Saturday, July 13, 2013

Audi launches S6 model in India priced at Rs 85.99 lakh

New Delhi: German luxury carmaker Audi launched its sedan S6 in India, priced at Rs 85.99 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi).

"We are now happy to add the Audi S6 to our portfolio after the launch of the new Audi RS 5 Coupe earlier this month. With these launches, I am confident of consolidating our leadership position even further," Audi India Head Michael Perschke said in a statement.

The company's other models in the high performance car segment includes Audi R8, Audi R8 Spyder, Audi S4 and Audi TT Coupe.

Audi launches S6 model in India priced at Rs 85.99 lakh

The Audi S6 has various luxury features including four zone air conditioner, electrically adjustable sport seats with memory functions for the driver and sun blinds.

The Audi S6 has various luxury features including four zone air conditioner, electrically adjustable sport seats with memory functions for the driver and sun blinds.

Buoyed by good sales growth last year, Audi is expecting India to become one of its top ten global markets by 2014-15.

The company which sold 9,003 units in India in 2012 is aiming to sell around 10,500-10,800 units this year at a growth rate of about 20 per cent.

The German firm expects India to move up to 6th or 7th position by 2020 from its current rank of 22.

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At least 6 dead in France train crash near Paris

BRETIGNY-SUR-ORGE, France (AP) ? A train carrying hundreds of passengers derailed and crashed into a station outside Paris on Friday on one of the busiest days of the year for vacation getaways. At least six people were killed and dozens were injured, officials said.

The crash was the deadliest in France in several years. French President Francois Hollande rushed to the scene at the Bretigny-sur-Orge station, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Paris. The Interior Ministry said some 192 people were either injured or being treated for shock ? of which nine were in a critical condition.

Four of the seven train cars slid toward the station, crushing part of the metallic roof over the platform. Images on French television and on Twitter showed gnarled metal and shards on the platform, and debris from the crash clogging the stairwell leading beneath the platform.

Some 300 firefighters, 20 medical teams and eight helicopters were deployed to get survivors out of the metal wreckage, according to the Interior Ministry.

The accident came as France is preparing to celebrate its most important national holiday, Bastille Day, on Sunday, and as masses of vacationers are heading out of Paris and other big cities to see family or for summer vacation.

Hollande praised "the mobilization of the emergency services," and reached out in "solidarity with the victims' families." He said an inquiry has been launched to determine the cause of the accident.

"The inquiries will be public so that there is absolutely no doubt on what happened," he added.

Witnesses reported that the train was not moving at an excessive speed, deepening the mystery of what happened.

"I think it's genuinely too early to start to give this or that hypothesis. Now, we're still in the emergency operation," said Interior Ministry spokesman, Pierre-Henry Brandet. "There's some long work ahead from experts that will allow us to know the exact circumstances and the exact causes of this drama."

Ben Khelifa, a 20-year-old accounting apprentice whose commuter train was on the adjacent track, told The Associated Press that the derailed train "was unrecognizable.

"There was nothing but metal scraps," he said. "The train just collapsed, just like that, on its side... There was blood."

He added that he was one of a number of passengers in the adjacent train that went to help pull trapped survivors out of the wreckage. "People were screaming, people were asking where their children were," he said.

Another witness, Bazgua El Mehdi, 19, told Le Parisien newspaper: "I heard a loud noise. A cloud of sand covered everything. Then the dust dissipated. I thought it was a freight train, but then we saw the first casualties ... Many passengers on the (train) were crying."

It was unclear whether all the casualties were inside the train, or whether some had been on the platform, or how fast the train was traveling. The head of the SNCF rail authority, Guillaume Pepy, called it a "catastrophe."

The train's third and fourth cars initially derailed, which then knocked the other cars off the track, Pepy said. "Some cars simply derailed, others are leaning, others fell over," he said.

The Interior Ministry said six people died in the crash and nine were in critical condition. Earlier, Interior Minister Manuel Valls had said seven people died.

The SNCF said the train was carrying about 385 passengers when it derailed Friday evening at 5:15 p.m. (1515 GMT; 11:15 a.m. EDT) and crashed into the station at Bretigny-sur-Orge.

The train was headed from Paris to Limoges, a 400-kilometer (250-mile) journey, and was about 20 minutes into the scheduled three-hour journey.

A passenger speaking on France's BFM television said the train was going at a normal speed and wasn't meant to stop at Bretigny-sur-Orge. He described children unattended in the chaotic aftermath.

Trains operations have been suspended in Bretigny-sur-Orge for the next three days.

___

AP writer Thomas Adamson contributed to this report from Paris.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/least-6-dead-france-train-crash-near-paris-194513835.html

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Friday, July 12, 2013

Plainfield Historical Society Planning Yard Sale; Donations ...

Sale is scheduled for July 26 and 27.

The?Plainfield Historical Society?is planning a July 26 and 27?yard saleat the Quality Hill House, 23781 W. Lockport St. (Lockport and Eastern Avenue).

All proceeds will be used to continue renovations on the home, which dates back to the 1840s.


Donations are being accepted for the sale. To make a donation, call Sue at the historical society at 815-436-4073.

Related:


Source: http://plainfield.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/plainfield-historical-society-planning-yard-sale-donations-accepted

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Hamm taking plunge into sports world as ESPYs host

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Jon Hamm is going from a presenter to host of the ESPY Awards, a natural segue for the former three-sport prep athlete who is unabashed in his love for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals.

Hamm called himself a "pretty good" high school player, but is quick to note he was never a threat to make it in the professional ranks.

That's why the 42-year-old actor best known as Don Draper on AMC's "Mad Men" wants to keep the focus on the athletes when he hosts the annual show honoring the year's best sports moments. It airs live on ESPN on July 17 from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.

"When you look at someone else who is excellent at what they do, you can't help but be jealous," Hamm said Thursday. "When you look at what David Freese did in the 2011 World Series, that's performance at the highest level with all the chips on the table."

Freese had two key hits in the late innings of Game 6 against Texas that year, helping the Cardinals force a Game 7, which they won.

"I don't want to disrespect any Blues fans, but the Cardinals are No. 1 in my heart," he said, adding that the Cardinals and NHL's Blues are "1 and 1-A" in his rooting order.

