Kerry plunges back into Mideast peace diplomacy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time to make further efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time to make further efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, in Jerusalem on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time to make further efforts to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Kerry is in Israel for the fifth time, to make further efforts to resume peace talks between Israel 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)

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry plunged back into the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Thursday, using Jordan as a base for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In is fifth visit to the region to try to restart peace talks, Kerry held a four-hour dinner meeting with Netanyahu that stretched into Friday morning. He was to have lunch with Abbas on Friday in Amman, and more meetings could be in the offing.

Kerry left Amman on Thursday evening in a convoy of nearly a dozen vehicles for the roughly 90-minute drive to Jerusalem. A Jordanian military helicopter flew over his convoy during the trip, according to a reporter who was allowed to make the trip with Kerry and his delegation.

Netanyahu was about an hour late, apparently telling Kerry that he was delayed because he had been attending a graduation ceremony for Israeli military pilots. They started talking around 9:30 p.m. local time in a suite at a hotel in Jerusalem and ended their discussion around 1:30 a.m. Friday.

There were no immediate readouts of the discussion from Israeli or U.S. officials.

U.S. State department officials say that while there are no scheduled plans for any three-way discussion during Kerry's trip, they are confident that both sides are open to negotiations, or at least sitting down together at the same table to restart talks that broke down in 2008.

Kerry, they say, will continue to try to find common ground between the two sides that would lead to a re-launching of peace talks. On this trip, Kerry is trying to pin down precisely what conditions Abbas and Netanyahu have for restarting talks and perhaps discuss confidence-building measures.

Beyond that, Kerry wants to talk about the positive outcomes, such as enhanced economic growth, of a two-state solution. But at the same time, the secretary, who has long-time relationships with officials from both sides, will remind them of what's at stake if the conflict is left unresolved, they said.

Earlier this month, in a speech to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Kerry warned of serious consequences if no deal is reached.

"Think about what could happen next door," he told the Jewish audience. " The Palestinian Authority has committed itself to a policy of nonviolence. ... Up until recently, not one Israeli died from anything that happened from the West Bank until there was a settler killed about a month ago.

"But if that experiment is allowed to fail, ask yourselves: What will replace it? What will happen if the Palestinian economy implodes, if the Palestinian Security Forces dissolve, if the Palestinian Authority fails? ... 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."

So far, there have been no public signals that the two sides are narrowing their differences.

Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.

Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions ? though his predecessor conducted talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and the international community views the settlements as illegal or illegitimate.

Earlier on Thursday, Kerry talked about the crisis in Syria and the Mideast peace process over lunch with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

In a statement, the Royal Palace said Abdullah told Kerry that he will continue trying to bridge the gaps in the viewpoints of Palestinians and Israelis. But he warned that Israel's "unilateral actions, which include continuous Israeli trespassing on Christian and Muslim holy sites, undermine chances for peace."

On Wednesday, an Israeli planning committee gave the final approval for construction of dozens of new homes in a settlement in east Jerusalem. The announcement, which was made the day before Kerry's visit, appeared to be an Israeli snub at the secretary of state's latest round of Mideast diplomacy.

Officials traveling with Kerry sought to minimize the significance of the announcement, saying the U.S. has repeatedly said that continued construction of settlements were unhelpful to efforts to restart the talks. The settlements are part of the Har Homa area of east Jerusalem. The Obama administration said it was "deeply concerned" back in 2011 when an Israeli planning commission approved 930 new housing units in the Har Homa neighborhood.

The Palestinian side condemned the announcement.

"Such behavior proves that the Israeli government is determined to undermine Secretary Kerry's efforts at every level," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

___

Associated Press writer Jamal Halaby in Amman contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-27-Kerry/id-9a278f18953a41c7859f5c19c7cb1c80

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The Challenges of Living Longer

Thanks to advances in medical technology and a thriving society, Americans can now look forward to living much longer than ever before. In the early 1900s, average U.S. life expectancy was around 45-50 years; today, Americans who are alive at age 65 can expect to live, on average, another twenty years. ¹

These numbers should make us all very happy, yet they also present some challenges. In addition to living longer, Americans have been retiring earlier than before. The average retirement age has dropped from 68 in 1950 to 62 in 2000. As a result, many Americans are now spending more than a quarter of their lives in retirement, and their retirement income is often insufficient to get them through these ?extra? years. ²

Retirement planning is no easy task. It is difficult to know exactly how much we should be saving for retirement and how we should allocate our current investments to ensure we will be financially safe in the future. Despite the wide availability of retirement planning advice and information, most people have trouble thinking through these issues. In addition to these financial knowledge barriers, there are also psychological barriers that stand in the way of being prepared for those extra years. The most critical one is our inability to plan for the distant, long-term future. Research from both the fields of psychology and economics suggests that people care more about present outcomes than they do about future ones, a tendency called temporal discounting. ³

There are two main factors that contribute to this tendency. First, present rewards trigger stronger emotional reactions than do future ones. This tendency was powerfully illustrated in a series of experiments conducted with children. ⁴ Researchers wanted to know what might motivate children to wait patiently for a potential reward?namely, a marshmallow sitting on a table in front of them. Children who were asked to think about the informative properties of the reward?namely, the marshmallow?s color or shape?were more likely to wait for it than were children who were asked to think about potentially arousing properties of the marshmallow, such as its taste. Second, we mispredict how we might feel in the future if certain events were to transpire. ⁵ Specifically, we tend to overestimate how good a positive outcome, such as winning the lottery, will make us feel, and also overestimate how bad a negative outcome, such as not being promoted, will make us feel. These tendencies make it difficult for us to make good decisions about the distant future.

Despite significant psychological barriers to saving for the future, related work gives us important insights on how to combat these problems. Two lines of research have identified interventions that are particularly compelling.The first one involves changing the default for retirement plans, such that employees are automatically enrolled and must actively opt out if they so choose (as opposed to the typical plan, where employees must opt in to join a plan). This subtle intervention is effective because it involves no effort on employees? part to join the plan. Thanks to this intervention, many organizations have witnessed large increases in the rate of participation of their employees in retirement plans. In 2004, Benartzi and Shlomo took this intervention a step forward by releasing a program called SMarT (Save More Tomorrow). Under this plan, employees? contributions to their 401(k) plan increase automatically every year, in accordance with their salary increases. As a result, employees? savings go up without affecting their take-home pay. The first organization that adopted this new program saw a dramatic increase in savings for employees who participated: from 3.5 to 13.6 percent over four years. Over 50 percent of the retirement plans in the United States now use automatic escalation, and annual retirement savings increased by $7.4 billion during this time. ⁶

This first intervention is in the hands of our employers, but a second intervention is under our control. It consists of trying to imagine your future self. Recent research demonstrated the benefits of this simple intervention by asking two groups of students to interact with realistic computer renderings of themselves. One group only saw images of themselves at their current age. The other group saw some additional images: age-morphed versions of how they might look by the time they retire. All participants were then asked how much they would save for retirement. Those who saw a picture of their older selves indicated they would save twice as much as those who saw a picture of their current selves. These findings are already affecting employees? long-term financial planning. ⁷ The expectation is that employees? savings decisions will be influenced by this glimpse of their future selves. Even if such software is not available to you, picturing your ?future you? seems to be a good first step to assure our decisions are not too present focused.

