NEW YORK (AP) ? The documentary crew that accompanied Dennis Rodman to North Korea over the winter says it had no idea it would meet the reclusive country's young leader, Kim Jong Un, until he showed up at a basketball game it was filming.
The media company VICE arranged the trip and invited Rodman after its first choice, Michael Jordan, expressed no interest. A 30-minute documentary on the unexpected piece of basketball diplomacy will air on June 14 on HBO as the final episode of VICE's first season, and was previewed for some reporters on Wednesday.
The North Korean leader loves basketball so much that he overlooked the government's antipathy for VICE founder Shane Smith, who had made two critical documentaries on North Korea, and invited the crew in. Smith wasn't allowed back but VICE's Ryan Duffy accompanied Rodman and three members of the Harlem Globetrotters traveling basketball troupe.
"We just wanted to make a good documentary," Smith said in an interview. "We didn't do it as a stunt."
Duffy quickly learned his place: One of the first things one of his "tour guides" told him was, "I know who you are. I don't like you and I don't like your company," he said Wednesday. The crew was told when it could turn on its cameras and when they had to be off, and feared landing in a North Korean prison if it didn't comply, he said.
The North Koreans did not go through the footage shot by the crew, however. Some 36 hours of film was cut down into the half-hour HBO show, and some may surface later as online extras.
The crew went through an elaborate week-long organized tour of North Korea's capital of Pyongyang, visiting a well-stocked mall with no other customers and the country's version of Sea World. At one point, it was shown a classroom with students sitting behind computers, but only one person either knew how or was allowed to use one of the machines. One student sat before Google's home page and never searched for anything, just moving the cursor back and forth randomly.
The tour was taken in the hopes of catching one or two glimpses of the real North Korean people, which the group finally achieved toward the end when its minders let the bus stop at a park and the Globetrotters played around with some of the kids, helping them learn to spin a basketball on their finger.
Duffy said the group was surprised when Kim arrived to watch what was essentially a pickup basketball game with the Globetrotters and some members of a North Korean youth team. Rodman didn't play; he sat in the stands watching with Kim. After the game, the VICE crew and players were rushed across Pyongyang unexpectedly for a dinner with Kim and other members of the North Korean government.
Although Rodman was key to securing the visit and played the most prominent role of any of the visiting Americans, he's only a bit player in VICE's documentary. Smith said Rodman declined to be interviewed about the trip by VICE afterward.
The American group brought in some basketballs and basketball equipment to distribute to young North Koreans, but wasn't asked for anything else by its hosts, Smith said. VICE hasn't spoken to anyone in the Obama administration about the trip, he said. During the trip, the administration had refrained from commenting about it.
HBO and VICE have not agreed to continue its series of news documentaries beyond this season, but the arrangement is likely. HBO said the show gets solid ratings, while VICE said the network gives VICE valuable exposure beyond the young audience that traditionally follows its product.
Smith said he's open to heading back to North Korea at some point in the future.
Hiring the wrong job candidate can cost a company serious money, which is why it?s all too common to make job seekers go through a multi-phase interview process. It may seem cumbersome or downright annoying to the candidate going through it, but career experts say it?s necessary in today?s job market.
?Competition is tough, especially for professions where there isn?t a skills shortage,? says Vinda Rao, the marketing manager at Bullhorn, a recruitment software company. ?More and more companies are using personality and intelligence tests to weed out applicants and it usually takes more than just one interview with one person to gauge if someone is a fit.?
According to career experts it?s not uncommon for a job candidate to go through multiple phases starting with an initial interview over the phone. Once they?ve passed the first screening process, many companies will have a job candidate take personality and intelligence tests, meet with human resources and then interview with the hiring manager. Companies will even make the candidate undergo a multi-day try out, interview with a panel of people or even the entire team before deciding on who it will hire. There?s even those companies that take it to the next level by requiring a FBI type background check or require them to write a series of essays.
All of that may seem like overkill to a candidate, but there is a method to the madness. After all a company is only as good as their employees and if they continually hire the wrong people it will not only cost them money but will hurt their ability to run the business. ?By using different phases, the company can get to know an applicant better, before the hire, plus get feedback from several members of the organization,? says Joel Garfinkle, author of Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level.? ?Additionally, interviewing in short phases minimizes the amount the company invests in a candidate, if they are able to determine early on they aren?t suitable for the position.?
Take the initial phone interview for example. This is a common practice for companies, particularly ones that use recruiters to find their employees.? Having the first interview over the phone enables a company to weed out candidates without wasting time and money having a face to face meeting.? The second, third, fourth and even fifth interviews are designed to make sure the candidate has the skills to do the job, gels with the company?s culture and clicks with all of the people he or she will be working with.
Panel interviews may be intimidating, but even with those there?s logic behind the perceived misery. According to Jaime S. Fall, vice president of workforce and talent development policy of HR Policy Association, a panel interview makes sense if the person interviewing will be working with all the people on the panel on a daily basis. ?A lot of people may be affected by the output of the individual position the company is hiring for,? says Fall. ?Instead of doing separate interviews it?s easier to do a panel.?
Terry Pile, Principal Consultant of Career Advisors, knows all too well how grueling the interview process can be, especially in a competitive job market. She herself once had to go through 12 interviews before getting a job and recently counseled a client who went through a tough interview process. ?It?s partially endurance test and partially to see if they are a good fit for the company,? says Pile. Her client who was interviewing for a mid-level job working for a small city had to answer fifteen essay questions before she was invited in for an interview. After that she was required to give a fifteen minute presentation, go through two panel interviews, write a sample letter for the local mayor, interview with another manager and write yet another essay about how she would approach the job.
While the process was completely frustrating to the job candidate she went through it all because she really wanted the job. And even though she was passed up, Pile says it was a learning experience that put her in a better position for the next interview. ?Even though she didn?t get the job they were very impressed with her,? says Pile. ?She may not have been picked for that job but there could be other opportunities.?
