Coffee Fungus Outbreak Resumes

Researchers are marshaling technology in a bid to thwart the harvest-threatening outbreak in Central America

By Daniel Cressey and Nature magazine

Coffee growers are worried that a fungal outbreak will affect the next harvest of coffee berries. Image: HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Where there is coffee, there is ?coffee rust?. But the long stalemate between growers and the fungus behind the devastating disease has broken ? with the fungus taking the advantage. As one of the most severe outbreaks ever rages through Central America, researchers are reaching for the latest tools in an effort to combat the pest, from sequencing its genome to cross-breeding coffee plants with resistant strains.

Caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, coffee rust generally does not kill plants, but the Institute of Coffee of Costa Rica estimates that the latest outbreak may halve the 2013?14 harvest in the worst affected areas of the nation. This outbreak is ?the worst we?ve seen in Central America and Mexico since the rust arrived? in the region more than 40 years ago, says John Vandermeer, an ecologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has received ?reports of devastation in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico?.

At his research plot in Mexico, Vandermeer says that the situation is so bad that the leaves are simply dropping off the plants. More than 60% of the trees have at least 80% defoliation, and 30% have no leaves at all.

On 22?January, Costa Rica enacted emergency legislation to speed up the flow of government money towards fighting the fungus. Other nations are also stepping up the fight. Last week, the Nicaraguan government reportedly declared that it would include coffee rust on a list of special research projects designed to safeguard the country?s agriculture.

The fungus first emerged as a significant problem by 1869 in Ceylon ? now Sri Lanka ? before spreading around the world. Stuart McCook, a historian at the University of Guelph in Canada who studies the rust, says that the wet weather in some areas of Ceylon was ideal for the spread of the fungus, and more than 90% of coffee crops were wiped out in those regions. Faced with an economic catastrophe, the country abandoned coffee for the tea it is associated with today. The disease is so universal that it ?is not going to be eradicated; or the only way to eradicate the disease in practice is to eradicate all of the coffee?, says McCook.

By 1970, the fungus had been detected in Brazil, and severe outbreaks were seen in Costa Rica in 1980 and Nicaragua in 1995, says Jacques Avelino, a plant pathologist at Costa Rica?s Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, based in San Jos?.

But changes to management practices had brought the disease mostly under control. ?Coffee rust was considered a solved problem by most of the coffee growers and coffee institutes of the region?, says Avelino. ?People didn?t fear the disease.? The outbreak may have taken hold because of patchy use and effectiveness of fungicides.

And in Africa, Noah Phiri, a plant pathologist working in Nairobi for the not-for-profit development organization CABI, says that rust has been causing ever-greater problems, although in Kenya, varieties resistant to the rust have held it at bay.

Colombia could be the closest to a solution. Marco Aurelio Cristancho, a researcher at Cenicaf?, the National Center for the Investigation of Coffee in Chinchin?, says that the government has supported research into developing resistant strains of coffee through crossbreeding. The introduction of resistant strains, together with improved weather monitoring to help predict rust outbreaks, has meant that fewer than 10% of plants now need to be treated with fungicide, down from 60% four years ago, Cristancho says. The government has also supported work on the genetics of both the fungus and the plant.

Research programs have started in other countries, too. At the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Valdir Diola is working to isolate resistance genes in coffee and to find molecular markers that distinguish between different strains of the pathogen and that could be used to develop tailored strategies for its control. And in the United Kingdom, Harry Evans is working on the genome of H.?vastatrix at CABI in Egham. In Nairobi, Phiri is using money from the intergovernmental agency the Common Fund for Commodities, as well as from Kenya, India, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to screen for resistant coffee plants and to analyze varieties of the pathogen.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=880de4d91414aaa872c31570a1787b20

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Apple Has Been Granted A Trademark For Its Retail Store Design ...

Apple has been granted a trademark by the U.S. government for the design and layout of its retail stores, according to a filing at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The company had applied for the trademark back in 2010 but it was rejected twice before finally being approved now,?according to ifoAppleStore.

The trademark covers the glass storefront, furniture arrangement, shelving, the Genius Bar and more.

In fact, it's quite detailed.

Here's the mark description from the USPTO:

The mark consists of the design and layout of a retail store.

The store features a clear glass storefront surrounded by a paneled facade consisting of large, rectangular horizontal panels over the top of the glass front, and two narrower panels stacked on either side of the storefront.

Within the store, rectangular recessed lighting units traverse the length of the store's ceiling.

There are cantilevered shelves below recessed display spaces along the side walls, and rectangular tables arranged in a line in the middle of the store parallel to the walls and extending from the storefront to the back of the store.

There is multi-tiered shelving along the side walls, and a oblong table with stools located at the back of the store, set below video screens flush mounted on the back wall.

The walls, floors, lighting, and other fixtures appear in dotted lines and are not claimed as individual features of the mark; however, the placement of the various items are considered to be part of the overall mark.

You can check out the filing here at the USPTO's website.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-store-trademark-2013-1

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Facewash

What do you do if you're fully aware that your Facebook account is strewn with content that seemed perfectly fine to share at the time, but in hindsight could cause a lot of embarrassment? How do you ferret out those naughty pictures and status updates full of crass language? A Facebook app called Facewash (Facewa.sh/) (free) searches your entire Facebook account for you, on the prowl for anything that might be questionable, helping you delete or hide photos, comments, and posts that could pose a problem the next time a potential employer searches your name online.

How Facewash Works
The free Facewash app connects to your Facebook account like any other Facebook app, meaning you have to give it permission to look through everything in your account?and you should. If you're concerned at all about connecting third-party apps on Facebook, rest assured you can remove the app when you're done with it.

The tool largely automates the process of finding questionable content, although it doesn't automatically delete or hide it for you, which is good. You ought to be able to make the call for yourself on a case-by-case basis after evaluating the context.

In any event, when you click "start" for the first time, you can sit back and let the app do the work. It will scour your account in search of bad words, which include profanity and many other words that may or may not have a negative connotation depending on context, "suck" being a prime example.

The app can search both English and Spanish, although not simultaneously. It claims to look through your:

• status updates,
• photos (although with limitations, explained below),
• photos in which you've been tagged,
• "liked" links,
• "liked" photos,
• pages, and
• timeline.

My Results
When I ran an automated search, which took seconds, my account turned up fairly clean, with only a few instances of status updates showing profanity and other flagged words. Facewash's flagged words appear highlighted in green in context of the entire Facebook activity, so it's really easy to evaluate them.

Looking at my questionable content, I decided that most of them were perfectly acceptable. There were a few curse words, most of which were quotes, a post that referenced "bestiality" (in reference to a German news article on the subject), the word "sexy" in reference to the television show Dirty Sexy Money (starring the fabulous Donald Sutherland), and a few instances of "suck" (as in "Whoever said being an English major in college wouldn't pay off was clueless. Suck it!").

