SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A group of California taxpayers went to court on Friday to demand a greater role in how the city of Stockton would raise taxes to exit the bankruptcy it filed a year ago.
The group asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento for official committee status so its members could see details on Stockton's plan for increasing its sales tax. If granted this status, the group could also participate in talks about the city's plan to adjust its debts.
Stockton officials aim to file their debt-adjustment plan with the bankruptcy court in September following a vote by the city council on a sales tax increase.
Stockton's city manager wants the council to hold a vote next month on putting a ballot measure to voters in November that would ask them to raise the city's sales tax to 9.0 percent from 8.25 percent.
If approved by voters, the increase would go into effect next April and raise revenue to help Stockton exit bankruptcy, put more money into public safety programs and hire more police officers to help tackle crime in a city that ranks among the 10 most dangerous U.S. cities.
According to a draft of the tax plan, the increase would raise about $219 million over 10 years for public safety spending.
Over the same time, about $112 million in proceeds would fund the city's exit from bankruptcy. The effort would get a larger share of revenue initially as police staffing ramps up.
The taxpayers group wants more details on how the revenue would be allocated and it is concerned Stockton's creditors could press for a bigger share, which would set back plans for hiring more police officers.
"Creditors will no doubt seek as large a recovery as possible leaving taxpayers with significantly reduced health, safety and welfare services," according to an exhibit attached to the taxpayers group's court filing.
A city of about 300,000 residents in California's Central Valley, Stockton is the biggest U.S. city to have filed for bankruptcy and is trying to impose steep losses on its bond insurers and bondholders to restructure its finances.
The U.S. municipal debt market is watching to see if the Stockton prevails or its so-called capital markets creditors can convince the bankruptcy court to have the city cut its pension spending as part of a plan to exit bankruptcy.
Stockton has refused to cut pensions, saying it is prohibited by state law, and that its employees have suffered several years of pay and job cuts while its retired workers are losing subsidized medical coverage.
(Reporting by Jim Christiel Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
CAIRO (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called on Egypt's government and opposition on Saturday to engage each other in constructive dialogue and prevent violence spilling out across the region.
Political violence on Friday killed three people, including an American student, and mass rallies are planned for Sunday aimed at unseating Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
Obama said he was "looking at the situation with concern".
Hundreds have been wounded and at least eight killed in street fighting for over a week as political deadlock deepens. On Friday, a bomb killed a protester at a rally by the Suez Canal. Washington is pulling non-essential staff out of Egypt.
"Every party has to denounce violence," Obama said at the other end of Africa, in Pretoria. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Mursi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."
He added that it was "challenging, given there is not a tradition of democracy in Egypt".
Mursi's critics hope millions will march on Sunday when he marks a year in power to demand new elections. They accuse his Muslim Brotherhood of hijacking the revolution of 2011 and using its electoral majorities to monopolize power.
"Egypt is the largest country in the Arab world," Obama said. "The entire region is concerned that, if Egypt continues with this constant instability, that has adverse effects more broadly." U.S. missions would be protected, he said. Last year, a consulate in Libya was overrun and Americans killed.
The Egyptian army, heavily funded by Washington since before Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, is on alert. It warned politicians it may step in if they lose control of the streets - an outcome some in the diffuse opposition coalition may quietly welcome, but to which Mursi's Islamist allies might respond with force.
It is unclear how big the rallies will be or when they may start. Protest organizers said on Saturday a petition calling on Mursi to quit had 22 million signatures - over 40 percent of the electorate and 7 million more than they announced 10 days ago.
The figure could not be verified, but independent analysts say there is a real prospect of very large demonstrations.
Some few thousand activists in Cairo were camping out at rival centers on Saturday. There was no sign of renewed trouble.
VIOLENCE, CAMPING
Several offices of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood were attacked on Friday, including one in Alexandria where two men died, including 21-year-old American Andrew Procter. In Port Said on the Suez Canal, a home-made hand grenade killed a protester and wounded 15.
The Health Ministry said 236 people were injured on Friday.
The U.S. embassy evacuated non-essential staff and warned citizens to avoid Egypt. An airport source said dozens of U.S. personnel and their families left Cairo for Germany on Saturday.
The U.S. ambassador has angered liberals by saying Mursi was legitimately elected and that protests may be counter-productive for an economy crippled by unrest that has cut tourism revenues.
In the capital, Islamist supporters were still camped outside a suburban mosque where they had gathered in the many thousands on Friday to vent anger and fear over a return of army-backed rule. Some speakers also urged reconciliation.
On Tahrir Square, seat of the uprising of early 2011, flags and tents formed a base camp for protesters. They hoped for millions on the streets under slogans accusing Mursi and the Brotherhood of hijacking the revolution against Hosni Mubarak to entrench their own rule. A rally was also planned outside the presidential palace, where some had already taken up position.
With short supplies of fuel adding to long-standing economic woes, many said they would turn out on Sunday, when Mursi marks his first year in office as Egypt's first ever freely elected leader, to demand a new president who can bring them prosperity.
Liberal opposition leaders dismissed an offer of cooperation from Mursi this week as too little too late. The Brotherhood, which says at least five of its supporters have been killed in days of street fighting, accuses liberals of allying with those loyal to Mubarak to mount a coup against the electoral process.
The opposition says the Brotherhood are trying to monopolize power, Islamize a diverse society and throttle dissent. They cite as evidence Mursi's broadsides against critical media and legal proceedings launched against journalists and satirists.