While it?s easy to throw in the towel and give up in frustration career experts say you need to weigh how much you want the job before making a rash decision. ?The bottom line is, a hiring company has every right to require several rounds of high-pressure interviews,? says Rao. ?And a job seeker has every right to walk away from the interview process if it seems abusive or futile.?
When language switching has no apparent cost: Lexical access in sentence context
Bilinguals have the remarkable ability to switch from one language to the other. In a new study, Jason Gullifer and colleagues from Pennsylvania State University, USA, looked at whether language switching incurs a processing cost. They show that the mind has little difficulty in preventing such mix-ups between languages. When 26 North American Latino people were asked to read aloud an underlined word within a text that mixed English and Spanish, they did not think longer or make more mistakes than when the text was in a single language. Gullifer et al. conclude that voluntary language switching is a natural feature of bilingualism that requires little additional processing time by the mind.
Jason Gullifer
Department of Psychology
Pennsylvania State University, USA
Phone: +1 9782738062
Email: jwg20@psu.edu
Frontiers in Microbiology
Contrasting genomic properties of free-living and particle-attached microbial assemblages within a coastal ecosystem
In terms of environmental and economic impact, the Columbia River is the most important river in the US Pacific Northwest. To characterize the microbial diversity within its estuary, Holly M. Simon and colleagues from Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction and the J. Craig Venter Institute, sequenced total DNA from water in four habitats: the Columbia River's immediate outflow; the river plume that extends into Pacific Ocean; upwelling low-oxygen water off the coast; and the ocean bottom. They show that the Columbia River estuary is a complex region characterized by high turbidity ("cloudiness"), in which bacteria attached to solid particles suspended in the water are crucial for recycling organic matter.
Paradoxically, the turbidity blocks sunlight in these estuarine waters and makes it difficult for photosynthetic algae to grow there, yet light-dependent bacteria dominate these waters. These bacteria are known as photoheterotrophs because they use both organic substrates and light energy for growth and survival. They employ a protein that is related to light-sensitive pigments in mammalian eyes to generate energy from light, which helps them survive when nutrients are scarce. Habitat diversity, in the form of local variation in size and type of suspended particles, maintains the considerable bacterial biodiversity in the estuary of the Columbia River.
Holly M. Simon
Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction and Division of Environmental & Biomolecular Systems
Oregon Health and Science University, USA
Email: simonh@ebs.ogi.edu
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Age-related similarities and differences in brain activity underlying reversal learning
Memories are constantly updated because surroundings are not static. One way that researchers have investigated memory updating is with "reversal learning" tasks in which participants learn as association (e.g., Mary is angry) and then update their response when contingencies change (e.g., Mary is no longer angry). Kaoru Nasiro at the Center for Vial Longevity at the University of Texas, Dallas and colleagues from the University of Southern California, USA, examined brain activity in younger (19-35 years) and older (61-78 years) adults while they were engaged in two types of reversal learning tasks in an fMRI scanner; one involved emotion and the other did not (e.g., who is angry? vs. who wears eye-glasses?).
During emotional reversal learning, both groups showed similar activity in the amygdala, a region critical for emotional memory, and the frontopolar/orbitofrontal cortex, which updates old emotional memory. During neutral reversal learning however, older adults showed greater activity in regions that control attention than did younger adults. The results suggest that brain mechanisms underlying emotional memory updating is little affected by age.
Kaoru Nashiro
Center for Vital Longevity
University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Email: kxn130030@utdallas.edu
Also of interest, Frontiers research not under embargo:
Frontiers in Psychology
Music training, cognition, and personality
Two key personality traits openness-to-experience and conscientiousness predict better than IQ who will take music lessons and continue for longer periods, according to a new study. A team of researchers, led by Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto Mississaug, also found that when personality traits and demographic factors are considered, the link between cognitive ability and music training disappears. In separate groups of 167 10-12-year-olds and 118 university undergraduates, the researchers looked at how individual differences in cognitive ability and personality predict who takes up music lessons and for how long. They found that pre-existing differences in personality could explain why musically trained children have substantially higher IQs and perform better in school than other children.
E. Glenn Schellenberg
Department of Psychology
University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
Email: g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca
Also of interest, Frontiers research not under embargo:
Frontiers in Neuroscience
The role of the primary auditory cortex in the neural mechanism of auditory verbal hallucinations
How can healthy people who hear voices help those with schizophrenia? In a recently pubished study, Kristiina Kompus and colleagues analyzed data from a functional magnetic reasonance imaging (fMRI) study, to show that those with schizophrenia have a reduced ability to regulate the primary auditory cortex using cognitive control compared to those who hear voices but are otherwise healthy.
Kristiina Kompus
Department of Biological and Medical Psychology
University of Bergen, Norway
Email: kristiina.kompus@psybp.uib.no
###
For copies of embargoed papers, please contact: Gozde Zorlu, Communications Officer: tel: +41 (0) 21 693 9203. Interview requests should be directed to the corresponding author and appropriate contact details are provided above.
For online articles, please cite "Frontiers in xxx" followed by the name of the field as the publisher and include a link to the paper; URLs are listed.
About Frontiers
Frontiers, a partner of Nature Publishing Group, is a scholarly open access publisher and research networking platform. Based in Switzerland, and formed by scientists in 2007, it is one of the largest and fastest growing publishers and its mission is to empower all academic communities to drive research publishing and communication into the 21st century with open science tools.
The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations, such as, the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
When language switching has no apparent cost: Lexical access in sentence context
Bilinguals have the remarkable ability to switch from one language to the other. In a new study, Jason Gullifer and colleagues from Pennsylvania State University, USA, looked at whether language switching incurs a processing cost. They show that the mind has little difficulty in preventing such mix-ups between languages. When 26 North American Latino people were asked to read aloud an underlined word within a text that mixed English and Spanish, they did not think longer or make more mistakes than when the text was in a single language. Gullifer et al. conclude that voluntary language switching is a natural feature of bilingualism that requires little additional processing time by the mind.
