The snowplow driver calling himself Dogg has been ticking off a lot of people. Mark Hussey, who plows the streets of Lowell, Mass., for a private contractor, made a video of himself as he buried cars in the white stuff and blocked driveways by pushing back the snow shoveled off of them. The worst part: [...]
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Most electric vehicle news as of late has been focused on the Telsa Motors vs the New York Times situation, but lest we forgot it's not all about Model S sedans and Superchargers. Giving his State of the City 2013 address for New York, Mayor Bloomberg let loose some exciting prospects for the EV faithful. As SlashGear notes, the city aims to expand beyond its 220 charging points (100 of which are public) to a whopping 10,000 (including 30 more for the city government) by 2019, while hoping to have landlords make 20-percent of all parking friendly to EVs. Beyond that, the city will test the viability of two quick-chargers that would allow some vehicles to juice up in about 30 minutes. Whether the city ultimately approves the lofty plans it their current form will remain to be seen, but, at the very least, we'll be glad to have more in place for decreasing range anxiety near the Big Apple. You can watch the full recording of the address by heading past the break.
Filed under: Transportation
Via: SlashGear, New York Times (City Room Blog)
Source: mayorbloomberg (YouTube)
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/6LNVXguGuEg/
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(Reuters) - Poor password security allowed hackers to broadcast a bogus warning on TV networks that the United States was under attack by zombies, broadcasters said, and one expert in the technology said the emergency channel they broke into remained vulnerable.
The attacks on Monday on a handful of stations prompted the government to order broadcasters to change passwords for the equipment that authorities use to instantly push out emergency broadcasts through what is known as the Emergency Alert System, or EAS.
The FCC would not comment on the attacks, but in an urgent advisory sent to television stations on Tuesday the agency said: "All EAS participants are required to take immediate action."
It instructed them to change passwords on equipment from all manufacturers that forces emergency broadcasts on to television networks, interrupting regular programming. It instructed them to make sure that gear was secured behind firewalls and to also inspect systems to ensure that hackers had not queued "unauthorized alerts" for future transmission.
The attacks came at a time when officials and outside security experts are warning the United States is at risk of a cyber attack that could cause major physical damage or even cost lives. President Barack Obama has told Congress that some hackers are looking for ways to attack the U.S. power grid, banks and air traffic control systems.
While the zombie hoax appeared to be somewhat innocuous, the fact that hackers could easily broadcast an emergency message showed that they might be able to wreak havoc with more alarming communications.
"It isn't what they said. It is the fact that they got into the system. They could have caused some real damage," said Karole White, president of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters.
White and her equivalent in Montana, Greg MacDonald, said they believed the hackers were able to get in because stations had not changed the default passwords they used when they shipped from the manufacturer.
The "zombie" hackers targeted two stations in Michigan, and several in California, Montana and New Mexico, White said.
A male voice addressed viewers in a video posted on the Internet of the bogus warning broadcast from KRTV in Great Falls, Montana, a CBS affiliate: "Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from the grave and attacking the living."
The voice warned not "to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous."
STILL VULNERABLE
Larry Estlack, chairman of the Michigan Emergency Alert System, told Reuters that passwords sometimes do not get changed because the EAS uses equipment that is not easy to set up.
"Some people have trouble getting through the setup procedure. It is fairly complex," he said.
But Mike Davis, a hardware security expert with a firm known as IOActive Labs, said there were other ways to remotely access the systems that would allow hackers to bypass password checks even if they were changed.
Davis said he had submitted a report to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, about a month ago that detailed security flaws in EAS equipment that he warned make it vulnerable to attacks.
"Changing passwords is insufficient to prevent unauthorized remote login. There are still multiple undisclosed authentication bypasses," he told Reuters via email. "I would recommend disconnecting them from the network until a fix is available."
Davis also said he was able to use Google Inc's search engine to identify some 30 systems that he believed were vulnerable to attack as of Wednesday morning.
Officials with US-CERT could not be reached.
Bill Robertson, vice president of privately held electronics manufacturer Monroe Electronics of Lyndonville, New York, told Reuters that equipment from his company had been compromised in at least some of the attacks after hackers gained access to their default passwords.
Monroe publishes the default passwords for its equipment in user manuals that can be accessed on its public website.