Facewash groups content by type according to the bullet points above. It only searches back a few years, and then displays a button beneath each section's results that prompts a search on content going farther back.

To remove any item, you have to click on it, which brings you to the post in question directly on Facebook. I'd prefer to be able to delete or hide the content right from Facewash, although I'm not sure if this limitation is a byproduct of how Facebook's APIs work (I imagine it is). Nevertheless, an ideal tool would like me select multiple instances of content to hide or remove in one fell swoop.

Facewash searches your photos on Facebook, too, although it only appears to search comments, captions, and other textual information associated with them. I enlisted some help and scanned two more accounts, it does in fact seem to be the case that Facewash only searches text and not the content of photos.

Additional Features
Say you're going to a job interview at a company, and you want to be sure your Facebook account doesn't reference that employer or any of its products in a negative light. You can use Facewash to search for any terms of your choosing, such as brand names, employer names, or really anything at all. It displays results the same way, and again, you have to link through to Facebook to actually change the settings to remove the activity.

It's worth noting that you can do most of this same thing right on Facebook using the activity tools (see "Get Organized: How to Clean Up Facebook" for detailed instructions). What Facewash adds is an automated search for a long list of potentially dangerous words.

Finally, Facewash reportedly will be adding another arm soon that will run the same kind of dirty content check on a Twitter account.

Scrub Up
Facewash won't leave your Facebook account perfectly spotless, but it can help you find and evaluated instances of questionable content. Its value lies in its list of words, which likely include terms you otherwise would not have thought to search out among your Facebook content. It helps you make decisions on a case-by-case basis about how to treat various activity, rather than obliterate it all, although it would be helpful to have a feature that lets you knock out a number of posts in one shot, rather than manage every single piece of content one by one. If you aren't sure what's on your Facebook account, let Facewash do a quick scrub down. You might be surprised at what you find.

More Internet Reviews: ??? Facewash
??? LiquidPlanner 4
??? MySpace
??? Carbonite Currents (beta)
??? Pocket (for Mac)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Z3zsl0hel68/0,2817,2414821,00.asp

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Accessible tourism and dementia

Jan. 29, 2013 ? Researchers are planning new ways of making tourist attractions dementia-friendly.

Fear of getting lost, fear of not finding the toilets or being misunderstood; there are many reasons why people with dementia and the families who care for them stop going on holiday.

For people with dementia, even simple days out can pose a host of hazards. Often, families say, it's easier to just stay at home. But Bournemouth University's newly launched Dementia Institute hopes to change that.

"We have a vision," says Professor Anthea Innes of the BU Dementia Institute (BUDI), "that perhaps in the future, Bournemouth might become a dementia-friendly tourist resort." An expert in health and social care research, Professor Innes is collaborating with Professor Stephen Page of BU's School of Tourism to launch pioneering research into dementia-friendly tourism -- developing venues where people with dementia will feel safe and at ease to enjoy themselves.

Encouraged by a government pledge to create 20 dementia-friendly cities, towns and villages by 2015, Professor Innes is working closely with those who need these facilities most.

"Our aim is to see how tourism can respond to the needs of people with dementia and their carers and find out if and why they haven't been able to access tourist attractions and leisure facilities," she says. "We hope to increase their use of tourist attractions, accommodation and resorts in the South of England."

While an exploratory pilot scheme will take place locally, Professor Innes hopes to expand the research to international, as well as UK, facilities. "Lots of work is currently going into dementia-friendly communities -- safe cashpoints, trained staff and police for instance -- but we are the only people looking specifically at leisure and tourism," she says.

Her initial focus groups with families of people with dementia will feed into research into voluntary organisations, NHS services and businesses themselves. BUDI plans to develop training to shape professional dementia care in the region. In the course of its research, BUDI's team will also interview the many tourist attractions that make up Bournemouth's seaside resort, such as the Oceanarium and venues such as tearooms, galleries, theatres and museums.

Dorset is home to one of the largest ageing populations in England and is a good place to start. Dorset also has the lowest rate of dementia diagnosis in the country, but not because of a shortage of people with the disease. Professor Innes estimates just one in four people with dementia in Dorset have actually been diagnosed.

"That's a shocking statistic. In other areas of the country about half the people with dementia are diagnosed, and if you don't have a diagnosis, you won't be able to access services and support. You might end up in a crisis situation because you and your family have not been able to plan for the future," she says.

Sometimes GPs are reluctant to give a diagnosis due to a lack of local services. A dementia label can also carry a stigma with families and communities -- meaning people are reluctant to admit a problem, and doctors might be unaware of the level of care available. Sometimes elderly people will already be in care homes, but labelled as 'pleasantly muddled,' rather than receiving a formal diagnosis.

A strong business case also exists for improving tourist facilities. Experts predict numbers of people with dementia will double over the next 30 years -- currently the disease costs the UK economy an estimated ?19 billion.

"If somewhere is labelled as dementia-friendly, it's good for the industry and people involved. Staff will be better trained and more aware -- and that's good for levels of service overall," says Professor Innes.

Reference: Innes, A, Kelly, F and McCabe, L (2012) (eds) Dementia in the 21st Century: Theory, policy and practice. London: Jessica Kingsley

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Bournemouth University, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/iyBDN07SRPg/130129080506.htm

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Former Ecuador judge on Chevron case says plaintiffs bribed court

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A former Ecuadorean judge has claimed that after stepping down from the bench, he illegally ghostwrote a judgment in which Chevron was ordered to pay $18.2 billion (11.5 billion pounds) for polluting the rain forest, and that the plaintiffs paid a $500,000 bribe to the judge who issued the ruling.

Alberto Guerra, who presided over the case from 2003 to 2004, made the allegations in a sworn statement filed by Chevron on Monday in support of a lawsuit in Manhattan federal district court accusing the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and their lawyers of fraud.

"Another participant in the fraud has now come forward rather than wait to be exposed by others," Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs, in a statement called Guerra a "disgraced former Ecuadorean judge who is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Chevron to make false allegations about the Ecuador trial court judgment."

Guerra was not available to comment.

The filing is the latest in an ever-escalating two-decade battle between Chevron and residents of Ecuador's Lago Agrio over oil extraction in the region.

Residents claimed that Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001, polluted the rainforest and water supplies with hundreds of unlined waste pits from 1964 to 1992, damaging crops and public health including deaths from cancer.

Chevron claimed that its share of the waste pits had been cleaned up and that its activities were not responsible for environmental and public health damage.

An Ecuadorean court entered the $18.2 billion judgment in 2011. The award was upped to $19 billion in July.

The National Court of Justice, Ecuador's highest court, last month appointed three judges to hear Chevron's final appeal in that country of the court decision.

