Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/193560543?client_source=feed&format=rss
wish you were here lyrics wish you were here lyrics mine mine amzn kendrick perkins
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
White House pressure on Gulf oil leak figures alleged
Official estimates of how much oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster turned out to be well below the mark. Now an advocacy group has filed a complaint of misconduct to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) against the scientist who compiled the estimates, alleging he "lowballed" the numbers after political pressure from the White House, among others.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) alleges that Bill Lehr of NOAA edited his report to stress estimates from a technique called particle image velocimetry, even though three scientists on the team had already concluded that the technique was seriously underestimating the flow.
Their much higher estimates were later confirmed to be roughly correct.
Lehr denies the allegation. "Absolutely nothing was done in any way to change these numbers or fudge any data," he told New Scientist.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
Subscribe now to comment.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
anniversary flight 93 flight 93 al qaeda infiniti empire state building amazing grace
Monday, January 30, 2012
Mitt Romney: Who In God's Name Is He Anyway?
New York:
Back in the thick of the 2008 Republican presidential race, I asked a captain of American finance what he had made of Mitt Romney when they were young colleagues at Bain & Company. "Mitt was a nice guy, a smart businessman, and an excellent team player," he ?responded without missing a beat. Then came the CEO's one footnote, delivered with bemusement, not pique: "Still, whenever the rest of us would go out at the end of the day, we'd always find ourselves having the same conversation: None of us had any idea who this guy was."
Read the whole story: New York
"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/30/mitt-romney-mormon_n_1240761.html
urban meyer adam shulman adam shulman nfl power rankings week 13 nfl power rankings week 13 patrice patrice
99% A Separation
All Critics (88) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (88) | Rotten (1) | DVD (2)
Asghar Farhadi's emotionally epic movie is not just a masterpiece dramatically, it is a movie dramatically of its moment.
It's small. It's real. And it's deeply moving.
This is a trenchant emotional thriller that you watch in dread, awe, and amazing aggravation.
Some films wear their artistry so lightly they appear simply to be happening, the inner workings of the story guided by an unseen hand.
The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone's position, our emotions often disagree.
This is primarily a human story about a marriage unraveling, the husband torn between love for his daughter and devotion to his father, the daughter torn between one parent and the other.
Emotionally resonant beyond the filmmaker's own country and culture, it is a compassionate yet searingly precise film that refuses to name villains, nor to let any of its protagonists off the hook
Sometimes, in an attempt to do the best we can for the people we love, we end up wreaking irreparable damage.
[The film] puts us in the uncomfortable role of the adjudicator.
Culturally specific but universally relatable, this slowly escalating Iranian drama boasts incredibly impressive motivational clarity.
For all the stifled truths of its characters, Farhadi's film feels like a gust of brisk air.
...like being caught in a barbed-wire fence of ethical dilemmas.
Feels like a peek through a neighbor's window.
The progressively tedious atmosphere ultimately prevents the film's final scenes from making any real emotional impact...
Estabelece definitivamente Asghar Farhadi como um dos diretores mais consistentes e fascinantes do Cinema contempor?neo.
More Critic ReviewsSource: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_separation_2011/
walmart black friday 2011 walmart black friday 2011 packers vikings bob costas jerry sandusky chelsea clinton kat von d tiki barber
Sunday, January 29, 2012
If Round 1 is the war of words, Phil Davis leads 10-8 over Rashad Evans
CHICAGO -- In most interviews Phil Davis comes off as a reserved young man. He's not out to ruffle any feathers, but those of us who've had a chance to speak to him repeatedly always knew there was a potential media darling behind that conservative facade.
In the lead-up to Saturday's UFC on Fox 2 card, Rashad Evans has brought out the beast in Davis and the former UFC light heavyweight hasn't reacted too well.
It started last week when Evans flipped out on Davis calling him a "boy." Yesterday during the UFC on Fox 2 prefight press conference, Evans shook his head, appeared annoyed and even looked flustered on several occasions.
As the banter began, Evans tried to play it cool.
"For the most part, I've got nothing against Phil, but you we've got a fight so I've got a lot against him right now. It's personal, but not really PERSONAL personal," said Evans, who had heated prefight words with previous opponents like Tito Ortiz and Quinton Jackson.
Evans got irked when the issue of college wrestling came up. Phil Davis, a more accomplished NCAA star at Penn State than Evans was at Michigan State, laughed when someone asked if his opponent could beat him in a straight wrestling match. Evans kept saying "your technique is trash."
Then Davis was asked about missing the opportunity to face Evans back in August in Philadelphia. Davis quickly pointed out that he didn't get to fight in front of his friends and family from nearby Harrisburg, Pa. Evans took issue with the fact that Davis didn't say he was sad to lose out on the opportunity to fight him. Davis fired back, "Nobody heard me say that!"
Evans snapped again when Davis explained his understanding of what the result of a win could be, a possible title shot against Jon Jones.
"The winner of this fight will fight for the title, but in the event that I hit him too hard and break my hand ... it might lead to somebody else getting the title shot first," said Davis.
"You don't punch nobody hard. Phil can't hit. Phil punches with his hands open and everything," Evans said. "He couldn't bust a grape. You look like Arsenio Hall."
Davis laughed.
"Give him a hand y'all. Give him a hand," said Davis.