At John Burroughs High in suburban St. Louis, Hamm was on the football, baseball and swimming teams, lettering in all three sports.

"I loved it. A lot of those guys I played on those teams with I'm still pretty good friends with," he said. "It's important for young kids to get out there and move around, especially in the kind of high-fructose environment we have these days."

Hamm is hosting the ESPYs just as he wraps filming on the Disney movie "The Million Dollar Arm," in which he plays a sports agent.

Hosting an awards show is not like hosting "Saturday Night Live," he noted. "But I've never had a problem standing up in front of people making a fool of myself, and I'm sure that will happen at least once during the telecast."

As someone who's been nominated for his share of acting trophies, Hamm knows what it's like to sit in the audience for an awards show.

"You kind of want it to go fast because there's fun parties afterwards," he said, noting that the best hosts "always kind of keep it moving, keep it light, and give you some laughs."

Among the scheduled presenters are LeBron James, Ben Affleck, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Selena Gomez, Danica Patrick, Maria Sharapova, Jason Sudeikis, and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Chrissy Teigen.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hamm-taking-plunge-sports-world-espys-host-220321871.html

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Thursday, July 11, 2013

UK to list Royal Mail, woos workers with free shares

By Neil Maidment and William James

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will list a majority stake in the Royal Mail postal service on the stock market in the next nine months, promising free shares for workers fiercely opposed to the country's biggest privatisation in around 20 years.

Analysts expect the initial public offering (IPO) to value Royal Mail, which traces its roots to a service founded by King Henry VIII in 1516, at 2-3 billion pounds, so selling a majority stake could raise over 1 billion pounds to help the country's stretched finances.

In a bid to weaken support for trade unions, which have helped to scupper past attempts to sell off the business, the government said it would give away 10 percent of shares in Royal Mail to its 150,000 UK postal workers, with the condition that they must be held for three years.

The company's management has long argued that access to external capital is vital as it invests in shifting its business away from falling letter volumes and toward a growing parcels industry fuelled by internet shopping.

But unions have threatened strike action, arguing privatisation could jeopardise Royal Mail's commitment to provide a universal, six-days-a-week service and lead to a decline in working conditions for staff.

Business Secretary Vince Cable sought to sooth such concerns, saying the universal service would be protected by regulator Ofcom as well as parliament, and that privatisation would not trigger a change in employment conditions.

"It cannot be right for Royal Mail to come cap in hand to ministers each time it wants to invest and innovate. The public will always want government to invest in schools and hospitals ahead of Royal Mail," he said.

State postal services have been privatised across much of western Europe. Last month, Belgium's bpost received strong interest in its stock market debut, which was priced towards the top end of expectations.

Royal Mail, which no longer includes the Post Office services and retail business, more than doubled profit in the year ended March 31, helped by parcel demand.

PUBLIC OFFERING

The listing, which will take place in the company's current financial year, will include a retail offering for the public, for which Royal Mail workers will also receive priority treatment. Banks Goldman Sachs and UBS have been appointed as lead advisers for the IPO.

Cable said the government would retain flexibility on the size of stake to be sold, pending market conditions and demand.

Britain's Conservative-Liberal coalition government, which paved the way for privatisation last year by freeing Royal Mail of its hefty pension liabilities, has been criticised by the main opposition Labour party for pushing to sell off the firm at a time when its profits are rising.

The privatisation push follows similar attempts by the Conservatives in 1994 and by Labour in 2009, both of which were scuppered by union threats and party rebellions, with the latter attempt also succumbing to rocky financial markets.

In a consultative ballot sent to 112,000 Royal Mail workers in June, the Communication Workers Union said that, from a 74 percent turnout, 96 percent opposed plans to sell the firm. It urged the government to consider other ways to access capital or risk strike action.

The retail element of the IPO plan is rare for Britain, and only usually considered for well known companies. In October last year insurer Direct Line sold around 15 percent of its 787 million pound IPO to retail investors who on average bought 5,000-6,000 pounds worth of shares.

A YouGov poll commissioned for a Think Tank paper released on Wednesday exploring the merits of privatising Royal Mail showed that just 53 percent of the British public are aware of the sale plans, with 67 percent of people opposed to it. (Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Kate Holton and Mark Potter)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/british-pm-says-expects-big-public-support-royal-114531373.html

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07/16/2013 - OUR SAVIOR LUTHERAN CHURCH TO HOST ?THE KINGDOM CHRONICLES? VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL


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Judge: Apple aimed to raise e-book prices

Published: 7/11/13 @ 12:00

Judge: Apple aimed to raise e-book prices

new york

Apple Inc. milked the popularity of its iTunes store to form an illegal cartel with publishers to raise electronic- book prices, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, citing ?compelling evidence? from the words of the late Steve Jobs.

Wednesday?s ruling by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in New York sided with government regulators? contention that Apple joined five major book publishers to gang up on Amazon.com in a price-fixing conspiracy that caused consumers to pay more for electronic books.

Bernanke: US still needs Fed?s stimulus

washington

Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday the U.S. economy still needs help from the Federal Reserve?s low interest rate policies.

Bernanke told the NationalSFlbBureau of Economic ResearchSFlbthat because unemployment remains high and inflation is below the Fed?s target, the policies are still necessary. He also said the economy is being held back by higher taxes and federal spending cuts.

Associated Press

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Huntington Bank, .20, 8.26?.20

JP Morgan Chase, 1.52,54.84?.05

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LaFarge, 15.27 ?.10

Macy?s, 1.00, 49.46?.91

Parker Hannifin, 1.80, 98.12.11

PNC, 1.76,74.57?1.69

RTI Intl. Metals,29.78.25

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Selected prices at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Provided by Stifel Nicolaus. Not to be construed as an offer or recommendation to buy or sell any security.