Jason Gullifer
Department of Psychology
Pennsylvania State University, USA
Phone: +1 9782738062
Email: jwg20@psu.edu
Frontiers in Microbiology
Contrasting genomic properties of free-living and particle-attached microbial assemblages within a coastal ecosystem
In terms of environmental and economic impact, the Columbia River is the most important river in the US Pacific Northwest. To characterize the microbial diversity within its estuary, Holly M. Simon and colleagues from Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction and the J. Craig Venter Institute, sequenced total DNA from water in four habitats: the Columbia River's immediate outflow; the river plume that extends into Pacific Ocean; upwelling low-oxygen water off the coast; and the ocean bottom. They show that the Columbia River estuary is a complex region characterized by high turbidity ("cloudiness"), in which bacteria attached to solid particles suspended in the water are crucial for recycling organic matter.
Paradoxically, the turbidity blocks sunlight in these estuarine waters and makes it difficult for photosynthetic algae to grow there, yet light-dependent bacteria dominate these waters. These bacteria are known as photoheterotrophs because they use both organic substrates and light energy for growth and survival. They employ a protein that is related to light-sensitive pigments in mammalian eyes to generate energy from light, which helps them survive when nutrients are scarce. Habitat diversity, in the form of local variation in size and type of suspended particles, maintains the considerable bacterial biodiversity in the estuary of the Columbia River.
Holly M. Simon
Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction and Division of Environmental & Biomolecular Systems
Oregon Health and Science University, USA
Email: simonh@ebs.ogi.edu
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Age-related similarities and differences in brain activity underlying reversal learning
Memories are constantly updated because surroundings are not static. One way that researchers have investigated memory updating is with "reversal learning" tasks in which participants learn as association (e.g., Mary is angry) and then update their response when contingencies change (e.g., Mary is no longer angry). Kaoru Nasiro at the Center for Vial Longevity at the University of Texas, Dallas and colleagues from the University of Southern California, USA, examined brain activity in younger (19-35 years) and older (61-78 years) adults while they were engaged in two types of reversal learning tasks in an fMRI scanner; one involved emotion and the other did not (e.g., who is angry? vs. who wears eye-glasses?).
During emotional reversal learning, both groups showed similar activity in the amygdala, a region critical for emotional memory, and the frontopolar/orbitofrontal cortex, which updates old emotional memory. During neutral reversal learning however, older adults showed greater activity in regions that control attention than did younger adults. The results suggest that brain mechanisms underlying emotional memory updating is little affected by age.
Kaoru Nashiro
Center for Vital Longevity
University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Email: kxn130030@utdallas.edu
Also of interest, Frontiers research not under embargo:
Frontiers in Psychology
Music training, cognition, and personality
Two key personality traits openness-to-experience and conscientiousness predict better than IQ who will take music lessons and continue for longer periods, according to a new study. A team of researchers, led by Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto Mississaug, also found that when personality traits and demographic factors are considered, the link between cognitive ability and music training disappears. In separate groups of 167 10-12-year-olds and 118 university undergraduates, the researchers looked at how individual differences in cognitive ability and personality predict who takes up music lessons and for how long. They found that pre-existing differences in personality could explain why musically trained children have substantially higher IQs and perform better in school than other children.
E. Glenn Schellenberg
Department of Psychology
University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada
Email: g.schellenberg@utoronto.ca
Also of interest, Frontiers research not under embargo:
Frontiers in Neuroscience
The role of the primary auditory cortex in the neural mechanism of auditory verbal hallucinations
How can healthy people who hear voices help those with schizophrenia? In a recently pubished study, Kristiina Kompus and colleagues analyzed data from a functional magnetic reasonance imaging (fMRI) study, to show that those with schizophrenia have a reduced ability to regulate the primary auditory cortex using cognitive control compared to those who hear voices but are otherwise healthy.
Kristiina Kompus
Department of Biological and Medical Psychology
University of Bergen, Norway
Email: kristiina.kompus@psybp.uib.no
###
For copies of embargoed papers, please contact: Gozde Zorlu, Communications Officer: tel: +41 (0) 21 693 9203. Interview requests should be directed to the corresponding author and appropriate contact details are provided above.
For online articles, please cite "Frontiers in xxx" followed by the name of the field as the publisher and include a link to the paper; URLs are listed.
About Frontiers
Frontiers, a partner of Nature Publishing Group, is a scholarly open access publisher and research networking platform. Based in Switzerland, and formed by scientists in 2007, it is one of the largest and fastest growing publishers and its mission is to empower all academic communities to drive research publishing and communication into the 21st century with open science tools.
The "Frontiers in" series of journals publish around 500 peer-reviewed articles every month, which receive 5 million monthly views and are supported by over 25,000 editors and reviewers. Frontiers has formed partnerships with international organizations, such as, the Max Planck Society and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). For more information, please visit: http://www.frontiersin.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Everybody hopes that dieting methods can help them achieve the best and most natural health. That should be your main goal and it?s easier to reach than you might have previously thought. Unfortunately, most people try to make those fad diets work and hope that shortcuts will get them to where they want to go. From a marketing perspective, the brains behind those diets know exactly how to get people to believe in them. Anybody who knows marketing knows that people want results quickly. Sadly, this can cause people to make all sorts of terrible choices. So try to do the right thing and use these tips for natural health via healthy dieting choices.
The Paleo diet is something you have probably heard of by now. The real reason to keep talking about this diet is that it is pretty healthy and good for helping you lose weight. It is not advisable, however, that you follow the diet in its strictest form. It?s important for you to take care of the needs you actually have. There is no reason, for example, to avoid dairy or grains?just to use a few examples. Beyond these basic problems, the diet is great for teaching a person?s body how to burn fat properly. Learning about the Paleo diet and then integrating the parts of it that work the best for you is a good idea.
Just about the worst time to start a new diet is near the end of winter time (if you have that season where you live). There is so much pressure to lose weight to make yourself look better once the summer has arrived. The thing to remember is that changing your eating habits, especially when you start out, is how much patience is required.