Could understanding our behaviors hold the key to financial security? We think so. Learn More at The Challenge Lab.

____________________________________________________________________________

1. Arias, E. 2007.United States life tables, 2004.Natl. Vital Stat. Rep. 56: 1?40.
   Carstensen, L.L. 2009. A Long Bright Future: An Action Plan for a Lifetime of Happiness, Health, and Financial Security. Random House. New York, NY.
   Shultz, G.P. & J.B. Shoven. 2008. Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Secruity and Heal Care Reform. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY.
   McKinsey Global Institute. 2008. Talkin? ?Bout My Generation: The Economic Impact of Aging U.S. Baby Boomers. McKinsey & Co. San Francisco, CA.
2. OECD. 2011. Pensions at aGlance 2011: Retirement-Income Systems in OECD and G20 Countries., Vol. 2011.?http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/10/art2full.pdf
3. Chapman, G.B. 1996. Temporal discounting and utility for health and money. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22: 771?791.
   Lynch, J.G. & G. Zuberman. 2006. When do you want it? Time, decisions, and public policy. Journal of Public Policy Marketing, 25: 67?78.
   Choi, J.J., D. Laibson & B.C. Madrian (2011). $100 bills on the sidewalk: suboptimal investment in 401(k) plans. Review of Economics and Statistics, 93: 748?763.
4. Mischel, W., E.B. Ebbesen & A. Raskoff Zeiss. 1972. Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21: 204?218.
   Mischel, W. 1974. Processes in delay of gratification. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 7. L. Berkowitz, Ed.: 249?292. Academic Press. New York.
   Mischel, W., Y. Shoda & M.L. Rodriguez. 1989. Delay of gratification in children. Science 244: 933?938.
5. Wilson, T.D. & D.T. Gilbert. 2003. Affective forecasting. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 35. M.P. Zanna, Ed.: 345?411. Academic Press. San Diego.
   Gilbert, D.T., et al. 1998. Immune neglect: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 75: 617?638.
   Gilbert,D.T. &T.D.Wilson. 2007. Prospection: experiencing the future. Science 317: 1351?1354.
6. Thaler, R.H. & S. Benartzi. 2004. Save More Tomorrow (TM): using behavioral economics to increase employee saving. J. Polit. Economy 112: S164?S187.
   Shlomo Benartzi and Richard H. Thaler, ?Behavioral Economics and the Retirement Savings Crisis? Science Magazine, Vol 339, March 8, 2013.
7. Hershfield, H.E., Goldstein, D.G., Sharpe, W.F., Fox, J., Yeykelvis, L., Carstensen, L.L., & Bailenson, J. (2011). Increasing saving behavior through age-progressed renderings of the future self. Journal of Marketing Research, 48, S23-S27.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/prudential_roundtable/2013/06/the_challenges_of_living_longer.html

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Perry, filibuster star clash over Texas abortions

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) ? A fight over sweeping attempts to limit abortion in Texas became a personal grudge match Thursday between conservative Republican Gov. Rick Perry and a state senator whose lengthy, one-woman filibuster has catapulted her to sudden, national political stardom.

Addressing the 43rd annual National Right to Life Conference in Grapevine, Perry singled out state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, saying that her life story proves all children born into difficult circumstances deserve not be aborted.

"She was the daughter of a single woman. She was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate," Perry said. "It's just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters."

In comments to reporters afterward, he went even further, saying that he was glad Davis' mother didn't chose to have an abortion.

"What if her mom had said, "I just can't do this. I don't want to do this,'" Perry said. "At that particular point in time I think it becomes very personal."

Davis starting working at 14 to help support a household of her single mother and three siblings. By 19, she was already married and divorced with a child of her own ? but she eventually graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and won her senate seat in an upset.

In an e-mailed statement Wednesday, Davis shot back: "Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds."

"They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view," she said. "Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test."

On Tuesday, Davis' marathon speech and raucous outbursts from abortion rights protesters in the state Senate that kept lawmakers from approving sweeping restrictions that could make abortion all but impossible for many women in the second-largest state.

Those efforts ran out the clock on the midnight deadline Tuesday to pass legislation during a special legislative session Perry called to tackle abortion and other key issues. But on Wednesday, he called a second, 30-day extra session and put tighter abortion rules at the top of the agenda he sets for lawmakers.

The extra session has delayed Perry's expected announcement on whether he will seek a fourth full term as governor in elections next year. Davis is up for re-election then too, but some Democratic activists are urging her to seek the party's gubernatorial nomination.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/perry-filibuster-star-clash-over-texas-abortions-175240836.html

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Scalpel in hand, Chinese Premier Li stirs reform hopes

By Koh Gui Qing

BEIJING (Reuters) - Investors getting stung by China's worst financial market rout in years should find solace in the fact that the government, in particular Premier Li Keqiang, is willing to play hardball to force through much-needed policy change.

The central bank's refusal to intervene last week to ease an unprecedented cash crunch, where interest rates in the interbank market shot as high as 30 percent, was the clearest sign yet that China's new leaders are willing to stomach economic pain for the long-term good.

The People's Bank of China (PBoC) takes its cue from the government under China's communist system. It has allowed interest rates to stay high to slow runaway credit growth and to punish banks for reckless practices that include using short-term funding for long-term lending.

In a country where 30 years of double-digit economic expansion has created a culture of prizing growth above all else, Beijing's decision to let the money market seize up even at the risk of choking China's slowing economy is a milestone.

"Clearly we are now in a different ball game," said Louis Kuijs, an economist with RBS in Hong Kong.

"Even though people are reducing their (economic) forecasts, the government is comfortable with a policy stance that emphasizes reform."

SHOCK AND AWE

Accustomed to China's previous government where leaders bent over backwards to produce stellar rates of growth, Beijing's new stance has shocked investors.

