Wednesday, April 8, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/british-pm-david-cameron-caught-eating-hot-dog-knife-fork-n337046

British PM David Cameron Caught Eating Hot Dog With Knife and Fork
- Alastair Jamieson
First published April 7th 2015

LONDON — An attempt by Britain's prime minister to connect with ordinary voters during the election campaign appeared to fail Tuesday after cameras captured him eating a hot dog with knife and fork.

David Cameron, the blue-blooded son of a stockbroker and who was educated at elite private school Eton College, is often caricatured as out-of-touch with a country struggling with his Conservative government's austerity measures.

He attended a barbecue in Dorset, southern England, on Monday, but instead of demonstrating the common touch he was pictured taking a mannerly approach to the all-American snack — earning him online ridicule.

"Hahhaa, David Cameron eating a hot dog with a knife and fork. Silver service only for the privileged!" was typical of the comments on Twitter Tuesday, 30 days ahead of Britain's general election.

"What kind of monster eats a hot dog with a knife and fork?" asked another.

It wasn't clear if Cameron was unaware of how most people eat their hot dogs or if he was simply trying to avoid repeating the mistake of his main opponent, Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who was recently pictured making a hard job of eating a bacon sandwich.

Cameron's cutlery awkwardness was an echo of the moment when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I ate their first hot dogs during a royal visit to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's family home in upstate New York in 1939. The baffled queen chose a knife and fork despite Roosevelt's suggestion that she use her hands to eat.

However, he wouldn't be the first lawmaker to raise an eyebrow for using cutlery. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio ate a pizza using a knife and fork during a 2014 visit to a Staten Island restaurant weeks into his new job, provoking howls of outrage.




“An attempt by Britain's prime minister to connect with ordinary voters during the election campaign appeared to fail Tuesday after cameras captured him eating a hot dog with knife and fork. David Cameron, the blue-blooded son of a stockbroker and who was educated at elite private school Eton College, is often caricatured as out-of-touch with a country struggling with his Conservative government's austerity measures. …. Cameron's cutlery awkwardness was an echo of the moment when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I ate their first hot dogs during a royal visit to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's family home in upstate New York in 1939. The baffled queen chose a knife and fork despite Roosevelt's suggestion that she use her hands to eat.”

I am currently reading a biography of the present Queen Elizabeth which goes back to the time of Victoria and gives lots of historical, political and cultural information about England. In that book is a description of letters that Queen Elizabeth I wrote to her daughter the present queen. She was very excited about the hot dogs. She had never seen or tasted them before, and liked them very much.

This failure to avoid seeming “out of touch” reminds me of a recent article on a special school for US Republicansto practice how they should behave. The party has actually constructed a small town with modest-looking buildings in which faux businesses are operating. One is a restaurant. The trainee goes in the restaurant to practice his campaign skills before the audience of “locals” (who are actually actors), using folksy language, rolling his shirtsleeves up to the elbow like Obama often does, and eating plain plebian food. They are there to learn how to be accepting and charming to the “average man” and get his vote. It's both funny to me and slightly nauseating.





http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/obama-says-he-would-act-fast-take-cuba-terrorism-list-n337091

Obama Says He Would Act Fast To Take Cuba Off Terrorism List
Reuters World
April 7, 2015

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he would act fast to take Cuba off the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries once he gets a State Department recommendation.

"As soon as I get a recommendation, I'll be in a position to act on it," Obama said in an interview with National Public Radio.

In a March interview with Reuters Obama had said he hoped to have an embassy open in Cuba by the time of the April 10-11 Summit of the Americas later this week. There Obama will meet with Cuban president Raul Castro. Cuba has made it clear that it will not move on certain negotiations until it is removed from the list.

Cuba had been added to the list of terrorism sponsors in 1982 when it was aiding Marxist insurgencies. Since then the country has been aiding a peace process with Colombia's left-wing FARC guerrillas.

Obama said in the NPR interview the U.S. hopes to be in a position to have an embassy in Cuba and have more regular contacts and consultations on different issues. "What I'm saying is, I'm going to be taking a very close look at what the State Department recommends," Obama said.




“In a March interview with Reuters Obama had said he hoped to have an embassy open in Cuba by the time of the April 10-11 Summit of the Americas later this week. There Obama will meet with Cuban president Raul Castro. Cuba has made it clear that it will not move on certain negotiations until it is removed from the list. Cuba had been added to the list of terrorism sponsors in 1982 when it was aiding Marxist insurgencies. Since then the country has been aiding a peace process with Colombia's left-wing FARC guerrillas.”

"What I'm saying is, I'm going to be taking a very close look at what the State Department recommends," Obama said.” This does look like the kind of thing the Tea Party will be dead set against because it is pure diplomacy rather than a threatening approach against the old enemy Cuba. To me, from what I have seen of Raul Castro, he is not the ridiculously posturing and hostile leader that his brother was. I'm all for an agreement to normalize relations and drop the sanctions. By any logical standard more friends and fewer enemies is a good thing!






RACIAL INCIDENTS


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/activists-protest-in-town-where-mississippi-man-was-hanged/

Activists protest in town where Mississippi man was hanged
AP April 5, 2015

Photograph – Otis Byrd.  CBS NEWS

PORT GIBSON, Miss. -- Two weekend gatherings at the Claiborne County Courthouse called for action in the death of Otis Byrd, a man reported missing early in March and found March 19, hanging from a tree.