"Mursi is no longer the legitimate president of Egypt," Mohamed Abdelaziz, a protest organizer, told a news conference where others called for peaceful sit-ins to last until Mursi made way for an interim administration led by a senior judge.
"Come June 30, the people will run Egypt!" chanted people attending the event. The opposition, which has lost a series of elections, wants to reset the rules that emerged in a messy process of army and then Islamist rule since early 2011.
"CIVIL WAR"
Egypt's leading religious authority warned of the risk of "civil war" after violence in the past week that left several dead and hundreds injured. The clerics backed Mursi's offer to talk to opposition groups before Sunday's protests.
A senior figure at Cairo's Al-Azhar institute said Sunday should be a day of "community dialogue and civilized expression of opinion", a "catalyst" for political leaders to understand their national duty - and the "dangerous alternative".
Senior Brotherhood figure Essam el-Erian was dismissive of middle-class protest organizers in a Facebook post: "Millions of farmers will wake early, perform their morning prayers and go to their fields to harvest food for the people," he wrote.
Warning again that Mubarak-era "thugs" would spread violence among peaceful protesters, he said government would continue: "President Mohamed Mursi will go to his office tomorrow to sign new planning and budget laws for the new financial year."
Medical and security officials in Alexandria, Egypt's second city, said the American was fatally stabbed as he filmed events at the Brotherhood office in the Mediterranean port during an attack by anti-Mursi protesters, who eventually ransacked it.
Kenyon College in Ohio said Pochter was one of its students and came from Chevy Chase, Maryland. A Facebook post apparently from his family said Pochter had been teaching English to 7- and 8-year-olds and had been improving his Arabic:
"He went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East, and he planned to live and work there in the pursuit of peace and understanding," the post read.
"As we understand it, he was witnessing the protest as a bystander and was stabbed by a protester."
(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Alexander Dziadosz, Omar Fahmy, Tom Perry, Patrick Werr, Shaimaa Fayed and Alastair Macdonald in Cairo and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Gareth Jones)
Climate change may transform the community of microbes that forms the crucial top layer of soil, known as a biocrust, in deserts throughout the United States, new research suggests.
The study, published today (June 27) in the journal Science, found that one type of bacteria dominates in warm climates, whereas another is more prevalent in cooler areas. Combined with climate models, the findings suggest that the cold-loving bacteria could completely disappear from their current habitats as the climate warms.
That disappearance, in turn, could have unpredictable ripple effects across the entire desert ecosystem, study researchers said, as the biocrusts are important resources for desert plants and help mitigate dust storms. [Photos: Mysterious World of Cryptobiotic Soils]
"For the first time, we have shown that the distribution of microbes is also prone to changes due to global warming," said study co-author Ferran Garcia-Pichel, a microbial ecologist at Arizona State University. "We simply don't know the consequences of this."
Ubiquitous organisms
Throughout the arid regions of the western United States, desert soil is permeated by a cryptic collection of photosynthetic organisms, including microbes, lichens and mosses. These mostly bacterial biocrusts anchor the soil, preventing sandstorms and erosion. They also play a critical role in cycling carbon and providing nitrogen in the soil, which feeds the growth of desert plants.
Yet these soils remained virtually unstudied by researchers.
To get a better picture of these cryptic species, Garcia-Pichel and his colleagues conducted a thorough survey of the microbial constituents in biocrusts at 23 sites throughout the western United States. They found that two species ? Microcoleus vaginatus and M. steenstrupii ? each dominated in different regions.
Hot and cold
M. vaginatus predominated in cooler deserts near the California-Oregon border and in Utah, whereas M. steenstrupii was the main bacteria in the scorching deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and California. The researchers looked at several potential causes for the difference in distribution, such as rainfall and soil composition, but found that temperature was the best predictor of which microbe thrived in each region.
To help confirm that this was the major driver behind the distribution, the team then took the bacteria back to the lab and cultured them at different temperatures. Sure enough, M. steenstrupii flourished in warmer conditions and was more tolerant to extreme heat, while the opposite was true for M. vaginatus.
Next, they looked at global warming models, which predicted that the desert regions in the United States would increase in temperature over the next 50 years. With this projected warming, M. vaginatus could completely disappear from the arid regions of the western United States, the researchers said.
The team realized "this is enough temperature to push one of them out of our map,'" Garcia-Pichel told LiveScience.
Unknown consequences
Unfortunately, so little is known about the mysterious M. steenstrupii that no one is sure how this change will impact desert ecosystems, said Jayne Belnap, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Moab, Utah, who was not involved in the study.
"These are the only game in town to prevent dust storms and erosion, so they're really, really critical parts of this ecosystem," Belnap told LiveScience. "Yet we've never asked the question, 'who's really in there, and what's going to happen there as things shift?'"
Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter?and Google+.?Follow?LiveScience?@livescience,?Facebook?&?Google+. Original article on?LiveScience.com.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Pianist Keith Jarrett says "only music excites me, and awards and ceremonies do not." But the pianist says he feels honored to receive the National Endowment for the ArtsJazz Masters Award, joining many past recipients who've influenced him.
The NEA announced Thursday that its 2014 Jazz Masters ? the nation's highest jazz honor ? also include avant-garde saxophonist-composer Anthony Braxton, bassist-educator Richard Davis, and educator Jamey Aebersold.