Robertson said that he believed attackers had been able to access the devices over the Internet because television stations had not properly secured the equipment behind fire walls, which is what Monroe recommends.
"The devices were not really locked down right. They were exposed," he said.
He said that the company is working to beef up security on the equipment and may update its software so that it forces customers to change default passwords.
"They were compromised because the front door was left open. It was just like saying 'Walk in the front door,'" he said.
Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dan Watson said the breach did not have any impact on the government's ability to activate the Emergency Alert System.
(The story is corrected to change "his" to "her" in the eighth paragraph)
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Patrick Graham)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zombie-hoax-blamed-lax-passwords-u-broadcasters-045834782--sector.html
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Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, meets in his office tonight with wounded Army Spc. Ryan Wilcox, of New Haven, Oswego County, before President Obama's State of the Union address. Maffei gave his only guest ticket to Wilcox, who has been undergoing physical therapy at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., as he recovers from a gunshot to the upper thigh. Wilcox, 24, received a nerve and vein graft to repair damage in his thigh. ? Washington -- Rep. Dan Maffei said tonight that middle class families in Central New York stand to benefit from the initiatives that President Barack Obama highlighted in his State of the Union Address.
Maffei, D-DeWitt, said in an interview after the speech that he liked Obama's idea of changing U.S. tax codes to help promote domestic manufacturing.
Maffei was less enthusiastic about the president's idea of creating up to 15 special manufacturing hubs in region's across the nation.
?We need general programs that will help manufacturing nationwide," Maffei said. "But I think the core of what the president was saying is exactly what we need to hear in Central New York. We need a thriving middle class.?
Maffei added, ?I think he hit all the right places. But that doesn?t mean I will support every program the president proposes.?
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the address "President Obama's best and most stirring State of the Union."
Schumer added, "The president focused squarely on the middle class and appealed to the average American. He talked about education, gun safety and immigration, but most of all, jobs. The president's proposals will help put the middle class on a renewed path to prosperity and make our country safer. They deserve a vote, and they deserve our support."
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., also said the president's address offers hope for middle class families.
?For too long, Congress has let the smallness of its politics keep us from solving our greatest challenges ? all at the expense of middle class families and small businesses, Gillibrand said in a statement. "I am hopeful that with a fresh start, we can leave the partisan gridlock and gamesmanship behind us, build consensus around the common, core values that unite us, and do our part to help create new jobs."
Central New York's other House member, Rep. Richard Hanna, R-Barneveld, said before the speech that he hoped to hear the president focus on jobs and the economy.
?Upstate New Yorkers want their leaders in Congress and the White House to put politics aside and focus on serving their foremost needs ? which in our community means getting serious about jobs and the economy,? Hanna said.
Contact Mark Weiner at mweiner@syracuse.com or 571-970-3751. Follow him on Twitter @MarkWeinerDC
Source: http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/02/rep_dan_maffei_reacts_to_presi.html
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for talks on a far-reaching free trade agreement with the 27 nations of the European Union, throwing his weight behind a deal that would encompass half the world's economic output.
"Tonight I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs," Obama said in his annual State of the Union speech.
The United States and the EU already have the largest economic relationship in the world, and one of the most complicated. A pact would unite the United States, the world's largest economy, with four other countries in the top ten: Germany, France, Britain and Italy.
Faced with slow growth on both sides of the Atlantic and rising competition from China and other emerging economies, the long-time allies in late 2011 began looking at ways to build on their existing relationship.
Last week, EU leaders endorsed trade talks with the United States, putting it at the top of a larger agenda that includes negotiations with Canada and Japan.
Two-way goods trade between the United States and the EU now totals more than $600 billion annually. Services trade, including sales by majority-owned U.S. or EU companies in each other's market, adds about $1.2 billion.
U.S. companies have invested around $1.9 trillion in production, distribution and other operations in the EU, far more than in China or anywhere else in the world. EU companies have invested about $1.6 trillion in the United States.
Since most tariffs between the United States and the EU are already low, reducing regulatory barriers to trade in areas like agriculture and chemicals is expected to be the most challenging aspect of the talks.
The EU recently lifted bans on imports of U.S. live swine and beef washed with lactic acid to help build confidence that it can address U.S. agricultural concerns.
TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS
Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk earlier on Tuesday, welcomed those steps but said any agreement must also reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, poultry treated with chlorine washes to kill pathogens and meat from animals fed the growth stimulant ractopamine.
"A strong, comprehensive trade and investment agreement with the EU has the potential to create significant good-paying jobs for Americans," but negotiations will be tough, Representative Dave Camp, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement welcoming Obama's announcement.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an early proponent of trade talks with the EU, applauded the news and urged swift negotiation of a high-standard pact.
The U.S.-EU talks also are expected to tackle new areas, such as setting rules to govern the free flow of information across borders. That is an increasingly important priority for big U.S. Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon but could be hard for EU members France and Germany to accept because of privacy concerns.
Meanwhile, the two sides are locked in a long-running battle at the World Trade Organization over government support for Boeing, the largest the U.S. exporter, and its European rival, Airbus.
That dispute threatens to erupt into a transatlantic trade war in coming years unless the two sides can work out a negotiated settlement.
Obama also reaffirmed his commitment to talks with ten countries in the Asia-Pacific region on a free trade pact called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that negotiators hope to finish this year after more than three years of bargaining.
Talks on the U.S.-EU accord are expected to begin by June. A successful conclusion to both negotiations would secure Obama's reputation as a free trade president after what critics say was a slow start in his first term.
Camp and the Senate Finance Committee leaders also said they planned to push this year for renewal of "trade promotion authority," a law that expired in 2007 that allowed the White House to submit trade deals to Congress for a straight yes-or-no vote without any amendments.
That legislation has long been considered essential in persuading other countries to put their best offers on the table in trade talks with the United States.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Jim Loney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-u-free-trade-pact-european-union-040632588.html
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Pope Benedict's legacy may be a willingness to let liberal Catholics leave in favor of a more orthodox church in the US and Europe.
Pope Benedict XVI delivers his message during a meeting of Vatican cardinals, at the Vatican, Monday. Pope Benedict announced Monday that he would resign at the end of the month - the first pontiff to do so in nearly 600 years.
Courtesy of L'Osservatore Romano/AP
EnlargePope Benedict resigns later this month after arguably being the single most influential figure inside the Roman Catholic Church for three decades, dating to the early 1980s.
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A shy but brilliant scholar whose consistent vision has been to reinstitute the grand authority held by the Vatican in the Middle Ages, Benedict has, often single-handedly, redirected his church away from the liberal experiments and sometimes amateurish enthusiasms of the Vatican II period of the 1960s, which conservatives saw as a dangerous diversion. He has also, over years, instituted doctrines, individuals, and orders consistent with his theological view of the Catholic Church as the true and only authentic one.
While not as widely beloved as his predecessor John Paul II, the popular Polish pope who helped crack the Soviet hold on eastern Europe and attracted global crowds, Benedict arguably has had more influence inside the church ??even as he often irritated Protestants who he said were not "authentic" Christians, angered Muslims by put-downs of Islamic figures, or unsettled Jewish-Catholic relations by rehabilitating a fringe religious society with a bishop who denied the severity of the Nazi holocaust.
Benedict's chief occupation as pope has been, observers say, to purify his church.?
To do so, Benedict crushed the liberation theology movements of the?third world, put a slammer hold on efforts to ordain women and question celibacy, put earlier ecumenical impulses on the back burner, and, instead, has greatly empowered more hardcore orders like Opus Dei, Legions of Christ, and other orthodox wings, largely on the idea that the church must first cherish its most ardent believers.
Yet, while Benedict has won many battles inside the church, he is also widely seen as having lost many larger wars that he either instituted or took part in.
Benedict?s effort to reinstitute Christianity in its European context has largely failed to generate enthusiasm on a continent increasingly secular. While in pursuit of liberal priests and nuns who he implied were polluting the church with wrong doctrines, Benedict has appeared to many Europeans to be too inattentive to priests who sexually abused minors, of whom there are an estimated 8,000. The revelations of sexually abusive priests in Germany, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria two years ago brought a change to the story line that such problems were restricted to the United States.?