The investigation is taking too long, organizers of both groups told the Vicksburg Post, saying they won't believe it if authorities report that Byrd killed himself.

"We want justice, and we want justice now," said Claiborne County NAACP president Evan Doss, who led a Saturday morning march and rally. "We're not going to accept suicide. That's just not there."

Byrd, 54, was found hanging by a bed sheet from a branch of a tree behind his rented house.

If agents in Port Gibson cannot say by now whether he was killed or killed himself, more agents are needed, said Doss.

The team of federal, state and local investigators is waiting for FBI Laboratory test results, said Don Alway, FBI special agent in charge for Mississippi.

"We'll combine those results with many other facts we've gathered, to give the results context. These facts will give investigators the most accurate information to determine what happened," he said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.

Claiborne County Supervisor Edwin Smith told the first gathering, "I'd like to apologize on behalf of the county. These people deserve action. We've been disrespected. If they can look at a satellite and get your tag number, we can surely get some closure on this."

Stephanie Atlas said her husband worked with Byrd, and she doesn't believe he committed suicide.

"He wasn't that type of person, so I wanted to come and support the family," she said. "He didn't take his own life."

The national chair of the New Black Panther Party, Krystal Muhammad, led a Saturday afternoon community meeting on the courthouse steps.

"We know that Otis Byrd was lynched," she said. "We're not going to let it just be a cover-up. We went and looked at the scene ourselves. It's impossible that he lynched himself, and we're not going to let Mississippi get away with their old Mississippi ways."

Claiborne County Sheriff Marvin Lucas said people need patience.

"All I ask is that people let the authorities do their job and don't feed into that foolishness, that hearsay," he said.




“The investigation is taking too long, organizers of both groups told the Vicksburg Post, saying they won't believe it if authorities report that Byrd killed himself. "We want justice, and we want justice now," said Claiborne County NAACP president Evan Doss, who led a Saturday morning march and rally. "We're not going to accept suicide. That's just not there." Byrd, 54, was found hanging by a bed sheet from a branch of a tree behind his rented house. …. The team of federal, state and local investigators is waiting for FBI Laboratory test results, said Don Alway, FBI special agent in charge for Mississippi. "We'll combine those results with many other facts we've gathered, to give the results context. These facts will give investigators the most accurate information to determine what happened," he said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. …. The national chair of the New Black Panther Party, Krystal Muhammad, led a Saturday afternoon community meeting on the courthouse steps. "We know that Otis Byrd was lynched," she said. "We're not going to let it just be a cover-up. We went and looked at the scene ourselves. It's impossible that he lynched himself, and we're not going to let Mississippi get away with their old Mississippi ways."

I do hope whoever did murder can be found and sent to prison for the rest of their lives. I used the plural because one man alone can't do a lynching – it's a gang activity of choice among whites in some localities which has never completely stopped. Every few years there is a lynching, it seems to me from news reports. We can't accept lynchings in these times. We have made so much progress in so many ways that it would be a shame to let these atrocities go unpunished.




3 http://www.npr.org/2015/04/06/396780902/ferguson-activists-hope-that-momentum-sparks-a-national-movement

Ferguson Activists Hope That Momentum Sparks A National Movement
Cheryl Corley
APRIL 06, 2015

Photograph – Activists gather at a school next door to the Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson, Mo. for a meeting of what the Organization for Black Struggle was calling a "People's Movement Assembly."
Cheryl Corley/NPR

Since August, several U.S cities have been at the center of protests about policing and race. Activists in Ferguson, Mo., demonstrated for months in the aftermath of the shooting death of Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old killed by a white police officer last summer. They also have demanded resignations and pushed for new laws in what organizers say is the start of a national movement for justice.

On a crisp, sunny Saturday afternoon, about 100 people gathered at a school next door to Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson. The church has been a gathering spot and safe haven for activists in the St. Louis region.

"The responses that we've seen over the last seven months wouldn't have happened without you actually being willing to be in the streets, without you being willing to be intentionally involved in movement-building," says 41-year-old Montague Simmons, head of the Organization for Black Struggle. It was one of the main groups coordinating protests in the aftermath of Brown's death.

"It's hard to reconcile the idea that in death, there is something being born out of it," he says. "But they left him on the ground just long enough that his blood gave birth to something else, so that we can actually transform this predicament we find ourselves in."

The Organization for Black Struggle has been active in the area for several years, but other groups sprang up last summer, including the Don't Shoot Coalition, a collection of about 50 activist groups.

Co-chair Michael T. McPhearson says the coalition is working to keep a national spotlight on the issue of policing in communities of color. He acknowledges there are struggles regarding coordination, funding and internal disputes, but says there's a lesson to be learned from the movement of more than 50 years ago.

"If you look at the civil rights movement — and we tend to romanticize the civil rights movement — it took over a decade for it to manifest the outcomes it was looking for," he says. "It didn't just happen. It wasn't like a six-month thing and then it was, you know, we got all the civil rights that we're still fighting for right now."

A big advantage of today versus those earlier times, some organizers say, is the ability to use social media to make connections — there's no need to wait for cameras to show up to get a message out. But Simmons says the movement of the '50s and '60s worked in ways that are challenging for this generation of activists to replicate

"During those eras you had communities, and usually faith communities, that came together to provide housing needs, to provide food, to provide transportation, to help support and create an infrastructure for movement-building," he says. "That doesn't exist anymore ... definitely not the same way."