China's stock market dived to 4-1/2-year lows on Tuesday as investors worried that steep money market rates, by raising the cost of borrowing, might be a defacto tightening of monetary policy that could stifle investment and consumption.

Some investors said the central bank's brinkmanship could backfire if it triggered a banking crisis.

Others lauded Premier Li's tactics as tough love that could gird China for other challenging economic reforms such as further slimming down giant state firms to make them more efficient.

Li took office in March, along with President Xi Jinping. As premier, Li is responsible for managing the economy.

His grit is reminiscent of former Premier Zhu Rongji, credited for leading China's previous round of major economic reforms in the late 1990s when he sacked more than 50 million workers at state firms to trim the bloated sector.

"Welcome to Doctor Li Keqiang's surgery," analysts from Standard Chartered said in a note.

"We had suspected that Premier Li would want to drive significant reforms. We underestimated, however, his apparent willingness to make policy choices that would risk putting further downside pressure on the economy."

In May, Li said there was limited room for policy stimulus because such measures carried risks and were not sustainable. China has a debt hangover from spending 4 trillion yuan ($650.9 billion) at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008/2009 to boost the economy.

The cabinet also said this month after a meeting chaired by Li that credit had to be used for real business needs.

A ZHU RONGJI REVIVAL?

Beijing's standoff with banks in the interbank market - where banks lend to one another -- began in the first week of June and climaxed last week when rates tore to record highs.

Rates had climbed through June on strong demand for cash during a three-day holiday from June 10, and ahead of the month-end when banks need more funds to meet regulatory requirements.

However, unlike in the past when Chinese authorities often stepped in, they resisted doing so this time.

Not only did the PBoC ignore complaints from traders about its failure to add cash to the market as rates surged, it summoned bankers to a meeting last week where it bluntly told them that plentiful liquidity could not last forever, sources with knowledge of what was discussed said.

The PBoC told bankers that economic problems could not be papered over with monetary expansion, taking aim at outstanding credit which is twice the country's $8.6 trillion economy.

The PBoC relented a bit this week, saying it had given cash to some banks facing temporary shortages and would continue to do so if needed, although overnight rates, at 5.5 percent, are still above average levels.

Analysts said Beijing's unwillingness to cave last week was a way of forcing banks to resolve their own cash crunch by pulling funds from riskier businesses such as an informal loans market, where money is lent for speculation in high-yielding wealth products.

Some said the attitude was a sign Li had no qualms angering others to put China's economy on a more sustainable growth path.

The aggressive Zhu Rongji-style of governance means China may sacrifice growth in the short-term to achieve more balanced expansion, analysts said.

And with Zhu's former lieutenants holding top jobs in China today, including Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, hopes for change are high.

"We believe there is likely to be more economic pain down the road," said Zhang Zhiwei, an economist at Nomura.

Growth in the world's second-biggest economy, already suffering from falling exports and sluggish domestic demand, could keep cooling to miss the government's 7.5 percent target this year and hit a 23-year low, he said.

Indeed, China faces its biggest challenge in at last a decade to change the way it does business: depend less on exports and investment for growth and more on consumption.

Policymakers, investors and analysts all agree on what needs to change, but there are few concrete ideas on how to enact reforms, especially if they hurt the interests of state firms.

Some are optimistic.

"While the reform outlook today remains unclear, we believe the current administration seems to have taken a step in the right direction," Zhang said. ($1 = 6.1453 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Dean Yates)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/scalpel-hand-chinese-premier-li-stirs-reform-hopes-053316826.html

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Satellites Providing Internet To the 'Under-Connected'

... no one can hear your investors scream.

The private investors are just the public face of this venture.

Their accounts receivables are insured against loss by the French government. This is a way for the French government to partially subsidize its own aerospace industry (in this case, the satellites are made by a French and an Italian joint effort), and at the same it's a way to control which war lords/governments in Congo, Ivory Coast, Mali, or Syria get free satellite internet access, and which war lords/governments in those parts of the world do not.

In other words, this infrastructure is a way to buy yourself some influence in those parts of the world (where French influence has been slowly shrinking otherwise).

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/Py0ssjXGmf0/story01.htm

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Comparing genomes of wild and domestic tomato

Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
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Contact: Andy Fell
ahfell@ucdavis.edu
530-752-4533
University of California - Davis

You say tomato, I say comparative transcriptomics. Researchers in the U.S., Europe and Japan have produced the first comparison of both the DNA sequences and which genes are active, or being transcribed, between the domestic tomato and its wild cousins.

The results give insight into the genetic changes involved in domestication and may help with future efforts to breed new traits into tomato or other crops, said Julin Maloof, professor of plant biology in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Maloof is senior author on the study, published June 24 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For example, breeding new traits into tomatoes often involves crossing them with wild relatives. The new study shows that a large block of genes from one species of wild tomato is present in domestic tomato, and has widespread, unexpected effects across the whole genome.

Maloof and colleagues studied the domestic tomato, Solanum lycopersicum, and wild relatives S. pennellii, S. habrochaites and S. pimpinellifolium. Comparison of the plants' genomes shows the effects of evolutionary bottlenecks, Maloof noted -- for example at the original domestication in South America, and later when tomatoes were brought to Europe for cultivation.

Among other findings, genes associated with fruit color showed rapid evolution among domesticated, red-fruited tomatoes and green-fruited wild relatives. And S. pennellii, which lives in desert habitats, had accelerated evolution in genes related to drought tolerance, heat and salinity.

New technology is giving biologists the unprecedented ability to look at all the genes in an organism, not just a select handful. The researchers studied not just the plants' DNA but also the messenger RNA being transcribed from different genes. RNA transcription is the process that transforms information in genes into action. If the DNA sequence is the list of parts for making a tomato plant, the messenger RNA transcripts are the step-by-step instructions.

Gene-expression profiling, combined with an understanding of the plants' biology, allows researchers to understand how genes interact to create complex phenotypes, said Neelima Sinha, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and co-author on the paper.

"Genomics has fast-tracked previous gene-by-gene analyses that took us years to complete," she said.

"We could not have done a study like this ten years ago -- certainly not on any kind of reasonable budget," Maloof said. "It opens up a lot of new things we can do as plant scientists."

###

The study is the result of a collaborative NSF project awarded to Sinha, Maloof and Jie Peng, associate professor of statistics at UC Davis. Additional authors on the paper are: Daniel Koenig, Jos Jimnez-Gmez, Seisuke Kimura, Daniel Fulop, Daniel Chitwood, ?Lauren Headland, Ravi Kumar, Michael Covington, Upendra Kumar Devisetty, An Tat, Mallorie Taylor-Teeples, Siobhan Brady, all at UC Davis; Takayuki Tohge, Alisdair Fernie, Anthony Bolger and Bjrn Usadel, all at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Golm, Germany; Korbinian Schneeberger, Stephan Ossowski, Christa Lanz and Detlef Weigel, all at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tbingen, Germany; and Guangyan Xiong and Markus Pauly, both at UC Berkeley.

