NEW YORK (AP) - Taylor Jordan jogged to the mound, skipped a warmup toss to the backstop and then fielded an easy comebacker for the first out.
From Double-A prospect to the bigs, just like that.
Jordan made his major league debut Saturday and kept Washington close. The Nationals' defense doomed him, however, in a 5-1 loss to the New York Mets.
"I wasn't as nervous as I thought I was going to be," Jordan said.
The 24-year-old Jordan earned his promotion after going a combined 9-1 with a 1.00 ERA in Double-A and Class A this year. He got to Citi Field faster than many anticipated - he already was scheduled to represent the Nationals on the same field in two weeks in the All-Star Futures game.
"I liked what I saw. First good outing," manager Davey Johnson said.
Jordan (0-1) lasted 4 1-3 innings. He gave up three runs, although a pair of errors by third baseman Ryan Zimmerman helped make two of them unearned.
Jordan gave up five hits, walked two, hit a batter and struck out one. He also collected a few souvenirs - the ball from his first pitch, the ball from fanning pitcher Dillon Gee for his first strikeout, and another ball after he lined a single up the middle for his first big league hit.
The right-hander hit 95 mph on the stadium radar gun, featuring a delivery where he whips the ball behind his back and then slings it to the plate. He's in the rotation while struggling Dan Haren is on the disabled list, and Johnson previously said he expected Jordan to get at least a couple of starts.
Watched by his parents, family members and friends who came from as far as Colorado and Florida, Jordan started out by throwing 10 straight fastballs.
He wasn't particularly pleased with the results.
"Just had a lot of trouble commanding my fastball for the most part. Wish I threw more strikes," he said. "I feel like the whole game I really didn't have my fastball."
Jordan arrived in New York on Friday. He had plenty of company Saturday - first baseman Adam LaRoche talked to him on the mound before the first pitch, and the entire infield visited Jordan after he issued a two-out walk and then hit a batter in the first inning.
After Jordan escaped the early jam, shortstop Ian Desmond waited to give Jordan a handshake outside the dugout. Desmond understood what Jordan was going through.
"Everything's kind of going fast forward. Just give him a chance to catch his breath, look around," Desmond said. "Sometimes you don't remember it when you're going through it, the first one. Try to give him a second to check everything out."
Gee beat Washington for the third time this season and the Mets scored the go-ahead run when Zimmerman and Desmond made errors on the same strange play.
Daniel Murphy delivered three hits and first baseman Josh Satin started a pair of nifty double plays for the Mets. The Nationals fell back to .500, losing to the team with the worst home record in the majors.
Gee (6-7) gave up one run in six innings, working around six hits and three walks.
The right-hander has excelled against the Nationals, permitting just two runs in 18 2-3 innings this year while accounting for half of his win total. He's 6-1 lifetime against them - Gee hasn't beaten any other opponent more than three times.
Murphy got the Mets' first hit with two outs in the third. It was 1-all in the fifth when Murphy led off with a single and took second on a groundout.
Marlon Byrd followed with a hard bouncer that handcuffed Zimmerman and deflected in the air, where Desmond alertly caught the ball with his bare hand on the edge of the outfield grass.
But Desmond tried an off-balance throw to get Murphy at third, and he skipped an awkward toss. The ball hit Murphy in the hip and skittered away, and he hustled home and slid in ahead of Zimmerman's throw. Kirk Nieuwenhuis added a sacrifice fly for a 3-1 lead.
Eric Young Jr. had a sacrifice fly, and Byrd had an RBI single in the sixth.
NOTES: Washington tied a season high with three errors. ... Nationals LHP Ross Detwiler had stiffness in his lower back after Friday night's start. He was on the disabled list earlier this season for a strain in his back. Manager Davey Johnson says that if Detwiler can't make his next start, RHP Ross Ohlendorf will fill in. ... Mets rookie RHP Zack Wheeler (1-0, 3.18) makes his home debut Sunday vs. LHP Gio Gonzalez (4-3, 3.31).
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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HBT: Max Scherzer became the first pitcher in 27 years to win his first dozen starts, with the help of Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder.
This week, America took another step on the path leading to a more perfect union -- while demonstrating that it's a journey that proceeds in fits and starts. On Tuesday, a divided Supreme Court took the nation backwards by striking down a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act. The very next day, the equally divided high court moved us forward by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. This ruling wasn't a victory just for gay Americans -- just as Tuesday's decision wasn't a defeat just for minority voters. When our nation's policies move us towards our founding ideals, it's a victory for all Americans. Speaking of victories, this week's dramatic filibuster by Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis, which blocked an extreme anti-choice bill, demonstrated that the spirit needed to keep making our union more perfect is alive and well -- and also marked the birth of new political star. #StandWithWendy #PinkSneakersRule
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MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a measure that stigmatizes gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality.
The lower house of Russia's parliament unanimously passed the Kremlin-backed bill on June 11 and the upper house approved it last week.
The ban on "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values over Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see as corrupting Russian youth and contributing to the protests against Putin's rule.
Hefty fines can now be imposed on those who provide information about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to minors or hold gay pride rallies.
The Kremlin announced Sunday that Putin has signed the legislation into law.
In a major win for corporations worried about choice of law, the Delaware Court of Chancery held that forum selection bylaws adopted by corporation boards are at least facially valid as a matter of contract under Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL). Boilermakers Local 154 Retirement Fund v. Chevron Corporation stands for the proposition that bylaws which designate a specific forum for legal dispute resolution will stand up in court, taking some of the concern away for corporations in the realm of multiforum litigation.
