23.4%, 23.1% and 22.1%). FSRRX will tend to trade more like a basket of commodities than any single type of bond, but also more like a diversified basket of bonds than any one commodity. I recommended purchasing this fund in tandem with Strategic Income to broaden our approach to the income landscape in general and to diversify within it as best as possible. Total Bond (FTBFX) Manager: Ford O'Neil Expenses: 0.45% Primary manager Ford O'Neil (along with managers Michael Foggin, Jeff Moore and Matthew Conti) uses the Barclays U.S. Universal Bond Index as an investment guide for Fidelity's diversified bond fund, Fidelity Total Bond Fund (MUTF:FTBFX). Investments in this $17 billion-plus fund are allocated across investment-grade (76.2%), high-yield (16.2%) and emerging-market (4.8%) bonds. The investment-grade debt includes a 29% total weighting in U.S. Treasuries. The result? A 30-day yield around 3.5%. Foreign holdings make up 9.8% of the investments. Jim Lowell is the editor of Fidelity Investor. Sign up for Fidelity Investor today and you'll also receive his free report on the top sector funds and ETFs for 2015.
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ANKARA, Turkey A video that appears to show a man helping three British schoolgirls on their way to join the Islamic State group in Syria was released Friday by a Turkish news channel. A Haber television said that the video was filmed in Gaziantep on Turkey's border with Syria by the man, who was later detained by Turkish authorities. A Turkish government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, confirmed the video came from the police but didn't elaborate on the content. Turkish authorities said the man was working for the intelligence service of a country that is part of the anti-IS coalition, but did not publicly name the country. On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the man was a Syrian citizen. In the video, a man speaking in English appears to tell the British girls that they will be in Syria within an hour. The three girls identified by British authorities as Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15 traveled from the U.K. to Turkey last month, from where they are believed to have crossed into Syria. Their journey highlighted the difficulty of halting the radicalization of young Muslims. There has been tension between Turkey and Britain over who was to blame for the teenagers being able to sneak into Syria to join the extremist group, with Turkey accusing Britain of failing to notify authorities in time to prevent them from crossing the border. The girls had boarded a flight for Istanbul on Feb. 17. Earlier this month, a Turkish television station obtained video showing the teenagers at an Istanbul bus terminal before they boarded a bus to a city near Turkey's border with Syria. Cavusoglu also said that Turkey has detained 16 Indonesians trying to cross the border into Syria to join the IS group and was looking for another group of the same size reported missing in Turkey. Turkish news reports say 11 children were among the 16 Indonesians who were caught. ___ Butler reported from Istanbul
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Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), who has faced several weeks of critical press coverage, will no longer be speaking on a panel on Millennial issues at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival this weekend. Schock was slated to speak alongside fellow 33-year-old Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on a panel called "Millennials: The Unstoppable Force" at the Austin, Texas, tech confab that typically attracts big crowds. Schock and Gabbard have often appeared together to address issues facing young adults. In 2013, they paired up in conjunction with the Millennial Action Project to form the Congressional Future Caucus. The two were slated to address net neutrality, jobs, criminal justice reform and technological innovation in their discussion Sunday on American Millennials, typically defined as those ages 18-34. Instead, freshman Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) will speak on the panel alongside Gabbard, his office confirmed. Hurd, 37, represents a district in western Texas. "Representative Schock's office has informed us that he will no longer be participating in the panel," David Pasch, a spokesman for Generation Opportunity, whose president is moderating the panel, told The Hill. "We're excited about having Rep. Hurd join us and share his perspective as one of the youngest members of Congress," Pasch added. "Millennials care less about party labels and blind partisanship, and care more about getting things done," Gabbard had said in a statement announcing the panel earlier Friday. A phone call and email requesting comment from Schock's office was not immediately returned. The lawmaker in recent weeks has faced a slew of questions surrounding his use of taxpayer funds and lavish tastes, starting last month with questions on his "Downton Abbey"-inspired office decorations. As the first member of Congress born in the 1980s, Schock has built an online following with Instagram posts from exotic places, like showing his dancing skills in Argentina, and with celebrities, like rapper Jay Z and Pope Francis. Several other lawmakers are planning to attend the event in Texas, including likely 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). Dan Pfeiffer, the former senior adviser to President Obama, is also slated to speak on a panel on breaking news.
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SURPRISE, Ariz. Right-hander Yu Darvish has decided to undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery after famed orthopedist Dr. James Andrews confirmed the previous two recommendations to have the partially torn elbow ligament replaced. The decision comes as no surprise, though Darvish wanted to wait to learn if Andrews were to have a different take on the MRI exam than team physician Dr. Keith Meister and Dr. David Altchek, another renowned surgeon, before committing to a lost season. Andrews will perform the surgery Tuesday in Pensacola, Fla., and Darvish will begin his rehab Thursday at the Surprise Recreation Campus and continue it at Meister's TMI Sports Medicine in Arlington as the season begins. "I was told that there's not a tear," said Darvish, who was shut down last season with elbow inflammation. "It's more like being thinned out. When it's thinned out, there's a danger." Darvish was removed from his lone Cactus League appearance March 5 after one scoreless inning because of tightness in his triceps. He joked that it was a minor injury and nothing to worry about before the MRI reveal the damaged ulnar collateral ligament. "It's very weird, because I did feel the tightness in my triceps, but the stiffness and the tightness and the pain is gone," Darvish said. "Even today, when I touch my ligament or my elbow, I don't feel pain there. Maybe it was something that happened even before that game." The soonest Darvish is likely to return to a big-league mound is May 2016, though general manager Jon Daniels suggested it could be sooner. Darvish's absence and the delayed start this spring for Derek Holland have pushed Yovani Gallardo into driver's seat for the Opening Day start April 10 at Oakland. Gallardo, Holland and Colby Lewis are the only three starters to have locked up rotation spots. Left-hander Ross Detwiler is a strong front-runner for one of the remaining two, and Nick Tepesch and Nick Martinez are leading the crowded competition for the remaining spot. Darvish said that he will try to use the recovery time as an opportunity to grow professionally and to help counsel other teammates who might be facing the same procedure. "I'm very optimistic. I have no worries whatsoever," Darvish said. "I'm going to take this time to learn a lot. I feel like this is something during this time that there is a lot I can do to make myself better. Knowing that this is going to make me better and that the rehab is going to make me better, I feel nothing but 1/8positivity3/8."