Source: http://www.vindy.com/news/2013/jul/11/judge-apple-aimed-to-raise-e-book-prices/?mobile

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Friday, July 5, 2013

Study of mitochondrial DNA ties ancient remains to living descendants

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Researchers report that they have found a direct genetic link between the remains of Native Americans who lived thousands of years ago and their living descendants. The team used mitochondrial DNA, which children inherit only from their mothers, to track three maternal lineages from ancient times to the present.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/p5yW0kBCGTA/130704095044.htm

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Thursday, July 4, 2013

Carcassonne updated with new tally displays and detailed play by play summaries

Carcassonne updated with new tally displays and detailed play by play summaries

Carcassonne, a port of the popular German boardgame, has been updated with some new features that make keeping track of gameplay easier including new scoring visualizations that will give you the ability to review every detail of a game once it's completed.

The new update also brings with it a new tally display which serves to show score details during actual game play. Carcassonne first brought the classic game to iPhone and iPad about four years ago. For hardcore fans of the traditional game, it's nice to see it's still getting updated and receiving the support it deserves. From the developers and the community.

You can grab the update via the link below. If you don't already have Carcassonne, the $9.99 purchase covers both the iPhone and iPad version.

    


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/PQW1YwDDjJ8/story01.htm

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Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange back in action

Mt Gox Bitcoin exchange back in action

As promised, Mt. Gox has reenabled cash withdrawals after taking its system offline to iron out the kinks. The Bitcoin exchange says it's successfully processed over $1,000,000 worth of transactions during these past two weeks of testing, which has given it the confidence to resume business -- despite a backlog on some transactions. Mt. Gox is also announcing that it's signed more banking partnerships "in Japan and around the world," though no specific companies were named. If you want to get into this whole Bitcoin thing, but don't know where to start, we got you covered.

Comments

Via: The Next Web

Source: Mt. Gox

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/04/mt-gox-bitcoin-exchange-resumes-service/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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The Epic 'Lone Ranger' Train Sequence: How'd They Do That?

Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and Gore Verbinski take MTV News inside the 'massive puzzle' of the 'Lone Ranger' climax.
By Josh Wigler

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709993/lone-ranger-johnny-depp-armie-hammer-train-sequence.jhtml

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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Vatican scandal: Two high-profile resignations follow arrest of monsignor

Vatican scandal: The?Vatican bank director and his deputy resigned Monday afternoon amid a growing financial scandal that has already landed a Vatican monsignor in prison.

By Nicole Winfield,?Associated Press / July 1, 2013

Ernst von Freyberg, president of the Vatican Bank I.O.R. (Istituto per le Opere Religiose), talks with the Associated Press at his office in Vatican City, June 10. Mr. von Freyberg has been appointed the acting director of the I.O.R. The I.O.R.'s previous director and deputy director resigned Monday, just days after Francis announced a commission of inquiry into the bank and shortly after the arrest of a Vatican accountant, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano.

Domenico Stinellis/AP

Enlarge

The director of the embattled Vatican bank and his deputy resigned Monday, the latest heads to roll in a broadening finance scandal that has already landed one Vatican monsignor in prison and added urgency to Pope Francis' reform efforts.

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The Vatican said in a statement that Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, stepped down "in the best interest of the institute and the Holy See." The speed with which they resigned, however, indicated that the decision was not entirely theirs.

Cipriani, along with the bank's then-president, was placed under investigation by Rome prosecutors in 2010 for alleged violations of Italy's anti-money-laundering norms after financial police seized 23 million euro ($30 million) from a Vatican account at a Rome bank. Neither has been charged and the money was eventually ordered released.

But the bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, has remained under the glare of prosecutors and now Francis amid fresh concerns it has been used as an offshore tax haven.

It was the latest turmoil to hit the IOR, which has long been the source of scandal for the Holy See. Last year, the bank's board ousted its then-president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, for incompetence and erratic behavior.

The resignations Monday and nominations of interim administrators represented a final overthrow of the bank's old guard management and coincided with its efforts to comply with international norms to fight money-laundering and terror financing.

The resignations came just days after Francis announced a commission of inquiry into the bank and followed the arrest of a Vatican accountant caught up in a criminal investigation into the IOR. Monsignor Nunzio Scarano is accused by Rome prosecutors of corruption and slander in connection with a plot to smuggle 20 million euro ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland without reporting it to customs officials.

Scarano, dubbed "Don 500" by the Italian media because of his purported favorite euro banknote, acknowledged under questioning Monday that his behavior was wrong but that he was only trying to help out friends, his attorney Silverio Sica told The Associated Press.

According to wiretapped phone conversations, Scarano was in touch regularly with both Cipriani and Tulli to get the required bank approval to move large amounts of cash into and out of his IOR accounts. Scarano had two such accounts: a personal one and one called "Fondo Anziani" to receive charitable donations for projects to help the elderly, prosecutors say.

In addition to his Rome arrest, Scarano is also under investigation in the southern city of Salerno for alleged money-laundering stemming from a 560,000 euro cash withdrawal he made from his IOR charity account in 2009. Sica, the attorney, has said Scarano arranged complicated transactions with dozens of other people and eventually used the money to pay off a mortgage.

The group of five cardinals who oversee the IOR accepted the resignations of Cipriani and Tulli and tapped the IOR's current president, German financier and aristocrat Ernst von Freyberg, to serve as interim director, a Vatican statement said.

Von Freyberg, who was named IOR president in February, thanked Cipriani and Tulli for their years of work and said much progress has been made in recent years to bring greater transparency to the Vatican's finances.

"While we are grateful for what has been achieved, it is clear today that we need new leadership to increase the pace of this transformation process," von Freyberg said in a statement.

The IOR has in the past three years undergone tumultuous changes as it tries to adhere to international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing ? changes that apparently didn't always sit well with the old guard, who had long-standing relations with their clients.

Italian banker Rolando Marranci was named as acting deputy and another banking expert, Antonio Montaresi, was brought into a new position as chief risk officer to help ensure the IOR complies with anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism norms. Both belong to the Promontory Group, an expert in the field of anti-money laundering which has been retained by the IOR to help it comply with international norms.

The IOR's board has begun the process of finding a permanent director and deputy director, the statement said.

It wasn't immediately clear how von Freyberg would handle his new role essentially running the IOR's day-to-day operations as director, while also retaining his oversight role as president and member of the bank's board. It also wasn't clear how the new management team of Promontory executives would be able to act independently from the other more senior Promontory officials who remain as advisers to the IOR.