In the case at bar, both Chevron and FedEx had adopted bylaws in their certificates of incorporation which indicated that Delaware would be the sole forum for any stockholder litigation. The court rejected the plaintiffs? challenge of these forum selection provisions and held that the DGCL in fact does permit this kind of forum designation contractually.
The court?s reasoning was in part that the DGCL permits corporations to regulate themselves in order to function smoothly, and these kinds of bylaws assisted the smooth governance of the corporation. The court also found that both federal and Delaware law rendered forum selection bylaws contractually enforceable. This finding is based on the fact that the charters of the corporations in question granted unilateral power to the boards to adopt bylaws, and that this binding power was known to stockholders.
Tags: articles of incorporation, Boilermakers Local 154 Retirement Fund, Chevron Corporation, choice of law, corporate bylaws, corporate governance, corporate law, Delaware Chancery Court, Delaware General Corporation Law, delaware law, DGCL, forum selection, multiforum litigation, stockholder litigation
The Supreme Court struck down DOMA ? the Defense of Marriage Act ? and handed Proposition 8 back to a lower court ? which both legitimizegay marriage. But, the routes the court took don't suggest a high court pro-gay marriage or pro-child crusade ? yet.
By James Norton,?Guest Blogger / June 28, 2013
William, Knott, 7, son of Kelly Bryson and her wife Erika Knott, right, participates in a celebration rally in Jackson Square in New Orleans after the Supreme Court's decision on the Defense of Marriage Act was published.
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If you?ve followed the news over the past week, you've probably noticed a shift in the very definition of the American family. As public opinion and state laws have evolved increasingly to tolerate and embrace gay marriage, so has the legal system ? the Supreme Court this week invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act and effectively ended California's gay marriage ban, Proposition 8.
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Contributing blogger
James Norton got his professional start at the Monitor as an online news producer, before moving over to edit international news during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since leaving the Monitor in 2004, he has worked as a radio producer, author, and food blogger.?He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Becca, his son Josiah, and three pleasantly sassy cats: Bartlett, Braeburn, and Nola.
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Gays and lesbians who want to marry and receive recognition under the law are the obvious winners. But that the Court has been expanding marriage recognition, rights, and protection to same-sex couples is a part of a bigger trend ? an expansion of marriage that has positive effects for children specifically, says Adam Pertman, executive director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. ? ?"The fact is, there's lots of research indicating that the biggest beneficiaries of marriage are children," Mr. Pertman says. "They get social benefits, economic benefits ? they get a big range of benefits from marriage. The list goes on and on." ? ?Pertman, whose organization researches policies that affect adoption and works to improve adoption laws, doesn't think that the court has been swept up in a pro-gay marriage, pro-children crusade. He points to the different ways that justices arrived at their two important decisions this week. ? ?"If you look at it ruling by ruling, the California [Prop 8] ruling, for instance, it has a very different rationale than the DOMA ruling," Pertman says. "Both seem to be saying: 'All families are created equal, and all children should be protected' ? but [the] California [decision] didn't really say that, [it] said the litigants didn't have standing." (The court ruled that proponents of a ban on gay marriage passed by California voters did not have the right to defend that law in federal courts).
The court also ruled that the backers of California's Proposition 8 didn't have standing to challenge lower-court rulings about the 2008 ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in the state. Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/How_this_weeks_Supreme_Court_decisions_affect_Pa_NJ.html#Ktv31eVBwAR5XHEP.99 Pertman's stance is that the positive impact on children's lives is a good thing, but one that has come about haphazardly and not through any beneficent design on the part of the country's top court.
XXXXXX ?"The powers that be ? the courts, and the legislatures ? I rarely think they put their money where their mouth is," Pertman says. "What they say is, 'The children are the future, children are our more valuable resource, children are this, children are that,' but the truth is when push comes to shove, it's the adults and adult concerns that take priority." ? ?The story, Pertman suggests, leads back to the ancient currency of Washington: clout. ? ?"I wrote an op-ed?saying children don't lobby and children don't vote, and they pay the price for that," he says.
The photo shown above appears to be the shell of Apple?s next generation iPhone in a rather ugly shade of green, according to French gadget blog Nowhereelse.
Rumors have circulated over the last year that Apple is trying to make a cheaper version of its iPhone ? nicknamed iPhone 5S or iPhone mini ?? that could potentially eliminate the need to carrier subsidies and allow the company to more leeway during the manufacturing process. A handful of analysts have backed up these claims as well, but obviously Apple itself has admitted nothing.
As VentureBeat previously reported, the cheaper version of the iPhone will likely phase out a case made of glass and metal components in favor of a hard, durable plastic. There?s also some speculation that this cheaper model will come in a variety of colors, much like Apple has done in the past with its line of iPods. The green-ish shell in the photo (or as commenters on MacRumors called it, ?radioactive vomit green?) is one of a handful that we could see ? with each color being similar to the line of iPhone 4 bumpers the company has previously released.
In terms of next-gen iPhone rumors go, this one doesn?t have much credibility. However, someone mentioned that the new shade of colorful iPhone might go along with the palate of colors in Apple?s recently revealed iOS 7 redesign, which is extremely drastic compared to all the past versions of the mobile OS. The idea of using a Easter-color iPhone with a drastically altered user interface design is a lot of change, and one that might be risky when trying to keep its long-term customers happy. But then again, Apple getting into the business of keeping people happy seems boring and a sure-fire way to make its products bland over time.
Regardless of if the photo above is accurate, I will not be purchasing an Apple product in any shade of vomit.
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VATICAN CITY (AP) -- A Vatican cleric and two other people were arrested Friday by Italian police for allegedly trying to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) in cash into the country from Switzerland by private jet. It's the latest scandal to hit the Holy See and broadens an Italian probe into its secretive bank.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, already under investigation in a purported money-laundering plot involving the Vatican bank, is accused of corruption and slander and was being held at a Rome prison, prosecutor Nello Rossi told reporters.