One of them, Oscar Bermudez, told Reuters that they are not allowed to consider new evidence.

"Our job is to make sure the sentence issued by the previous court complies with legal and constitutional precepts ... they can provide new evidence but the court cannot take it into account," he said, adding that Chevron may consider presenting Guerra's statement to Ecuador's attorney general for his consideration.

Chevron, with no assets in Ecuador now, has fought a global campaign against the enforcement of the $19 billion award. In February 2011, it filed the New York federal lawsuit against the plaintiffs and their lawyers, including Steven Donziger and Pablo Fajardo, contending the judgment was obtained via fraud.

The declaration Monday by Guerra was filed by Chevron in support of that lawsuit.

According to the document, the Chevron case had been assigned to Judge Nicolas Zambrano in 2009. Guerra said Zambrano at times ask him to ghostwrite civil rulings for him for $1,000 a month, which he says was illegal.

The case was then given to another judge, Juan Nunez, who later had to recuse himself due to allegations of bribery brought by Chevron after Nunez was caught on tape discussing the case. Zambrano then took charge again.

In his sworn declaration, Guerra wrote: "Zambrano told me he was in direct contact with Mr. Fajardo and that the Plaintiffs' representatives had agreed to pay him USD $500,000 from whatever money they were to collect from the judgment, in exchange for allowing them to write the judgment in the Plaintiffs' favor."

Guerra in his declaration said he received $38,000 from the company for the costs of providing the evidence. Kent Robertson, a spokesman for Chevron, confirmed Chevron has agreed to pay Guerra's family $10,000 for monthly living expenses and $2,000 for housing.

"He's a scoundrel," Fajardo told Reuters on Monday. "I've never met Mr. Guerra, but I know who he is and how he's being paid by Chevron."

In a statement from the Ecuador plaintiffs last week, Fajardo said Guerra had at one point offered to provide testimony to the rainforest communities if they would pay him, though they had refused.

Zambrano could also not be contacted on Monday. He has been out of the public eye since his dismissal last February for releasing a drug trafficker in an act described by the judicial watchdog as "obvious negligence."

The New York case is Chevron Corporation v. Donziger, et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 11-00691.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York, Braden Reddall in San Francisco, and Eduardo Garcia Gil and Alexandra Valencia in Quito; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-ecuador-judge-chevron-case-says-plaintiffs-bribed-025841619--finance.html

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Debt Relief Package for Myanmar Unusually Generous - Global Issues

• by Carey L. Biron (washington)
• Monday, January 28, 2013
• Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (IPS) - Nearly 20 of the world's largest creditor countries have announced that they would be cutting nearly half of Myanmar's total foreign debt, worth some six billion dollars.

Those countries, which include the United States, United Kingdom and several members of the European Union, are part of the Paris Club, a group of 19 of the world's largest donors. On Monday, the group stated that its members were aware of Myanmar's "exceptional situation" and had agreed to a 50-percent cancellation of arrears and a seven-year grace period for the remainder.

On the sidelines, Norway and Japan came to separate agreements to cancel additional debts amounting to around four billion dollars. President Thein Sein, who has overseen more than two years of contested political and economic reforms in Myanmar, had reportedly made debt relief a priority for his administration.

The Paris Club move comes just a day after the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) came to a separate agreement to restructure close to a billion additional dollars that Myanmar owed the institutions. This deal, made possible by a substantial "bridge loan" from Japan, will give the country economic breathing room as it works to emerge from decades of international isolation and almost nonexistent economic and social development.

The deals follow on an agreement signed last month stipulating that Myanmar would adhere to conditionalities set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Together, the accords signed in recent days clear up, at least temporarily, almost three-quarters of Myanmar's total foreign debt.

Estimated by the IMF at around 15 billion dollars, that debt load has been described by some economists and diplomats as one of the most significant impediments to the new government's plans for reforms and development.

Among other things, the new agreements will allow Myanmar leeway to engage in new programmes through the World Bank, which had been constrained in the extent to which it could engage with the country. Last week, the World Bank approved a new credit, worth 440 million dollars, aimed at strengthening the country's macroeconomic climate ? and beginning to pay back the Japanese government's bridge loan.

Future saddling

Myanmar received significant foreign financing during the 1980s, but that was largely halted following a brutal crackdown on civil liberties that began in 1988. By the end of the 1990s, the military government, amidst broad stagnation and increasingly isolated on the international stage, essentially stopped paying its foreign debts.

As the past two years of reforms have taken hold, however, international donors and multinational companies have begun to eagerly flood back into the country; the World Bank Group re-opened Yangon offices in August. Yet the fact that Myanmar will now again be fully integrated into the international framework strikes some overly quick ? and the terms of the new agreements as overly generous.

"These agreements allow large amounts of new lending, before any investigation has been made into how past loans did and did not benefit the people of Burma," Tim Jones, a policy officer with the Jubilee Debt Campaign, an international anti-debt advocacy group, said Monday in a statement.

He also noted that the new World Bank and ADB deals, which simply restructure rather than cancel Myanmar's debts, will now allow the government once again to engage in borrowing from these institutions.

"None of these deals save Burma any money now, but they commit future governments to making payments on debt they inherit," he says. "This support for a military dictatorship could bind the hands of a hoped-for future democratic government."

Indeed, for all of the changes of the past few years, Myanmar's government is still dominated by the military, with President Thein Sein himself a former general. And despite suggestions of significant factionalisation within that force, it is far too early for many in and out of the country to believe that the Myanmarese military is in any way reformed.

"It is incredible that Burma gets billions of dollars of debt relief when its biggest spending is on the military," Anna Roberts, executive director of Burma Campaign UK, said Monday. "Burma's leaders should be on trial in The Hague, not getting special deals on debt relief."

Unnecessary exception

The "specialness" of the new deals is of particular interest. Over the past decade, after all, the international community has made some progress in consolidating a set of principles by which it should deal with foreign debt amassed by developing countries.

"If two developing countries have the same amount of debt, we'd like them to get the same deal," David Roodman, who researches aid and debt relief at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

"But according to the norms that have been developed, Myanmar didn't meet those requirements. So this agreement not only is an exception to those rules but undermines the rules-based approach more generally."

In evolving discussions over the past 10 years, the international community has agreed to define eligibility for debt relief based on the sustainability of debt levels ? the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP), for instance, or the ratio of debt to exports.

Yet Roodman says that while the agreed level for debt to GDP is 30 percent, Myanmar's debt stands at just 18 percent of GDP, almost half of the stipulated requirement. Likewise, the level for debt to exports has been agreed at 100 percent, while Myanmar's stands somewhat lower at 85 percent.

"Further, the IMF has done some scenarios through modelling on the likely course of exports and GDP in coming years in Myanmar," he says, "and they found that the debt load, if anything, is going shrink."