For fully believing Catholics, the Roman church is a divine, not a human institution; its leader, the pope, is the ?vicar of Christ,? the direct spiritual descendant of Jesus Christ and his disciple Peter. The kingdom of heaven on earth that Jesus asked his followers to pray for, must, in orthodox Catholic doctrine, come through the Catholic Church and the pope, also known as the Holy Father.
For many modern-thinking or non-literal Catholics, particularly after the long-running church self-examination known as Vatican II, those orthodox doctrines of the identity of the church and the pope were put in question and thrown open for new interpretation.
Vatican II lead, though often quite indirectly, to a massive re-evaluation of things like the operation of the spirit in the church, the possibility of women being ordained as priests, a faint questioning of the doctrine, only adopted in pre-medieval Europe, of celibacy, and of more "democracy"?or power by the laity or non-clergy members in matters of church governance.
For a rising college theology professor named Joseph Ratzinger, these new interpretations were viewed with increasing horror. They often lacked seriousness, were sloppy, and seemed chaotic and undignified.
As then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict took office in 1982 as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the same office that earlier conducted or oversaw heresy trials. Yet while that office has a five-year term and most predecessors held it for 10 years at most, Ratzinger stayed 24 years, only leaving to become pope in 2005.
Now, as Catholics think through their future they will do so with a set of cardinals, bishops, priests, and church authorities that have largely been vetted through the orthodox filter set up by the Bavarian-born pontiff.
Indeed, a church hierarchy carefully pruned of liberal and ecumenical impulses may be one of Benedict?s enduring legacies, though it has brought the current pontiff into serious disagreements with powerful orders, like the Jesuits, that previously saw themselves as the main defenders of Rome.
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MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament voted on Tuesday to consider protecting bullfighting as a cultural asset, angering animal rights campaigners and authorities in two regions where the sport is banned.
Members of the ruling People's Party, which has an absolute majority in the parliament, voted to debate a petition signed by signed by 500,000 members of the public.
Under the proposal, bullfighting would be promoted and Spain would push to have it recognized by UNESCO as part of its heritage, joining world cultural symbols such as China's Dragon Boat Festival and the Castells human tower formations from the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia.
Bullfighting has gone on in Spain for centuries and its fans included the U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway and Spanish artist Picasso, who celebrated it in their works.
A positive vote could potentially help supporters of bullfighting overturn regional bans - in place in the Canary Islands since 1991 and in Catalonia since 2011.
Protecting bullfighting could also make it easier to gain state subsidizes to rear bulls and maintain bullrings.
The sport already receives significant subsidies in many regions and critics say it would not survive in some areas on ticket sales alone. Some regions have been forced to cut back subsidies in order to meet stringent deficit targets.
The wealthy Catalonia region banned the sport after accepting a people's petition at the Barcelona parliament, in what some people saw as an attempt to further distinguish the region culturally from the rest of Spain.
Catalonia's regional government has pledged to hold a referendum in 2014 on secession.
Esquerra Republicana, a leftist separatist party from Catalonia, said approving the petition was provocative.
"Never, ever, will we accept bullfighting in Catalonia," Alfred Bosch, the spokesman for the group in the Madrid parliament, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Sarah Morris; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/spain-studies-protecting-bullfighting-national-pastime-211621563.html
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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama asked the U.S. Congress to support an ambitious agenda for his second term during the annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
Obama called for tax reform legislation, overhauls of gun and immigration laws, and an increase in the federal minimum wage, among other proposals.
Here are some key quotes from Obama's remarks and reactions to his speech.
Obama on the "sequester" planned spending cuts:
"These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness. They'd devastate priorities like education, energy, and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs."
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican, on the sequester:
"The president had an opportunity to offer a solution tonight, and he let it slip by. We are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president's sequester, and he failed to offer the cuts needed to replace it."
------------------------------------------
Obama on Medicare:
"We'll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors. We'll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare, because our medical bills shouldn't be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital - they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive."
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, in the Republican Party's response to Obama's speech, on Medicare:
"I would never support any changes to Medicare that would hurt seniors like my mother. But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now is in favor of bankrupting it.
"Republicans have offered a detailed and credible plan that helps save Medicare without hurting today's retirees. Instead of playing politics with Medicare, when is the president going to offer his detailed plan to save it? Tonight would have been a good time for him to do it."