That opened the door for a female fan to ask Davis whether he looked more like Hall or NBA star Dwight Howard? Davis handled it gracefully as he done throughout the lead-up to Saturday's tilt. We'll see if his poise remains intact in the fight. Either way, this week showed he'll be a valuable asset on main cards for years to come in the UFC.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/round-1-war-words-phil-davis-10-8-154948395.html
whole foods blood pressure uhs uhs google street view google street view gluten free diet
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Matt Yglesias Is Wrong About Copyright
Oh, but Caleb, you will say. A lunch is different than an electronic copy of a work of art. And I would answer, Yes, that's true, but that's a separate issue, which I'll get to in a moment. The rationale quoted above depends in no way on the nature of what is taken. It's merely a claim that the economy-boosting spending potential of a thief is not necessarily impaired by his theft, and it can justify, or at least minimize the harm of, the theft of anything, abstract or concrete. It depends in no way on the nature of what is taken. Let's try taking Yglesias' laptop, for example. Here we go. ... Great! Now I have a new laptop. And the money that I was going to spend upgrading mine, I'm now free to spend on a new bicycle! Somebody in Portland will hand-make it, probably. A hipster has been given a job! Yglesias' laptop is my new bicycle! The Internet is so much fun.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=6b9eac2a08a3a776ab52169e99705405
friday night lights christina hendricks emmys emmys tom bosley nina dobrev nina dobrev
Medication helps some with mild depression (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? People with mild depression may benefit from taking antidepressants, suggests a new analysis of past studies that compared symptoms in people on the drugs to those given drug-free placebo pills.
Some earlier reports had suggested that antidepressants generally only improve mood in people with severe depression.
But that might be because those studies weren't precise enough to pick up on smaller changes in symptoms that can still make a difference for people with milder forms of the disease, researchers said.
"I think there's a valid concern... that if someone has not-that-severe depression that hasn't lasted that long, maybe it will get better itself or with therapy," said Dr. David Hellerstein, from the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, who worked on the study.
Still, he said the question of whether or not to prescribe medication shouldn't necessarily come down to how severe the depression is, but how long symptoms have lasted.
People with "transient depression" that will improve with diet or exercise or after a few weeks of therapy "shouldn't be taking the risk of being on meds," he told Reuters Health.
"But people who have more persistent depression should be evaluated for treatment and medicine should be one of the options," even when the depression is more modest.
Hellerstein and his colleagues collected data from six studies done at the state's psychiatric institute between 1985 and 2000. Those included 825 people with non-severe, long-lasting depression enrolled in trials that compared symptoms with antidepressant treatment versus a placebo.
In three of the six studies, patients taking an antidepressant improved more on a widely-used scale of depression symptoms and severity than those taking a placebo, and in four studies, a higher percentage of patients taking antidepressants went into remission, meaning they were no longer considered to have clinically-significant depression.
Depending on the particular drug and study, the researchers calculated that between three and eight people with non-severe depression would have to be treated with an antidepressant for one to benefit substantially from it.
That, they wrote in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, is "a range considered by researchers as sufficiently robust to recommend treatment."
The drugs tested in those studies included Prozac, as well as older and now less-popular medications known as monoamine oxidase inhibitors and tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants. It's hard to know how well the findings would apply for newer antidepressants, the researchers said.
The results don't mean that everyone with mild depression should be on an antidepressant, a psychiatrist not involved in the study pointed out.
"People with these milder depressions also respond well to counseling and psychotherapy and can respond well to exercise," said Dr. Michael Thase, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
"This is basically saying, these antidepressants aren't that good, and you should also consider other treatment options and don't just focus on the thing that's the easiest," he told Reuters Health.
The researchers said that some combination of antidepressants and talk therapy is considered most effective in depression treatment -- but getting therapy is often more expensive and time-consuming than medication.
Talk therapy can run $100 or more per session, while generic brands of antidepressants usually cost about $20 per month. Drugs may come with side effects, including insomnia and stomach aches, but they're usually minor, according to Hellerstein.
Still, people on antidepressants should be followed closely by a doctor to see how they're responding to treatment, he said.
Several of the authors of the current study reported having received funding for other research projects from drug companies that make antidepressants.
One recent study found that some depressed people on the antidepressant Cymbalta did worse than the comparison placebo group -- but the majority got some benefit (see Reuters Health story of December 9, 2011).
"I believe the basic finding that drugs are more effective than placebo," Thase said.
But, "The benefits of antidepressants may not be that dramatic in patients with milder depressions for whom many other (non-drug) strategies can also be considered."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/yVBEdk Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online December 27, 2011.
bob knight lavar arrington hope solo dancing with the stars hope solo dancing with the stars jack wagner matt jones snow white and the huntsman trailer
Friday, January 27, 2012
Of Course the World's Most Expensive Private Yacht Has Its Own Laser Shield [Video]
oklahoma state university badgers badgers mendenhall nbc sports network demarcus cousins savannah brinson
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Cynthia Nixon wrestles with life in a moving 'Wit' (AP)
NEW YORK ? Another "Sex and the City" star has made her way to Broadway but she's brought along a different kind of cocktail.
Cynthia Nixon has a combination of the drugs Hexamethophosphacil and Vinplatin in her veins as she fights back ovarian cancer in a tight and powerful Manhattan Theatre Club production of "Wit," which opened Thursday at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
The play about the final days of a scholar of John Donne's metaphysical poetry is making its Broadway premiere 13 years after it earned playwright Margaret Edson the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
It is a deceptive play ? seemingly so simple yet layered with nuance and self-consciousness. "I've got less than two hours. Then: curtain," quips the scholar at the top of the piece in a typically ? yes, witty ? line.
The part of Professor Vivian Bearing is catnip for any serious actress ? Emma Thompson and Judith Light have played her ? and Nixon has scrubbed all glamour from her face and body to inhabit a woman who goes from detached observer of her own condition to one consumed by raw feeling, whimpering childlike in pain.
And yet Nixon has decided to play her character far too robotic at the beginning, perhaps to heighten her arc. The result is a more shocking payoff when Bearing finally succumbs, but it comes at the cost of initially emotionally connecting with her audience. For too many stretches here, Nixon is like a Vulcan, her character's humanity hidden behind the walls of her formidable mind.
Nixon on stage appears on stage bald from chemo and wears a baseball cap and two formless hospital gowns. It's a far cry from her "Sex and the City" comrade Kim Cattrall, who just finished her latest stint on Broadway in Noel Coward's frothy "Private Lives" while sipping Champagne in silky gowns.
The humor in Nixon's play is grim, grim, grim and Nixon ? along with director Lynne Meadow, who are both cancer survivors ? have wrung out every ounce in a 100-minute, intermission-less production. The production gets its biggest laughs for tweaking hospitals as inhuman factories, with the ubiquitous question to patients "How are you feeling today?" particularly mocked.