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 26-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andy Fell
ahfell@ucdavis.edu
530-752-4533
University of California - Davis

You say tomato, I say comparative transcriptomics. Researchers in the U.S., Europe and Japan have produced the first comparison of both the DNA sequences and which genes are active, or being transcribed, between the domestic tomato and its wild cousins.

The results give insight into the genetic changes involved in domestication and may help with future efforts to breed new traits into tomato or other crops, said Julin Maloof, professor of plant biology in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Maloof is senior author on the study, published June 24 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For example, breeding new traits into tomatoes often involves crossing them with wild relatives. The new study shows that a large block of genes from one species of wild tomato is present in domestic tomato, and has widespread, unexpected effects across the whole genome.

Maloof and colleagues studied the domestic tomato, Solanum lycopersicum, and wild relatives S. pennellii, S. habrochaites and S. pimpinellifolium. Comparison of the plants' genomes shows the effects of evolutionary bottlenecks, Maloof noted -- for example at the original domestication in South America, and later when tomatoes were brought to Europe for cultivation.

Among other findings, genes associated with fruit color showed rapid evolution among domesticated, red-fruited tomatoes and green-fruited wild relatives. And S. pennellii, which lives in desert habitats, had accelerated evolution in genes related to drought tolerance, heat and salinity.

New technology is giving biologists the unprecedented ability to look at all the genes in an organism, not just a select handful. The researchers studied not just the plants' DNA but also the messenger RNA being transcribed from different genes. RNA transcription is the process that transforms information in genes into action. If the DNA sequence is the list of parts for making a tomato plant, the messenger RNA transcripts are the step-by-step instructions.

Gene-expression profiling, combined with an understanding of the plants' biology, allows researchers to understand how genes interact to create complex phenotypes, said Neelima Sinha, professor of plant biology at UC Davis and co-author on the paper.

"Genomics has fast-tracked previous gene-by-gene analyses that took us years to complete," she said.

"We could not have done a study like this ten years ago -- certainly not on any kind of reasonable budget," Maloof said. "It opens up a lot of new things we can do as plant scientists."

###

The study is the result of a collaborative NSF project awarded to Sinha, Maloof and Jie Peng, associate professor of statistics at UC Davis. Additional authors on the paper are: Daniel Koenig, Jos Jimnez-Gmez, Seisuke Kimura, Daniel Fulop, Daniel Chitwood, ?Lauren Headland, Ravi Kumar, Michael Covington, Upendra Kumar Devisetty, An Tat, Mallorie Taylor-Teeples, Siobhan Brady, all at UC Davis; Takayuki Tohge, Alisdair Fernie, Anthony Bolger and Bjrn Usadel, all at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Golm, Germany; Korbinian Schneeberger, Stephan Ossowski, Christa Lanz and Detlef Weigel, all at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tbingen, Germany; and Guangyan Xiong and Markus Pauly, both at UC Berkeley.

---

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?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/uoc--cgo062613.php

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Pope names commission of inquiry into Vatican bank

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Francis has named a commission of inquiry to look into the activities of the troubled Vatican bank amid a fresh money-laundering investigation and questions about what exactly goes on inside the secretive institution.

It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has intervened to get to get to the bottom of the problems that have plagued the Institute for Religious Works: On June 15, he filled a key vacancy in the bank's governing structure, tapping a trusted friend to be essentially his eyes inside the bank. The new appointee will have access to documentation, board meetings and management.

On Wednesday, he named a commission to investigate the bank's legal structure and activities. It comes as Salerno prosecutors investigate a senior Vatican official for alleged money-laundering.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-names-commission-inquiry-vatican-bank-110114498.html

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What?s in Obama?s Climate Plan?

DEAR ABBY: I was taken away from my parents at 13 and placed into foster care, where I stayed until I aged out at 21. My biological mother is a drug addict who abandoned me to my father when I was 11. She never tried to contact me while I was in care.I am now 24 and she won't leave me alone. She sends Facebook messages that alternate between begging me to let her get to know me, and condemning me for being vindictive and not having forgiveness in my heart. Abby, this woman exposed me to drugs and all manner of seedy people and situations. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-climate-plan-060024445.html

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Past brain activation revealed in scans

Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
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Contact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
972-893-43856
Weizmann Institute of Science

Weizmann Institute scientists discover that spontaneously emerging brain activity patterns preserve traces of previous cognitive activity

What if experts could dig into the brain, like archaeologists, and uncover the history of past experiences? This ability might reveal what makes each of us a unique individual, and it could enable the objective diagnosis of a wide range of neuropsychological diseases. New research at the Weizmann Institute hints that such a scenario is within the realm of possibility: It shows that spontaneous waves of neuronal activity in the brain bear the imprints of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place.

The new research stems from earlier findings in the lab of Prof. Rafi Malach of the Institute's Neurobiology Department and others that the brain never rests, even when its owner is resting. When a person is resting with closed eyes that is, no visual stimulus is entering the brain the normal bursts of nerve cell activity associated with incoming information are replaced by ultra- slow patterns of neuronal activity. Such spontaneous or "resting" waves travel in a highly organized and reproducible manner through the brain's outer layer the cortex and the patterns they create are complex, yet periodic and symmetrical.

Like hieroglyphics, it seemed that these patterns might have some meaning, and research student Tal Harmelech, under the guidance of Malach and Dr. Son Preminger, set out to uncover their significance. Their idea was that the patterns of resting brain waves may constitute "archives" for earlier experiences. As we add new experiences, the activation of our brain's networks lead to long-term changes in the links between brain cells, a facility referred to as plasticity. As our experiences become embedded in these connections, they create "expectations" that come into play before we perform any type of mental task, enabling us to anticipate the result. The researchers hypothesized that information about earlier experiences would thus be incorporated into the links between networks of nerve cells in the cortex, and these would show up in the brain's spontaneously emerging wave patterns.

In the experiment, the researchers had volunteers undertake a training exercise that would strongly activate a well-defined network of nerve cells in the frontal lobes. While undergoing scans of their brain activity in the Institute's functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, the subjects were asked to imagine a situation in which they had to make rapid decisions. The subjects received auditory feedback in real time, based on the information obtained directly from their frontal lobe, which indicated the level of neuronal activity in the trained network. This "neurofeedback" strategy proved highly successful in activating the frontal network a part of the brain that is notoriously difficult to activate under controlled conditions.

