THE HAGUE (Reuters) - International judges on Thursday acquitted two former Serbian secret police officials of involvement in war crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia in the early 1990s wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Judges said it was not proven that Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's security service and a close ally of late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, had intended to have paramilitary units commit crimes against humanity. They acquitted Franko Simatovic, a counter-intelligence official, of similar charges.
The pair trained and guided Serb paramilitary units that were active in Bosnia and Croatia, including the Red Berets and the Skorpions. These units murdered civilians and subjected them to forced deportation, but judges found there was no evidence this had been the aim of Stanisic or Simatovic.
"The chamber found the prosecution had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused planned or ordered the crimes," said Alphons Orie, president of the three-judge panel.
The acquittal, which means no Belgrade government official has been convicted of crimes committed during the war in Bosnia, which claimed more than 100,000 lives over three years to 1995, was welcomed by the Serbian prime minister.
"The Serbian government has always insisted that all suspects before the Hague tribunal should receive a fair trial," Ivica Dacic told Reuters. "This is the only way to establish the truth about the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, for reconciliation and lasting peace throughout the region."
(Reporting By Thomas Escritt and Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson from "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo."
It's a tough time for the family from TLC's hit series, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo." Over the past few days, they've weathered a mysterious health emergency and the loss of a beloved pet.
The woes started last Friday evening, when dad Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson collapsed and was taken to the hospital. According to posts on the official Honey Boo Boo Facebook fan page, which is run by "Mama" June Shannon and a family friend, Sugar Bear underwent "a lot of tests on his brain" and the family feared it could be "very serious." Recent posts on both their Facebook and Twitter accounts added the hashtag "#prayforsugarbear."
But in the midst of the crisis, things got even worse for the reality TV stars from McIntyre, Ga.
While Thompson remained at the hospital, they discovered that the family dog, a Chihuahua named China they'd rescued six years earlier, had been "hit and left to die."
"(She was) still spasming as they found her," one Facebook post explained. "We think it may have been done intentionally cause of where she was found."
As for Thompson, the latest updates indicate there's been no change in his condition. The cause of his collapse is still a mystery.
The incident is just the latest in a long list of medical emergencies for the family patriarch in recent months. Last September, he was hospitalized due to a foot infection following a "mud-boggin'" accident. Then, in December, an ambulance was called after he fell ill during a toy drive. And just three months ago, he was hospitalized again after a bout of pancreatitis.
TODAY.com reached out to TLC about the family's troubles. The network had no comment.
"Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" returns with new episodes starting July 17.
A little added interactiveness with living room essentials goes a long way. With that in mind, Comcast today announced it's boosting its iOS X1 remote control with newly minted voice commands, something the company's been working on since earlier this year. Xfinity TV subscribers using the X1 platform will now be able to search for content by (quietly) shouting different vocal orders at the application, including, but not limited to, things like "Record," "Watch Gossip Girl" or "Find the Yankees game." While the new feature is only available on iOS at the moment, Comcast says its devs and engineers are "also working on voice control features for Android phones and for traditional remote controls." The X1 app update doesn't appear to be live just yet, but be sure to keep an eye on the App Store as it should be arriving pretty soon.
Shape-shifting nanoparticles flip from sphere to net in response to tumor signalPublic release date: 28-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Brown scinews@ucsd.edu 858-246-0161 University of California - San Diego
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have designed tiny spherical particles to float easily through the bloodstream after injection, then assemble into a durable scaffold within diseased tissue. An enzyme produced by a specific type of tumor can trigger the transformation of the spheres into netlike structures that accumulate at the site of a cancer, the team reports in the journal Advanced Materials this week.
Targeting treatments specifically to cancerous or other diseased cells depends on some means of accumulating high levels of a drug or other therapeutic agent at the specific site and keeping it there. Most efforts so far depend on matching a piece of the drug-delivering molecule to specific receptors on the surface of the target cell.
Inspiration for this new strategy came from biological systems that use shape to alter the ability of something to lock in place or slip away and escape, said Nathan Gianneschi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who led the project.
"We wanted to come up with a new approach," Gianneschi said. "Specifically, we wanted to design switchable materials that we could inject in one shape and have them change to another between the blood and tumors."
