You can see it here, blown up in a tweet by someone urging it be taken down:
Is this administration so under the sway of the Saudis that we have our Embassies using their flags on our twitter accounts, and putting their flag on equal level with our flag, a complete and utter violation of U.S. flag protocol? Not to mention the sword positioned with point toward the flag and any other symbolism in the Saudi flag, apparently being endorsed.
We had Embassy officials in Cairo that apologize for being attacked, and don?t answer information on dead Americans after 10 p.m..
Now we have this Embassy account debasing us still further? Take it down!
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DAKAR (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would not start "wheeling and dealing" with China and Russia over a U.S. request to extradite former American spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Obama, who appeared concerned that the case would overshadow his three-country tour of Africa begun in Senegal, also dismissed suggestions that the United States might try to intercept Snowden if he were allowed to leave Moscow by air.
"No, I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," he told a news conference in Dakar, a note of disdain in his voice. Snowden turned 30 last week.
Obama said regular legal channels should suffice to handle the U.S. request that Snowden, who left Hong Kong for Moscow, be returned to the United States.
He said he had not yet spoken to China's President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue.
"I have not called President Xi personally or President Putin personally and the reason is ... number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said sharply.
"Number two, we've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues."
Snowden fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in the Guardian and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance of Internet and phone traffic.
The American, who faces espionage charges in the United States and has requested political asylum in Ecuador, has not been seen since his arrival in Moscow on Sunday. Russian officials said he was in a transit area at Sheremetyevo airport.
A Russian immigration source close to the matter said Snowden had not sought a Russian visa and there was no order from the Russian Foreign Ministry or Putin to grant him one.
CHARGES OF U.S. HYPOCRISY
Snowden's case has raised tensions between the United States and both China and Russia. On Thursday, Beijing accused Washington of hypocrisy over cyber security.
Obama's remarks in Senegal seemed calibrated to exert pressure without leading to lasting damage in ties with either country.
"The more the administration can play it down, the more latitude they'll have in the diplomatic arena to work out a deal for him (Snowden)," said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
Obama indicated that damage to U.S. interests was largely limited to revelations from Snowden's initial leak.
"I continue to be concerned about the other documents that he may have," Obama said. "That's part of the reason why we'd like to have Mr. Snowden in custody."
Still, Snowden's disclosures of widespread eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency in China and Hong Kong have given Beijing considerable ammunition in an area that has been a major irritant between the countries.
China's defense ministry called the U.S. government surveillance program, known as Prism, "hypocritical behavior."
"This 'double standard' approach is not conducive to peace and security in cyber space," the state news agency Xinhua reported, quoting ministry spokesman Yang Yujun.
In Washington, the top U.S. military officer dismissed comparisons of Chinese and American snooping in cyber space.
"All nations on the face of the planet always conduct intelligence operations in all domains," Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience at the Brookings Institution.
"China's particular niche in cyber has been theft and intellectual property." Dempsey said. "Their view is that there are no rules of the road in cyber, there's nothing, there's no laws they are breaking, there's no standards of behavior."
In Ecuador, the leftist government of President Rafael Correa said it was waiving preferential rights under a U.S. trade agreement to demonstrate what it saw as its principled stand on Snowden's asylum request.
Correa told reporters Snowden's situation was "complicated" because he has not been able to reach Ecuadorean territory to begin processing the asylum request.
"In order to do so, he must have permission of another country, which has not yet happened," Correa said.
In a deliberately provocative touch, Correa's government also offered a multimillion dollar donation for human rights training in the United States.
The U.S. State Department warned of "grave difficulties" for U.S.-Ecuador relations if the Andean country were to grant Snowden asylum, but gave no specifics.
"USEFUL" CONVERSATIONS
Obama said the United States expected all countries that were considering asylum requests for the former contractor to follow international law.
The White House said last week that Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave would hurt U.S.-China relations. Its rhetoric on Russia has been somewhat less harsh.
Putin has rejected U.S. calls to expel Snowden to the United States and said the American should choose his destination and leave the Moscow airport as soon as possible.
Obama acknowledged that the United States did not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but said such a treaty was not necessary to resolve all of the issues involved.
He characterized conversations between Washington and Moscow as "useful."
Washington is focused on how Snowden, a former systems administrator for the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, gained access to National Security Agency secrets while working at a facility in Hawaii.
NSA Director Keith Alexander on Thursday offered a more detailed breakdown of 54 schemes by militants that he said were disrupted by phone and internet surveillance, even as the Guardian newspaper reported evidence of more extensive spying.
In a speech in Baltimore, Alexander said a list of cases turned over recently to the U.S. Congress included 42 that involved disrupted plots and 12 in which surveillance targets provided material support to terrorism.