The key to understanding the Paris Club decision, then, might have to do less with development than with foreign policy. From this perspective, while foreign governments may be successfully jockeying for position with Myanmarese officials, they may be losing valuable leverage that could still be required down the road.

Notably, Myanmar still owes around two billion dollars to China, the military's closest ally for decades and a key reason many Western countries may be prioritising relations with Myanmar today. In a new blog post, Roodman notes that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has in the past urged foreign governments to suspend rather than end economic sanctions.

"(T)he threat of easy reinstatement, in her judgment, would spur further reform," he writes. "The analogous step in the debt dance was to refinance defaulted loans rather than cancel them. Just as sanctions can be permanently abolished later, so can debts be."

? Inter Press Service (2013) ? All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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Right-to-work, 'fair share' bills surface in Maine

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- A pair of labor bills in Maine that have been rejected in past legislative sessions, so-called right-to-work and fair share, are being introduced again this session.

Republican Rep. Lawrence Lockman of Amherst acknowledges that his bills will face an uphill battle in a Legislature, with Democratic majorities in both chambers. But he also notes that other states ? notably Indiana and Michigan ? last year passed right-to-work laws.

In Maine, Lockman's bill would allow workers at unionized private businesses to opt not to join or financially support a union as a condition of employment. Lockman says it's good for jobs and good for business.

The second bill takes away a requirement that state employees pay fees to the Maine State Employees Association whether they join the union or not.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fair-share-bills-surface-maine-154947498.html

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BlackBerry World will soon feature an extensive catalogue of music, movies and TV shows

Not only will Research in Motion?s (RIMM) BlackBerry World include more than 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps, the storefront will also offer ?one of the most robust music and video catalogs in mobile today.? The company announced on Monday that the new BlackBerry World will feature an ?extensive catalog? of DRM-free music as well as movies and TV shows, a majority of which will be available for download on the same day they are released on DVD, and next day availability for a number of TV series. The BlackBerry World catalog of music, movies and TV shows will be available on the first BlackBerry 10 devices, which the company is scheduled to announce at a press conference this Wednesday, January 30th. RIM?s press release follows below.

New BlackBerry World for BlackBerry 10 to Include Extensive Catalogue of Songs, Latest Movies and TV Shows

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 debuts on Wednesday ? strap in for a wild ride]

January 28, 2013

Unified Multimedia Storefront Will Carry Music and Video Content from All Major Studios, Labels and Broadcasters

Waterloo, ON ? Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX:RIM) today announced that the new BlackBerry? World? storefront (formally BlackBerry App World?) for BlackBerry 10 will offer one of the most robust music and video catalogs in mobile today. The new BlackBerry World will include an extensive catalog of songs as well as movies and TV shows, with most movies coming to the store the same day they are released on DVD, and next day availability of many current TV series. The competitive offering will feature content from all major studios, music labels and top local broadcast networks. Customers will be able to preview tracks and access the content using multiple payment options.*

?Music and video content is an integral part of a rich mobile experience. People want easy and convenient access to their favorite music, movies and TV shows wherever they are,? said Frank Boulben, Chief Marketing Officer at Research In Motion. ?RIM is committed to working with content providers to bring the best, most up-to-date content to our customers with BlackBerry 10, and to make it easy for them to get what they want.?

The video download and rental section in BlackBerry World will initially be available in the US, UK and Canada. Varying by region and distributor, customers will have access to movies from the following studios and independents: 20th Century Fox, Entertainment One (eOne), Lionsgate, MGM, National Film Board of Canada, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (US), Starz Digital Media, STUDIOCANAL, The Walt Disney Studios, Universal Pictures (UK), Warner Bros. Customers will also have access to TV shows from the following broadcasters and studios: ABC Studios, BBC Worldwide, CBC/Radio-Canada, CBS, DHX Media, ITV, National Geographic, NBCUniversal (UK), Nelvana, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (US), Starz Digital Media, Twentieth Century Fox Television, Univision Communications Inc, and Warner Bros.

The BlackBerry World storefront?s DRM-free music download section will feature an extensive catalog from all major and independent labels including: 4AD Records, Domino Recording Company, finetunes, Matador Records, [PIAS] Entertainment Group, Rough Trade Records, Sony Music Entertainment, The Orchard, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, XL Recordings and Zebralution. The music section will initially be available in 18 countries: Canada, USA, UK, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-world-soon-feature-extensive-catalogue-music-movies-191558444.html

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Consumer alert: new health care markets on the way

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Buying your own health insurance will never be the same.

This fall, new insurance markets called exchanges will open in each state, marking the long-awaited and much-debated debut of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The goal is quality coverage for millions of uninsured people in the United States. What the reality will look like is anybody's guess ? from bureaucracy, confusion and indifference to seamless service and satisfied customers.

Exchanges will offer individuals and their families a choice of private health plans resembling what workers at major companies already get. The government will help many middle-class households pay their premiums, while low-income people will be referred to safety-net programs they might qualify for.

Most people will go online to pick a plan when open enrollment starts Oct. 1. Counselors will be available at call centers and in local communities, too. Some areas will get a storefront operation or kiosks at the mall. Translation to Spanish and other languages spoken by immigrants will be provided.

When you pick a plan, you'll no longer have to worry about getting turned down or charged more because of a medical problem. If you're a woman, you can't be charged a higher premium because of gender. Middle-aged people and those nearing retirement will get a price break: They can't be charged more than three times what younger customers pay, compared with six times or seven times today.

If all this sounds too good to be true, remember that nothing in life is free and change isn't easy.

Starting Jan. 1, 2014, when coverage takes effect in the exchanges, virtually everyone in the country will be required by law to have health insurance or face fines. The mandate is meant to get everybody paying into the insurance pool.

Obama's law is called the Affordable Care Act, but some people in the new markets might experience sticker shock over their premiums. Smokers will face a financial penalty. Younger, well-to-do people who haven't seen the need for health insurance may not be eligible for income-based assistance with their premiums.

Many people, even if they get government help, will find that health insurance still doesn't come cheaply. Monthly premiums will be less than the mortgage or rent, but maybe more than a car loan. The coverage, however, will be more robust than most individual plans currently sold.

Consider a hypothetical family of four making $60,000 and headed by a 40-year-old. They'll be eligible for a government tax credit of $7,193 toward their annual premium of $12,130. But they'd still have to pay $4,937, about 8 percent of their income, or about $410 a month.

A lower-income family would get a better deal from the government's sliding-scale subsidies.

Consider a similar four-person family making $35,000. They'd get a $10,742 tax credit toward the $12,130 annual premium. They'd have to pay $1,388, about 4 percent of their income, or about $115 a month.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation's online Health Reform Subsidy Calculator. But while the government assistance is called a tax credit and computed through the income tax system, the money doesn't come to you in a refund. It goes directly to insurers.