To test whether the connections created in the brain during this exercise would leave their traces in the patterns formed by the resting brain waves, the researchers performed fMRI scans on the resting subjects before the exercise, immediately afterward, and 24 hours later. Their findings, which appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed that the activation of the specific areas in the cortex did indeed remodel the resting brain wave patterns. Surprisingly, the new patterns not only remained the next day, they were significantly strengthened. These observations fit in with the classic learning principles proposed by Donald Hebb in the mid-20th century, in which the co-activation of two linked nerve cells leads to long term strengthening of their link, while activity that is not coordinated weakens this link. The fMRI images of the resting brain waves showed that brain areas that were activated together during the training sessions exhibited an increase in their functional link a day after the training, while those areas that were de-activated by the training showed a weakened functional connectivity.

This research suggests a number of future possibilities for exploring the brain. For example, spontaneously emerging brain patterns could be used as a "mapping tool" for unearthing cognitive events from an individual's recent past. Or, on a wider scale, each person's unique spontaneously emerging activity patterns might eventually reveal a sort of personal profile highlighting each individual's abilities, shortcomings, biases, learning skills, etc. "Today, we are discovering more and more of the common principles of brain activity, but we have not been able to account for the differences between individuals," says Malach. "In the future, spontaneous brain patterns could be the key to obtaining unbiased individual profiles." Such profiles could be especially useful in diagnosing or learning the brain pathologies associated with a wide array of cognitive disabilities.

###

Prof. Rafi Malach's research is supported by the Nella and Leon Benoziyo Center for Neurosciences; the Nella and Leon Benoziyo Center for Neurological Diseases; the Carl and Micaela Einhorn-Dominic Brain Research Institute; the Norman and Helen Asher Center for Human Brain Imaging; the Murray H. and Meyer Grodetsky Center for Research of Higher Brain Functions; the Kahn Family Research Center for Systems Biology of the Human Cell; the Friends of Dr. Lou Siminovitch; the Adelis Foundation; and the Mike and Valeria Rosenbloom through the Mike Rosenbloom Foundation. Prof. Malach is the recipient of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation; and he is the incumbent of the Barbara and Morris L. Levinson Professorial Chair in Brain Research.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.

Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/

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Public release date: 25-Jun-2013
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Contact: Yivsam Azgad
news@weizmann.ac.il
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Weizmann Institute of Science

Weizmann Institute scientists discover that spontaneously emerging brain activity patterns preserve traces of previous cognitive activity

What if experts could dig into the brain, like archaeologists, and uncover the history of past experiences? This ability might reveal what makes each of us a unique individual, and it could enable the objective diagnosis of a wide range of neuropsychological diseases. New research at the Weizmann Institute hints that such a scenario is within the realm of possibility: It shows that spontaneous waves of neuronal activity in the brain bear the imprints of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place.

The new research stems from earlier findings in the lab of Prof. Rafi Malach of the Institute's Neurobiology Department and others that the brain never rests, even when its owner is resting. When a person is resting with closed eyes that is, no visual stimulus is entering the brain the normal bursts of nerve cell activity associated with incoming information are replaced by ultra- slow patterns of neuronal activity. Such spontaneous or "resting" waves travel in a highly organized and reproducible manner through the brain's outer layer the cortex and the patterns they create are complex, yet periodic and symmetrical.

Like hieroglyphics, it seemed that these patterns might have some meaning, and research student Tal Harmelech, under the guidance of Malach and Dr. Son Preminger, set out to uncover their significance. Their idea was that the patterns of resting brain waves may constitute "archives" for earlier experiences. As we add new experiences, the activation of our brain's networks lead to long-term changes in the links between brain cells, a facility referred to as plasticity. As our experiences become embedded in these connections, they create "expectations" that come into play before we perform any type of mental task, enabling us to anticipate the result. The researchers hypothesized that information about earlier experiences would thus be incorporated into the links between networks of nerve cells in the cortex, and these would show up in the brain's spontaneously emerging wave patterns.

In the experiment, the researchers had volunteers undertake a training exercise that would strongly activate a well-defined network of nerve cells in the frontal lobes. While undergoing scans of their brain activity in the Institute's functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, the subjects were asked to imagine a situation in which they had to make rapid decisions. The subjects received auditory feedback in real time, based on the information obtained directly from their frontal lobe, which indicated the level of neuronal activity in the trained network. This "neurofeedback" strategy proved highly successful in activating the frontal network a part of the brain that is notoriously difficult to activate under controlled conditions.

To test whether the connections created in the brain during this exercise would leave their traces in the patterns formed by the resting brain waves, the researchers performed fMRI scans on the resting subjects before the exercise, immediately afterward, and 24 hours later. Their findings, which appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed that the activation of the specific areas in the cortex did indeed remodel the resting brain wave patterns. Surprisingly, the new patterns not only remained the next day, they were significantly strengthened. These observations fit in with the classic learning principles proposed by Donald Hebb in the mid-20th century, in which the co-activation of two linked nerve cells leads to long term strengthening of their link, while activity that is not coordinated weakens this link. The fMRI images of the resting brain waves showed that brain areas that were activated together during the training sessions exhibited an increase in their functional link a day after the training, while those areas that were de-activated by the training showed a weakened functional connectivity.

This research suggests a number of future possibilities for exploring the brain. For example, spontaneously emerging brain patterns could be used as a "mapping tool" for unearthing cognitive events from an individual's recent past. Or, on a wider scale, each person's unique spontaneously emerging activity patterns might eventually reveal a sort of personal profile highlighting each individual's abilities, shortcomings, biases, learning skills, etc. "Today, we are discovering more and more of the common principles of brain activity, but we have not been able to account for the differences between individuals," says Malach. "In the future, spontaneous brain patterns could be the key to obtaining unbiased individual profiles." Such profiles could be especially useful in diagnosing or learning the brain pathologies associated with a wide array of cognitive disabilities.

###

Prof. Rafi Malach's research is supported by the Nella and Leon Benoziyo Center for Neurosciences; the Nella and Leon Benoziyo Center for Neurological Diseases; the Carl and Micaela Einhorn-Dominic Brain Research Institute; the Norman and Helen Asher Center for Human Brain Imaging; the Murray H. and Meyer Grodetsky Center for Research of Higher Brain Functions; the Kahn Family Research Center for Systems Biology of the Human Cell; the Friends of Dr. Lou Siminovitch; the Adelis Foundation; and the Mike and Valeria Rosenbloom through the Mike Rosenbloom Foundation. Prof. Malach is the recipient of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation; and he is the incumbent of the Barbara and Morris L. Levinson Professorial Chair in Brain Research.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.