The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it isn't open to the public ? only to Vatican employees, religious orders and diplomats accredited to the Holy See.

Last week, Francis announced a commission of inquiry into the bank's activities and legal status to ensure it is in "harmony" with the Catholic Church's mission. It's part of his overall effort to reform the Vatican bureaucracy, mandated by the cardinals who elected him pope in March.

The reason for concern about the IOR is well-founded: The bank has long been the source of some of the greatest scandals of the Holy See, famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s, in one of Italy's largest fraud cases.

Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that still remain mysterious.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.

While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.

The late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American prelate who headed the Vatican bank at the time, was charged as an accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy in the scandal, but Italy's Constitutional Court eventually backed the Vatican in ruling that under Vatican-Italian treaties Marcinkus had immunity from Italian prosecution. Marcinkus long asserted his innocence and died in 2006.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/d9vWDny_Q6c/Vatican-scandal-Two-high-profile-resignations-follow-arrest-of-monsignor

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Teens' self-consciousness linked with specific brain, physiological responses

July 2, 2013 ? Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence.

"Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.

The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that teens' sensitivity to social evaluation might be explained by shifts in physiological and brain function during adolescence, in addition to the numerous sociocultural changes that take place during the teen years.

Somerville and colleagues wanted to investigate whether just being looked at -- a minimal social-evaluation situation -- might register with greater importance, arousal, and intensity for adolescents than for either children or adults. The researchers hypothesized that late-developing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), could play a unique role in the way teens monitor these types of social evaluative contexts.

The researchers had 69 participants, ranging in age from 8 to almost 23 years old, come to the lab and complete measures that gauged emotional, physiological, and neural responses to social evaluation.

They told the participants that they would be testing a new video camera embedded in the head coil of a functional MRI scanner. The participants watched a screen indicating whether the camera was "off," "warming up," or "on," and were told that a same-sex peer of about the same age would be watching the video feed and would be able to see them when the camera was on. In reality, there was no camera in the MRI machine.

The consistency and strength of the resulting data took the researchers by surprise: "We were concerned about whether simply being looked at was a strong enough 'social evaluation' to evoke emotional, physiological and neural responses," says Somerville. "Our findings suggest that being watched, and to some extent anticipating being watched, were sufficient to elicit self-conscious emotional responses at each level of measurement."

Specifically, participants' self-reported embarrassment, physiological arousal, and MPFC activation showed reactivity to social evaluation that seemed to converge and peak during adolescence.

Adolescent participants also showed increased functional connectivity between the MPFC and striatum, an area of the brain that mediates motivated behaviors and actions. Somerville and colleagues speculate that the MPFC-striatum pathway may be a route by which social evaluative contexts influence behavior. The link may provide an initial clue as to why teens often engage in riskier behaviors when they're with their peers.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/Gktsz7CfouA/130702100956.htm

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NYT: The Government Is Tracking All Your Snail Mail Too

NYT: The Government Is Tracking All Your Snail Mail Too

Your email and phone call metadata certainly isn't private, but maybe you were holding out hope that good old fashioned snail mail somehow avoided big brother's living gaze. The Smoking Gun broke the bad news a month ago, and now the New York Times is confirming that nope, that's all being tracked too. Surprise surprise.

It's by no means a new development; it's been going on for years. But now the details of the whole system are coming to light. Fortunately, the sanctity of your mail's contents is only defilable if there's a warrant involved. There's none needed to track all the sweet, sweet metadata, though.

The New York Times explains:

At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Actually opening the mail requires a warrant.) The information is sent to whatever law enforcement agency asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny.

The surveillance system is known as the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, and was instated in 2001 after the mail-borne anthrax attacks that killed five people. Since then, the program's been responsible for photographing each and every piece of mail the Postal Service handles. There were over 160 billion pieces last year.

All this is only possible with a little help from the Postal Service itself, of course. Again, from the Times:

For mail cover requests, law enforcement agencies simply submit a letter to the Postal Service, which can grant or deny a request without judicial review. Law enforcement officials say the Postal Service rarely denies a request. In other government surveillance program, such as wiretaps, a federal judge must sign off on the requests. The mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days.

Surveillance like this can be initiated either for reasons of national security, or suspicion of more vanilla criminal activity. And though everyone involved is supposed to stay quiet about the numbers, anonymous sources told the Times there are about 15,000-20,000 criminal activity tracking requests per year. National security requests? Who knows.

It's a cold comfort that no one is reading your mail (or email, or transcripts of your phone calls) considering how revealing your metadata can be. For most of us, snail mail isn't much more than a vehicle for junk mail and the occasional package anyway, but it's still disquieting to find out about. Maybe if they just started throwing away the trash for us, it'd be a little less offensive. [The New York Times]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/nyt-the-government-is-tracking-all-your-snail-mail-too-659103174

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Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Facial Analysis Software Spots Struggling Students

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Facial Analysis Software Spots Struggling Students
A computer can learn to recognize, and respond intelligently to, users? emotional state.Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which need more of a challenge. Fortunately, laptops may soon come with enough emotional intelligence built in to do the job for them.

Source: Technology Review
Posted on: Monday, Jul 01, 2013, 8:13am
Views: 12

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128851/Facial_Analysis_Software_Spots_Struggling_Students

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Thursday, June 27, 2013

Sailors most often injure their knees -- on land

June 26, 2013 ? The knees are the body part that is injured the most by dinghy sailors. The injuries are primarily due to overstrain and most often occur during physical training. This was shown in a study at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

"Studies have been made on the risk of injury for many sports, but not for dinghy sailing. With more knowledge, we can create recommendations that will prevent sailors from getting injured," says Lena B?ymo-Having, who conducted the study at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg.

During the study, researchers followed 42 sailors who were part of the Swedish national sailing team or who were students at one of the Swedish sailing academies. The results reveal that just over twenty percent of the injuries reported by the sailors during the study year were due to accidents or some other type of external force.

In four of five cases, the injury was due to overstrain. Overall, it was the knees that had the highest injury rate among sailors, but the study shows that the risk of injury is different between younger and older sailors.