You already know this but the diet industry caters mostly to the impatient part of you. People drink energy drinks not just to give themselves more energy but to also increase their metabolism?s speed. Then there are diet pills that basically work on the same principle. If you want to have the greatest success, then try to have patience and approach things the right way.
Just about the worst approach that you can take is to try to change everything about the way you eat in one day. Some people might be successful with this method but that is all: a few.
Actually, it should never be a problem finding what you need to know if you want natural health through intelligent dieting. The web is full of data, research, information and studies to tell you what you need to know. If you are fed up with making small inroads with your dieting, then you know what you need to do.
Watch my does african mango work video clip to discover a natural superfood that you may consider for your diet if you are struggling to lose weight.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) ? DNA testing so far has been inconclusive on whether two men executed in Kansas for the 1959 killings that inspired the book "In Cold Blood" can also be linked to the unsolved slayings of a Florida family weeks later, a senior investigator said Wednesday.
Kansas Bureau of Investigation will continue testing material collected from the remains of convicted murderers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, Deputy Director Kyle Smith said. Investigators believe the men fled to Florida after killing the Clutter family in a gruesome case later documented by Truman Capote in his genre-forming classic.
"The analysis is not completed," Kyle Smith told The Associated Press. "We are still trying."
In Florida, the Sarasota County sheriff's office says it remains optimistic that it can resolve questions about the killings of four family members, just days before Christmas 1959. A detective there began investigating the case again in 2007.
"Hopefully, science will be able to give us the answers," spokeswoman Wendy Rose said.
The KBI initially projected it would have definitive results from the DNA early this month, but the agency now has no timetable for when the testing will be complete.
"Justice never rests," Smith said.
Hickock and Perry Smith were hanged in 1965 in Kansas for the killings of Herb Clutter, his wife and two of their children in the family's farmhouse outside the southwest Kansas town of Holcomb.
The hunt for the killers mesmerized the nation and drew journalists from across the U.S. to the small farming town. Capote's book takes readers through the killings, Hickock's and Perry Smith's trial and their execution. It is celebrated because it reads like a novel; scholars have long debated its accuracy.
Attention quickly turned to Hickock and Perry Smith when, only weeks after the Kansas slayings, a Florida family was killed. Cliff Walker and his wife, Christine, along with their two small children, were killed in their home in Osprey, Fla., south of Sarasota. The case was never solved.
Investigators believed Hickock and Smith fled to Florida after killing the Clutter family, then traveled to Las Vegas, where they were captured. A lie detector test cleared them of the Walker slayings ? but in 1987, a polygraph expert declared that such tests were worthless in the 1960s. Christine Walker also had been raped, so Florida authorities sought to compare a DNA profile from semen on her clothing to the DNA profiles taken from the remains of Hickock and Smith.
The convicted murderers were buried in Lansing. Kansas officials had their remains exhumed in December so state investigators could collect bone fragments for DNA samples.
Kyle Smith said the KBI will eventually turn over results of the DNA tests to Florida officials who will announce any links between the cases.
"In Cold Blood" alludes to the Walker killings in a short passage; Capote incorrectly states that the slayings occurred near Tallahassee, Fla., about five hours north of the actual scene. He also relates a conversation between Hickock and Smith on a beach in Miami, and has Smith speculating that "a lunatic" copied the Kansas killings. The book says that in reply, Hickock "shrugged and grinned and trotted down to the ocean's edge."
Authorities in Florida have said Hickock and Smith were spotted at least a dozen times from Tallahassee to Miami. On the day of the Walker slayings, authorities have said, Hickock and Smith bought items at a Sarasota department store.
The Sarasota County Sheriff's detective who began re-investigating the Walker deaths in 2007 said the Walkers had been considering buying a 1956 Chevy Bel Air, the kind of car Hickock and Smith were driving through Florida.
___
Follow John Hanna on Twitter at http://twitter.com/apjdhanna
* Top 20 pct of earners get half the benefit of top breaks * Tax breaks on capital gains favor the wealthy * Study favors Obama's approach to tax reform -Democrats By David Lawder WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) - The top ten U.S. tax deductions, credits and exclusions will keep $12 trillion out of federal government coffers over the next decade, and several of them mainly benefit the wealthiest Americans, a new study from the Congressional Budget Office shows. The top 20 percent of income earners will reap more than half of the $900 billion in benefits from these tax breaks that will accrue in 2013, the non-partisan CBO said on Wednesday. Further, 17 percent of the total benefits would go to the top 1 percent of income earners -- families earning roughly $450,000 or more. The same group that was hit with a tax rate hike in January. The benefits of preferential tax rates on capital gains and dividends, a break worth $161 billion this year, go almost entirely to the wealthy, including 68 percent to the top one percent of earners. House Democrats, who requested that Congress' budget referee conduct the study, argued that it backs up President Barack Obama's proposed approach to tax reform and deficit reduction: raise revenues by limiting the amount tax preferences for the wealthy. "This shows that we could achieve a significant amount of deficit reduction by limiting the preferences to the highest income earners," said Representative Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Although the study did not provide income thresholds, U.S. Census Bureau data for 2011 shows the top 20 percent of household income extends to down to $101,582, a level that is considered middle-class in many parts of the United States. The lowest quintile topped out at $20,262 in the Census data.