Obama's law is the biggest thing that's happened to health care since Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. But with open enrollment for exchange plans less than 10 months away, there's a dearth of consumer information. It's as if the consumer angle got drowned out by the political world's dispute over "Obamacare," the dismissive label coined by Republican foes.

Yet exchanges are coming to every state, even those led by staunch GOP opponents of the overhaul, such as Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. In their states and close to 20 others that are objecting, the exchanges will be operated by the federal government, over state opposition. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has pledged that every citizen will have access to an exchange come next Jan. 1, and few doubt her word.

But what's starting to dawn on Obama administration officials, activists, and important players in the health care industry is that the lack of consumer involvement, unless reversed, could turn the big health care launch into a dud. What if Obama cut the ribbon and nobody cared?

"The people who stand to benefit the most are the least aware of the changes that are coming," said Rachel Klein, executive director of Enroll America, a nonprofit that's trying to generate consumer enthusiasm.

"My biggest fear is that we get to Oct. 1 and people haven't heard there is help coming, and they won't benefit from it as soon as they can," she added. "I think it is a realistic fear."

Even the term "exchange" could be a stumbling block. It was invented by policy nerds. Although the law calls them "American Health Benefit Exchanges," Sebelius is starting to use the term "marketplaces" instead.

Polls underscore the concerns. A national survey last October found that only 37 percent of the uninsured said they would personally be better off because of the health care law. Twenty-three percent said they would be worse off in the Kaiser poll, while 31 percent said it would make no difference to them.

Insurers, hospitals, drug companies and other businesses that stand to benefit from the hundreds of billions of dollars the government will pump in to subsidize coverage aren't waiting for Washington to educate the public.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, for example, are trying to carve out a new role for themselves as explainers of the exchanges. Somewhere around 12 million people now purchase coverage individually, but the size of the market could double or triple with the new approach, and taxpayers will underwrite it.

"Consumers are expecting their health insurance provider to be a helpful navigator to them," said Maureen Sullivan, a senior vice president for the Blues' national association. "We see 2013 as a huge year for education."

One goal is to help consumers master the "metals," the four levels of coverage that will be available through exchange plans ? bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.

Blue Cross is also working with tax preparer H&R Block, which is offering its customers a health insurance checkup at no additional charge this tax season. Returns filed this year for 2012 will be used by the government to help determine premium subsidies for 2014.

"This tax season is one of historical significance," said Meg Sutton, senior advisor for tax and health care at H&R Block. "The tax return you are filing is going to be key to determining your health care benefits on the exchange."

Only one state, Massachusetts, now has an exchange resembling what the administration wants to see around the country. With six years in business, the Health Connector enrolls about 240,000 Massachusetts residents. It was created under the health overhaul plan passed by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney and has gotten generally positive reviews.

Connector customer Robert Schultz is a Boston area startup business consultant who got his MBA in 2008, when the economy was tanking. Yet he was able to find coverage when he graduated and hang on to his insurance through job changes since. Schultz says that's freed him to pursue his ambition of becoming a successful entrepreneur ? a job creator instead of an employee.

"It's being portrayed by opponents as being socialistic," said Schultz. "It is only socialistic in the sense of making sure that everybody in society is covered, because the cost of making sure everybody is covered in advance is much less than the cost of putting out fires."

The Connector's executive director, Glen Shor, said his state has proven the concept works and he's confident other states can succeed on their own terms.

"There is no backing away from all the challenges associated with expanding coverage," Shor said. "We are proud in Massachusetts that we overcame what had been years of policy paralysis."

___

Online:

Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator - http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/consumer-alert-health-care-markets-131529045.html

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Frank Ocean Wants Chris Brown Charged Over Parking-Lot Brawl

Brown, meanwhile, posts a depiction of Jesus on the cross to Instagram with the caption: 'Painting the way I feel today.'
By Kara Warner

Chris Brown and Frank Ocean
Photo: Getty Images

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1700949/chris-brown-frank-ocean-fight-charges.jhtml

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We Are What We Are: Sundance Review - The Hollywood Reporter

PARK CITY ? In the deliciously seasoned genre treat, We Are What We Are, director Jim Mickle and his screenwriting partner Nick Damici take the bones of the 2010 Mexican film of the same name, about a family of ritualistic cannibals, and reassemble them into an entirely different creature. Exchanging impoverished urban anxiety for rural creepiness in upstate New York, this reimagining serves up chilling contemporary American Gothic that slowly crescendos into an unexpected burst of gloriously pulpy Grand Guignol. You may never look at a bowl of beef stew the same way again.

Picked up for U.S. release soon after its Sundance premiere by eOne Distribution, the film is that rare modern horror movie that doesn?t simply fabricate its scares with the standard bag of post-production tricks. Instead it builds them via a bracing command of traditional suspense tools ? foreboding atmosphere, methodical plotting, finely etched characters and a luscious orchestral score that effectively plays against the ominous tone of some scenes while dramatically heightening the tension of others. This is polished film craft.

One of Mickle and Damici?s smartest moves is to flip the gender of the surviving family figurehead from Jorge Michel Grau?s original. Instead of losing their father at the start of the movie, it?s the Parker kids? mother (Kassie Depaiva) who dies in an accident while picking up groceries in the backwoods Catskills town during the beginning of a torrential rainstorm.

That shifts the film?s dynamics to center on teenage sisters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner), who are expected to continue the woman?s sacred role of preparing the family meal. Staging the most macabre element of the story in scenes that evoke classic American family tradition ? the pioneer look of the Parkers? supper clothes, the solemnity of grace before meals, the folk songs heard playing softly ? makes it all the more disturbing. It also helps convey that the arcane ways of this unwholesome brood go back a long time.

But while grieving patriarch Frank Parker (Bill Sage) refuses to change plans for their mysterious ritual, which begins with three days of fasting, Iris and Rose have increasing qualms. Their young brother Rory (Jack Gore) is just hungry. In a scene that?s both shockingly funny and horrifying, he confesses as much when he bites the thumb of their kind neighbor, Marge (Kelly McGillis), who babysits him during his mother?s funeral.

While the townspeople are busy dealing with post-storm flood damage, a distraught couple reports that their daughter has gone missing. At the same time, Doc Barrow (Michael Parks) performs an autopsy on Mrs. Parker that yields surprising findings about her condition. More inexplicably, his dog sniffs out what appears to be a human bone washed up in the creek. When the sheriff (Damici) shows little interest in his discovery, the doctor gets Deputy Anders (Wyatt Russell) on board. Back in town after training and eager to advance his high school crush on Iris, Anders is more than willing to go poking around the Parkers? property.