"Younger sailors have more pain in their back and torso, while the sailors on the national team are somewhat older and often injure their shoulders," says Lena B?ymo-Having.

The study shows that the sailors' injuries seldom occur during racing. Instead, it is during physical training that the risk of injury is highest.

A large majority of the sailors in the study had a sailing coach but just over one third have a personal trainer.

"Sailors need personal training programs that are customized for their needs. We can also draw the conclusion that different groups of sailors may need different types of training to prevent injury," says Lena B?ymo-Having.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/hcZKs35ZP4I/130626113320.htm

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World's toughest programmer explains how to make educational games fun

Mike Lee's New Lemurs has released Lemurs Chemistry: Water - a fun educational game that teaches kids (and adults) the chemistry of water. As the name of the game (and company) implies, lemurs abound in the game. Lee shares with us some of his thoughts on how you can make an educational game enriching and fun to play.

    


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/Jt5-fAVA1_w/story01.htm

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

CNN bringing 'Crossfire' back on the air

FILE - In this March 16, 2013 file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich apears during the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. CNN is bringing its political show "Crossfire" back on the air this fall with Newt Gingrich as one of the combatants. The original political talk show on cable news aired on CNN from 1982 until 2005. The new version will air on weekdays, although CNN said Wednesday, June 26, that the show has no time slot yet. Gingrich, the former House speaker and presidential candidate, is one of two hosts "from the right" matched against two liberal voices. Conservative commentator S. E. Cupp, who also works at The Blaze, is Gingrich's conservative partner. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, file)

FILE - In this March 16, 2013 file photo, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich apears during the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md. CNN is bringing its political show "Crossfire" back on the air this fall with Newt Gingrich as one of the combatants. The original political talk show on cable news aired on CNN from 1982 until 2005. The new version will air on weekdays, although CNN said Wednesday, June 26, that the show has no time slot yet. Gingrich, the former House speaker and presidential candidate, is one of two hosts "from the right" matched against two liberal voices. Conservative commentator S. E. Cupp, who also works at The Blaze, is Gingrich's conservative partner. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, file)

NEW YORK (AP) ? CNN said Wednesday that it is bringing the political debate show "Crossfire" back on the air this fall with Newt Gingrich as one of the combatants.

The former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate will be one of the four regular hosts of the program, taking the conservative side along with commentator S.E. Cupp of The Blaze. Stephanie Cutter, a former campaign spokeswoman for President Barack Obama, and Van Jones, a Yale-educated attorney and advocate for green projects, will speak from the left.

"It just feels like the right time for 'Crossfire' to be coming back," said Sam Feist, CNN's senior vice president and Washington bureau chief. The show will air weekdays but no time slot has been set.

The original aired on CNN from 1982 until 2005, and its alumni list reads like a Washington who's who ? Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, Geraldine Ferraro, Lynn Cheney, James Carville, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson among them. It was essentially killed by Jon Stewart.

"The Daily Show" host appeared on "Crossfire" in 2004 and got into a bitter fight with Carlson, with Stewart calling the show "partisan hackery" that did little to advance the cause of democracy. When then-CNN U.S. President Jon Klein cancelled it a few months later, he said he was essentially siding with Stewart.

But with Fox News Channel tilting right and MSNBC leaning left, there really isn't a debate program on cable TV now that is a fair fight, Feist said.

"CNN is really the only network that can have a bipartisan debate show with some level of authenticity," he said.

Each show will have a single topic and feature two of the four regular hosts, joined by two guests who are experts on the particular issue being discussed, Feist said. It will be a studio show without the audience that was used in a later incarnation of "Crossfire," he said.

New CNN chief Jeff Zucker began pushing for the show's resurrection almost since taking over this winter, saying he had long been a fan of it, Feist said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-06-26-TV-CNN-Crossfire/id-45dba2501935457d8bd9dbc3b03cc021

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Put an Entire Galaxy Under Your Office Chair

A floor mat is unfortunately a must-have accessory if you don't want your office chair trampling down carpet, or tearing up a wooden floor. But thankfully you no longer have to just opt for a boring sheet of plastic. Underfoot Media creates chair mats printed with stunning images of the universe, so rolling over to get a printout feels like soaring across the galaxy. More »
    


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/J7j-q_Pz56M/put-an-entire-galaxy-under-your-office-chair

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More details sought on mute Boston bomb suspect

In this Friday, April 19, 2013 photo obtained by The Associated Press and authenticated by a member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF and FBI agents check suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for explosives and also give him medical attention after he was apprehended in Watertown, Mass., at the end of a tense day that began with his older brother, Tamerlan, dying in a getaway attempt. Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday as investigators continue piecing together the who and why of the two brothers involved in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo)

In this Friday, April 19, 2013 photo obtained by The Associated Press and authenticated by a member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF and FBI agents check suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for explosives and also give him medical attention after he was apprehended in Watertown, Mass., at the end of a tense day that began with his older brother, Tamerlan, dying in a getaway attempt. Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday as investigators continue piecing together the who and why of the two brothers involved in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings. (AP Photo)

Lt. Mike Murphy of the Newton, Mass., fire dept., carries an American flag down the middle of Boylston Street after observing a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the bombing at the Boston Marathon near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A woman wipes a tear at a memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing on Boylston Street near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

A man prays at a memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing on Boylston Street near the race finish line, Monday, April 22, 2013, in Boston, Mass. At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the bombings, many bowed their heads and cried at the makeshift memorial on Boylston Street, three blocks from the site of the explosions, where bouquets of flowers, handwritten messages, and used running shoes were piled on the sidewalk. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Audrey Gasteier, left, of Cambridge, Mass., and Aminata Ndiaye, center, of Boston, join others to observe a minute of silence at City Hall Plaza in Boston for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings Monday, April 22, 2013, one week after the explosions. The remembrance was held at 2:50 p.m., the time the first of the two bombs exploded near the race's finish line. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)

BOSTON (AP) ? The 19-year-old charged with the Boston Marathon bombing, his throat injured by a gunshot wound, wrote down answers to the questions of investigators about his motives and connections to any terror networks.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's answers led them to believe he and his brother were motivated by a radical brand of Islam without major terror connections, said U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

But the written communication precluded back-and-forth exchanges often crucial to establishing key facts and meaning, said officials who cautioned they were still trying to verify what Tsarnaev told them and were poring over his telephone and online communications.