MIDDLE-CLASS AID But the study also showed that benefits for the largest of the tax preferences, the exclusion for employer-paid health benefits, worth $3.4 trillion over 10 years, are more evenly distributed, with well over half of the benefits going to the middle 60 percent of earners. The middle 20 percent of earners also got the biggest benefit from excluding a portion of Social Security and Railroad Retirement benefits, a perk worth $414 billion over 10 years. Three other big tax breaks, the $2 trillion exclusion of net pension contributions and earnings over 10 years, the $1 trillion deduction for mortgage interest and the $1.1 trillion deduction for state and local taxes, also benefited the top 20 percent disproportionately. Representative Sander Levin, the highest ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel that is trying to advance tax reform this year, said the study shows that Republicans would have to greatly reduce tax breaks that benefit the middle class in order to achieve their goals of reducing tax rates and balancing the budget. "The CBO report underscores the need to go beyond the rhetoric of lowering tax rates without indication of how that would be achieved or the implications for economic growth and tax equity," Levin said. A spokesperson for Ways and Means Committee's Republican Chairman, Dave Camp, could not immediately be reached for comment on the study. Republicans want to reform the tax code by eliminating certain deductions, credits and exclusions, but they do not want to divert any resulting revenues toward deficit reduction. Instead they want to use the savings to lower rates, which they say will accelerate economic growth and increase revenue collection. Democrat Van Hollen said his favored approach would be to limit the total amount of deductions for the top 2 percent of income earners, or families earning $250,000 or more, while leaving intact much of the top 10 tax breaks, which also include deductions for charitable contributions and tax credits for earned income and children. These latter two tax breaks, which are largely aimed at the working poor, provide two thirds of their $118 billion in 2013 benefits to the lowest 40 percent of wage earners, the CBO said in the study. Over 10 years, these two credits will cost $1.2 trillion.
BEIJING (AP) ? A newborn's cries from a public restroom in a residential building in eastern China led a tenant to a startling discovery: a baby boy trapped in a sewage pipe beneath a squat toilet.
Firefighters, unable to pull the baby out, ended up sawing away an L-shaped section of the pipe and carrying it to a hospital, where it was delicately pried apart to save the infant.
Video of the two-hour rescue of Baby No. 59 ? so named because of his incubator number in the hospital in the Pujiang area of the city of Jinhua ? was shown on Chinese news programs and websites late Monday and Tuesday.
The baby, who weighed 2.8 kilograms (6 pounds, 2.8 ounces), had a low heart rate and some minor abrasions on his head and limbs, but was mostly unhurt, according to Zhejiang Online, the province's official news site. The placenta was still attached.
It was unclear how the baby ended up in the toilet, but police said they were treating the case as an attempted homicide. The Pujiang county police bureau said on its official microblog account that the boy's mother has been located and that an investigation was under way, but it gave no further details.
In the video, officials were shown removing the pipe from a ceiling that apparently was just below the restroom and then, at the hospital, using pliers and saws to gently pull apart the pipe, which was about 10 centimeters (about 3 inches) in diameter.
News of the baby's ordeal was met with horror and pity by bloggers on Chinese sites. Most speculated that the child had been dumped by his parents down the toilet.
The rescue prompted an outpouring from strangers who came to the hospital with diapers, baby clothes, powdered milk and offers to adopt him.
The landlord of the building told Zhejiang News that there were no signs that the birth took place in the restroom and she was not aware of any recent pregnancies among her tenants.
Despite the offers to adopt Baby No. 59, a doctor at the hospital said the boy would be turned over to social services if his parents did not claim him, Zhejiang News said.
In China, reports of babies being abandoned are common and fuel public anger against a strict one-child policy that imposes huge fines on parents who violate the rules. The policy has been blamed as a factor in causing parents to abandon unwanted children, although they are usually baby girls because of a traditional preference for males.
Ben Collins is famous for being a successful race car driver, author, and Hollywood stunt driver, but you probably know him best as The Stig from Top Gear. Now that the helmet's off he can answer all your questions about being the world's most infamous wheelman and driving for James Bond in the movies.
Most of us would be happy to live a live where we race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, win a Formula Three Race, and double for James Bond and Batman on the big screen. Alas, Ben Collins is probably most famous for the work he didn't get to take credit for: The Stig.
Yes, the Bristol, England native was the "tame racing driver." As The Stig, Collins got to pilot some of the world's greatest cars and teach Lionel Richie how to drive.
He was the most famous hotshoe in the entire world but no one knew but him and a handful of people until being outed by The Daily Telegraph in 2009.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ? Cellphone pioneer Motorola announced Wednesday that it's opening a Texas manufacturing facility that will create 2,000 jobs and produce its new flagship device, Moto X, the first smartphone ever assembled in the U.S.
The company has already begun hiring for the Fort Worth plant. The site was most recently unoccupied but was once used by fellow phone manufacturer Nokia, meaning it was designed to produce mobile devices, said Will Moss, a spokesman for Motorola Mobility, which is owned by Google.
"It was a great facility in an ideal location," said Moss, who said it will be an easy trip for Motorola engineering teams based in Chicago and Silicon Valley, and is also close to the company's service and repair operations in Mexico.
The formal announcement came at AllThingsD's D11 Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., from Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office administers a pair of special state incentive funds meant to help attract job-creating businesses to the state, but Moss said the Republican governor did not distribute any money to close this deal.
"Motorola Mobility's decision to manufacture its new smartphone and create thousands of new jobs in Texas is great news for our growing state," Perry said through a spokeswoman. "Our strong, healthy economy, built on a foundation of low taxes, smart regulation, fair legal system and a skilled workforce is attracting companies from across the country and around the world that want to be a part of the rising Texas success story."
The factory will be owned and run by Flextronics International Ltd., a Singapore-based contract electronics manufacturer that has had a long relationship with Motorola.
Assembly accounts for relatively little of the cost of a smartphone. The cost largely lies in the chips, battery and display, most of which come from Asian factories. For instance, research firm iSuppli estimates that the components of Samsung's latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S4, cost $229, while the assembly costs $8.
In December, Apple Inc. said it would move manufacturing of one of its existing lines of Mac computers to the U.S. this year, reversing decades of increasing outsourcing. The company has come under some criticism for working conditions at the Chinese factories where its products are assembled.
Some other manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co., have kept some PC assembly operations in the U.S.
Moss said the Moto X will go on sale this summer. He said he could provide few details, citing priority secrets. He said the idea from the beginning was to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
"It's obviously our major market so, for us, having manufacturing here gets us much closer to our key customers and partners as well as our end users," he said. "It makes for much leaner, more efficient operations."
