LONDON (AP) ? Britain's High Court said Tuesday a retired businessman who allegedly plotted to sell missile components to Iran cannot appeal against his extradition to the United States.
U.S. authorities say Christopher Tappin offered in 2006 to sell specialized batteries for Hawk missiles for $25,000, not knowing that his contacts were undercover U.S. agents, not Iranians. Two other men have been jailed in Texas over the plot.
Tappin denies the charges and says he was the victim of a sting operation by the U.S. government.
A judge ruled last year that 64-year-old Tappin should be extradited.
Two judges said Tuesday that Tappin could not take his fight against extradition to Britain's Supreme Court because his case did not raise legal issues that needed to be considered by a higher court.
Tappin's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald had argued that under European human rights legislation, Tappin should not be extradited because he had to care for his sick wife. The judges ruled that the severity of the charges against Tappin outweighed his right to not be extradited. Tappin faces up to 35 years in jail if convicted in the United States.
Tappin's case is the latest to expose trans-Atlantic tensions over the exchange of criminal suspects.
Lawyers complain that under "fast track" extradition procedures introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. is not required to offer substantial proof of an allegation when seeking to extradite a suspect from Britain.
But in October, a judge-led review in the U.K. found that extradition agreements between the United States and Britain are fair and unbiased.
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Air Force Research Laboratory experiment shows chirality of tube controls speed of growth
The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, has experimentally confirmed a theory by Rice University Professor Boris Yakobson that foretold a pair of interesting properties about nanotube growth: That the chirality of a nanotube controls the speed of its growth, and that armchair nanotubes should grow the fastest.
The work is a sure step toward defining all the mysteries inherent in what Yakobson calls the "DNA code of nanotubes," the parameters that determine their chirality -- or angle of growth -- and thus their electrical, optical and mechanical properties. Developing the ability to grow batches of nanotubes with specific characteristics is a critical goal of nanoscale research.
The new paper by Air Force senior researcher Benji Maruyama; former Air Force colleague Rahul Rao, now at the Honda Research Institute in Ohio; Yakobson and their co-authors appeared this week in the online version of the journal Nature Materials.
It's an interesting denouement in a saga that began with a 2009 paper by Yakobson and his collaborators. That paper, which presented the theoretical physicist's dislocation theory of chirality-controlled growth, described how nanotubes emerge as if single threads of atoms weave themselves into the now-familiar chicken-wire-like tubes. It also garnered a bit of controversy over what precisely the results meant.
"Boris caught some heat over it," Maruyama said. "The experimental work out there indicated his theory might be true, but they couldn't confirm it. The good part about our work is that it's fairly unambiguous."
Yakobson, Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry, took it all in stride. "The criticism didn't affect anything; it was actually the best advertisement and motivation for further work," he said. "In fact, (nanotube pioneer Sumio) Iijima noted early that 'helicity may aid the growth.' We have transformed it into a verifiable equation."
Experimental confirmation of a theory is never final but always satisfying, he admitted, and the Air Force lab was uniquely equipped to prove the linkage between the speed of a nanotube's growth and its chiral angle.
The chirality of a single-walled nanotube is determined by the way its carbon atoms are "rolled." Yakobson has described it as similar to rolling up a newspaper; sometimes the type lines up, and sometimes it doesn't. That alignment determines the nanotubes' electrical properties. Metallic armchair nanotubes, so named for the shape of their uncapped edges, are particularly desirable because electrons pass through from tip to tip with no resistance, while semiconducting nanotubes are useful for electronics, among other applications.
Rao developed a technique in Maruyama's lab to measure the growth rates of individual nanotubes. "It's an impressive setup," Yakobson said. "They can grow individual tubes in very low density and identify their signatures their chirality and at the same time measure how rapidly they grow."
The technique involved mounting catalyst nanoparticles on microscopic silicon pillars and firing tightly controlled lasers at them. Heat from the laser triggered the nanotubes to grow through a standard technique called chemical vapor deposition, and at the same time, the researchers analyzed nanotube growths via Raman spectroscopy.
From the spectra, they could tell how fast a nanotube grew and at what point growth terminated. Subsequent electron microscope images confirmed the spectra were from individual single-walled nanotubes, while chiral angles were determined by comparing post-growth Raman spectra and nanotube diameters to the Kataura plot, which maps chirality based on band gap and diameter.
They noted in the paper that the results provide a basis for further research into growing specific types of nanotubes. "Now that we know what the growth rate is for a particular chirality nanotube, one could think about trying to achieve growth of that specific chirality by influencing growth conditions accordingly," Rao said. "So, basically, we now have another 'knob' to turn."
"This work is at a very early development stage, and it's all about post-nucleation," Yakobson said. "Nucleation sets what I think of as the genetic code very primitive compared to biology that determines the chirality and the speed of growth of a nanotube." He said it may be possible someday to dictate the form of a nanotube as it begins to bubble up from a catalyst, "but it will take a lot of ingenuity."
