latest computer technology news: June 2013

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Berlusconi convicted in sex-for-hire trial

FILE - In this Friday, May 11, 2012 file photo, Italian former premier Silvio Berlusconi grimaces as he attends the funeral service of Italian entrepreneur Giampiero Cantoni in Milan. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi faces a verdict in his sensational sex-for-hire trial, charges that could bring an end to his two-decade political career. Berlusconi is charged with paying an under-age Moroccan teen for sex and then trying to cover it up with phone calls to Milan police officials when she was picked up for alleged theft. Berlusconi and the woman deny having had sex with each other. A court is expected to deliver a verdict Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

Two women reacts outside the courthouse after a verdict against Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, Italy, Monday, June 24, 2013. A Milan court has convicted former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute during infamous "bunga bunga" parties at his villa and then using his influence to try to cover it up. Berlusconi, 76, was sentenced to seven years in prison and barred from public office for life. The ban on holding office could mean the end of Berlusconi's two-decade political career. However, there are two more levels of appeal before the sentence would become final. The banners read, in Italian: "A sentence to save Italy's dignity" and "All are equal before the law". (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Silvio Berlusconi lawyer Niccolo' Ghedini speaks to reporters outside the courthouse in Milan, Italy, Monday, June 24, 2013. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi faces a verdict in his sensational sex-for-hire trial, charges that could bring an end to his two-decade political career. Berlusconi is charged with paying an under-age Moroccan teen for sex and then trying to cover it up with phone calls to Milan police officials when she was picked up for alleged theft. Berlusconi and the woman deny having had sex with each other. A court is expected to deliver a verdict Monday. (AP Photo/Paolo Santalucia)

FILE - In this Thursday, April 4, 2013 file photo a tear rolls down the cheek of Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, a Moroccan woman at the center of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire trial, as she reads a statement to reporters during a protest outside the court house, in Milan, Italy. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi faces a verdict in his sensational sex-for-hire trial, charges that could bring an end to his two-decade political career. Berlusconi is charged with paying an under-age Moroccan teen for sex and then trying to cover it up with phone calls to Milan police officials when she was picked up for alleged theft. Berlusconi and the woman deny having had sex with each other. A court is expected to deliver a verdict Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, file)

FILE -- In this Sept. 27 2012 file photo, former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi attends the presentation of a book in Rome. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi faces a verdict in his sensational sex-for-hire trial, charges that could bring an end to his two-decade political career. Berlusconi is charged with paying an under-age Moroccan teen for sex and then trying to cover it up with phone calls to Milan police officials when she was picked up for alleged theft. Berlusconi and the woman deny having had sex with each other. A court is expected to deliver a verdict Monday, June 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

MILAN (AP) ? Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's flamboyant former premier, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from politics for life Monday for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous "bunga bunga" parties and forcing public officials to cover it up.

It was the most damaging setback yet for the 76-year-old Berlusconi, who has been tried numerous times for his business dealings but never before for his personal conduct.

Still, he vowed that his days as a political force are not over. He has two levels of appeal ? and his supporters quickly rallied around him.

The charges against the billionaire media mogul resulted from what became widely known in Italy as "bunga bunga" parties hosted in 2010 by Berlusconi, then the sitting premier, at his villa near Milan, where he wined and dined beautiful young women.

Berlusconi's defense described the dinner parties as elegant soirees; prosecutors said they were sex-fueled gatherings that women were paid to attend. The woman at the center of the scandal, Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby, has described aspiring showgirls stripping provocatively for the then-Italian leader.

Both Berlusconi and el-Mahroug denied ever having sex, and el-Mahroug says she never worked as a prostitute.

After the verdict, Berlusconi said in a message posted on Facebook that he believed he would be acquitted "because in the facts there is really no possibility to convict me."

He called the sentence "incredible, of a violence never seen or heard before, to try to eliminate me from the political life of this country." He pledged to "resist this persecution, because I am absolutely innocent, and I don't want in any way to abandon my battle to make Italy a truly free and just country."

The Milan criminal court's ruling was unexpectedly stiff, going further than the original charges and openly questioning whether many of the young women who testified in Berlusconi's defense had lied on the stand to protect him.

The panel of three judges, all women, said Berlusconi went beyond using his influence to cover up his relationship with the then-17-year-old Moroccan, as originally charged. They said he stepped in to win her release from police custody when she was accused of theft.

As a result, they added one year to the six requested by prosecutors.

The court also said it was turning over to prosecutors files containing the testimony of more than 30 young women who attended the now-infamous "bunga bunga" parties to investigate if they had lied under oath when they denied a sexual character to the gatherings.

Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, who is also secretary of Berlusconi's People of Liberty Party, said he told his political mentor to "hang in there, and keep moving on" in a phone call after the verdict.

Berlusconi was not in court for the sentencing, but his lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, said he would appeal a decision he called both "largely expected" and "out of reality." The Berlusconi camp has long accused Milan magistrates of mounting a campaign to sideline him politically.

Berlusconi loyalist Daniela Santanche, who attended the sentencing, denounced it as "an outrage, and a political sentence that has nothing to do with justice." But she also said that it should have no impact on the government.

Some political opponents, however, said Berlusconi, who has shaped political discourse in Italy for two decades, should withdraw from politics immediately.

Alessandro Di Battista, a lawmaker in the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, said Berlusconi "must go to jail. It is outrageous that he is a senator that can make laws. Until he goes to jail, the country is not free." And the left-leaning governor of Apulia, Nicchi Vendola, said Berlusconi should "abandon public life."

Berlusconi does not have any official role in government, but he is a senator in Parliament and retains influence in the uneasy grand coalition between his forces and the center-left Democratic Party that emerged after inconclusive February elections. The Democratic Party issued a statement acknowledging the sentence and in support of the autonomy of the courts.

Berlusconi's high-stakes judicial woes are far from over. He faces a final appeal in a tax fraud conviction for which he has been sentenced to four years in jail and a five-year ban from office.

Roberto D'Alimonte, a political analyst for il Sole 24 Ore daily and professor at Rome's LUISS University, said the tax fraud conviction poses the more immediate threat since Italy's highest court is likely to rule before the statute of limitations runs out.

The sex-for-hire case "weakens him politically, but not that much, because we have seen that his voter base seems to be insulated from the impact of these sentences. We saw in the last elections, everyone thought he was dead, but he came back to life," D'Alimonte said.

While the verdict drew intense international media coverage, with half a dozen satellite vans parked outside the Milan courthouse, there was only a smattering of public interest. A few anti-Berlusconi protesters gathered outside, and just a handful of citizens joined journalists crammed inside the small courtroom.