Making the family a part of the community and not the usual isolated weirdos adds an interesting layer. This is particularly so with the two girls, whose blond hair and alabaster skin give them an angelic appearance. They can be abrupt and suspicious when cornered, but their extreme distress the first time we see them doing their grisly duty reveals how deeply troubled they are by the warped scriptures laid down by their father.

Both actresses are terrific. A sweet-faced beauty, Childers? Iris shows the internal struggle of a girl who can picture a normal life, even if she somehow knows that prospect has been bred out of her nature. Garner ? memorable in Martha Marcy May Marlene, which this film at times recalls in its stretches of glowering stillness ? has a watchful intensity that foreshadows her resourceful behavior when the situation grows more dangerous.

Also serving as editor, Mickle modulates the tension with only one or two pardonable detours into ghoulish excess en route to the climactic carnage. He intercuts effectively among the family?s frictions, the doc?s investigation, and flashes of late 18th century action prompted by Rose?s reading of the family journal.

The showdown between Doc Barrow and Frank is right out of a Western. In a role that easily could have toppled over into fire-breathing quasi-religious fanaticism, Sage drags Frank?s menace from the depths of a somber man, all but broken by the death of his wife. Yet his eruptions of monstrous rage are scary indeed. And Parks? timeworn intelligence makes it seem less of a stretch that this small-town medic could be such an ace in the research department, his persistence fueled by lingering pain from the unexplained disappearance of his own daughter.

Among the smaller roles, Russell brings a nice relaxed manner to Anders? touching scenes with Iris; Gore strikes the right balance in a child who?s both innocent and haunted, his young face transformed at times into a ravaged death mask; and McGillis brings salt-of-the-earth warmth to her brief appearances.

Russell Barnes? production design and Elisabeth Vastola?s costumes cleverly support the evidence of the Parkers as descendants of another time and way of life.

The film was shot in locations still recovering in the wake of widespread flooding following Hurricane Irene in 2011, a reality echoed in the power outages that hit the town in this story after the storm. Cinematographer Ryan Samul casts a subtle graveyard gloom over the exteriors, bringing muted tones and a malevolent eye even to some gorgeous scenic shots.

We Are What We Are sustains not only suspense, but also internal logic. The Walking Dead showed that a comic book about a zombie apocalypse could yield muscular American survival drama with non-stereotypical characters. In a comparable way, Mickle and his collaborators have taken one of the more lurid horror subgenres, the predatory cannibal movie, and treated it with stylistic restraint, narrative integrity and even moments of gentle lyricism.

The film grips from start to finish, offering a slyly subversive reflection on clans ? cultists, fundamentalists, or just plain crazies ? who impose their diseased thinking from one generation to the next.

Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Park City at Midnight; eOne Distribution)

Cast: Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner, Jack Gore, Kelly McGillis, Wyatt Russell, Michael Parks, Nick Damici, Kassie Depaiva, Odeya Rush

Production companies: Memento Films International, in association with Uncorked Productions, The Zoo

Director: Jim Mickle

Screenwriters: Nick Damici, Jim Mickle, based on the screenplay ?Somos lo Que Hay,? by Jorge Michel Grau

Producers: Rodrigo Bellott, Andrew D. Corkin, Linda Moran, Nicholas Shumaker, Jack Turner

Executive producers: Emilie Georges, Tanja Meissner, Brett Fitzgerald, Mo Noorali, Rene Bastian, Jacob Pechenick

Director of photography: Ryan Samul

Production designer: Russell Barnes

Music: Philip Mossman, Darren Morris, Jeff Grace

Costume designer: Elisabeth Vastola

Editor: Jim Mickle

Sales: WME, Memento Films

No rating, 105?minutes.

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/we-are-what-we-are-415662

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Obama: Gun-control advocates have to listen more

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, talks about proposals to reduce gun violence at the White House in Washington. Obama has called for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and is pushing other policies in the wake of the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. In response, gun-rights advocates have accused Obama and others of ignoring the Second Amendment rights of Americans. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2013, file photo, President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, talks about proposals to reduce gun violence at the White House in Washington. Obama has called for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and is pushing other policies in the wake of the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. In response, gun-rights advocates have accused Obama and others of ignoring the Second Amendment rights of Americans. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

People walk from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, during a march on Washington for gun control. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

People walk from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, during a march on Washington for gun control. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

People walk from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, during a march on Washington for gun control. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says gun-control advocates should be better listeners in the debate over firearms in America.

In an interview with The New Republic, Obama says he has "a profound respect" for the tradition of hunting that dates back for generations.

"And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas," he says.

Obama has called for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and is pushing other policies following the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. In response, gun-rights advocates have accused Obama and others of ignoring the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

The president says it's understandable that people are protective of their family traditions when it comes to hunting.

"So it's trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes," he says.

Has Obama himself ever fired a gun?

"Yes," the president says, "in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time."

His daughters don't shoot skeet at the presidential retreat in Maryland, he adds, "but oftentimes guests of mine go up there."

The interview appears in the Feb. 11 issue of The New Republic.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-27-US-Obama-Guns/id-edd0fdb2cdce49218973a8bcc5bc8728

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French, Mali forces head toward Timbuktu

Malian soldiers man a checkpoint on the Gao road outside Sevare, some 620 kilometers (385 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. French and Malian troops held a strategic bridge and the airport in the northern town of Gao on Sunday as their force also pressed toward Timbuktu, another stronghold of Islamic extremists in northern Mali, officials said. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Malian soldiers man a checkpoint on the Gao road outside Sevare, some 620 kilometers (385 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. French and Malian troops held a strategic bridge and the airport in the northern town of Gao on Sunday as their force also pressed toward Timbuktu, another stronghold of Islamic extremists in northern Mali, officials said. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

A Malian family's taxi is searched at a checkpoint on the Gao road outside Sevare, some 620 kilometers (385 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. French and Malian troops held a strategic bridge and the airport in the northern town of Gao on Sunday as their force also pressed toward Timbuktu, another stronghold of Islamic extremists in northern Mali, officials said. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

In this image taken during an official visit organized by the Malian army to the town of Konna, some 680 kilometers (430 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, a Malian army armored vehicle used by islamist rebels stands charred. One wing of Mali's Ansar Dine rebel group has split off to create its own movement, saying that they want to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Mali, in a declaration that indicates at least some of the members of the al-Qaida linked group are searching for a way out of the extremist movement in the wake of French air strikes. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

In this image taken during an official visit organized by the Malian army to the town of Konna, some 680 kilometers (430 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013, a videographer films Malian soldiers walking through the rubbles of a former army based leveled during fighting with islamist rebels. One wing of Mali's Ansar Dine rebel group has split off to create its own movement, saying that they want to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Mali, in a declaration that indicates at least some of the members of the al-Qaida linked group are searching for a way out of the extremist movement in the wake of French air strikes. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

in this image taken during an official visit organized by the Malian army to the town of Konna, some 680 kilometers (430 miles) north of Mali's capital Bamako Saturday , Jan. 26, 2013, an ammunition belt lays on the ground of a destroyed base used by Islamist rebels. One wing of Mali's Ansar Dine rebel group has split off to create its own movement, saying that they want to negotiate a solution to the crisis in Mali, in a declaration that indicates at least some of the members of the al-Qaida-linked group are searching for a way out of the extremist movement in the wake of French airstrikes. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

SEVARE, Mali (AP) ? French and Malian forces pushed toward the fabled desert town of Timbuktu on Sunday, as the two-week-long French mission gathered momentum against the Islamist extremists who have ruled the north for more than nine months.