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CHICAGO (AP) -- A.J. Hammons scored 23 points on 7-for-10 shooting, and rugged Purdue wore down Penn State in the second half of a 64-59 victory in the Big Ten Tournament on Friday. Rapheal Davis made three 3-pointers as Purdue advanced to the tournament semifinals for the first time since it won the title in 2009. Hammons also had nine rebounds, leading a strong effort on the glass that helped the Boilermakers play keep away during a key stretch in the second half. Next up for Purdue (21-11) is a rematch with top-seeded Wisconsin, which advanced with a 71-60 victory over Michigan. The Boilermakers lost 62-55 to the Badgers on Jan. 7. D.J. Newbill scored 19 points for Penn State (18-16), and Ross Travis had 10 points and nine rebounds. But the 13th-seeded Nittany Lions, who advanced with victories over Nebraska and Iowa, seemed to run out of energy in the final five minutes of their third game in three days. Newbill was 6 for 18 from the field. The senior guard scored 44 points on 44 percent shooting in the wins over the Cornhuskers and Hawkeyes. The Nittany Lions had a 50-44 lead with 9:10 left, but then went scoreless for the next 8 1/2 minutes. Davis, who was plagued by foul trouble in the first half, helped lead the defensive effort on Newbill and the Boilermakers surged in front with a 13-0 run. Jon Octeus made two foul shots with 53.2 seconds to go, giving Purdue a 57-50 lead. Newbill stopped the drought with a 3 with 40 seconds remaining, but it was too late for the Nittany Lions, who were outrebounded 41-32. The scoring drought at the end of the game was quite the contrast to Penn State's fast start. Travis had one of the flashiest plays of the tournament, driving down the lane for a big dunk over Hammons. Donovon Jack's 3-pointer as the shot clock expired made it 37-26 with 1:48 to go, leading to a timeout for Purdue. The Boilermakers played much of the first half without Davis after the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year was whistled for his second foul with 9:06 left. But Kendall Stephens made a 3-pointer with a hand in his face in the final seconds, trimming the deficit to 37-32 at the break. Davis started the second half and made a 3-pointer for Purdue's first basket, sparking a 10-2 run. Vince Edwards' layup with 15:20 left gave the Boilermakers a 42-41 lead, setting the stage for the frantic finish. TIP-INS Penn State: The Nittany Lions were 7 for 15 from 3-point range. ... Before the run in the tournament, Penn State dropped eight of its last 10 games of the regular season. Purdue: Octeus finished with nine points and 11 rebounds. ... Davis had 13 points. UP NEXT Penn State waits to hear if it gets an NIT bid. Purdue takes on Wisconsin on Saturday. --- Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap
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sports
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By Jason Rowan Things have gone off the rails so severely for the New York Knicks this season that team president Phil Jackson jokingly suggested he meant to ruin the team and that Jeanie Buss, his fiancée and Los Angeles Lakers president, put him up to it. Jackson on Thursday was asked after the team's shootaround in Los Angeles why he chose to come out of retirement to take on turning around the woeful Knicks franchise. "It's not something I wanted to do, it's something my partner said, 'You're sitting on all this information. Come on out and destroy a basketball team that you love,' " Jackson joked, via the New York Post . "So that's what I've done." Jackson's first season running the Knicks obviously has been a disaster, something he even readily admitted when he said, "My experiment has fallen flat on its face." And he's right. Even the most ardent, cult-like followers of the Zen Master would have had to reluctantly accept the Knicks were in such disarray upon Jackson's arrival that even his deft touch wouldn't be able to quickly turn things around. And those who suggested Jackson was incapable of accomplishing the task grudgingly would have had to acknowledge the same. The Knicks' nightmarish season (an NBA-worst 13-51) hasn't been entirely Jackson's fault, although he did have a hand in it. The fact that in a moment of levity he was able to crack a self-deprecating joke shows he at least has a sense of humor about the mess. Jackson of course understands, all kidding aside, that he must do a better job in the future to turn around the organization. Although it doesn't take a genius or even a Zen Master to arrive at that conclusion.
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sports
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Clare Sebastian reports from Gramercy Typewriters, where customers of all ages are interested in the machines in spite of more modern alternatives.
| 8 | 12,387 |
video
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Police arrested nine teenagers from a Los Angeles high school on Friday in connection with sexual assaults and unlawful sex acts against two students, and investigators are seeking five more minors who also are suspects, a police official said. Police said administrators at Venice High School, a campus in a relatively affluent community near the beach in the west of the city, reported a suspected sexual assault to detectives on Tuesday evening. Investigators discovered that two female students at the school were sexually assaulted between December 2013 and this month, both on and off campus, said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Commander Andrew Smith. Officers set out on Friday to arrest 14 suspects, all of whom are male between the ages of 14 and 17, believed to be responsible for sexual assaults and unlawful sex acts against the two girls, Smith said. Police said they apprehended eight students at the school and one teenager off campus, and that they were on the hunt for another five teenage suspects. All the suspects are either current or former students at Venice High, Smith said. "This is a painful moment for Venice High School, and this district," Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines said in a statement. "I want you to know that no sexual misconduct of any kind by students or staff will ever be tolerated in L.A. Unified." Most of the teenagers arrested are suspected of sexual assault, and a smaller number are believed to have committed an unlawful sex act, Smith said. The names of the teenagers taken into custody were not released because they are minors, and unless they had a prior criminal record they were expected to be released to their parents to await their court dates, he said. The arrests follow a number of high-profile sexual assault cases at U.S. colleges and high schools. In 2013, two high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, were found guilty as juveniles of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, in a case that gained national attention after a photo and video appeared online to document the assault. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Sandra Maler and Eric Beech).