Some cancerous tissues produce high levels of a class of molecules called MMPs, for matrix metalloproteinases. These enzymes change how other proteins behave by altering their molecular configuration, leading to metastasis. Gianneschi and colleagues harnessed this ability to alter their nanoparticles in ways that would cause them to linger at the site of the tumor.
"We figured out how to make an autonomous material that could sense its environment and change accordingly," Gianneschi said.
Each nanoparticle is made of many detergent-like molecules with one end that mixes readily with water and another that repels it. In solution, they self assemble into balls with the water-repellant ends inside, and in that configuration can easily be injected into a vein.
When mixed with MMPs in vials, the enzymes nicked the peptides on the surface of the spheres, which reassembled into netlike threads.
The team tested the concept further by injecting their new nanoparticles into mice with human fibrosarcomas, a kind of cancer that produces high levels of MMPs.
To mark when the spheres broke down to form other structures, the chemists placed one of two fluorecent dyes, rhodamine or fluorescein, inside the spheres. In close proximity, the dyes interact to create a specific light signal called FRET for Frster Resonance Energy Transfer, when energy jumps from rhodamine to fluorescein.
Within a day they detected FRET signals indicating that the spheres had reassembled at the sites of the tumors, and the signal persisted for at least a week.
The treatment is not inherently toxic. It did not appear to change the tumors in any way, and liver and kidney, the organs most vulnerable to collateral damage from treatments because they clear toxins from the body, were normal and healthy eight days after injection.
Different versions of these nanoparticles could be designed to respond to signals inherent to other types of cancers and inflamed tissue, the authors say. The spheres can also be engineered to carry drugs, or different diagnostic probes.
Right now, this same team is developing nanoparticles that carry an infrared dye, which would enable them to visualize tumors deeper inside the body along with other materials that can be imaged with instruments commonly available in the clinic.
###
Co-authors include Miao-Ping Chen and Matthew Thompson in Gianneschi's group, and Christopher Barbak and David Hall in UC San Diego School of Medicine's Department of Radiology. Funding agencies include National Institutes of Health, Army Research Office and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Gianneschi was also supported by a New Faculty Award from the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Foundation and a Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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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.
Shape-shifting nanoparticles flip from sphere to net in response to tumor signalPublic release date: 28-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Susan Brown scinews@ucsd.edu 858-246-0161 University of California - San Diego
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have designed tiny spherical particles to float easily through the bloodstream after injection, then assemble into a durable scaffold within diseased tissue. An enzyme produced by a specific type of tumor can trigger the transformation of the spheres into netlike structures that accumulate at the site of a cancer, the team reports in the journal Advanced Materials this week.
Targeting treatments specifically to cancerous or other diseased cells depends on some means of accumulating high levels of a drug or other therapeutic agent at the specific site and keeping it there. Most efforts so far depend on matching a piece of the drug-delivering molecule to specific receptors on the surface of the target cell.
Inspiration for this new strategy came from biological systems that use shape to alter the ability of something to lock in place or slip away and escape, said Nathan Gianneschi, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, who led the project.
"We wanted to come up with a new approach," Gianneschi said. "Specifically, we wanted to design switchable materials that we could inject in one shape and have them change to another between the blood and tumors."
Some cancerous tissues produce high levels of a class of molecules called MMPs, for matrix metalloproteinases. These enzymes change how other proteins behave by altering their molecular configuration, leading to metastasis. Gianneschi and colleagues harnessed this ability to alter their nanoparticles in ways that would cause them to linger at the site of the tumor.
"We figured out how to make an autonomous material that could sense its environment and change accordingly," Gianneschi said.
Each nanoparticle is made of many detergent-like molecules with one end that mixes readily with water and another that repels it. In solution, they self assemble into balls with the water-repellant ends inside, and in that configuration can easily be injected into a vein.
When mixed with MMPs in vials, the enzymes nicked the peptides on the surface of the spheres, which reassembled into netlike threads.
The team tested the concept further by injecting their new nanoparticles into mice with human fibrosarcomas, a kind of cancer that produces high levels of MMPs.
To mark when the spheres broke down to form other structures, the chemists placed one of two fluorecent dyes, rhodamine or fluorescein, inside the spheres. In close proximity, the dyes interact to create a specific light signal called FRET for Frster Resonance Energy Transfer, when energy jumps from rhodamine to fluorescein.
