The Roots live large in new Philadelphia mural

Workmen sweep in front of a new mural honoring The Roots, Friday, May 31, 2013, in Philadelphia. As a teen growing up in Philadelphia, Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter got busted for graffiti and was ordered by a judge to clean up such vandalism by painting murals. Now, Trotter and his Grammy-winning band The Roots are scheduled to attend Friday the unveiling of a city-sanctioned mural in their honor. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Workmen sweep in front of a new mural honoring The Roots, Friday, May 31, 2013, in Philadelphia. As a teen growing up in Philadelphia, Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter got busted for graffiti and was ordered by a judge to clean up such vandalism by painting murals. Now, Trotter and his Grammy-winning band The Roots are scheduled to attend Friday the unveiling of a city-sanctioned mural in their honor. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? The Roots are officially living large in their hometown.

Members of the house band for NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" in New York returned to their roots in Philadelphia on Friday for the dedication of a multistory mural in their honor.

The massive artwork occupies the back wall of a charter school on the street where the Grammy Award-winning band once busked for change after its founding in 1992.

"This is an amazing turnaround that on South Street we're getting immortalized some 21 years later," Roots drummer Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson said.

The mural, titled "Legendary," is a colorful collage of images including portraits, cassette tapes and musical instruments that traces the history of the hip-hop group. It's one of more than 3,600 pieces of art created by the city's Mural Arts Program.

The project's unveiling came a day before The Roots Picnic, an annual music festival in the city hosted and curated by the band. In a few weeks, Thompson's memoir "Mo' Meta Blues" will be released.

Mural Arts Program executive director Jane Golden praised the project's paint and design team, which persevered through numerous complications. The original location, about eight blocks away on the same street, fell through.

"What you see behind me right now is beautiful," Golden said. "We think and we hope that we captured the wonderful spirit of The Roots."

When plans for the mural were first announced in November 2011, Roots co-founder Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter noted how he once got busted for graffiti as a teenager and a judge ordered him to clean up such vandalism by painting murals. Trotter called the punishment "scrub time."

On Friday, he said it was great to see his life come full circle.

"It hits close to home for me that this is in south Philadelphia. This is my part of town," Trotter said. "It's an honor and a blessing."

Thompson, too, said he was proud.

"This is one of the greatest moments of our career," he said. "I've forever driven the streets of Philadelphia wondering, when are we getting our mural?"

___

Online: http://www.muralarts.org

___

Follow Kathy Matheson at http://www.twitter.com/kmatheson

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-05-31-People-The%20Roots/id-1cd4b63331ba404c907436aa7954342a

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Aspartame in Milk: More ?Real Milk? Myths ? DrAxe.com

You may have heard about the latest uproar: the dairy industry wants the FDA to change its definition of milk. Why? They claim that it will benefit children?s health, that kids will drink more milk if they don?t realize it?s sweetened with aspartame. They?re referring to chocolate milk and other flavored milks for the most part, but low-fat milks also contain added sweeteners.

Some school systems have banned sugary beverages in order to combat childhood obesity, including flavored milks containing added sugar or high fructose corn syrup. The dairy industry reacted by offering reduced-calorie chocolate milk. They now claim that terms such a ?reduced calorie,? ?reduced sugar,? ?low-calorie? or ?diet? turns kids off. The FDA presently requires that any ?non-nutritive? additive be boldly listed on the front label as well as being included in the ingredient list. In addition, non-nutritive additives change milk composition so much that the FDA decided these altered drinks cannot be simply called ?milk? or ?chocolate milk,? but must be labeled as ?low-calorie? or ?reduced calorie? beverages.

The dairy industry purports that milk lower in sugar and sweetened with aspartame is a healthy choice for our kids. The industry is playing on parent?s concerns: many parents still think that their children are getting needed nutrients by drinking chocolate milk that they wouldn?t get otherwise. If you think this is true, you may want to take a look at my article: ?Which is More Deadly: Aspartame or Sugar?? ?In an NPR.com article, nutrition professor Barry Popkin says that there is no real evidence that flavored milks increase milk consumption among children.

Does Milk Contribute to Obesity?

Low-fat dairy choices are common today. We?ve been told that whole milk can contribute to weight gain and heart disease. Yet, reducing fat reduces flavor. That?s why low-fat milk often has added sugar or artificial sweetener.

The Physicians for Responsible Medicine (PFRM) report that a recent study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood found that low-fat milk did not lower obesity rates among small children. In fact, kids that drank one percent or skim milk were more likely to be overweight or obese than kids that drank whole milk.

An earlier study, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, came up with similar results. Tracking 12 adolescents for four years, the researchers found that drinking skim milk and one percent milk was associated with weight gain but milk fat was not.

Plus, researchers are finding that artificial sweeteners can change the chemistry of our brain and satiation receptors, leading to sweet cravings and unhealthy eating. You can read more about this in ?Sweet Addiction: Artificial Sweeteners Not So Sweet After All.?

Got Strong Bones?

Many parents believe their kids need to drink milk at school in order to get needed calcium for strong bones. PFRM thinks milk should be taken off the school menu because studies don?t support milk consumption and bone health. A Harvard study found that drinking milk doesn?t prevent the risk of bone fracture in women and recent studies find that drinking milk doesn?t prevent stress fractures in adolescent girls.

Milk fat is what helps us to absorb calcium. Stripping the fat and pasteurizing milk prevents us from absorbing its nutrients adequately.

What?s Real Milk?

First of all, consider what you?re getting in milk. Cows are fed grains rather than grass. They?re loaded with hormones to boost milk production and given antibiotics to prevent disease. They?re exposed to fertilizers and pesticides. If you aren?t buying locally, you don?t know what kind of conditions surround the milk you drink. Check out ?Are These Chemicals in Your Milk?? to see what you may be ingesting.

Then there?s pasteurization. High heat destroys helpful bacteria in milk so that it?s more vulnerable to population by bad bacteria. This heat destroys and denatures enzymes that help us to digest milk and utilize its nutrients. Pasteurization destroys the majority of vitamins A, C, D, E and the B vitamins. And calcium? We become less able to absorb calcium in milk because the pasteurization process destroys phosphatase, an enzyme we?d normally use to take calcium up.

Raw milk is real milk. To understand the truth about the dangers of pasteurized milk and the benefits of raw milk, read ?Raw Milk Myths: Are We Prisoners of Pasteurization?? ?I don?t think that pasteurized milk should be labeled as real milk, never mind low-fat milk with aspartame. There are plenty of healthy food choices you can give your kids to make sure they get needed nutrients. Just as the dairy industry shouldn?t be able to trick children and parents into choosing an artificially sweetened drink, parents shouldn?t be okaying sugary drinks like chocolate milk because they contain calcium. Teach your kids to eat and appreciate real foods and you won?t have to worry about what the food industry is trying to pass off as real food.