Scarano's arrest came just two days after Pope Francis created a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank to get to the bottom of the problems that have plagued it for decades and contributed to the impression that it's an unregulated, offshore tax haven.
Francis has made clear he has no tolerance for corruption or for Vatican officials who use their jobs for personal ambition or gain. He has said he wants a "poor" church that is concerned for the world's needy, and he has also noted, perhaps tongue in cheek, that "St. Peter didn't have a bank account."
Prosecutor Rossi said the Swiss operation involved three people, all of whom were arrested Friday: Scarano, a recently suspended accountant in the Vatican's main finance office, Italian financier Giovanni Carenzio, and Giovanni Zito, who at the time of the plot was a member of the military police's agency for security and information.
Rossi detailed a remarkable plot ? uncovered by telephone wiretaps ? in which the three allegedly planned to bring into Italy some 20 million euros in cash that financier Carenzio held in his name in a Swiss bank account without paying customs at the airport, as would be required.
Scarano's attorney, Silverio Sica, said his client was something of a middleman: The 20 million euros belonged to friends who had given the money to Carenzio to invest but wanted it back. The plot would presumably enable them to avoid paying customs fees or having any paper trail of such a large amount of money entering Italy.
Rossi identified the friends as members of the Italian shipping family d'Amico and said that the money was "presumably" being held in Switzerland to avoid paying Italian taxes. An email seeking comment from the family's Rome-based company, the d'Amico Societa di Navigazione SpA, wasn't immediately returned.
According to prosecutors, Zito, the agent, called in sick to his job one day in July 2012, rented a private plane and flew with Carenzio to Locarno, Switzerland. There, Carenzio was supposed to withdraw the cash from his bank account and hand it over to Zito to bring back to Italy. The plan was so detailed there was even to be an armed police escort waiting at the airport to bring the money to Scarano's apartment in Rome, Rossi said.
"This operation was meticulously planned in all its details," Rossi said, noting that Zito was chosen to be the mule specifically because his high-ranking position in the Carabinieri would have enabled him to pass through the airport customs area without being stopped.
The money could have been transported relatively easily because euros are issued in high denominations. If the cash had been withdrawn in the largest denomination ? 500 euro notes ? it would have weighed 44 kilograms (97 pounds) and fit in a suitcase.
But at a certain point in Locarno, the deal fell through and Carenzio made excuses that the bank couldn't come up with the money, Rossi said. He declined to identify the bank.
Zito returned to Rome empty-handed but still demanded from Scarano his fee of 600,000 euros for the operation. Scarano cut him one check for 400,000 euros which he deposited. He gave him a second check for 200,000 euros, but in a bid to prevent the check from being deposited, reported it as missing, the prosecutor said.
That put a block on the check and resulted in Scarano being accused of slander for filing a false report knowing that the check was in Zito's hands, Rossi said.
Scarano, as well as the other two, are also accused of corruption. If they are indicted and convicted, they could face up to five or six years in prison, prosecutors said.
Sica, the lawyer, said Scarano said his client would respond to prosecutors' questions.
The Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, is cooperating with Italian authorities and its lay board has launched an internal investigation, spokesman Max Hohenberg said.
Rossi, the Italian prosecutor, described the operation as one branch in a "mosaic" of investigations targeting the IOR, which has long been a source of scandal for the Holy See. That said, the Swiss investigation didn't immediately appear to directly involve the IOR.
The checks Scarano wrote to Zito, for example, came from an Italian bank account, prosecutors said. They declined to say if Scarano received any payment for his role in the plot, or if his IOR account was used at all.
Rossi's team of prosecutors in 2010 placed the top two Vatican bank officials under investigation for allegedly violating anti-money laundering norms during a routine transaction involving an IOR account at an Italian bank. They ordered the 23 million euros in the transaction seized. The money was eventually unfrozen but the two men remain under investigation.
Rossi's team is also working with prosecutors in Salerno on a separate money-laundering investigation involving Scarano and his IOR account.
According to Sica, the lawyer, Scarano took 560,000 euros ($729,000) in cash out of his IOR bank account in 2009 and carried it out of the Vatican and into Italy to help pay off a mortgage on his Salerno home.
The money had come into Scarano's IOR account from donors who gave it to the prelate thinking they were funding a home for the terminally ill in Salerno, Sica said.
To deposit the money into an Italian bank account ? and to prevent family members from finding out he had such a large chunk of cash ? he asked 56 close friends to accept 10,000 euros apiece in cash in exchange for a check or money transfer in the same amount. Scarano was then able to deposit the amounts in his Italian account.
The lawyer said Scarano had given the names of the donors to prosecutors and insisted the origin of the money was clean, that the transactions didn't constitute money-laundering, and that he only took the money "temporarily" for his personal use.
The home for terminally ill was never built, though the property has been identified, Sica said.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Scarano was suspended more than a month ago and that the Vatican was taking the appropriate measures to deal with his case. He said the Vatican had confirmed it was prepared to offer its "full cooperation" to Italian investigators.
On Wednesday, Francis named five people to head a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank's activities and legal status "to allow for a better harmonization with the universal mission of the Apostolic See."
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Recently immunized people are not more apt to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome
By Nathan Seppa
Web edition: June 27, 2013
Shortly after getting a vaccination, people are no more likely to develop a dangerous nerve-damaging condition called Guillain-Barr? syndrome, or GBS, than they are at other times, a new analysis finds.