But Motorola will still have global manufacturing operations, including at factories in China and Brazil.
"Fact remains that more than 130 million people in the U.S. are using smartphones," Mark Randall, Motorola's senior vice president of supply chain and Operations, said in a statement, "but until Moto X, none of those smartphones have been built in the USA."
__
Eds: AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this report from New York.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand touched another four year low against the dollar on Wednesday, edging loser to the 10.0 mark as weak economic data and labour market tensions weighed on sentiment.
Government bonds took their cue from the currency, with selling pressure driving the yield for the 2026 paper 14.5 basis points higher to 7.335 percent while the 2015 issue rose 8 basis points to 5.345 percent.
The rand hit a session trough of 9.86 per dollar, a level last reached in mid-March 2009, and was trading at 9.8001 by 1539 GMT from Tuesday's close at 9.7850.
The market was still reeling from the previous day's data which showed growth in Africa's biggest economy slowed more than expected in the first quarter of 2013 as manufacturing output shrunk nearly 8 percent.
"The weakness in the rand has been due in large part to domestic factors," said Capital Economics analyst Shilan Shah.
The relationship between rand movements and global risk appetite had broken down in recent months, Shah noted, adding that while the currency's over 9 percent fall over the past month had left it undervalued, it was likely to remain weak.
The local currency has shed more than 15 percent against the dollar to date in 2013, the steepest decline among 20 emerging market currencies tracked by Reuters.
CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's president sent a bill that would regulate non-governmental organizations to the country's interim parliament on Monday after months of criticism by rights groups concerned about stifling of their activities.
The text of the bill presented to the Islamist-dominated Shura Council was not made public, but a top presidential aide said that Mohammed Morsi's legal team took into consideration concerns that had been raised by local and international groups.
NGOs allege past versions of the bill were an attempt to regulate the work of civil society by with murky, loosely defined oversight by security agencies of their work. One concern has been that security forces might be allowed to inspect the raw material gathered by human rights groups that collect sensitive testimony from witnesses.
Morsi said in a statement Monday that the bill is aimed at committing NGOs to the principles of transparency and striking a balance with "the openness of Egypt" after the uprising that toppled longtime President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Under Mubarak, local and foreign NGOs were not allowed to align themselves with political parties, involvement in politics was tightly restricted and elections widely rigged.
The United States criticized earlier versions as "a step backwards."
Presidential aides said that under the proposed bill, civil society groups receiving foreign funding will not be allowed to support Egyptian parties or candidates. On the other hand, broad voter awareness activities would be permitted.
It was not clear what other restrictions might be imposed on foreign funding for local groups and the work of international NGOs. Those groups have been regarded with suspicion by Egyptian leaders, who have regarded some of their work as foreign interference in domestic affairs.
Under military rule that followed Mubarak's ouster, the Egyptian government shut down several U.S.-funded NGOs and charged some of its activists, including 16 Americans, with criminal offenses, setting off a prolonged diplomatic crisis between the two countries. The Americans left the country and were later tried in absentia.
Presidential aide Khaled Al-Qazzaz said the new bill does not require that security officials be part of a "steering committee" that will decide much of the fate of NGOs. Al-Qazzaz was speaking to reporters along with two other presidential aides before Morsi submitted the bill to the Shura Council for debate.
Removed from the latest draft is wording that said NGO's would be banned from receiving foreign funds directly and instead would have to receive money through a government bank account, the aides said. A previous draft stated that no transfer of money would be allowed until a steering committee that included members of the Interior Ministry and National Security Agency approved it within 60 days or rejected it.
The new draft, according to the presidential aides, would not require NGOs to hold their money in public funds.
Rights groups regarded the previous drafts as similar to, if not worse than, the autocratic policies of Mubarak's regime, when NGOs faced retaliation from police for exposing human rights violations, abuse and torture.
In the new bill, Al-Qazzaz said the steering committee may receive reports from intelligence agencies about NGOs or groups applying to register as NGOs. He described it as "inter-agency" work.
Aides said the steering committee will be comprised of nine officials, four elected to the body from the NGO community and four to be appointed by the Minister of Social Solidarity. The minister himself would be the ninth.
The committee would be responsible for a number of tasks, including granting and rejecting NGO licenses as well as objecting to NGO activities that exceed or counter the group's registered mandate. The steering committee could refer an NGO to a court for a judge to rule on whether to revoke a group's license.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as the country's most powerful political group, is among those affected by the new law. Under Mubarak, it was banned from politics and from registering as an NGO.
The president's Freedom and Justice Party and the Muslim Brotherhood ? from which the party emerged ? will now be allowed to work alongside one another in what Al-Qazzaz described as "gray area" between political activism and the work of local charitable groups involved in awareness programs.
Ask any football (soccer) player what they're looking for in a cleat and you'll likely get the same response: Feel. Today Nike revealed its latest "innovation" with the Hypervenom, a boot built for agility.
Most interesting is NikeSkin, which is equally composed of a hybrid mesh and polyurethane film, in addition to an all weather material. The claim is that the Hypervenom puts the player's foot that much closer to the ball for a barefoot-like experience.
In an interview with Gizmodo, VP of Nike Football Footwear, Phil McCartney, told us the new mesh boot was born out of necessity because the game has evolved and players needed a boot to match the new style of play.
"Players would tell us that the game, in their minds, was getting faster and space was getting tighter," McCartney told me.
The Hypervenom, McCartney says, has been in development for roughly 2.5 years with NikeSkin having gone through multiple iterations over the course of a nine to 10 month period. Something like 20 different variations of mesh had been tested in that time and 10 to 15 different skin combinations were created before the final version we see today. The pattern itself was optimal for both ball control and striking ability, McCartney added.
In the last decade or so, football cleats have mostly been built for speed, which is why there have been many a lightweight boot from everyone in the space. But the Hypervenom is supposedly different and is meant to somehow be more agile, giving players even better ball control.