Weizmann Institute news releases are posted on the World Wide Web at http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/, and are also available at http://www.eurekalert.org/

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/wios-pba062513.php

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Report: Xbox Music Will Leave Its Windows 8 Prison and Hit the Web

According to The Verge, Microsoft's Xbox Music service will launch in the form of a web-based version accessible across platforms next week. That would make sense given that Microsoft's Build developer shebang happens, uh, tomorrow. Maybe more importantly, move makes sense given the big Xbox push the company is set to make at the end of the year.

You see, we were very fond of Xbox Music when it launched last year, but no matter how good it is, there's no reason to sign on to it unless you have a bunch of Windows 8 devices. Spotify and the rest of the streaming music ilk work no matter what ecosystem you're on, so why choose something limited. A web-based version is basically a welcome mat to cross-platform users.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/according-to-the-verge-microsofts-xbox-music-service-w-573329884

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Carole Brody Fleet: The Changing Face Of The Widowed: What DO Widowed Really Look Like?

When someone says the word "widowed" to you, what is the first image that enters your mind? If referring to a widowed woman, chances are the image is of someone in her golden years who is perennially dressed in black. Similarly, a widower is also thought of as one who is somewhat older and likely looking for a new wife approximately 20 minutes after his beloved has passed away.

Even though stereotypes exist because on some level they are based in fact, the reality is that the image of the widowed must be broadened and it must be broadened dramatically. How do I know? Because I, along with millions of others in the widowed community have heard the following phrases too many times to count:

**"You're too young to be a widow".
**"How can you be widowed?"
**"You're a widow? REALLY? Stay away from me!" (usually said while making a cross with two fingers)
**"You're widowed? You sure don't look like it".

Phrases like these (and many more like them) made me ask at long last:

What do widowed really look like to the world at large?

In my continuing quest to break the stereotype of how the widowed are viewed, allow me to introduce you to this wonderful community as entirely and as all-inclusively as is possible:

We are not the image of widowed that the world purports us to be.
No widowed look exactly the same.
No widowhood looks exactly the same.
Therefore, no healing journey or healing timeline is exactly the same.

There is no "minimum age requirement" involved with widowhood.
Widowhood does not discriminate and is arbitrary in its attack.
Our beloveds were lost suddenly.
Our beloveds died after the ravages of long-term illness or infirmity.
Yes, we have many older widowed sisters and brothers in our community...
But not all widowed were married for many decades.
Not all widowed see twilight years with their spouses.

We come from both genders, in all age groups and from all walks.
We are opposite-sex spouses and we are same-sex spouses.
We were engaged and death stole our beloved away before we had the opportunity to walk down an aisle.
We were in long-term relationships that people around us easily dismiss; stating that it should be "easier" for us to get over the death of our beloveds because we "weren't really a couple".

We have adult children.
We have young children.
We were left pregnant.
We never had the chance to have children at all.

We are retired from the workplace
We are still in the workplace and must return to work while still in the midst of grieving.
We are faced with returning to the workplace after staying at home with our children and are unsure of our place in a professional world.

We are faced with a life that we aren't sure how to live.
We likely know no one to talk to that really understands.
We have questions about this new life that we have been handed; questions that we want to ask so badly, but are afraid to because of what other people may say or think.

We wear black because it is a fashion statement; not because we are in perpetual mourning.
We celebrate when we accomplish something new; whether it is fixing something in the house or going out for a meal on our own.
We wish you would call.
We wish you would mention their name.
We cry when no one is looking.
We also laugh because it feels good to do so once again - but laughing again does not mean that we have forgotten who and what we have lost.

We take baby steps into a life that we did not sign up for; yet are left behind to live.
We want to live fully again and are not sure how to go about doing so.
We are derided (and worse) by those whom we once trusted and thought would always be a source of support for us and for our children.
We are also loved and supported by incredibly special people in our lives without whom we would be lost and our Healing Journeys would be impossibly empty.

We do not want to be looked at peculiarly.
We do not want to be treated as though we carry a contagious disease called Death.
We do not want pity.
We simply want help without reproach.
We want education without lecture.
We want support without condition or negative opinion.
We need our community of peers who understand without question.
Because...we're still here.
And we matter too.

How does a stereotype fade into oblivion and take its place in the Land of the Obsolete? It starts with those who surround the widowed community; those in a position of providing consolation and comfort. The next time you meet a widowed person, resist the temptation to make remarks about how they don't look like a "typical widow/er" or reminding them how many decades that had with their beloved prior to their death and how "lucky" they should feel. Instead, simply take them by the hand, look into their eyes and say, "I'm so very sorry -- I cannot imagine the pain that you are in right now". It will help more than you will ever know.

Carole's latest book, "Happily Even After..." has won the prestigious Books for a Better Life Award. For more information about Carole Brody Fleet and Widows Wear Stilettos, please visit www.widowswearstilettos.com

Follow on Facebook at Widows Wear Stilettos
Follow on Twitter: @WidowsStilettos

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carole-brody-fleet/widowed-changing-face_b_3482374.html

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Mad Catz R.A.T. M

Gaming mice are usually complicated affairs, and wireless gaming mice tend to be even more involved. Besides a cable, high-end gaming mice usually have a charging cradle and are designed to sit quietly on a desk when not in use. This is great if you have a desktop gaming system, but if you like traveling around with a gaming notebook, it feels a bit bulky. Mad Catz's mobile gaming mice offer an alternative. The R.A.T. M is a particularly small, portable gaming mouse with all of the extra buttons and laser sensor resolution (6,400 dpi) you could want, but at $129.99 (direct) it's very pricey and it's just a little too small to be comfortable, especially compared to the you-won't-notice-it's-much-bigger-in-your-bag M.O.U.S. 9, which costs the same and will cause less cramps for larger hands.

Design
The R.A.T. M feels like a more compact version of Madcatz' other R.A.T. mice, and is dwarfed even by the M.O.U.S. 9, a similar MadCatz wireless mouse. The mouse takes Mad Catz' distinctive shape, with an angular, futuristic profile punctuated by a large thumb rest, an index finger button located to the left of the regular left mouse button, and a prominent, ridged metal wheel. Besides the additional index finger button, the mouse has two thumb buttons and a four-way directional nub on the thumb rest, plus a switch located just under the mouse wheel that toggles between high and low sensitivity.

Under the R.A.T. M, a small USB receiver sits in a spring-loaded hole, so you don't have to worry about losing it when the mouse isn't in use. A small switch under the optical sensor turns the mouse on and off. A battery compartment sits under the palm rest and holds two AAA batteries. The mouse comes with a drawstring pouch made of a black mesh material, for keeping the mouse safe when traveling.