Within a day they detected FRET signals indicating that the spheres had reassembled at the sites of the tumors, and the signal persisted for at least a week.
The treatment is not inherently toxic. It did not appear to change the tumors in any way, and liver and kidney, the organs most vulnerable to collateral damage from treatments because they clear toxins from the body, were normal and healthy eight days after injection.
Different versions of these nanoparticles could be designed to respond to signals inherent to other types of cancers and inflamed tissue, the authors say. The spheres can also be engineered to carry drugs, or different diagnostic probes.
Right now, this same team is developing nanoparticles that carry an infrared dye, which would enable them to visualize tumors deeper inside the body along with other materials that can be imaged with instruments commonly available in the clinic.
###
Co-authors include Miao-Ping Chen and Matthew Thompson in Gianneschi's group, and Christopher Barbak and David Hall in UC San Diego School of Medicine's Department of Radiology. Funding agencies include National Institutes of Health, Army Research Office and Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Gianneschi was also supported by a New Faculty Award from the Henry and Camille Dreyfus Foundation and a Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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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.
May 29, 2013 ? Deforestation is the second largest source of CO2 emissions after consumption of fossil fuels. So-called PES programmes, where landowners are paid to replant or protect forests, have been promoted as a way to reduce deforestation. However, the effectiveness of the programmes has been questioned, and new research from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, points to potential negative long-term effects and a need for broader guidelines and policies.
PES programmes have been promoted as a cost-effective tool to combat climate change. However, the rather limited documentation on the effectiveness of the programmes is discouraging.
'Human behaviour is not always predictable, and short-term positive effects may turn to negative effects in the long term,' says Anna Nord?n, economics researcher at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg.
In her recently presented doctoral thesis titled Essays on Behavioral Economics and Policies for Provision of Ecosystem Services, Nord?n explores the weaknesses of PES programmes and the importance of complementing them with additional measures.
The established climate targets make the measurability of PES programmes appealing -- it is tempting to point to results by quantifying forests that would probably have been cut down in the absence of PES programmes. Paying landowners for abstaining from deforestation is considered the most effective programme design. However, this strategy implies that those who are already maintaining their forests are not rewarded. Nord?n conducted experiments to identify the consequences of such programmes, and found that those who are already displaying the desired behaviour tend to eventually lose their willingness to protect their forests.
'The net effect of these programmes may be negligible, meaning that the money spent may not do much to reduce emissions and combat climate change,' says Nord?n, who calls for better awareness of the effects of different reward systems.
Nord?n also studied what motivates landowners to participate in PES programmes and how they react to the size and type of the payments they receive. In a study in Costa Rica, landowners were offered either cash or education.
'Both payment types stimulated participation, but when we looked at long-term participation -- more than five years -- cash had a greater effect. And the more cash the landowners were offered, the more motivated they were to participate in the programme. They did not respond the same to more education.'
Yet cash payments can also have negative effects on the climate. Nord?n gives an example:
'When a poor landowner is paid in cash, he may become able to pay somebody to cut down his forest.'
Nord?n is critical to the narrow focus of climate negotiations on PES programmes.
'It seems naive to believe that just one policy will reduce deforestation. My research points to the importance of complementing the programmes with other tools and measures, and of paying better attention to long-term effects.'
The thesis was presented on 24 May 2013 Thesis title: Essays on Behavioral Economics and Policies for Provision of Ecosystem Services
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two rockets hit a Shi'ite Muslim district of Beirut on Sunday, driving home the risk of spillover from Syria's civil war, after the head of Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah said it would keep fighting on the Syrian government's side until victory.
It was the first attack to apparently target Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital since the outbreak of the two-year conflict in neighboring Syria, which has sharply heightened Lebanon's own sectarian tensions.
The United States and Russia have proposed an international peace conference to douse a civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, driven 1.5 million Syrians as refugees abroad and raised the specter of sectarian bloodshed in the wider region.
Syria's government will "in principle" attend the talks tentatively set for June in Geneva and believes it will be an opportunity to resolve the crisis, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday.
But in an apparent rebuff of Western calls for President Bashar al-Assad to cede power as part of any deal on transition, Moualem said: "No power on earth can decide on the future of Syria. Only the Syrian people have the right to do so."