Yakobson revealed a formula last year that defined the nucleation probability through the edge energies for graphene, which is basically a cut-and-flattened nanotube. But the earlier and related dislocation theory applies to the following growth, and if confirmed further may turn out to be his masterwork.
"The dislocation theory of growth is elegant and simple," Rao said. "It's still too early to say that it is the only growth mechanism, but Boris should be given plenty of credit for proposing this bold idea in the first place."
###
Co-authors are former Rice graduate student Tonya Leeuw Cherukuri and David Liptak, both researchers at the Air Force lab.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Research Council funded the work.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat3231.html
By learning to grow and measure single nanotubes, scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory were able to confirm a theory by Rice Professor Boris Yakobson that predicted the chirality of a nanotube its "DNA code" controls the speed of its growth. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
Air Force researchers mounted nanoparticle catalysts on microscopic silicon pillars and heated them with lasers to trigger nanotube growth. They were then able to determine the rate of growth and the tubes' chiralities. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
A single nanotube stretches out across a microscopic silicon pillar in the Air Force Research Laboratory experiment. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.
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Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Air Force Research Laboratory experiment shows chirality of tube controls speed of growth
The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, has experimentally confirmed a theory by Rice University Professor Boris Yakobson that foretold a pair of interesting properties about nanotube growth: That the chirality of a nanotube controls the speed of its growth, and that armchair nanotubes should grow the fastest.
The work is a sure step toward defining all the mysteries inherent in what Yakobson calls the "DNA code of nanotubes," the parameters that determine their chirality -- or angle of growth -- and thus their electrical, optical and mechanical properties. Developing the ability to grow batches of nanotubes with specific characteristics is a critical goal of nanoscale research.
The new paper by Air Force senior researcher Benji Maruyama; former Air Force colleague Rahul Rao, now at the Honda Research Institute in Ohio; Yakobson and their co-authors appeared this week in the online version of the journal Nature Materials.
It's an interesting denouement in a saga that began with a 2009 paper by Yakobson and his collaborators. That paper, which presented the theoretical physicist's dislocation theory of chirality-controlled growth, described how nanotubes emerge as if single threads of atoms weave themselves into the now-familiar chicken-wire-like tubes. It also garnered a bit of controversy over what precisely the results meant.
"Boris caught some heat over it," Maruyama said. "The experimental work out there indicated his theory might be true, but they couldn't confirm it. The good part about our work is that it's fairly unambiguous."
Yakobson, Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry, took it all in stride. "The criticism didn't affect anything; it was actually the best advertisement and motivation for further work," he said. "In fact, (nanotube pioneer Sumio) Iijima noted early that 'helicity may aid the growth.' We have transformed it into a verifiable equation."
Experimental confirmation of a theory is never final but always satisfying, he admitted, and the Air Force lab was uniquely equipped to prove the linkage between the speed of a nanotube's growth and its chiral angle.
The chirality of a single-walled nanotube is determined by the way its carbon atoms are "rolled." Yakobson has described it as similar to rolling up a newspaper; sometimes the type lines up, and sometimes it doesn't. That alignment determines the nanotubes' electrical properties. Metallic armchair nanotubes, so named for the shape of their uncapped edges, are particularly desirable because electrons pass through from tip to tip with no resistance, while semiconducting nanotubes are useful for electronics, among other applications.
Rao developed a technique in Maruyama's lab to measure the growth rates of individual nanotubes. "It's an impressive setup," Yakobson said. "They can grow individual tubes in very low density and identify their signatures their chirality and at the same time measure how rapidly they grow."
The technique involved mounting catalyst nanoparticles on microscopic silicon pillars and firing tightly controlled lasers at them. Heat from the laser triggered the nanotubes to grow through a standard technique called chemical vapor deposition, and at the same time, the researchers analyzed nanotube growths via Raman spectroscopy.
From the spectra, they could tell how fast a nanotube grew and at what point growth terminated. Subsequent electron microscope images confirmed the spectra were from individual single-walled nanotubes, while chiral angles were determined by comparing post-growth Raman spectra and nanotube diameters to the Kataura plot, which maps chirality based on band gap and diameter.
They noted in the paper that the results provide a basis for further research into growing specific types of nanotubes. "Now that we know what the growth rate is for a particular chirality nanotube, one could think about trying to achieve growth of that specific chirality by influencing growth conditions accordingly," Rao said. "So, basically, we now have another 'knob' to turn."
"This work is at a very early development stage, and it's all about post-nucleation," Yakobson said. "Nucleation sets what I think of as the genetic code very primitive compared to biology that determines the chirality and the speed of growth of a nanotube." He said it may be possible someday to dictate the form of a nanotube as it begins to bubble up from a catalyst, "but it will take a lot of ingenuity."