Roger Baxter of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and his colleagues reviewed medical records from 1994 to 2006 of more than 3 million Kaiser members and found 415 diagnoses of GBS. Only 25 of these people had received any vaccine in the six weeks prior to being diagnosed with the condition. None were children. Analyses showed that people were no more likely to develop GBS during those six weeks than they were 1.5 to 9 months following a vaccination, the researchers report in the July 15 Clinical Infectious Diseases.
An earlier study had found an association between receiving the 1976 swine flu vaccine and increased GBS risk, but nearly all studies since then have failed to find a GBS link to flu shots or other vaccinations.
Nearly 7 million flu shots were dispensed to the Kaiser members during the study period. GBS showed up in 18 of these people in the six weeks after getting a flu shot. But 13 of them had a respiratory or gastrointestinal illness at the time, a known risk factor for GBS.
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To refuse to call A Hijacking a thriller is not to say it isn't thrilling, in a dryly cerebral way.
It's the second feature from the young writer-director Tobias Lindholm, and it showcases his gift for tightly focused stories told without an ounce of fat.
Lindholm doesn't present the film as a procedural for hostage negotiations because he knows too well that there are too many movable parts, too many things that can go wrong.
Methodical and tense ... has the feel of something based on real-life events ... boils down to an arresting portrait of two men, with different backgrounds and abilities, doing everything they can not to break.
We're impatient for action, any kind of action - but preferably the sort that involves a team of Navy SEALs, maybe led by Dwayne Johnson. Instead, we get something like a merger meeting.
Hand-held camerawork, so often a confounded nuisance, here makes the conditions on board the Rozen feel nauseatingly urgent.
When the gut-wrenching conclusion of A Hijacking comes in the form of a single, random act, it's only then you realize how far you've been pulled into its emotional core.
A Hijacking delivers all the thrills the title suggests, but in none of the places you'd expect them.
The danger never reaches the level of chaos, but the subtext and metaphor in the slow-moving humanistic commentary on the motivations and byproducts of capitalism make for an intriguing film.
A smart movie derived out of the small moments that collectively comprise the hostage experience, rather than grandiose gestures.
Lindholm's you-are-there docudrama works as a tense thriller, but themes of negotiation and the ability to empathize provide a rich subtext.
...slow, mostly talk, but tense and realistic...
The level of suspense in this riveting Danish thriller doesn't build in sweeping melodramatic fashion, but rather at a low-key simmer that emphasizes authentic character dynamics.
A Hijacking accomplishes a tricky task, generating tension through talk rather than action.
This absorbing chronicle of a hijacking in the Indian Ocean has the strengths of the best procedural dramas -- it assumes a distanced and objective tone and packs an emotional wallop.
Moment by moment we find ourselves wondering what will happen next...
Auteur Tobias Lindholm does a striking job in grabbing your attention and running with it as he succinctly tells the story of "A Hijacking."
A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film that's lingered heavily on the mind for a couple of days now.
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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Thursday praised the Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage as a "victory for American democracy" but clashed with his African host over gay rights in a sign of how far the movement has to go internationally.
Obama said recognition of same-sex unions in the United States should cross state lines and that equal rights should be recognized universally. It was his first chance to expand on his thoughts about the ruling, which was issued Wednesday as he flew to Senegal, one of many African countries that outlaw homosexuality. Senegalese President Macky Sall rebuffed Obama's call for Africans to give gays equal rights under the law.
"We are still not ready to decriminalize homosexuality," Sall said, while insisting that the country is "very tolerant" and needs more time to digest the issue without pressure. "This does not mean we are homophobic."
Obama said gay rights didn't come up in their private meeting at the presidential palace, a mansion that looks somewhat similar to the White House. But Obama said he wants to send a message to Africans that while he respects differing personal and religious views on the matter, it's important to have nondiscrimination under the law.
"People should be treated equally, and that's a principle that I think applies universally," he said.
A report released Monday by Amnesty International says 38 African countries criminalize homosexuality. In four of those ? Mauritania, northern Nigeria, southern Somalia and Sudan ? the punishment is death. These laws appear to have broad public support. A June 4 Pew Research Center survey found at least nine of 10 respondents in Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society.
Sall sought to reassure Obama that gays are not persecuted in Senegal.
Under Senegalese law, "an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex" can be punished by up to five years in prison.
And as recently as February of 2008, police rounded up men suspected of being homosexual after a Senegalese tabloid published photographs of a clandestine gay wedding in a suburb of Dakar. Gays went into hiding and those who could fled to neighboring countries, but they were pushed out of Gambia by the president's threat of decapitation.
As for Wednesday's court ruling, Obama said he's directing his administration to comb through every federal statute to quickly determine the implications of a decision that gave the nation's legally married gay couples equal federal footing with all other married Americans.
He said he wants to make sure that gay couples who deserve benefits under the ruling get them quickly. Obama said he personally believes that gay couples legally married in one state should retain their benefits if they move to another state that doesn't recognize gay marriage.
"I believe at the root of who we are as a people, as Americans, is the basic precept that we are all equal under the law," he said. "We believe in basic fairness. And what I think yesterday's ruling signifies is one more step towards ensuring that those basic principles apply to everybody."
Obama also offered prayers for former South African President Nelson Mandela, who is gravely ill, ahead of Obama's planned visit to his country this weekend. Obama said he was inspired to become political active by Mandela's example in the anti-apartheid movement of being willing to sacrifice his life for a belief in equal treatment.
"I think he's a hero for the world," Obama said. "And if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."
Later Obama plans to reflect on the ties many African-Americans share with the continent as he takes a tour of Goree Island, Africa's westernmost point. Africans reportedly were shipped off into slavery across the Atlantic Ocean through the island's "Door of No Return."