"For 20 years, he's been running Italy. He's done what he wanted," said Aurelio De Boni, a retired suit salesman from Milan who attended the trial.

Neither Berlusconi nor el-Mahroug testified in this trial. El-Mahroug was called by the defense but failed to show, delaying the trial, and Berlusconi's team eventually dropped her from the witness list.

El-Mahroug, however, did testify in the separate trial of three Berlusconi aides charged with procuring prostitutes for the parties. She told that court that Berlusconi's disco featured aspiring showgirls dressed as sexy nuns and nurses performing striptease acts, and that one woman even dressed up as President Barack Obama.

El-Mahroug, now 20, said in the other trial that she attended about a half-dozen parties at Berlusconi's villa, and that after each, Berlusconi handed her an envelope with up to 3,000 euros ($3,900). She said she later received 30,000 euros cash from the then-premier, paid through an intermediary ? money that she told Berlusconi she wanted to use to open a beauty salon, despite having no formal training.

But she denied ever receiving millions from the billionaire, as she had claimed to acquaintances, saying they were "lies" meant to inflate her own importance.

She was 17 at the time of the alleged encounters but passed herself off as 24. She also claimed she was related to then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Berlusconi's lawyers argued that he believed el-Mahroug was indeed Mubarak's niece, and he called police after she was accused of theft in a bid to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Berlusconi, who has been tried numerous times relating to his business dealings, has been convicted in other cases at the trial level. But those convictions have always either been overturned on appeal or else the statute of limitations has run out before Italy's high court could have its say.

The sex-for-hire case is the first involving his personal conduct.

Later this week, Italy's highest court has scheduled a hearing on Berlusconi's appeal to a verdict ordering him to pay 560 million euros ($800 million) to a rival media group over corruption in the acquisition of the Mondadori publishing empire. And a preliminary hearing will begin in Naples to decide if Berlusconi should be tried for allegedly bribing a lawmaker to bolt a previous center-left government under Romano Prodi and join his party, a move that weakened Prodi's slim majority.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-24-Italy-Berlusconi%20Trial/id-5abf67d320034d928bc568e7a18adabd

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Judy Reyes: My Daughter Will ?Probably Be a Director?

"She does the lines and then we switch roles and she goes, 'No! Don't say it like that. This is impossible!' She'll probably be a director," she adds.

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/XjMuMQXxMqs/

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LA mayor exits after bumpy term, looking ahead

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The famous smile is intact. But there's a glint of gray in the hair, a hint of melancholy in the voice and a collection of wrinkles he didn't bring with him when he became mayor of Los Angeles eight years ago.

Antonio Villaraigosa makes his exit July 1 after a seesaw run that saw him celebrated as the city's first Hispanic mayor since 1872, praised for bulking up the police department and transit services, but often mocked, fairly or not, as a party boy who cared more about nightlife than his day job at City Hall.

Through most of it, he struggled with a sour economy not of his making. Now 60 and talking again about running for governor, the Democrat looks back and ponders how a former labor organizer ended up chopping thousands of government jobs to keep the books in balance, pushed municipal workers for the first time to pay toward their pensions and health care and clashed with the teachers union that once employed him.

What has he learned?

"You have to be able to say no to your friends," Villaraigosa said during an interview at his soon-to-be former office. "You are making decisions that will have an impact far into the future. Don't worry about what people say right now."

As for complaints, he's heard an earful.

As with any big-city mayor, there's no pleasing everyone, particularly in a city of nearly 4 million people. And the work is never done. He can fairly claim a string of wins, including historically low crime rates, new rail lines in a metropolis strangled by cars and a citywide move away from polluting, coal-fired power. But those gains get tempered by longstanding gripes that he starts more than he finishes and ignores potholes, cracked sidewalks and other basics while globe-trotting and preening for TV cameras.

He promised to transform the city when he was elected in 2005, but proved a shape-shifter himself. At different times he's presented himself as the education mayor, the green mayor, the transportation mayor, the law-and-order mayor. He had plenty of setbacks ? his plan to seize control of schools flopped, for example ? but he also proved resilient, using his political skills to push school improvements even if he wasn't directly in charge.

"He was slow on deciding which of those maybe five or seven dream points, visionary points, he was going to realistically try to tackle," notes Jaime Regalado, former executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

Regalado considers Villaraigosa the most successful mayor since Tom Bradley, who landed the 1984 Olympics and helped shape the city's modern skyline, but adds that Villaraigosa "dreamed large and delivered far less."

Don't tell that to the mayor. "There was a lot more than got done than didn't. In spades," Villaraigosa says.

The outline of Villaraigosa's life is well etched. Son of a Mexican immigrant, barrio tough and high-school dropout, he lifted himself up and eventually became speaker of the California Assembly, city councilman and in 2005, mayor of the nation's second-most populous city.

His best-known traits remain his energy, charm and quick smile, but those were overmatched during a recession and housing crisis that destroyed jobs and chopped into tax revenues. City Hall shed jobs, many streets were left cracked and pocked, library hours were cut.

Unemployment continues to hover around double-digits, lagging the national recovery. Even with new contributions from workers, a growing bill for pensions and retiree health care threatens money needed for street paving and other services. The freeways remain among the most congested roads in the nation.

Villaraigosa is ready for critics who say the only thing he leaves behind is an empty suit. He's distributing a glossy, 61-page magazine documenting the city's safe streets, gains against smog, new park space and his efforts to rescue some of the city's worst-performing schools. His photo appears more than a dozen times inside.

But you'd have to look elsewhere for details on less flattering episodes, the affair with the newscaster that ended his marriage, the record ethics fine for failing to disclose free tickets to Los Angeles Lakers games and other events and the photo of him with the hard-partying Charlie Sheen in Mexico that surfaced as the mayor's name was being mentioned for a possible Obama administration job. Later, Villaraigosa said he wasn't interested in going to Washington.

As his successor, fellow Democrat Eric Garcetti, has made clear he wants to get down to business, not get down and party, Villaraigosa recently marked his departure at a celebration with former President Bill Clinton and Stevie Wonder.

It will also be a generational change at City Hall. Garcetti, 42, is just a few years older than Villaraigosa's eldest daughter.

The outgoing mayor's future isn't clear, though he expects to hook up with a university or think tank and bank some money with paid speeches, a typical route for a celebrity politician. During the interview he waxed about bucking convention and putting the lie to those who have underestimated him over the years.