The role of a slightly dim but goodhearted nurse (played by Carra Patterson) seems ill-defined in this production. But two smaller roles are very well executed.
Greg Keller plays the brisk Dr. Jason Posner, a one-time student of the imperial Professor Bearing who is in many ways her medical soul mate. He, too, is unhappy dealing with humans, preferring to be hidden away in a research lab just as she hides behind wit.
"So. The young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity," Bearing tells us in an aside.
Keller shows a lovely flash of awkwardness when he begins a pelvic exam of his old teacher and his speech about why the disease she battles is so interesting to him ? "Cancer's the only thing I ever wanted," he thoughtlessly says ? mimics his patient's detached rapture for her beloved poet, Donne.
The other memorable performance is from Suzanne Bertish, who pops up twice as E.M. Ashford, Bearing's mentor who encourages the younger woman to engage with life in a flashback scene and then tenderly reads to her as she dies in the play's most tear-jerking moment.
Meadow has handled the flashbacks and quick scene changes flawlessly. She has been aided by Santo Loquasto's simple yet effective set, which is really just an industrialized-colored wall that spins, allowing one scene to play out and then twist to present another on the reverse side.
In one flashback, a lecture about one of Donne's sonnets by a still-formidable Bearing armed with a pointer she smacks around to make her points is a glorious moment to see her in her full arrogant, passionate past, one made even more poignant when she is interrupted by a nurse requesting another medical test. Nixon shines here as she allows her irritability to come out.
Edson's writing grows in strength as the play builds and so does Nixon, whose stilted language at the beginning ("It is not very often that I do feel fine") gives way to the use of contractions, swears and slang. ("What's left to puke?" she asks.) Bearing learns to accept and then enjoy human touch. She licks a Popsicle then laughs at herself for being corny.
"Once I did the teaching, now I am taught," she says.
In a play about ultimately reconnecting with one's humanity, Nixon is almost too hard to watch at the end. A ball of pain, and a curdling cry, is all she seems. But she ultimately achieves the state that the playwright intended: grace.
___
Online:
http://www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com
scarlett johansson glee project winner kris humphries remember the titans wale wale weather denver
VH1 Debuts MOB WIVES: THE SIT DOWN with Host CARRIE KEAGAN Sunday January 29th at 9pm EST
With ratings as high as the on-set drama, VH1 today announced that its one-hour hit reality series ?Mob Wives? will?be immediately followed with a half-hour post-show titled ?Mob Wives: The Sit Down,? beginning Sunday, January 29 at 9pm ET/PT. The series will also be produced by TWC, Electus, Left/Right and JustJenn Productions who also produce [...]
hgtv dream home miss america 2012 patriots vs broncos tebow denver broncos contraband tim tebow
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Palestinian leader: Talks with Israel over (AP)
RAMALLAH, West Bank ? A low-level dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians about a future border has ended without any breakthrough, the Palestinian president said Wednesday, reflecting the impasse plaguing the negotiations for at least three years.
President Mahmoud Abbas said he would consult with Arab allies next week to figure out how to proceed now. While frustrated with the lack of progress, Abbas is under pressure to extend the Jordanian-mediated exploratory talks, which the international community hopes will lead to a resumption of long-stalled formal negotiations on establishing a Palestinian state.
Israel said Wednesday it's willing to continue the dialogue. Abbas didn't close the door to continued meetings, saying he'll decide after consultations with the Arab League on Feb. 4.
A Palestinian walkout could cost Abbas international sympathy at a time when he seeks global recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
The gaps between the leaders are vast, and Abbas believes there is no point in returning to formal negotiations without assurances, such as marking the pre-1967 war lines as a basis for border talks and halting Israeli settlement building on occupied lands. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says everything should be discussed in negotiations and insists he is serious about reaching a deal by year's end.
Though there have been talks off and on, the last substantive round was in late 2008, when Israel informally proposed a deal and the Palestinians did not respond. When Netanyahu took office the next year, he took the proposal, including a state in most of the territories the Palestinians claim, off the table.
A round started in late 2010 by President Barack Obama quickly sputtered over the settlement issue.
Visiting EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is scheduled to meet separately over the next two days with Abbas and Netanyahu to try to salvage the exploratory talks. Two officials involved in the contacts said she is trying to put together a package of Israeli incentives that would keep the Palestinians from walking away.
"We need to keep talks going and increase the potential of these talks to become genuine negotiations," Ashton said.
Before his meeting with Ashton, Netanyahu said, "We've been trying to make sure that the talks between us and the Palestinians will continue. That is our desire."
Under Jordanian mediation, Israeli and Palestinian envoys have met several times over the past month, including on Wednesday. The Quartet of international mediators ? the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia ? said last fall that it expected both sides to submit detailed proposals on borders and security arrangements in these meetings.
Palestinian officials said they submitted their proposals, but that Israel did not. Abbas suggested that exploratory talks could continue if Israel presented a detailed border plan.
"If we demarcate the borders, we can return to negotiations, but Israel does not want to do that," Abbas said Wednesday, after talks in Jordan with Jordan's King Abdullah II. His remarks were carried by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
The Palestinians are flexible on security arrangements, but would object to any Israeli presence in a Palestinian state, he said.
Netanyahu has said he would not give up east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital, but has never outlined where he would draw a border.
Such a demarcation could set off a political firestorm in his governing coalition, particular among pro-settler parties, because it would spell out how many settlements would have to be dismantled at a minimum.
In the exploratory talks, Israel submitted a list of 21 issues that would need to be discussed, but didn't present positions.
The Palestinians have accused Netanyahu ? a reluctant latecomer to the idea of Palestinian statehood ? of seeking negotiations as a diplomatic shield, with no real intention of reaching an agreement.
An Israeli government official said Israel is committed to reaching a full accord before the end of the year. "We hope that the Palestinians aren't looking for an excuse to walk away from the table," the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
The two sides even disagree on how much time was set aside for these talks. The Palestinians said the deadline is Thursday, or three months after the Quartet issued its marching orders, while Israel believes it has until early April, or three months after the start of meetings.