Thousands of boisterous revelers welcomed Obama's motorcade Thursday morning in Dakar, cheering and waving homemade signs as the first African-American president made his way to the presidential palace. A large sign outside his hotel gate had pictures of smiling Obama and Sall that read, "Welcome home, President Obama."
Some in the crowd drummed, danced and sang, and many wore white as a symbol for peace. Sall and his wife, Marieme Faye Sall, greeted Obama and first lady Michelle Obama before entering the palace for a bilateral meeting between the two presidents.
Obama's focus in Senegal is on the modern-day achievements of the former French colony after half a century of independence. Sall ousted an incumbent president who attempted to change the constitution to make it easier for him to be re-elected and pave the way for his son to succeed him. The power grab sparked protests, fueled by hip-hop music and social media, that led to Sall's election.
"Senegal is one of the most stable democracies in Africa and one of the strongest parterns that we have in the region," Obama said. "It's moving in the right direction with reforms to deepen democratic institutions."
But such people-powered democratic transitions are not always the story of the African experience. Fighting and human rights abuses limited Obama's options for stops in his first major tour of sub-Saharan Africa since he took office more than four years ago. Obama is avoiding his father's homeland, Kenya, whose president has been charged with war crimes, and Nigeria, the country with the continent's most dominant economy. Nigeria is enveloped in an Islamist insurgency and military crackdown.
Obama's itinerary in Senegal was designed to send a message, purposefully delivered in a French-speaking, Muslim-majority nation, to other Africans in countries that have not made the strides toward democracy that Senegal has. Obama plans to meet with civil society leaders at the Goree Institute and visited the Supreme Court to speak about the importance of an independent judiciary and the rule of law in Africa's development.
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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Sometimes movie stars grow on you, with familiarity breeding fondness. It's taken time but Channing Tatum has finally won me over with his goofy, lunkish charm.
Good thing, too, since he's front and center in the shameless bonfire of gunfire, explosions and macho hyperbolic heroics that is "White House Down," the latest over-the-top offering from director-producer-blockbuster specialist Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and "2012").
Emmerich, of course, notoriously annihilated the White House and most of Washington, D.C., in "Independence Day," a movie about an extraterrestrial invasion. In "White House Down," it's the Capitol that gets blown up, and this time it's human bad guys who are the invaders, taking over the White House at gunpoint.
Tatum plays John Cale, a Capitol Hill policeman and Afghanistan War vet who just happens to be accompanying his precocious daughter, Emily (Joey King), on a guided tour of the White House that day. During the course of the tour, President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx), an idealistic former academic who chomps on Nicorette to keep from smoking - hmm, remind you of anyone? - stops by to greet the visitors and grants young Emily a brief interview for her video blog.
Minutes later, a group of heavily armed gunmen, who'd been posing as repairman, put into operation with military precision a takeover of the White House. Pulling out major weaponry, they start firing, slaughtering the President's entire protective detail and bevies of bureaucrats.
Cale quickly unites with President Sawyer, trying his best to protect the leader of the free world and keep him out of the bad guys' hands. As the two sneak around the Executive Mansion, trying to elude the gunmen and get to safety, they're also attempting to figure out what the heck is happening and who's behind the takeover.
At the same time, in a secure bunker elsewhere, a group of high level security personnel (Maggie Gyllenhaal), military officers (Lance Reddick) and elected figures (Richard Jenkins) gather to investigate the identities and motives of the White House invaders and how best to save the President and the nation.
The cat-and-mouse game in "White House" goes on and on (the movie runs for two hours and 17 minutes), growing more preposterous and silly by the scene. This totally is the stuff of action movies, not real life.
It's kind of fun, in a dopey way, for a while, but then it's just noise and firepower and boys with their toys.
As for the acting, Tatum proves a sturdy action hero, stripping down to a sleeveless undershirt in record time and projecting resolute concern. This guy is Aldo Ray all over again, only he's going to have a longer and more successful career.
Foxx goes with the flow, doing a sly take on the current occupant of the White House, making his President Sawyer both noble and ready to rumble. In supporting roles, Gyllenhaal, Reddick, Jenkins, James Woods and Jason Clarke all deliver when asked to, and Nicolas Wright earns laughs as a know-it-all White House tour guide who's appalled by the gunmen's disregard for historical White House antiques.
I'll give "White House Down" this: For sheer chutzpah, both in terms of product placement and situational believability, it will be hard for any other movie this summer to top a scene in which a bad guy has the temerity to grab President Sawyer by the ankles.
The Commander in Chief, having earlier in the story swapped his heavy dress shoes for pricey, fleet-making sneakers, fights the man off, scolding, "Don't touch the Jordans!"
HONG KONG (AP) ? Stock markets from Sydney to Shanghai extended gains for a second day Thursday after the U.S. said quarterly growth may be weaker than expected, raising investors' hopes that the Federal Reserve would delay plans to wind down its stimulus program.
Further signs of easing in China's money markets also helped lift stocks.
Japan's Nikkei 225 jumped 2.4 percent to 13,142.50 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 1.3 percent to 20,607.27. South Korea's Kospi surged 3 percent to 1,837.45.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 1.8 percent to 4,818.80. Benchmarks in New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan also rose.
The U.S. government cut its estimate for second-quarter economic growth to 1.8 percent, down sharply from 2.4 percent because of lower than predicted consumer spending.
While news of the weakness in the world's biggest economy was disappointing, it was also positive for investors, who were rattled last week after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank would slow its bond-buying program if the U.S. economy continues to strengthen. That program has kept interest rates low and made stocks more attractive.
"This doesn't put a new spin on the outlook but it certainly makes one wonder all the more about the Fed's 'new and improved' outlook for 2014," economists at DBS Bank wrote in a commentary.