So now, Simmons says, activists are working to rebuild a movement while also trying to create an infrastructure for organizing — that's the hard work that comes after the high octane energy of street protests.

Activist and hip-hop artist Tef Poe, co-founder of Hands Up United, says there are questions about persuading some street protesters to work with more structure.

"For us, that is a struggle," he says. "For the most part everyone is a rebel amongst rebels."

Still, Tef Poe says national coordination helped keep the movement going, including in New York City in the protests regarding the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man died after police used a chokehold on him during an arrest.

"Police brutality — it's at the point now where it's too far gone in the black community," he says. "It has to be addressed."

Brittany Ferrell, co-founder of Millennial Activists United, says that while its important for activists to stay in the streets protesting, young people should also raise their voices in the traditional political arena. Ferrell points to the nearly all-white city leadership and police force in predominantly black Ferguson as a concern.

"We need to be in positions of power and have a say in our spaces," she says.

Ferrell says she and other activists with her group have spoken at high schools and will work this summer to launch a political workshop series for young people "to ready them potentially for running for candidates in their neighborhood, like aldermen and mayor, and what that means, and what your responsibilities would be and is this why you should do it," she says.

These activists say the national focus on policing — and the Department of Justice report blasting Ferguson's police department for widespread racial bias — has brought some change, resignations of top city officials and more minority candidates running for local office. They also say they plan to keep the momentum going to make certain their movement brings about lasting change.





“Still, Tef Poe says national coordination helped keep the movement going, including in New York City in the protests regarding the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man died after police used a chokehold on him during an arrest. "Police brutality — it's at the point now where it's too far gone in the black community," he says. "It has to be addressed." Brittany Ferrell, co-founder of Millennial Activists United, says that while its important for activists to stay in the streets protesting, young people should also raise their voices in the traditional political arena. …. Ferrell says she and other activists with her group have spoken at high schools and will work this summer to launch a political workshop series for young people "to ready them potentially for running for candidates in their neighborhood, like aldermen and mayor, and what that means, and what your responsibilities would be and is this why you should do it," she says.”

This does look to me to be a movement of widespread public scrutiny and basic changes in policing. The outcry at each new incident continues and a few police departments including Ferguson have made improvements in police training and oversight – and that should help. Smart phone cameras, YouTube and other Internet sites, instantaneous communication via Twitter and Facebook are also helping. The Supreme Court has to be brought in to question laws that give police officers carte blanche in their “judgment” of the moment which gives them the excuse that they “felt afraid for my life,” as a number of officers have said. The PD in Charleston, SC didn't back Officer Slager up yesterday, very likely because of public pressure, and the Police Chief wept at their press conference when he announced the charge of murder. We'll have to see what the local courts do about it, and then the Supreme Court in turn. Still the most recent several cases do look better for the cause of justice than has traditionally been the case. Usually the courts automatically free the officer and back up his action, which makes a mockery of the laws in existence. There's still a long way to go, of course, so I will continue to pick it up when I see an article about another shooting.





http://news.yahoo.com/hunting-land-cant-help-hungry-polar-bear-152046868.html

Hunting on Land Can't Help a Hungry Polar Bear
By Becky Oskin
April 6, 2015

Photograph – A polar bear rests on sea ice in the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia.

Even though some polar bears are hunting on land more often in areas hit by climate change, a diet of bird eggs and berries can't sustain these huge animals, a new study finds.

Only a handful of polar bears have been spotted snacking on land-based foods to supplement their traditional, blubber-rich diet of seals and marine mammals. But researchers have wondered whether the high-protein, high-carbohydrate foods polar bears eat on land — such as caribou and berries — could help these symbols of the perils of climate change survive, as sea-ice loss makes seals harder to snatch.

It turns out the calorie trade-off isn't worth it, according to the study, a review of previous research on bear diets published today (April 1) in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The biggest bears on the planet, polar bears spend so much energy searching for berries or chasing down caribou that they reap little caloric reward from these meals. [In Images: Polar Bears' Shifting Diet]

"A really large bear has high energetic costs when they get up to forage, and these [terrestrial] resources are typically lower in calories or widely dispersed," said Karyn Rode, lead study author and a U.S. Geological Survey research wildlife biologist in Anchorage, Alaska.

Polar bears get all the calories, vitamins and minerals they need from their traditional diet, which is the fattiest of any animal on Earth. But their nearest geographic cousin, the Arctic grizzly, struggles to find enough food.

Rode points out that Arctic grizzlies are the smallest of all grizzlies. These aren't the giant brown bears that gorge at Southeast Alaska salmon streams. Arctic grizzlies are just a quarter the size of polar bears, Rode said. "The first time I saw an Arctic grizzly I was laughing, it was so small," she told Live Science.

Polar bears typically spend 85 percent of their time on land, resting and fasting. A grizzly, on the other hand, forages all the time, Rode said.

Finally, even if a few polar bears do make bird eggs and other terrestrial foods an important part of their diet, the bears may gobble so many eggs that they might decimate the Arctic seabird population. "Terrestrial foods can't offer polar bears what they need at a population level," Rode said.

Global warming has reduced the amount of Arctic sea ice near shore, especially in the late spring when polar bears hunt for seal pups before moving onto land for the summer. Polar bears mainly hunt for seals on the sea ice. The shrinking sea ice is sending the bears to shore earlier in the season in some areas of the Arctic, such as Hudson Bay, Canada, and their arrival overlaps with hunting opportunities for geese, eggs and caribou.