Jarrett was cited by the NEA for his work in both the jazz and classical fields. His latest release, "Somewhere," marks the 30th anniversary of his trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette. His recording of J.S. Bach's "Six Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard" with violinist Michelle Makarski is due out in September.
A new version of Android (4.3, and still called Jelly Bean) is already doing the testing rounds on Samsung's Galaxy S 4 and thanks to some porting work from SAMMobile, it's apparently working on both the Google Play and original iterations. We've caught a glance of Android 4.3 on LG's Nexus 4 already, but we're now getting a second look at a refreshed camera interface, some minor design tweaks (like more regular appearances of a share button) and, well, we're still perusing the gallery for more nuggets. If you know what you're doing (and don't fear voiding your warranty) you can find the files at the source -- early reports suggest that the GS4 is "fully working" on this early build. We'll update this post if we find anything else new, but early impressions suggest it's a relatively gentle upgrade from the existing mobile OS.
Few would say that consistency is good for its own sake. Microsoft certainly agrees -- it just revealed at Build that Internet Explorer 11 will reverse the company's previously cautious stance on WebGL. The new browser will support the 3D standard from the get go, joining the likes of Chrome and Firefox. IE11 should improve plain old 2D as well, as there's hardware acceleration for video streaming through MPEG Dash. All told, Internet Explorer should be a better web citizen -- and deliver a speed boost in the process.
MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian President Vladimir Putin says that fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has been in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport since flying in from Hong Kong ? meaning that he has not officially entered the country. If true, it's effectively a life of airport limbo for Snowden, whose American passport has been revoked by U.S. authorities.
Here's a look at the place and how it operates.
WHAT IT'S LIKE
The area where Snowden is purportedly staying serves both connecting passengers traveling via Moscow to onward destinations and passengers departing from Moscow who have passed border and security checks. An Associated Press reporter entered the area Wednesday by flying from Kiev, Ukraine.
The huge area unites three terminals: the modern, recently built D and E, and the older, less comfortable F, which dates to the Soviet era. The transit and departure zone is essentially a long corridor, with boarding gates on one side and gleaming duty free shops, luxury clothing boutiques and souvenir stores selling Russian Matryoshka dolls on the other. About a dozen restaurants owned by local and foreign chains serve various tastes.
Hundreds of Russian and foreign tourists await flights here, some stretched out on rows of gray chairs, others sipping hot drinks at coffee shops or looking out through giant windows as silver-blue Aeroflot planes land and take off.
Business ran as usual at the terminals on Wednesday morning. An Asian girl, about 10 years old, slept peacefully on her father's lap. A middle-aged mother and her teenage daughter tried out perfume samples at a duty free store, while nearby a woman in a green dress picked out a pair of designer sunglasses. A pilot was buying lunch at Burger King.
NO TRACE OF SNOWDEN
Putin insisted Tuesday that Snowden has stayed in the transit zone without passing Russian immigration and is free to travel wherever he likes. Snowden, who arrived Sunday on a flight from Hong Kong, registered for a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela, but didn't board the plane. His ultimate destination was believed to be asylum in Ecuador. Dozens of Russian and foreign journalists boarded the Havana flight only to photograph Snowden's empty seat 17A during the 12-hour journey.
The U.S. move to annul Snowden's passport might have further complicated his travel plans.
Hordes of journalists armed with laptops and photo and video cameras have camped in and around the airport, looking for Snowden or anyone who may have seen or talked to him. But after talking to passengers, airport personnel, waiters and shop clerks, the press corps has discovered no trace of the elusive leaker.
Russian news agencies, citing unidentified sources, reported that Snowden was staying at a hotel in the transit terminal, but he was nowhere to be seen at the zone's only hotel, called "Air Express." It offers several dozen capsule-style spaces that passengers can rent for a few hours to catch some sleep. Hotel staff refused to say whether Snowden was or has in the past stayed there.
"We only saw lots of journalists, that's for sure," said Maxim, a waiter at the Shokoladnitsa diner not far from Air Express. He declined to give his last name because he wasn't allowed to talk to reporters.
PLACES TO HIDE
The departure and transit area is huge and has dozens of small rooms, some labeled "authorized personnel only," where one could potentially seek refuge with support from airport staff or security personnel. And security forces or police patrolling the area can easily whisk a person out of this area though back doors or corridors.
There are also a few VIP lounge areas, accessible to business-class passengers or people willing to pay some $20 per hour. Snowden was not seen in those areas.
Exiting the area would either require boarding a plane or passing through border control. Both require a valid passport or other identification.
Sheremetyevo's press service declined to comment on Snowden's whereabouts.
June 27, 2013 ? Let's all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.
CU-Boulder Professor John Stocke, study leader, said new observations with Hubble's $70 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, designed by CU-Boulder show that normal spiral galaxies are surrounded by halos of gas that can extend to over 1 million light-years in diameter. The current estimated diameter of the Milky Way, for example, is about 100,000 light-years. One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles.
The material for galaxy halos detected by the CU-Boulder team originally was ejected from galaxies by exploding stars known as supernovae, a product of the star formation process, said Stocke of CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department. "This gas is stored and then recycled through an extended galaxy halo, falling back onto the galaxies to reinvigorate a new generation of star formation," he said. "In many ways this is the 'missing link' in galaxy evolution that we need to understand in detail in order to have a complete picture of the process."