The U.S. and Russian foreign ministers, striving to refloat a plan for a political transition in Syria, were due to meet in Paris on Monday to work out the details.
Whether the exiled Syrian civilian opposition will take part in the envisaged peace talks - and be able to negotiate effectively, given their internal divisions and shaky rapport with rebels inside Syria - remains in doubt.
The United States has been prodding Assad's opponents to unite before the conference. But the Islamist-dominated coalition has been hamstrung by power struggles during talks going on in Istanbul aimed at broadening its representation and electing a cohesive leadership.
The talks stalled on Sunday in a factional dispute over proposals to dilute Qatar's influence on rebel forces, with Saudi Arabia angling to play a greater role now that Iranian-backed Hezbollah was openly fighting for Assad.
Some observers have viewed the commitment by Hezbollah to Assad's cause as indicating the Lebanese movement does not see the United States weighing in against it. Asked whether the militia's role might alter Washington's reluctance to arm the rebels, a spokesman for President Barack Obama said on Sunday:
"The calculus that the president is making is something that is regularly reviewed and updated ... Our involvement and our assistance to the opposition there has steadily increased."
European Union foreign ministers meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss British and French calls for them to ease an arms embargo in order to help the rebels obtain weapons. Some other EU states oppose the move, at least until after any peace talks.
CONFLICT AFFLICTING LEBANON
Syria's conflagration has polarized Lebanon, a country of four million, in whose 15-year civil war to 1990 Syria was a major player and where Syrian troops remained until 2005.
Lebanese Sunni Muslims support the mainly Sunni insurgency against Assad, and Shi'ite Hezbollah stands by the president, whose minority Alawite sect derives from Shi'ite Islam.
In Sunday's attack, one rocket landed in a car sales yard next to a busy road junction in south Beirut's Chiah neighborhood, and the other struck an apartment several hundred meters away, wounding five people, residents said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Brigadier Selim Idris, head of Syria's Western-backed rebel military command, told Al-Arabiya Television that his forces had not carried out the attack.
He urged rebels to keep their conflict inside Syria.
But another Syrian rebel, Ammar al-Wawi, told Lebanon's LBC Television the attack was a warning to authorities in Beirut to restrain Hezbollah. "In coming days we will do more than this. This is a warning to Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to keep Hezbollah's hands off Syria," he said.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had declared on Saturday night that his thousands of fighters were committed to the conflict against what he called radical Sunni Islamist rebels in Syria, whatever the cost.
"We will continue to the end of the road. We accept this responsibility and will accept all sacrifices and expected consequences of this position," he said in a televised speech on Saturday evening. "We will be the ones who bring victory."
Though numbering only in the thousands compared to the tens of thousands of troops and many more irregular Syrian militiamen that Assad can draw on, Hezbollah's fighters, seasoned in urban warfare against Israel as recently as 2006, are a potent force.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned the violent spillover into Lebanon. "The war in Syria must not become the war in Lebanon," he told reporters in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.
Until recently, Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah had not sent guerrillas to fight alongside Assad's forces.
Syrian government forces reinforced by Hezbollah launched an onslaught last week on Qusair, a rebel-controlled town close to the Lebanese border that rebels have used as a crucial supply corridor for weapons coming into the country.
For Assad, taking Qusair would help keep Damascus, the capital, connected to the Alawite coastal heartland and also hinder links between the rebel-held north and south of Syria.
Lebanese authorities, haunted by Lebanon's own civil war and torn by the same kind of sectarian rifts as Syria, have pursued a policy of "dissociation" from the Syrian turmoil.
But Hezbollah is arguably a stronger force than Beirut's government, which has been unable to stem the flow into Syria of Sunni gunmen who support the rebels or of Hezbollah fighters who back Assad. It has also struggled to absorb nearly half a million refugees coming the other way to escape the fighting.
At least 25 people have been killed in Tripoli in the north of Lebanon over the last week in Sunni-Alawite street fighting triggered in part by the battle for Qusair across the frontier.
In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, residents said three rockets landed on Sunday close to the mainly Shi'ite border town of Hermel, without causing injuries. Rebels have targeted Hermel from inside Syria several times in recent weeks.
Nasrallah's speech was condemned by former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni who said that Hezbollah, set up by Iran in the 1980s to fight Israeli occupation forces in south Lebanon, had abandoned anti-Israeli "resistance" in favor of sectarian conflict in Syria.