In other developments Wednesday, the Geneva-based Interparliamentary Union protested the arrest of Hamas lawmakers by Israel in recent days. Five legislators have been arrested since last week, including Speaker Abdel Aziz Dwaik. The IPU, which represents 159 parliaments worldwide, said it is "extremely concerned" and demanded that the lawmakers be released.
Currently, 24 of 45 Hamas legislators from the West Bank are in Israeli detention on charges of membership in an illegal organization. Hamas lawmakers have been subject to arrest by Israel since the group defeated Abbas' Fatah movement in the 2006 parliament election.
Hamas alleged that the arrests are meant to sabotage presidential and parliamentary elections, tentatively set for late spring. Hamas has said it would only participate in elections if its candidates are safe from arrest by Israel.
Israel says the arrests are not politically motivated.
steve mcnair brooklyn bridge lady antebellum marques colston listeria listeria kendall hunter
Hitachi And Mitsubishi Stop Domestic Production Of TVs, Optical Discs
Two big Japanese electronics companies, namely Hitachi and Mitsubishi, are to stop producing parts of their product portfolio domestically: Hitachi announced [JP] it will end production of plasma and LCD TVs in Japan, marketed under the Wooo brand, by September this year. The company owns a plant in Gifu prefecture in central Japan that churns out about 100,000 TVs per month (pictured: a Hitachi Wooo plasma from 2009). Citing price competition in the TV business as the main reason for the move, Hitachi said the plant will be used to produce projectors and chips instead.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hn-cN5ohQZQ/
prime suspect prime suspect whitney whitney person of interest james spader james spader
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
"Can Olive Garden be fixed?" (quit snickering foodies)
By msnbc.com staff and news services
Sometimes all-you-can-eat breadsticks just aren?t enough.
The Chicago Tribune reports that Olive Garden is losing customers and is trying to change strategy to win customers back.
We will pause while self-described foodies snark themselves silly and the chain?s defenders snark themselves silly over how self-important and fun-free said foodies can be.
Darden Restaurants Inc. owns Olive Garden, as well as Red Lobster and several smaller national chains such as The Capital Grille. The company declined to comment for the Tribune article, which reported the following major changes coming:
- New menu focusing on lower-priced items.
- Remodeled restaurants.
- Getting rid of the ever-so-perky commercials.
Analysts interviewed by Tribune seemed to think Darden, which has a history of pulling off turnarounds, was up to the task.
"Can Olive Garden be fixed? Absolutely. Yes. Is it an easy fix? No," said Mark Kalinowski, a restaurant analyst who covers Darden for Janney Capital Markets.
Darden shares were off 1.16 percent in midday trading Tuesday.
It was the second negatively-themed article in a major news outlet in slightly over a month. In late December the Wall Street Journal reported on the problems the chain was having revamping its menu --?even down to the fact that the foundation of its customer base didn?t? want the company messing with type of bowls it served its all-you-can-eat salad in.
We called Olive Garden?s spokersperson for a comment and haven?t heard back from her.
The Journal article did contain this bit of self-awareness from John Caron, president of Olive Garden. ?"We don't use the word authentic," he said. The company would rather be thought of as "Italian-inspired."
?We?re not going to pile on Olive Garden. Yes, they can be accused of using way too much cheese and cooking their pasta several offramps past al dente. But we also, long ago, worked in a little California town where one opening was the talk of the community for months.
What?s your Olive Garden experience?
apple cup jewelry stores sleep no more cyber monday deals war eagle war eagle pawn stars
Virtual Styling And Fashion Community Polyvore Raises $14M From DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs And Others
Polyvore, the startup lets web shoppers pull their favorite items any online store and mix and match to create personalized outfits online, has raised $14 million in Series C financing led by DAG Ventures and with participation from Goldman Sachs, Vivi Nevo (NV Investments), Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. This brings the company's total funding to over $22 million. The funding was originally reported by the New York Times. Polyvore allows users to create fashion ?sets,? which are digital collages that users create by combining their favorite products from across the web. The site says it has 13 million unique monthly visitors, an 80% increase over last year. And the Polyvore user community creates on average one Polyvore set every two seconds, a total of 1.4 million sets per month.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JnSpWicPEyQ/
gloria steinem forgetting sarah marshall meteor shower tonight annie oakley edc paranormal activity 4 lovelace
Monday, January 23, 2012
Obama signals State of Union a campaign rallying call (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama, offering a glimpse of next week's State of the Union address, made clear on Saturday that he will deliver a starkly partisan election-year call for a "return to American values" of economic fairness.
"I'm going to lay out a blueprint for an American economy that's built to last," Obama said in a campaign video sent to supporters. "And most importantly, a return to American values of fairness for all, and responsibility from all."
A reference to values is usually political code for social and religious issues, a rallying cry for conservative Republicans who want to deny the Democratic president a second White House term in November.
But Obama, who delivers his annual State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night, is running for re-election on his claim of being a champion for the middle class, while trying to paint Republicans as the party for the rich.
"We can go in two directions. One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few," Obama said.
He is expected to use the speech to repeat calls for higher taxes on the wealthy, tax breaks to bring American manufacturing jobs home, steps to aid the housing market, and another nudge to China on currency flexibility to aid U.S. exports.
Republicans, who were holding a closely watched primary election in South Carolina on Saturday to help select their nominee to face Obama, say he is an old-fashioned tax-and-spend liberal whose policies hurt business and jobs.
Obama's suggestions are therefore unlikely to make much headway in Congress, where Republicans control the House of Representatives.
Attacking congressional Republicans on their own turf, during a prime-time televised joint session of Congress, signals a de-emphasis on appeals for cooperation that have marked Obama's previous State of the Union addresses.
Obama campaigned in 2008 on a message of reaching across the political aisle to change the way that Washington works, but now complains that Republicans have obstructed his efforts to collaborate and are only interested in seeing him fail.