Yakobson revealed a formula last year that defined the nucleation probability through the edge energies for graphene, which is basically a cut-and-flattened nanotube. But the earlier and related dislocation theory applies to the following growth, and if confirmed further may turn out to be his masterwork.
"The dislocation theory of growth is elegant and simple," Rao said. "It's still too early to say that it is the only growth mechanism, but Boris should be given plenty of credit for proposing this bold idea in the first place."
###
Co-authors are former Rice graduate student Tonya Leeuw Cherukuri and David Liptak, both researchers at the Air Force lab.
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Research Council funded the work.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat3231.html
By learning to grow and measure single nanotubes, scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory were able to confirm a theory by Rice Professor Boris Yakobson that predicted the chirality of a nanotube its "DNA code" controls the speed of its growth. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
Air Force researchers mounted nanoparticle catalysts on microscopic silicon pillars and heated them with lasers to trigger nanotube growth. They were then able to determine the rate of growth and the tubes' chiralities. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
A single nanotube stretches out across a microscopic silicon pillar in the Air Force Research Laboratory experiment. (Credit: Rahul Rao/Air Force Research Laboratory)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.
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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.
A person familiar with the negotiations says Rutgers is in contract discussions with Florida International's Mario Cristobal to become the Scarlet Knights' football coach.
The person spoke to The Associated Press on Monday on condition of anonymity because the deal, first reported by The Star-Ledger, is not complete.
Rutgers is replacing Greg Schiano, who left the school last week to become coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Cristobal, a former Rutgers assistant under Schiano, just completed his fifth season at FIU. He is 24-38 with the Panthers but has led them to bowl games the past two seasons.
Before taking over at the Miami-based school in 2007, Cristobal was an assistant at the University of Miami.
____
AP Sports Writer Tom Canavan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
MIAMI ? Newt Gingrich slammed GOP rival Mitt Romney on Sunday for the steady stream of attacks he likened to "carpet-bombing," trying to cut into the resurgent front-runner's lead in Florida in the dwindling hours before Tuesday's pivotal presidential primary.
Surging ahead in polls, Romney kept the pressure on Gingrich with a dominant advertising presence that questioned the former House speaker's leadership and ethics. During campaign stops, Romney divided his focus between Gingrich and President Barack Obama.
In what has become a wildly unpredictable race, the momentum has swung back to Romney, staggered last weekend by Gingrich's victory in South Carolina. Romney has begun advertising in Nevada ahead of that state's caucuses next Saturday, illustrating the challenges ahead for Gingrich, who has pledged to push ahead no matter what happens in Florida.
Romney's campaign has dogged Gingrich at his own campaign stops, sending surrogates to remind reporters of Gingrich's House ethics probe in the 1990s and other episodes in his career.
Gingrich reacted defensively, accusing the former Massachusetts governor and a political committee that supports him of lying, and the GOP's establishment of allowing it.
"I don't know how you debate a person with civility if they're prepared to say things that are just plain factually false," Gingrich said during appearances on Sunday talk shows. "I think the Republican establishment believes it's OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order."
Gingrich objected specifically to a Romney campaign ad that includes a 1997 NBC News report on the House's decision to discipline Gingrich, then speaker, for ethics charges.
After hounding Gingrich during two debates last week, Romney returned more of his attention to Obama, who had been Romney's chief target as he tried to make the case that he was the most worthy Republican to challenge the Democratic incumbent.
But Romney didn't relent in swiping at Gingrich, even as an NBC News/Marist poll published Sunday showed Romney with support from 42 percent of likely Florida primary voters, compared with 27 percent for Gingrich.
"He's now finding excuses ... complaining about what he thinks were the reasons he thinks he's had difficulty here in Florida. But you know, we've got a president who has a lot of excuses," Romney said at a rally in Naples. "And the excuses are over, it's time to produce."
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, trailing in Florida by a wide margin, stayed in his home state, where his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was hospitalized. She has a genetic condition caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome. Aides said he would resume campaigning as soon as possible.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has invested little in Florida, looked ahead to Nevada. The libertarian-leaning Paul is focusing more on gathering delegates in caucus states, where it's less expensive to campaign. But securing the nomination only through caucus states is a hard task.
The race began moving toward a two-person fight in South Carolina, and has grown more bitter and personal in Florida.
The intense effort by Romney to slow Gingrich is comparable his strategy against Gingrich in the closing month before Iowa's leadoff caucuses Jan. 3.
Gingrich led in Iowa polls, lifted by what were hailed as strong performances in televised debates, only to drop in the face of withering attacks by Romney, aided immensely by ads sponsored by a political committee run by former Romney aides.