So far the French forces have met little resistance, though it remains unclear what battles may await them farther north. The Malian military blocked dozens of international journalists from trying to travel toward Timbuktu.

Lt. Col. Diarran Kone, a spokesman for Mali's defense minister, declined to give details Sunday about the advance on Timbuktu citing the security of an ongoing operation.

Timbuktu's mayor, Ousmane Halle, is in the capital, Bamako, and he told The Associated Press he had no information about the remote town, where phone lines have been cut for days.

A convoy of about 15 vehicles transporting international journalists also was blocked Sunday afternoon in Konna, some 186 miles (300 kilometers) south of Timbuktu.

The move on Timbuktu comes a day after the French announced they had seized the airport and a key bridge in Gao, one of the other northern provincial capitals under the grip of radical Islamists.

Meanwhile, French and African land forces also were making their way to Gao from neighboring Niger.

French and Malian forces were patrolling Gao Sunday afternoon searching for remnants of the Islamists and maintaining control of the bridge and airport, said Kone, the Mali military spokesman.

The French special forces, which had stormed in by land and by air, had come under fire in Gao from "several terrorist elements" that were later "destroyed," the French military said in a statement on its website Saturday.

In a later press release entitled "French and Malian troops liberate Gao" the French ministry of defense said they brought back the town's mayor, Sadou Diallo, who had fled to the Malian capital of Bamako far to the west.

However, a Gao official interviewed by telephone by The Associated Press said late Saturday that coalition forces so far only controlled the airport, the bridge and surrounding neighborhoods.

And in Paris, a defense ministry official clarified that the city had not been fully liberated, and that the process of freeing Gao was continuing.

Both officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, was seized by a mixture of al-Qaida-linked Islamist fighters more than nine months ago along with the other northern provincial capitals of Kidal and Timbuktu.

The rebel group that turned Gao into a replica of Afghanistan under the Taliban has close ties to Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian national who has long operated in Mali and who last week claimed responsibility for the terror attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in Algeria.

His fighters are believed to include Algerians, Egyptians, Mauritanians, Libyans, Tunisians, Pakistanis and even Afghans.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said late Saturday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Le Drian the United States will aid the French military with aerial refueling missions.

U.S. aerial refueling planes would be a boost to air support for French ground forces as they enter vast areas of northern Mali, the size of Texas, that are controlled by al-Qaida-linked extremists.

The U.S. was already helping France by transporting French troops and equipment to the West African nation. However, the U.S. government has said it cannot provide direct aid to the Malian military because the country's democratically elected president was overthrown in a coup last March.

The Malian forces, however, are now expected to get more help than initially promised from neighboring nations.

Col. Shehu Usman Abdulkadir told The Associated Press that the African force will be expanded from an anticipated 3,200 troops to some 5,700 ? a figure that does not include the 2,200 soldiers promised by Chad.

Most analysts had said the earlier figure was far too small to confront the Islamists given the huge territory they hold.

Since France began its military operation, the Islamists have retreated from three small towns in central Mali: Diabaly, Konna and Douentza. However, the Islamists still control much of the north, including the provincial capital of Kidal.

The Mali conflict will dominate the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sunday and Monday.

___

Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-27-Mali%20Fighting/id-9e98c22c2f464e25afd36eaf1eebb78b

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Egypt declares state of emergency in 3 provinces

Smoke rises after Egyptian protesters clash with police, unseen, in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Violence erupted briefly when some in the crowd fired guns and police responded with volleys of tear gas, witnesses said. State television reported 110 were injured. Egyptian health officials say 3 have been killed in clashes between protesters and police in Port Said. (AP Photo)

Smoke rises after Egyptian protesters clash with police, unseen, in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Violence erupted briefly when some in the crowd fired guns and police responded with volleys of tear gas, witnesses said. State television reported 110 were injured. Egyptian health officials say 3 have been killed in clashes between protesters and police in Port Said. (AP Photo)

Egyptians chant slogans during a mass funeral in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of the restive Egyptian city of Port Said on Sunday for a funeral for most of the 37 people killed in rioting a day earlier, chanting slogans against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. (AP Photo)

Egyptians carry the coffin of a man killed during a mass funeral in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of the restive Egyptian city of Port Said on Sunday for a funeral for most of the 37 people killed in rioting a day earlier, chanting slogans against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. (AP Photo)

Egyptians pray during a mass funeral in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of the restive Egyptian city of Port Said on Sunday for a funeral for most of the 37 people killed in rioting a day earlier, chanting slogans against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. (AP Photo)

Egyptians carry the coffin of a man killed during a mass funeral in Port Said, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of the restive Egyptian city of Port Said on Sunday for a funeral for most of the 37 people killed in rioting a day earlier, chanting slogans against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi. (AP Photo)

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's president declared a state of emergency and curfew in three Suez Canal provinces hit hardest by a weekend wave of unrest that left more than 50 dead, using tactics of the ousted regime to get a grip on discontent over his Islamist policies and the slow pace of change.

Angry and almost screaming, Mohammed Morsi vowed in a televised address on Sunday night that he would not hesitate to take even more action to stem the latest eruption of violence across much of the country. But at the same time, he sought to reassure Egyptians that his latest moves would not plunge the country back into authoritarianism.

"There is no going back on freedom, democracy and the supremacy of the law," he said.

The worst violence this weekend was in the Mediterranean coastal city of Port Said, where seven people were killed on Sunday, pushing the toll for two days of clashes to at least 44. The unrest was sparked on Saturday by a court conviction and death sentence for 21 defendants involved in a mass soccer riot in the city's main stadium on Feb. 1, 2012 that left 74 dead.

Most of those sentenced to death were local soccer fans from Port Said, deepening a sense of persecution that Port Said's residents have felt since the stadium disaster, the worst soccer violence ever in Egypt.

At least another 11 died on Friday elsewhere in the country during rallies marking the second anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising. Protesters used the occasion to renounce Morsi and his Islamic fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged as the country's most dominant political force after Mubarak's ouster.