Stocke gave a presentation on the research June 27 at the University of Edinburgh's Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics in Scotland at a conference titled "Intergalactic Interactions." The CU-Boulder research team also included professors Michael Shull and James Green and research associates Brian Keeney, Charles Danforth, David Syphers and Cynthia Froning, as well as University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Blair Savage.
Building on earlier studies identifying oxygen-rich gas clouds around spiral galaxies by scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College and the University of California, Santa Cruz, Stocke and his colleagues determined that such clouds contain almost as much mass as all the stars in their respective galaxies. "This was a big surprise," said Stocke. "The new findings have significant consequences for how spiral galaxies change over time."
In addition, the CU-Boulder team discovered giant reservoirs of gas estimated to be millions of degrees Fahrenheit that were enshrouding the spiral galaxies and halos under study. The halos of the spiral galaxies were relatively cool by comparison -- just tens of thousands of degrees -- said Stocke, also a member of CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, or CASA.
Shull, a professor in CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department and a member of CASA, emphasized that the study of such "circumgalactic" gas is in its infancy. "But given the expected lifetime of COS on Hubble, perhaps another five years, it should be possible to confirm these early detections, elaborate on the results and scan other spiral galaxies in the universe," he said.
Prior to the installation of COS on Hubble during NASA's final servicing mission in May 2009, theoretical studies showed that spiral galaxies should possess about five times more gas than was being detected by astronomers. The new observations with the extremely sensitive COS are now much more in line with the theories, said Stocke.
The CU-Boulder team used distant quasars -- the swirling centers of supermassive black holes -- as "flashlights" to track ultraviolet light as it passed through the extended gas haloes of foreground galaxies, said Stocke. The light absorbed by the gas was broken down by the spectrograph, much like a prism does, into characteristic color "fingerprints" that revealed temperatures, densities, velocities, distances and chemical compositions of the gas clouds.
"This gas is way too diffuse to allow its detection by direct imaging, so spectroscopy is the way to go," said Stocke. CU-Boulder's Green led the design team for COS, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder for NASA.
While astronomers hope the Hubble Space Telescope keeps on chugging for years to come, there will be no more servicing missions. And the James Webb Space Telescope, touted to be Hubble's successor beginning in late 2018, has no UV light-gathering capabilities, which will prevent astronomers from undertaking studies like those done with COS, said Green.
"Once Hubble ceases to function, we will lose the capability to study galaxy halos for perhaps a full generation of astronomers," said Stocke. "But for now, we are fortunate to have both Hubble and its Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to help us answer some of the most pressing issues in cosmology."
The Boston Bruins hit everything in sight in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final, but the Chicago Blackhawks skated circles around them, winning 3-1.
By Mark Sappenfield,?Staff writer / June 23, 2013
Boston Bruins center Chris Kelly (23) trips over Chicago Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford (50) who blocked his shot in the first period during Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup final Saturday in Chicago.
Bruce Bennett/AP
Enlarge
For nearly six weeks, the Toronto Maple Leafs were just a memory.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
How had that band of young upstarts, in the playoffs for the first time since 2004, come within 52 seconds of eliminating the Big Bad Boston Bruins? For weeks after, those frantic moments when the Bruins scrambled back to win Game 7 after being down 4-1 with 11 minutes left seemed merely a first-round hiccup.
The Bruins, after all, had found their stride since. They had roughed up the New York Rangers and then, with delicious impudence, sent the prima donnas of Pittsburgh packing in four games.
Even in the first four games of the Stanley Cup final, the Bruins seemed on even keel, playing the Chicago Blackhawks into overtime in three of them and managing to take two of the four. ?
Then the Blackhawks came out for Game 5 as though coach Joel Quenneville had brandished a cattle prod in the pregame speech, and something shifted. The Blackhawks, who are quite well equipped to match the Bruins' wrecking-ball style of hockey, found a new gear ? almost as though they had forgotten they had it ? and the Bruins could do nothing about it.
For a moment, it looked like the Maple Leafs all over again.
There can be something mesmerizing about Bruins hockey. For a sport played mostly by big, angry boys with sticks, it can be a default mode. The crowd loves it. North American players have been raised in the Cult of Don Cherry to believe this is "real hockey." You hit me, I'll hit you. And again. And again. It is the endlessly repeating integer of Boston's Stanley Cup equation.
In truth, the real genius of Boston hockey is that it is about making opponents pay an enormous price for every goal. Often, that price is physical. Sometimes, it is mental. The Penguins, for instance, must have wondered when they were ever going to score.
But at its core, Boston hockey is mostly about fundamental hockey.
We will dump the puck into your zone to keep it away from our goal. We will forecheck ferociously to make it as hard as possible to get the puck out of your own zone. We will build a defensive wall around our goaltender. And then, in those rare times when everything breaks down, our spectacular goaltender will stop you.
In Bruins hockey, goals are like the planets aligning ? they come only rarely and usually only with a symphonic coincidence of fortuitous circumstances. In Bruins hockey, a team with no clear superstar can become far more than the sum of its parts.
So the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011. So they are in the Stanley Cup final this year.
Yet in the Blackhawks, the Bruins have met a team that can play "Bruins hockey" ? fundamentally sound, physically taxing, emotionally draining ? yet is more talented than they are. The result, as became clear Saturday, is that no matter how long the two teams play, the Blackhawks will always create more and more dangerous scoring chances when they are at their best.