Mainland Chinese benchmarks opened sharply higher after a report that Chinese industrial profits grew strongly in May, though they pared their gains by midday. The Shanghai Composite Index advanced 0.4 percent to 1,959.25 and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index rose 0.3 percent to 913.87.
Markets were also buoyed as interbank lending rates in China continue to ease after a pledge earlier in the week by authorities to shore up banks facing cash shortfalls.
"We expect the interbank rates will come down further in the coming weeks," J.P. Morgan analysts Haibin Zhu, Grace Ng and Lu Jiang said in a research report. But they said that they didn't expect the rates to fall to the level they were at previously.
The central bank had allowed rates that banks pay to borrow from each other to soar last week, part of an attempt by Beijing to clamp down on massive credit in the informal lending industry.
Fears of a credit crisis in the world's second-biggest economy had contributed to a rout in global markets that ended when policymakers in China softened their stance with the promise to provide "liquidity support" if needed.
Benchmark oil for August delivery was up 39 cents to $95.89 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 18 cents to end at $95.50 a barrel on Wednesday.
In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3031 from $1.3012 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar rose to 97.76 yen from 97.74 yen.
?The iPhone can already do a lot of things, but here?s a new trick: An app released today by Rolocule Games pairs with users? Apple TVs and turns the phone into a Wiimote-style motion controller,? Eric Johnson reports for AllThingsD.
?The end result: Just in time for Wimbledon, a tennis game app designed for your TV (or computer) that turns swinging your iPhone into an onscreen avatar swinging a virtual racket,? Johnson reports. ?The novelty is that the game runs on the phone as-is, without the need of any peripheral hardware besides the Apple TV.?
Johnson reports, ?The game, Motion Tennis, works over Apple?s AirPlay Mirroring technology, which can beam the audio and video from most iPhones, iPads and iPod touches over Wi-Fi onto second- and third-generation Apple TVs. ?
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dan K." for the heads up.]
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraq is open to greater American military cooperation as U.S. commanders explore ways to boost security assistance to the country, a top Iraqi official said Thursday as a fresh wave of bombings claimed 16 lives.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has recommended that military American commanders look for ways to help improve the military capabilities of Iraq and Lebanon, which both face the risk of spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Dempsey said Wednesday that the assistance would not involve sending U.S. combat troops, but could involve the U.S. sending in training teams and accelerating sales of weapons and equipment.
The last American combat troops left Iraq in December 2011, ending a nearly nine-year war that cost nearly 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.
About 100 military and civilian Department of Defense personnel remain in Iraq as an arm of the American Embassy to act as liaisons with the Iraqi government and facilitate arms sales. The U.S. has similar offices in other countries.
Ali al-Moussawi, the media adviser for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Baghdad would welcome increased arms sales and faster weapons deliveries along with U.S. training teams to help it confront rising regional instability and terrorist threats.
"We welcome this kind of cooperation and we consider it a part of the existing agreement between us," al-Moussawi said when asked about Dempsey's comments.
"Because of the high risks the region faces, I think there should be bigger cooperation and coordination between all countries threatened by terrorism."
Iraq is struggling to contain a resurgent al-Qaida that is one of the main drivers behind the country's worst uptick in violence in half a decade. More than 2,000 people have been killed in car bombings and other violent attacks in Iraq since the start of April.
More violence rocked Iraq late Thursday when bombs struck cafes in and around Baghdad, killing 16 and wounding dozens. The attacks struck in quick succession at the start of the local weekend while the cafes were filled with patrons watching a soccer match.
Police reported five people killed and 17 wounded in Baghdad's largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, and another three dead and 14 wounded in Shiite-dominated Umm al-Maalif, in the southwestern suburbs of the capital.
Another blast struck the Shiite town of Jbala, about 50 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad, killing 8 and wounding 25.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information to journalists.
The upsurge in violence comes as Iraqi fighters have been traveling to fight on both sides of Syria's civil war. The Iraqi branch of al-Qaida is pushing to make itself a player in the conflict, and now calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to highlight its cross-border ambitions.
Iraq has acquired billions of dollars' worth of American-made military equipment, including howitzers, armored personnel carriers and Abrams tanks in recent years.
It has yet to receive the first of as many as 36 F-16 fighter jets it has ordered, and Baghdad has been pressing U.S. officials to speed delivery of the warplanes.
Also on Thursday, a spokesman for Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission said a voting list backed by influential Sunni politicians has won the biggest single bloc of seats in provincial elections in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar.
Safaa al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Independent High Electoral commission, said the United list led by Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi won 8 of 30 seats in Anbar's provincial council. A bloc backed by al-Maliki came in second with five seats.
The western province of Anbar, a former al-Qaida stronghold, has been the center of anti-government rallies protesting what Sunnis say is their second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government.
Residents in Anbar and neighboring Ninevah province voted last week in local elections that had been delayed due to security concerns.
___
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Adam Schreck contributed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google might make another foray into living room hardware as it's currently developing an Android powered gaming console. Since that's just not enough of a rumor bomb, the talkative "people familiar with the matter" also claim a wristwatch and followup to its "postponed" Nexus Q project are on the way. If you believe the rumors, its reason for jumping into all these categories is to beat products Apple is reportedly developing in the same categories, with at least one of them launching this fall. Finally, the leaks indicate Google's next major Android update will be "tailored to low-cost devices in developing countries," and are ready to go in a much wider variety of devices.