He's single, his divorce was quietly settled after a messy split, with four children ranging in age from 38 to 20, the two youngest with his former wife Corina.

"How you are perceived is over a continuum of time," Villaraigosa said. "So I just keep on working. I've kind of always seen that as the antidote. Just keep on working."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/la-mayor-exits-bumpy-term-looking-ahead-140732044.html

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Published research shows promise of new device to detect disease with drop of blood

Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
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Contact: Sheryl Weinstein
973-596-3436
New Jersey Institute of Technology

An NJIT research professor known for his cutting-edge work with carbon nanotubes is overseeing the manufacture of a prototype lab-on-a-chip that would someday enable a physician to detect disease or virus from just one drop of liquid, including blood. "Scalable nano-bioprobes with sub-cellular resolution for cell detection," Biosensors and Bioelectronics, (Elsevier, Vol. 45), which will publish on July 15, 2013 but is available now online, describes how NJIT research professors Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, his former postdoctoral fellow, and their team have created a carbon nanotube-based device to noninvasively and quickly detect mobile single cells with the potential to maintain a high degree of spatial resolution.

"Using sensors, we created a device that will allow medical personnel to put a tiny drop of liquid on the active area of the device and measure the cells' electrical properties," said Farrow, the recipient of NJIT's highest research honor, the NJIT Board of Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal. "Although we are not the only people by any means doing this kind of work, what we think is unique is how we measure the electrical properties or patterns of cells and how those properties differ between cell types."

In the article, the NJIT researchers evaluated three different types of cells using three different electrical probes. "It was an exploratory study and we don't want to say that we have a signature," Farrow added. "What we do say here is that these cells differ based on electrical properties. Establishing a signature, however, will take time, although we know that the distribution of electrical charges in a healthy cell changes markedly when it becomes sick."

This research was originally funded by the military as a means to identify biological warfare agents. However, Farrow believes that usage can go much further and potentially detect viruses, bacteria, even cancer. The research may also someday even assess the health of good cells, such as brain neurons. Since 2010, three U.S. patents, "Method of forming nanotube vertical field effect transistor," #7,736,979 (2010); "Nanotube device and method of fabrication" #7,964,143 (2011); "Nanotube device and method of fabrication" #8,257,566 (2012) were awarded for this device. In addition, more patents have been filed.

The device (shown in photo) utilizes standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies for fabrication, allowing it to be easily scalable (down to a few nanometers). Nanotubes are deposited using electrophoresis after fabrication in order to maintain CMOS compatibility.

The devices are spaced by six microns which is the same size or smaller than a single cell. To demonstrate its capability to detect cells, the researchers performed impedance spectroscopy on mobile human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells, neurons from mice, and yeast cells. Measurements were performed with and without cells and with and without nanotubes. Nanotubes were found to be crucial to successfully detect the presence of cells.

Carbon nanotubes are very strong, electrically conductive structures a single nanometer in diameter. That's one-billionth of a meter, or approximately ten hydrogen atoms in a row. Farrow's breakthrough is a controlled method for firmly bonding one of these submicroscopic, crystalline electrical wires to a specific location on a substrate. His method also introduces the option of simultaneously bonding an array of millions of nanotubes and efficiently manufacturing many devices at the same time.

Being able to position single carbon nanotubes that have specific properties opens the door to further significant advances. Other possibilities include an artificial pancreas, three-dimensional electronic circuits and nanoscale fuel cells with unparalleled energy density.

Farrow has published over 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings, received 11 patent awards, 4 while at NJIT, and given 14 invited talks. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center have all supported his research. Farrow was president and conference chair of the 2012 International Symposium on Electron, Ion, and Photon Beams and Nanofabrication. Farrow received his doctorate from Stevens Institute of Technology.

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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.

Published research shows promise of new device to detect disease with drop of blood Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sheryl Weinstein
973-596-3436
New Jersey Institute of Technology

An NJIT research professor known for his cutting-edge work with carbon nanotubes is overseeing the manufacture of a prototype lab-on-a-chip that would someday enable a physician to detect disease or virus from just one drop of liquid, including blood. "Scalable nano-bioprobes with sub-cellular resolution for cell detection," Biosensors and Bioelectronics, (Elsevier, Vol. 45), which will publish on July 15, 2013 but is available now online, describes how NJIT research professors Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, his former postdoctoral fellow, and their team have created a carbon nanotube-based device to noninvasively and quickly detect mobile single cells with the potential to maintain a high degree of spatial resolution.

"Using sensors, we created a device that will allow medical personnel to put a tiny drop of liquid on the active area of the device and measure the cells' electrical properties," said Farrow, the recipient of NJIT's highest research honor, the NJIT Board of Overseers Excellence in Research Prize and Medal. "Although we are not the only people by any means doing this kind of work, what we think is unique is how we measure the electrical properties or patterns of cells and how those properties differ between cell types."

In the article, the NJIT researchers evaluated three different types of cells using three different electrical probes. "It was an exploratory study and we don't want to say that we have a signature," Farrow added. "What we do say here is that these cells differ based on electrical properties. Establishing a signature, however, will take time, although we know that the distribution of electrical charges in a healthy cell changes markedly when it becomes sick."

This research was originally funded by the military as a means to identify biological warfare agents. However, Farrow believes that usage can go much further and potentially detect viruses, bacteria, even cancer. The research may also someday even assess the health of good cells, such as brain neurons. Since 2010, three U.S. patents, "Method of forming nanotube vertical field effect transistor," #7,736,979 (2010); "Nanotube device and method of fabrication" #7,964,143 (2011); "Nanotube device and method of fabrication" #8,257,566 (2012) were awarded for this device. In addition, more patents have been filed.

The device (shown in photo) utilizes standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies for fabrication, allowing it to be easily scalable (down to a few nanometers). Nanotubes are deposited using electrophoresis after fabrication in order to maintain CMOS compatibility.

The devices are spaced by six microns which is the same size or smaller than a single cell. To demonstrate its capability to detect cells, the researchers performed impedance spectroscopy on mobile human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells, neurons from mice, and yeast cells. Measurements were performed with and without cells and with and without nanotubes. Nanotubes were found to be crucial to successfully detect the presence of cells.

Carbon nanotubes are very strong, electrically conductive structures a single nanometer in diameter. That's one-billionth of a meter, or approximately ten hydrogen atoms in a row. Farrow's breakthrough is a controlled method for firmly bonding one of these submicroscopic, crystalline electrical wires to a specific location on a substrate. His method also introduces the option of simultaneously bonding an array of millions of nanotubes and efficiently manufacturing many devices at the same time.