| 5 | 12,388 |
news
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Forget the 2013 "taper tantrum." U.S. stock markets are in the midst of a "'patient' panic" ahead of Wednesday's Federal Reserve statement, when many investors expect a change in the Fed's language that would send the clearest signal yet that a rate hike is coming soon. The S&P 500 has fallen 2.6 percent since February's stronger-than-expected jobs report a week ago boosted expectations for an interest rate increase as soon as June. Stocks may fall further if Fed Chair Janet Yellen drops a pledge to be "patient" about rate hikes in the Fed's statement after the upcoming policy meeting. Most economists expect her to erase that word as a precursor to starting rate hikes in June, according to a Reuters Poll. Fed fund futures contracts, however, show futures traders still expect the first increase in September, putting just 19 percent odds on a June rate hike, compared with a 58 percent probability for September, according to CME Group FedWatch. With inflation still low, many stock investors are still not ready for a June hike. This may change Wednesday, said Torsten Slok, chief international economist for Deutsche Bank Services in New York. "Next week if she does remove 'patient' they could get the wake-up call," said Slok, who sees stocks selling off further in what he calls the "patient panic." Some strategists see the market's decline as a short-lived speed bump because the strength of the U.S. economy that would trigger a rate hike will ultimately help drive stocks up. Strategists and investors are looking to May 2013, hoping to avoid a repeat of what became known as the 'taper tantrum.' At that time, then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke sent equity investors running when he talked about conditions that might cause the Fed to reduce its $85 billion-a-month in bond purchases aimed at stimulating the economy. The S&P fell 5.8 percent between May 21 and June 24 of that year in anticipation of tighter policy, while bond yields rose dramatically. The Fed gradually wound down its bond purchases and stocks rallied to a series of records. Now, faced with the first Fed interest rate hike since June 2006, equity investors have more to worry about than in 2013 because a rapid rise in the dollar is expected to hurt for many U.S. multinational companies. On Friday, the dollar reached its highest point against a basket of major currencies since April 2003, and is on course for its strongest quarterly performance since the fourth quarter of 1992. The dollar's 25 percent move in the last four quarters has historically coincided with a 10 percent drop in earnings per share, according to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch research. "That's exaggerating the anxiety," said John Praveen, chief investment strategist Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC in Newark, New Jersey. While Praveen expects U.S. stocks to fall next week in a "patient tantrum" he also sees a comeback and "healthy gains over the next few quarters" due to economic strength. (Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Ryan Vlastelica; Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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finance
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Apple Pecan Pie Get recipe Rhubarb and Strawberry Pie Get recipe Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Get recipe Bourbon pecan pie Get recipe Banoffee Pie Get recipe Pumpkin-Praline Pie Get recipe Saskatoon Meringue Pie Get recipe Strawberry Jello Pie Get recipe Key Lime Pie with Chocolate Crust Get recipe Squash Pie Get recipe Buttermilk Pumpkin Pie Get recipe Fish Pie Get recipe Tagliatelle Pie Get recipe Coconut Cream Pie Get recipe Pear Pie with Walnut Pastry Get recipe Deep Dish Blackberry Peach Pie Get recipe Easter Pie Get recipe Lemon Meringue Pie Get recipe Coconut Pumpkin Pie Get recipe Christmas Apple Pie Get recipe Chicken Pot Pie Get recipe Michy's Mini Fried Plum Pie Get recipe Thoroughbred Pie Get recipe Pasta Pie Get recipe Mocha Walnut Pie Get recipe Banana Cream Pie Get recipe Cherry Cheesecake Pie Get recipe Mini Upside Down Cherry Berry Pie Get recipe Sweet Potato Pie Get recipe Pear Butterscotch Pie Get recipe
| 0 | 12,390 |
foodanddrink
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Eventually, this seemingly never-ending winter will move on though we're not convinced and when it does, cities around the country will celebrate one of the prettiest harbingers of spring: the cherry blossom season. The biggest cherry blossom festival in the U.S. is in Washington, D.C., March 20 April 12. If you're planning a trip to the capital for the festivities, know that several hotels in the area are offering special flower-themed perks, including spa treatments and signature cocktails. Four Seasons Hotel Washington, D.C. After a day spent walking around the Mall, you might be in need of some R&R. The spa at the Four Seasons can take care of that: It's offering a Cherry Blossom Champagne Body Treatment, an 80-minute indulgence that includes exfoliation, a body wrap, and a scrub with the spa's own champagne and salt treatment. Mandarin Oriental, Washington D.C. Book this luxury hotel's Cherry Blossom Getaway package (available March 27 April 12) and you'll receive both a special cherry blossom themed dessert created for the hotel, as well as a commemorative pin for the occasion. The hotel also hosts yoga classes every morning in its garden, which has a few cherry trees of its own. (Hotel guests who didn't book this package can still take the yoga class for $25.) Embassy Row Hotel This lodging near Dupont Circle is the official hotel partner for the National Cherry Blossom Festival, so it's no surprise that it's offering a themed package (available March 18 May 15). Booking it gets you a cherry blossom gift bag (contents still a mystery), along with two passes on the D.C. Metro, so you can explore the city to your heart's content. You'll also be able to sample the hotel's signature cherry blossom cocktail, the Pamplemouse, a combination of grapefruit-infused rye, lychee, and pink peppercorns. Kimpton Hotels The Kimpton brand has 11 hotels in the D.C. area including the Hotel Palomar , the Donovan , and the George and each one is offering a " Blossoms & Bubbles " cherry blossom package. The special offer includes a cherry-scented handmade soap from Virginia's Harmony Creek Farm; a $25 credit for the hotel's restaurant; and complimentary sake tastings during the Kimpton's nightly happy hour. Capella Washington D.C. This new Georgetown hotel has a "Cherish the Cherry Blossom" package (available March 20 April 12) that includes the usual perks complimentary breakfast and a stay in one of the hotel's luxe rooms along with some more unusual amenities, like a private Segway tour with a viewing of the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin and the National Mall. The three biggest spots for viewing the cherry trees are the Tidal Basin (the body of water near the Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorials), East Potomac Park, and the grounds of the Washington Monument. Although peak bloom typically happens in late March/early April, it's best to keep tabs on the National Cherry Blossom Festival's Bloom Watch for real-time updates. More from Conde Nast Traveler: 10 Travel Gear Fails: They're So Bad, They're Genius The 50 Best Travel Films of the Past 50 Years Top 25 Cities in the World 10 Things Not to Do in Paris
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travel
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Note found scrawled on the side of the boat where suspected Boston bomber was captured. Alexandra Field reports.