That could mean laptops or even appliances running the rumored Key Lime Pie flavor of Android, built by manufacturers like Samsung which is already working on a watch of its own. Also mentioned is HP, which the report goes on to claim is building laptops that run Android. Companies like Ouya, Mad Catz, Pebble and GEAK probably think Mountain View is already late to the party, but official OS-level support and heavily marketed hardware could take these segments to the next level.
One of the best parts of home ownership (I imagine) is having a place that's all to yourself. Unfortunately, in the beautiful Wall House you'd have to share some space, but when that space looks like this, it'd be hard to mind it.
The psyllid is seen in 2008 University of Florida photo provided by the University of California, Davis. The psyllid, discovered eight years ago in Florida citrus groves, has proven problematic for researchers and farmers alike.
University of California, Davis/AP
The psyllid is seen in 2008 University of Florida photo provided by the University of California, Davis. The psyllid, discovered eight years ago in Florida citrus groves, has proven problematic for researchers and farmers alike.
University of California, Davis/AP
With its pleasant climate, Florida has become home to more exotic and invasive species of plants and animals than any other state in the continental U.S. Some invasive species have been brought in deliberately, such as the Burmese python or the Cuban brown snail. But the majority of species are imported inadvertently as cargo.
Amanda Hodges, who heads the Biosecurity Research lab at the University of Florida, says until recently, scientists saw about a dozen new bugs arrive in Florida each year.
"But we've seen in the last few years, we've actually seen an increase in the number of new introductions," Hodges says. "We've seen more like 24 new arthropods."
These new bugs are being studied inside the biosecurity lab. After signing and putting on a lab coat ? measures designed to make sure the invasive pests being studied don't escape ? you would find graduate student Ashley Poplin. She's studying one of the newest threats to American agriculture: the brown marmorated stinkbug.
"These are the little guys. They're pretty tiny; kind of have an orange abdomen and black markings," she says. "It almost looks like a black spider but of course this has six legs instead of eight."
The bug was first discovered in Allentown, Pa., but has now spread nationwide. In Florida, it threatens vegetable crops and the state's ornamental plant industry. With time, researchers are confident they'll identify natural predators and parasites that will help them control the stinkbug. It's a strategy that takes time and work but almost always pays off.
But there's one pest in Florida that so far has defied the best efforts of scientists and the agriculture industry. It's a tiny bug called a psyllid, and it poses a huge threat to Florida's $9 billion a year citrus industry. The bug was only discovered eight years ago in Florida's citrus groves, says University of Florida entomology professor Marjorie Hoy. Since the discovery of the psyllid, Hoy says Florida lost a good portion of its crops.
"It's been a disaster since then," she says, "From 860,000 acres, I think we're down to roughly 600,000 acres or less."
For decades, Hoy and other researchers used parasites and predators to successfully combat a series of invasions by bugs that preyed on citrus trees. But with this latest invasion, entomologists may have met their match. The psyllid, combined with bacteria it carries, causes citrus greening, a disease that kills orange trees and makes the fruit unusable.
To combat it, citrus growers have turned away from biological controls and are using pesticides and nutrient sprays. For Hoy, it's been disheartening.
"It's a very sad situation because Florida citrus was one of those premier examples of how to grow citrus with the least number of pesticides," Hoy says. "It's just heartbreaking."
The citrus industry is reeling from greening, not just in Florida, but also in California and Brazil. Meanwhile, researchers are scrambling to develop better traps, stronger trees and possibly even transgenic solutions. Scientists are studying ways to alter the genome of citrus to make it more resistant to greening.
Wallpapers generally come flat. While we don't expect (or want) anyone to pop on a pair of 3D glasses to change that, you can add some attractive depth to your desktop with isometric renderings.
An Isometric Race
Download this wallpaper | mister-meh on deviantART 2000x1306
Google City
Download this wallpaper | NASC 1920x1357
Project Eternity
Download this wallpaper | PC Gamer 1920x1080
3D Cubes
Download this wallpaper | Passy's World of Mathematics 2560x1440
Lit Cube
Download this wallpaper | ATSkill on deviantART 1920x1200
Neopets
Download this wallpaper | Rick Acosta 1600x995
Canterlot
Download this wallpaper | BreAuna on deviantART 2600x2472
For more great wallpapers, check out our previous Wallpaper Wednesdays. Got any great wallpapers you'd like to share? Email me a link with "Wallpaper Wednesday" in the subject line. Submitting your own work is highly encouraged!
Contact: Richard Lewis richard-c-lewis@uiowa.edu 319-384-0012 University of Iowa
University of Iowa study shows how 3- and 4-year-olds retain what they see around them
When young children gaze intently at something or furrow their brows in concentration, you know their minds are busily at work. But you're never entirely sure what they're thinking.
Now you can get an inside look. Psychologists led by the University of Iowa for the first time have peered inside the brain with optical neuroimaging to quantify how much 3- and 4-year-old children are grasping when they survey what's around them and to learn what areas of the brain are in play. The study looks at "visual working memory," a core cognitive function in which we stitch together what we see at any given point in time to help focus attention. In a series of object-matching tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. By comparison, adults max out at 3 to 4 objects, according to prior studies.
"This is literally the first look into a 3 and 4-year-old's brain in action in this particular working memory task," says John Spencer, psychology professor at the UI and corresponding author of the paper, which appears in the journal NeuroImage.
The research is important, because visual working memory performance has been linked to a variety of childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, developmental coordination disorder as well as affecting children born prematurely. The goal is to use the new brain imaging technique to detect these disorders before they manifest themselves in children's behavior later on.
"At a young age, children may behave the same," notes Spencer, who's also affiliated with the Delta Center and whose department is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, "but if you can distinguish these problems in the brain, then it's possible to intervene early and get children on a more standard trajectory."