Lessons Learned

• Low-fat milk contains added sugar or artificial sweeteners.
• Low-fat, flavored milks are linked to weight gain in children.
• Pasteurization destroys nutrients in milk.
• Real milk is raw milk.

Sources

• Allison Aubrey, ?Can Milk Sweetened With Aspartame Still Be Called Milk?? National Public Radio, March 3, 2013, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/06/173618723/can-milk-sweetened-with-aspartame-still-be-called-milk
• ?Low-Fat Milk Does Not Prevent or Reverse Childhood Obesity,? Physicians for Responsible Medicine, March 20, 2013, http://www.pcrm.org/health/medNews/low-fat-milk-does-not-prevent-or-reverse-childhood
• ?Let?s Really Move Milk Out of School Lunches,? Physicians for Responsible Medicine, http://www.pcrm.org/health/healthy-school-lunches/letsreallymove/lets-really-move-milk-out-of-school-lunches

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above may be ?affiliate links.? This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission?s 16 CFR, Part 255: ?Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.?

Source: http://www.draxe.com/aspartame-in-milk-more-real-milk-myths/

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The online MBA comes of age - Fortune Management

By John A. Byrne

UNC Kenan-Flagler's Chapel Hill campus

(Poets&Quants) -- Douglas A. Shackelford is a professor's professor. He's a widely published scholar whose CV overflows with six densely packed pages of published papers, Congressional testimonies, and academic honors. A highly regarded authority on taxation, he's been a visiting professor at two of the world's best universities, Stanford and Oxford, and he's been teaching at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School for nearly a quarter of a century.

So when Kenan-Flagler Dean James W. Dean Jr. began to seriously consider going into the online MBA market three years ago, Shackelford was understandably aghast. "Oh my God," I thought, "the budget situation must be desperate. I told the dean that this is such a big bet that either he will be a hero for doing it or burned in effigy on campus if it fails."

Undaunted, Dean plowed ahead, appointing his initially skeptical colleague as the associate dean of the online program, MBA@UNC. In due time, Shackelford shed his reservations and has since become a true convert. Now, as the school prepares to graduate its first class of online MBAs this July, the professor believes that Kenan-Flagler's move into the online space was not only prescient. "It was brilliant," concedes the 55-year-old professor.

After all, some of the best business schools in the world now offer MBA degrees online. Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business will enroll its first online class this August. Online MBA programs are flourishing at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, IE Business School in Spain, Babson College's Olin School, and Arizona State University's Carey School. Every other week, a new business school seems to be announcing the launch of yet another cyber-MBA program. At several schools, including Indiana and Arizona State, incoming online MBA classes outnumber the new full-time students enrolled on-campus.

As Robert Dammon, dean of Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, puts it, "The wave of the future is the use of technology to deliver education more broadly to people. There [is] a large group of people who don't want to leave their jobs and still want an MBA from a top-tier school."

From Shackelford's perspective, Kenan-Flagler's move into the market two years ago has gained the school plaudits as an educational innovator and has challenged the faculty to think differently about teaching. The program has drawn an exceptional group of working professionals -- some of them already earning more than $250,000 -- and their satisfaction with the experience has been high. Nearly every quarter, when Kenan-Flagler opens its Internet doors to a new cohort, the size of its incoming classes grows larger.

If you're interested in an online MBA degree these days, you'll find several quality programs and much wider acceptance of online study from employers than ever before. In fact, so many not-for-profit universities have entered the market that they are now taking significant market share away from the for-profit players who pioneered online education years ago. And while McKinsey & Co. and Goldman Sachs (GS) aren't yet recruiting graduates of online MBA programs, that day may not be that far off.

Gaining credibility

"The acceptance ? of online degrees as a legitimate replacement for on-campus degrees is going up," says Haven Ladd, a partner with The Parthenon Group's education practice. "Most HR [human resources] departments really don't care about the differences." Adds his partner, Robert Lytle, "It's only a matter of time before professional service firms get comfortable hiring online graduates."

Online education in general is gaining credibility. The decision by the likes of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT to offer MOOC (massive open online courses) has certainly helped. But online MBA programs can still rouse controversy, of course. Many educators continue to pooh-pooh the quality of an Internet degree. They bemoan the lack of community and the limited networking of online education. Duke University's Fuqua School, which offers a global executive MBA where 40% of the work is done via Internet, refuses to even acknowledge that it is selling an "online MBA degree." Insists John Gallagher, director of executive MBA programs at Fuqua, "The last thing we want to do is dilute the brand, and so we would never use the word 'online' or call it a distance learning program."

Yet as schools with global brands and reputations continue to move into the online market, the quality of the students who are opting to earn degrees on the web is increasing as well. "It's finally come of age," believes Phil Powell, the faculty chair of Indiana University's Kelley Direct online MBA program. "Students who wouldn't have done it 10 years ago are willing to do it now. Students who are most sensitive to pedigree and quality have finally embraced the idea."

Susan Cates, executive director of Kenan-Flagler's MBA@UNC, says she just admitted into the online MBA program an applicant who had been fourth in her undergraduate class at an Ivy League university and first in her medical school class. "She just finished up her residency and thinks an MBA will help her go where she wants to go faster," adds Cates. "With her background, she is not going to do an MBA degree anywhere except a top-tier school."

Unlike traditional full-time MBA programs, which have been shrinking at many schools in recent years, the online MBA market is booming. Last year, for the first time since 1999, when Indiana launched its online version of the MBA, the school enrolled a larger number of online MBA students than full-time, on-campus students. Indiana enrolled 245 students in the past 12 months, 135 in its fall cohort and 110 in this spring's newest cohort, up 20% from a year ago. That exceeds the 180 students who entered the school's traditional MBA program in the fall.

Babson College, which opened its Fast Track MBA program to the public in 2007 with 26 students, recently graduated a class of close to 140 online students. At any given time, the school has an online enrollment of up to 350 MBA candidates.

This July, when the Kenan-Flagler Business School graduates its first online MBA class of 18 students, the school also expects to enroll its largest MBA@UNC online class ever, with more than 80 people.

For students who intend to stay in their organizations and use the MBA to enhance their careers, an online MBA is an attractive option. Not only is it more convenient than an evening or weekend program, it's vastly less expensive than the full-time MBA because students can forego the opportunity costs of being unemployed for nearly two years. If a student is either a road warrior or transferred to a new location, there's also no problem in continuing their studies. And most online programs enroll students at least twice, if not more often, a year. Kenan-Flagler, for example, has start dates in January, April, July, and October.

Online education gets a face-lift

Just as crucial, online learning is no longer a clunky and ill-defined stepchild of the educational world. Many business schools are employing high production values, high-end video conferencing technology, and Internet simulations that keep students on their toes. They go far beyond the early Internet courses first available on dial-up connections.

In the vast majority of earlier courses, professors put a camera in a classroom to do lecture capture. "The message is, 'There was a real class and I wasn't there. So this is second best,'" adds Cates. "We're using the technology to help us do the same things that we do in the face-to-face program: challenging class discussions, group projects, team consulting assignments, and simulations."