The Guardian reported that the NSA for years collected masses of raw data on the email and Internet traffic of U.S. citizens and residents, citing a top-secret draft report on the program prepared by NSA's inspector general.
(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Alexandra Valencia in Quito, Lidia Kelly and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing, Deborah Charles in Baltimore and Steve Holland, Laura MacInnis and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Jeff Mason and Christopher Wilson; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Tim Dobbyn)
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
The 2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks ride in a victory parade down Washington Street as an elevated train passes by Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
CHICAGO (AP) ? Showered with confetti and cheered by screaming fans, the Blackhawks wound their way through downtown Chicago on open-topped buses Friday to celebrate the team's stunning Stanley Cup victory.
Thousands of fans who ditched work and painted their faces red and black roared as the buses moved past carrying waving players in red jerseys including forward Jonathan Toews who cradled the bar-hopping silver trophy.
Before dawn, crowds jammed entrances to the rally site in Grant Park along Lake Michigan where the parade was headed. Some die-hard fans camped out overnight, ready to sprint to the big stage at the front of the park the minute police swung barriers aside.
Some fans hauled homemade versions of the silver Stanley Cup, including one fashioned from an empty beer keg.
One supporter along the parade route held a sign that said, "Thank you, guys." Another said, "Best 17 seconds of my life," referring to the pair of goals scored just seconds apart in the final minutes of the Hawks' 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins on Monday night.
Twenty-somethings Courtney Baldwin and Meghan O'Kane, from the city's suburbs, slapped together a homemade Stanley Cup out of a jumble of jugs and plastic bowls painted grey. Early in the morning, it was not yet full of frothy beverage.
"It will be this afternoon," Baldwin said.
The Blackhawks gave the city something to celebrate as the Cubs and White Sox grind through another lost summer and after the Bears failed to make the playoffs in each of the last two seasons.
And fans took note.
"We love the Blackhawks. This is history and this is a championship, unlike the Cubs," O'Kane said, taking a shot at a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908.
For the Blackhawks, it was the second time they have brought the Stanley Cup home in three years.
This season's victory was dramatic. Trailing Boston until the final minutes, Chicago scored twice in 17 seconds. Delirious fans bolted from bars to celebrate in the streets. Car horns blared.
The party roared overnight and into the next day as the team returned from Boston and, making good on an NHL tradition, toted the Cup around bars and restaurants to the delight of onlookers and fans who tried to keep up.
Sarah Schmidt, 22, who grew up in Chicago and made the pilgrimage to Friday's celebrations from Milwaukee, telling her boss she was taking the day off no matter what ? and hoping she would still have her bar tending job when the party was over.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - A former Warner Music Group intern who's suing the music company has filed a second suit, this time against a New York City recording studio.
In a class-action complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Wednesday, Justin Henry says that he worked for Chung King studios from October 2008 until August 2010. During that time, Henry says, he wasn't paid minimum wage and didn't receive overtime compensation. The class-action suit claims that he wasn't the only one to endure such alleged treatment.
The suit claims that Henry and other members of the class worked "in various positions related to the maintenance and operations of the music studio." Henry claims to have "typically worked from Thursday through Sunday, consistently from 10 p.m. until 10 a.m." From October 2008 to December 2009, the suit alleges, Henry was given no compensation at all, and that from January 2009 to August 2010, he was paid a flat rate of $200 per week, "regardless of the amount of hours worked."
The suit contends that Henry and others in his situation are owed minimum wage plus overtime under federal and U.S. law.
Henry's suit against Warner Bros. Music Group, filed earlier this month, claims that WMG subsidiary Atlantic Music Group withheld wages from Henry and other employees beginning in or around June 2007. Henry's suit claims that he worked as an unpaid intern for the company, answering phones, making copies and performing other tasks, regularly working from 10 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m.
A number of lawsuits from interns seeking compensation for their labor have been filed recently. Earlier this month, two interns who worked on the film "Black Swan" won a partial summary judgment from a judge who found that interns Alexander Footman and Eric Glatt are entitled to pay for their work on the film under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York labor law.