Tsarnaev was interrogated and charged Monday in his hospital room, where he was in serious condition with the throat wound and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway. His brother, Tamerlan, 26, died Friday after a fierce gunbattle with police.

The charges came just hours before a memorial service for one of the three people killed in the bombings, 23-year-old Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi, was held at the school and attended by hundreds of people, including Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

"She's gone but our memories of her are very much alive," said her father, Lu Jun, who spoke in his native tongue and was followed by an English interpreter. "An ancient Chinese saying says every child is actually a little Buddha that helps their parents mature and grow up."

Tsarnaev, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, was charged with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was accused of joining with his brother in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed Lu and two other people and wounded more than 200 on April 15.

The next step in the legal process against Tsarnaev is likely to be an indictment, in which federal prosecutors could add new charges. State prosecutors have said they expect to charge Tsarnaev separately in the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was shot in his cruiser Thursday night on the campus in Cambridge.

After Tsarnaev is indicted in the bombing, he will have an arraignment in federal court, when he will be asked to enter a plea.

Under federal law, as a defendant charged with a crime that carries a potential death penalty, he is entitled to at least one lawyer who is knowledgeable about the law in capital cases. Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad, whose office has been asked to represent Tsarnaev, filed a motion Monday asking that two death penalty lawyers be appointed to represent Tsarnaev, "given the magnitude of this case."

A probable cause hearing ? at which prosecutors will spell out the basics of their case ? was set for May 30. According to a clerk's notes of Monday's proceedings in the hospital, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler indicated she was satisfied that Tsarnaev was "alert and able to respond to the charges."

Tsarnaev did not speak during Monday's proceeding, except to answer "no" when he was asked if he could afford his own lawyer, according to the notes. He nodded when asked if he was able to answer some questions and whether he understood his rights.

Conrad declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press.

The criminal complaint outlining the allegations shed no light on the motive for the attack. The two U.S. officials who spoke anonymously said preliminary evidence from the interrogation suggests the brothers were motivated by religious extremism but were apparently not involved with Islamic terrorist organizations.

The brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had been living in the U.S. for about a decade, practiced Islam.

A statement released Monday by Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs bolstered the U.S. officials' comments about seeking details on the suspect's other modes of communication and his associations.

Two foreign nationals arrested Saturday on immigration violations are from the central Asian nation and may have known the suspects, the ministry said. U.S. authorities came across the students while searching for "possible links and contacts," it said.

Officials have not disclosed the names of the nationals, who the ministry said were found to have "violated the U.S. visa regime."

In the criminal complaint against Tsarnaev, investigators said he and his brother each placed a knapsack containing a bomb in the crowd near the finish line of the 26.2-mile race. The FBI said surveillance-camera footage showed Dzhokhar manipulating his cellphone and lifting it to his ear just instants before the two blasts.

After the first blast, a block away from Dzhokhar, "virtually every head turns to the east ... and stares in that direction in apparent bewilderment and alarm," the complaint says. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, "virtually alone of the individuals in front of the restaurant, appears calm."

He then quickly walked away, leaving a knapsack on the ground; about 10 seconds later, a bomb blew up at the spot where he had been standing, the FBI said.

The FBI did not say whether he was using his cellphone to detonate one or both of the bombs or whether he was talking to someone.

Among the details in the affidavit:

? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs and hands when he was captured hiding out in a boat in a backyard in the Boston suburb of Watertown, authorities said.

? One of the brothers ? it wasn't clear which one ? told a carjacking victim during their getaway attempt, "Did you hear about the Boston explosion? I did that."

? The FBI said it searched Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on Sunday and found BBs as well as a white hat and dark jacket that look like those worn by one of the suspected bombers in the surveillance photos the FBI released a few days after the attack.

Shortly after the charges were unveiled, Boston-area residents and many of their well-wishers ? including President Barack Obama at the White House ? observed a moment of silence at 2:49 p.m. ? the moment a week earlier when the bombs exploded.

In addition to that and the memorial for Lu, who was from Shenyang, China, and studied statistics at BU, a funeral was held Monday at St. Joseph Church for another victim, Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager who had gone to watch a friend finish the race. Services have not been announced for the third bombing victim, 8-year-old Martin Richard, of Boston.

As of Monday, 51 people remained hospitalized, three of them in critical condition. At least 14 people lost all or part of a limb; three of them lost more than one.

___

Sullivan reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Steve Peoples, Allen Breed, Bridget Murphy, Jay Lindsay and Bob Salsberg in Boston and Pete Yost in Washington.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-23-US-Boston-Marathon-Explosions/id-7349a52c90a44fadb1cd4c464b736d31

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In Paraguay, a rich conservative must tackle poverty

By Daniela Desantis and Hilary Burke

ASUNCION (Reuters) - For Horacio Cartes, a millionaire cigarette and soft drink magnate who will be Paraguay's next president, the challenge now is to run a country where most people can only dream of having a sliver of the wealth he does.

The 56-year-old, who won election on Sunday with 46 percent of the vote and will take office in August, campaigned as a center-right conservative at a time when most of Latin America is run by leftists.

Indeed, Cartes has touted a pro-business agenda that includes modernizing the bloated state, which employs about 10 percent of all workers in Paraguay. At a news conference on Monday, he said the state's "main responsibility is to create an environment so that the private sector can work with calm."

He also wants to attract up to $2.7 billion in private capital to refurbish Paraguay's airports and build new highways.

"We have to try to make investments in infrastructure without growing our mass of public workers," he said on Monday.

Yet it may not be quite that easy.

Cartes himself has acknowledged that, to be successful, he must also cater to Paraguay's poor masses. Poverty runs near 40 percent and per-capita gross domestic product was just $5,413 in 2011, the second-lowest in South America behind only Bolivia, according to International Monetary Fund data.

The country of 6.6 million has long been one of the region's most politically unstable, with a fragile economy dependent on agriculture. The last elected president, Fernando Lugo, was impeached last year following civil unrest.