However, polar bear populations are stable in other Arctic areas, such as the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia, Rode said. And the availability of marine prey could change as new species move north to claim warming ocean waters.

"If terrestrial feeding can't help, there are other things we need to be thinking about," Rode said.




“It turns out the calorie trade-off isn't worth it, according to the study, a review of previous research on bear diets published today (April 1) in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The biggest bears on the planet, polar bears spend so much energy searching for berries or chasing down caribou that they reap little caloric reward from these meals. [In Images: Polar Bears' Shifting Diet] "A really large bear has high energetic costs when they get up to forage, and these [terrestrial] resources are typically lower in calories or widely dispersed," said Karyn Rode, lead study author and a U.S. Geological Survey research wildlife biologist in Anchorage, Alaska. …. However, polar bear populations are stable in other Arctic areas, such as the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia, Rode said. And the availability of marine prey could change as new species move north to claim warming ocean waters.”

This article doesn't make the polar bears' future look very hopeful. They are beautiful creatures and I really hate to think of their becoming extinct. They won't be the only species to die with climate change, of course. Maybe a few can be kept alive in zoos for breeding. Maybe this warming trend will be a phase rather than a permanent change.




UNFAIR COMPETITION TO LOCAL MARKETS


http://www.globalpost.com/article/6505309/2015/04/02/maps-uber-legal-troubles-world

These are the places that are trying to put the brakes on Uber
Eva Grant and Simran Khosla
Apr 2, 2015

Graphics – The map above shows the places around the world that are trying to restrict Uber's operations. Here's a large version of the map. 

Uber is valued at more than $40 billion. Will that be enough to cover its legal fees?

On paper, the ride-sharing/taxi service is one of Silicon Valley's most successful startups, which is sort of incredible considering the string of public relations disasters it's suffered (and created) over the past year.

Uber has been plagued by sexual assault allegations. (In India, it's rolling out a depressing new feature to improve safety: an "SOS" button.) Senior executives, including CEO Travis Kalanick, said some very brand destructive things about women and journalists. And on March 23, 2015, UN Women ended a partnership with the company just a few weeks after announcing it was starting one. 

And then there are the legal restrictions. 

Uber doesn’t function as a normal taxi service, instead occupying the strange business space between chauffeur service and tech company. Uber often foregoes taxi licenses for many of its drivers, causing legal hiccups when the company enters new, heavily regulated markets. Some countries and regions have completely banned the service, finding it illegal under national or state laws. Other places, like France and Germany, ban just its discount services, such as UberPOP and UberX.

As you can probably guess, Uber's legal status varies country-by-country — a lot —and so does its response to legal challenges.

Some nations and cities, like South Korea, have chosen to delay their decisions on Uber, asking the service to suspend operations until they can pass Uber-specific legislation and regulations. In some cases, Uber has independently chosen to suspended operations in response to growing pressure from local communities and municipalities (like in Panama City Beach, Florida). In other places, it's continued to operate in the face of that pressure. (In Cape Town, South Africa, for example, traffic police impounded 34 Uber vehicles for operating illegally.) Other times, legal loopholes have allowed it to continue their operations. In Germany, where ride-sharing services are banned from operating without taxi licenses, Uber plans to purchase commercial licenses for its drivers.

Even legal clarity doesn't guarantee a smooth ride when it comes to introducing new competition into the local taxi market. In Brussels, a cab driver intimidated and harassed multiple Uber drivers, including one incident where he threw eggs and flour at an employee. And cities around the world have held protests against the company.

The map above shows the places around the world that are trying to restrict Uber's operations. Here's a large version of the map. 



Uber (company)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Uber is an American international company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, markets and operates the mobile-app-based transportation network also called Uber. The Uber app allows consumers to submit a trip request, which is routed to crowd-sourced taxi drivers.[1][2] As of March 26, 2015, the service was available in 55 countries and more than 200 cities worldwide.[3] Since Uber's launch, several other companies have emulated its business model, a trend that has come to be referred to as "Uberification".[4][5]

Uber was founded as "UberCab" by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009 and the app was released the following June. It raised $49 million in venture funds by 2011. Beginning in 2012, Uber expanded internationally. In 2014, it experimented with carpooling features and made other updates. It continuously raised additional funding, reaching $2.8 billion in total funding by 2015. Many governments and taxi companies have protested against Uber, alleging that its use of unlicensed, crowd-sourced drivers was unsafe or illegal.

Founding[edit]

The idea for Uber came to Travis Kalanick when he was trying to find a cab to attend a 2008 LeWeb conference in Paris, France but he could not find one. Kalanick cites "Paris as the inspiration for Uber".[6] Uber was founded as "UberCab" by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2009. The service was launched in San Francisco in June 2010, with Ryan Graves appointed as CEO. Graves later stepped down from that role to become VP of Operations and was replaced by Kalanick.[7] Uber's mobile app for iPhones and Android phones was launched in San Francisco in 2010.[8]

By August 2014, the company had raised US$1.5 billion in venture capital.[14] Uber hired David Plouffe as a lobbyist in the same month,[15] who joined the company's numerous other lobbyists.[16]