A lawsuit was also recently filed against publisher Conde Nast by two former interns for the company.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Jerusalem, on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time in three months, to make further efforts to resume peace talks between the Jewish country and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Jerusalem, on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time in three months, to make further efforts to resume peace talks between the Jewish country and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Jerusalem, on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time in three months, to make further efforts to resume peace talks between the Jewish country and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in his office in Jerusalem, Israel, June 9, 2013. A senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Israeli government will not accept a Palestinian state with the borders favored by the Palestinians and the international community, a new hurdle to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's effort to restart peace talks in his latest visit to the region. Netanyahu's office has tried to distance itself from the comments. (AP Photo/Abir Sultan, Pool)
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, Israel's President Shimon Peres, center, and Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, left, attend an acrobatics display during a graduation ceremony in the Hatzerim air force base near the southern city of Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 27, 2013. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
FILE - In this file photo taken on April 21, 2010, Governor of the Central Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem. The outgoing governor of Israel's central bank took a parting shot at the Israeli leadership Thursday, June 27, 2013 saying the country hasn't done enough to push for peace with the Palestinians. Fischer, an internationally respected economist, has been a loyal partner to a series of Israeli governments during his eight-year tenure and rarely voiced political opinions in public. But in an interview to Army Radio, Fischer said Israel should push to strengthen Palestinian leaders to help create an independent Palestinian state.(AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel's prime minister, known for his rigid negotiating positions, has been sending signals that he is ready for significant compromises in a peace deal with the Palestinians ? and that he accepts the narrative increasingly favored by his opponents that says ending the West Bank occupation is essential for Israel itself.
While some of Benjamin Netanyahu's political allies say he is serious, the Palestinians remain skeptical. This week's visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry could show which way things can go.
In recent speeches, Netanyahu has stressed the importance of reaching a peace deal, saying it is essential to ensuring Israel's long-term survival.
On Thursday, he made reference to Israel's nightmare scenario in which the peace process breaks down, Palestinians drop their pursuit of an independent state and instead demand equal rights in a single, binational state compromising today's Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza. Most experts believe that given the high Palestinian birthrate, such an Israel could not long survive as a country that is both democratic and somehow Jewish in character.
"It's correct. We do not want a binational state," Netanyahu said at a memorial ceremony for the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl.
On the front page of the Haaretz daily, an anonymous Cabinet minister in Netanyahu's Likud Party was quoted as saying Thursday that Netanyahu is prepared to withdraw from most of the West Bank and evacuate numerous Jewish settlement as part of a peace deal. The story became the focus of much discussion in Israel, widely taken as a trial balloon and an attempt to signal seriousness by the government.
Another Cabinet minister, Yaakov Peri, told the Army Radio station that Netanyahu "knows he will have to carry out a painful evacuation of a number of settlements" as part of any deal.
Netanyahu recently told the Washington Post that if Kerry were to pitch a tent to hold peace talks with the Palestinians, he would "stay in the tent and negotiate for as long as it takes to work out a solution of peace and security."
Such pronouncements were once unthinkable for Netanyahu, who for years was the leader of Israel's nationalist camp and an opponent of Palestinian independence.
That began to change after Netanyahu was elected four years ago and for the first time endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state.
Even so, peace efforts failed to get off the ground, in large part due to Palestinian suspicions toward Netanyahu.
The Palestinians have called on Netanyahu to freeze all Jewish settlement in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war that the Palestinians claim for their future state along with the Gaza Strip, which Israel also occupied but pulled out of in 2005. More than 500,000 Israelis now live in such Jewish settlements, making it increasingly difficult to divide the land into two states.
The Palestinians also say Netanyahu should accept Israel's pre-1967 boundaries as the basis for a final border, with slight modifications worked out in negotiations. Previous Israeli leaders accepted the 1967 borders as a basis for talks.
Netanyahu has refused the Palestinian demands, saying talks should begin without any preconditions.
On Thursday, Israel's outgoing central bank chief, Stanley Fischer, lamented that Israel could have "done more efforts to reach an agreement" with the Palestinians. It was a rare political pronouncement by the internationally respected economist.
Given Netanyahu's refusal to spell out his vision for a final peace deal in any detail, and his past hardline policies and views , the Palestinians remain deeply suspicious.
They note the hundreds of housing starts on occupied land already this year, with thousands more in the pipeline ? including 69 homes that received final permission for construction in an area of east Jerusalem this week.
"Israel has a selected repertoire awaiting U.S. officials ... which includes settlements, settlements and more settlements," the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Thursday. "The international community should understand that in order to create the right environment for negotiations it should not grant impunity to Israel over its repeated crimes and violations."
Following the re-elections of both Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, the U.S. has launched a new mission aimed at reviving peace talks.
Kerry has been shuttling between the sides in search of an acceptable formula. His arrival in Israel late Thursday marked his fifth visit to the region since taking office early this year.
The Americans have been putting pressure on both sides without tangible signs of progress so far. Kerry's proposal is expected to call for compromises by both, including a partial halt to settlement construction, economic aid to the beleaguered Palestinian economy and guarantees that Israel will negotiate border issues in a timely manner.
U.S. officials traveling with Kerry said he will be using long-time relationships with officials from both sides to coax them into talks, and at the same time will remind them of what could happen if no accord is reached.
Earlier this month, in a speech to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Kerry said that the best way to truly ensure Israel's security is by ending the conflict and reaching a negotiated resolution that results in two states.