Plenty of research has gone into better understanding visual working memory in children and adults. Those prior studies divined neural networks in action using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). That worked great for adults, but not so much with children, especially young ones, whose jerky movements threw the machine's readings off kilter. So, Spencer and his team turned to functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has been around since the 1960s but has never been used to look at working memory in children as young as three years of age.
"It's not a scary environment," says Spencer of the fNIRS. "No tube, no loud noises. You just have to wear a cap."
Like fMRI, fNIRS records neural activity by measuring the difference in oxygenated blood concentrations anywhere in the brain. You've likely seen similar technology when a nurse puts your finger in a clip to check your circulation. In the brain, when a region is activated, neurons fire like mad, gobbling up oxygen provided in the blood. Those neurons need another shipment of oxygen-rich blood to arrive to keep going. The fNIRS measures the contrast between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood to gauge which area of the brain is going full tilt at a point in time.
The researchers outfitted the youngsters with colorful, comfortable ski hats in which fiber optic wires had been woven. The children played a computer game in which they were shown a card with one to three objects of different shapes for two seconds. After a pause of a second, the children were shown a card with either the same or different shapes. They responded whether they had seen a match.
The tests revealed novel insights. First, neural activity in the right frontal cortex was an important barometer of higher visual working memory capacity in both age groups. This could help clinicians evaluate children's visual working memory at a younger age than before, and work with those whose capacity falls below the norm, the researchers say.
Secondly, 4-year olds showed a greater use than 3-year olds of the parietal cortex, located in both hemispheres below the crown of the head and which is believed to guide spatial attention.
"This suggests that improvements in performance are accompanied by increases in the neural response," adds Aaron Buss, a UI graduate student in psychology and the first author on the paper. "Further work will be needed to explain exactly how the neural response increaseseither through changes in local tuning, or through changes in long range connectivity, or some combination."
###
Contributing authors include David Boas from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Nicholas Fox, research assistant at the UI.
The National Institutes of Health (grant number: P41 14075) funded the research through a grant to Boas. Other funding came from the UI's funding of the Delta Center's Child Imaging Laboratory in Development Science (CHILDS) facility. This is the first study from data collected from the CHILDS facility.
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Contact: Richard Lewis richard-c-lewis@uiowa.edu 319-384-0012 University of Iowa
University of Iowa study shows how 3- and 4-year-olds retain what they see around them
When young children gaze intently at something or furrow their brows in concentration, you know their minds are busily at work. But you're never entirely sure what they're thinking.
Now you can get an inside look. Psychologists led by the University of Iowa for the first time have peered inside the brain with optical neuroimaging to quantify how much 3- and 4-year-old children are grasping when they survey what's around them and to learn what areas of the brain are in play. The study looks at "visual working memory," a core cognitive function in which we stitch together what we see at any given point in time to help focus attention. In a series of object-matching tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. By comparison, adults max out at 3 to 4 objects, according to prior studies.
"This is literally the first look into a 3 and 4-year-old's brain in action in this particular working memory task," says John Spencer, psychology professor at the UI and corresponding author of the paper, which appears in the journal NeuroImage.
The research is important, because visual working memory performance has been linked to a variety of childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, developmental coordination disorder as well as affecting children born prematurely. The goal is to use the new brain imaging technique to detect these disorders before they manifest themselves in children's behavior later on.
"At a young age, children may behave the same," notes Spencer, who's also affiliated with the Delta Center and whose department is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, "but if you can distinguish these problems in the brain, then it's possible to intervene early and get children on a more standard trajectory."
Plenty of research has gone into better understanding visual working memory in children and adults. Those prior studies divined neural networks in action using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). That worked great for adults, but not so much with children, especially young ones, whose jerky movements threw the machine's readings off kilter. So, Spencer and his team turned to functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has been around since the 1960s but has never been used to look at working memory in children as young as three years of age.
"It's not a scary environment," says Spencer of the fNIRS. "No tube, no loud noises. You just have to wear a cap."
Like fMRI, fNIRS records neural activity by measuring the difference in oxygenated blood concentrations anywhere in the brain. You've likely seen similar technology when a nurse puts your finger in a clip to check your circulation. In the brain, when a region is activated, neurons fire like mad, gobbling up oxygen provided in the blood. Those neurons need another shipment of oxygen-rich blood to arrive to keep going. The fNIRS measures the contrast between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood to gauge which area of the brain is going full tilt at a point in time.
The researchers outfitted the youngsters with colorful, comfortable ski hats in which fiber optic wires had been woven. The children played a computer game in which they were shown a card with one to three objects of different shapes for two seconds. After a pause of a second, the children were shown a card with either the same or different shapes. They responded whether they had seen a match.
The tests revealed novel insights. First, neural activity in the right frontal cortex was an important barometer of higher visual working memory capacity in both age groups. This could help clinicians evaluate children's visual working memory at a younger age than before, and work with those whose capacity falls below the norm, the researchers say.
Secondly, 4-year olds showed a greater use than 3-year olds of the parietal cortex, located in both hemispheres below the crown of the head and which is believed to guide spatial attention.
"This suggests that improvements in performance are accompanied by increases in the neural response," adds Aaron Buss, a UI graduate student in psychology and the first author on the paper. "Further work will be needed to explain exactly how the neural response increaseseither through changes in local tuning, or through changes in long range connectivity, or some combination."
###
Contributing authors include David Boas from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Nicholas Fox, research assistant at the UI.
The National Institutes of Health (grant number: P41 14075) funded the research through a grant to Boas. Other funding came from the UI's funding of the Delta Center's Child Imaging Laboratory in Development Science (CHILDS) facility. This is the first study from data collected from the CHILDS facility.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
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