Comfort
While it's small, the palm rest can extend slightly to fit larger hands. Unfortunately, even with the palm rest completely extended, the mouse is too small to use comfortably under my large hand. With my fingers placed on the mouse buttons, the rest barely reaches the upper part of my palm, and the heel of my hand gets no support at all. It really feels like a mini-mouse. Everything feels smaller than the R.A.T. 9 or M.O.U.S. 9, and for my Herculean mitts that means wrist cramping after extended use. If you have smaller hands, the R.A.T. M might be a refreshing change of pace and a much more comfortable mouse, but for me it just felt far too tiny. Adding insult to injury, the palm rest has no locking mechanism, so it tends to push back into the mouse when in use.

The R.A.T. M measures less than 4.3 inches long with the palm rest fully extended, shorter than most gaming mice. For reference, the Corsair Vengeance M65 measures 4.7 inches in length, the Logitech Touch Mouse T620 measures 4.4 inches in length, a house mouse (mus musclus) can grow up to 3.9 inches in length not including tail, and a brown rat (rattus norveigus) can reach up to 10 inches in length not including tail. Incidentally, rattus norveigus make surprisingly good, intelligent pets.

Despite the size, the R.A.T. M feels responsive, like other mice in Mad Catz' catalog. It uses a 6,400 dots-per-inch laser sensor to track movement, and I had no problem with precision when playing games connected to a notebook.

The Mad Catz R.A.T. M packs some great design elements and a very good laser sensor into a tiny, pocketable gaming mouse you can take with you on the go. However, its small size can be a hindrance for gamers with large hands, and its $130 price tag is pretty intimidating for what you get. The small size doesn't quite justify the premium you pay, especially when the excellent Logitech G700s?is available for $30 less. If you're unwilling to compromise on the buttons and sensitivity of a gaming mouse, there's no reason to compromise on the size of the mouse and how it feels in the hand. If you just want a functional wireless mouse, the Logitech Touch Mouse?is available for half the price of the R.A.T. M, and the Mad Catz M.O.U.S. 9 offers a larger, more comfortable fit (while still built for portability) than the R.A.T. M.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/wNrFvMvai_k/0,2817,2420648,00.asp

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Wanted US leaker Snowden believed to be in Moscow

MOSCOW (AP) ? A former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing highly classified surveillance programs was believed to have landed in Russia on Sunday ? possibly as a stopover before traveling elsewhere ? after being allowed to leave Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden was on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong that arrived in Moscow shortly after 5 p.m. (1300gmt) Sunday and was booked on a flight to fly to Cuba on Monday, the Russian news agencies ITAR-Tass and Interfax reported, citing unnamed airline officials. The reports said he intended to travel from Cuba to Caracas, Venezuela. There was also speculation that he might try to reach Ecuador.

The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group said it was working with him and that he was bound for an unnamed "democratic nation via a safe route for the purpose of asylum."

Snowden did not leave Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport with the other passengers and was not seen by a crowd of journalists waiting in the arrivals lounge. Interfax reported that he was spending the night in the transit zone of the airport because he did not have a visa to enter Russia and had rented a room in a capsule hotel.

The car of Ecuador's ambassador to Russia was parked outside the airport, spurring the speculation that Snowden intended to seek asylum in the Latin American country. But in Ecuador, a high-ranking source at the presidency said there was no information about whether Snowden would seek asylum there. The source spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak on the issue.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said last week that if Snowden asked for asylum, Ecuador would study the request.

Snowden had been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks after he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs. WikiLeaks said it was providing legal help to Snowden at his request and that he was being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from the group.

WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, who has spent a year inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning about sex crime allegations, told the Sydney Morning Herald that his organization is in a position to help because it has expertise in international asylum and extradition law.

The White House said President Barack Obama has been briefed on Sunday's developments by his national security advisers.

Snowden's departure came a day after the United States made a formal request for his extradition and gave a pointed warning to Hong Kong against delaying the process of returning him to face trial in the U.S.

The Department of Justice said only that it would "continue to discuss this matter with Hong Kong and pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel."

The Hong Kong government said in a statement that Snowden left "on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel."

It acknowledged the U.S. extradition request, but said U.S. documentation did not "fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law." It said additional information was requested from Washington, but since the Hong Kong government "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."

The statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure. It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden had revealed.

Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden go on a technicality appears to be a pragmatic move aimed at avoiding a drawn out extradition battle. The action swiftly eliminates a geopolitical headache that could have left Hong Kong facing pressure from both Washington and Beijing.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, has a high degree of autonomy and is granted rights and freedoms not seen on mainland China, but under the city's mini constitution Beijing is allowed to intervene in matters involving defense and diplomatic affairs.

Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., but the document has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political.

Russian officials have given no indication that they have any interest in detaining Snowden or any grounds to do so. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia would be willing to consider granting asylum if Snowden were to make such a request.

Russia and the United States have no extradition treaty that would oblige Russia to hand over a U.S. citizen at Washington's request.

The Cuban government had no comment on Snowden's movements or reports he might use Havana as a transit point.

The Obama administration on Saturday warned Hong Kong against delaying Snowden's extradition, with White House national security adviser Tom Donilon saying in an interview with CBS News, "Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case."

Michael Ratner, Assange's lawyer, said he didn't know Snowden's final destination, but that his options were not numerous. "You have to have a country that's going to stand up to the United States," Ratner said. "You're not talking about a huge range of countries here."

Ratner added that a country's extradition treaty with the U.S. is "not going to be relevant" because the country he ends up going to will likely be one willing to give him a political exemption.

Snowden's departure came as the South China Morning Post released new allegations from the former NSA contractor that U.S. hacking targets in China included the nation's cellphone companies and two universities hosting extensive Internet traffic hubs.

He told the newspaper that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." It added that Snowden said he had documents to support the hacking allegations, but the report did not identify the documents. It said he spoke to the newspaper in a June 12 interview.

With a population of more than 1.3 billion, China has massive cellphone companies. China Mobile is the world's largest mobile network carrier with 735 million subscribers, followed by China Unicom with 258 million users and China Telecom with 172 million users.

Snowden said Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chinese University in Hong Kong, home of some of the country's major Internet traffic hubs, were targets of extensive hacking by U.S. spies this year. He said the NSA was focusing on so-called "network backbones" in China, through which enormous amounts of Internet data passes.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was aware of the reports of Snowden's departure from Hong Kong to Moscow but did not know the specifics. It said the Chinese central government "always respects" Hong Kong's "handling of affairs in accordance with law." The Foreign Ministry also noted that it is "gravely concerned about the recently disclosed cyberattacks by relevant U.S. government agencies against China."