" The Palestinian Authority has committed itself to a policy of nonviolence," he said. "But if that experiment is allowed to fail, ask yourselves: What will replace it?" The failure of the moderate Palestinian leadership could very well invite the rise of the very thing that we want to avoid: the same extremism in the West Bank that we have seen in Gaza or from southern Lebanon."
It is far from clear whether Kerry will succeed, and Netanyahu's grand vision, if he has one, remains a secret.
Dore Gold, a former Netanyahu adviser who remains a confidant of the prime minister, said the Israeli leader "is determined to make the peace process work" and show "considerable Israeli flexibility."
"At the same time, he's cognizant of the fact that Israel is in a much more dangerous neighborhood," he said, referring to the civil war in neighboring Syria and the takeover of Gaza by Hamas militants. That requires far-reaching security guarantees, Gold said.
Yossi Beilin, a dovish former Israeli politician who helped negotiate interim peace accords with the Palestinians, said there is a complicated "dichotomy" with Netanyahu. Beilin said he has held discussions with Netanyahu and believes he truly is serious about pursuing peace. But he also remains a fervent nationalist and security hawk who will not make the concessions demanded by the Palestinians.
"He is not somebody with whom you cannot talk. But ... not really ready to pay the price of a permanent agreement," Beilin said.
Beilin said the Palestinians should consider pursuing an "interim" deal, granting them independence in 50 to 70 percent of the West Bank while leaving the most difficult issues, such as final borders and the status of Jerusalem, for later. As long as Hamas, which opposes a peace deal with Israel, controls Gaza, a partial deal is the best anyone can hope for anyway, he said.
"There is an opportunity with him," Beilin said, referring to Netanyahu.
___
Associated Press correspondent Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The highest U.S. military appeals court on Wednesday overturned the murder conviction of a Marine sergeant found guilty in 2007 of leading a squad in Iraq that was accused of killing a civilian they had captured, bound and gagged.
Three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces found Sergeant Lawrence Hutchins gave a statement to a U.S. Navy investigator while in custody that should have been ruled inadmissible and tainted his court-martial.
The case stems from the 2006 death in Hamdania, Iraq, of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, a father of 11 and grandfather of four.
In 2007, a court-martial at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base north of San Diego sentenced Hutchins to 15 years in military prison after finding him guilty of unpremeditated murder, larceny and other crimes.
Hutchins was the leader of a squad that went on a mission aimed at stopping militants' use of improvised explosive devices. Witnesses had testified that Hutchins and another Marine shot Awad and placed an AK-47 and a shovel next to the corpse to suggest he had been planting a bomb.
Earlier, Awad had been bound and gagged at another location, according to a finding by a lower court of appeal for the military.
In its ruling on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces said that in May 2006, a Navy investigator began to question Hutchins but he invoked his right to an attorney and was put under guard in a trailer.
Hutchins was not allowed to call a lawyer and no attorney was provided to him, according to the ruling written by Judge Charles Erdmann. Seven days later, the investigator entered the trailer and asked to search Hutchins' belongings and the sergeant said he wanted to talk, the ruling states.
The next day, Hutchins provided a written confession, the ruling stated.
The court found that after Hutchins requested an attorney the investigator had initiated the conversation - by coming back for a search. That led to Hutchins' admission and the judge and two colleagues found that it violated his constitutional right to remain silent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces found "it was an error for the military judge to admit the statement made by Hutchins," which was used at his court-martial.
"Therefore, notwithstanding the other evidence of Hutchins' guilt, there is a reasonable likelihood that the statement contributed to the verdict," the court ruled.
A spokesman for Camp Pendleton where the 2007 court-martial was held said he could not comment on whether Hutchins might soon be released from custody.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces sent the case to a military judge advocate general for referral to an "appropriate convening authority who may authorize a rehearing."
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Anti-gay groups were immediately up in arms after the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional. They argued that this decision will change life in the United States for the worse and that "God's judgment" will be upon us.
American Family Association spokespeople Fred Jackson and Sandy Rios expressed dismay over the DOMA strike-down, Right Wing Watch notes. Rios said the phrase "DOMA's dead" is "metaphorical" because "marriage is dead, too."
"Not a good day," Jackson said, adding, "There is no question that as a country, as a country, if God's judgment has not been upon us before this, God's judgment will be."
AFA mouthpiece Bryan Fischer thinks the worst is yet to come.
The Westboro Baptist Church thanked God for the decision because it means "USA's doom." They seem to think there is no quicker way to bring about the "destruction of this nation" than to allow this equal right.
Meanwhile, the Family Research Council, which released a statement on the decision, seems to be quite concerned about what will happen to all the country's florists.