Republicans say they oppose his policies because they view them as bad for the country, and say they are willing to work with the president on areas of genuine common ground.
FED UP
Polls show Americans are fed up with gridlock in Washington, but tend to blame congressional Republicans more than the president for the state of affairs.
Obama said he would focus on American manufacturing "with more good jobs and more products stamped with Made in America," American energy, and skills for American workers as key parts of his plans for the economy.
"They're big ideas, because we've got to meet this moment. And this speech is going to be about how we do it," he said.
He is expected to emphasize incentives to encourage lenders to refinance underwater mortgages, which would ease a crucial obstacle to a recovery in housing and the broader economy.
He has also said he will put forward tax breaks to reward companies that bring jobs home to the United States, while eliminating tax benefits that outsource jobs overseas, and has repeatedly stressed wealthy Americans should pay more in taxes.
Obama has proposed a so-called Buffett rule, named after the billionaire Warren Buffett, who supports the president and says it is unfair that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because most of his income is taxed as capital gains.
Mitt Romney, a top Republican contender to face Obama and one of the richest politicians to vie for the nomination, this week disclosed he paid a tax rate of around 15 percent, because most of his income comes from investments.
Republicans say Obama is playing the politics of envy and what Americans really care about is jobs.
Voters do rate the economy as one of the most important factors in the upcoming election, and while U.S. growth has picked up, it remains fragile and unemployment, at 8.5 percent, is still high by historical standards.
Obama departs on Wednesday for a five-state, three-day tour to promote the framework he will highlight in the address, including visits to Las Vegas and Denver that were hit hard in the housing downturn, and to Detroit, home to the U.S. auto industry that Obama helped rescue through a taxpayer bailout.
(Reporting By Alister Bull; Editing by Vicki Allen)
apple press conference apple press conference apple event apple event buccaneers buccaneers bernanke
Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed?
Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. View full size image
Image: Creative Commons | The Opte Project
The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom ? but it won't be the last battle of its kind. Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be ruined or lost.
Physical destruction
A vast behemoth that can route around outages and self-heal, the Internet has grown physically invulnerable to destruction by bombs, fires or natural disasters ? within countries, at least. It's "very richly interconnected," said David Clark, a computer scientist at MIT who was a leader in the development of the Internet during the 1970s. "You would have to work real hard to find a small number of places where you could seriously disrupt connectivity." On 9/11, for example, the destruction of the major switching center in south Manhattan disrupted service locally. But service was restored about 15 minutes later when the center "healed" as the built-in protocols routed users and information around the outage.
However, while it's essentially impossible to cripple connectivity internally in a country, Clark said it is conceivable that one country could block another's access to its share of the Internet cloud; this could be done by severing the actual cables that carry Internet data between the two countries. Thousands of miles of undersea fiber-optic cables that convey data from continent to continent rise out of the ocean in only a few dozen locations, branching out from those hubs to connect to millions of computers. But if someone were to blow up one of these hubs ? the station in Miami, for example, which handles some 90 percent of the Internet traffic between North America and Latin America ? the Internet connection between the two would be severely hampered until the infrastructure was repaired.
Such a move would be "an act of cyberwar," Clark told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
Content cache
Even an extreme disruption of international connectivity would not seriously threaten the survival of Web content itself. A "hard" copy of most data is stored in nonvolatile memory, which sticks around with or without power, and whether you have Internet access to it or not. Furthermore, according to William Lehr, an MIT economist who studies the economics and regulatory policy of the Internet-infrastructure industries, the corporate data centers that harbor Web content ? everything from your emails to this article ? have sophisticated ways to back up and diversely store the data, including simply storing copies in multiple locations.
Google even stores cached copies of all Wikipedia pages; these were accessible on Jan. 18 when Wikipedia took its own versions of the pages offline in protest of SOPA and PIPA.
This diversified storage plan keeps the content itself safe, but it also offers some protection against loss of access to any one copy of the data in the event of a cyberwar. For example, if power were cut to a server, you may be unable to reach a website on its home server, but you mayfind a cached version of the content stored on another, accessible server. Or, "If you wanted data that was not available from a server in country X, you may be able to get substantively the same data from a server in country Y," Lehr said.
Internet arms race
The redundancy of so much online content and of connectivity routes makes the Internet resilient to physical attacks, but a much more serious threat to its status quo existence is government regulation or censorship. In the early days of Egypt's Arab Spring uprising, the government of Hosni Mubarak attempted to shut down the country's Internet in order to cripple protesters' ability to organize; it did this by ordering the state-controlled Internet Service Provider (ISP), which grants Internet access to customers, to cut service.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=def2dc28450e4d296900243586e49ee3
the brothers grimm grimm fairy tales grimm fairy tales gold rush gold rush weather boston amityville horror
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Elusive Z- DNA found on nucleosomes
Friday, January 20, 2012
New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell & Bioscience is the first to show that left-handed Z-DNA, normally only found at sites where DNA is being copied, can also form on nucleosomes.
The structure of DNA which provides the blueprint for life has famously been described as a double helix. To save space inside the nucleus, DNA is tightly wound around proteins to form nucleosomes which are then further wound and compacted into chromatin, which is further compacted into chromosomes.
But this familiar image of a right handed coil (also called B-DNA) is not the only form of DNA. At sites where DNA is being copied into RNA (the messenger which is used as the instruction to make proteins) the DNA needs to unwind, and, in a process of negative supercoiling, can form a left-handed variety of the DNA double helix (Z-DNA).
It was originally thought that Z-DNA could only be formed in the presence of active RNA polymerase (the enzyme which assembles RNA). However more recently it has been discovered that SWI/SNF, a protein involved in remodeling nucleosomes and allowing RNA polymerase access to DNA, can convert certain sequences of B to Z-DNA.
The team of researchers led by Dr Keji Zhao discovered that they could convert B-DNA to Z-DNA on nucleosomes by the addition of SWI/SNF and ATP (the cell's energy source) and that the Z-nucleosome formed was a novel structure.