In Florida, senior Romney aides have popped up at Gingrich events to question Gingrich's conservative credentials. Led by Romney's top Iowa adviser, David Kochel, Romney's team cites Gingrich's criticism of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan's Medicare overhaul plan last year, and his appearance with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in an advertisement supporting climate-change legislation.
"That kind of language emboldens the critics of conservatism," Kochel said. "We're out pointing that out correcting the record."
Gingrich has responded by criticizing Romney's conservative credentials. Outside an evangelical Christian church in Lutz, Gingrich said he was the more loyal conservative on key social issues.
"This party is not going to nominate somebody who is a pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, pro-tax increase liberal," Gingrich said. "It isn't going to happen."
But Gingrich, in appearances on Sunday news programs, returned to complaining about Romney's tactics, rather than emphasizing his own message as that of a conservative with a record of action in Congress.
"When we get to a positive idea campaign, I consistently win," Gingrich said. "It's only when he can mass money to focus on carpet-bombing with negative ads that he gains any traction at all."
Romney and the political committee that supports him had combined to spend some $6.8 million in ads criticizing Gingrich in the Florida campaign's final week. Gingrich and a group that supports him were spending about one-third that amount.
Gingrich worked to portray himself as the insurgent outsider, collecting the endorsement of tea party favorite Herman Cain, whose own campaign for president foundered amid sexual harassment allegations.
It was unclear how aggressively Gingrich would be able to compete in states beyond Florida. The next televised debate, a format Gingrich has used to his advantage, is not until Feb. 22, more than three weeks away.
Romney already has campaigned in Nevada more than Gingrich, is advertising there, and stresses his business background in a state hard-hit by the economy. His campaign welcomed the Sunday endorsement of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's largest newspaper.
Michigan and Maine, states where Romney is well-positioned also hold their contests in February. Arizona, a strong tea-party state where Gingrich could do well, has its primary Feb. 28.
___
Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in Naples and Shannon McCaffrey in Lutz contributed to this report.
BEIJING ? Clouds of smoke from Lunar New Year fireworks sent air pollution readings soaring in the more sensitive measurement system Beijing started using a little more than a week ago, reports said Sunday.
Readings of fine particulate matter called PM2.5 reached 1.593 milligrams per cubic meter on the Jan. 22 eve of the holiday, about 100 times worse than the amount considered good for 24-hour exposure, the city's environmental bureau said.
The reading drew wide publicity in the local media on Sunday. The popular Beijing Youth Daily praised the city government for taking a more critical look at air pollution, while urging residents to consider the environmental effects of setting off fireworks.
The readings moderated under relatively clear skies in recent days. By noon Sunday, before the weeklong holiday ends and people return to work, the level stood at a relatively good 0.039.
Beijing is frequently cloaked in yellow haze that obscures buildings a couple of blocks away. On particularly bad days, schools cancel outdoor activities and hospitals treat more people ? particularly the elderly ? for respiratory complaints.
The city began measuring the small particles in the air and releasing the readings on Jan. 21, as concern has grown over Beijing's air pollution from all sources. PM2.5 ? particles less than 2.5 micrometers in size, or about 1/30th the width of an average human hair ? are believed to be the greatest health risk because their smallness means they can lodge deeply in the lungs.
Beijing previously had only given PM10 measurements of coarser particles, which indicated pollution was "light," leading to accusations the true extent of the problem was hidden.
The U.S. Embassy since last year has released PM2.5 readings from a device on its rooftop and some residents have tested the air in their neighborhoods and posted the results online.
The embassy measured more pollution than the city on Sunday, but the sampling stations are 10 miles apart or more.
Beijing says its PM2.5 measuring station is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) west of central Tiananmen Square.
___
Associated Press researcher Henry Hou contributed to this report.
RAMALLAH, West Bank ? The Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday blamed each other for the impasse in newly launched peace efforts, raising doubts about whether the dialogue would continue just weeks after it began.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of spoiling the low-level talks, saying it failed to present detailed proposals for borders and security requested by international mediators. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinians "refused to even discuss" Israeli security needs.
For the past month, the sides have held Jordanian-mediated exploratory talks at the urging of the Quartet of international Mideast mediators ? the U.S., the U.N., the E.U. and Russia. The goal of the talks has been to find a formula to resume formal peace negotiations, with the aim of forging an agreement this year.
The Palestinians say a three-month period set by the Quartet for the exploratory talks ended last week, counting from the day the mediators issued their marching orders last October.
But Abbas, deeply skeptical about the hardline Netanyahu, is under intense international pressure to stay at the table and would risk being blamed for the failure of the latest Mideast peace efforts.
Walking away would be a risky strategy at a time when he seeks global recognition of a state of Palestine ahead of a possible border deal with Israel. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon is expected in the region this week to help keep the talks alive.
Abbas said Israel's efforts so far have fallen short.