China's state-run media have used Snowden's allegations to poke back at Washington after the U.S. had spent the past several months pressuring China on its international spying operations.

A commentary published Sunday by the official Xinhua News Agency said Snowden's disclosures of U.S. spying activities in China have "put Washington in a really awkward situation."

"Washington should come clean about its record first. It owes ... an explanation to China and other countries it has allegedly spied on," it said. "It has to share with the world the range, extent and intent of its clandestine hacking programs."

____

Chan reported from Hong Kong. Sylvia Hui in London, Paul Haven in Havana, Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, and Anne Flaherty and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wanted-us-leaker-snowden-believed-moscow-161850018.html

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Deal of the Day ? Dell Optiplex 3010 Core i5 Quad-Core desktop with Windows 7 Pro and 3-year warranty

LogicBUY’s Deal for Sunday is the configurable Dell?Optiplex 3010 3rd Gen Core i5 Quad-core desktop, starting at?$539.00. ?Features: Core i5-3470 3.2GHz Quad-core CPU 4GB RAM 500GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD-ROM Keyboard and mouse Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) 3-year warranty $841.43 – 29% instant savings – $50 coupon code = $539.00 with free shipping. This deal [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/06/23/deal-of-the-day-dell-optiplex-3010-core-i5-quad-core-desktop-with-windows-7-pro-and-3-year-warranty/

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Jobs Trailer: See Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/jobs-trailer-ashton-kutcher-as-steve-jobs/

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Floods kill 3, 75,000 forced from Calgary homes

A police car sits stuck in a parking lot of an apartment building after heavy rains have caused flooding, closed roads, and forced evacuation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Friday, June 21, 2013. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

A police car sits stuck in a parking lot of an apartment building after heavy rains have caused flooding, closed roads, and forced evacuation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada Friday, June 21, 2013. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

The Bow River overflows in Calgary, Canada on Friday, June 21, 2013. Heavy rains have caused flooding, closed roads, and forced evacuations in Calgary. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

A search and rescue boat carries rescued passengers from a flooded industrial site near highway 543 north of High River, Alberta, Canada on Friday, June 21, 2013. The rescued passengers spent the night moored on a structure they built in the water. Calgary's mayor said Friday the flooding situation in his city is as under control as it can be, for now. Officials estimated 75,000 people have been displaced in the western Canadian city. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jordan Verlage)

Firefighters monitor flood waters that spilled over a highway 543 north of High River, Alberta, Canada on Friday, June 21, 2013. The rescued passengers spent the night moored on a structure they built in the water. Calgary's mayor said Friday the flooding situation in his city is as under control as it can be, for now. Officials estimated 75,000 people have been displaced in the western Canadian city. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jordan Verlage)

A search and rescue boat carries rescued passengers from a flooded industrial site near highway 543 north of High River, Alberta, Canada on Friday, June 21, 2013. The rescued passengers spent the night moored on a structure they built in the water. Calgary's mayor said Friday the flooding situation in his city is as under control as it can be, for now. Officials estimated 75,000 people have been displaced in the western Canadian city. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jordan Verlage)

CALGARY, Alberta (AP) ? At least three people were killed by floodwaters that devastated much of southern Alberta, leading authorities to evacuate the western Canadian city of Calgary's entire downtown. Inside the city's hockey arena, the waters reached as high as the 10th row.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday called the level of flooding "stunning" and said officials don't know yet if it will get worse, but said the water has peaked and stabilized and noted that the weather has gotten better.

Overflowing rivers washed out roads and bridges, soaked homes and turned streets into dirt-brown waterways around southern Alberta. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Patricia Neely told reporters three were dead and two bodies were recovered. The two bodies recovered are the two men who had been seen floating lifeless in the Highwood River near High River on Thursday, she said.

Harper, a Calgary resident, said he never imagined there would be a flood of this magnitude in this part of Canada.

"This is incredible. I've seen a little bit of flooding in Calgary before. I don't think any of us have seen anything like this before. The magnitude is just extraordinary," he said.

"We're all very concerned that if gets much more than this it could have real impact on infrastructure and other services longer term, so we're hoping things will subside a bit."

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the water levels have reached a peak, but have not declined.

"We've sat at the same level for many, many hours now," Nenshi said. "There is one scenario that would it go even higher than this, so you'll either see the Bow river continue at this level for many hours or you will see it grow even higher and we're prepared for that eventuality."

Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated 75,000 people, have already been evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and serves as the center of Canada's oil industry.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford said Medicine Hat, east of Calgary, was under a mandatory evacuation order affecting 10,000 residents. The premier warned that communities downstream of Calgary had not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.

About 350,000 people work in downtown Calgary on a typical day. However, officials said very few people need to be moved out, since many heeded warnings and did not go to work Friday.

A spokesman for Canada's defense minister said 1,300 soldiers from a base in Edmonton were being deployed to the flood zone.

Police were asking residents who were forced to leave the nearby High River area to register at evacuation shelter. The Town of High River remained under a mandatory evacuation order.

In downtown Calgary, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.

The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames flooded and the water inside was 10 rows deep. That would mean the dressing rooms are likely submerged as well.

"I think that really paints a very clear picture of what kinds of volumes of water we are dealing with," said Trevor Daroux, the city's deputy police chief.

At the grounds for the world-famous Calgary Stampede fair, water reached up to the roofs of the chuck wagon barns. The popular rodeo and festival is the city's signature event. Mayor Nenshi said it will occur no matter what.

About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.

The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.

Schools and court trials were canceled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.

Residents were left to wander and wade through streets waist-deep in water.

Newlyweds Scott and Marilyn Crowson were ordered out of their central Calgary condominium late Friday as rising waters filled their parking garage and ruptured a nearby gas line. "That's just one building but every building is like this," he said. "For the most part, people are taking it in stride."

Crowson, a kayaker, estimated the Bow River, usually about four feet deep, is running at a depth of 15 feet (4.57 meters).

"It's moving very, very fast," he said of the normally placid stream spanned by now-closed bridges. "I've never seen it so big and so high."

It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to four inches (100 millimeters) of rain. Environment Canada's forecast called for more rain in the area, but in much smaller amounts.

Calgary was not alone in its weather-related woes. Flashpoints of chaos spread from towns in the Rockies south to Lethbridge.

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Associated Press writer Rob Gillies contributed from Toronto and AP writer Jeremy Hainsworth contributed from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Associated Press

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