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that DOMA, which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages even in states where the union has been legalized, is unconstitutional by a 5-4 vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in the majority opinion that "treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others" is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
In a statement released after the ruling, President Barack Obama applauded the Supreme Court's decision to strike down DOMA saying it was "discrimination enshrined in law."
"This ruling is a victory for couples who have long fought for equal treatment under the law; for children whose parents? marriages will now be recognized, rightly, as legitimate; for families that, at long last, will get the respect and protection they deserve; and for friends and supporters who have wanted nothing more than to see their loved ones treated fairly and have worked hard to persuade their nation to change for the better," he said.
PHOENIX (Reuters) - A potentially deadly heat wave is expected to bear down on some Arizona and California desert areas in the next few days, forecasters said on Wednesday.
The mercury is predicted to soar well past 110 degrees Fahrenheit and perhaps top 120F (40s and 50s degrees Celsius) starting on Friday in the deserts of southeast California and southern Arizona, Weather.com and the National Weather Service said.
Forecasters said highs could top 118F (48C) in Phoenix on Saturday, potentially setting a new record for that date in the sun-baked Arizona capital, and increasing the risk of heat stroke and exhaustion.
"Exceedingly high temperatures can cause heat-related illness, including death," the National Weather Service said in an excessive heat warning.
The agency added that residents without air conditioning are most vulnerable during the period covered by the warning - 8 a.m. on Friday through 8 p.m. on Sunday.
Another concern is the risk to undocumented immigrants trekking up from Mexico on foot through the remote deserts of southern Arizona, where shade is scarce and heat is expected to reach 115F to 121F (46C to 49C) over the weekend.
"It's a very dangerous situation to have anyone out in these remote areas," Brent Cagen, a spokesman for the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, told Reuters. "We definitely see a rise (in rescues and deaths) when it gets to be 115 or 120 degrees (Fahrenheit) out in the desert," he added.
Agents, including 250 specially trained as emergency medical responders, carried out 374 rescues from October 1 through May 31. Ninety-nine deaths, most from exposure, were reported during the period, Cagen said.
(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Stacey Joyce)
The Other Mexicans The number of Mexicans of indigenous origin in the U.S. is growing fast, but they are largely overlooked in the debate on immigration reform.
Source: National Geographic News Posted on:
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Dry run for the 2020 Mars MissionPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
A team of scientists is testing instruments vying for a place on the 2020 Mars mission in the Atacama Desert
A film director looking for a location where a movie about Mars could be shot might consider the Atacama Desert, one of the harshest landscapes the planet has to offer. Due to the accidents of its geography, Atacama is the driest place on Earth. Some scientists believe there was no rain to speak of in part of the Atacama between 1570 and 1971. With little moisture in the air its salt lakes, sand dunes and lava flows broil or freeze and are blasted by ultraviolet radiation.
The conditions make the Atacama a splendid place to test instruments for future Mars missions.
"If you're practicing to find life on Mars, you don't want to go to a lush environment," says Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in the earth and planetary sciences Washington University in St. Louis and a participant in NASA's ASTEP program to advance the technology and techniques used in planetary exploration.
This month, under the auspices of ASTEP, a Carnegie-Mellon University rover named Zoe set out into the Atacama. It is scheduled to spend the next four weeks traveling between waypoints with interesting geology and analyzing soil samples, both ones from the surface and ones dredged up from deep underground.
Subsurface samples pulled up by a meter-long drill and dumped into sample cups carried by a carousal to be examined by a laser Raman spectrometer called the Mars Microbeam Raman Spectrometer, or MMRS.
Wang, the principle investigator for the spectrometer, also remotely operates it from her office in St. Louis. Her colleague Jie Wei, PhD, a research scientist in earth and planetary sciences, is traveling with the rover in the Atacama.
Wang says they are hoping Zoe will drive 40 to 50 kilometer and drill 10 to 15 boreholes.
Ready for prime time
The MMRS in its current compact, robust configuration is the culmination of 18 years of work at WUSTL and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), led first by former WUSTL professor Larry Haskin, and now by Wang.
The MMRS was originally scheduled to ride on the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity but after NASA lost two missions on approach to Mars the Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter the MER rovers were downsized and offloaded. The Raman spectrometer, because it was the newest analytical instruments on the rovers, was a casualty of this process.
However, it is now the top candidate among instruments being considered for a 2020 mission to Mars and Wang has just received $3 million from NASA to make sure that it will be mission ready.
What's special about Raman? The spectrometer shines a laser on the sample and measures the energy of the photons the sample scatters back. "Compared to other spectroscopies," Wang says, "Raman spectroscopy returns a very clear spectrum. So if you analyze a mixture (rock or soil) you see peaks for each mineral phase and organic molecule. You don't have to do complicated spectral processing to identify what's in the sample. So compared to other spectroscopies," Wang says, " its very diagnostic. "
Don't fail me now
The journeys in the Atacama are intended is to test the MMRS (and other instruments) until they fail. If a power system is going to fail on Mars, it will probably fail as well in the Atacama. And far better it should fail while still Earth-bound, than when it is 34 million miles away on the Martian surface.