"The resistance is ending by your hand and your will," Hariri said in a statement. "The resistance announced its political and military suicide in Qusair."
Hariri is backed by Saudi Arabia, which along with other Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab monarchies has strongly supported the uprising against the Iranian-backed Assad.
The extent to which Hezbollah's support for Assad has alienated Sunni Arabs who admired its battles against Israel was demonstrated on Sunday when the foreign minister of Sunni-ruled Bahrain used unusually strong language to call Nasrallah a "terrorist" and said it was a "religious duty" to stop him.
(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Istanbul, Laila Bassam and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Ahmed Rasheed and Suadad al-Salhy in Baghdad and John Irish in Abu Dhabi; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Will Waterman and Alastair Macdonald)
Website marketing IdeasNetwork marketing can be a system in addition to skills implemented online to attain a general website marketing accomplishment on the business. Internet Promoting is additionally named for the reason that website advertising, Web advertising, seo, eMarketing. Internet promotional may well do? To make across the world world wide web reputation of the supplier and a business. ? It might provide Replica Carrera Sunglasses contact with the outer management and business earth. ? It might yield business leads? It could make speedy reply in addition to facts require towards audience. ? To make a new assurance with the customerTop periods within Website advertising: First fully understand who seem to an individual's buyer is normally in addition to what exactly is a give? Phase 1: Exploration ones own MarketPhase a pair of: Cook a great AnalysisPhase 3: Make a StrategyPhase some: Observe an individual's performanceImportance with Website advertising: ? House audience might at all times employ world wide web to help acquisitions merchandise. ? Shopper is capable of having an apparent graphic images and additionally outline pertaining to a person's merchandise or even service? Immediate get exchange is straightforward. ? Guide coming to your website is not hard. ? It'll impression return from your company? It could raise a Product IdentityKey critical measures to get achievements with Web marketing: 1. Online ApplicationRelated: ? Site along with straightforward direction-finding systems? Quality Content? Transparent Customer Interface? Material software System? Online site visitor support? Are living conversation application? Safeguarded transfer support? Internet marketer Replica Ferragamo Belts in addition to merchant internet marketing system? Touchdown Page? Online community and Concept board2. Several Website marketing collaterals? Movie & Stereo reason of one's product or service or even service? Banners along with skyscraper advertising? Appear ads? Paid advertising Advertising? Opt-in newssheet service? Connection return programFour critical factors will have an impact on your web advertising Results: ? Density? Proximity? Saturation? DepthWhere you have to use your hard earned cash inside Web marketing: Best important Fake Louis Vuitton Bags game enthusiasts are? Search engine Adwords, Search engine Adsense, Yahoo bottom part, Search engine Catalogs? Google Search engine marketing, Google Establishments, ? WINDOWS LIVE MESSENGER Investigation beta? Next-Tag? LookSmart? Company. comTips for the Web marketing Strategy: Consider Yahoo and google Adwords? Aim for best suited Audiences? Investigation a person's keywords? Examination many commercials a single by means of one? Comprise of aimed keyword phrases in your own ads? Push targeted visitors to be able to useful Getting Page.
After seven months of cooperative tapping, Peter Molyneux's Curiosity experiment is finally over: the cube is open. As Molyneux's studio, 22Cans, teased the game's last layer over Twitter, players descended upon it, chipping away the last million cubelets in a matter of minutes. "We have a winner," the game's creator wrote on the social network. "They should get a message now." 22Cans is currently trying to validate the player who tapped away the final block. After the final block disappeared, so did the cube, presumably to be opened privately by the winner. So, what was inside the box? We may never know -- but if you just happened to win, fill us in, would you?
Update: The winner asked Molyneux to share the winner video with the community. Their prize? Godhood, according to 22Cans. The winner will be featured as a deity in the company's next game, Goddess, and will able to "decide on the rules that the game is played by." The winner will get a share of the revenue generated by the title. Check out the full video for yourself after the break.
Considering Fallon Fox won her first two fights in the first round, it was expected for the first openly trans fighter to walk through her next opponent, Allanna Jones at Championship Fighting Alliance on Friday. In her first nationally televised bout, Fox won with a submission in the third round, but it was not the overwhelming win that oddsmakers were expecting.
