A survey of more than 22,000 U.S. consumers aimed at probing Bitcoin awareness and levels of trust has found around a quarter of consumers have heard of the decentralised digital currency and the majority of them trust it, despite all Bitcoin's infrastructure issues, legal question marks and valuation swings.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fh4BYhEVvXc/
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DENVER (AP) ? An appeals board is upholding the Bureau of Land Management's decision to grant the artist Christo a permit for his Over the River project, which involves temporarily suspending 5.9 miles worth of silvery fabric panels in sections over 42 miles of the Arkansas River.
The Interior Board of Land Appeals on Friday rejected arguments that the BLM didn't fully consider impacts of Over the River before granting the permit.
Meanwhile, two lawsuits challenging Over the River in state and federal courts are still pending.
"We can now move on from the agency hijinks and into federal court where we can get an unbiased review of this project," said Michael Harris, a lawyer representing the group Rags Over the Arkansas River, which is trying to block Christo's plan. "We fully expect the court to find that the OTR project approval is illegal."
New York-based Christo said in a written statement that he remains confident that state and federal permitting processes were thorough and complete. "This is one of three legal hurdles that needed to be overcome, and I am very happy with this decision," Christo said.
Even if Christo wins in the lawsuits, it would be at least 2016 before the project would be ready for public display.
He and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, got their first inkling for Over the River in 1992.
Work to set up a system of anchors and cables to suspend the fabric panels over the river would unfold over roughly two years. The project would be displayed for two weeks in the month of August, when the river would be calm enough for rafters to peer up at the fabric as they float underneath and when drivers on U.S. 50 along the river could look down.
Denver-based environmental consultant Rocky Smith, who was among those filing the administrative appeal of the BLM's permitting decision, said he still thinks Over the River is "horribly inappropriate" for the canyon Christo plans to use.
Opponents contend the project threatens bighorn sheep, public safety, traffic on U.S. 50, and businesses that depend on the scenic river to draw anglers, rafters and tourists.
Christo's team has said it plans dozens of measures to mitigate impacts.
___
Talk to Catherine Tsai on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ctsai_denver
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/appeals-board-upholds-permit-christo-project-231612573.html
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? As President Barack Obama prepares to visit East Africa, nearly 15 years after terrorists bombed two U.S. embassies here, security experts say that the region still faces threats from militants.
Obama is scheduled on Monday to visit Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania, which along with Nairobi was the site of near-simultaneous embassy attacks in August 1998. The attacks killed 224 people, mostly Kenyans, but also a dozen Americans. Obama is likely to visit the memorial for the victims of the Tanzania attack.
The threat of terrorism has increased since the Osama bin Laden-masterminded attacks, said a top Kenyan security official who added that intelligence capabilities have also increased and that the situation "is under control." Obama is not visiting Kenya.
The latest U.S. State Department Country Report on Terrorism for Tanzania said that the country has not experienced a major terror attack since the embassy bombing, but that Tanzania's National Counterterrorism Center said the June 2012 arrest of an al-Shabab associate shows that terror groups have elements inside Tanzania.
Kenya, though, faces more security concerns, given its shared border with Somalia. Scott Gration, the immediate past ambassador in Nairobi, worries that security at the Nairobi embassy has been "complacent" and may not have had adequate priority in the recent past.
Gration, a retired U.S. Air Force major general, told The Associated Press this week that during one period of his yearlong tenure as ambassador the American security staff saw its personnel numbers cut in half because of things like personnel changeovers known as gaps.
"When it cuts down to 50 percent, including the head guy, that's a little bit much and to me that indicates there wasn't the sense of urgency that there needs to be, or maybe we've become a little bit complacent and arrogant, and that became an issue for me," said Gration, who still lives in Nairobi and runs a technology and investment consultancy.
"You know what Kenya's like. There are grenades going off, in Mombasa, in Wajir, even in Nairobi," he said.
The period of the 50 percent reduction occurred about four months prior to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, he said, in which four Americans were killed, including the ambassador, on Sept. 11, 2012.
The Nairobi Embassy is ranked as a "critical" threat posting for terrorism and crime by the State Department.
"There are 179 countries (with embassies). Take your gaps other places, but don't take your gaps in a high threat area. So it was surprising to me that we would take a reduced capability in a place like Benghazi, Nairobi and other places, though I think that this has been corrected by the investigations and by the media" scrutiny, said Gration.
Hilary Renner, the State Department spokeswoman for the Bureau of African Affairs, said she could not comment on specific security operations, measures or personnel assigned to the Nairobi Embassy.
"The safety and security of U.S. personnel serving abroad is one of the State Department's highest priorities," she said by email. "We continually assess and evaluate the security of our missions, and make appropriate adjustments, as needed."
Gration also declined to say how many security personnel work in Nairobi. But an official familiar with the security arrangements said the embassy has only about five American security personnel, meaning a reduction of 50 percent would have been two or three people. The embassy also employs Kenya security personnel. The official said he was not allowed to be quoted by name.
Though no major attacks against U.S. interests have occurred in East Africa since 1998, the region has its share of terrorists, including al-Shabab militants in neighboring Somalia, a group with ties to al-Qaida.
Also, Kenyan officials last year arrested two Iranian agents said to be from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, an elite and secretive unit, who were found with 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of the explosive RDX. Kenyan officials have said the two may have been planning attacks on American, British or Israeli interests.
The new U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were built far off the street, with multiple layers of physical security, making a repeat of the truck bomb that tore through the street-side Nairobi embassy in 1998 unlikely.