Last year Wang was part of a team that tested instruments in the desert, without the rover, boring holes with hand-held equipment and operating the instruments manually.
Wang was the PI for three of the instruments. "We found some problems we never expected," she says.
"The heat generated by cooling the Raman spectrometer's detector is dissipated by a cooling fan. When we came to the Atacama we were sometimes as high as 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) above sea level. The air is so thin at that altitude, the fan labored to get rid of the heat. That's one lesson we learned."
"Of course it will be different on Mars, "she says, " where the atmosphere is much thinner, but we learned where the instrument is vulnerable. "
On the other hand the laser in the Raman probe has to stay within a certain temperature range to operate properly. "But when we came to Laguna Lejia suddenly we weren't getting a strong enough signal," Wang says. "We started checking and discovered the laser power was only a fifteenth of its normal value. It was so windy and cold the laser couldn't warm up. We had to run it longer before taking measurements to get a good signal. So we learned we had to work out a better temperature control for this laser."
Both discoveries were invaluable since they will allow the team to safeguard against these problems so that they don't occur on Mars.
It's alive!
After the Viking landers failed to find evidence of life on Mars in the late 1970s, a group of scientists took duplicate instruments into the Atacama, where they, too, failed to find evidence life. They did, however, encounter oxidizing soil conditions in the Atacama that destroyed organic molecules, a leading hypothesis for the apparent sterility of the Martian soils.
The Atacama soil tests done last year confirmed the presence of microorganisms in the desert soils. The presence of life in the Atacama does not of course guarantee its presence on Mars. But it does show that if there is subsurface life, the instruments will be able to detect it.
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Dry run for the 2020 Mars MissionPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
A team of scientists is testing instruments vying for a place on the 2020 Mars mission in the Atacama Desert
A film director looking for a location where a movie about Mars could be shot might consider the Atacama Desert, one of the harshest landscapes the planet has to offer. Due to the accidents of its geography, Atacama is the driest place on Earth. Some scientists believe there was no rain to speak of in part of the Atacama between 1570 and 1971. With little moisture in the air its salt lakes, sand dunes and lava flows broil or freeze and are blasted by ultraviolet radiation.
The conditions make the Atacama a splendid place to test instruments for future Mars missions.
"If you're practicing to find life on Mars, you don't want to go to a lush environment," says Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in the earth and planetary sciences Washington University in St. Louis and a participant in NASA's ASTEP program to advance the technology and techniques used in planetary exploration.
This month, under the auspices of ASTEP, a Carnegie-Mellon University rover named Zoe set out into the Atacama. It is scheduled to spend the next four weeks traveling between waypoints with interesting geology and analyzing soil samples, both ones from the surface and ones dredged up from deep underground.
Subsurface samples pulled up by a meter-long drill and dumped into sample cups carried by a carousal to be examined by a laser Raman spectrometer called the Mars Microbeam Raman Spectrometer, or MMRS.
Wang, the principle investigator for the spectrometer, also remotely operates it from her office in St. Louis. Her colleague Jie Wei, PhD, a research scientist in earth and planetary sciences, is traveling with the rover in the Atacama.
Wang says they are hoping Zoe will drive 40 to 50 kilometer and drill 10 to 15 boreholes.
Ready for prime time
The MMRS in its current compact, robust configuration is the culmination of 18 years of work at WUSTL and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), led first by former WUSTL professor Larry Haskin, and now by Wang.
The MMRS was originally scheduled to ride on the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity but after NASA lost two missions on approach to Mars the Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter the MER rovers were downsized and offloaded. The Raman spectrometer, because it was the newest analytical instruments on the rovers, was a casualty of this process.
However, it is now the top candidate among instruments being considered for a 2020 mission to Mars and Wang has just received $3 million from NASA to make sure that it will be mission ready.
What's special about Raman? The spectrometer shines a laser on the sample and measures the energy of the photons the sample scatters back. "Compared to other spectroscopies," Wang says, "Raman spectroscopy returns a very clear spectrum. So if you analyze a mixture (rock or soil) you see peaks for each mineral phase and organic molecule. You don't have to do complicated spectral processing to identify what's in the sample. So compared to other spectroscopies," Wang says, " its very diagnostic. "
Don't fail me now
The journeys in the Atacama are intended is to test the MMRS (and other instruments) until they fail. If a power system is going to fail on Mars, it will probably fail as well in the Atacama. And far better it should fail while still Earth-bound, than when it is 34 million miles away on the Martian surface.