A political novice who never voted before 2009, Cartes will have strong support from Congress, but will also have to sustain the support of his center-right Colorado Party, whose 60-year reign was interrupted by Lugo's election in 2008.

On Sunday, the Colorado Party won control of the lower house and 19 of 45 Senate seats, preliminary election results showed. The Liberals had the second-biggest showing and leftist coalitions came in third place, with Lugo elected senator.

Cartes has promised to reform the Colorado Party, infamous for corruption and whose long period in power included General Alfredo Stroessner's 1954-1989 dictatorship. But some in the party will likely push back against change.

"It's very difficult to know what Cartes wants to do," said political analyst Jose Carlos Rodriguez.

"In principle, he has a neo-conservative project that gives a strong impulse to private companies and nothing to the state. But there's a major inconsistency there and he'll also have a powerful party that will demand certain benefits."

NOTORIOUS FOR CONTRABAND

Paraguay relies heavily on soybean and beef exports but it is also notorious for contraband trade and money laundering. Growth is seen at 13 percent this year after a severe drought caused a contraction in 2012, according to the central bank.

Land conflicts have intensified in recent years and the small, violent left-wing Paraguayan People's Army operates in northern regions.

In January, the Liberal government took an unprecedented step to tap global debt markets, selling $500 million in 10-year bonds that were nearly 12 times oversubscribed.

Cartes expressed misgivings on Monday over the bond, saying the issue was a "very positive step" but that the money could not be used on salaries or other fixed costs that would "grow the daddy state."

On Monday, Paraguay's global bond was trading largely steady. A New York-based trader said it was yielding at 4.37 percent, or 26 basis points tighter than when it was first issued at par, but he said the paper was very illiquid.

Latin America's leftist bloc is especially strong in the Mercosur trade group, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay. Mercosur suspended Paraguay in June when Lugo was ousted, arguing the two-day impeachment trial was tantamount to a coup.

Soon after, Mercosur brought in socialist Venezuela even though its inclusion was never approved by Paraguay's Congress.

Cartes told reporters on Sunday that he had already made contacts with Mercosur officials to ensure Paraguay's full return to the group. The presidents of Argentina and Uruguay welcomed Paraguay back into the fold after Cartes' victory.

Fiona Mackie, Paraguay analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit research firm, said she did not think Cartes would pursue plans to open airports and state utilities to private investment due to resistance within the Colorado Party.

"That said, a Cartes government would be relatively open to foreign investment in mineral resources," she wrote last week, noting the recent discovery of a major titanium deposit and plans for an aluminum smelter by Rio Tinto Alcan.

(Additional reporting by Mariel Cristaldo and Joan Magee for IFR in New York; Editing by Brian Winter, Eric Walsh and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/paraguay-rich-conservative-must-now-tackle-poverty-200844066--business.html

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Monday, April 22, 2013

Life in India: Girl vanishes. Police are called. Nothing happens.

NEW DELHI (AP) ? A child disappears. Police are called. Nothing happens.

Child rights activists say the rape last week of a 5-year-old girl is just the latest case in which Indian police failed to take urgent action on a report of a missing child. Three days after the attack, the girl was found alone in locked room in the same New Delhi building where her family lives.

More than 90,000 children go missing in India each year; more than 34,000 are never found. Some parents say they lost crucial time because police wrongly dismissed their missing children as runaways, refused to file reports or treated the cases as nuisances.

The parents of the 5-year-old said that after their daughter disappeared, they repeatedly begged police to register a complaint and begin a search, but they were rejected.

Three days later, neighbors heard the sound of a child crying from a locked room in the tenement. They broke down the door and rushed the brutalized girl to the police station.

The parents said the police response was to offer the couple 2,000 rupees ($37) to keep quiet about what had happened.

"They just wanted us to go away. They didn't want to register a case even after they saw how badly our daughter was injured," said the girl's father, who cannot be identified because Indian law requires a rape victim's identity be kept secret.

Delhi's Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar admitted Monday that local police had erred in handling the case.

"There have been shortfalls, so the station house officer and his deputy have been suspended," Kumar told reporters.

Other poor parents of missing children say they also have found police reluctant to help them.

In 2010, police took 15 days to register a missing-persons case for 14-year-old Pankaj Singh. His mother is still waiting for him to come home.

"Every day my husband and my father would go wait at the police station, but they would shoo them away," Pravesh Kumari Singh said as she sat on her son's bed, surrounded by his pictures and books.

One morning in March 2010, she fed her son a breakfast of fried pancakes and spicy potatoes, then left for a community health training program.

"He told me he would have a bath and settle down to study for his exams," said Singh, clutching the boy's photograph to her heart.

When she returned, he was gone. "The neighbors said some boys had called him out. We searched everywhere, went to the police, but they refused to believe that something had happened to our son."

The police insisted he had run off with friends and would return, she said.

"They said we must have scolded him or beaten him, which is why he had run away from home," she said.

Formal police complaints were registered in only one-sixth of missing child cases in 2011, said Bhuwan Ribhu, a lawyer with Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save the Childhood Movement. He said police resist registering cases because they want to keep crime figures low, and that parents are often too poor to bribe them to reconsider.

Ribhu said the first few hours after a child goes missing are the most crucial. "The police can cordon off nearby areas, issue alerts at railway and bus stations, and step up vigilance to catch the kidnappers," he said.

Activists say delays let traffickers move children to neighboring states, where the police don't have jurisdiction. There is no national database of missing children that state police can reference.

Police have insisted that most of missing children are runways fleeing grinding poverty.

"It's easy enough to blame the police for not finding the children. Some of the parents do not even possess a photograph of the child. Or they will come up with a years-old picture. It becomes difficult when there's not even a photograph to work with," Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said last month when asked about complaints on police inaction in investigating case of missing children.

Many cases involved poor migrant construction workers who move from site to site around the city, Bhagat said.

"The children are unfamiliar with the place and once they lose their way, they wouldn't know how to return," he said.

India's Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath told Parliament last month that the problem of missing children had assumed "alarming" proportions. The National Crime Records Bureau reported that 34,406 missing children were never found in 2011, up from 18,166 in 2009.