You can watch the full fight in the video above. Fox and Jones both made mistakes like keeping their hands too low and holding their chin out too far throughout the bout. They looked like two inexperienced fighters because that's what they are.
Much of the controversy that surrounded Fox was the perception that since she was born a man, she would have clear advantage over her opponents. As Sherdog's Jordan Breen pointed out, "So, did anyone watch that and think, 'Wow, what an insurmountable advantage Fallon Fox has, no one could ever beat her!'?" She beat a 2-1 fighter, but not soundly. When she goes up in level of competition, as she will do in the next round of the CFA tournament, she will have a hard time.
What is Gods will for His children? It is to have abundance and prosperity in every aspect of their lives. How can we be sure about this? First of all it is Gods nature to be good. Moreover, His will and promises are written clearly in the Scriptures--words that have seen centuries of lives transformed through knowing His purposes and desires. So how can I get to the wealth that is reserved for me? Is there a prosperity prayer out there that God will hear and answer?
Wait, before you start reciting every prayer you have ever heard,you need to know that its not so much what you say but why and how you say it. God is not after your words or any offering you might give--He wants your heart. He is eager to see you blessed so there is no need to beg for meager resources to get you by. See the whole world as this overflowing abundance of gifts designed with you in mind. Knowing God's goodness will allow you to trust in His providence for your life.
We have established that God wants to bless your life with abundance and prosperity. Now you need to be in agreement with His promises in the Scriptures. Declare these promises over your life and receive it as His child. Nothing is more powerful than His Word and when you speak it out in faith, a prosperity prayer is made. Here is an example of one:
Abba, I glorify You for who You are to me. There is no God like you, holy and mighty above all, (Luke 1:49) Nothing is too difficult for You. (Jeremiah 32:27) You have given earth to man; (Psalm 115:16; Jeremiah 27:5) And You only want the best for me. (Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13) To prosper me is your desire (Proverbs 28:35) Because You called me Your beloved. (Jeremiah 31:3; John 1:17; Romans 8:31)
So here I stand claiming your promises; You are God and You cannot lie. (Titus 1:2) You make a way when no way is visible to us, (Joshua 2:10) And you empower me to produce wealth, (Deuteronomy 8:18) Beyond anything I could ever imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)
Your Word is Power itself, (Hebrews 1:3) The world was formed through It; (Hebrews 11:3) And I speak it out to change my situation. Thank You Lord, Amen.
Remember, you need to make a decision to now focus on all things that are good so reject thoughts of negativity battling for your attention. When this occurs, bring into remembrance things that you are grateful for in this life. Express your gratitude in words even if you just start with the smallest blessings. You will experience supernatural peace when you give begin to nurture a thankful heart.
This prosperity prayer can be prayed wherever and whenever you can. Keep in mind that it is not a password that when recited often enough will get riches to drop down on your lap. This prayer is to stir you up for the prosperity about to come in your life because they surely will. Feel free to add scriptural verses that speak to you personally"it is your message to God. Now rest. God is moving mightily to bring you and your family the blessings that will exceed even your imagination.
If you've been waiting for Samsung to refresh last year's Series 9 Ultrabook, don't hold your breath; apart from a recent upgrade to 1080p resolution, it's basically stayed the same. That doesn't mean Samsung is taking a break from ultraportables, though: the company recently started shipping the Series 7 Ultra (now called the ATIV Book 7), which debuted at CES. Regardless of the name, the idea was always for it to be part of Samsung's performance line, ranking right below the flagship Series 9 family. To that end, it ships for $1,060 with all the specs you'd expect to find in a mid- to high-end Ultrabook: a Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, a 13.3-inch, 1080p display and a stronger set of speakers than on the Series 9. Obviously, the fact that it's launching with Ivy Bridge is one knock against it, but how does it stack up otherwise? Might it be a good deal if it ever gets a CPU refresh?
NBC and sister networks will air Blake Shelton's concert to help his fellow Oklahomans affected by this week's storms in their home state.
Shelton's "Healing in the Heartland" benefit will be broadcast live as a telethon by NBC on May 29, at 9 p.m. EDT. It will also air on cable networks Style, G4, Bravo, E! and CMT on either a live or delayed basis.