The Wall Street Journal reported on December 5, 2014, that Uber has raised US$1.2 billion from a number of investors, including sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, New Enterprise Associates, and hedge fundsValiant Capital Partners and Lone Pine Capital. The successful investors, the names of which Uber did not disclose, participated in a competitive bidding process that lasted several weeks, and their investments meant that Uber was worth US$41 billion. The article only referred to "people familiar with the matter" in regard to the sources of its information.[17]

UberPop and UberPool in Paris and New York[edit]

In the first half of 2014, the UberPop version of the app was launched in Paris, France, whereby users are linked to drivers without professional taxi or chauffeur licenses, while Uber covers supplemental insurance—UberPop was expanded to other European cities over the course of the year.[40] On June 6, 2014, Uber announced US$1.2 billion in funding during its latest round. The round valued Uber at around $17 billion pre-money.[41]

The UberPool service was then introduced to the Parisian market in November 2014, a month after a French court deemed the company's UberPop service to be illegal—Uber claimed that UberPool was the next iteration of the UberPop concept. Uber's Western Europe chief told reporters at the time that it was "very confident" about overturning the court decision.[40] At the start of February 2015, the UberPool service was still operational in Paris, France, despite the regulatory opposition in that country.[42]

Uber announced on December 2, 2014, that the UberPool concept would be rolled out the following week in New York, U.S. The Uber blog announcement offered riders the possibility of reducing their journey costs by 20 to 50 percent, explaining: "On any given day, the vast majority of UberX trips in NYC have a 'lookalike' trip—a trip that starts near, ends near, and is happening around the same time as another trip".[43]

Lawsuits by private entities[edit]

In December 2013, an Uber driver ran over and killed a six-year-old girl in San Francisco, severely injuring her mother and brother in the same incident. The driver was not carrying a passenger, but the girl's family filed a wrongful death claim against Uber, claiming the driver was using Uber's mobile application at the time.[153][154][155]

In September 2014, a class-action was filed by Atlanta, Georgia taxicab drivers and CPNC holders as the plaintiff class, against Uber Technologies, Inc., its subsidiary Raiser LLC (which operates UberX), and in a rare move, all of both companies' drivers as a defendant class in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, for restitution of all metered fares collected via the Uber and UberX apps for trips originating within the Atlanta city limits.[156]

In December 2014, Checker Cab Philadelphia and 44 other taxi companies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that Uber was operating illegally in the city.[157]

In 2015, a Delhi woman who claims to have been raped by Uber driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, in her city, is suing the company for negligence in US courts.[158]




“Uber doesn’t function as a normal taxi service, instead occupying the strange business space between chauffeur service and tech company. Uber often foregoes taxi licenses for many of its drivers, causing legal hiccups when the company enters new, heavily regulated markets. Some countries and regions have completely banned the service, finding it illegal under national or state laws. Other places, like France and Germany, ban just its discount services, such as UberPOP and UberX. As you can probably guess, Uber's legal status varies country-by-country — a lot —and so does its response to legal challenges.”

I didn't know until I saw this article what Uber actually is. I had the vague impression that it was a type of car, not a type of taxi service. If I were wealthy and I lived in a concentrated city area like NYC, I probably wouldn't drive a car due to the difficulty in finding parking places. When I lived in Washington DC I did have a car for about a year, but gave it up over the parking problems. The bus and subway service there is excellent and I rarely went outside the city area. If I were unable to walk around due to severe arthritis, that would make it more attractive, however. I can see the usefulness of buying this app for such use, and especially if I were a frequent traveler where finding taxis in a strange city might be difficult. I can see why local taxi services would hate Uber, however, and so the legal challenges in some countries. I must say it is a very clever idea as a type of service business, and I give the owners credit for ingenuity.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2015/04/07/397886748/a-new-internet-domain-extortion-or-free-speech

A New Internet Domain: Extortion Or Free Speech?
YUKI NOGUCHI
APRIL 07, 2015

A rash of new Web domain suffixes have popped up in recent years to supplement .com or .net — terms such as .bargains or .dating.

Several new suffixes seem to invite negative feedback. There's .gripe and .fail. There's even .wtf — a colorful variation on "what the heck." And soon, there will be .sucks.

J. Scott Evans says his objection isn't that it sounds whiny. It's the price. Evans is associate general counsel at Adobe Systems, and for a trademark owner like his to claim Adobe.sucks would cost $2,500 a year. That's more than a hundred times the typical fee.

"I basically think it's extortion," Evans says.

Adobe purchased relevant suffixes like .photo, Evans says, but it will not buy defensively to protect the brand. "We are not going to participate in any sort of extortion scheme," he says.

Someone else may register the name. But, Evans says, there's a remedy:

"I told my people the best way not to get included is not to suck," he says.

But most companies don't want to risk giving up control, says Elisa Cooper, vice president at MarkMonitor, which helps monitor brand reputation. "If the brands have the concern, they're acquiring it," she says.

Some of the brands that block others from using their name include Wal-Mart, Hotmail, and insurance giant AIG.

By and large, Cooper says, these folks aren't pleased. "Oh, they are furious," she says.

They don't want their brands abused. But they're also aware that by paying up, they foster an unwanted industry.

"If it's shown that this is a profitable situation, you can imagine that there'll probably be others that copy it in the future," Cooper says.

The administrator of the new registry is a company called Vox Populi. Its CEO, John Berard, says the annual $2,500 fee is a relative steal.

"A little over year ago, we were contemplating a price of $25,000," he says.