An MBA@UNC course

In class sessions online, students often peer at computer screens with a Hollywood Squares-look, seeing fellow students in tiny boxes with a professor orchestrating a discussion via an audio feed. Students can tap on a button to "raise their hands," generally by typing in a question or a response into a window on the screen. But there's much more to it than that.

In the past six months, for example, Kenan-Flagler piloted its first live consulting project with a team of online students and a faculty advisor, a retired McKinsey & Co. partner. "They will be delivering the same kind of consulting project that our full-time MBAs would do," says Cates.

At Carnegie Mellon, which will enroll its first online MBA class in August, online students will partake in the same intensive leadership experiences -- with workshops, seminars, and one-on-one coaching -- that were recently part of an update of the school's full-time, on-campus MBA curriculum.

Tangible results: Salary bumps and promotions

Increasingly, schools that have been in the online space for several years are now reporting positive outcomes for their graduates. At Kelley, which allows online MBA students to sign up for the on-campus recruiter interview schedules available to its full-time students, the rewards have come in higher pay and upward mobility. Powell says Kelley Direct students who graduated in June 2012 began the program with average salaries of $76,750. When they graduated, their pay was $104,160, an increase of 36%. Moreover, 66% of the students also earned a promotion by commencement.

Babson College says students who graduated in 2010 from its Fast Track MBA program averaged a 30% increase in pay by the time they left with their online degrees. "They certainly didn't graduate during the flush years of the economy, yet they were getting substantial increases in pay," says Michael Cummings, faculty director of Fast Track.

At Kenan-Flagler, 30% of students in the online program for more than a year have gotten a promotion or had a job change internally or externally.

A recent study of the online educational market by Parthenon showed that potential applicants prefer hybrid programs that combine Internet-based classes with on-campus study sessions and projects. Pure online programs were favored in the study over on-campus degrees.

Giving it the (somewhat) personal touch

So far, the scant data available on online degree learning is limited. Cates says UNC's twice-a-quarter surveys of its online MBA candidates show that student satisfaction is extremely high. "Students feel they know each other well, that they have great access to the faculty, and that they are being intellectually challenged," adds Cates.

For the professors who teach in online settings, it can be a little disconcerting at first. "In a classroom, I can look at a student's body language and facial expressions," says Cummings of Babson. "I can tell when they're not getting it. Now I am deprived of that."

On the other hand, bulletin board discussions can often seem more substantive than the real dialogue in a classroom. "As a professor," adds Cummings, "You can skate around things in a regular classroom. Your voice evaporates into thin air, but your written comments are there for a long time."

Many of the best schools offering online education require face-to-face meetings between fellow students and faculty. Week-long orientation immersions, weekend retreats, and multi-day consulting projects onsite are all part of the more sophisticated blended programs. After a kickoff week on-campus, Babson's Fast Track program has students studying two courses over each seven-week module in a 21-month program. In each module, there are four weeks online, then two and one-half days of on-campus class, and finally three weeks of online study. All told, 60% of the contact hours are via the Internet, with the remaining 40% in person.

"You are seeing a blurring of the definitions of online education," says Lytle of The Parthenon Group.

While videos, podcasts, animations, bulletin board discussions, and chat features are largely a given in online programs, each school has come up with a different approach to its on-campus segments. The University of Florida requires online MBA students to come to its Gainesville, Fla., campus for weekend classes and projects every four months during the 27-month-long program. A weekend orientation program at the beginning includes a ropes and challenge course. In Carnegie Mellon's 32-month program, there will be 15 "Access Weekends" where students get together with faculty from Friday through Sunday in one of three locations in Pittsburgh, New York, or Silicon Valley.

Aside from the week-long "connect week" on Indiana's Bloomington campus at the start of the Kelley Direct program, there is a second "connect week" at the start of the second year. And, for the first time this summer, Kelly Direct is bringing 20 of its students to Botswana, Africa for a global consulting project with one of five small businesses. Teams of four students each will first fly to meet their clients, which range from a garment business to an auto body shop, in Washington, D.C., for a weekend. They will then fly back home and for the next seven weeks to work closely with their clients virtually. Finally, in August, they will spend a week on site with the business in Africa before making final presentations to the client.

The most common hurdle in an online business program is how to recreate the kind of dynamic class interaction that occurs when a business school professor leads a case study discussion. UNC believes it has discovered a very good solution from its online partner, 2U, an educational startup backed by venture funding. 2U has brought to Kenan-Flagler a way to do case studies from its partnership with the law school at Washington University, which now offers an online master's degree in United States law for attorneys practicing overseas.

"They had to figure out how to teach the Socratic method with their law program, and it became evident to us that this would be a good way to do case study classes," explains Shackelford. The school records a professor engaged in a rapid-fire exchange with two scripted students who have already taken the course. "At a certain point, the professor looks straight into the camera and asks the live students a question," adds Shackelford. "Then, the student has to type in an answer. The decision might be, 'Do you buy a company or not?' Once you make your choice, and it could require further work, the discussion resumes. It may sound kind of corny but when you watch the video, you feel you are involved in an intellectual exchange."

A lot of the prep work required of teachers in an online MBA program is also finding its way into traditional MBA teaching. Many schools are using their recorded lectures, the so-called asynchronous course sessions, to "flip the classroom," adopting a model in which professors do the basic lecture on video and use the classroom time for more interactive learning. "It has changed the culture of the school," insists Shackelford. "I don't believe we could think about doing education in this building without thinking about doing online now."

If the once-skeptical professor now sounds like an online evangelist, he is. What's going on is a revolution in learning, says Shackelford. "There are some who are in denial that the world is changing in a big way. But the train has left the station, and I think it's really exciting."

More from Poets&Quants:

Source: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/29/online-mba/

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Obama seeks to limit top pay for federal contractors (reuters)

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MintLife Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice | Is an FHA Loan ...

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the U.S. government?s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has provided a form of mortgage insurance to back loans made to Americans who would not otherwise qualify for a home loan.

Over the years, FHA-insured loans have allowed consumers all across the country to become homeowners.

The program allows borrowers to become buyers with a low down payment, typically as low as 3.5 percent. Today, the program is under pressure and some worry that soon these loans may fall out of favor.

A Rise in Popularity

After the subprime loan crisis began in 2007 and subprime lenders left the market,?FHA loans?became the primary method for lower income homeowners to qualify for a?mortgage loan.

Overnight, the FHA?s share of the market skyrocketed from around 4 percent of all loans to over 15 percent of all new loans and 30 percent of new home purchase loans.

Many believed that this would put undue stress on the agency and lead to higher delinquencies and losses for the agency.

A study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University in July 2012 estimated that 30 percent of the loans originated by the FHA between 2007 and 2009 would be?delinquent within 5 years.

Changes Ahead

The FHA has maintained that it is loaning money to people who are more creditworthy than in the past.

However, last month (April), the agency increased the mortgage insurance premiums it charges consumers who take out FHA loans.