The Maple Leafs are not as talented as the Blackhawks. But they are young and fast. At times against the Maple Leafs, the Bruins played as though someone had pulled the fire alarm.
Though not as pronounced Saturday, the same impression was inescapable. For all their gristle and hustle, the Bruins could not cope with the Blackhawks' skating.
After spending much of the series flitting about on the edges of the action, Blackhawk Patrick Kane has figured out that it is not his muscle but his movement that is needed. He scored two goals Saturday by ceaselessly seeking the empty patches of ice near the goal that open and close with the speed of a camera shutter.?
There's never been much of a doubt that the Blackhawks could put together a game like Game 5. Consider that they are up 3-2 in the series despite the fact that Bruins goaltender Tuukka Rask has been guiltless in virtually all of the Blackhawks' 14 goals. That is a testament to the Blackhawks' ability to create offensive chances.
This is not to say that the Blackhawks must win the series. Teams don't always play at their best. Moreover, as solid as Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford has been at times, his glove has been a weakness; Rask could still steal a game or two for the Bruins.
But on Saturday, it was clear: The Blackhawks took Bruins hockey to another level.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said on Sunday it was disappointed with Hong Kong's decision not to arrest former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who is accused of divulging secrets about U.S. surveillance programs. The Hong Kong government said the U.S. extradition requests were insufficient.
Below is the timeline of communication between the United States and Hong Kong before Snowden fled the Chinese territory for Russia, based on Reuters reports and official U.S. accounts.
June 5 - Britain's Guardian newspaper publishes a secret court order that shows the NSA collecting millions of U.S. telephone records.
June 6 - The Washington Post reports on the classified anti-terrorism program that involves the NSA and the FBI tapping into the servers of American Internet companies.
June 9 - The Guardian and the Post identify Snowden as source of the leaks.
June 10 - U.S. Department of Justice officials learn Snowden is in Hong Kong and start communicating with counterparts there.
June 14 - U.S. authorities, in a sealed criminal complaint, charge Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilfull communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the Espionage Act. A warrant is issued for his arrest.
June 15 - The United States asks Hong Kong, under their extradition agreement, to provisionally arrest Snowden so that he can be sent back to the United States.
June 17 - Hong Kong authorities acknowledge receipt of the U.S. request, said only that the matter was "under review."
The FBI, the State Department and the Justice Department worked with their Hong Kong counterparts during the process.
June 19 - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen. According to a Justice Department official, Holder stressed the importance of the case and urged Hong Kong to honor the request for Snowden's arrest.
June 21 - Hong Kong authorities ask for more information about U.S. charges and evidence against Snowden. U.S. authorities were in the process of responding when they learned that Snowden had been allowed to leave Hong Kong.
June 23 - Hong Kong authorities notify the United States that they had found the extradition request insufficient and had allowed Snowden to leave.
The United States was disappointed with the decision and said Hong Kong never indicated there was a problem with its arrest request, a Justice Department official said.
(Compiled by Alina Selyukh; Editing by Tabassum Zakaria and Doina Chiacu)
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The judge in the George Zimmerman trial has ruled that two voice identification experts who suggested that unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin screamed for help before he was shot and killed by Zimmerman will not be allowed to testify at the trial.
The ruling by Judge Debra Nelson was released on Saturday. It was the last major hurdle before opening statements in the high-profile trial begin on Monday in Seminole County courthouse in Sanford, Florida.
Prosecutors had sought to call audio experts to testify about a 911 emergency call in which screams for help can be heard in the background during an altercation between Zimmerman and Martin before the shooting.
In her 12-page order, Nelson said the decision does not prevent either side from playing the 911 tape and presenting witnesses familiar with Zimmerman's and Martin's voices from stating their opinions.
Prosecutors say Zimmerman followed and confronted Martin despite a police dispatcher telling him not to pursue the 17-year-old. Zimmerman, 29, has said the two fought and that he shot Martin because he feared for his life.
An all-female jury will decide whether Zimmerman is guilty of second-degree murder, a charge that carries a potential life sentence. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty.
Two state experts, in what they qualify as tentative or probable findings because of the poor quality of the recording, have said that the chilling screams heard in the background came from Martin.
The screams could be pivotal evidence and help identify who was the aggressor on the night of the February 2012 killing. Zimmerman's family and supporters claim the voice was his, while Martin's parents insist the voice belonged to their son.
Last year, an FBI expert said a voice analysis of the call was inconclusive.
Lawyers for Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, sought to block the testimony on grounds that the methods used by the state's voice recognition experts were based on questionable science.
Audio experts who testified for the defense in a lengthy pre-trial hearing argued that voice recognition techniques cannot identify an individual from screams made under extreme duress.
On Friday, the judge also dismissed a defense motion to bar certain words and phrases from the prosecution's opening statement.
She ruled prosecutors could allege that Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, "profiled" Martin but ordered them not to use the term "racial profiling."
(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Eric Beech)
In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota that a state can?t require an out-of-state business to collect and remit sales taxes to it if doing so is burdensome to the business.
The Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA), recently passed by the Senate and under consideration in the House, ignores the need to simplify tax collection obligations and instead ensures that compliance will be burdensome for small businesses. In a recent Daily Caller op-ed, Drex Davis provides a high-level introduction to the burdens imposed on small businesses by the MFA. My personal experience confirms his assertions.