The curfew and state of emergency, both in force for 30 days, affect the provinces of Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez. The curfew takes effect Monday from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day.

Morsi, in office since June, also invited the nation's political forces to a dialogue starting Monday to resolve the country's latest crisis. A statement issued later by his office said that among those invited were the country's top reform leader, Nobel peace Laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist politician who finished third in last year's presidential race.

The three are leaders of the National Salvation Front, an umbrella for the main opposition parties.

Khaled Dawoud, the Front's spokesman, said Morsi's invitation was meaningless unless he clearly states what is on the agenda. That, he added, must include amending a disputed constitution hurriedly drafted by the president's Islamist allies and rejected by the opposition.

He also faulted the president for not acknowledging his political responsibility for the latest bout of political violence.

"It is all too little too late," he told The Associated Press.

In many ways, Morsi's decree and his call for a dialogue betrayed his despair in the face of wave after wave of political unrest, violence and man-made disasters that, at times, made the country look like it was about to come unglued.

A relative unknown until his Muslim Brotherhood nominated him to run for president last year, Morsi is widely criticized for having offered no vision for the country's future after nearly 30 years of dictatorship under Mubarak and no coherent policy to tackle seemingly endless problems, from a free falling economy and deeply entrenched social injustices to surging crime and chaos on the streets.

Reform of the judiciary and the police, hated under the old regime for brutality, are also key demands of Morsi's critics.

Morsi did not say what he plans to do to stem the violence in other parts of the country outside those three provinces, but he did say he had instructed the police to deal "firmly and forcefully" with individuals attacking state institutions, using firearms to "terrorize" citizens or blocking roads and railway lines.

There were also clashes Sunday in Cairo and several cities in the Nile Delta region, including the industrial city of Mahallah.

Egypt's current crisis is the second to hit the country since November, when Morsi issued decrees, since rescinded, that gave him nearly unlimited powers and placed him above any oversight, including by the judiciary.

The latest eruption of political violence has deepened the malaise as Morsi struggles to get a grip on enormous social and economic problems and the increasingly dangerous fault lines that divide this nation of 85 million.

In an ominous sign, a one-time jihadist group on Sunday blamed the secular opposition for the violence and threatened to set up vigilante militias to defend the government it supports.

Addressing a news conference, Tareq el-Zomr of the once-jihadist Gamaa Islamiya, said:

"If security forces don't achieve security, it will be the right of the Egyptian people and we at the forefront to set up popular committees to protect private and public property and counter the aggression on innocent citizens."

His threat was accompanied by his charge that the opposition was responsible for the deadly violence of the past few days, setting the stage for possible bloody clashes between protesters and Islamist militiamen. The opposition denies the charge.

In Port Said on Sunday, tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets for a mass funeral for most of the 37 people who died on Saturday. They chanted slogans against Morsi.

"We are now dead against Morsi," said Port Said activist Amira Alfy. "We will not rest now until he goes and we will not take part in the next parliamentary elections. Port Said has risen and will not allow even a semblance of normalcy to come back," she said.

The violence flared only a month after a prolonged crisis ? punctuated by deadly violence ? over the new constitution. Ten died in that round of unrest and hundreds were injured.

In Port Said, mourners chanted "There is no God but Allah," and "Morsi is God's enemy" as the funeral procession made its way through the city after prayers for the dead at the city's Mariam Mosque. Women clad in black led the chants, which were quickly picked up by the rest of the mourners.

There were no police or army troops in sight. But the funeral procession briefly halted after gunfire rang out. Security officials said the gunfire came from several mourners who opened fire at the Police Club next to the cemetery. Activists, however, said the gunfire first came from inside the army club, which is also close to the cemetery. Some of the mourners returned fire, which drew more shots as well as tear gas, according to witnesses. They, together with the officials, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation in the city on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the Suez Canal.

A total of 630 people were injured, some of them with gunshot wounds, said Abdel-Rahman Farag, director of the city's hospitals.

Also Sunday, army troops backed by armored vehicles staked out positions at key government facilities to protect state interests and try to restore order.

There was also a funeral in Cairo for two policemen killed in the Port Said violence a day earlier. Several policemen grieving for their colleagues heckled Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the force, when he arrived for their funeral, according to witnesses.

The angry officers screamed at the minister that he was only at the funeral for the TV cameras ? a highly unusual show of dissent in Egypt, where the police force maintains military-like discipline.

Ibrahim hurriedly left and the funeral proceeded without him, a sign that the prestige of the state and its top executives were diminishing.

In Cairo, clashes broke out for the fourth straight day on Sunday, with protesters and police outside two landmark, Nile-side hotels near central Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 2011 uprising. Police fired tear gas while protesters pelted them with rocks.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-27-Egypt/id-c2829ef6b2de4310ba277e8ba32d5497

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Brushes Mars Rock Clean, a First

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pulled out another item from its toolkit for the first time, using a brush to sweep Martian rocks clean of the planet?s ubiquitous red dust, the space agency announced Monday (Jan. 7).

Curiosity?s first use of the Dust Removal Tool at the tip of its robotic arm marks another milestone for the rover, which has spent about five months on the Red Planet. The Curiosity rover landed Aug. 5 to begin a two-year mission to determine if the Mars may have once been habitable for primitive life.

The Dust Removal Tool is a brush that allows Curiosity to sweep away the reddish-brown particles that coat most surfaces on Mars, in order to get a better look at rocks that could be worth drilling into?for further study. The motorized brush is made with wire bristles, and is attached to the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

The tool, built by New York City-based Honeybee Robotics, resembles brushes that flew to Mars on NASA's previous rover missions, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

"This is similar to the brush on board the Rock Abrasion Tools on Spirit and Opportunity, and will let researchers get a look at the rock (rather than the pervasive dust) before deciding whether to drill for a sample," Honeybee Robotics spokesman John Abrashkin told SPACE.com.

For its inaugural run, Curiosity mission planners chose to use the brush on a Martian rock called "Ekwir_1," which sits in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Curiosity's landing site in Mars' Gale Crater.

"We wanted to be sure we had an optimal target for the first use," Diana Trujillo, the mission's activity lead for the Dust Removal Tool at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We need to place the instrument within less than half an inch of the target without putting the hardware at risk. We needed a flat target, one that wasn't rough, one that was covered with dust. The results certainly look good."

Cleaning the dust off rocks not only allows Curiosity to get a better look at them, but clears away surface contaminants that might confuse samples taken from deeper in the rocks after the rover digs down into them with its hammering drill.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover is exploring Yellowknife Bay as it makes its way toward a point called Glenelg at the base of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain that rises up from the center of Gale Crater.

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz.?Follow SPACE.com on Twitter?@Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook?&?Google+.?

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-brushes-mars-rock-clean-first-055358174.html

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