| 5 | 12,392 |
news
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Look out for these other subtle signs that something may be amiss with your blood sugar. 5 Surprising Symptoms Of Diabetes Not every case of type 2 diabetes presents with the obvious symptoms unquenchable thirst, nonstop bathroom trips, and numbness in your hands or feet. Look out for these other subtle signs that something may be amiss with your blood sugar. 1. You've noticed unpleasant skin changes Dark, velvety patches in the folds of skin, usually on the back of the neck, elbows, or knuckles, are often an early warning sign of too-high blood sugar levels. Although genetics or hormonal conditions can cause the skin disorder, called acanthosis nigricans, "when I notice the patches, the first thing I do is test my patient's blood sugar," says Sanjiv Saini, MD, a dermatologist in Edgewater, Maryland. "High insulin levels promote the growth of skin cells, and melanin, a pigment in these cells, makes the patches dark." The test may show that the patient already has diabetes, but, more likely, it will detect higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, suggesting the patient is on the way to developing the disease, explains Saini. Losing weight as little as 10 pounds will likely lower blood sugar levels and help the condition clear up. Otherwise, he says a dermatologist can treat it with laser therapy or topical retina A. 2. Your vision improved out of nowhere Sorry, suddenly being able to ditch your glasses probably isn't good news: "You'll often read that blurry vision is as a diabetes symptom when, in fact, vision can change for better or worse," says Howard Baum, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in the diabetes division at Vanderbilt University. "I've had patients tell me that their vision has improved when their blood sugars were elevated, and then after they start treating their diabetes, they needed their glasses again." What gives? Diabetes causes fluid levels in the body to shift around, including inside your eyes, which leads to the erratic eyesight. 3. You have unrelenting itchiness Think it's silly to mention scratchy skin to your doctor? Not so. Diabetes impairs blood circulation, which can lead to dryness and itchiness. "Some of my newly diagnosed diabetes patients mention they're itchy on their extremities the hands, lower legs, and feet so it's something doctors should consider in conjunction with other symptoms," says Baum. If regular use of a moisturizer doesn't fix the itch, bring it up at your next appointment. 4. Your hearing isn't what it used to be If you find yourself cranking the volume on the TV or you can't get through a conversation without asking people to repeat themselves, tell your doctor you need a blood sugar test. One study by the National Institute of Health suggested hearing loss could be an early warning sign of diabetes: People with higher than normal blood sugar who didn't yet meet the criteria for diabetes were 30% more likely to have hearing damage than those with healthy glucose levels. The researchers believe that diabetes damages the blood vessels and nerves of the inner ear, leading to sub-par hearing. 5. You snore like a chainsaw "About half of type 2 diabetics have sleep-disordered breathing," says Osama Hamdy, MD, director of inpatient diabetes management at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. So if you're diagnosed with the condition characterized by loud snoring and daytime sleepiness it's a good bet to get your blood sugar levels checked, too. One recent Canadian study showed that 23% of patients diagnosed with mild or moderate obstructive sleep apnea, a common sleep disorder, went on to develop diabetes within 5½ years. The connection isn't completely understood, but there's one important link between the two: Patients with sleep-disordered breathing tend to release stress hormones during sleep, which can raise blood sugar levels.
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health
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Tiger Woods will not play in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Now the question is whether he'll play in the Masters that starts April 9. Woods will extend his leave of absence for at least another week as he informed Palmer on Friday that he would not play next week at Bay Hill in Orlando, where Woods has won the tournament a record eight times. "I spoke to Arnold today and told him that I will not play in his tournament this year," Woods said on Twitter and his website. "I'm sorry I won't be in Orlando next week." One of Woods' victories in the API came in 2013 when Woods won five PGA Tour titles, rose to No. 1 and was the Tour's player of the year. But once the calendar turned to 2014, Woods has suffered injuries to his back and his game, especially his chipping. Five days after he withdrew on Feb. 5 from the Farmers Insurance Open with a tight back, Woods announced via Twitter and on his website that he would step away from the Tour to work on his game, coming back only when he felt he could compete. "I've put in a lot of time and work on my game and I'm making strides, but like I've said, I won't return to the PGA Tour until my game is tournament ready and I can compete at the highest level," Woods said. "I hope to be ready for the Masters, and I will continue to work hard preparing for Augusta." His short game needs the most work. Since the Hero World Challenge in December, Woods, who has won the Masters four times, the last in 2005, has been miserable around the greens. He has chunked chips, skulled chips and shanked chips. In 2014, Woods also missed the Arnold Palmer Invitational. After having back surgery March 31 (he also has had surgery to his left knee four times), he missed the Masters and the U.S. Open. Woods played just nine events in 2014, finishing 72 holes on just four occasions. This year, he's played in just two events and didn't make it to the weekend. At the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Woods said his back was 100% but he struggled with his chipping and missed the cut. He shot his highest score, 82, in the second round. The following week, he withdrew on his 12 th hole in the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego when his back stiffened up during two fog delays. It was his third withdrawal due to injury in his last nine events. Woods, who has been atop the world golf rankings for a record 683 weeks, is ranked No. 79, his lowest standing in 19 years. He hasn't won since August 2013, when he captured the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational by seven shots. Woods has 79 PGA Tour titles second to Sam Snead's 82 and 14 majors second to Jack Nicklaus' 18. But Woods hasn't won a major since the 2008 U.S. Open when he played 91 holes on a broken left leg and with his left knee ligaments shredded.