FHA mortgage insurance traditionally remained an expense for borrowers until the loan amount due fell below 80 percent of the total value of the property. Lenders call that calculation the Loan-to-Value or LTV ratio.

Next month (June), the agency will make another change that will require FHA borrowers to pay mortgage insurance premiums for the life of the loan.

Some say this will add thousands of dollars to the price of a home for FHA borrowers.

Others point to the fact that most people refinance into new loan products about every 7 years, which would allow FHA borrowers to refinance into a conventional loan and possibly avoid mortgage insurance premiums long before their home was paid off.

The Bottom Line

FHA insures loans written by FHA-approved lenders who set their own rates and fees, so the only way to know for sure if an FHA loan will meet your needs is to talk to a qualified lending professional.

While these government-insured loans are going through some changes right now, they are still likely to serve the needs of many homeowners in the years ahead.

?Is an FHA Loan Right for You?? was provided by Zillow.com.?

Source: http://www.mint.com/blog/housing/is-an-fha-loan-right-for-you-0513/

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NASA's WISE mission finds 'lost' asteroid family members

May 29, 2013 ? Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families. The snapshots also helped place thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families for the first time. The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans.

"NEOWISE has given us the data for a much more detailed look at the evolution of asteroids throughout the solar system," said Lindley Johnson, the program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This will help us trace the NEOs back to their sources and understand how some of them have migrated to orbits hazardous to the Earth."

The main asteroid belt is a major source of near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are those asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun. Some near-Earth objects start out in stable orbits in the main asteroid belt, until a collision or gravitational disturbance flings them inward like flippers in a game of pinball.

The NEOWISE team looked at about 120,000 main belt asteroids out of the approximately 600,000 known. They found that about 38,000 of these objects, roughly one third of the observed population, could be assigned to 76 families, 28 of which are new. In addition, some asteroids thought to belong to a particular family were reclassified.

An asteroid family is formed when a collision breaks apart a large parent body into fragments of various sizes. Some collisions leave giant craters. For example, the asteroid Vesta's southern hemisphere was excavated by two large impacts. Other smash-ups are catastrophic, shattering an object into numerous fragments, as was the case with the Eos asteroid family. The cast-off pieces move together in packs, traveling on the same path around the sun, but over time the pieces become more and more spread out.

Previous knowledge of asteroid family lineages comes from observations of their orbits. NEOWISE also looked at the asteroids' reflectivity to identify family members.

Asteroids in the same family generally have similar mineral composition and reflect similar amounts of light. Some families consist of darker-colored, or duller, asteroids, while others are made up of lighter-colored, or shinier, rocks. It is difficult to distinguish between dark and light asteroids in visible light. A large, dull asteroid can appear the same as a small, shiny one. The dark asteroid reflects less light but has more total surface area, so it appears brighter.

NEOWISE could distinguish between the dark and light asteroids because it could detct infrared light, which reveals the heat of an object. The larger the object, the more heat it gives off. When the size of an asteroid can be measured, its true reflective properties can be determined, and a group of asteroids once thought to belong to a single family circling the sun in a similar orbit can be sorted into distinct families.

"We're separating zebras from the gazelles," said Joseph Masiero of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is lead author of a report on the new study that appears in the Astrophysical Journal. "Before, family members were harder to tell apart because they were traveling in nearby packs. But now we have a better idea of which asteroid belongs to which family."

The next step for the team is to learn more about the original parent bodies that spawned the families.

"It's as if you have shards from a broken vase, and you want to put it back together to find out what happened," said Amy Mainzer, the NEOWISE principal investigator at JPL. "Why did the asteroid belt form in the first place and fail to become a planet? We are piecing together our asteroids' history."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, managed and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after completing its main objectives of scanning the entire sky twice.

More information about the mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/wise .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/qu0zsmOeq0A/130529214902.htm

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Dinosaur chomped like a bird of prey, say scientists

A study of an Allosaurus fossil found that the massive dinosaur dined more like a kestrel than a crocodile, tearing flesh from carcasses by pulling its head straight back.?

By Eoin O'Carroll,?Staff / May 22, 2013

At first glance, a nearly 30-foot long, 150-million-year-old dinosaur may not seem to have much in common with a modern-day bird of prey, but according to new research, the Allosaurus and the falcon at least had the same table manners.

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In a study published this week in the journal?Palaeontologia Electronica, Ohio University researchers used a CT scanner to create a digital image of an Allosaurus fragilis skull. After adding neck and jaw muscles, air sinuses, and a windpipe to the image, they then, using a physics simulator, modeled how the dinosaur would have moved its head.

They found that, unlike the Tyrannosaurus, which paleontologists say dismembered its victims by thrashing its head from side to side like a crocodile, the Allosaurus, which, like Tyrannosaurus walked on two legs and had stubby forelimbs, most likely dined by biting into its prey and then tearing the flesh retracting its head back and upward.

Their discovery hinged on a neck muscle that?was unusually positioned on the Allosaurus. On most predatory dinosaurs, such as the T. rex the longissimus capitis superficialis runs along the side of the neck, where it attaches to a bony protrusion at the base of the skull. But on the Allosaurus, the muscle is attached much lower on the skull.?

"This neck muscle acts like a rider pulling on the reins of a horse's bridle," said ?Ohio?University paleontologist Eric Snively, the study's lead author, in an Ohio University press release.?"If the muscle on one side contracts, it would turn the head in that direction, but if the muscles?on both sides pull, it pulls the head straight back."

Most Allosaurus specimens, including the one used in this study, have been unearthed in the western United States, in a fossil-rich region known as the Morrison Formation. During the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, the Allosaurus sat at the top of the food chain. In 2005, paleontologists detailed?evidence?of combat between Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, suggesting that the armored quadroped was on the Allosaurus's menu.

The Tyrannosaurs lived much later, about 65 million years ago.

"Apparently one size doesn't fit all when it comes to dinosaur feeding styles," said Dr. Snively. "Many people think of Allosaurus as a smaller and earlier version of?T. rex, but our engineering analyses show that they were very different predators."

Both genuses are theropods, a group of two-legged dinosaurs that includes today's birds. In other words, the Allosaurus and the falcon have at least one more thing in common: they are both dinosaurs. ?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/7IV2ZLIhs_s/Dinosaur-chomped-like-a-bird-of-prey-say-scientists

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Reports: Woman who reported newborn in pipe is mom

BEIJING (AP) ? A 22-year-old woman who raised the initial alarm about a newborn trapped in a sewer pipe in China kept quiet about being his mother even as she watched the sensational two-hour rescue unfold, reports said Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not revealed in state media reports, confessed to police a couple of days later when they asked her to undergo a medical checkup after searching her rented room and finding toys and blood-stained toilet paper, the state-run Zhejiang News website said.

Firefighters were called Saturday to the residential building in the Pujiang area of the eastern Zhejiang province city of Jinhua to rescue a baby trapped in the L-joint of a sewage pipe just below a squat toilet in one of the building's public restrooms.