Last year Wang was part of a team that tested instruments in the desert, without the rover, boring holes with hand-held equipment and operating the instruments manually.
Wang was the PI for three of the instruments. "We found some problems we never expected," she says.
"The heat generated by cooling the Raman spectrometer's detector is dissipated by a cooling fan. When we came to the Atacama we were sometimes as high as 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) above sea level. The air is so thin at that altitude, the fan labored to get rid of the heat. That's one lesson we learned."
"Of course it will be different on Mars, "she says, " where the atmosphere is much thinner, but we learned where the instrument is vulnerable. "
On the other hand the laser in the Raman probe has to stay within a certain temperature range to operate properly. "But when we came to Laguna Lejia suddenly we weren't getting a strong enough signal," Wang says. "We started checking and discovered the laser power was only a fifteenth of its normal value. It was so windy and cold the laser couldn't warm up. We had to run it longer before taking measurements to get a good signal. So we learned we had to work out a better temperature control for this laser."
Both discoveries were invaluable since they will allow the team to safeguard against these problems so that they don't occur on Mars.
It's alive!
After the Viking landers failed to find evidence of life on Mars in the late 1970s, a group of scientists took duplicate instruments into the Atacama, where they, too, failed to find evidence life. They did, however, encounter oxidizing soil conditions in the Atacama that destroyed organic molecules, a leading hypothesis for the apparent sterility of the Martian soils.
The Atacama soil tests done last year confirmed the presence of microorganisms in the desert soils. The presence of life in the Atacama does not of course guarantee its presence on Mars. But it does show that if there is subsurface life, the instruments will be able to detect it.
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With Google Reader ready to tap out, it seems like everyone is keen to throw their hat into the feed reader ring. The latest offering is from AOL and it's simple, fast and lacking any unique features?though that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Just a few short steps off Central Park West you have the means of traveling back through time to explore the diversity of life in ways you may not consider. Before humans, before dinosaurs, before fish even, there was another life form that achieved dominance. Something that we would likely overlook today, but once flourished with with great success. I?m talking, of course, about trilobites, and the opportunity to step back in time through a temporary exhibit at the American Museum of History to the age of the trilobites.
Trilobites represent some of the earliest forms of complex life. They had a solid 300 million year run, which allowed them to develop into some very diverse forms. Scientists have identified over 20,000 species that swam, crawled, and burrowed in the oceans at some point between the Cambrian (542 mya) and Permian (251 mya) periods before succumbing to a final mass extinction. The fossil record shows that their numbers dwindled a few times during this time frame, but they were able to rebound to varying degrees of success.
We?ve been able to learn a great deal about these creatures because they?re arthropods and have exoskeletons, and when you combine this with a marine environment we have the optimal conditions for detailed fossils. Exhibit curator Dr. Neil Landman finds them fascinating. ?They?re exquisitely preserved,? he said.?Some have eyes on stalks some have spines. And all this information tells us how the animals lived on the ocean floor.?
The display is meant to capture the diversity and complexity of life through a different lens. Trilobites themselves seem like creatures from another planet?it?s a great reminder that life can be successful in many different ways.
Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon and John Cusack are among an array of A-list actors starring in a new video urging President Barack Obama to "set the world's course" for an end to nuclear weapons at next week's G8 Summit in Northern Ireland.
"Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked," actor Robert De Niro says in the video.
"Such fatalism is a deadly adversary," Damon responds.
Whoopi Goldberg, Morgan Freeman, Naomi Watts and Christoph Waltz also appear in the two-and-a-half minute spot.
The video was produced by Global Zero, a Washington, D.C.-based grassroots organization whose mission is "to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2030."
?The message from national security experts and citizens around the world is clear: the only way to eliminate the global nuclear danger is to eliminate all nuclear weapons,? Michael Douglas says. ?It's time to set the world's course to zero.?
To do so, Global Zero said in a press release, President Obama "will have to go beyond the bilateral process President Reagan started of U.S.-Soviet/Russian arms reductions and bring the other leading nuclear powers into international arms negotiations for the first time in history."
The group also sent an open letter to Obama recalling a 2009 speech in which the president committed to their cause.
President Obama,
Four years ago in Prague, [y]ou stated clearly and with conviction your commitment to seek a world without nuclear weapons. You asked for perseverance. You dared us to overcome our differences. You challenged us to ignore the voices that tell us the world cannot change. And you told us words must mean something.
We heard you.
On June 17-18, when you meet with President Putin on the side of the G8 Summit, we urge you to negotiate further cuts to the massive U.S.-Russian Cold War stockpiles and pave the way to bringing world leaders into the first international negotiations in history for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Of course, there are other pressing issues for Obama and Putin to discuss. Namely, Syria, and its deadly civil war.