Dr Zhao, from the NIH, explained, "The fact that we have found Z-DNA on nucleosomes is a new step in understanding the roles of chromosome remodeling and Z-DNA in regulating gene expression. While the Z-nucleosome is likely to be a transient structure it nevertheless provides a window of opportunity for the placement of DNA binding proteins which may recruit, regulate, or block the transcription machinery and hence protein expression."
###
BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com
Thanks to BioMed Central for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
This press release has been viewed 65 time(s).
Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116908/Elusive_Z__DNA_found_on_nucleosomes
2012 golden globe nominations houston texans houston texans texans alex smith alex smith san francisco 49ers
Gingrich upends Republican race in South Carolina (Reuters)
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) ? Newt Gingrich jolted the Republican presidential race on Saturday with a convincing come-from-behind victory in South Carolina, where voters rejected frontrunner Mitt Romney's pitch that he is the best bet to fix a broken economy and defeat President Barack Obama.
Gingrich's win injects unexpected volatility into a Republican nominating race that until this week appeared to be a coronation for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and private-equity chief.
Three different candidates now have won the first three contests in the state-by-state battle for the Republican presidential nomination to face Obama, a Democrat, on November 6.
Former senator Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses on January 3 and Romney won the New Hampshire primary on January 10. Gingrich fared poorly in both those states and had trailed badly in South Carolina polls.
Riding a series of feisty debate performances, Gingrich captured the lingering unease of conservative voters in South Carolina who view Romney's moderate past and shifting policy stances with suspicion. The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives argued that he would be able to better articulate the party's conservative ideals.
With 65 percent of the vote counted, Gingrich had pulled in 41 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 26 percent, networks reported. Santorum was in third with 18 percent and U.S. congressman Ron Paul in fourth with 13 percent.
Gingrich contrasted his sometimes-chaotic management style with Romney's buttoned-down approach, arguing that his campaign was powered by ideas rather than logistics.
U.S. television networks declared Gingrich the winner shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m. EST (0000 GMT).
"We have a very real chance on an idea basis as conservatives to offer a better future for the American people. We have an ability to reach out to lots of people and communicate with them without millions of dollars of paid advertising," Gingrich said on Fox Business Network.
"This race is getting to be even more interesting," Romney told supporters.
"We're now three contests into a long primary season," he added in a speech in which he took several shots at Gingrich, including condemning Republican rivals for assaulting free enterprise as they criticized his business resume.
FLORIDA IS NEXT
The next contest is the Florida primary on January 31. It will be the largest state yet in the nomination battle and one that will require the candidates to spend quite a bit of money on advertising.
Romney starts off with a wide lead in the polls in Florida and a distinct edge in logistics and fund-raising, which will be crucial in a state that has 10 separate media markets.
A drawn-out Republican contest would likely help Obama as Republican candidates would continue to spend time and money attacking each other.
Obama, who does not face a primary challenger, will have his turn in the spotlight on Tuesday with his State of the Union address. In a message to supporters on Saturday, he said the speech would focus on "building an economy that works for everybody, not just a wealthy few.
Animosity between Gingrich and Romney has been festering since December, when a group supporting Romney launched a blitz of negative TV ads in Iowa that effectively ruined Gingrich's campaign there.
In South Carolina, a state with a reputation for rough and tumble politics, the gloves came off.
Gingrich attacked Romney's business record and reluctance to release personal tax information, while Romney pointed to Gingrich's past ethics lapses and alluded to his messy personal life.
Voters said they were overwhelmingly focused on fixing the sluggish economy and finding the strongest candidate to defeat Obama. Some 78 percent said they were "very worried" about the economy and 45 percent said that the most important trait in a candidate was the ability to beat Obama, according to exit polls released by CNN.
Those issues are the twin pillars of Romney's candidacy.
Romney had developed an aura of inevitability after strong showings in the first two nominating contests, and he led South Carolina polls by 10 percentage points a week ago.
He suffered a setback on Thursday when Iowa officials declared in a recount that he had come in second place in that state's January 3 contest, behind Santorum, instead of winning narrowly as initially announced.
Romney is among the richest men ever to run for the U.S. presidency and his stewardship of the private equity firm Bain Capital has been criticized by Gingrich and others.
"If Republican leaders want to join this president in demonizing success and disparaging conservative values then they are not going to be fit to be our nominee," Romney told supporters.
Voters said they viewed Romney's business background as an asset. But he waffled this week when asked whether he would release his tax records, and acknowledged that he pays a much lower tax rate than many Americans.
'PUNCH IN THE MOUTH'
"This is the punch in the mouth/wake up call Romney needed if he wanted to be a strong general election candidate," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said in a Twitter message, referring to the South Carolina results.
Romney attacked Gingrich's ties to mortgage giant Freddie Mac and criticized his time in the nation's capital. His campaign also highlighted Gingrich's $300,000 fine due to ethics lapses while serving as House speaker 15 years ago.
The thrice-married Gingrich has fended off publicity about his turbulent marital history. On Thursday, he rejected his second wife's accusation that he had asked her for an "open marriage" while he was having an affair with another woman in the 1990s.
South Carolina has been a tough state for Romney's presidential ambitions. In his previous run for the White House in 2008, Romney finished a poor fourth, with just 15 percent of the vote, behind winner and eventual Republican nominee John McCain. McCain endorsed Romney in the current campaign.
The winner of South Carolina's Republican presidential primary has gone on to win the party's nomination in every presidential election since 1980.
frank gore drew brees drew brees nfl games nfl schedule nfl scores nfl scores
Saturday, January 21, 2012
South Carolina GOP primary races to dramatic close
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, reacts as he arrives to campaign at Harmon Tree Farm in Gilbert, S.C., Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, reacts as he arrives to campaign at Harmon Tree Farm in Gilbert, S.C., Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, right, and his wife Callista sign autographs at a campaign rally aboard the USS Yorktown Friday, Jan. 20, 2012, in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum gives thumbs up as Albert Jabs speaks at Hudson's BBQ in Lexington, S.C., Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Carol Paul, wife of Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas., playfully embraces a lifesize cardboard cut out of her husband during a campaign rally in Columbia, S.C., Friday, Jan., 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are not ceding one inch of South Carolina as the unpredictable campaign for the South's first presidential primary concludes ? and certainly not Tommy's Ham House.