Being able to position single carbon nanotubes that have specific properties opens the door to further significant advances. Other possibilities include an artificial pancreas, three-dimensional electronic circuits and nanoscale fuel cells with unparalleled energy density.

Farrow has published over 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals and proceedings, received 11 patent awards, 4 while at NJIT, and given 14 invited talks. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center have all supported his research. Farrow was president and conference chair of the 2012 International Symposium on Electron, Ion, and Photon Beams and Nanofabrication. Farrow received his doctorate from Stevens Institute of Technology.

###
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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/njio-prs062113.php
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Monday, June 24, 2013

Nadal loses to 135th-ranked player at Wimbledon

LONDON (AP) ? In one of Wimbledon's greatest upsets, an ailing Rafael Nadal was knocked out in straight sets Monday by a player ranked 135th ? the Spaniard's first loss in the opening round of a Grand Slam event.

Steve Darcis of Belgium stunned the two-time champion 7-6 (4), 7-6 (8), 6-4. He ended Nadal's 22-match winning streak and eliminated one of the Big Four of men's tennis on the very first day of the grass-court Grand Slam.

Nadal was sidelined for seven months with a left knee injury after losing in the second round of Wimbledon last year. He seemed to be struggling physically. He was unable to turn on the speed or use his legs to spring into his groundstrokes, limping and failing to run for some shots.

Darcis was as surprised as everyone else with the result.

"Rafa Nadal didn't play his best tennis today," the 29-year-old Belgian said. "The first match on grass is always difficult. It's his first one. Of course, it's a big win. I tried to come to the net as soon as I could, not play too far from the baseline. I think it worked pretty good today."

Nadal was coming off his eighth championship at the French Open last month but, on this day, he never looked like the player who has won 12 Grand Slam titles and established himself as one of the greatest players of his generation.

It's the second straight early Wimbledon exit for Nadal, who was ousted in the second round last year by 100th-ranked Lukas Rosol.

After that loss, Nadal took the rest of the year off to recover from the knee problem. Since returning to action this year, he had made it to the finals of all nine tournaments he entered, winning seven.

After winning the French Open, Nadal pulled out of a grass-court tuneup in Halle, Germany. He came to Wimbledon without any serious grass-court preparation.

Darcis is the lowest ranked player to beat Nadal at any tournament since Joachim Johansson ? ranked No. 690 ? defeated the Spaniard in 2006 in Stockholm.

Gustavo Kuerten, in 1997, was the last reigning French Open champion to lose in the first round at Wimbledon.

Darcis, who had won only one previous match at Wimbledon, played the match of his life Monday, going for his shots and moving Nadal from corner to corner. Darcis amassed a total of 53 winners, compared with 32 for Nadal.

Darcis finished the match in style, serving an ace down the middle ? his 13th ? as Nadal failed to chase after the ball.

Earlier, Roger Federer began his bid for a record eighth title at the All England Club with the same dominance that has defined his grass-court greatness.

Ten years after his first Wimbledon championship, Federer opened the tournament on Centre Court as defending champion and looked right as home as he dismantled Victor Hanescu of Romania 6-3, 6-2, 6-0.

This was a grass-court clinic from Federer that lasted 68 minutes. He had 32 winners, seven aces and just six unforced errors.

He won 90 percent of the points when he put his first serve in. When his serve is clicking, Federer usually is unbeatable. On this day, he won his first 15 service points and 24 out of the first 25.

"I'm happy to get out of there early and quickly," Federer said. "So it was a perfect day."

Earlier, Wimbledon produced an upset in the women's draw with fifth-seeded Sara Errani eliminated by Puerto Rican teenager Monica Puig 6-3, 6-2.

Second-seeded Victoria Azarenka overcame a right knee injury from a scary fall beating Maria Joao Koehler of Portugal 6-1, 6-2.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nadal-loses-135th-ranked-player-wimbledon-171755085.html

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Snowden arrives in Moscow

By James Pomfret and Lidia Kelly

HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - An aircraft believed to be carrying Edward Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday after Hong Kong let the former U.S. security contractor leave the territory, despite Washington's efforts to extradite him to face espionage charges.

The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said Snowden was heading for a "democratic nation" which it did not name, although a source at the Russian airline Aeroflot said he would fly on within 24 hours to Cuba and then planned to go to Venezuela.

Moscow airport officials said the flight from Hong Kong had landed but could not immediately confirm Snowden was on board. However, a source at Aeroflot said he had booked a seat on the service.

Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about U.S. surveillance activities to news media.

A spokesman for the government of Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997, said it had let Snowden depart because a U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law.

The United States wanted him to be extradited to face trial and is likely to be furious about his departure. In Washington, a Justice Department official said it would seek cooperation with countries Snowden may try to go to.

"It's a shocker," said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."

A source at Aeroflot said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then planned to go on to Venezuela. The South China Morning Post earlier said his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.

The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find "political asylum in a democratic country".

It added in an update on Twitter that he was accompanied by diplomats and legal advisers and was travelling via a safe route for the purposes of seeking asylum.

"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group's founder Julian Assange, said in a statement.

"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."

Assange has taken sanctuary in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and said last week he would not leave even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.

U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.

The United States had asked Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China, to send Snowden home.

"The U.S. government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden," the Hong Kong government said in a statement.

"Since the documents provided by the U.S. government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR government has requested the U.S. government to provide additional information ... As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."

It did not say what further information it needed.

The White House had no comment.

CHINA SAYS U.S. "BIGGEST VILLAIN"

Although Hong Kong retains an independent legal system, and its own extradition laws, Beijing has control over its foreign affairs. Some observers see Beijing's hand in Snowden's sudden departure.

Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden, a former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month that Russia would consider granting Snowden asylum if he were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.

The South China Morning Post earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about the United States' spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile telephone companies and targeting China's Tsinghua University.

Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.

China's Xinhua news agency, referring to Snowden's accusations about the hacking of Chinese targets, said they were "clearly troubling signs".

It added: "They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age."

Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America who pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.

(Additional reporting by Fayen Wong in Shanghai, Nishant Kumar in Hong Kong and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Anna Willard and David Stamp)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-nsa-contractor-snowden-leaves-hong-kong-moscow-080843121.html

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Booker brings education ideas to NJ Senate race

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. (AP) ? Newark Mayor Cory Booker has seen the urgent need to fix the city's failing public schools.

Now that he's a candidate for U.S. Senate, he sees the same urgency in urban areas throughout the state.