He says Vox Populi, as the name suggests, gives the people a voice. Its ad includes rousing clips from Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches and an endorsement from political activist Ralph Nader:

"The word sucks is now a protest word. And it's up to people to give it more meaning," Nader says in the video.

Berard says he expects companies will use these sites to engage with their customers.

"It's our belief that if a company choses to register its name in the .sucks domain, that it will cultivate it as a clean well-lighted place for criticism, for better understanding," he says.

Independent activists who want to use the suffix and pledge to blog can pay as little as $10 a year.

But what if someone wants to claim another individual's name? Berard says the registry will police for cyberbullying. But if a person wants to preemptively block their name, that will cost $200 a year.

Berard admits the suffix itself may be controversial, but he says the content doesn't have to be.

"If you're trying to get someone's attention to make a point, or to be heard, it's possible that the sharper edge of a .sucks domain could be just the thing," he says.

Cyrus Namazi is vice president at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which governs Web domains. He says when Vox Populi applied, it didn't draw any complaints.

"There were actually no objections," he says.

And, Namazi adds, curbing use of new domains is tricky. "We have to keep in mind that freedom of speech is actually one of the fundamental rules of the United States of America as well as the fundamental rule of what the Internet is supposed to enable," he says.

Sites ending in .sucks will go live in June.




“A rash of new Web domain suffixes have popped up in recent years to supplement .com or .net — terms such as .bargains or .dating. Several new suffixes seem to invite negative feedback. There's .gripe and .fail. There's even .wtf — a colorful variation on "what the heck." And soon, there will be .sucks. …. By and large, Cooper says, these folks aren't pleased. "Oh, they are furious," she says. They don't want their brands abused. But they're also aware that by paying up, they foster an unwanted industry. "If it's shown that this is a profitable situation, you can imagine that there'll probably be others that copy it in the future," Cooper says. The administrator of the new registry is a company called Vox Populi. Its CEO, John Berard, says the annual $2,500 fee is a relative steal.”

The Internet is again proving to be a source of unfair or even illegal practices and there is apparently little being done about it. I thought that was what trademark registration was all about. Many businesses are caving in to the attacks by Vox Populi and defensively buying up the abusive domain names when they pop up. A few like Wal-Mart are “blocking” others from using their name in this way, so how are they blocking it and why aren't all companies doing that? Is it merely too expensive? It seems to me that this practice should be illegal. One business owner has described it as extortion, and that is exactly what it looks like to me. Vox Populi grants an interloper a website with your business name but the extension reads .sucks. Vox Populi then charges two thousand dollars or so to take the name down. The law needs to act, I think. The Internet is a wild, wild west environment at this time. Numerous child pornography sites exist, Craigs List has been the contact means for rapists and even killers to stalk down their prey, and it is my belief that these should be taken down and the owner charged with a crime – supporting or promoting sexual abuse, for instance. This needs to be changed so that those whose good name or privacy rights are abused can get justice.






http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/04/07/396195610/a-new-orleans-high-school-adapts-to-unaccompanied-minors

A New Orleans High School Adapts To Unaccompanied Minors
Claudio Sanchez
Correspondent, Education, National Desk
April 7, 2015

Photograph – Ben Davis, Carver Prep's principal, says of his school's newest additions, "They know they could be deported at any point, and that's a really, really terrifying reality for them."
LA Johnson/NPR

G.W. Carver Preparatory Academy has enrolled more than 50 unaccompanied minors from Central America. Principal Ben Davis says he's spending an extra $2,500 per student for special education services and instructional software tailored for them.

For the past year now, many Americans have been hearing and reading about the 68,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed illegally into the U.S. Nearly all of these minors come from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, and since their arrival, immigration officials have released most of them to their parents or relatives who already live in this country.

A number of these children and teenagers are in deportation proceedings, but while they wait, they have been allowed to attend public schools. In Louisiana, schools have enrolled nearly 2,000 of them.

I reported in October on G.W. Carver Preparatory Academy, a charter school in New Orleans' 9th Ward that took in more than 50 of these children. Recently, I went back to see how they're doing.

The adjustment — for the students and the school — hasn't been easy. But Principal Ben Davis loves talking about the new Latino students who showed up at his school last August. He adds, though, that he hates the fact that most may not be with him very long.

"They know they could be deported at any point and that's a really, really terrifying reality for them," says Davis. You can see the emotional toll that this uncertainty is taking on them, he says. "The rates of trauma are really high."

So much so that Carver Prep has had to provide "trauma screenings" because teachers know all too well that depressed, anxious kids are much much harder to teach.

Still, most of these new arrivals seem grateful. They're learning English and catching up in math and science. Yet some are struggling to fit in, and that has contributed to tension between them and the rest of the student body, which is mostly poor, mostly African-American.

On the morning I visited, for example, there was a fight between a black student and one of the new Latino students. Teachers stepped in quickly to restrain one of the students involved.

One Latino student who saw the scuffle says there was a knife involved. It turns out not to be true.

Some of the new Latino students complain that black kids pick on them all the time.

"They insult us and hit us," says a boy named Yordan in Spanish. Since the students risk deportation, the school has asked that we use their first names only.

Not knowing English seems to be part of the problem. Sometimes, the black students think Spanish-speaking students are saying bad things about them, and Latino students suspect the same about their black classmates.

"Its a high school, and every school struggles with kids learning to get along with each other," says Davis. "I don't see this as some kind of racial-tension issue."