Renner said the U.S. works closely with host governments on security matters. And the U.S.-Kenya security relationship ? in particular the relationship the FBI has with Kenya's Anti-Terrorism Police Unit ? is seen as strong.
The threat of terrorism is high in East Africa, as a result of decades of instability in Somalia, said a top Kenyan police official. The official, though, said he doesn't think al-Shabab or al-Qaida can carry out large-scale attacks in Kenya, and instead have resorted to small-scale attacks with grenades. The official spoke on condition he wasn't identified because he was not authorized to share the information.
Kenyan police last September said they disrupted a major terrorist attack after they found four suicide vests, two improvised explosive devices, four AK-47 assault rifles and 12 grenades in Nairobi's main ethnic Somali community, Eastleigh.
More than three dozen presumed terrorist incidents were reported in Kenya in 2012, mostly grenade attacks, that were generally attributed to al-Shabab, according to the latest U.S. State Department Country Report on Terrorism for Kenya. It said Kenya showed persistent political will to secure its borders, apprehend terrorists and cooperate in regional and international counterterror efforts.
The Benghazi attack has greatly increased the focus on security on overseas embassies. The State Department's diplomatic security budget increased from about $200 million in 1998 to $1.8 billion in 2008. But a recent Government Accountability Office report found that there has been little long-range strategic planning for embassy security.
Gration said he was in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia during the 1996 bombing that killed 19 Americans. He was also in the Pentagon when it was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
Despite the criticism of the U.S. security posture during a two-month period in Nairobi, he said: "I truly believe the State Department is doing a great job. They're working hard. There was some small aspects of things that I disagreed with."
Gration was a national security adviser to Obama's first presidential campaign and resigned his job as ambassador in June 2012 ahead of a U.S. government audit critical of his leadership.
Gration said that as he's thought about security over the years, he's concluded that it's impossible to protect oneself completely.
"So yes we're still vulnerable when we're overseas or in America to an attack, and it can be well organized, or it can be disorganized and they can still do a lot of damage," Gration said. "So it's a false security to think we can ever be free of attacks against our interests overseas or even in the homeland."
___
Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/terrorism-still-threat-east-africa-embassies-185617769.html
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BANGKOK (AP) ? The price of oil rose Thursday on expectations the Federal Reserve's monetary stimulus campaign will stay in place despite a vow to begin scaling it back.
The official estimate of U.S. economic growth was Wednesday lowered to an annual rate of 1.8 percent for the January-March quarter, sharply down from a previous estimate of 2.4 percent. That raised hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep in place its bond buying program, which has been a boon to stock and commodity markets by lowering interest rates and weakening the dollar.
The Fed has said its $85 billion a month of government bond purchases could be scaled back starting later this year if the economy keeps improving.
Benchmark oil for August delivery was up 55 cents to $96.05 a barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 18 cents Wednesday to close at $95.50 per barrel.
Analysts said confidence indicators in Europe as well as speeches by Fed officials expected later in the day would provide further encouragement to markets.
"We expect more soothing comments from Fed speakers while Eurozone data will point to gradual improvement," Anthony Lam of Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in a commentary.
Brent crude, which is used to set prices for oil used by many U.S. refineries to make gasoline, rose 57 cents to $102.24 a barrel.
In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:
? Natural gas fell 1.2 cents to $3.725 per 1,000 cubic feet.
? Heating oil rose 1.3 cents to $2.869 a gallon.
? Wholesale gasoline rose 0.6 cent to $2.723 a gallon.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/oil-price-rises-above-96-fed-fears-fade-095146596.html
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June 27, 2013 ? Indium tin oxide (ITO) has become a standard material in light-emitting diodes, flat panel plasma displays, electronic ink and other applications because of its high performance, moisture resistance, and capacity for being finely etched. But indium is also rare and expensive, and it requires a costly deposition process to make opto-electronic devices and makes for a brittle electrode. Replacing indium as the default material in transparent electrodes is a high priority for the electronics industry.
Now, in a paper appearing in APL Materials, a new open-access journal produced by AIP Publishing, researchers report creating a sturdy, transparent, and indium-free electrode from silver (Ag) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) that could replace indium-based electrodes in some applications.
"Silver and titanium are much more abundant than indium in the earth's crust, and so we anticipate that electronic devices based on silver and titanium dioxide would be a more sustainable materials system and be manufactured at a low cost," said T.L. Alford, a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Arizona State University who led the research.
The TiO2/Ag/TiO2 composite electrode multilayer film the researchers studied has been well characterized in the literature, but the team optimized both the thickness of the silver layer and the manufacturing process so that the multilayer film has a low sheet resistance and high optical transmittance, both properties necessary for high-performance.
The researchers created films with a sheet resistance as low as one sixth of that achieved by previous studies, while maintaining approximately 90 percent optical transmittance. With the choice of an underlying substrate made of polyethylene napthalate (PEN) -- a sturdy polymer used in a variety of applications from bottling carbonated beverages to manufacturing flexible electronics -- the researchers added additional durability.
Because of a less expensive manufacturing process and the wide availability of titanium dioxide, silver and PEN, the new TiO2/Ag/TiO2 thin film could one day help make devices such as electronic displays and solar cells more affordable by replacing more expensive indium-based electrodes.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/H1X-9lhBbuM/130627130953.htm
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7 hours ago
FRANK FRANKLIN II / AP
Pedestrians pass Macy's department store Friday Jan. 14, 2005 in New York.