Activists say some children are trafficked and forced to beg on the streets. Some work on farms or factories as forced labor and others have their organs harvested and sold. The activists say young girls are pushed into the sex trade or sold for marriage.

"The government is just not ready to confront the issue of trafficking or missing children. And this gets reflected in the apathy of the police in dealing with cases of missing children," said Ribhu, the lawyer.

In 2006, the Central Bureau of Investigation said at least 815 criminal gangs were kidnapping children for begging, prostitution or ransom.

The Save the Childhood Movement said police have not cracked a single one of those syndicates.

"Despite our providing the police with all the details of where a child was picked up from, where he was taken, the police are simply not willing to act," said Ribhu.

Two streets away from Singh, in a tiny windowless room crammed with clothes, bedding and a stove, Pinky Devi keeps a prized possession locked away in a drawer: a faded color photograph of her son Ravi Shankar.

One afternoon in November 2011, she says, the 11-year-old went off with other children to a neighborhood fair. He never returned.

Devi said the police visited her home a couple of times and spoke to her neighbors, but their interest soon wore out.

"I'm sure if we had money to spend on them, the police would have been more active in tracing my son," said Devi, her two younger sons and infant daughter clinging to her sari in their one-room tenement in southeast Delhi.

Shantha Sinha, who heads the government's National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, acknowledged that much remained to be done to make police take cases of missing children seriously.

"There has to be a strong message that in every incident of a missing child, a criminal case has to be registered and the case is properly investigated," Sinha said.

Kunwar Pal, a construction worker, fears police indifference crushed his efforts to find his son Ravi Kumar.

Since the 12-year-old disappeared three years ago, the distraught father has cycled across India's sprawling capital, visiting police and railway stations, children's homes and hospitals, handing out posters and photographs of his missing son. Every time he hears of a child found anywhere in the city, he cycles to the police station, hoping it's Ravi.

Pal, a lean 45-year-old with haunted eyes, refuses to think the worst. He believes Ravi was taken by a childless couple who wanted a child of their own.

"If they were to let me know somehow that my son is alive, I would be happy," said Pal, his spare frame wracked by dry heaves. "They can keep him. Just let me see his shadow. Just let me know he's safe."

He also believes police would have worked harder if he had not been poor.

"If I were rich, my son would have been found by now. If I had money, the police would have taken the case more seriously," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/indian-girls-rape-highlights-police-apathy-103156990.html

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Prosecutors move quickly to build Marathon case

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration has a range of legal options in the Boston Marathon bombings, and they could include seeking the death penalty against the 19-year-old suspect in the case.

The administration has indicated it intends to move quickly to build a criminal case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. But investigators plan to first question him without informing him of his legal rights to remain silent and have an attorney present.

Several Republican lawmakers on Saturday criticized the administration's approach because they said it would afford Tsarnaev more rights than he deserves. The federal public defender for Massachusetts called for the quick appointment of a lawyer to represent Tsarnaev because of serious issues involving his interrogation in the absence of a lawyer.

Prosecution of Tsarnaev in federal court would seem a natural course for an administration that previously won a life sentence against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria for trying to blow up a packed jetliner using a bomb sewn into his underwear on Christmas Day 2009.

The administration also will put Osama bin Laden's son-in-law on trial in January on charges that he conspired to kill Americans in his role as al-Qaida's chief spokesman.

As a U.S. citizen, Tsarnaev could not be tried by a military commission under current law; the only option for prosecuting an American is in civilian courts. A federal official with knowledge of the case said Tsarnaev was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in September 2012. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about details of the case and requested anonymity.

Tsarnaev was under armed guard at a Boston hospital and was reported in serious condition and unable to be interrogated Saturday. He has yet to be charged but prosecutors appear to have no shortage of federal laws at their disposal.

The most serious charge would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Three people died in the twin explosions in Boston and more than 180 were injured.

Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, and it remains to be seen whether the administration would try to persuade a jury to sentence Tsarnaev to death. The state could try to bring charges against him, including for the death of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who authorities say was killed by Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan.

An early question that arose after Tsarnaev's capture on Friday was how to conduct his initial interrogation.

The administration said it would not immediately inform him of legal protections known as the Miranda rights. Instead, prosecutors planned to invoke a public safety exception created by the need to protect police and the public from immediate danger.

The American Civil Liberties Union's executive director, Anthony Romero, said the exception applies only when there's a continued threat to public safety, like whether there is imminent danger from other bombs, and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule.

The federal public defender for Massachusetts, Miriam Conrad, said her office expects to represent Tsarnaev after he is charged and that he needs a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."

But several congressional Republicans said Tsarnaev's rights should be even more restricted than the administration intends.

"I am disappointed that it appears this administration is once again relying on Miranda's public safety exception to gather intelligence which only allows at best a 48-hour waiting period that may expire since the suspect has been critically wounded," Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement hours after Tsarnaev was captured.

Chambliss' concerns were echoed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as well as Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

"A decision to not read Miranda rights to the suspect was sound and in our national security interests," the four said in a statement. "However, we have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake. It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect."

But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a former federal prosecutor and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration should ignore "hasty calls to treat the suspect as an enemy combatant."

"This is not a foreign national caught on an enemy battlefield, but an American citizen arrested on American soil," Schiff said. "The Justice Department has demonstrated a far greater ability to successfully prosecute suspected terrorists in federal courts than the military commissions have thus far been able to show. Nothing must be done to compromise the public safety, the ability of prosecutors to seek justice for the victims or our constitutional principles."

While the Republicans asserted that Tsarnaev can be held as an enemy combatant, the Supreme Court has never resolved whether citizens or foreign nationals arrested on U.S. soil can be held by the military, as opposed to civilian authorities.

The court twice was prepared to take up that question in recent years, once while George W. Bush was president and once since Barack Obama became took office. Both times, the administration moved the suspected terrorists, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla and graduate student Ali al-Marri, from a military brig to civilian confinement to head off the high court case.

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Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie in Boston and Donna Cassata and Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prosecutors-move-quickly-build-marathon-case-194420543--politics.html

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