The Ivy League-educated mayor has clashed with the teachers unions for his support of merit pay and school vouchers. He tells The Associated Press he wants to create the same educational opportunities for all kids as he had.

But the New Jersey Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are staying neutral in the Democratic primary.

Their endorsement probably would have gone to either of two candidates who have been called stalwart supporters of public schools.

A fourth candidate, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, has opposed vouchers but angered the unions by posting pension and health benefits reform bills for a vote.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/booker-brings-education-ideas-nj-senate-race-182232693.html

Red Cross

Nationals' Harper uncertain about rehab timeline

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper is not convinced he can begin a rehab assignment as quickly as his manager believes.

Davey Johnson had said Friday that he expects Harper to start a rehab stint Tuesday at Class A Potomac. Harper, who has been sidelined since May 26 with left knee bursitis, said he thought he needed an extra day or two.

"It just depends how I feel today and tomorrow," Harper said before Saturday's game against the Colorado Rockies. "Monday is an off day, which is good. Tuesday, that's kind of early. I'm thinking Wednesday or Thursday, maybe."

Reporters later informed Johnson of Harper's comments during the manager's pregame media session.

"I'll have a conversation with him about that," Johnson said. "When a player starts playing, it's really up to me, what I think they need. Not up to the player. I'm always trying to do what's best for the player. But at the same time, it's my job to know when they're ready and when they're not."

Entering Saturday, Harper has missed 29 of the Nationals' 73 games. The NL Rookie of the Year ran in the outfield and took swings in the indoor batting cage the previous two days.

"Running after a ball and running on the bases and hitting, I'm full speed, every single day," Harper said. "It's going to be hard playing at 70 percent if they want me to play at 70 percent. I'm not going to do that. I want to come back 100 percent and get back as quick as I can."

Johnson: "The most I'm concerned about is is (Harper) going to be able to bounce back after playing a nine-inning game? He's probably worried about timing and everything being letter-perfect. All that changes from if you're in Potomac. You may never get your timing there because it's a whole new ballgame there, guys don't have command as well as they do up here, and there's a big variation in how they pitch to guys.

"So I'm more concerned about just how they recover from when they come off the DL than I am about what they hit. Since he's never really been on the DL or done rehab, I think his concept might be different from mine."

Before his managerial career, the 70-year-old Johnson played in the majors for 13 seasons.

"I trust players too. They know more about their body than the medical staff," Johnson said. "But when you come back from injury, are you ever 100 percent? But the body has a wonderful ability to heal itself. The more you get the blood flowing, the more you have to heal. Let's get off the DL, guys."

Despite the missed games, Harper, batting .287, remains tied with Ian Desmond for the team lead in home runs with 12.

"It's still going to be sore the whole year, I feel like," Harper said of his left knee. "But daily, it's getting better. I have no pain, which is good. I'm a little sore everywhere else, but that's common. It's good to have no pain finally. To run with zero pain is going to feel great."

Washington has struggled without its left fielder, but their current three-game winning streak has moved the Nationals one game above .500 at 37-36.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nationals-harper-uncertain-rehab-timeline-154405992.html

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Mr. Former President

If America is the land of opportunity, it?s also a great place for reinvention and second acts. Perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in politics. Citizens from all walks of life can and do pursue elected office and often go on to new pursuits on the other side of their public service.?

To succeed at the highest level of politics requires a degree of resilience that most of us don?t have. And that may help explain why so many of our presidents have managed to engineer compelling second and even third acts in the course of their lives.?

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/video/the_hive/2013/06/presidents_after_office_second_and_third_careers_of_u_s_heads_of_state_video.html

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Chimp victim faces battle in appeal of $150M suit

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) ? Blocked in her bid to sue the state for $150 million, the woman mauled and disfigured by a chimpanzee in 2009 faces an uphill battle as she appeals to the legislature.

Charla Nash, who was blinded, lost both hands and underwent a face transplant, argues that officials knew the chimp was dangerous but didn't do anything about it.

While Nash has lawmakers' sympathies, they deny most appeals of decisions by the state's claims commissioner. Nash would also have to overcome a ban on laws that benefit one person and, experts say, a reluctance to authorize a potentially costly lawsuit in a state with financial woes.

"I would say there's a pretty strong burden of proof on a party that's seeking to challenge the claims commissioner's determination," said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven. "There's a fairly high threshold in order to hold the state accountable."

The commissioner on June 14 approved the state's motion to dismiss Nash's claim, saying the law at the time allowed private ownership of chimpanzees and didn't require officials to seize legal animals. The state generally is immune to lawsuits, unless allowed by the claims commissioner.

Nash's lawyer, Charles Willinger Jr., said the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection should be held responsible for not seizing the chimpanzee before the attack. Several months before the attack, a biologist warned state officials in a memo that the chimpanzee could seriously hurt someone if it felt threatened, saying "it is an accident waiting to happen."

That letter helps Nash's case, said state Rep. Arthur O'Neill, a Southbury Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee that will hear her appeal.

"I think there are some interesting questions about what the role of the Department of Environmental Protection was and the degree to which they have any kind of responsibility for people who have these relatively exotic animals," O'Neill said. "Clearly there are issues. It's not like she has no claim on either our sympathies or on the potential for a sense of responsibility by the state towards her."

But O'Neill said sympathy alone would not be enough for Nash to prevail. He recalled a losing appeal by a man who won $5.8 million in the lottery but missed the deadline to collect it by days in 1996.

O'Neill said lawmakers also could approve a financial award for Nash, but he noted her claim is for $150 million. "I really don't know that the legislature is going to award that kind of money," he said.

Nash reached a $4 million settlement last year with the estate of the chimp's owner, Sandra Herold, who died in 2010.

Nash had gone to Herold's home on Feb. 16, 2009, to help lure her friend's 200-pound chimpanzee, named Travis, back inside. But the chimp went berserk and ripped off Nash's nose, lips, eyelids and hands before being shot to death by a police officer.

Nash, 59, now lives in a nursing home outside Boston and requires extensive 24-hour care.

Even if lawmakers vote to allow Nash to sue, there would be legal problems with that decision, said New Haven lawyer Joel Faxon, who is not involved in Nash's case. He said the legislature would have to pass a special act pertaining to one person and that kind of law has been deemed unconstitutional. Many cases rejected by the claims commissioner but later approved by lawmakers have been dismissed by courts because of that issue, he said.

Nash would need to show that granting her the right to sue would serve a larger public purpose, such as protecting others endangered, as well, O'Neill said.