Macy's Inc has agreed to pay a $175,000 civil fine and improve its practices to resolve a U.S. government probe that found the retailer had discriminated against immigrant employees when verifying their eligibility to continue to work.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said Macy's had engaged in "unfair documentary practices" against some immigrant employees who had previously been authorized to work.
It said this resulted in some affected workers being suspended, terminated, or losing seniority. Macy's agreed to set up a $100,000 fund to compensate these workers.
The settlement covers Macy's Retail Holdings Inc, as well as divisions that contain department store locations in western and southwestern U.S. states, Florida and Puerto Rico.
It also requires Macy's to improve training and employment reverification policies, including the use of the government's "E-Verify" platform that lets employers check workers' legal status, and subjects the retailer to two years of monitoring by the Justice Department.
"Employers must ensure that they follow correct procedures during the reverification of employment authorization of non-U.S. citizens," Gregory Friel, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a statement.
The department said its probe began in April 2012, based on several calls to a worker hotline regarding Macy's practices. It did not immediately provide details about the specific violations.
Macy's spokesman Jim Sluzewski declined to comment.
According to the settlement agreement, Macy's denied committing immigration-related discrimination or engaging in unfair documentary practices in violation of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.
That law bars employers from demanding more or different documents, or changing documentation rules, based on people's immigration status or national origin.
Macy's had about 175,700 full- and part-time employees as of Feb. 2, according to its annual report, and operated roughly 840 stores under the Macy's and Bloomingdale's names. The company has offices in Cincinnati and New York.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
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An oil and gas pumping station in Santa Cruz, east from Havana, Cuba.Photo by Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images
We often hear how the world as we know it will end, usually through ecological collapse. Indeed, more than 40 years after the Club of Rome released the mother of all apocalyptic forecasts, The Limits to Growth, its basic ideas are still with us. But time has not been kind.
The Limits to Growth warned humanity in 1972 that devastating collapse was just around the corner. But, while we have seen financial panics since then, there have been no real shortages or productive breakdowns. Instead, the resources generated by human ingenuity remain far ahead of human consumption.
But the report?s fundamental legacy remains: We have inherited a tendency to obsess over misguided remedies for largely trivial problems, while often ignoring big problems and sensible remedies.
In the early 1970s, the flush of technological optimism was over, the Vietnam War was a disaster, societies were in turmoil, and economies were stagnating. Rachel Carson?s 1962 book Silent Spring had raised fears about pollution and launched the modern environmental movement; Paul Ehrlich?s 1968 title The Population Bomb said it all. The first Earth Day, in 1970, was deeply pessimistic.
The genius of The Limits to Growth was to fuse these worries with fears of running out of stuff. We were doomed, because too many people would consume too much. Even if our ingenuity bought us some time, we would end up killing the planet and ourselves with pollution. The only hope was to stop economic growth itself, cut consumption, recycle, and force people to have fewer children, stabilizing society at a significantly poorer level.
That message still resonates today, though it was spectacularly wrong. For example, the authors of The Limits to Growth predicted that before 2013, the world would have run out of aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten, and zinc.
Instead, despite recent increases, commodity prices have generally fallen to about a third of their level 150 years ago. Technological innovations have replaced mercury in batteries, dental fillings, and thermometers: Mercury consumption is down 98 percent and, by 2000, the price was down 90 percent. More broadly, since 1946, supplies of copper, aluminum, iron, and zinc have outstripped consumption, owing to the discovery of additional reserves and new technologies to extract them economically.
Similarly, oil and natural gas were to run out in 1990 and 1992, respectively; today, reserves of both are larger than they were in 1970, although we consume dramatically more. Within the past six years, shale gas alone has doubled potential gas resources in the United States and halved the price.
As for economic collapse, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global GDP per capita will increase 14-fold over this century and 24-fold in the developing world.
The Limits of Growth got it so wrong because its authors overlooked the greatest resource of all: our own resourcefulness. Population growth has been slowing since the late 1960s. Food supply has not collapsed (1.5 billion hectares of arable land are being used, but another 2.7 billion hectares are in reserve). Malnourishment has dropped by more than half, from 35 percent of the world?s population to under 16 percent.
Nor are we choking on pollution. Whereas the Club of Rome imagined an idyllic past with no particulate air pollution and happy farmers, and a future strangled by belching smokestacks, reality is entirely the reverse.
In 1900, when the global human population was 1.5 billion, almost 3 million people ? roughly one in 500?died each year from air pollution, mostly from wretched indoor air. Today, the risk has receded to one death per 2,000 people. While pollution still kills more people than malaria does, the mortality rate is falling, not rising.
Nonetheless, the mindset nurtured by The Limits to Growth continues to shape popular and elite thinking.
Consider recycling, which is often just a feel-good gesture with little environmental benefit and significant cost. Paper, for example, typically comes from sustainable forests, not rainforests. The processing and government subsidies associated with recycling yield lower-quality paper to save a resource that is not threatened.
Likewise, fears of overpopulation framed self-destructive policies, such as China?s one-child policy and forced sterilization in India. And, while pesticides and other pollutants were seen to kill off perhaps half of humanity, well-regulated pesticides cause about 20 deaths each year in the U.S., whereas they have significant upsides in creating cheaper and more plentiful food.