Unfortunately, proponents of the MFA such as Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have claimed that tax collection post-MFA will be ?as simple as looking up the weather on a person?s computer.? This illustrates a deep misunderstanding about the complexity of tax laws, jurisdictions and the software systems that are necessary to tie the mess together.
Each of this country?s 10,000 different taxing jurisdictions has its own laws for applying sales tax to all sorts of goods ? including food, prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs, software, clothes and much more. Plus, within the same zip code, even on the same street, different tax rates can apply. I manually downloaded and printed the sales tax rates by zip code for all of the states. It?s over 38,000 lines long and 811 printed pages.
MFA proponents argue that the ?free software? (paid for by the states) will make this complexity irrelevant. But the software will only provide me with rates, not product categories, and it will do nothing to help lift the time-and-money burden of submitting up to 600 tax returns per year. So much for ?free.? I can use an unsubsidized software program like the one Avalara produces, which simplifies the process to some degree, but if I did that I?d have to pay Avalara a fee on every single sale I make, plus about $29 for every tax return I file. For my business, that would be $16,000 in remittance costs annually, plus thousands of dollars in transaction fees.
The problems and costs don?t end there. I scheduled two meetings with Avalara to walk me through implementation of their software. Like many other small businesses, I use the accounting software Sage 50 (formerly Peachtree). The Sage 50 platform isn?t capable of live, forced compliance, so the Avalara representatives I spoke with told me I?d have to upgrade to the Sage 100 platform in order to automate my sales tax calculations. They also said my shopping cart isn?t compatible with their program and would have to be modified. Moreover, I?d have to change my entire sales software and strategy because no multi-channel cart solutions are currently supported by their software. To integrate Avalara?s software, I?d have to spend at least $40,000 in the first year alone, and then a certain amount each year after that.
I wish I could say that was the end of it, but I can?t. I?d also have to categorize all of my products to be readable by the software. Contrary to statements by pro-MFA politicians, neither the MFA nor the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA) provide rate simplification or designate what is taxable and what isn?t. This means that small business owners will have to become experts on tax law in the 46 sales-tax states so that they can tag their products to be software readable.
This is virtually impossible. For example, in Idaho clothing is exempt from sales taxes but in Minnesota it?s not. In other states, clothing might be exempt, depending on the price. That is ? of course ? unless it?s not. In Massachusetts the categorization requirements are unbelievably convoluted and confusing: sports bras are tax exempt, but sports shorts aren?t. A sewing button is exempt but a scrapbooking button isn?t. That same sewing button isn?t exempt if it?s included in a sewing kit. Yarn is exempt unless it could be used to make a rug. Thread is exempt, unless it?s sold with a needle. These are just a few examples of thousands.
Software isn?t going to make these distinctions or judgment calls. We will be forced to make them, and that will mean huge time investments. But that still won?t protect us. If an out-of-state auditor disagrees with our categorization, we could be held personally liable for uncollected taxes or penalized for over-collecting.
The MFA fails to satisfy the minimum requirements set forth by the Supreme Court because collecting and remitting sales taxes for remote states is extremely burdensome on small businesses like mine. Congress needs to scrap the MFA and go back to the drawing board.
Justin Krauss is the president of Garage Flooring LLC and cofounder of the eMainStreet Alliance.
Days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appointed the student who would sit on the state Board of Regents, the administration announced that it would keep looking.
Thursday morning, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, an aide of the governor called Joshua Inglett, a University of Wisconsin-Platteville rising junior, to tell him he was not getting the position after it came to light the student signed a petition to force Walker's 2012 recall election.
"They had four months to look this up and Google-search me," Inglett told the Journal Sentinel. "I looked it up online yesterday. It took me 15 seconds."
Inglett told the Journal Sentinel he discussed the petition with one of Walker's aides over the phone, and acknowledged he did sign it two years earlier. The following morning, he was told the governor would withdraw Inglett's nomination.
But Walker, who named Inglett on Monday, won't say the withdrawal was related to the petition.
"My comment's just going to be that we withdrew the nomination, and there's plenty of other good candidates we've looked at, and we'll look at in this case," Walker told WKOW. He also denied being involved in telling Inglett the nomination was quashed.
"Again, I wasn't involved in that directly. In the interest of not pulling him through the details on this, we withdrew the nomination and we'll be submitting another name," Walker said.
Inglett was one of more than 939,000 who signed the petition in 2011 and 2012. The petition forced a recall election, which Walker won in June 2012.
Inglett told the Journal Sentinel he felt like his character was attacked. He had wanted the job for two years, writing in an application that he was "enthusiastic" about the opportunity.
The conservative blog RightWisconsin.com claims the fact that Inglett signed the petition led to the nomination withdrawal.
Lawmakers are hoping Walker will reconsider the appointment, and criticized his decision to nix Inglett.
"Governing by paranoia is not going to get us anywhere," said state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) in a statement Thursday.
"It seems to me this young man was caught up in the emotion and fervor of our state's 'civil war' of just over two years ago," state Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) said in a letter to Walker. "How active he was in the affair is debatable, but it appears he did nothing more than sign a petition."
LONDON (AP) ? A man has been charged with allegedly spraying paint on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II hanging in Westminster Abbey, police said Friday.
Tim Haries, 41, appeared at a London court charged with criminal damage over 5,000 pounds ($7,800). He was arrested at the abbey Thursday after a portrait of the monarch by Australian artist Ralph Heimans was defaced with paint.