But mesh? It's been around for so long and so I asked McCartney after all the different space-age materials they've come up with in the past, why mesh.
"This isn't a traditional mesh. We thought about mesh in a different way," McCartney said. "It's a comfortable material but up until now we haven't had the technology to "skin" a mesh. The combination of mesh and polyurethane work in tandem to create better feeling in a way that hasn't been done before."
Topping off the mesh and polyurethane is a material called Nike All Conditions Control (ACC) that holds up in both wet and dry conditions. Player feedback, McCartney said, was generally about not having to make micro adjustments on the field when field conditions changed from dry to wet. ACC addresses that, letting the players play their game regardless of weather.
Aside from the new upper is a new last, the most anatomical to date, Nike says, putting the foot closer to the ground. Other tweaks were made to the outsole in conjunction with a new stud configuration and split toe box. All of which are constantly in flux depending on the materials used and types of studs?conical in this case?based around the type of play the boot is built for. The split toe construction allows the player's first metatarsal to activate first, which is important for agility and allows for a more natural movement, says McCartney.
And as far as the unconventional colorway, it was inspired by nature's more colorful and venomous creatures and is meant to evoke the sensation or feeling of "bursting to life," says McCartney. [Nike]
Update: Just found some "designer" sketches of the boot here.
WHITE MARSH, Md. (AP) -- A cargo train derailed Tuesday in a Baltimore suburb and an explosion could be heard for miles, collapsing nearby buildings and setting them on fire, officials and witnesses said.
The train derailed at about 2 p.m. in White Marsh, about 10 miles northeast of Baltimore and a fire department spokeswoman said she did not know if there were any injuries. Hazmat teams were on the scene, are responding, Baltimore County Police and Fire said in a series of tweets.
Dale Walston said he lives about a half-mile away from the blast site and that the smell of chemicals is very strong.
"It shook my house pretty violently and knocked things off the shelves," he said in an email to The Associated Press.
Photos and video on TV stations showed a large plume of smoke rising from the area. At least three rail cars could be seen off the tracks.
Overhead news shots show several blackened buildings and fires burning.
A worker at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, Tawan Rai, reached by The Associated Press by phone, said he saw a fire and flames by the railroad tracks at first, then felt a thundering blast that sent smoke pouring into the sky.
"The whole building shook and there was just dust everywhere," said Rai, adding no windows broke but he was surprised by the intensity of the blast. "I went outside and people were rushing there, the police officers, fire trucks."
He also said he saw some ambulances arrive but didn't see anyone injured.
He also said police had apparently stopped traffic on nearby Pulaski Highway not far from the tracks and he no longer had any customers at his donut shop.
John Kane, treasurer of Atlantic Tire on nearby Pulaski Highway, said the explosion blew out two large showcase windows and light fixtures in his shop.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) ? Rutgers is standing by its incoming athletic director despite allegations she humiliated and verbally abused players during her coaching days, with the embattled president of the prominent university saying he is looking forward to her first day on the job.
It's the latest in a series of difficulties for the school, which lost its previous men's basketball coach and chief athletic executive to an abuse scandal, and then had to acknowledge its new men's coach had not graduated from Rutgers after it previously said he did.
Julie Herrman officially takes over the athletic department on June 17, and on Monday she said she plans to be in the position on that date. And the university is standing behind her.
"I never considered withdrawing because I feel very qualified to lead Rutgers into the future and into the transition into the Big Ten (Conference)," Hermann said during a conference call in response to a report in the Star-Ledger of Newark. "And I do feel the support of the Rutgers community."
President Robert Barchi said in a statement that the university looks forward to her running the athletic department. He added that she was the best of the 63 candidates interviewed for the job of succeeding Tim Pernetti.
"Rutgers was deliberative at every stage of this process," Barchi said. "Over the course of the search, Julie's record established her as a proven leader in athletics administration with a strong commitment to academic success as well as athletic excellence, and a strong commitment to the well-being of student athletes.
Despite the Star-Ledger report, Barchi said Hermann's entire career is stellar.
"We remain confident that we have selected an individual who will work in the best interests of all of our student athletes, our athletics teams, and the university."
Speaking to four reporters on a conference call in which each participant was allowed two questions, Hermann denied having knowledge of a letter written by the 15 players on Tennessee's volleyball team. She said her former boss never heard of it and she never heard her former players make the allegation.
Rutgers officials have talked to her about it in recent days, she said.
Hermann acknowledged she was an intense coach and may have made a few mistakes handling her team. The 49-year-old administrator said she has matured and believes she is qualified to lead the scandal-marred Rutgers program.
It was Hermann's first comments since the Star-Ledger's story on Sunday revealed that the Tennessee volleyball team in 1996 sent a letter to the school in which the players said Hermann called them "whores, alcoholics and learning disabled."
Hermann left the following year to work with the United States national volleyball team.
"As I recall, Julie Hermann did not continue as our head coach only due to a lack of significant improvement in her final season overall record with the Lady Vol volleyball program," former Tennessee athletic administrator Debby Jennings wrote in a message to the AP.
Jennings filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Tennessee last September alleging age and sex discrimination led to her forced retirement at the age of 57 in May 2012.
In the past two days, state lawmakers have criticized Hermann's hire and Gov. Chris Christie has said he will speak with school officials about the report. Barring a resignation, only the university's board of governors can withdraw Hermann's appointment.
The governor appoints six of the board's 11 voting members and can wield pressure through a variety of ways, perhaps by threatening to cut school funding or refusing to renominate a board member who doesn't support his view.
With President Barack Obama scheduled to tour the New Jersey shore Tuesday to see the rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy, it is unlikely Christie will turn his attention to Rutgers until Wednesday.
Former New Jersey Gov. and current State Sen. Dick Codey was furious with the latest controversy at Rutgers, saying officials made Pernetti the scapegoat after video of men's basketball coach Mike Rice physically and verbally abusing his players during his three-year tenure came to light in early April.