Indeed, reliance solely on organic farming?a movement inspired by the pesticide fear?would cost more than $100 billion annually in the U.S. At 16 percent lower efficiency, current output would require another 65 million acres of farmland?an area more than half the size of California. Higher prices would reduce consumption of fruits and vegetables, causing myriad adverse health effects (including tens of thousands of additional cancer deaths per year).
Obsession with doom-and-gloom scenarios distracts us from the real global threats. Poverty is one of the greatest killers of all, while easily curable diseases still claim 15 million lives every year?25 percent of all deaths.
The solution is economic growth. When lifted out of poverty, most people can afford to avoid infectious diseases. China has pulled more than 680 million people out of poverty in the last three decades, leading a worldwide poverty decline of almost 1 billion people. This has created massive improvements in health, longevity, and quality of life.
The four decades since The Limits of Growth have shown that we need more of it, not less. An expansion of trade, with estimated benefits exceeding $100 trillion annually toward the end of the century, would do thousands of times more good than timid feel-good policies that result from fear-mongering. But that requires abandoning an anti-growth mentality and using our enormous potential to create a brighter future.
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A new war memoir, "Carnivore" by Dillard Johnson, makes some rather extraordinary claims, according to media appearances and promotional material from publisher HarperCollins. But it's looking likely that these claims are exaggerated, and in some eyes are veering towards stolen valor territory.
The book is subtitled "A memoir by one of the Deadliest American Soldiers of All Time" and in it Sgt. 1st Class Johnson and his co-author write that he had 2,746 "confirmed" enemy kills during his time serving in Iraq, with 121 of those "confirmed sniper kills, the most ever publicly reported by a US Army soldier."
But his claims have sent the online veteran community into an uproar, with many vets calling them implausible and some men who served with him saying his statements are downright falsehoods. He served as a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with the 3rd Squadron, 7th US Cavalry, which took the lead in the charge to Baghdad after US forces went over the berm to invade Iraq in March 2003.
"I don?t want to take away from what [Johnson] did do, he did do great things: led a platoon, completed the missions," Brad Spaid tells the Monitor. He is a former staff sergeant who served with Johnson in Iraq and now has a civilian job with the Veteran's Administration and has read the book. "We lost some really good NCOs, guys that we really looked up to, and we feel that ? on Facebook and blogs other vets are coming out and calling us out and calling us liars and idiots, and it takes away from what we really did?. We don?t want to become a laughing stock, we want to be remembered for what we did and move on."
RECOMMENDED: US military muscle
That Sergeant Johnson (who received a Silver Star) and his fellows in the 7th Cavalry faced heavy fighting and performed admirably in Iraq is beyond question. The brief unit history on their website recounts that "combat operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20th when the squadron crossed into Iraq as the lead element of the [3rd Infantry Division]. The Squadron attacked to Baghdad fighting both the Republican Guard and the Saddam Fedayeen. It was the longest cavalry charge in the history of the world and it ended in the capture of Baghdad."
But while I haven't yet read the book, the headline claim is an extraordinary one, based on my five years covering the Iraq war between 2003 and 2008. An ounce of common sense also comes into play.
In late 2007, after Johnson had left Iraq, statistics provided to USA Today by the US-led coalition, estimated that 19,429 militants had been killed by all coalition forces, including Iraqi ones, since the start of the war in 2003. Johnson's claimed "confirmed kills" of 2,746 would amount to 14 percent of all those deaths, an astonishing number for a single soldier who did not serve in the hottest battles of the post-invasion war.
His statement is even more remarkable when compared to the brief history given at the unit's home page, which recounts that "by the time the Squadron had redeployed it had killed 2,200 Iraqi personnel, 64 tanks, 41 armored vehicles, numerous active air defense systems, as well as trucks and civilian vehicles used as suicide bombers."
The squadron experienced heavy fighting between the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003 and when it left in August. It returned to Iraq for 12 months in 2005. Former Staff Sgt. Brad Spaid, who was with the 3/7th's Apache Troop in Iraq in '03 and with the Crazy Horse Troop that Johnson belonged to in '05, estimates that they only had about six engagements during that second deployment with at most five to six insurgents killed in each one. Yet Johnson's confirmed kills claim is 124 percent of the total on the unit's history page for 2003 and, by Mr. Spaid's reckoning, would still be well above 100 percent of the total if he claimed every single kill made in 2005.
To be sure, the real number of militants killed by US forces in Iraq is essentially unknown, any statistics a combination of guesswork made amid the haze of battle when units were running on to the next engagement, not spending time counting up dead bodies and figuring out who delivered the shot that struck them down. A press contact for HarperCollins' William Morrow imprint, which published "Carnivore," had not returned a call for comment at the time of publication.
Whatever the uncertainty around body counts, the claims invite incredulity, and will raise doubts about any other claims made in the book, which is currently being heavily promoted by the NewsCorp media empire. NewsCorp owns HarperCollins and the tone of NewsCorp's news properties about the book has been gushing and uncritical. For instance the company's New York Post carried an "exclusive" on June 23 that begins:
With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record ? and maybe the most humble.
As a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle nicknamed ?Carnivore,? Johnson, 48, helped lead the ground assault during Operation Iraqi Freedom, overwhelming the enemy with a relentless show of military might that left a trail of dead in his wake.
Johnson was obliged to report confirmed kills to his superiors, cataloging the dead in a green journal that revealed the astonishing tally ? which only began to come light as he and co-writer James Tarr were researching his exploits for his memoir.