Romney is fighting a suddenly surging Gingrich, while rivals Rick Santorum and Ron Paul look to surprise in a four-man race that has spun wildly in its last 48 hours.
Seen as Romney's to lose just days ago, South Carolina's primary has become a close contest between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor portraying himself as the best able to beat President Barack Obama, and Gingrich, the confrontational former House speaker and former Georgia congressman.
Both were scheduled to hold dueling campaign events at Tommy's, in Republican-rich Greenville, late Saturday morning. And neither campaign was stepping back from a primary day showdown.
It's "neck and neck," Romney declared Friday, moving to lower expectations for a race he led by double digits as of midweek.
Even as Romney was touting his electability in November, he continued to try to stoke doubt about Gingrich's ethics.
Gingrich, buoyed by the endorsement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry as he left the race Thursday, called Romney's suggestion that his chief rival release documents relating to an ethics investigation from the 1990s a "panic attack" brought on by sinking poll numbers.
Romney's demand was turnabout from Gingrich's that Romney release his income tax returns before the weekend primary. Gingrich argues that GOP voters need to know whether the wealthy former venture capital executive's records contain anything that could hurt the party's chances against Obama.
The stakes were high for Saturday's vote. The primary winner has gone on to win the Republican nomination in every election since 1980. And voters were faced with stamping Romney, who has led in national polls since December, as the party's front-runner, or reshuffle the contest.
Romney won the New Hampshire primary by a wide marign on Jan. 10, and was thought to have edged Santorum in a photo-finish in Iowa's leadoff caucuses. However, the certified count from Iowa on Thursday showed Santorum had received more votes, although a handful of precincts remained uncertain and no winner was declared.
Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator vying to be the preferred conservative, all planned to campaign in South Carolina's conservative upstate as the voting got under way. Paul, the Texas congressman who has campaigned lightly here, had no campaign appearances scheduled but was expected to visit campaign volunteers.
Behind the flurry of public events around the state Friday, telephones and televisions crackled with attack messages. Some of South Carolina's notorious 11th-hour devilry ? fake reports in the form of emails targeting Gingrich and his ex-wife Marianne ? emerged in a race known as much for its nastiness as for its late-game twists.
"Unfortunately, we are now living up to our reputation," said South Carolina GOP strategist Chip Felkel.
State Attorney Gen. Alan Wilson ordered a preliminary review of the phony messages to see if any laws had been broken.
Gingrich's ex-wife burst into the campaign this week when she alleged in an ABC News interview that her former husband had asked her for an "open marriage," a potentially damaging claim in a state where the Republican primary electorate includes a potent segment of Christian conservatives. The thrice-married Gingrich, who has admitted to marital infidelities, angrily denied her accusation.
Associated Pressarturo gatti stoma stoma money ball bill cunningham vladimir putin vladimir putin
Friday, January 20, 2012
Railroad companies fight safety rules
Kelly B. Huston
The Chatsworth rail disaster in 2008 caused 25 deaths and 135 injuries in Chatsworth, Calif., on Sept. 12, 2008.
By Justine Sharrock, Laurie Udesky and Stuart Silverstein
FairWarning.org
Less than four years after a California train disaster spurred passage of major safety legislation, railroad companies are pushing hard to relax the law?s chief provision.
They have won over key Republicans, and extracted a major concession from the Obama administration, in their bid to scale back and delay a system to prevent crashes such as the head-on collision that caused 25 deaths and 135 injuries in Chatsworth, Calif.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act, passed in late 2008 soon after the Chatsworth disaster, mandated the $13 billion project and stuck railroad companies with nearly all of the cost. The law calls for installation of a technology known as Positive Train Control, or PTC, that automatically puts the brakes on trains about to collide or derail.
Railroads are required to install PTC by the end of 2015 on an estimated 70,000 miles of track used by trains carrying passengers or extremely hazardous materials such as chlorine.
The technology?s champions include the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent advisory and investigative agency. It has advocated PTC for more than two decades to prevent accidents resulting from human error, the main cause of rail crashes.
Investigators with the agency have identified 21 train wrecks since late 2001 that, they say, would have been averted by PTC. In all, the accidents caused 53 deaths and nearly 1,000 injuries.
??PTC can prevent these human errors from causing collisions, hazmat releases, passengers killed and injured, and train crews being killed,? said Steven Ditmeyer, a former rail industry executive and federal official who now teaches in Michigan State University?s railway management program.
Serious train crashes, he said, ?are very rare events, but they still occur.?
PTC supporters such as Paul Hedlund, a lawyer for many families of Chatsworth victims, say they are appalled by efforts to relax the mandate. It?s a ?scary step backwards,? Hedlund said, calling existing protections ?horribly archaic.?
Since 2008, he added, ?We haven?t had another crash of the magnitude of Chatsworth that would be affected by this but we are going to.?
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The 2005 rail crash in Graniteville, S.C., killed nine people and caused the evacuation of 5,400.
But the railroad industry and its allies, arguing that the project is unaffordable, have put up stiff resistance. They also maintain that the technology still needs to be refined, even though Amtrak already operates a similar system from Boston to Washington, D.C.
PTC critics have argued for delaying the installation deadline by three years, exempting as much as 20 percent of the track and allowing railroads to use other safety systems that might be cheaper, but also less effective.
The industry is bolstered by a political climate that is hostile to federal dictates, a factor behind the executive order President Obama issued early last year to streamline regulations. They have extra leverage because federal agencies are divided on the merits of the PTC mandate.
PTC opponents also are drawing ammunition from a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO assessment didn?t address PTC?s effectiveness but said technological hurdles could delay completion of the project beyond the 2015 deadline.
?What you hear from all the railroad companies is that everyone supports PTC in theory, but the realities of how difficult it is financially and technologically to install [mean] it can?t happen by 2015,? said Matt Ginsberg, director of operations for the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, which includes contractors that work on PTC installation.