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sports
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Photograph by Rachel Matos What is your definition of the perfect marriage proposal? Candle-lit dinner by the beach? A trip to an exotic location? We all have different ideas about romance and what would define the ideal proposal especially when it's not your first marriage. It can be your movie romance event or something very personal and meaningful to the relationship. In my case, the latter happened to me and it was the most romantic experience I've had to date. I've been grappling with a TMJ disorder that flared up and knocked me off my feet with on and off vertigo, vision issues, impaired hearing, chronic pain, muscle rigidity and a very overwhelmed nervous system for the last year. My fiance has been with me every step of the way holding my hand, wiping my tears, making me soup because I was not able to chew for several months, and running to the store when I needed something. More importantly, he listened to me every time I need to vent. No matter the time of day or if he was busy, he was there to hear me when I needed him. Every night, he made us two cups of tea, we talked, we held hands and fell asleep. That routine helped me get through many hard days, and it helped me believe that things were going to be alright. When I started to feel a bit better, he began planning the "perfect proposal." He wanted me to feel special, especially after having such a rough year. He had the ring hidden in the house waiting for me to be back to my old self again so he could pop the question under the stars in Malibu at our favorite restaurant. Weeks went by and my health was not improving, and in some ways getting worse. The ideal proposal was not going to happen any time soon because the vertigo came and went frequently, making it hard to stick to plans. Actions speak louder than words, and I'm comforted knowing that the man I'm going to marry is one I already know I can depend on when we get to the "for worse" part of "for better or for worse" since we've already been there. Until one night, I was lying in bed ready to go to sleep, my fiance came in the room with our usual two cups of tea. We drank tea and chatted as we did every night. He looked over and asked me, "how many more ways can I show you that I love you? How much more can I give you to show you that I will always be there?" Not knowing what was coming, I started to list answers jokingly. As we talked and laughed, he popped the question by presenting me with a beautiful ring and promising to be by my side, no matter what. I've been down the marriage road before, and I can't express how meaningful those words were to me. It was a promise to be there, no matter the journey. Not just for me, but also for my son. A promise that was already being delivered on. To me, that was romantic ... and very sexy! We can always have that moonlit dinner for two in Malibu, and we will. But actions speak louder than words, and I'm comforted knowing that the man I'm going to marry is one I already know I can depend on when we get to the "for worse" part of "for better or for worse" since we've already been there. For now, and for years to come, I'll get to relive that special moment every night over a cup tea with the love of my life.
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lifestyle
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For every car guy, there is a magic moment that locks in the passion for life. In the case of Paul Lee, that defining day came in the summer of 1971. Curiosity aroused, Paul begged his father to drop him off at the front gate of Atco Dragway the legendary South Jersey quarter-mile that to this day has the reputation as one of the fastest, best-hooking tracks anywhere on the planet. The 13-year-old pressed his face against the chain-link fence. The explosive crackle of a nitro-burning Funny Car instantly changed to a wail, and rattled the bones of his inner ear to the point of physical pain. Paul seemed unfazed as his steely eyes locked onto the blue Chevy of "Jungle Jim" Liberman. A thousand feet down the track, Liberman finally lifted, and the packed crowd roared to its feet. The reverberation of the nitro-injected Hemi died away, its pungent energy gradually swallowed by the pine barrens. Related video: Junkyard Barracuda Rescue! In the other lane, Leroy Goldstein did the same in the Ramchargers Challenger; the white and red Mopar incinerated its swollen rear slicks, in the process creating long hot trails that would propel the missile down track. He backed the flopper into the staging area where Liberman waited. The two Hemis beat the air with a barrage of cannon fire, like two juggernaut ironclads locked in battle. The announcer's tinny voice on the PA somehow cut through the thunder, his unbridled excitement bouncing off the grandstands. Lights flashed and the two sleek machines bolted down track in lockstep, stiletto-thin yellow flames erupting from zoomie headers and stabbing the blue sky. Paul took in the sights, sounds, and smells of that scene, and in that moment found harmony in the universe. In the coming months, years, and decades, this singular boyhood experience in the pine barrens of South Jersey would give shape and purpose to Paul's life, informing his actions through both conscious decision and by an unconscious and relentless gravitational pull. And as you'll see, it's also what shaped his decision to build the '70 'Cuda you see here. At the age of 17, Paul began surreptitiously drag racing his mother's six-cylinder Duster. Then he got his own '73 Camaro, coincidentally the same kind driven by his hero, "Jungle Jim" Liberman. A full-chassis Super Pro bracket car came in 1983, which ran a steady string of 9.30s and 9.20s. Then in 1988, Paul made the life-altering move into an Alcohol Funny Car, which he owned and drove until 1993. Related story: Repossessed 1970 Barracuda Offered at $1.8 Million Here is where the story might end, except for two things: Paul has the rare capability of seeing the world with a much bigger picture, and he's one tenacious pit bull. Life as the owner of a struggling Alcohol Funny Car team means everything else is sacrificed for those precious five seconds of nirvana. It means giving up control of a huge chunk of your existence for a really small slice of exquisite bliss. As Paul put it, "I wanted to be more in control of my destiny, and to do that you have to be successful in business." Lee took in the sights, sounds, and smells of that scene, and in that moment found harmony in the universe. Naturally, McLeod Racing components are a big part of the mix, such as McLeod's renowned RXT dual-disc clutch, which is rated at 1,000 hp, but as this example suggests is clearly capable of much more. Likewise, McLeod's revolutionary new Muscle Car 5 manual overdrive transmission is a featured product in the '70 'Cuda. With a modest torque rating of 600 lb-ft, it too is clearly capable of handling quite a bit more with deft use. And finally, the McLeod 'Cuda makes use of the company's popular hydraulic throw-out bearing assembly. When that lightbulb blinked on, Paul wasted no time. He sold the Funny Car and went to work driving for other teams, gaining more experience, making more connections, and forging friendships that would stand the test of