And here's a partial transcript of his appearance on Fox and Friends yesterday morning (titled: "True stories from one of America's deadliest soldiers") with the interviewer in full "hooah!" mode (the transcript is mine; I've summarized the interviewer's comments):
Interviewer: "Hear this incredible story, and meet this incredible man. With 2,746 confirmed kills Army Sgt. 1st Class Dillard CJ Johnson is one of the deadliest American soldiers on record..."
Johnson: "I've just always been lucky I guess, you know, it's better to be lucky than good. I grew up and I always wanted to be Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury from the comic books and I believe in America and what it stands for."
Interviewer: You've got 100 plus sniper kills, why did you write this book?
Johnson: I wrote this book "because I kept winding up in other books and magazines and stuff over an insert from 'On Point.' It was out there in public domain, and all these other writers kept using it. And Charlie Horse really deserves, Crazy Horse, the unit I was in, really deserves the credit for what went on over there as far as the battle and the confirmed kills. And the confirmed kills aren't as if I went out there and actually counted bodies to go through this ? a lot of them are attributed from the book 'On Point' and the other ones are when I actually did battlefield assessment to give my commander an evaluation of what was going on out there. But there were other troopers that did as much as I did or even more out there with it."
Interviewer: What should people understand about our fighting men and women?
Johnson: "They should really know that there's nobody out there doing this for a paycheck. They're doing it for love of country and love of their fellow soldier and they're putting their entire life on hold and their life at risk every day so that people can enjoy the freedoms that they have.... I don't think people really understand, you know, when we go to war with someone else, they don't understand what that country was like and everything else. America has been very fortunate as far as how our civilians act and everything else and we don't have the same culture that these other countries do, and all we can really do when we go to these other countries [is] give them a fighting chance, you know, for democracy..."
Dennis Goulet, who was the leader of the troop's 4th platoon (Johnson was the 3rd platoon's sergeant), writes that he doesn't believe Johnson's sniper claims, particularly an account of killing two insurgents at a range of 852 meters. "I can tell you ... the man was no sniper," he writes in an e-mail. "The only weapon system he had that could reach that far would be the Barrett or the Bradley gun. I was either with him on every mission and if I wasn't with him, every enemy engagement would have to be reported to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) and it's not like he was out there by himself."
A Dec. 14, 2005 release put out by a public affairs officer for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team appears to say that Johnson killed two Iraqi insurgents at 852 meters in an engagement at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad. (I write "appears" only because I can only find the release on unofficial sites like this one, not on official military sites, but it looks legitimate). But neither Mr. Goulet nor Spaid has any recollection of this achievement.
Goulet says the .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle the unit carried was "seldom used" and doesn't recall Johnson killing anyone with it. I'm "not trying to discredit the man's service to the country, but there are hundreds of others that deserve recognition for their service, to include five men who lost their lives in 2005. It's about all who served in 3-7, NOT Johnson," writes Goulet.
Spaid says there are other elements in the book that ring false to him. In the book, Johnson recounts firing 7,000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition from his Bradley Fighting Vehicle (nicknamed "Carnivore" and so yielding the title of the book) and dismounting to fight hand-to-hand. Spaid says at the time the heavy armor unit was not trained for that kind of infantry fighting and doubts that happened, recalling that he was only issued a 9mm pistol "with about 27 rounds" at the time. "We never dismounted, we were heavy armor."
Spaid says he checked with the Master Sergeant responsible for tracking ammunition used during that deployment ? an important job since guns require maintenance after firing a certain number of those rounds and could explode, injuring or killing their crew, if they didn't get it. He says the sergeant told him "for Johnson to go through 7,000 depleted uranium rounds, that would have been 1/3 of what we?d been given for the entire invasion to be split between 50 or 60 Bradleys." He also points out that a Bradley carrying that many rounds would be physically impossible.
Other stories he casts doubt on include Johnson's claim that he cut through a 220 volt cable with a small knife to darken an Iraqi hut he was hiding in when insurgents entered. "That area where he was ? there wasn't electricity," says Spaid. "And I've been to college, I think that many volts would melt a knife that size, even if it was insulated, not just leave a few nicks."
The tales of the 7th Cavalry in Iraq are filled with heroism, tragedy, and obstacles overcome, and I hope to revisit some of those stories later this week so that it isn't all about Johnson.
But as the saying goes, the first casualty when war comes is truth. Sometimes the casualties continue to accrue long after the guns have fallen silent.
RECOMMENDED: US military muscle
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/americas-deadliest-soldier-stolen-valor-212237661.html
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8 hours ago
Summer's here! And while many favorite and critically acclaimed shows have ended their seasons (see you next year, Don Draper!), summer blockbusters are starting to show up in theaters and many popular television programs are returning to the airwaves.
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"Casablanca," "The Sopranos," "The Simpsons" and "The Godfather Part 2" all made Entertainment Weekly's list of top movies and TV shows ever.
And as the summer entertainment season kicks into gear, Entertainment Weekly is preparing to unveil its list of All Time Greatest TV Shows and Movies Wednesday morning on TODAY.
Gangsters, outlaws, star-crossed lovers and creepy shower killers are among those viewers meet in the magazine's top five films list. And while we?re not revealing which movie is the magazine's No. 1 pick, we can tell you none of the movies that made the top five came along after America?s bicentennial. Think the suave 1940's charm of ?Casablanca,? or "Citizen Kane's" saga of old-school journalism, and the gritty and engrossing tales of mob life in ?The Godfather,? 1972 and ?The Godfather Part 2,? 1974.