Video of the rescue of Baby No. 59 ? so named because of his incubator number in the hospital ? was shown on Chinese news programs and websites starting late Monday and picked up worldwide, prompting both horror and an outpouring of charity on behalf of the newborn.

The single woman, a tenant in the building, told police she could not afford an abortion and secretly delivered the child Saturday afternoon in the toilet. She said the newborn slipped into the sewer line and that she alerted her landlord of the trapped baby after she could not pull the child out, Zhejiang News said.

In China, unwanted pregnancies have been on the rise because of lack of sex education and of an increasingly lax attitude toward sex. Young men and women often are engaged in unprotected sex, and abortions have become increasingly are common.

The baby, who weighed 2.8 kilograms (6 pounds, 2.8 ounces), had a low heart rate and some minor abrasions on his head and limbs, but was mostly unhurt, according to Zhejiang Online, the province's official news site. The placenta was still attached.

Police initially said they were treating the case of as possible attempted homicide, but it was not immediately clear whether the mother would face any criminal charges.

In the video, officials were shown removing the pipe from a ceiling that apparently was just below the restroom and then, at the hospital, using pliers and saws to gently pull apart the pipe, which was about 10 centimeters (about 3 inches) in diameter.

Zhejiang News said the mother was present throughout the entire rescue and expressed her concern for the child, thought that didn't initially rouse suspicion of the police.

News of the baby's ordeal was met with horror and pity by bloggers on Chinese sites. Most speculated that the child had been dumped by his parents down the toilet. The rescue prompted an outpouring from strangers who came to the hospital with diapers, baby clothes, powdered milk and offers to adopt him.

The landlord of the building told Zhejiang News earlier in the week that there were no signs that the birth took place in the restroom and she had not been aware of any recent pregnancies among her tenants.

The mother told police she cleaned up the scene in the toilet after the delivery and that she managed to hide her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes and tightly wrapping her abdomen, Zhejiang News said.

___

Online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHW_fn2W9HQ

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/reports-woman-reported-newborn-pipe-mom-033834855.html

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Wave of bombings in Iraqi capital kill at least 66

BAGHDAD (AP) ? A wave of car bombings tore through mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhoods of the Baghdad area starting Monday afternoon, leaving at least 66 dead in the latest outburst of an unusually intense wave of bloodshed roiling Iraq.

The blasts are the latest indication that Iraq's security is rapidly deteriorating as sectarian tensions exacerbated by months of Sunni-led anti-government protests and the war in neighboring Syria are on the rise.

Iraq has been hit by a wave of bloodshed that has killed more than 350 people in the past two weeks alone.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's bloodshed, but the attacks bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida's Iraqi arm. The group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, frequently uses car bombs and coordinated blasts in an effort to undermine Iraqis' confidence in the Shiite-led government.

The day's deadliest attack happened when two bombs exploded in the eastern Habibiya neighborhood, which is near the sprawling Shiite district of Sadr City. That attack killed 12 killed and wounded 35, according to police.

Twin blasts also struck an open-air market in the predominantly Shiite al-Maalif area, killing six and wounding 12 others, two police officers said.

Another car bomb exploded in the busy commercial Sadoun Street in central Baghdad. It killed five civilians and wounded 14 others, two other police officers said. Among the wounded were four policemen who were in a nearby checkpoint.

The street is one of the major hubs in the capital for clinics, pharmacies and shops. Firefighters were seen struggling to extinguish the flames from the debris of the car bomb as police sealed off the area.

Several shops were partially damaged or burned. Elsewhere, police said a car bomb went off in the capital's eastern New Baghdad area as they were waiting for explosives experts to dismantle it, killing a civilian and wounding nine others.

In the northern Sabi al-Boor neighborhood, police said eight civilians were killed and 26 wounded when another car bomb exploded in a market.

Meanwhile in the southwestern neighborhood of Bayaa, another car bomb explosion in a market killed six civilians and wounded 16. In northern Baghdad's Kazimiyah district, a car bomb blew up near a bus and taxi stop, killing four and wounding 11 others. And in Baghdad's central Sadria area, a car bomb went off in a market and killed three civilians and wounded 11.

In the eastern Jisr Diyala area, a car bomb killed 5 and wounded 12. And in the northern Shaab area, a car bomb killed four and wounded nine.

Car bombs also struck the eastern Baladiyat neighborhood, killing four and wounding 11, and the northern neighborhood of Hurriyah, leaving five dead and 14 wounded.

In Madain, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of central Baghdad, a car bomb killed three and wounded nine.

Medical officials confirmed the causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

Although violence has decreased sharply in Iraq since the height of insurgency, militants are still capable to carry out lethal attacks nationwide.

The recent wave of bloodshed has raised tensions between the country's Sunni minority and Shiite-led government. The surge in violence has been reminiscent of the sectarian carnage that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

Alarmed by a nationwide deterioration in the security situation, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered a reshuffle in senior military ranks.

Since Saturday, the government has launched a military operation in the country's western Anbar province to chase down fighters from al-Qaida in Iraq. The group has grown stronger thanks to the rising lawlessness on the Syrian-Iraq frontier and to cross-border cooperation with the Syrian militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front.

___

Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wave-bombings-iraqi-capital-kill-least-66-170911418.html

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Keeping a dual-Mac lifestyle in sync ? Tech News and Analysis

Relationships are a lot of work. You need to make sure you?re compatible, communicate well, and are on the same page for almost everything. Wait, you thought I meant personal relationships? Oh, sorry, I was talking about keeping multiple Macs in sync.

I was gifted a really nice 27-inch monitor a year ago. Connecting that to my 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro essentially turned my laptop into a desktop Mac. Not that unplugging it and bringing it with me is a hassle. It?s getting it to recognize the monitor when I plug it in. I end up having to use GFXCardStatus to force the graphics card into Discrete mode (even if it?s there already) to get it to properly detect the external monitor. I also dual-boot this Mac into Windows 8 to play some games, so that just generates some extra hassles when reconnecting the monitor.

At the same time, I did need a mobile platform. I?m getting a band together, and need a laptop to bring to rehearsals to record with. Plus, I wanted something light if I was leaving the house to write with. I also didn?t want to pay a lot for this muffler, err laptop.

Fortunately, I still had my 2009 13-inch MacBook Pro kicking around. This is the tale of how I manage both laptops. Because everyone has two laptops floating around, right?

The Mac App Store

The Mac App store has really eliminated my ?OK, where did I put that serial number?? issues. While software packages like Microsoft Office aren?t there, I?m finding that around 90 percent of what I need is available in the Mac App Store. Pages?($19.99), Things ($49.99) and Evernote??(Free) are key to my workflow, so being able to easily reinstall them from the Mac App Store (along with a 5-device license) is a blessing.