As the last morning bus drops off its last batch of students, I see a familiar face. It's Yashua, a 14-year-old from Honduras I interviewed last fall. I say hello from a distance and ask him how he's doing.

"Fine," he says.

Yashua is in deportation proceedings and has a court date scheduled for early May. His mother didn't want us to talk to him this time around because she thinks talking to the media could hurt his chances.

Teachers and administrators at Carver Prep have been patient and generous with these students. Davis says he's spending an extra $2,500 per student for special education services and instructional computer software tailored just for them. It allows them to take PowerPoint presentations a teacher creates and translate them into Spanish.

Carver Prep has also reassigned two teachers who've been trained to work with kids who don't know English. Coming up with the money for all this has not been easy.

But Louisiana and 34 other states are supposed to receive an additional $14 million in federal aid to pay for a wide range of academic and nonacademic services for these students. After all, these unaccompanied minors arrived not just emotionally distraught but often with little or no schooling.

"I can't even imagine what they've gone through," says Pete Kohn, an algebra teacher.

Kohn had never worked with students who don't know English. So he and a handful of his fellow teachers traveled to Honduras over winter break to study Spanish, on their own dime.

"That shows [my students] that I care about them, and they've responded," Kohn says. "They asked lots of questions: 'What did you see? Did you eat this, did you see this?' "

Despite the travel restrictions that Honduras has put in place, especially for tourists, Kohn says it was impossible to miss the poverty and lawlessness that students say they're fleeing from.

That's why the stability these kids now have, however brief, is important, he adds. "My day-to-day goal is to make sure that no matter where they end up they have more skills than they came here with, and make sure they felt like they were with people who cared about them."

The extra care and attention that teachers and administrators believe they've provided, apparently has paid off. This semester, nearly half of the ninth and 10th graders on the school's honor roll are unaccompanied minors.




“Nearly all of these minors come from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, and since their arrival, immigration officials have released most of them to their parents or relatives who already live in this country. A number of these children and teenagers are in deportation proceedings, but while they wait, they have been allowed to attend public schools. In Louisiana, schools have enrolled nearly 2,000 of them. …. The adjustment — for the students and the school — hasn't been easy. But Principal Ben Davis loves talking about the new Latino students who showed up at his school last August. He adds, though, that he hates the fact that most may not be with him very long. "They know they could be deported at any point and that's a really, really terrifying reality for them," says Davis. You can see the emotional toll that this uncertainty is taking on them, he says. "The rates of trauma are really high." …. Still, most of these new arrivals seem grateful. They're learning English and catching up in math and science. Yet some are struggling to fit in, and that has contributed to tension between them and the rest of the student body, which is mostly poor, mostly African-American. …. "They insult us and hit us," says a boy named Yordan in Spanish. Since the students risk deportation, the school has asked that we use their first names only. Not knowing English seems to be part of the problem. Sometimes, the black students think Spanish-speaking students are saying bad things about them, and Latino students suspect the same about their black classmates. …. But Louisiana and 34 other states are supposed to receive an additional $14 million in federal aid to pay for a wide range of academic and nonacademic services for these students. After all, these unaccompanied minors arrived not just emotionally distraught but often with little or no schooling.”

“The extra care and attention that teachers and administrators believe they've provided, apparently has paid off. This semester, nearly half of the ninth and 10th graders on the school's honor roll are unaccompanied minors.” They may be behind in their schoolwork, but they are apparently trying hard and are intelligent enough to make top grades. I'm impressed. I'm also glad to see that there is some kind of bright future with those kids who just recently traveled a thousand miles or so to get to the US.





http://www.npr.org/2015/04/06/396905885/when-did-humans-start-shaping-earths-fate-an-epoch-debate

When Did Humans Start Shaping Earth's Fate? An Epoch Debate
Nell Greenfieldboyce
Correspondent, Science Desk
APRIL 06, 2015


Humans have had such a huge impact on the Earth that some geologists think the human era should be enshrined in the official timeline of our planet.

They want to give the age of humans a formal name, just as scientists use terms like the Jurassic or the Cretaceous to talk about the age of dinosaurs.

But some researchers think that formally establishing a so-called "Anthropocene" as part of the geologic time scale would be a big mistake.

The debate is heating up as a working group is getting closer to making recommendations to the scientific organization that decides such things — the International Union of Geological Sciences. The working group's interim report is expected by next year.

"The Anthropocene does, the more you look at it, become more geologically real," says Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who's a member of the group. "We seem to be moving towards saying that the Anthropocene should be formalized."

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Scientists have divided up that vast stretch of time into categories and subcategories. There are eons and eras and periods and epochs, says Zalasiewicz. "Currently, formally, we live in something called the Holocene epoch."

He says the push to give an official name to the time of human domination began about 15 years ago. A prominent atmospheric chemist named Paul Crutzen spontaneously came up with the term at a meeting where people were talking about environmental change in the Holocene, and he later learned that biologist Eugene Stoermer had been using it as well.

As an informal term, it's really caught on, and all kinds of scientists are now using it. The question is whether or not to make it official. And that question is a lot trickier than it might seem. For example, scientists would first have to define when this new age began.

One early idea was that it began with the industrial revolution, says Zalasiewicz, "but the majority of us are beginning to favor a more recent time, in the mid-20th century."

That's because this is when human activities first left clear marks in the geologic record. Geologists like to see those kinds of unmistakable signals in the rock to mark the beginning of an official time period.