In fact, there?s a flurry of bad men ? and one bad woman ? at the top of the list. ?Casablanca? has its Nazis of course, and ?The Godfather? films feature their share of murder and mayhem, horse heads in beds and characters who end up sleeping with the fishes. ?Bonnie and Clyde? came out in 1967 but tells the tale of famed outlaws from 30 years prior. And 1960?s legendary ?Psycho? is dubbed the ?granddaddy of all slasher films,? and it kept some of us out of the shower like ?Jaws? kept us out of the ocean.
On the small screen, only one of the magazine's top five picks for All Time Greatest TV Shows is still on the air. (Seriously, "Breaking Bad," "Walking Dead" and "Game of Thrones" didn't crack the summit of the list!) And that still-on-the-air comedy, Fox's very long-running "The Simpsons," is also the only animated program anywhere in the top 70.
The rest of the top five is evenly split with two truth-filled sitcoms featuring stellar comedians ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show," 1970-1977, and "Seinfeld," 1989-1998) and two crime-dramas with complex, not-always-good-guy leads who became TV legends ("The Sopranos," 1999-2007, and "The Wire," 2002-2008).
Tune in to TODAY Wednesday to see how Entertainment Weekly ranked these shows and movies in their All Time Greatest list!
Which movies and TV shows would put in your top 5? Click on "Talk about it" below and give us your list!
Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/all-time-greatest-tv-shows-movies-are-6C10423399
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HTC may have its Mini Bluetooth handset, but Sony thinks such implementation works best as a big clip without the numeric pad. Dubbed the SBH52, this splashproof device comes with FM radio, a headphone jack plus a small OLED display to show caller ID and text messages, so in a way it's similar to its predecessors. What's new is that you now get NFC as well as an earpiece -- the latter lets you use the clip as a mini phone. Expect to see this on the shelves in Q3 this year.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/595O6QjHoT8/
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By Tom Brown and Barbara Liston
SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - The murder trial of George Zimmerman, whose fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin triggered nationwide protests last year, begins in earnest on Monday in a Florida courtroom.
Opening statements from lawyers outlining the basic facts in the case, and what they believe the evidence will show, are set to begin at 9 a.m. EDT.
This follows two weeks of jury selection which ended last week with a panel of six female jurors chosen to decide Zimmerman's fate. Due to blanket media coverage the judge ordered the jury sequestered for the duration of the trial.
Zimmerman, who is 29 and part Hispanic, was the neighborhood watch captain in a gated community in Sanford at the time of the killing on February 26, 2012. He has pleaded innocent to the charge of second-degree murder and could face life imprisonment if convicted.
Martin, 17, was a student at a Miami-area high school and a guest of one of the homeowners in the Retreat at Twin Lakes community. He was walking back to the residence after buying snacks at a nearby convenience store when he was shot in the chest during a confrontation with Zimmerman.
Because Sanford police initially failed to arrest Zimmerman, on grounds that he acted in self-defense, many saw the killing as an example of second-class treatment of black victims in the U.S. criminal justice system.
That set off civil rights rallies and cries of injustice across the United States throughout much of last year. It also threw a spotlight on gun use and Florida's controversial self-defense laws.
Much of what happened during Martin's fatal encounter with Zimmerman is still a mystery. Neighbors who witnessed the scuffle and the fatal shot, albeit on a rainy night, are expected to testify.
Zimmerman claims Martin was the aggressor, but Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda, who is the lead prosecutor, says the younger man would be alive today had he not been profiled by Zimmerman as "a real suspicious guy."
Setting the stage for a possible fiery opening to the trial, presiding Seminole County Judge Debra Nelson overruled objections from the defense last week and said prosecutors could use such inflammatory terms as "vigilante" and "wannabe cop" in referring to Zimmerman.
She also ruled that prosecutors could say Zimmerman "profiled" Martin and "confronted" him, language suggesting that he initiated the altercation that led to Martin's death.
There is a high bar for the prosecution in a case that will center on Florida's aggressive self-defense laws, however. Under Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which was approved in 2005 and has since been copied by about 30 other states, people fearing for their lives can use deadly force without having to retreat from a confrontation, even when it is possible.
In instructions on "justifiable use of deadly force," that Nelson read to potential jurors last week, she noted that anyone in fear of grievous bodily harm or death is entitled to shoot and kill an assailant rather than back down.
"The danger facing the defendant need not have been actual," Nelson said, suggesting that mere perception of "danger" was enough to make it reality.
"If the defendant was not engaged in an unlawful activity, and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and a right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believed that it was necessary do so," Nelson said.
(Writing by Tom Brown; editing by David Adams and Jackie Frank)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/murder-trial-begins-earnest-floridas-trayvon-martin-case-050411255.html
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All Critics (149) | Top Critics (33) | Fresh (146) | Rotten (3)
For at least three-quarters of the way, this is a fine film, and one that kids and parents could see together.
There is an enchanted-fairy-tale aspect to Mud, but its bright, calm surface only barely disguises a strong, churning undercurrent.
A modern fairy tale, steeped in the sleepy Mississippi lore of Twain and similar American writers, and with a heart as big as the river is wide.
Nichols has a strong feeling for the tactility of natural elements-water, wood, terrain, weather.
Nichols takes his time with the story, dwelling on how the boy is shaped by the killer's tragic sense of romance, yet the suspense holds.
"Mud" isn't just a movie. It's the firm confirmation of a career.
Just like its lead character, this film is packed to the brim with sadness, swagger and soul.
All the women in this movie are shrews, liars and/or emasculators.