"By not presenting a clear vision on the issues of borders and security, as the Quartet demanded, Israel foiled the exploratory talks in Amman," Abbas said in remarks published late Saturday by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Israel has said it wants to keep talking and is serious about reaching a deal by year's end. It says the exploratory talks should continue for another two months, starting its countdown of the Quartet's three-month period from the beginning of meetings in early January.
Addressing his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said the dialogue had gotten off to a rocky start, but held out hope the talks would continue.
"Until this moment, according to what happened in recent days, the Palestinians refused to even discuss with us the needs of Israel's security," he said. "The signs are not very good, but I hope they will come to their senses and we'll continue the talks so we can reach real negotiations."
The Quartet had asked both sides to present detailed proposals on borders and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state, in hopes the exploratory talks would evolve into full negotiations.
The Palestinians said they presented four-page proposals on each subject, but refused to elaborate. Earlier this week, Israel presented its principles for drawing a border with a future state of Palestine ? the first-ever indication by Netanyahu on how much war-won land he would be willing to relinquish.
Abbas said he remains committed to serious negotiations that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
The Palestinians want to establish their state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians, who regained control of Gaza in 2005, have said they are willing to swap some land to enable Israel to keep some of the largest of dozens of settlements it has built on occupied lands. In talks with Netanyahu's predecessor, the Palestinians suggested swapping 1.9 percent of the West Bank, while Israel proposed 6.5 percent.
Two Palestinian officials said last week that Israel proposed keeping control of east Jerusalem and essentially turning its West Bank separation barrier into the border. That would place attach roughly 10 percent of the West Bank to Israel.
Israeli officials have declined comment.
However, it is unlikely Abbas would accept any deal that leaves east Jerusalem under Israeli control and gives him only 90 percent of the West Bank.
Abbas consulted Sunday with his Fatah movement and was to talk Monday with top officials in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abbas said he would make his final decision after briefing the Arab League at the end of the week.
Western diplomats said Quartet envoy Tony Blair will try in coming days to persuade Netanyahu to agree to incentives to salvage the talks, including the release of veteran Palestinian prisoners.
Mahmoud Aloul, a senior Fatah official, said Sunday that Fatah would likely urge Abbas to end the talks.
"There is no hope ... that these talks or any talks with this right-wing Israeli government would lead to any progress," Aloul said.
UPDATE: Well, we can cross two big names off the list. Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times has learned that the groups led by Mark Cuban and former agent Dennis Gilbert didn?t make it to the second round of the bidding process.
Meanwhile, Tony Jackson of ESPNLosAngeles.com hears that Peter O?Malley?s group and the group led by?Stanley Gold (who runs the investment firm for the family of the late Roy Disney) have advanced. O?Malley has reportedly discussed joining forces with Gold?s group.
9:30 PM: We learned earlier this week that the Dodgers received more than 10 opening bids in advance of Monday?s deadline from those interested in buying the team from Frank McCourt. The opening bids aren?t binding and new bidders could still emerge in the days to come, but we have some early word on who made it through to the next round.
Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reports that?at least eight groups have advanced, including the Magic Johnson/Stan Kasten group, the Joe Torre/Rick Caruso?group and the group headed by hedge fund manager?Steven Cohen. No word on any others, but it?s safe to say most of the big names are sticking around.
The Dodgers released a statement a little while ago confirming that ?the round of preliminary bidding has been completed successfully.? However, they didn?t say who advanced or provide a timeline for the next step.
The embattled McCourt faces an April 30 deadline to sell the team and has agreed to identify the winning bidder by April 1. The sale is expected to fetch an MLB record price tag in excess of $1 billion.
Finding the right cofounder is often the hardest part of doing a startup, as most anyone with experience will tell you. As a personal example: the cofounder of my first company,?Phil Kast, was an old high school buddy employed as a whitewater rafting guide in Colorado when we started talking about working together. He happened to be hitting the off-season right when I was trying to get started -- and everything went from there. FounderDating has been working to solve the cofounder connection problem by running regular meetups in San Francisco and Seattle. Today, it's expanding on the effort by launching a web site that screens then connects those looking for colleagues, and by announcing meetups in new cities including New York, then Boston and Los Angeles.
Sometimes, life feels a bit too three-dimensional. All that depth perception, it gets tiring. Well, if you're after a break, maybe you could get one of these bags and convince yourself that you live in some kind of 2-D cartoon instead. More »
(Reuters) ? Netflix Inc won back Wall Street's affections on Thursday after adding more U.S. subscribers than expected in the fourth quarter, a rebound that prompted analyst upgrades and the company's biggest one-day stock jump in two years.
The Los Gatos, California-based company's shares soared 23.5 percent to $117.40 in afternoon trading. Shares had dropped to a year's low of $62.37 on November 30.