Fathers 4 Justice, a protest group that campaigns on behalf of fathers denied contact with their children, said Haries was a member. He had painted the word "help" on the 9-foot by 11-foot (2.5-meter by 3.4-meter) canvas, the group said.
Haries didn't enter a plea during his brief court appearance Friday. He was released on conditional bail until a court appearance in two weeks, and banned from London after police raised concerns that he might join a protest there over the weekend.
Heimans' portrait, which depicts the queen standing on the spot in the abbey where she was crowned, was commissioned last year to mark the monarch's 60 years on the throne.
The abbey said the painting has been removed from public view until it can be restored.
The keyboard you're typing on is probably gross as hell, and it isn't doing any favors for your posture, either. Consider replacing it with Microsoft's stalwart ergonomic split keyboard, which is on sale for $30 from Amazon at the moment.
Each coach says nothing but great things about everyone left in ?The Voice,? and each one especially loves their own acts. But no coach and singer have the chemistry that Usher and Michelle Chamuel boast.
With all of his other candidates long gone from the competition, Usher has channeled all of his energy and his competitive nature ? both of which appear to be limitless ? into building his indie-rocker-nerd-girl into a serious contender. They?ve worked together seamlessly, and it was capped off Monday night with the singer dedicating her second song of the night to him.
?Usher, you?ve become like family to me,? Michelle said. ?You?re someone I look up to, and who leads by example both on and off camera.You?ve allowed me to be who I am, taken the time to see that, and helped me appreciate that as well. Time after time you?ve been there for me, and this one?s for you. Thanks, coach!?
She then broke into ? appropriately enough ? Cyndi Lauper?s ?Time After Time.? When she finished, her coach was on his feet, the crowd was cheering, and any doubt about her advancing to next week's finale dissipated.
?Thank you so much for dedicating that song to me,? Usher said. ?My God. You?re the winner. You?re perfect how you are, and we?re continuing to let the world know that you can be whatever you want to be -- just believe. That is the story. You are medicine for the world. I love you, Michelle Chamuel.?
?Medicine for the world" narrowly edged Shakira's praise for the biggest compliment of the night. The star had earlier told Michelle she was on a ?permanent crescendo.? Clearly, the new coaches are more than pulling their weight in being creative with the catchphrases.
Love was also the theme for Danielle Bradbery, who went into the crowd to hug her family during her version of ?Who I Am? by Jessica Andrews. It was a move designed to tug at the heartstrings ... and guess what? It worked. Her first song -- Rodney Crowell's "Please Remember Me" -- wasn?t the greatest, but it?s not going to matter. Who can resist the teen prodigy and her loving mom and dad?
That leaves the other three acts vying for a spot. The Swon Brothers and Sasha Allen started the night facing an uphill battle. They were the first two acts to perform, traditionally the performance slots of death. But Amber Carrington had a disappointing first performance, not setting off any sparks with Katy Perry?s ?Firework.? And though her rendition of Maroon 5's ?Sad? made coach and song co-writer Adam Levine happy, it might not have been enough for her to advance.
Biodegradable implant may lessen side effects of radiation to treat prostate cancerPublic release date: 10-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Wallace wallacej@vcu.edu 804-628-1550 Virginia Commonwealth University
VCU Massey Cancer Center is first in the United States to test the device
Several years ago, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center became the first center in the United States to test an Israeli-invented device designed to increase the space between the prostate and the rectum in prostate cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. Now, results from the international Phase I clinical trial show that the device has the potential to significantly reduce rectal injury, a side effect caused by unwanted radiation exposure that can leave men with compromised bowel function following treatment.
Results of the 27-patient prospective trial were recently published in the Journal of Radiation Oncology. The device known as the BioProtect Balloon Implant was tested on patients with localized prostate cancer. It is designed to reduce radiation exposure to the rectum by expanding to increase the space between the rectum and the prostate. It remains in place throughout the treatment process and is designed to biodegrade completely within six months.
"We found that the addition of BioProtect reduced the radiation dose delivered to the rectum by an average of about 30 percent," says local primary investigator Mitchell Anscher, M.D., Florence and Hyman Meyers Chair of Radiation Oncology at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "Most notable was the device's ability to reduce exposure at higher radiation levels, which indicates that the cancer could be safely treated with more aggressive protocols."
The researchers observed a greater reduction in radiation exposure to the rectum at increasing radiation dose levels. At 50 percent of prescribed dose, there was little difference in rectal tissue exposure. However, there was a 55.3 percent reduction at 70 percent of the prescribed dosage, a 64 percent reduction at 80 percent of the prescribed dosage, a 72 percent reduction at 90 percent of the prescribed dosage and an 82.3 percent reduction at 100 percent of the prescribed dosage.
As anticipated, all implanted balloons started to degrade three months after implantation. The researchers concluded that the device could be especially useful in hypofractionated radiation therapy. Hypofractionated radiation therapy uses larger doses of radiation applied over a shorter number of treatments instead of delivering a small percentage of the total dose during daily treatments spread over a longer period of time.
"Massey has many patients that travel from rural areas for care. If this device allows us to deliver the prescribed radiation dose over a shorter period of time, we can reduce the overall burden on the patient and they can spend less time away from work and their family," says Anscher. "We hope to initiate a Phase II clinical trial in a larger cohort of patients in order to determine the effectiveness of the device in reducing rectal injury in comparison to standard treatment protocols."