Mud is a moving exploration into the nature of manhood, with superb performances, striking location and engrossing story creating a mesmerising and heartfelt coming of age drama.
A stripped back approach to tracking the process of growing up, but lacks the faith to see the plan executed to the end
Nichols takes his time unravelling Mud and Ellis's entwined fates, but his characters are so rich that it's well worth being in their company.
In its energy and nuance, Mud seems like the kind of film Hollywood would've made in the Seventies, and would've continued to do if not for the advent of market-conscious filmmaking.
More than a mere tribute to Twain and Dickens: this has all the makings of a modern classic.
An extremely sophisticated and progressive examination on how adolescent masculinity is defined by often-contradictory cultural attitudes towards femininity.
Mud is as beautiful to watch as it is to listen to, and feel kinship to, whether you're from the South or just Southern at heart.
In Jeff Nichols, America has a champion of the religious and working class. With the schism between the right and left in the U.S. growing ever larger... his ascent couldn't have come at a better time.
This is a film with a great naturalistic style and captivating performances and which does just about everything right.
Jeff Nichols writes characters with depth, nurtures strong performances form his cast and allows the screenplay's backwater setting to effectively create tone and texture.
This is American cinema at its very best as Huckleberry Finn meets Stand By Me.The two boys are terrific and McConaughey is sensational as Mud, dazzlingly frazzled as the hunted and haunted man on the run.
Up till just past the three-quarter mark, Mud is one heck of a nifty psychological fable.
The Southern-fried drama "Mud" is an electrifying example of what happens when you merge a crackerjack yarn with a very specific setting, and then pour on the heat with riveting performances.
McConaughey and Sheridan 's acting skills, as well as those of the entire supporting cast, make this movie better than it ought to be.
It gets under our skin because Nichols gives us time to come to know Mud's island like the places we knew as children.
As Mud might say, it's a hell of a thing.
The boys are so skillfully played that Mud also plays like cinema verite. Nichols' fluid camerawork suggests a documentary-style approach. That helps these young lads transform into flesh-and-blood characters who get our attention and support.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mud_2012/
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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) ? Demonstrators once again took to the streets in Brazil on Saturday, continuing a wave of protests that have shaken the nation and pushed the government to promise a crackdown on corruption and greater spending on social services.
Thousands gathered in the central square of Belo Horizonte and hundreds rallied in several other cities, largely to protest legislation that would limit the power of prosecutors to investigate crimes in a country where many are fed up with the high rate of robberies and killings.
President Dilma Rousseff broke days of silence on Friday with a broadcast address in which she vowed to battle corruption while improving government services, acknowledging the anger that has led to more than a week of vast, sometimes violent protests across Latin America's largest country.
She said she planned to soon meet with leaders of the protest movement, governors and the mayors of major cities. But it remained unclear who could represent the massive and decentralized groups of demonstrators taking to the streets with a range of grievances, including woeful public services despite a high tax burden.
Rousseff said that her government would create a national plan for public transportation in cities. Officials in many cities have already backed down from the hike in bus and subway fares that set off the protests. She also reiterated her backing for a plan before congress to invest all oil revenue royalties in education and a promise she made earlier to bring in foreign doctors to areas that lack physicians.
"I want institutions that are more transparent, more resistant to wrongdoing," Rousseff said in reference to complaints of deep corruption in Brazilian politics, which is emerging as a focal point of the protests. "It's citizenship and not economic power that must be heard first."
The leader is a former Marxist rebel who fought against Brazil's 1964-1985 military regime and was imprisoned for three years and tortured by the junta, and she pointedly referred to earlier sacrifices made to free the nation from dictatorship.
"My generation fought a lot so that the voice of the streets could be heard," Rousseff said. "Many were persecuted, tortured and many died for this. The voice of the street must be heard and respected and it can't be confused with the noise and truculence of some troublemakers."
Edvaldo Chaves, a 61-year-old doorman in Rio's upscale Flamengo neighborhood, said he found the speech convincing.
"I thought she seemed calm and cool. Plus, because she was a guerrilla and was in exile, she talks about the issue of protests convincingly," Chaves said. "I think things are going to calm down. We'll probably keep seeing people in the streets but probably small numbers now."
But Bruna Romao, an 18-year-old store clerk in Sao Paulo, said Rousseff's words probably wouldn't have an impact.
"Brazilians are passionate," she said. "We boil over quickly but also cool down fast. But this time it's different, people are in full revolt. I don't see things calming down anytime soon."
Some 1 million anti-government demonstrators took to the streets nationwide Thursday night to denounce everything from poor public services to the billions of dollars spent preparing for next year's World poor public services
The protests continued Friday, as about 1,000 people marched in western Rio de Janeiro city, with some looting stores and invading a $250 million arts center that remains empty after several years of construction. Police tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas as they were pelted with rocks. Police said some in the crowd were armed and firing at officers.
Other protests broke out in in the country's biggest city, Sao Paulo, where traffic was paralyzed but no violence was reported, and in Fortaleza in the country's northeast. Demonstrators were calling for more mobilizations in 10 cities on Saturday.
With Pope Francis scheduled to visit Brazil next month, the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops issued a statement expressing "solidarity and support for the demonstrations, as long as they remain peaceful."
"This is a phenomenon involving the Brazilian people and the awakening of a new consciousness," the Catholic leaders said in the statement. "The protests show all of us that we cannot live in a country with so much inequality."