"As a practical matter, if she's going to come to the legislature asking us to pass a law giving her permission to sue the state, she needs to show there is more to it than just her own personal benefit," O'Neill said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chimp-victim-faces-battle-appeal-150m-suit-131832512.html

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Firefighter optimistic they can save South Fork

DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? A massive wildfire threatening a tourist region in southwestern Colorado has grown to nearly 60 square miles, but officials said Saturday that the erratic blaze had slowed and they were optimistic they could protect the town of South Fork.

The fire's rapid advance prompted more than 400 evacuations Friday, and it could be days before people are allowed back into their homes, cabins and RV parks, fire crew spokeswoman Laura McConnell said.

Officials, meanwhile, closely monitored an arm of the blaze moving toward the neighboring town of Creede.

"We were very, very lucky," said Rio Grande County Commissioner Carla Shriver. "We got a free pass yesterday."

McConnell said no structures had been lost and the fire was still about 5 miles from the town.

The blaze had been fueled by dry, hot, windy weather and a stand of dead trees, killed by a beetle infestation. But the fire's spread had slowed by Saturday morning after the flames hit a healthy section of forest. Fire crews remained alert as more hot, dry and windy weather was forecast.

The wildfire, a complex of three blazes, remains a danger, officials said.

"The fire is very unpredictable," Shriver told evacuees at Del Norte High School, east of the fire. "They are saying they haven't quite seen one like this in years. There is so much fuel up there."

Smoke permeated the air Saturday in Del Norte, where a Red Cross shelter was set up for evacuees. Anticipating the mandatory South Fork evacuation would last for days, the Red Cross promised more supplies and portable showers.

New fire crews, meanwhile, descended from other areas to join more than 32 fire engines stationed around South Fork, with hoses and tankers at the ready. Firefighters also worked to move potential fuel, such as lawn furniture, propane tanks and wood piles, away from homes and buildings.

The town of Creede's 300 residents were under voluntary evacuation orders.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/firefighter-optimistic-save-south-fork-174914734.html

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A Typeface Designed To Thwart Spying Computers

If people are snooping on your textual communications and you don't like it, there are a couple of things you can do. You can try to block the prying eyes, you can stop saying things you don't want to be seen, or you can make your messages make no sense to the outside. The anti-authoritarian typeface ZXX is shooting for that last one.

Food Network Facebook Page Inundated With Angry Paula Deen Fans

Food Network's Facebook page has become inundated with angry Paula Deen fans upset that she has been dropped from the network.

The most recent post by the Food Network, a photo with a recipe link for zucchini casserole, has over 800 comments as of 6:30 p.m. on Friday. While there are comments on both sides, a large majority of the comments skew to the angry and racist side. One thing's for sure: there are a lot of die-hard Paula Deen fans out there.

A sampling:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/food-network-facebook_n_3480903.html

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Saturday, June 22, 2013

CUNY Teacher Education Programs Win Praise for Excellence ...

The City University of New York?s teacher-education programs, which have had continuous, marked success in preparing the next generation of students for 21st century classrooms, are engaged in many initiatives to further enhance teacher preparation.

CUNY?s nine campuses with teacher-education programs are fully accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, which is now known as the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, the recognized accrediting agency in the field. Those programs are at Brooklyn, Hunter, Lehman, Medgar Evers, Queens and York Colleges, as well as City College, the College of Staten Island and New York City College of Technology. CUNY candidates achieve high success rates ? well over 90 percent ? on the state certification exam that all candidates take.

CUNY is in the lead nationally and locally in diversifying the teacher workforce. The combined percentage of CUNY black and Hispanic graduates, and of graduates employed by the New York City Department of Education, is double the national workforce percentage (approximately 33 percent at CUNY for both groups combined vs. 14 percent nationally).

Symbolic of the high level of teacher preparation at CUNY are its distinguished partnerships. CUNY?s City College is the exclusive higher educational institution partner in New York State for Math for America ? a privately funded nonprofit that awards $100,000 stipends, payable over five years, to a select group of graduate students who commit to teaching math in New York City?s public secondary schools. The highly competitive program covers the cost of a three-semester master?s in secondary math education, and draws top students from CUNY campuses and undergraduate institutions including Colgate, Columbia, Georgetown, Haverford, and the University of California-Berkeley.

Another measure of CUNY?s quality is its status as a major partner in Lincoln Center Arts Education, which prepares candidates in arts education at Brooklyn, City, Hunter, Lehman, and Queens Colleges.

About The City University of New York:
The City University of New York is the nation?s leading urban public university. Founded in New York City in 1847, the University is comprised of 24 institutions: 11 senior colleges, seven community colleges, the William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, the CUNY Graduate School and University Center, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the CUNY School of Law, the CUNY School of Professional Studies and the CUNY School of Public Health. The University serves more than 269,000 degree credit students and 218,083 adult, continuing and professional education students.College Now, the University?s academic enrichment program, is offered at CUNY campuses and more than 300 high schools throughout the five boroughs of New York City. The University offers online baccalaureate degrees through the School of Professional Studies and an individualized baccalaureate through the CUNY Baccalaureate Degree. Nearly 3 million unique visitors and 10 million page views are served each month via www.cuny.edu, the University?s website.

Source: http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2013/06/21/cuny-teacher-education-programs-win-praise-for-excellence-diversity/

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Death toll in Indian monsoon flooding nears 600

JOSHIMATH, India (AP) ? Rescuers found bodies in the River Ganges and in the muddy, broken earth left by landslides, raising the death toll from monsoon flooding in mountainous northern India to nearly 600 Friday, officials said.

The air force dropped paratroopers, food and medicine for people trapped in up to 100 towns and villages cut off since Sunday in the Himalayan state of Uttrakhand where thousands of people are stranded, many of them Hindu pilgrims who were visiting four shrines in the area.

Uttrakhand state Chief Minister Vijay Bahguna said 556 bodies have been noticed buried deep in slush and the army was trying to recover them. He spoke to CNN-IBN television channel on Friday.

Rescuers also Friday found 40 bodies floating in the Ganges near Haridwar, a Hindu holy city, said police officer Rajiv Swaroop.

Bahguna said the eventual toll would be in the hundreds. Rakesh Sharma, another state official, had said Thursday the death toll might reach the thousands but the exact figure would not be known until the entire region is checked.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters in New Delhi that 34,000 people have been evacuated so far and another 50,000 were stranded in the region. Roads and bridges were washed away by the floods or blocked by debris.