Analysts at Citigroup, Barclays and J.P. Morgan Securities raised their price targets for Netflix. The fourth-quarter gain of more than 600,000 U.S. customers may help alleviate concerns about the company's ability to gain new business after a series of high-profile missteps, they said.
Citigroup also upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral."
Other analysts maintained their price targets, urging caution in the face of growing competition including a potential stand-alone offering of Amazon.com Inc's video streaming product at a lower price.
"We believe Netflix was a bit dismissive of the potential competitive threat here, but the degree of risk almost entirely depends on whether Amazon would approach such a service with its existing content library, or whether it would be willing to step up spending dramatically to acquire more content," JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a client note.
He said that in the end, competition with Amazon would not be good for the shares of either company.
On Wednesday, Netflix management acknowledged the competitive landscape. In a letter to shareholders, Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings shrugged off the threat from Amazon.com and Hulu Plus and said both services offered far less content. The greatest competition will come from cable networks going mobile, he said.
Thursday's share gains represented the biggest one-day jump for Netflix since January 2010, when the stock rose 23 percent after better-than-expected earnings and a bullish subscriber forecast.
Still, it would take a major positive run for Netflix to return to its former heights as a Wall Street darling, as recently as seven months ago when its shares peaked at $304 on July 13.
Netflix, which outraged customers with a surprising price increase and a botched attempt to split off its DVD-by-mail service in 2011, added 610,000 net new subscribers in its home U.S. market in the fourth quarter, helping revenue leap 47 percent to $876 million.
Total U.S. subscribers stood at 24.4 million at the end of December, still below the 24.6 million the company boasted at the end of June.
As the company shifts customers from its DVD-by-mail service onto instant streaming, Netflix has been writing ever-heftier checks to acquire more TV programs and movies for its streaming service. The company said it will operate with a loss for a few quarters this year while it expands in Latin America, Britain and Ireland.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore, Yinka Adegoke in New York and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Gunna Dickson)
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Women need to get recommended Pap tests, while girls and young women should be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) to protect them from cervical cancer, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises during Cervical Health Awareness Month.
Cervical cancer kills more than 4,000 women in the United States each year. Many of them could have been saved by routine Pap tests, which look for abnormal cells in the cervix that can turn into cancer. When caught early, those abnormal cells are highly treatable, according to the college.
More than 12,000 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
The good news is that the rate of cervical cancer in the United States has fallen more than 50 percent in the past three decades due to the widespread use of the Pap test, the college says.
Cervical cancer is caused by certain strains of HPV, a common sexually transmitted disease. HPV can also cause genital and anal warts and cancer of the mouth, head and neck, penis and anus.
Women can help protect themselves against cervical cancer by being monogamous, practicing safe sex and getting periodic Pap tests. In addition, girls and young women aged 9 to 26 should receive the HPV vaccine, the college recommends.
A young women should get her first Pap test when she turns 21 and continue having a Pap test every two years until age 30. Women age 30 and beyond who have three consecutive negative Pap test results can be screened once every three years, the college says.
More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about cervical cancer prevention.
Modern day video editors can be daunting. While it's better than the literal cut-and-paste practices of yesteryear, opening a new video editor can feel like stepping into the cockpit of a spaceship. Unless you're trained to fly spaceships, in which case this analogy is broken (and also, you're awesome.) Looking to distill video editing down to its simplest form ? a game like experience, they say ? is Game Your Video, a new iOS app from Global Delight.
Folding: it's detestable and boring, as any Gap employee can tell you. But it's also a totally fun thing you can do in a video game! And today it's particularly exciting because players of the online game Foldit have redesigned a protein, and their work is published in the science journal Nature Biotechnology. More »
Muslim men pray for peace and for people who lost their lives during the recent attacks, at a mosque in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday along with local people for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Muslim men pray for peace and for people who lost their lives during the recent attacks, at a mosque in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday along with local people for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Emir of Kano, Ado Bayaro, is seen at his palace in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Emir of Kano, Ado Bayaro, right, and Rabiu Kwankwaso, The governor of kano state, front left, prior to offering a prayer for peace and those who lost their lives during the recent attacks, at a mosque in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Muslim men pray for peace and for people who lost their lives during the recent attacks, at a mosque in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday along with local people for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Muslim girls sell kolanuts along a street in Kano, Nigeria, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, following recent sectarian attacks. The emir of Kano and the state's top politician offered prayers Monday for the more than 150 people who were killed in a coordinated series of attacks on Friday by the radical Islamist sect called Boko Haram which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the Hausa language of Nigeria's north.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
KANO, Nigeria (AP) ? The aging Muslim spiritual leader of this northern Nigeria city, his eyes heavy with fatigue, leaned into a microphone Monday and whispered to God his wish for peace after the killing of at least 185 people in an attack by the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram.