Office 365

Sometimes (OK, often), iWork isn?t enough, and I need the full might and power of the Microsoft Office Suite. To make my life a lot easier, I just use Office 365, which gives me access to the Office suite on both OS X and Windows 8. It also comes with 20 GB of SkyDrive space (more on that later).

Usually, I need Office when I?m on a fast roundtrip collaboration with a person who does not have iWork. While Pages does handle Word documents fairly well, I?m more comfortable keeping Word documents in Word. Also, I loathe Numbers and much prefer Excel. My issues with Numbers are lengthy, but it sums it up with that it kinda plays at being a spreadsheet, but doesn?t have nearly the power of Excel. So, it?s just easier to handle those tasks in Excel.

The cloud

Keeping the same programs on multiple devices is one thing. The important part is keeping the data in sync. For that, I rely on a handful of cloud services: iCloud, Dropbox and SkyDrive.

iCloud

iCloud has gotten kind of beaten up in the press lately, and to a certain degree, I admit the service has its good and bad points. So, I?ve separated out the pieces I have problems with (Documents in the Cloud) and instead focus on the parts that work for me (Bookmarks, iMessage, etc.).

The biggest issue I have with Documents in the Cloud is the walled-garden approach. Simply put, a file I start in Byword ($9.99) can?t easily be moved into Pages or Word, without cutting and pasting. I also don?t expect this to change, so I?ve looked for other solutions for document syncing. One problem I?ve run into is completely forgetting what program I even created a file in.

I also use Notes.app quite a bit. Its interface for capturing notes quickly is a little easier than Evernote?s. As an example, I was recently watching a band perform. This band is the same style of music I?m playing, and I took copious notes on their stage manner, song list and the like. I just felt more comfortable doing this in iCloud and Notes. Evernote for me still remains a place to store large bodies of notes with lots of text.

SkyDrive

My affair with SkyDrive started when I needed to edit Office documents on my Windows 8 partition. While Dropbox can handle this, I liked how it integrated natively into Windows 8. Also, it?s nice being able to edit Word documents in Skydrive?s web interface on a machine I might not have Office installed on. While I can use Google Docs for this (and for one spreadsheet, my band?s songlist, I do use Gdocs), I prefer the Office web apps. With my Office 365 subscription, SkyDrive also comes with 20 GB of storage. That also means I can use it to move my GarageBand songs between machines. One conscious decision I?ve made is to only have production-type files on Skydrive. This is where most of my working files reside.

Dropbox

Dropbox takes the place of flash drives for moving my files between computers. If I get a PDF in the mail I want to have on all computers, I put it in Dropbox. One exception to having work files on SkyDrive is most iOS text editors save to Dropbox, so I use that tool for any text files I?m working on. For the most part, these files are notes from meetings, or stories I?m working on that are in very rough draft and I don?t need to worry about niceties like formatting.

Final thoughts

A few months ago, I wrote about how I use Dropbox for some of the iCloud-type storage. Since then, I?ve started using SkyDrive quite a bit, and I like the separation between the digital junk drawer that?s my Dropbox folder, and the more organized, work environment in SkyDrive. While Dropbox would handle this well, the appeal to me is easy editing in a web interface via SkyDrive that I enjoy.

Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/05/28/keeping-a-dual-mac-lifestyle-in-sync/

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Mom's obesity surgery may help break cycle in kids

Chart shows IOM recommendations for weight gain

Chart shows IOM recommendations for weight gain

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Obese mothers tend to have kids who become obese. Now provocative research suggests weight-loss surgery may help break that unhealthy cycle in an unexpected way ? by affecting how their children's genes behave.

In a first-of-a-kind study, Canadian researchers tested children born to obese women, plus their brothers and sisters who were conceived after the mother had obesity surgery. Youngsters born after mom lost lots of weight were slimmer than their siblings. They also had fewer risk factors for diabetes or heart disease later in life.

More intriguing, the researchers discovered that numerous genes linked to obesity-related health problems worked differently in the younger siblings than in their older brothers and sisters.

Clearly diet and exercise play a huge role in how fit the younger siblings will continue to be, and it's a small study. But the findings suggest the children born after mom's surgery might have an advantage.

"The impact on the genes, you will see the impact for the rest of your life," predicted Dr. Marie-Claude Vohl of Laval University in Quebec City. She helped lead the work reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Why would there be a difference? It's not that mom passed on different genes, but how those genes operate in her child's body. The idea: Factors inside the womb seem to affect the dimmer switches that develop on a fetus' genes ? chemical changes that make genes speed up or slow down or switch on and off. That in turn can greatly influence health.

The sibling study is "a very clever way of looking at this," said Dr. Susan Murphy of Duke University. She wasn't involved in the Canadian research but studies uterine effects on later health. She says it makes biological sense that the earliest nutritional environment could affect a developing metabolism, although she cautions that healthier family habits after mom's surgery may play a role, too.

It's the latest evidence that the environment ? in this case the womb ? can alter how our genes work.

And the research has implications far beyond the relatively few women who take the drastic step of gastric bypass surgery before having a baby. Increasingly, scientists are hunting other ways to tackle obesity before or during pregnancy in hopes of a lasting benefit for both mother and baby.

What's clear is that obesity is "not just impacting your life, it's impacting your child," Duke's Murphy said.

More than half of pregnant women are overweight or obese, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But it's not just a matter of how much moms weigh when they conceive ? doctors also are trying to stamp out the idea of eating for two. Gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the child's risk of eventually developing obesity and diabetes, too.

What's too much? Women who are normal weight at the start of pregnancy are supposed to gain 25 to 35 pounds. Those who already are obese should gain no more than 11 to 20 pounds. Overweight mothers-to-be fall in the middle.

Sticking to those guidelines can be tough. The National Institutes of Health just began a five-year, $30 million project to help overweight or obese pregnant women do so, and track how their babies fare in the first year of life.

Called the LIFE-Moms Consortium, researchers are recruiting about 2,000 expectant mothers for seven studies around the country that are testing different approaches to a healthy weight gain and better nutritional quality. They range from putting pregnant women on meal plans and exercise programs, to weekly monitoring, to peer pressure from fellow parents trained to bring nutrition advice into the homes of low-income mothers-to-be.

It's best to get to a healthy weight before conceiving, noted Dr. Mary Evans of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, who oversees the project.

Just how much mom has to lose for a healthier baby is "obviously a research gap," she said.

Monday's research findings from Canada may shed some new light. Consider: Overweight mothers have higher levels of sugar and fat in the bloodstream, which in turn makes it to the womb.

Fetuses are "marinated, and they're differently marinated" depending on mom's weight and health, said Dr. John Kral of New York's SUNY Downstate Medical Center, who co-authored the Canadian study.

That may do more than overstimulate fetal growth. Scientists know that certain molecules regulate gene activity, attaching like chemical tags. That's what Laval University lead researcher Dr. Frederic Guenard was looking for in blood tests. He took samples from children born to 20 women before and after complex surgery that shrank their stomachs and rerouted digestion so they absorb less fat and calories. On average, they lost about 100 pounds.