Rice, who initially had been suspended, fined and ordered to undergo anger management counseling, was fired by Barchi the day after the video was broadcast. Pernetti was forced to resign two days later.
"His successor is someone who is an obvious liar, a flat-out liar," Codey said in a telephone interview with the AP on Monday night. "She shouldn't be the AD anywhere, whether it's Rutgers or anywhere else. She should stay in Louisville and not come back to the state, and Barchi should go to Louisville himself because he is not a leader. It's dumb and dumber."
Hermann believes she can be an effective leader at Rutgers, which has also had several other key officials resign. And after hiring former Scarlet Knights star Eddie Jordan to replace Rice, the university mistakenly called him a graduate when he had never finished his degree.
"All of my life has prepared me to lead this organization," said Hermann, who would be the first woman to serve as Rutgers' athletic director and only the third female AD at the 124 schools playing at college football's top tier.
"Whatever mistakes you make as a young person, you've got to learn from them and go and grow," she added. "It is my intent to go to Rutgers with this vast experience of super highs and super lows and lead what I hope is an outstanding team into the Big Ten."
Other comments from the 10-minute call included:
? Hermann said the company that vetted her for Rutgers did ask about a lawsuit filed by one of her assistant coaches over a job termination.
? Hermann believes she can raise funds despite what has happened.
? Hermann denied the name calling, specifically when asked about calling the players "whores."
"That's not part of my vocabulary. ... Here's what I would say. Am I an intense coach? Absolutely an intense coach as many coaches are," she said. "But there is a big canyon between being super intense and abuse, and this was not an abusive environment for these women. Was it challenging? It was incredibly challenging. Was I aware that there were players that were unhappy? I was aware of that at the end of the season and I was unhappy."
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AP Sports Writer Teresa Walker in Memphis, Tenn. and AP Writer Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J. contributed to this report.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday touted economic development in the West Bank as the path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But many Palestinians complain they've heard this story before.
By Joshua Mitnick,?Correspondent / May 27, 2013
From left: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Israeli President Shimon Peres all shake hands during the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Centre at the Dead Sea in Jordan, Sunday, May 26.
Jim Young / Pool / AP
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US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday outlined a vague plan to revive the Palestinian economy, and the moribund peace process, through an injection of billions in foreign investment. But his talk of grandiose development projects actually rubbed many Palestinians the wrong way.
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Speaking at the World Economic Forum Middle East conference in Jordan, Mr. Kerry outlined what sounded like a private sector equivalent of the Marshall plan, saying that $4 billion in investment could be found for new ventures that would cut Palestinian unemployment by two thirds over the coming years and boost economic output by 50 percent.
However, the plan is up against 20 years of dashed hopes and blueprints for nation building which have led many Palestinians to conclude that its simply impossible for them to achieve lasting economic development without an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a sovereign state.
?I think is the grandest smoke and mirrors game yet played. We?ve been here before, this is just on a grander scale,? says Sam Bahour, a Palestinian businessman. ?If we read any of the reports that have been issued over the last 10 years from the World Bank we see beyond a serious doubt that no sustainable and no serious Palestinian economy can be built under Israeli occupation???that has been the model of the last 10 years and its failed colossally."
Mr. Bahour was referring to the development program of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has touted the very opposite proposition: that Palestinians could begin laying the building blocks for statehood before achieving statehood. Despite praise from the international community that the Palestinians were moving in the right direction, the Palestinians in the last year found their government struggling to remain solvent and delays in the payment of public sector salaries.
While the notion of enhanced prosperity contributing to peace seems obvious, Palestinians consider talk of putting the economy first as an Israeli scheme to buy quiescence while the fruits of genuine statehood are delayed. At the outset of his second administration in 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promoted the idea of an ?economic peace? that would lay the groundwork for a final peace.
Sensitive to this reluctance, Mr. Kerry has repeatedly stressed that his economic plan would improve the atmosphere for political talks ? not replace them. At the conference he said that his investment plan would be impossible without progress in negotiations. That didn?t assuage Palestinians. ?
Economic peace?
?Since when is our cause about money?? says a Palestinian negotiator who said was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. ?It's misleading when people talk too much about the economic package and not the situation on the ground... We are not against economic development but it cannot happen until an end to occupation. Some international players are just waiting to have negotiations for the sake of negotiations.?
Kerry?s initiative dovetailed with the public launch of a Palestinian-Israeli business forum ? ?Breaking the Impasse????which claimed hundreds of members and vowed to lobby for a return to negotiations. But, fearing the initiative would stir up opposition among Palestinians, initiative co-founder Munib Masri declared at the end of a press conference, ?No to economic peace!?
Kerry said that his plan represents the fruits of weeks of brainstorming among international businessmen and consultants and enjoys the support of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. He pointed to untapped potential for tourism ? noting Syria, Jordan and Egypt outdraw Israel???and suggested that Israel and the Palestinians could swiftly draw new visitors in an atmosphere of peace.
But Palestinians say that Mr. Kerry?s plan sounds like visions of self-sufficiency that have been touted going back to the original establishment of the autonomous Palestinian government in the 1990s, the establishment of a customs union with Israel, and the promotion by Israel of joint industrial zones. (To be sure, the Palestinian Authority allegedly squandered hundreds of millions dollars in aid over the last two decades.)
Now they say they feel they are trapped in a trade regime which is tailored to the Israeli economy and hurts burgeoning Palestinian businesses. They also complain that their economic development is hindered by the lack of access to wide swaths of the West Bank that remain under the control of Israel and physical barriers to movement around the West Bank
?Everybody comes to the conflict with an economic plan,? says Bashar Azzeh, a Palestinian businessman from Ramallah. ?Since the Oslo, Israel has gone from a $70 billion to a $290 billion economy. They?ve benefited from peace, we?ve only gone from a $6?billion to a $9 billion economy. So you can see who is getting the economic benefits of peace.?
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Public release date: 30-May-2013
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