Uttrakhand spokesman Amit Chandola said the rescue operation centered on evacuating nearly 27,000 people trapped in the worst-hit Kedarnath temple area ? one of the holiest Hindu temples dedicated to Lord Shiva, located atop the Garhwal Himalayan range. The temple escaped major damage, but debris covered the area around it and television images showed the bodies of pilgrims strewn around the area.

Soldiers and other workers reopened dozens of roads by building makeshift bridges, accelerating the evacuation, Chandola said. More than 2,000 vehicles carrying stranded Hindu pilgrims have moved out of the area since late Thursday, he said.

Thousands of soldiers continued efforts to reach the worst-hit towns and villages, Chandola said.

Thirty-six air force helicopters have been ferrying rescue workers, doctors, equipment, food and medicine to Kedarnath, the town closest to many of those stranded, said Priya Joshi, an air force spokeswoman. Another seven aircraft carried paratroopers and fuel to the region.

Hundreds of people looking for relatives demonstrated in Dehradun, the Uttrakhand state capital, where flood survivors were taken by helicopters. They complained that the government was taking too long to evacuate the survivors, with small helicopters bringing in four to five people at a time.

Jasveer Kaur, a 50-year-old housewife, said she and her family survived by taking shelter in a Sikh shrine, which withstood the flood, located in Govind Dham.

"There was destruction all around," said Kaur after she was evacuated by an air force helicopter. "It was a nightmare."

Google has launched an application, Person Finder, to help trace missing people in Uttarakhand. The version is available in both Hindi and English languages, according to a Google India blog.

The annual monsoon rains sustain India's agriculture but also cause flooding that claims lives and damages property. Neighboring Uttar Pradesh state said 17 flood-related deaths occurred there since the heavy rains Sunday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/death-toll-indian-monsoon-flooding-nears-600-142740840.html

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Firefighters keep guard over mountain enclave

DEL NORTE, Colo. (AP) ? Fire crews with tankers and hoses at the ready stood guard Friday night as a massive and fast-burning wildfire threatened a popular mountain tourist enclave in southwestern Colorado, forcing the evacuation of more than 400 people.

"It's like gasoline up there," said Cindy Shank, a former firefighter and executive director of the southwest Colorado chapter of the Red Cross, which set up a shelter at Del Norte's high school for residents and visitors of South Fork, a summer retreat of cabins, RV parks and mostly part-time homes.

"I've never seen a fire do this before," Shank said of the blaze, which was being fueled by hot, windy weather and miles and miles of strands of trees killed by a beetle infestation. "It's really extreme, extreme fire behavior. It has split into two pieces. There are two heads to the fire."

A black smoky sky, broken up only by an orange glow over the outlines of the San Juan mountains, was all that was visible from the nearby town of Del Norte, where evacuees were given an update Friday evening by fire officials.

"It will be a couple of days before South Fork is out of danger," Jim Jaminet, a fire management officer for the Rio Grande National Forest, told evacuees.

Although he tried to reassure the residents that their homes and cabins would be saved ? "Every type of structure protection is in place," Jaminet said ? he noted that the wind- and dead tree-fueled blaze was unpredictable.

"Every afternoon these things are getting legs and getting up and walking around," he said of the fires.

Dozens of fire crews were positioned around neighborhoods in the town, working to remove propane tanks and wood piles that could help ignite homes.

Authorities said the 47-square-mile fire was a few miles southwest of town Friday night and had been advancing at a rate of about a mile an hour.

Meantime, a third fire sparked to the West, raising concerns it would move toward the town of Creede, which has about 300 residents.

And to the east, in south-central Colorado, nine structures and four outbuildings have been lost in a wildfire in Huerfano County that forced the evacuation of about two dozen residents and more than 170 Boy Scouts since it started Wednesday, fire officials said.

South Fork a popular spot for hiking and camping. The fictional Griswold family camped in South Fork in 1983's "National Lampoon's Vacation." The famous scene where a dog urinates on a picnic basket was filmed at South Fork's Riverbend Resort, called "Kamp Komfort" in the movie.

South Fork's mayor, Kenneth Brooke, sent his children and grandchildren to a safe location and stayed behind, helping several dozen area fire responders prepare for hosing down structures.

Brooke said authorities are allowing him to stay in South Fork until the blaze crests a nearby mountain. Until then, the mayor was taking phone calls from nervous neighbors and telling them the town's grim forecast.

"I just tell them it doesn't look good," Brooke told The Associated Press by phone Friday. "I tell them the truth, that the fire is coming. I just tell them to keep themselves safe, evacuate as need be and don't come back.

Late June to August is usually peak season for South Fork, when tourists or part-time residents multiply the town's population.

Harold Josefy, his wife and their 13-year-old granddaughter left the Fun Valley RV park after officers knocked on doors Friday morning. "They told us we had to get out now," he said.

But Terri Allahdadi and her motor coach were staying in South Fork for now. "It's like a ghost town," Allahdadi said by telephone Friday night. "We are not having trouble breathing. I know they need to evacuate people, but I don't feel threatened at all."

South Fork native Denny Fleming, 55, said he, his wife and his dad were the only residents he knew who stayed behind. His family runs South Fork's only gas station. They were keeping it open so firefighters would have fuel, coffee and ice, he said. The family's Rainbow Grocery was closed though.

"We're usually very, very busy right now," Fleming said.

Since most of the residents are part-time, most evacuees said they were less concerned about personal possessions than lifestyle.

"There's just lots of memories," Sue McCraw of Stillwater, Okla., said of she and her husband, Dean's rustic cabin 11 miles from South Fork.

"It's an antique," Dean McCraw said. "But it has character."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/firefighters-keep-guard-over-mountain-enclave-081948910.html

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Obama nominates Comey to head FBI

WASHINGTON (AP) ? As the FBI grapples with scrutiny over government surveillance, President Barack Obama on Friday moved to turn the agency over to James Comey, a top Bush administration lawyer best known for defiantly refusing to go along with White House demands on warrantless wiretapping nearly a decade ago.

Obama cited Comey's "fierce independence and deep integrity" as he nominated him to replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Mueller has led the agency for 12 years, longer than any previous director except J. Edgar Hoover, after Obama asked him to stay on beyond his initial 10-year term at a time of global threats. Mueller had moved into the director's office just the week before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Obama applauded him during a Rose Garden ceremony for leading "one of the biggest transformations of the FBI in history to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again."

But Mueller is leaving as agency of 36,000 employees faces new challenges surrounding its intelligence gathering and criminal investigations. The bureau has parried questions in recent weeks over media leak probes; the Boston Marathon bombings; the attack at Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans; vast government surveillance programs into phone records and online communications; and a criminal probe into the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed those programs to the media. And just this week, Mueller revealed the FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance and said the privacy implications of such operations are worthy of debate.