Joining Shelton in performing will be Grammy Award-winning artists Miranda Lambert, Reba and Vince Gill. Additional guests will be announced shortly, NBC said Friday. The concert will originate from Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City.
This week's disaster devastated Moore, Okla., and killed 24 people Monday.
Shelton, a resident of nearby Ada, announced plans for the benefit after Tuesday's episode of "The Voice."
Separately, singer Carrie Underwood has said she is donating $1 million in proceeds from her recent Blown Away Tour to the Red Cross for disaster relief. Underwood grew up in Checotah, Okla.
SEATTLE (AP) ? Thousands of bridges around the U.S. may be one freak accident or mistake away from collapse, even if the spans are deemed structurally sound.
The crossings are kept standing by engineering design, not supported with brute strength or redundant protections like their more modern counterparts. Bridge regulators call the more risky spans "fracture critical," meaning that if a single, vital component of the bridge is compromised, it can crumple.
Those vulnerable crossing carry millions of drivers every day. In Boston, a six-lane highway 1A near Logan airport includes a "fracture critical" bridge over Bennington Street. In northern Chicago, an I-90 pass that goes over Ashland Avenue is in the same category. An I-880 bridge over 5th Avenue in Oakland, Calif., is also on the list.
Also in that category is the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River north of Seattle, which collapsed into the water days ago after officials say an oversized truck load clipped the steel truss.
Public officials have focused in recent years on the desperate need for money to repair thousands of bridges deemed structurally deficient, which typically means a major portion of the bridge is in poor condition or worse. But the bridge that collapsed Thursday is not in that deficient category, highlighting another major problem with the nation's infrastructure: Although it's rare, some bridges deemed to be fine structurally can still be crippled if they are struck hard enough in the wrong spot.
"It probably is a bit of a fluke in that sense," said Charles Roeder, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington.
While the I-5 truck's cargo suffered only minimal damage, it left chaos in its wake, with two vehicles catapulting off the edge of the broken bridge into the river below. Three people involved escaped with non-life threatening injuries.
The most famous failure of a fracture critical bridge was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis during rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers ? a gusset plate, a key component of the bridge, was too thin. The plate was only half of the required one-inch thickness.
Because the bridge's key structures lacked redundancy, where if one piece fails, there is another piece to prevent the bridge from falling, when the gusset plate broke, much of the bridge collapsed.
Mark Rosenker, who was chairman of the NTSB during the I-35W bridge investigation, said the board looked into whether other fracture critical bridges were collapsing. They found a few cases, but not many, he said.
"Today, they're still building fracture critical bridges with the belief that they're not going break," Rosenker said.
Fracture critical bridges, like the I-5 span in Washington, are the result of Congress trying to cut corners to save money rather than a lack of engineering know-how, said Barry B. LePatner, a New York real estate attorney and author of "Too Big to Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward."
About 18,000 fracture critical bridges were built from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s in an effort to complete the nation's interstate highway system, which was launched under President Dwight Eisenhower, LePatner said in an interview. The fracture critical bridge designs were cheaper than bridges designed with redundancy, he said.
Thousands of those bridges remain in use, according to an AP analysis.
"They have been left hanging with little maintenance for four decades now," he said. "There is little political will and less political leadership to commit the tens of billions of dollars needed" to fix them.
There has been little focus or urgency in specifically replacing the older "fracture critical" crossings, in part because there is a massive backlog of bridge repair work for thousands of bridges deemed to be structurally problematic. Washington state Rep. Judy Clibborn, a Democrat who leads the House transportation committee, has been trying to build support for a tax package to pay for major transportation projects in the state. But her plan wouldn't have done anything to revamp the bridge that collapsed.
National bridge records say the I-5 crossing over the Skagit River had a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100 ? a score designed to gauge the ability of the bridge to remain in service. To qualify for federal replacement funds, a bridge must have a rating of 50 or below. A bridge must have a sufficiency rating of 80 or below to qualify for federal rehabilitation funding.
Hundreds of bridges in Washington state have worse ratings than the one that collapsed, and many around the country have single-digit ratings.
Clibborn said the Skagit River crossing wasn't even on the radar of lawmakers because state officials have to prioritize by focusing on bridges with serious structural problems that are at higher risk of imminent danger.