------------------------------------------
Obama on taxes:
"The American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms, and more time expanding and hiring; a tax code that ensures billionaires with high-powered accountants can't pay a lower rate than their hard-working secretaries; a tax code that lowers incentives to move jobs overseas, and lowers tax rates for businesses and manufacturers that create jobs right here in America."
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on taxes:
"President Obama says he wants a 'balanced approach' to reduce our deficit. That's code for higher taxes. But he already got his tax increases - and not just on rich people ... Republicans want more money in your pocket - not in government's pocket."
------------------------------------------
Obama on climate change:
"I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy."
Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford on climate change:
"It is encouraging to hear President Obama highlight the urgent need to address climate change, but unless the president uses his authority to put the brakes on new fossil fuel projects like Arctic drilling, Keystone XL, and exporting America's coal abroad, his efforts to move us to clean energy will remain one step forward, two steps back."
Rubio on climate change:
"When we point out that no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can't control the weather, he accuses us of wanting dirty water and dirty air."
------------------------------------------
Obama on immigration:
"Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship - a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally.
"And real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy."
Texas Republican Representative Randy Neugebauer, on Twitter, on immigration:
"I support legal immigration, but we must incentivize people to abide by the law, not break it, to come to our great nation."
------------------------------------------
Obama on the minimum wage:
"Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour."
Neera Tanden, president of left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, on minimum wage:
"President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage is a giant step for the middle class. It would help millions of people striving to enter the middle class and would strengthen the economy by increasing workers' purchasing power."
------------------------------------------
Obama on gun control:
"I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence. But this time is different. Overwhelming majorities of Americans - Americans who believe in the second amendment - have come together around commonsense reform - like background checks that will make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun ... Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress."
Rubio on gun control:
"We must effectively deal with the rise of violence in our country, but unconstitutionally undermining the second amendment rights of law-abiding Americans is not the way to do it."
(Reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Jim Loney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/factbox-state-union-quotes-reactions-044624548--business.html
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Kathy Kmonicek / AP
With tears in her eyes, Pirscilla Arena, 41, from Mount Sinai, N.Y., reads letters she wrote to her two children as she spent the night in her car on North Ocean Avenue in Farmingville after the car got stuck in the snow while she was traveling home after work during the snow storm. Arena was at the Brookhaven Town Hall on Saturday after being rescued by a New York state trooper.
By Frank Eltman, The Associated Press
FARMINGVILLE, N.Y. -- Stranded for hours on a snow-covered road, Priscilla Arena prayed, took out a sheet of loose-leaf paper and wrote what she thought might be her last words to her husband and children.
She told her 9 1/2-year-old daughter, Sophia, she was "picture-perfect beautiful." And she advised her 5 ?-year-old son, John: "Remember all the things that mommy taught you. Never say you hate someone you love. Take pride in the things you do, especially your family. ... Don't get angry at the small things; it's a waste of precious time and energy. Realize that all people are different, but most people are good. "
"My love will never die ? remember, always," she added.
Full coverage from The Weather Channel
Arena, who was rescued in an Army canvas truck after about 12 hours, was one of hundreds of drivers who spent a fearful, chilly night stuck on highways in a blizzard that plastered New York's Long Island with more than 30 inches of snow, its ferocity taking many by surprise despite warnings to stay off the roads.
Even plows were mired in the snow or blocked by stuck cars, so emergency workers had to resort to snowmobiles to try to reach motorists. Four-wheel-drive vehicles, tractor-trailers and a couple of ambulances could be seen stranded along the roadway and ramps of the Long Island Expressway. Stuck drivers peeked out from time to time, running their cars intermittently to warm up as they waited for help.
With many still stranded hours after the snow stopped, Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged other communities to send plows to help dig out in eastern Long Island, which took the state's hardest hit by far in the massive Northeast storm.
In Connecticut, where the storm dumped more than 3 feet of snow in some places, the National Guard rescued about 90 stranded motorists, taking a few to hospitals with hypothermia.
The scenes came almost exactly two years after a blizzard marooned at least 1,500 cars and buses on Chicago's iconic Lake Shore Drive, leaving hundreds of people shivering in their vehicles for as long as 12 hours and questioning why the city didn't close the crucial thoroughfare earlier.