time. Meanwhile, Paul was quietly amassing an arsenal of degrees that would give him the skills to succeed in business, from an undergraduate degree in finance from the esteemed Wharton Business School, to a master's in finance and a law degree, both from Rutgers University. Did we mention Paul was tenacious? Related Story: INSANE ALL-Wheel Drive 1965 Mustang Armed with the right education, Paul began his economic emancipation, working at various financial securities firms, then at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. His driving career likewise took a fortuitous turn, culminating in a Top 10 points total in NHRA's Alcohol Funny Car category in 2004 after winning events in Englishtown, Topeka, and Atlanta. In 2005, Paul moved from the Alcohol Funny Car ranks to nitro Funny Car where he became the shoe for J&B Motorsports. The change was exhilarating for Paul, where he quickly became the student once again. Paul told us, "An alcohol Funny Car is very hard to drive. You've got to rev it up, you've got to dump the clutch, you have to hit the shift points, and you've got to steer it. The nitro Funny Car is like a bucking bronco it's all manhandling. You don't have to shift it, you just have to steer it. It's so much quicker. The nitro Funny Car moves faster that you can think, you just drive it by feel. The alcohol Funny Car is a pretty forgiving car, but the nitro isn't. You can have a bad day real fast in a nitro Funny Car." Around that time, Paul left the Philadelphia Stock Exchange to take a job as CFO of Boninfante Friction, who are among other things the manufacturers of clutches for nitro funny cars. See how things have started to come full circle? First a spectator, then a driver, and now on the product side making commitments and contributions where it really counts. The experience at Boninfante provided Paul with a learning-rich environment for the performance aftermarket, and when the opportunity came to purchase McLeod Racing from B&M in 2008, Paul jumped on it. Says Paul, "McLeod was a brand name I grew up with. It was a dream job to actually own McLeod. I loved the clutch business working with Boninfante and driving Funny Cars, and I was a clutch guy as a driver I've always been interested in the clutch business. They had already been building high-quality clutches for 40 years before I bought it, so it's a dream come true." The perfect storm had started; the new CEO of a legacy performance driveline aftermarket manufacturer was not only a financial guru with connections to Wall Street, he had serious cred as a driver and a product guy. (His best 1,000-foot e.t. of 4.03/310 behind the wheel of Gary Densham's Dodge Charger certifies him as one of the fastest land-bound pilots on the planet.) And while most bean counters at big companies spend their days trying to arbitrarily squeeze ever lower costs and higher margins out of a product line, Paul knows as a racer that people bet their lives on McLeod components. He also knows that quality and excellence can make the difference between having a crappy weekend at the track, and having a memorable one. Related Story: Former 'Street Outlaws' driver charged with murder in LA race deaths At the end of the day, however, all Paul really wanted was to drive a fast hot rod. ("I'm still 13 in my head," Paul joked.) His life has been dedicated to putting himself in the position where he could build (without financial remorse!) the ultimate street machine. Beyond that, he's also been able to do it in such a way that enhances and validates the product he sells while at the same time projects McLeod Racing's visibility in new, exciting ways. Such was the motivation behind the McLeod-red '70 'Cuda. Its conception was simple: When you drive a 4-second nitro Funny Car on the weekend, the long stints behind the wheel in daily traffic can be mind-numbing to the point of torture. The choice of cars was a no-brainer for Paul: "A 70 'Cuda has always been my idea of an ultimate street car. This is my 20-year dream. I just love the look of that car. And, of course, it has to have a Hemi." And not just any Hemi. Being an industry insider, all the arrows pointed to Arrington Performance, one of the best in the business at building powerful Mopars. Pete Basica and the Arrington team got to work speccing out a 528ci Gen II Hemi that cranks out an easy 1,129 hp on 93 octane at a loafing 5,500 rpm. That all-aluminum mill is hung with the best stuff out there, including an F2 ProCharger, Holley Dominator EFI, and Edelbrock's new aluminum Hemi heads (just the second set in existence). Related Story: FCA warns its own customers about shady Hellcat dealers The car itself a 318 automatic car originally built in California was sourced from Paul's brother, Barry, who is a respected Mopar restoration expert in Middleburg, Florida. Once back in its home state of California, Bones Fabrication of Camarillo, California, was tasked with the 'Cuda's transformation. The metamorphosis wasn't easy, as most of the original body panels were damaged and had to be sacrificed for new ones. Moreover, the plan was to put all that Hemi power to the ground with a modern performance chassis, a process that involved cutting out the entire OE suspension and subframe, and replacing it with an Art Morrison Max-G chassis. The car's body was skillfully channeled over the Morrison chassis, which features a C6-derived IFS with RideTech coilovers in front, and a three-link with Watt's linkage and RideTech coilovers in the rear. As a result, the McLeod Racing 'Cuda is as capable as its silhouette is stunning. More Car Enthusiast Stories and News on MSN Autos Maintaining the same mechanical excellence in other areas, Paul called upon brake components from Wilwood, RT-S forged wheels from Weld, Sportsman S/R tires from Mickey Thompson, a rearend from Strange, a shifter from Hurst, ignition components from MSD and Crane, and a fuel system from Aeromotive. We noticed something about this list immediately: At some point in his racing career, Paul owed part of his success and/or survival to all these manufacturers' parts. Now he's putting that out there for all to see. Typically when you read about guys who build trend-setting g-Machines, there's plenty of chest beating about hitting the pro autocross, car show, or open road race circuits and setting the world on fire. When you're Paul Lee, you've already done so much more than that. I mean, what else is there to do in life once you've stuffed your right foot into Gary Densham's 10,000hp nitro-burning Hemi and kept it there for over four seconds? Paul running his 'Cuda at a local autocross would kind of be like George W. Bush running for mayor of Crawford, Texas. Nevertheless, Paul intends to let his customers see what the car is capable of, and that includes racing. "We're going to use it and take it to lots of different shows," Paul says. "It's got so much power and is so much fun; we'll try it out on the autocross and the dragstrip to see what it will do. It just blows the tires off right now, but it's designed to go low 9s or high 8s. I don't know the car's fast." The next time you'll see it is at Moparty At The Strip, scheduled for March 27-29, 2015. Forty-three years later, Paul sits behind the wheel of his '70 'Cuda, and pauses momentarily before stabbing the start button. The last glimmer of the sun slips below the