Guenard compared differences in those chemical tags in more than 5,600 genes between the younger and older siblings. He found significant differences in the activity of certain genes clustered in pathways known to affect blood sugar metabolism and heart disease risk.

Only time will tell if these youngsters born after mom's surgery really get lasting benefits, whatever the reason. Meanwhile, specialists urge women planning a pregnancy to talk with their doctors about their weight ahead of time. Besides having potential long-term consequences, extra pounds can lead to a variety of immediate complications such as an increased risk of premature birth and cesarean sections.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-05-27-HealthBeat-Obese%20Pregnancy/id-2b96e868b08a4725b4607571d36b9081

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The After Math: An Xbox One special

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages.

We doubt you missed it, but Microsoft unveiled its new games console this week, and it even showed off some Xbox One hardware to prove it. While the new name is offering casual gamers a bit of confusion -- Google "Xbox One" for a taste -- the specifications sound like they could make for one very potent console. Billions of transistors? We're just hoping they ensure there's plenty of Covenant to shoot in the requisite Halo sequel. There was a very heavy focus on TV, Call of Duty and sports games, so plenty of big-hitter titles to get excited about. But numbers and decimals make us just as happy, so join us for plenty of 'em after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Microsoft

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/27/the-after-math-xbox-one-special/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Syria fighting rages, more chemical attacks reported

By Erika Solomon

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Heavy fighting raged around the strategic Syrian border town of Qusair and the capital Damascus on Monday and further reports surfaced of chemical weapons attacks by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on rebel areas.

The Syrian military pounded eastern suburbs of Damascus with air strikes and artillery and loud explosions echoed around al-Nabak, 80 km (50 miles) north of the capital, where fighting has cut the highway running north to the central city of Homs, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said.

Syrian government offensives in recent weeks are widely seen as a campaign to strengthen Assad's negotiating position before a proposed international peace conference sponsored by the United States and Russia.

Opposition activists said Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were pressing a sustained assault on Qusair, a town long used by insurgents as a way station for arms and other supplies from Lebanon.

For Assad, Qusair is a crucial link between Damascus and loyalist strongholds on the Mediterranean coast. Recapturing the town, in central Homs province, could also sever connections between rebel-held areas in the north and south of Syria.

Hezbollah's deepening involvement in Qusair has raised fears of renewed civil war in neighboring Lebanon, where two rockets hit the Shi'ite Muslim movement's stronghold in south Beirut on Sunday and one was fired from south Lebanon towards Israel.

The rockets struck hours after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah promised that his anti-Israel guerrillas, fighting alongside Assad's forces, would win whatever the cost.

A Lebanese security source said another 107mm rocket, which did not go off, had been aimed at Beirut airport. The launch sites were near Aitat, in the hills just south of the capital.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced "deep concern" overnight at Hezbollah's admitted combat role and the risk that the Syrian conflict will spill into Lebanon and other neighboring states.

Ban urged all concerned "immediately to cease supporting the violence inside Syria and instead to use their influence to promote a political solution to Syria's tragedy".

"CHEMICAL ATTACK" AFFECTS DOZENS

The diplomacy so far appears only to have intensified the violence, especially around Qusair and Damascus.

In Harasta, an eastern Damascus suburb largely under rebel control, dozens of people were suffering the effects of an apparent overnight chemical attack, according to opposition sources. Video showed victims lying on the floor of a large room, breathing from oxygen masks.

The sides in the conflict, now in its third year, have accused each other of using chemical weapons. France's Le Monde newspaper published first-hand accounts on Monday of apparent chemical attacks by Assad's forces in April.

The newspaper said one of its photographers had suffered blurred vision and respiratory difficulties for four days after an attack on April 13 on the Jobar front, in central Damascus.

Another video from Harasta overnight showed at least two fighters being put into a van, their eyes watering and struggling to breathe while medics put tubes into their throats.

It was not possible to verify the videos independently, given the difficulties of media access in Syria.

A doctor interviewed in another video said the alleged chemical attack in Harasta was revenge for a rebel raid on nearby military checkpoints. He complained of a severe shortage in staff and medical supplies to treat "dozens of wounded".

Syria, which is not a member of the anti-chemical weapons convention, is believed to have one of the world's last remaining stockpiles of undeclared chemical arms.

As Washington and Moscow seek to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table, European Union foreign ministers gathered in Brussels to discuss calls from Britain and France to ease an EU embargo on arming Syrian rebels.

All EU sanctions on Syria could collapse unless the 27-nation bloc agrees on the fate of the arms embargo before it expires on June 1, but several EU members oppose any change.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague signaled that Britain was prepared to see EU sanctions fall apart rather than retreat from his demand to give more support to rebels. If the EU could not agree, then "each country will have to ensure it has its own sanctions," Hague declared.

Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger, whose country provides U.N. observers posted between Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan Heights, opposed any arming of rebels, saying the EU should remain a "peace community".

OPPOSITION DISARRAY

The U.S.-Russian initiative provides the first slim hope in almost a year for a diplomatic end to a conflict that has cost more than 80,000 lives and caused a refugee exodus that the U.N. refugee agency expects to top 3.5 million by the end of 2013.

China, which along with Russia, has three times blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria, said on Monday it would join the proposed peace conference. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said it would make efforts with all concerned to "push for an early, just, peaceful and appropriate settlement of the Syrian issue".

Damascus has indicated it will take part in the talks, but the fractured opposition, which has previously required Assad's exit to be guaranteed before any negotiations, has yet to lay out its position and remains mired in internal quarrels.

The opposition crisis deepened on Monday when liberals were offered only token representation, undermining international efforts to lend the Islamist-dominated alliance greater support.

To the dismay of envoys of Western and Arab nations monitoring four days of opposition talks in Istanbul, the 60-member Syrian National Coalition thwarted a deal to admit a liberal bloc headed by opposition campaigner Michel Kilo.

The failure to broaden the coalition, in which a Qatari-backed bloc influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood is prominent, could sap Saudi support for the revolt.

The coalition's Western backers had wanted more seats for liberals, an idea backed by Saudi Arabia, which had been uneasy about Qatar's rising influence, coalition insiders said.

France again urged the Syrian opposition to restructure and to clarify its position on the Geneva talks. "We repeat our desire to see the leadership structure of this National Syrian Coalition broadened," the French Foreign Ministry said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were due to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss the conference they want to hold in Geneva in June.

In Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay appealed for international action to halt the killing and urged the U.N. Security Council to ensure war criminals in Syria faced justice.

"Confronted with the flagrant disregard of international law and human life on every side, I feel utter dismay," she said, as she reeled off the latest atrocities reported to her office.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander and Brian Love in Paris, Costas Pitas in London, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Adrian Croft in Brussels and Tom Miles in Geneva; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-fighting-rages-amid-reports-chemical-attacks-105151844.html

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U.N. rights chief says anti-terror measures can backfire

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay told governments on Monday that trying to fight terrorism by limiting personal freedoms and mistreating suspects could only worsen the problem.