Earlier this year, scientists proposed pegging the start date of the Anthropocene at July 16, 1945 — the day of the first nuclear bomb explosion. Atom bomb tests produced fallout that can be detected in ice cores, soils, and sediments, all over the planet.

And about the same time, the world started to be sprinkled with a byproduct of fossil-fuel combustion called spheroidal carbonaceous fly ash particles.

"They would be a good marker for the Anthropocene if it is decided that it started in the mid-20th century," Neil Rose of University College London told NPR by email. He's just published a report showing a dramatic increase in accumulations of these particles starting around 1950.

But some researchers say, wait a second — humans actually began to transform the planet thousands of years earlier, with the development of agriculture.

"If the Anthropocene began in 1945, then the entire story of changing the surface of the earth by cutting forests and plowing prairies occurred before the Anthropocene," points out Bill Ruddiman, a climate scientist at the University of Virginia. "Does that make sense?"

In the current issue of the journal Science, he and some colleagues argue that the Anthroprocene is a useful concept but that trying to formally define it isn't helpful.

"I think this formal definition would be a mistake," says Ruddiman. He compares it to a group of historians trying to say that the settlement of the American West started with the completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago in the early 1970s. "That just leaves out an enormous, rich, interesting history, if you did something like that."

Plus, the geologic time periods in use today were originally developed as scientists tried to piece together Earth's unknown history by looking at rocks and fossils — because rocks and fossils were all they had. Humanity's impact on the Earth can be traced in a totally different way, points out Stan Finney, a geologist at California State University in Long Beach.

"We have human observations. We have human written records. We have human measurements from instruments," says Finney. "Why do we have to go find something in the rock record?"

What's more, he asks, "does it really need to be formally defined? We have many terms for major events in Earth's history that are not part of the geologic timescale."

When the first plants evolved to grow on land, there were dramatic changes to the Earth's surface and atmosphere. "We don't have a name for that incredible revolution and period in Earth's history," Finney says. "We refer to it, the time during which it occurred, as from the late Devonian through the Pennsylvanian."

He says proponents of a formal term seem motivated by the desire to make a political statement. One editorial in Nature in 2011 argued that formally defining the Anthropocene "would encourage a mindset that will be important not only to fully understand the transformation now occurring, but to take action to control it."

But the various bodies under the International Union of Geological Sciences that would have to consider the creation of a new term normally devote themselves to pondering highly technical issues in geology, rather than political questions.

"It's quite a long road ahead," says Zalasiewicz, who expects that nothing will be settled for at least a few years.




“But some researchers think that formally establishing a so-called "Anthropocene" as part of the geologic time scale would be a big mistake. The debate is heating up as a working group is getting closer to making recommendations to the scientific organization that decides such things — the International Union of Geological Sciences. The working group's interim report is expected by next year. …. As an informal term, it's really caught on, and all kinds of scientists are now using it. The question is whether or not to make it official. And that question is a lot trickier than it might seem. For example, scientists would first have to define when this new age began. One early idea was that it began with the industrial revolution, says Zalasiewicz, "but the majority of us are beginning to favor a more recent time, in the mid-20th century." …. Atom bomb tests produced fallout that can be detected in ice cores, soils, and sediments, all over the planet. And about the same time, the world started to be sprinkled with a byproduct of fossil-fuel combustion called spheroidal carbonaceous fly ash particles. "They would be a good marker for the Anthropocene if it is decided that it started in the mid-20th century," Neil Rose of University College London told NPR by email. He's just published a report showing a dramatic increase in accumulations of these particles starting around 1950. …. But some researchers say, wait a second — humans actually began to transform the planet thousands of years earlier, with the development of agriculture. "If the Anthropocene began in 1945, then the entire story of changing the surface of the earth by cutting forests and plowing prairies occurred before the Anthropocene," …. He says proponents of a formal term seem motivated by the desire to make a political statement. One editorial in Nature in 2011 argued that formally defining the Anthropocene "would encourage a mindset that will be important not only to fully understand the transformation now occurring, but to take action to control it." But the various bodies under the International Union of Geological Sciences that would have to consider the creation of a new term normally devote themselves to pondering highly technical issues in geology, rather than political questions.”

"We have human observations. We have human written records. We have human measurements from instruments," says Finney. "Why do we have to go find something in the rock record?" This article is amusing to me because, while I consider the new term Anthropocene very clever and scientifically valid, because species before Homo Sapiens, even Neanderthal, didn't fell many trees or plant crops. They did, however kill off animal species for their meat and hides, so maybe the date should be pushed even farther backward. But the best real answer, it seems to me, is that the beginning of agriculture – fire being the earliest means of clearing land for crops – was the first case. I am partly proud of human progress and partly horrified by many of its results. Humans grazing sheep and goats were partly responsible for the desertlike landscapes found around the Mediterranean Sea.

We have always solved our problems with short term solutions that have sometimes been devastating to the environment. In the present day the logging of trees in our last remaining rain forests is one of the causes of the increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere. I also can't forget the terrible forms of mining that have been done since man first discovered gold ore and the technique used to reduce it by fire. The “mountaintop removal” method of extracting coal is maybe the worst, though. I grew up with the beautiful Blue Ridge mountain range of the Eastern US, and those hills are being destroyed daily. I personally think that since we need to go off the dependence on coal anyway for environmental reasons, we should spare those gracefully rounded hills covered in gorgeous forests and go to solar and wind energy. I know, the coal industry can't bear to do that.