Spring Mountains, and he contemplates the twinkling Las Vegas skyline in the distance. It is, however, the faint tincture of nitromethane in the air that freezes him in place. As we wrap up our photo shoot the Saturday after the SEMA show, nitro Funny Cars are making qualifying passes at the strip across the road. An almost inaudible rumble turns to a muted whine, then stops. The decaying moan chases playfully across the surrounding hillsides. "Sounds like a good run. Maybe a 4.18," Paul stated matter-of-factly. I shoot a questioning glance at photog Machaqueiro and both of us squint through rolling waves of heat at the distant scoreboard. Dumbfounded, we make out a 4.18. In that moment, I can't help but imagine a 13-year-old boy pressing his face into a chain-link fence, wanting more than anything to drive a badass hot rod to find harmony in the universe. My reverie ends suddenly as Paul's Hemi shatters the night air. That's right, he already has. Related video: The History of Street-Legal Drag Racing, 1949-2013 Click image below for slideshow Fast Facts 1970 Plymouth Barracuda Car owner: Paul Lee • Orange, CA Engine Type: 528ci Gen II Hemi Bore & Stroke: 4.500 x 4.150 inches Compression Ratio: 10.0:1 Block: Mopar Performance aluminum Rotating Assembly: Molnar forged crank and rods, custom Diamond forged pistons Cylinder Heads: box-stock Edelbrock Hemi, 2.32-/1.94-inch valves, CNC-contoured combustion chambers and CNC-blended seats Camshaft: Arrington-spec solid roller, 252/260 degrees at .050-inch lift, .684-/.674-inch lift, 114 LSA Valvetrain: Comp Cams 829-16 solid roller lifters, Indy/T&D shaft rocker system Induction: ProCharger F2 supercharger, custom Arrington intake manifold with integrated ProCharger carb bonnet, Arrington 88mm billet throttle body (drive-by-wire control), Holley Dominator ECU with universal MPFI harness, Holley 83-lb/hr injectors and Holley rails Intake Manifold: Arrington-modified Mopar single-plane Fuel System: Aeromotive pump and regulator Oiling: wet sump lube circuit, Milodon pan, Indy oil pump and pick-up Exhaust: custom 2.125-inch primary long-tube headers into custom 3.5-inch dual exhaust with oval 3.5-inch side-exits, custom Flowmaster mufflers Ignition: Crane Hi-6 box and coil, MSD Super Conductor ignition wires, MSD flying trigger Cooling: Griffin radiator, SPAL electric fans, Mopar water pump Output: 1,129 hp at 5,500 rpm, 1,077 lb-ft at 5,500 rpm (93-octane fuel) Built by: Arrington Performance, Martinsville, VA Drivetrain Transmission: McLeod Muscle Car 5 manual overdrive (2.95, 1.99, 1.34, 1.00, and .63 ratio) Clutch: McLeod RXT Twin-Disc, McLeod flywheel and hydraulic throw-out bearing Shifter: Hurst Rearend: Strange S60, 3.73 gears Chassis Chassis: Art Morrison Max-G chassis Front Suspension: C6 type IFS by Art Morrison, RideTech coilovers Rear Suspension: Art Morrison three-link with RideTech coilovers and Watt's linkage Steering: Art Morrison power rack & pinion Brakes: Wilwood 14-inch discs with six-piston calipers up front, 14-inch discs with four-piston calipers in the rear, Wilwood master cylinder, Hydratech hydraulic brake assist Car Built by: Bones Fabrication, Camarillo, CA Wheels & Tires Wheels: Weld RT-S SR-71, 18x10 (6.6-inch backspace) and 20x13 (6.4-inch backspace) Tires: Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/R, 26x12R18 (front), 29x15R20 (rear)
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The well-traveled wide receiver is officially headed to Buffalo. The Buffalo Bills officially landed free agent wide receiver Percy Harvin, the team announced Harvin's contract is reportedly worth $6 million over one year, per NFL.com's Ian Rapoport . There was some suggestion last week that the San Francisco 49ers were making a move on Harvin at the last minute, via Dianna Marie Russini of NBC 4 in Washington D.C . But Harvin is headed to Buffalo, where he will rejoin former head coach Rex Ryan. Harvin has had an up-and-down career, but it's been mostly down since 2012. Noted for his speed and versatility, Harvin has all the makings of a great playmaker, but hasn't lived up to his potential of late. Significant injuries hampered him the most in recent seasons. Harvin played in just nine games in 2012 and one game in 2013. Harvin's best season came in 2011 when he caught 87 passes for 967 yards and six touchdowns for the Minnesota Vikings, the team that drafted him in the first round in 2009. That was also the only season in which he's played a full 16 games. This past season, Harvin was traded from the Seattle Seahawks to the New York Jets. He played five games with the Seahawks and eight games with the Jets, but came up short of 500 receiving yards in the end. Harvin was released by the Jets this offseason due to a prohibitive cap figure and lack of production. But he'll be 27 years old when the 2015 season gets underway, and if he can stay healthy, then he should be a valuable asset. He has 332 receptions for 3,802 yards and 21 touchdowns in seven seasons.
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sports
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Easy One-Pot Meals That Are Ready in 30 Minutes or Less Easy One-Pot Meals That Are Ready in 30 Minutes or Less These one-pot meals are easy to make and ready in 30 minutes or less, making them the perfect meal when you're busy. Browse: Easy on-the-go recipes 30-Minute Paella This hearty and delicious spin on a classic Spanish meal calls for shrimp and andouille sausage, but you can easily customize the recipe. Try adding chunks of cod, mussels, or scallops to this-quick cooking paella. Also try: Easy shrimp paella Bison Sausage Hash Who says all one-pot meals have to be served at dinner time? Though this sausage hash would certainly make a hearty and delicious supper, the meaty meal makes the perfect breakfast on a busy morning, too. Browse: More bison recipes Mussels Cooked with Cream, Chorizo, Garlic, and Flat-leaf Parsley Spicy chorizo, sweet mussels, and herbaceous flat-leaf parsley; what's not to love about this delicious and quick-cooking meal? Serve these mussels with a loaf of crusty bread so that you can soak up all the delicious and creamy sauce. Browse: More recipes with mussels Sausage Skillet Dinner With just nine ingredients, one skillet, and about 20 minutes of cooking time, you can feast on a hearty bowl of roasted sausage, apples, and potatoes for dinner. This easy meal will quickly become a weeknight favorite. Related: Easy oven-roasted meals Shakshuka Though you may think of eggs as a breakfast dish (and shakshuka does make a delicious morning meal) this easy recipe of eggs baked in a spicy and slightly smoky tomato sauce is perfect any time of the day. Serve it with a side of pita bread so that you can soak up all the delicious sauce. Related: 10 recipes to beat the winter blahs Shrimp Fried Rice Our new favorite way to use up leftover rice? Shrimp fried rice, of course! You only need a handful of ingredients and a few minutes of cooking time to get this satisfying meal on the table. Watch: How to buy fresh shrimp or prawns Skillet-Baked Penne You might think of boiled pasta as a quick one-dish meal, but how about skillet-baked penne with melted mozzarella cheese on top? This delicious spin on baked pasta cooks the penne right in the same skillet in which it's served. Watch: Shapes and variations of pasta Spring Ratatouille This spring dish makes the perfect light and healthy meal. Try serving your ratatouille with a nice, crusty baguette; you can pile the vegetables onto slices of the bread or use the baguette to soak up any sauce at the bottom of your bowl. Related: 17 spring recipes you can look forward to