She spoke as Britain and France were considering tightening anti-terror laws and surveillance after the killings of two soldiers in London and Paris, and as U.S. President Barack Obama renewed his efforts to close the Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba.

Pillay, speaking at the opening of the spring session of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, said she had received allegations of "very grave violations of human rights that have taken place in the context of counter-terrorist and counter-isurgency operations."

"Such practices are self-defeating. Measures that violate human rights do not uproot terrorism, they nurture it," she said.

Pillay made no direct reference to the killing of an off-duty British soldier in London last Wednesday by two men saying they were acting in the name of Islam and the stabbing of a soldier in the French capital.

Many politicians in both countries have called for toughening of anti-terror measures in the wake of both incidents and media reports have suggested such moves, including some that could affect free speech, might be in the works.

Pillay also said the U.S. failure to close down the Guantanamo detention center was "an example of the struggle against terrorism failing to uphold human rights, among them the right to a fair trial."

A total of 166 people from 23 countries, many held for more than a decade without charge, remain the prison set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

"The continuing detention of many of these individuals amounts to arbitrary detention, in breach of international law, and the injustice embodied in this detention center has become an ideal recruitment tool for terrorists," Pillay said.

She noted Obama's statement last Thursday outlining how he planned to close the center down, a move opposed by many in Congress, but said the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo must conform to international human rights law.

(Reported by Robert Evans; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-rights-chief-says-anti-terror-measures-132103290.html

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Obama to Okla.: 'We've got your back' (CNN)

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Blackhawks beat Red Wings 4-1 to stay alive

Detroit Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard, right, saves a shot by Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews, left, during the second period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Detroit Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard, right, saves a shot by Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews, left, during the second period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Chicago Blackhawks' Andrew Shaw (65) celebrates with Jonathan Toews (19) after scoring his goal during the second period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals against the Detroit Red Wings in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Chicago Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford (50) blocks a shot by Detroit Red Wings' Gustav Nyquist (14) during the first period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Chicago Blackhawks' Bryan Bickell (29) celebrates with teammates after scoring a goal during the first period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals against the Detroit Red Wings in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Chicago Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville, top left, yells to his team during the second period of Game 5 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs Western Conference semifinals against the Detroit Red Wings in Chicago, Saturday, May 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

CHICAGO (AP) ? The power play returned in the second half of the second period. All it took was one brilliant tip by one of the youngest players on the ice and a well-placed shot by the captain of a team in trouble.

All that tinkering paid off when the Chicago Blackhawks needed it the most.

Jonathan Toews and Andrew Shaw each had a timely power-play goal, and the Blackhawks avoided elimination with a 4-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night in Game 5 of the second-round playoff series.

"I've been saying it over and over the last couple of days: Stay positive and stick with it and things have to turn your away eventually, and they did tonight," Toews said.

The 21-year-old Shaw added his third career playoff goal in the third as the Blackhawks stopped the Red Wings' three-game winning streak by creating chaos in front of Jimmy Howard, who had shut down Chicago's attack while moving Detroit to the brink of the Western Conference finals.

With the sellout crowd chanting "Ho-ward! Ho-ward!" in an attempt to shake him, the standout goalie made 41 saves in another solid performance. But the Blackhawks created enough quality chances that he simply couldn't stop all of them.

"We knew it. We knew we were going to have to weather the storm early against them and I thought we did that," Howard said. "We got it going there, but they just kept coming and coming."

Bryan Bickell scored the first goal of the game and Corey Crawford had 25 stops for Chicago, which managed only two goals during its first three-game losing streak of the season.

Daniel Cleary scored for the second straight game for Detroit, which will have another chance to close out the top-seeded Blackhawks in Game 6 on Monday night. That will be at home, too, where the Red Wings are 4-1 in this postseason.

"We weren't good enough tonight as far as our plan we have to play to be successful," Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. "There was too much space and they were just freewheeling around having fun. It just goes to show you how hard it is to win and you've got to compete and do things right in order to be successful."

Detroit trailed 1-0 before Cleary completed a strong rush during a 4-on-4 stretch in the second period, beating Crawford from a tough angle on the left side for his fourth goal of the postseason. Henrik Zetterberg set up the score by throwing the puck across the crease while Brendan Smith was streaking toward the net.

Back came Chicago, which responded with two of its best power plays in weeks. The Blackhawks had converted only three of their first 25 chances in the postseason, and coach Joel Quenneville tried all sorts of combinations in practice to no avail.

He finally got what he wanted in Game 5.

First, Shaw had a perfect tip on Duncan Keith's slap shot to make it 2-1 at 13:08. Then Justin Abdelkader received his second penalty, this one for cross checking, and Toews wristed a shot off Howard's facemask and into the upper right corner.

"Good things come from shooting the puck," Shaw said. "There's rebounds, there's loose pucks, and we had all guys converging to the net and we just kept picking them up and hemmed them in there and tired them out and we were rewarded."

It was Toews' first playoff goal since April 21, 2012, at Phoenix, snapping a scoreless postseason drought of 10 games. It also came after he appeared frustrated while committing three penalties in the second period of Game 4.

The captain was mobbed by his teammates after he skated to the boards, and the crowd of 22,014 roared its approval.

"It is a relief. It's a confidence builder," Toews said. "You know the way you're working is adding up to something. You want to keep that going now. If I keep shooting the puck there's a good chance it's going in. The goaltender has to make a stop."

Chicago got off to a good start with a 4-1 victory in Game 1 of the series, but it had been all Detroit since that opening win. The Red Wings turned up the pressure on defense and Howard had an amazing 86 stops on 88 shots over three straight wins that pushed the Blackhawks to the edge of an early postseason exit.

Back at home after managing just one goal in a pair of losses in Detroit, the Blackhawks came out with a spirited opening period. Brent Seabrook, who played only 12 minutes in Game 4, and Bickell each delivered a huge hit in the opening minutes.

Bickell then plowed ahead to set up Chicago's first goal since the third period of Game 3. Howard turned away Bickell's first charge, but he skated around to the other side of the net and was right there to slam home on the rebound when Patrick Kane was denied.

Bickell pumped both his arms after he gave the Blackhawks their first lead in a week. It was the fourth goal of the season for physical forward, but his first since Game 4 of the first-round series against Minnesota.

The Red Wings then rushed down the ice, and Crawford turned away quality opportunities for Joakim Andersson and Gustav Nyquist. Crawford made 11 saves in the opening period.

"It's hard to match that when their backs were against the wall," Cleary said. "But we have to be ready to go like our backs are against the wall on Monday."

NOTES: Chicago Blackhawks Charities donated their portion of the Split the Pot money from Game 5 to the OK Strong Disaster Relief Fund to benefit the victims of the deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma.

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Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-05-26-Red%20Wings-Blackhawks/id-5ab000b189b6446cb577ad4fef3fcffa

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