After authorizing U.S. weapons for Syrian rebels, Obama faces difficult talks with the Russian president, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful ally.
"There are no illusions that that's going to be easy," Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, told Reuters.
?It?s in Russia?s interest to join us in applying pressure on Bashar Assad to come to the table in a way that relinquishes his power and his standing in Syria,? Rhodes told the Associated Press. ?We don?t see any scenario where he restores his legitimacy to lead the country.?
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) ? A woman who was critically wounded in last week's Santa Monica shooting rampage died Sunday, bringing the total number of victims killed by the gunman to five.
Marcela Franco, 26, died of her injuries at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, according to Santa Monica College spokeswoman Tricia Ramos.
Franco had been a passenger in a Ford Explorer driven by her father, campus groundskeeper Carlos Navarro Franco, 68, who also was killed in Friday's attack.
Investigators trying to determine why the gunman planned the shooting spree were focusing on a deadly act of domestic violence that touched off the mayhem.
The heavily armed man's attack against his own family at their home led to the violence in Santa Monica streets, lasting just a matter of minutes until he was shot to death in a chaotic scene at the college library by police.
Investigators were looking at family connections to find a motive because the killer's father and brother were the first victims, an official briefed on the probe who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly told The Associated Press.
The killer, who died a day shy of his 24th birthday, was connected to a home that went up in flames after the first shootings, said police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks.
Police were not naming the shooter or the two men found dead in the house because next of kin was out of the country and hadn't been notified. Neighbors and colleagues of the boys' mother said she was visiting family in Lebanon.
SWAT team officers searched the mother's Los Angeles apartment and officers interviewed neighbors about the son who lived with her, said Beverly Meadows who lives in the adjoining unit.
Public records show that Meadows' neighbor is Randa Abdou, 54, the ex-wife of Samir Zawahri and former co-owner of the house where the first shooting took place.
Abdou was wasn't expected home for another week, Meadows said. It wasn't clear if the son who lived with Abdou was a victim or the suspected gunman.
Zawahri, 55, brought his family to the neighborhood of small homes and apartment buildings tucked up against Interstate 10 in the mid-1990s, according to property records.
Not long after arriving on Yorkshire Avenue, the couple went through a difficult divorce and split custody of their two boys, said Thomas O'Rourke, a neighbor.
When the sons got older, one went to live with his mother while the other stayed with the father.
Standing next to the weapons and ammo found at multiple crime scenes, Seabrooks said at a Saturday news conference that the "cowardly murderer" planned the attack and was capable of firing 1,300 rounds.
The killer had a run-in with police seven years ago, but Seabrooks wouldn't offer more details because he was a juvenile at the time.
The gunman was enrolled at Santa Monica College in 2010, Seabrooks said.
After neighbors watched in shock as he shot at his father's house and it went up in flames, he opened fire on a woman driving by, wounding her, and then carjacked another woman.
He directed her to drive to the college, ordering her stop along the way to shoot at a city bus and people on the street. Two people on the bus were injured.
Police had received multiple 911 calls by the time the mayhem shifted to the college, a two-year school with about 34,000 students located more than a mile inland from the city's famous pier, promenade and expansive, sandy beaches.
On campus, he opened fired on a Ford Explorer driven by Navarro Franco, who plowed through a brick wall into a faculty parking lot.
Joe Orcutt heard gunshots and went to see what happened in the parking lot. He said he saw the Explorer in the brick wall and was looking for the shooter when, suddenly, there he was 30 feet away firing at people like it was target practice.
The gunman then moved on foot across campus, firing away. Students were seen leaping out windows of a classroom building and running for their lives. Others locked themselves behind doors or bolted out of emergency exits.
Trena Johnson, who works in the dean's office, heard gunshots and looked out the window and saw a man in black with a "very large gun" shoot a woman in the head outside the library. That victim was transported to a hospital, where she died.
At some point, police say the gunman dropped an Adidas duffel bag loaded with ammunition magazines, boxes of bullets and a .44 revolver. Police also found a small cache of ammunition in a room in the burned-out house.
Surveillance photos showed the gunman in black strolling past a cart of books into the library with an assault-style rifle by his side.
The shooter fired at least 70 rounds in the library. Miraculously, no one was injured until two Santa Monica police officers and a campus cop arrived and took out the shooter.
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Associated Press writer Christopher Weber contributed to this story. Tami Abdollah can be reached at: http://www.twitter.com/latams
Mad Men episode titles have been especially literal this season, haven't they? "Favors," last night's episode, falls in the same naming vein as the previous week's "A Tale of Two Cities," in which the allusions are evident from the start. Can people do things for other people without expectations in return? What's in a favor, anyway? (Plenty.)
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Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
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