Rousseff had never held elected office before she became president in 2011 and remains clearly uncomfortable in the spotlight. A career technocrat and economist, she was helped into the presidency by her mentor, the tremendously popular former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Marlise Matos, a political science professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, said before Rousseff spoke that officials need to take stronger action.
"The government has to respond, even if the agenda seems unclear and wide open," she said. "It should be the president herself who should come out and provide a response. But I think the government is still making strategic calculations to decide how to respond. What I'd like to see as a response is a call for a referendum on political reform. Let the people decide what kind of political and electoral system we have."
Social media and mass emails were buzzing with calls for a general strike next week. However, Brazil's two largest nationwide unions, the Central Workers Union and the Union Force, said they knew nothing about such an action, though they do support the protests.
A Thursday night march in Sao Paulo was the first with a strong union presence, as a drum corps led members wearing matching shirts down the city's main avenue. Many protesters have called for a movement with no ties to political parties or unions, which are widely considered corrupt here.
The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup soccer tournament, with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance.
Carlos Cardozo, a 62-year-old financial consultant who joined Friday's protest in Rio, said he thought the unrest could cost Rousseff next year's elections. Even as recently as last week, Rousseff had enjoyed a 74 percent approval rating in a poll by the business group the National Transport Confederation.
"Her paying lip service by saying she's in favor of the protests is not helping her cause," Cardozo said. "People want to see real action, real decisions, and it's not this government that's capable of delivering."
___
Barchfield reported from Rio de Janeiro and Brooks from Sao Paulo. Associated Press writers Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo and Jack Chang in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brazil-leader-breaks-silence-protests-001503729.html
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GOVINDGHAT, India (AP) ? Soldiers were working to evacuate tens of thousands of people still stranded Saturday in northern India where nearly 600 people have been killed in monsoon flooding and landslides.
With bad weather and heavy rainfall predicted over the next two days, there was an added urgency to reach the approximately 50,000 people still stranded in the flood-hit Uttarakhand state, federal Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said.
Since helicopters could rescue only small groups of people at a time, Shinde said army troops were opening up another road route to the Hindu temple town of Kedarnath, worst hit by the floods. More than 250 people have taken shelter in Kedarnath's main temple and are waiting to be rescued, he said.
Bridges and roads were washed away or blocked by debris. Shinde said air force helicopters were dropping food and drinking water to those stranded in inaccessible areas. More than 35,000 people have been rescued from the worst-hit districts over the past five days.
Officials say the death toll was expected to rise as troops reach remote hillside villages where flash floods washed away homes and boulders hurtled down on the fleeing villagers.
Around 10,000 army and paramilitary troops, members of India's disaster management agency and volunteers were involved in the rescue and relief efforts, Shinde said.
Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said Friday that 556 bodies were buried deep in slush caused by the landslides. Another 40 were found floating in the Ganges River.
Thousands of homes have been washed away or damaged in the state.
People across India are collecting clothes, blankets and tarpaulins and contributing money to help those left homeless in Uttarakhand.
Army engineers were rebuilding bridges and clearing roads to enable thousands of people to leave the region.
Uttarakhand is a popular summer vacation destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists seeking to escape the torrid heat of the plains. It is also a religious pilgrimage site with four temple towns located in the Garhwal Himalayan range.
The tourists usually head down to the plains before the monsoon breaks in July. But this year, early rains caught hundreds of thousands of tourists, pilgrims and local residents unaware.
Meteorological officials said the rains in Uttarakhand were the heaviest in nearly 80 years.
Google has launched an application, Person Finder, to help trace missing people in Uttarakhand. The version is available in both Hindi and English languages, according to a Google India blog.
Meanwhile, opposition parties and angry relatives in Uttarakhand accused the government of not doing enough to rescue people stranded in the temple towns.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party accused the government of callousness toward those affected by the flooding.
"It is very unfortunate that the government cannot coordinate the rescue efforts and provide timely help to the survivors of this calamity," Naqvi told repoters.
Earlier Saturday, Shinde admitted that there had been gaps in the government's rescue and relief efforts due to a lack of coordination between several disaster and welfare agencies in Uttarakhand.
Sri Devi, a tourist from neighboring Nepal, said she and her companions took shelter in a building in Govindghat, a small town on the road to the Sikh holy site of Hemkund, after their car was washed away. The 60-year-old woman was among a group of stranded tourists rescued from the town.
"It was raining boulders down the mountain and then a flood of water swept away everything. The road was washed away and we were stuck for four days without any food," Devi said.
Monsoon flooding is an annual occurrence in India, causing enormous loss of life and property, and hundreds of people were missing and feared washed away in this week's torrential monsoon downpours and flash floods in the tributaries of the Ganges River.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soldiers-rescue-flood-survivors-india-095613723.html
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The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating after two planes came perilously close to each other in a near miss over New York City on June 13, the Associated Press reports.
The incident happened around 3.45pm when a Delta Airlines Boeing 747 landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport came close to a Shuttle America Embraer E170 departing from LaGuardia Airport.
In a statement released today the FAA said the planes were "turning away from each other at the point where they lost the required separation." The issue occurred after the Delta flight had missed an approach and ended up traveling in the same direction as the Shuttle America flight.
One federal official told NBC New York that the two planes had come within 200 feet of each other.
NBC New York also got hold of a recording of the air traffic control contacting the planes, which is notable for how calm everyone involved sounds. Listen below (at around 0.30 in):
View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/two-planes-in-near-miss-over-new-york-2013-6
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