###
Anscher collaborated with the study's lead investigator Gyorgy Kovacs, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Lubeck, Germany; Dieter Jocham, M.D., and Gunther Bohlen, M.D., also from the University of Lubeck; Eliahu Gez, M.D., Rami Ben Yosef, M.D., Benjamin W. Corn, M.D., and Fabrizio Dal Moro, M.D., all from the Department of Radiation Oncology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel; Giovanni Scarzello, M.D., from the Department of Radiotherapy at the University of Padova, Italy; and Isaac Koziol, M.D., Mathew Bassignani, M.D., and Taryn Torre, M.D., all from Virginia Urology; and Shmuel Cytron, M.D., from Barzilai Medical Center, Israel.
This research was supported, in part, by funding from VCU Massey Cancer Center's NIH-NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059.
The full manuscript of the study is available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167814013000236
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact John Wallace, (804) 628-1550.
About VCU Massey Cancer Center
VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of only 67 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions in the country that leads and shapes America's cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It has one of the largest offerings of clinical trials in Virginia and serves patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at http://www.massey.vcu.edu or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-six of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation's leading academic medical centers. For more, see http://www.vcu.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Biodegradable implant may lessen side effects of radiation to treat prostate cancerPublic release date: 10-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Wallace wallacej@vcu.edu 804-628-1550 Virginia Commonwealth University
VCU Massey Cancer Center is first in the United States to test the device
Several years ago, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center became the first center in the United States to test an Israeli-invented device designed to increase the space between the prostate and the rectum in prostate cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. Now, results from the international Phase I clinical trial show that the device has the potential to significantly reduce rectal injury, a side effect caused by unwanted radiation exposure that can leave men with compromised bowel function following treatment.
Results of the 27-patient prospective trial were recently published in the Journal of Radiation Oncology. The device known as the BioProtect Balloon Implant was tested on patients with localized prostate cancer. It is designed to reduce radiation exposure to the rectum by expanding to increase the space between the rectum and the prostate. It remains in place throughout the treatment process and is designed to biodegrade completely within six months.
"We found that the addition of BioProtect reduced the radiation dose delivered to the rectum by an average of about 30 percent," says local primary investigator Mitchell Anscher, M.D., Florence and Hyman Meyers Chair of Radiation Oncology at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "Most notable was the device's ability to reduce exposure at higher radiation levels, which indicates that the cancer could be safely treated with more aggressive protocols."
The researchers observed a greater reduction in radiation exposure to the rectum at increasing radiation dose levels. At 50 percent of prescribed dose, there was little difference in rectal tissue exposure. However, there was a 55.3 percent reduction at 70 percent of the prescribed dosage, a 64 percent reduction at 80 percent of the prescribed dosage, a 72 percent reduction at 90 percent of the prescribed dosage and an 82.3 percent reduction at 100 percent of the prescribed dosage.
As anticipated, all implanted balloons started to degrade three months after implantation. The researchers concluded that the device could be especially useful in hypofractionated radiation therapy. Hypofractionated radiation therapy uses larger doses of radiation applied over a shorter number of treatments instead of delivering a small percentage of the total dose during daily treatments spread over a longer period of time.
"Massey has many patients that travel from rural areas for care. If this device allows us to deliver the prescribed radiation dose over a shorter period of time, we can reduce the overall burden on the patient and they can spend less time away from work and their family," says Anscher. "We hope to initiate a Phase II clinical trial in a larger cohort of patients in order to determine the effectiveness of the device in reducing rectal injury in comparison to standard treatment protocols."
###
Anscher collaborated with the study's lead investigator Gyorgy Kovacs, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Lubeck, Germany; Dieter Jocham, M.D., and Gunther Bohlen, M.D., also from the University of Lubeck; Eliahu Gez, M.D., Rami Ben Yosef, M.D., Benjamin W. Corn, M.D., and Fabrizio Dal Moro, M.D., all from the Department of Radiation Oncology at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel; Giovanni Scarzello, M.D., from the Department of Radiotherapy at the University of Padova, Italy; and Isaac Koziol, M.D., Mathew Bassignani, M.D., and Taryn Torre, M.D., all from Virginia Urology; and Shmuel Cytron, M.D., from Barzilai Medical Center, Israel.
This research was supported, in part, by funding from VCU Massey Cancer Center's NIH-NCI Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016059.
The full manuscript of the study is available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167814013000236
News directors: Broadcast access to VCU Massey Cancer Center experts is available through VideoLink ReadyCam. ReadyCam transmits video and audio via fiber optics through a system that is routed to your newsroom. To schedule a live or taped interview, contact John Wallace, (804) 628-1550.
About VCU Massey Cancer Center
VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of only 67 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions in the country that leads and shapes America's cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It has one of the largest offerings of clinical trials in Virginia and serves patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at http://www.massey.vcu.edu or call 877-4-MASSEY for more information.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center
Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 222 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-six of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 13 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation's leading academic medical centers. For more, see http://www.vcu.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sBzHBKZPKS_R1u9utYlZvfV_uyn09DUyIYYEThKDjktLrPrPLsUgFuiT_o-5ulZgLzxIfCN9rcZly1SAldwPoLQEDB_pD4QCgrgy9uCHc=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 10-Jun-2013
Share ]