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foodanddrink
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Miranda Lambert and More Celeb Weight Loss Stars Revealed Wow! So many celebs have shocked us by losing tons of weight. Let's take a look at some of our favorite body transformations -- before and after -- starting with Miranda Lambert. The country singer decided to get in shape before her 30th birthday and the results were amazing. Click here to see what she looks like now, plus more stars who've shed major pounds. Ahead of a milestone birthday in 2013, Miranda Lambert debuted a frame that appeared to be about 20-pounds slimmer. She told E! : "I thought, 'Well, you know, if I get a little healthier before I turn 30, maybe I can get ahead of the game.'" And the "House That Built Me" singer has not only kept it off, but has continued to tone up since. This photo of Christina Aguilera was taken at the 2012 American Music Awards . Do you think you'd recognize her looking about 20 pounds lighter at the same show a year later? Keep clicking to find out. Holy smokes! Christina Aguilera debuted a much slimmer figure at the 2013 American Music Awards . And after having a daughter in 2014 , she's already lost most of her baby weight. Click here to see her now! Rapper Rick Ross recently spoke about his 85-pound weight loss. Can you even imagine what he looks like now? After debuting his thinner body in 2014, Rick Ross told " Good Morning America " how he lost the weight. He said: "I wanted to cut back on some of the drinking I was doing and sleep a little more, you know, watch what I ate." Well, it worked! Missy Elliott dropped a shocking 70 pounds back in 2002, but she recently debuted an even more in-shape figure. Check her out now... In October 2014, Missy Elliot stepped out 30 pounds slimmer than before. She tweeted : "This time I lost 30 eating healthy/work out to @ShaunTFitness T25 videos. I do the Insanity workout. Sweets/bread/ fried foods is my weakness. It's not easy but health comes 1st." Her weight fluctuated for years, then she had two kids with hubby Eric Johnson. But now it seems Jessica Simpson has finally toned up for good. You won't believe how hot she's been lookin'! After signing on with Weight Watchers as a spokesperson, Jessica Simpson debuted her much-slimmer figure in 2014. And if you think she looks fab here, click here to see her bathing-suit body! Having a heart attack in 2012 pushed Rosie O'Donnell to lose weight and get healthy. Keep clicking to find out how she lost more than 50 pounds. In 2014, Rosie O'Donnell debuted her slimmed-down figure after making the decision to have gastric bypass surgery. She told People : "It's still hard. You have to risk your life, and you're in severe discomfort for a couple of months, and it forces you to modify your behavior when you haven't been able to before." Do you have any idea how " American Idol " alum Jennifer Hudson dropped down from a size 16 to a size 6? Keep clicking for the big reveal. In 2010, Jennifer Hudson debuted a way skinnier frame thanks to the help of Weight Watchers after she agreed to be a spokesperson for the brand. She said: "It's a lifestyle change, not a diet." A son and 80 pounds later, she's still lookin' great nowadays, right? Jordin Sparks lost how much weight in just about a year and half? Jordin Sparks debuted her 50-pound loss in 2014. She told "Today" about her current weight: "I go anywhere from, like, 155 to 161. So I'm right around there. That's where I am." Kirstie Alley has been known to yo-yo with her weight over the years. But she recently debuted a much more svelte frame thanks to the help of ... Jenny Craig! Kirstie Alley revealed a 50-pound weight loss in January 2015 with the help of the program. Doesn't she look fab? After Drew Carey dropped 80 pounds, he was able to go off of his diabetes medication! Find out how he did it ... " The Price is Right " host Drew Carey debuted a massive body transformation in 2010. He told People that he cut out carbs completely and does a lot of cardio in the gym to help him along. When Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi was on MTV's reality show " Jersey Shore " back in 2009, she was more worried about partying than her weight. But that has since changed! Before giving birth to her son in 2012, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi had already toned up with intense workouts and healthier eating since her days by the Jersey Shore. And after having a baby girl in 2014, her trainer told E! that she's currently already down to 99 pounds. Want to know the secret to " Hangover " star Zach Galifianakis' weight loss in 2014? Click on to find out -- and see his newly slimmed-down bod. In May 2013, Zach Galifianakis spoke about how he was starting to lose weight: "I stopped drinking and I just kind of put the weight off," he told Conan O'Brien. It definitely paid off, because a year later, he's looking great! Kelly Osbourne struggled with her weight before finally making a lifestyle change around 2009. Don't you want to see her transformation? In 2012, Kelly Osbourne dropped around 70 pounds and has kept it off. Doesn't she look amazing? Do you want to know how former " How I Met Your Mother " star Jason Segel shed more than 30 pounds a few years back? Well then, keep clickin'! In 2013, Jason Segel told Us Weekly : "I've just been living healthy, exercising, eating right -- no more midnight pizzas." Good work ! Back in 2007, " Ugly Betty " actress America Ferrera told Glamour : "I feel like I'm a regular-size person -- I'm a size 6 or 8, which is totally normal." But she's still lost a bit of weight since then. We're not sure exactly how many pounds America Ferrera shed, but doesn't she look tighter and more toned these days? Wow! Ricki Lake's weight fluctuated a lot over the years, but what show helped her get down to a better size in 2011? Ricki Lake credited her run on " Dancing With the Stars " with helping her lose another 20 pounds after she'd already started to work on her diet and exercise. You go, girl! Chaz Bono started out at 250 pounds before going on a weight-loss journey. Do you know how much he lost? After losing more than 70 pounds, Chaz Bono talked about his weight loss on an episode of " The Doctors " in 2013. He said: "I just feel much more comfortable in my skin now." Khloe Kardashian has struggled over the years to keep her body in tip-top shape, but after seriously toning up in 2015, she admitted on Instagram , "Looking back at pictures of myself I didn't realize at the time how unhealthy my lifestyle actually was." Do you know how fit she looks now? In February 2015, Khloe Kardashian shared this photo on Instagram of her super-tight abs. She wrote: "My fitness journey will be a life long journey. Fitness is not about being better than someone else..." We're not sure exactly how much weight she lost, but who's paying attention to anything else but her rock-hard stomach?
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entertainment
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