Along with being at risk of a fatal impact, the I-5 bridge was deemed to be "functionally obsolete," which essentially means it wasn't built to today's standards. Its shoulders were narrow, and it had low clearance.
There are 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Highway Administration. That's about a quarter of the 607,000 total bridges nationally. States and cities have been whittling down that backlog, but slowly. In 2002, about 30 percent of bridges fell into one of those two categories.
Spending by states and local government on bridge construction adjusted for inflation has more than doubled since 1998, from $12.3 billion to $28.5 billion last year, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. That's an all-time high.
"The needs are so great that even with the growth we've had in the investment level, it's barely moving the needle in terms of moving bridges off these lists," said Alison Premo Black, the association's chief economist.
There is wide recognition at all levels of government that the failure to address aging infrastructure will likely undermine safety and hinder economic growth. But there is no consensus on how to pay for improvements. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which provides construction aid to states, is forecast to go broke next year. The fund gets its revenue primarily from federal gas and diesel taxes. But revenues aren't keeping up because people are driving less and there are more fuel-efficient cars on the road.
Neither Congress nor the White House has shown any willingness to raise federal gas taxes, which haven't been increased since 1993. Many transportation thinkers believe a shift to taxes based on miles traveled by a vehicle is inevitable, but there are privacy concerns and other difficulties that would preclude widespread use of such a system for at least a decade.
Transportation spending got a temporary boost with the economic stimulus funds approved by Congress after President Barack Obama was elected. Of the $27 billion designated for highway projects under the stimulus program, about $3 billion went to bridge projects, Black said.
States are looking for other means to raise money for highway and bridge improvements, including more road tolls, dedicating a portion of sales taxes to transportation and raising state gas taxes. Clibborn, the Washington state lawmaker, has proposed a 10-cent gas hike to help pay for projects, though the effort has been held up by a dispute over how to rebuild the Columbia River bridge connecting Vancouver, Wash., and Portland, Ore.
"We can't possibly do it all in the next 10 years," Clibborn said. "But we're going to do the first bite of the apple."
___
Lowy reported from Washington, D.C. AP Writers Manuel Valdes and Gene Johnson contributed to this report.
Billy Joel hasn't released an album since 1993's "River of Dreams," its famous cover a painting by his then-wife, supermodel Christie Brinkley. But he continues to perform -- he toured with Elton John in 2010, and he reportedly stole the show at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief concert.
In a New York Times feature to be published Sunday, Joel talks about why he left songwriting, saying, "I got bored with it."
He's honest about a supposed feud with John, who suggested Joel backed out of their touring deal, hinting that Joel was too afraid to write new songs.
"(John) tends to shoot off his mouth ? he shoots from the hip," said Joel. "I think his heart is in the right place. Maybe he?s trying to motivate me, to get me mad or something. He?s kind of like a mom. ... He's got mom hair."
He's also blunt about his relationships with Brinkley and other beautiful women.
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Does Elton John have "mom hair"?
"I always get compared to how beautiful they are and how not beautiful I am, and it?s kind of funny, it?s like 'Beauty and the Beast,' " he said. "I don?t mind being the beast, I want them to be good-looking, and if they don?t mind me looking like me, why should I care?"
Music hasn't treated Joel as well financially as his fans may think. He admits that he made about $8,000 off his hit 1973 album "Piano Man," and says he lost perhaps $30 million thanks in part to mismanagement by his former brother-in-law. "I didn?t pay any attention to it, and I trusted other people, and I got screwed," Joel said.
Yet he backed out on a book deal that would've paid him a $3 million advance because the publishing company wanted him to focus on sex and drugs. "They wanted more sex, drugs and rock ?n? roll, and there?s not that much in my life," he said. "What I wanted to do was have a book that set the record straight."
It's simple: the numbers don't lie. Clearly aware of the many, many hours viewers are squeezing out of their tablets, the BBC has, for the better, made its iPlayer for Android more friendly with 10-inch models. Folks using the app will no longer have to rely on a shortcut to the website, with the BBC iPlayer now offering native support for those larger Android slates. The changelog also notes some tweaks to the UI on smartphones and 7-inch tablets, but mum's the word on what the changes were exactly. Either way, we're sure owners of, say, a Nexus 10 will be happy to hear there are fewer steps required to catch up with their favorite shows.
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Public release date: 28-May-2013
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