On the streets, however, smudged black graffiti written in charcoal gave a different message: "Boko Haram good."
Though businesses reopened and traffic again filled the streets Monday of Nigeria's second-largest city, people in Kano remained fearful that the radical sect will attack again. That tension only increased as police announced they had discovered 10 unexploded car bombs around the city and as uniformed officers and soldiers melted away from public view in this city of more than 9 million people.
"We are not safe at all," warned resident Aminu Garba, 38. "We are not safe."
Police issued a statement late Monday giving a fuller account of what happened during Friday's attack that saw at least two Boko Haram suicide bombers detonate explosive-laden cars. The statement by state police commissioner Ibrahim Idris described attackers as speaking accented Hausa and other languages not normally heard in Kano as they assaulted police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria's secret police.
The attack killed 150 civilians, 29 police officers, three secret police officers, two immigration officers and one customs official, Idris said, rising the toll to 185 dead. Medical workers and emergency officials say they still expect the death toll to rise.
Officers also have discovered 10 car bombs in the city, as well as about 300 bombs made from aluminum cans and other explosives, Idris said.
On Monday, Emir of Kano Ado Bayero and Kano state Gov. Rabiu Kwankwaso sat together at the front of a mosque typically full of worshippers during Friday prayers in this dusty, sprawling city. However, the special service to commemorate the dead and ask God for peace and justice drew much smaller crowds than usual, with half of the prayer mats unoccupied.
"I call on people from all groups to pray for this place," Bayero said.
Meanwhile, secret police officers stood guard outside with assault rifles.
Bayero is one of the premier rulers of the emirates of Nigeria, a system of governance that dates back to the 1800s and still carries spiritual importance to Muslims. British colonialists used the emirates to rule the north by proxy until Nigeria gained its independence in 1960. Many believe Nigeria's corrupt politicians now do the same, as the vast majority of those living in the north deal with crushing poverty in a nation where most earn less than $2 a day.
The influence of traditional leaders in Nigeria has waned in recent years and the 81-year-old emir himself showed his age as he walked slowly away from the mosque, leaning heavily on his cane.
Such leaders previously promised to intercede for the government to stop the increasingly violent sectarian attacks of Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language. However, a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable claims that Nigeria's government in 2008 released suspected Islamist extremists to such leaders as part of a parole program.
Around that same time, Nigerian authorities released a Boko Haram member now suspected of helping organize the August suicide car bombing of the U.N. headquarters in the capital, Abuja, that killed 25 people.
Friday's coordinated attack in Kano represents Boko Haram's deadliest assault since beginning a campaign of terror last year. Boko Haram has now killed 262 people in 2012, more than half of the 510 people the sect killed in all of 2011, according to an Associated Press count.
Nigeria's weak central government has been unable to stop the killings, and its heavy-handed military response has been criticized by civilians who live in fear of sect attacks and government reprisals.
Security forces on Sunday shot dead four people they accused of being Boko Haram members after finding explosive-making materials in their car in the sect's spiritual home of Maiduguri, said Col. Victor Ebhaleme, a military field operation officer in the northeastern city. Local police said at the same time on Sunday that a suspected sect member killed a Maiduguri High Court registrar at his home.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Monday that U.S. officials are discussing how to support Nigeria's counterterrorism efforts, including cutting funding for Boko Haram.
"We are obviously extremely concerned and it was a really horrific spate of bombings over the weekend," Nuland said.
Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
While the sect has begun targeting Christians in the north, the majority of those killed Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said. That leaves Kano residents like Garba, who stood outside the mosque following Monday's prayer service, living in fear.
In the middle of the sect's attack Friday, Garba said his pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage. Now people run at the sound of a tire bursting, he said.
Heavily armed soldiers who stood guard during the president's visit Sunday disappeared from Kano's streets shortly after he left the city. Police officers also have moved largely from their bombed stations to the city's outskirts.
"People have this anger because of the poverty and the illiteracy," Garba said. We "have to be very cautious."
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Associated Press writers Salisu Rabiu and Ibrahim Garba in Kano, Nigeria; Njadvara Musa in Maiduguri, Nigeria; and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
Quitting smoking is never easy. However, when you're poor and uneducated, kicking the habit for good is doubly hard, according to a new study by a tobacco dependence researcher at The City College of New York (CCNY).
Christine Sheffer, associate medical professor at CCNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, tracked smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.
Whether rich or poor, participants managed to quit at about the same rate upon completing a program of cognitive behavioral therapy, either with or without nicotine patches. But as time went on, a disparity between the groups appeared and widened.
Those with the fewest social and financial resources had the hardest time staving off cravings over the long run. "The poorer they are, the worse it gets," said Professor Sheffer, who directed the program and was an assistant professor with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at the time.