"This work of striking a balance between our security but also making sure we're maintaining fidelity to those values that we cherish is a constant mission," Obama said.

It's a balance that Comey prominently wrestled with during his time as the No. 2 in Bush's Justice Department, dramatically illustrated by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2007 as he recounted a remarkable hospital room standoff with senior White House aides.

Comey told the committee that the showdown on March 10, 2004, was "probably the most difficult night of my professional life." But he said it ultimately resulted in President George W. Bush authorizing him to make changes to an anti-terror program to eavesdrop on domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant.

The hospital confrontation came at the bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had been under intensive care with pancreatitis for a week while Comey served as acting attorney general. Comey said he and Ashcroft had a private meeting just before the attorney general fell ill and had decided they couldn't reauthorize the program that needed to be renewed by March 11 because of concerns about its legality.

Ashcroft's and Comey's opposition was a problem for the White House, which had set up the program with the requirement that it have the attorney general's signature to proceed. Comey said he told the White House he would not certify the program while he was acting as attorney general because of his concerns. So the White House decided to try to go around him.

Comey said his security detail was driving him home around 8 p.m. on that Wednesday when he got a call from Ashcroft's chief of staff letting him know that Bush chief of staff Andrew Card and counsel Alberto Gonzales were heading to the hospital despite a ban on visitors from Ashcroft's wife. Comey sped him to the hospital as he called Mueller and asked him to meet him there.

"I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that," Comey testified. He said he entered Ashcroft's darkened room and tried "to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn't clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off."

Comey said he waited in an armchair at the head of Ashcroft's bed, and Gonzales and Card arrived soon after carrying an envelope. He said Gonzales told the ailing Ashcroft they needed his approval.

"He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me," Comey testified. He said Ashcroft's views reflected the very concerns they had discussed the week before in their private meeting.

"As he laid back down, he said, 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,' and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left," Comey said. "The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room."

Obama cited Comey's willingness to stand up to power in making his FBI nomination. "At key moments, when it's mattered most, he joined Bob in standing up for what he believed was right. He was prepared to give up a job he loved rather than be part of something he felt was fundamentally wrong," Obama said.

Civil libertarians have expressed concern that Comey ultimately approved another version of the wiretapping program and also signed off on interrogation techniques they say were abusive, including waterboarding. But his defiance has won praise from the senators who will oversee his confirmation hearing.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nominates-comey-head-fbi-182258647.html

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British Spy Agency Is Saving Everyone's Email and Calls Too

Thanks to more classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Guardian is now reporting that a British spy agency has tapped into trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables, allowing them access to everything from email and Facebook messages to internet search histories and phone calls. Which they gather indiscriminately. Oh, and they're sharing it with the NSA.

UFO: Britain releases documents explaining closure of military UFO desk

UFO Britain:?The National Archives has been releasing declassified Ministry of Defense files on?UFOs in the UK?for the past five years.?

By Cassandra Vinograd,?Associated Press / June 21, 2013

Stonehenge, seen here during a meteor shower, is the site of reported UFO sightings, as revealed in newly declassified files from Britain's Ministry of Defense.

Kieran Doherty/Reuters/File

Enlarge

Newly declassified files from?Britain's?Ministry of Defense shed further light on why the military shut down its?UFO?desk nearly three years ago: despite a surge in reported sightings, the expensive operation just had no defense benefit.

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The National Archives has been releasing declassified Ministry of Defense files on?UFOs?for the past five years. The 10th and final tranche released Friday covers the work carried out during the final two years of the Ministry of Defense's?UFO?desk, from late 2007 to November 2009.

The 25 files detail reports of alien abductions, sightings, offers to develop weapons to shoot?UFOs?out of the sky ? and the reason for the?UFO?desk's shutdown.

Among the documents ? spread out over 4,400 pages ? was a memo to then-Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth in November 2009, saying that the?UFO?operation was "consuming increasing resource, but produces no valuable defense output."

In more than 50 years, no?UFO?sighting report "has ever revealed anything to suggest an extraterrestrial presence or military threat to the U.K.," the memo said.

The records show that 2009 saw 600?UFO?sightings and reports ? triple the number of the previous year and the largest ever number of?UFO?sighting reports since 1978, the year "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was released in cinemas.

Whatever the reason behind the surge ? some files suggest the popularity of releasing Chinese lanterns at weddings was behind it ? the decision was taken to close the desk.

"The level of resources diverted to this task is increasing in response to a recent upsurge in reported sightings, diverting staff from more valuable defense-related activities," the documents said, with one saying the desk "merely encourages the generation of correspondence."

A great deal of that correspondence is contained in the latest release of the declassified files ? with a wide variety of examples of sighting reports and the?UFO?desk's always polite and often entertaining responses.

One child wrote in, with a drawing of an alien waving from a?UFO?? to ask if there were living things outside of Earth got a nice letter ? and bag of Royal Air Force goodies ? from the Ministry of Defense.

"It's an interesting question and we remain totally open-minded about it, but we don't know of any evidence to prove life exists in outer space," the?UFO?desk replied in 2009. "We do look at reports of 'unidentified flying objects' but only to see if the country's airspace might have been affected but we haven't had any evidence of this so far."

The files also contained letters sent to officials ranging from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Queen Elizabeth II voicing concerns that the government was ignoring the threat of unidentified flying objects and even offering technological guidance on how to shoot down?UFOs.

Among the sightings were reports of?UFOs?seen hovering opposite the Houses of Parliament and near Stonehenge. The files show the desk also took hotline calls about alleged contact with aliens ? from a man who claimed in 2008 that he had been "living with an alien for some time" to another saying a?UFO?had stolen his dog, car and tent while was camping in 2007.

The desk sent the man a response, explaining that the defense ministry does not investigate each sighting unless there is evidence of a potential threat to the U.K. from an external source. But the message, sent in January 2008, added: "you informed us that your dog and possessions were abducted. Abduction, kidnap and theft are criminal offences and therefore would be a matter for the civilian police."

When the?UFO?desk did check into a reported sighting, explanations varied.

In response to one email sent in August 2009, an unidentified Ministry of Defense staffer suggested that "everyone who has seen" attached photos of a reported sighting thinks that two look like stunt kites, and "the third looks like a seagull head on.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/hZTMHqmTVwk/UFO-Britain-releases-documents-explaining-closure-of-military-UFO-desk

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