The industry?s strategy, he added, is that ?instead of an outright repeal, they will slowly chip away at it, making small little tweaks that will make a big change overall in the effect of the rule.?
Leading the resistance are the Association of American Railroads, which represents freight haulers and Amtrak, along with the American Public Transportation Association, which represents commuter rail systems. They have called PTC the biggest federal mandate the industry has faced in more than a century, and say they anticipated that the government would step up its financial support.
To deliver their message on PTC and other issues, railroad interests spend heavily on lobbying. According to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the railroad industry poured $73.4 million into lobbying in 2009 and 2010, and another $8.75 million in the first quarter of 2011.
The industry also has retained dozens of lobbyists, including the firm of former Senate powerhouses John Breaux, D-La., and Trent Lott, R.-Miss.
Meanwhile, as political currents have shifted and PTC has fallen out of the spotlight, the technology has fewer forceful advocates.
Former U.S. Rep. James L. Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who led the push for PTC in the House and who argued for it since the 1990s, was voted out of office in 2010, when Republicans took control of the lower chamber.
The Democrat who perhaps was most pivotal in getting the rail safety act through Congress and signed into law was Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Days after the Chatsworth crash in September 2008, she said the failure to install PTC would amount to ?criminal negligence.?
Today, she still favors PTC but no longer is a leader on the issue and is not a member of the panel with jurisdiction over railroads, the Commerce Committee.? Feinstein?s office quoted the senator as saying that she has urged colleagues to maintain the current deadline.
PTC systems include GPS and wireless communications technology and central control centers. They can monitor trains and stop them if they enter the wrong track or are about to run a red light.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, one of the accidents that PTC would have prevented was the freight train-commuter train collision in Chatsworth. The NTSB investigation blamed the accident on an engineer on the commuter train who ran a red light while text-messaging on a cellphone. (Metrolink, the rail system that operates the Chatsworth commuter line, hopes to finish installing its PTC system by mid-2013.)
The NTSB said the January 2005 rail crash in Graniteville, S.C., that killed nine people and injured 554 also would have been prevented by PTC. The crash punctured a chlorine tank car, releasing a toxic, greenish cloud that led to the evacuation of about 5,400 residents.
However, the agency responsible for enforcing the deadline has expressed ambivalence about PTC. The Transportation Department?s Federal Railroad Administration concedes that PTC increases safety. But the agency says PTC would save only about four or five lives a year, not nearly enough to justify the? cost ? though the agency analysis was completed in 2005, before the Chatsworth disaster.
PTC advocates say the agency?s analysis ignores the enormous business benefits that the technology could provide by, not only preventing accidents, but also by coordinating train traffic more efficiently and cutting shipping times.
Still, after the Transportation Department spelled out its rules for enforcing the PTC law, it was sued?in November 2010 by the Association of American Railroads. The industry group accused the agency of issuing ?a regulation that imposes a staggering and unjustified burden? that went beyond the intent of Congress.
Among other grievances, the industry said federal officials wrongly required railroads to put PTC on track that by 2015 will no longer be used to haul chlorine or other extremely hazardous materials.
The Transportation Department, to settle the litigation, offered to reduce the amount of track required to have PTC. The proposal, expected to be adopted in some form this spring, would remove 7,000 to 14,000 miles of track from the mandate, a cut of about 10 percent to 20 percent.
In an Aug. 23 announcement, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood characterized the move as being in line with the Obama administration?s initiative to streamline regulation.
NTSB officials, however, say the proposal also could have a pernicious effect. They say it could crimp regulators? flexibility to require PTC on troublesome track not specifically designated by the statute.
For instance, regulators can insist on PTC when they are concerned about the safety of track where freight trains haul, say, ethanol ? a dangerous material, but not one of the extreme hazards specified in the law. But the head of the NTSB, Deborah Hersman, said her agency is concerned?that the ?ability to identify other high-risk corridors will be hampered? because, under the proposed change, the railroads no longer would have to provide the government with as much risk data.
Separately, House Republicans have advocated relaxing the PTC requirements. One of the leaders is U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mica is one of the biggest recipients of railroad industry campaign contributions, with $182,298 since 2008.
He is working on a long-term surface transportation authorization bill that is regarded as a likely legislative vehicle for key breaks sought by the railroads. Lawmakers are expected to resume working in earnest on the authorization bill by the beginning of February.
Mica has voiced support for extending the PTC deadline by three years and allowing trains to use so-called non-technological safety systems.?
Such systems, unlike PTC, can?t automatically counter human error, which the Transportation Department says causes 40 percent of train accidents. Mica has described his goal as to ?protect against overly-burdensome regulations and red tape.? ?
Another vocal critic of PTC is U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the railroads subcommittee.
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, railroads were the top-contributing industry to his 2008 and 2010 election campaigns. Shuster has received $165,800 in campaign contributions from railroad interests since 2008.
He has criticized the PTC mandate ever since it was adopted. At a March hearing,? Shuster advocated extending the deadline beyond 2015 and reducing the amount of track covered, while calling the existing requirements ?regulatory overreach.?
Talk of accommodating the industry, however, infuriates union leaders. ?It?s hard for me to believe that anyone can go to Congress and say with a straight face that seven years after the bill passed is ?not enough time for us to do this,??? said James Stem, legislative director of the United Transportation Union.? ?But that?s what?s going on.?
Frank Kohler, severely injured in the Chatsworth train wreck.
It?s also distressing to crash victims such as Frank Kohler.
Kohler was one of those injured in the Chatsworth disaster.? He woke up after the collision lying on the ground with his head split open; he suffered a brain injury that, Kohler says, causes him to get confused and has ended his 36-year career as an emergency responder and registered nurse.
If PTC has been in place three years ago, Kohler said, he would have arrived home safely. Kohler added, ?I would still have my professional life intact and I would be a productive member of society.? ?
FairWarning?is a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on public health and safety issues.
21 jump street 19 kids and counting 2011 election results 11/11/11 11 11 11 activision blizzard acrylamide
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)