She found that smokers on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder were 55 percent more likely than those at the upper end to start smoking again three months after treatment. By six months post-quitting, the probability of their going back to cigarettes jumped to two-and-a-half times that of the more affluent smokers. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health and will appear ahead-of-print online under the journal's "First Look" section.
In their study, Professor Sheffer and her colleagues noted that overall, Americans with household incomes of $15,000 or less smoke at nearly three times the rate of those with incomes of $50,000 or greater. The consequences are bleak. "Smoking is still the greatest cause of preventable death and disease in the United States today," noted Professor Sheffer. "And it's a growing problem in developing countries."
Harder to Stay Away
Professor Sheffer suggested reasons it may be harder for some to give up tobacco forever.
Smoking relieves stress for those fighting nicotine addiction, so it is life's difficulties that often make them reach for the cigarette pack again. Unfortunately, those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale suffer more hardships than those at the top ? in the form of financial difficulties, discrimination, and job insecurity, to name a few. And for those smokers who started as teenagers, they may have never learned other ways to manage stress, said Professor Sheffer.
For people with lower socioeconomic status (SES), it can be tougher to avoid temptation as well. "Lower SES groups, with lower paying jobs, aren't as protected by smoke-free laws," said Sheffer, so individuals who have quit can find themselves back at work and surrounded by smokers. Also fewer of them have no-smoking policies in their homes.
These factors are rarely addressed in standard treatment programs. "The evidence-based treatments that are around have been developed for middle-class patients," Professor Sheffer pointed out. "So (in therapy) we talk about middle-class problems."
Further research would help determine how the standard six sessions of therapy might be altered or augmented to help. "Our next plan is to take the results of this and other studies and apply what we learned to revise the approach, in order to better meet the needs of poor folks," she said. "Maybe there is a better arrangement, like giving 'booster sessions'. Not everybody can predict in six weeks all the stresses they will have later on down the road."
"Some people say [quitting] is the most difficult thing in their life to do," said Sheffer. "If we better prepare people with more limited resources to manage the types of stress they have in their lives, we'd get better results. "
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City College of New York: http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu
Thanks to City College of New York for this article.
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As 2011 came to its close, many of us watched the annual rituals at Times Square on our flat-screened televisions. Around the country, songs were sung and parties enjoyed, but I wonder how many of us or our children remembered that December 31st is Watch Night. It was on this date in 1862 that Blacks in this nation, freeborn and enslaved, crowded into churches and other buildings, or huddled as families at home waiting for the event scheduled to happen on the first day of 1863. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order freeing many of the nation's slaves was to take effect. The actual order had been signed in September 1862, and was set to free the slaves held by the states in rebellion against the Union. (With the war's end in April 1865, and passage of the 13th Amendment in December of that year, all slaves would be freed.) Our ancestors had heard rumors of freedom's coming and were "watching" for this great event. They awaited word by all possible means. There were no cell phones or text messages that night, but word spread nonetheless. Yes, the president had signed the order. All Blacks in this nation had cause to celebrate.
My grandfather, James Louis Gray, was born in 1859. He was born enslaved. Slavery is my heritage. I've wondered what my grandfather's parents did on Watch Night. They lived in the border state of Missouri, which had already been technically freed by state law. Nonetheless, I imagine that they kept watch with others. Did they have cousins in other states who would be emancipated by Lincoln's order? Friends? I believe that they understood how inter-woven our destinies are. As Dr. King wrote in his great Letter from Birmingham Jail: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
My parents spoke easily of the way things were "back in slave days." It was simply a part of our family history, and not far away at all. Because of this, I had particular interest in the genealogical work I helped facilitate with Marjorie Taylor: The Freedman Bank records. Though the bank itself failed, a treasure survived. It had nothing to do with money, but with names.
If you're a former slave seeking to identify yourself in a new, post Civil War world where you can have a bank account and actually be paid for your labors, you have no Social Security card, no driver's license, no identification we would take for granted today. As a result, you would identify yourself by your relationships.
The microfilmed bank records we dealt with when doing the extraction (which were ultimately made available on CD) had priceless and sometimes heartbreaking notes to identify the owner of the account. In an interview, the former slave establishing an account would answer questions. Their answers would be written down. They would identify their parents, children, siblings. Each account might give generations of names, which their descendants can now look up. Family connections mattered deeply to our slave ancestors and they worked hard at maintaining those relationships -- even through the horrible years of slavery and reconstruction.
How well have we remembered this legacy and the hard history we share? Next year will be the 150th anniversary of "Watch Night." Let us teach our children to understand and value their roots. Let us never forget the lessons which remind us that what affects one affects all. Let us remember that we are still watching for freedom -- ours or that of anyone in the family of God.
May we all be blessed,
Darius A. Gray (A Christian in the Mormon Tradition)
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Public release date: 30-Jan-2012
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