Cuomo and other officials were similarly asked why they didn't act to shut down major highways in Long Island in advance of the storm, especially given the sprawling area's reputation for gridlock. The expressway is often called "the world's longest parking lot."
"The snow just swallowed them up. It came down so hard and so fast," explained Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone.
"That's not an easy call," added Cuomo, who noted that people wanted to get home and that officials had warned them to take precautions because the worst of the snow could start by the evening rush hour. Flashing highway signs underscored the message ahead of time: "Heavy Snow Expected. Avoid PM Travel!"
"People need to act responsibly in these situations," Cuomo said.
But many workers didn't have the option of taking off early Friday, Arena noted. The 41-year-old sales account manager headed home from an optical supply business in Ronkonkoma around 4 p.m. She soon found her SUV stuck along a road in nearby Farmingville.
"Even though we would dig ourselves out and push forward, the snow kept piling, and therefore we all got stuck, all of us," she recalled later at Brookhaven Town Hall, where several dozen stranded motorists were taken after being rescued. Many others opted to stay with their cars.
Related story: Boy killed by carbon monoxide as dad shovels out car
Richard Ebbrecht left his Brooklyn chiropractic office around 3 p.m. for his home in Middle Island, about 60 miles away, calculating that he could make the drive home before the worst of the blizzard set in. He was wrong.
As the snow came rushing down faster than he'd foreseen, he got stuck six or seven times on the expressway and on other roads. Drivers began helping each other shovel and push, he said, but to no avail. He finally gave up and spent the night in his car on a local thoroughfare, only about two miles from his home.
"I could run my car and keep the heat on and listen to the radio a little bit," he said.
He walked home around at 8 a.m., leaving his car.
Late-shifters including Wayne Jingo had little choice but to risk it if they wanted to get home. By early afternoon, he'd been stuck in his pickup truck alongside the Long Island Expressway for nearly 12 hours.
He'd left his job around midnight as a postal worker at Kennedy Airport and headed home to Medford, about 50 miles east. He was at an exit in Ronkonkoma ? almost home ? around 1:45 a.m. when another driver came barreling at him westbound, the wrong way, he said. Jingo swerved to avoid the oncoming car, missed the exit and ended up stuck on the highway's grass shoulder.
He rocked the truck back and forth to try to free it, but it only sank down deeper into the snow and shredded one of his tires. He called 911. A police officer came by at 9:30 a.m. and said he would send a tow truck.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, Jingo was still waiting.
"I would have been fine if I didn't have to swerve," he said.
In Middle Island, a Wal-Mart remained unofficially open long past midnight to accommodate more than two dozen motorists who were stranded on nearby roads.
"We're here to mind the store, but we can't let people freeze out there," manager Jerry Greek told Newsday.
Officials weren't aware of any deaths among the stranded drivers, Cuomo said. Suffolk County police said no serious injuries had been reported among stuck motorists, but officers were still systematically checking stranded vehicles late Saturday afternoon.
While the expressway eventually opened Saturday, about 30 miles of the highway was to be closed again Sunday for snow removal.
Susan Cassara left her job at a Middle Island day care center around 6:30 p.m., after driving some of the children home because their parents couldn't get there to pick them up.
She got stuck on one road until about 2:30 a.m. Then a plow helped her get out ? but she got stuck again, she said. Finally, an Army National Guardsman got to her on a snowmobile after 4 a.m.
"It was so cool. Strapped on, held on and came all the way here" to the makeshift shelter at the Brookhaven Town Hall, she said. "Something for my bucket list."
Related stories:
?
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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So You Think You Have Started a Cult:
What To Do Next?
If we may interrupt you from the worshipping session and declaration of your name being one with God or Gods? Then we at Cult 101 would like to begin to warn you of the major pitfalls, provide advice and anything else you will need in the day to day runnings of your cult.
Firstly this leaflet is for those who obviously have gathered enough mindless fools and though we at Cult 101 talk about Religion often we can't accept everyone. Recently we had to remove Scientology from the roster due to it's overwhelming popularity as is Mormonism.
We at Cult 101 believe a Cult can't be too big and prefer a group of say round about 5000, anymore and well the cult has reached the zenith and achieved Religion status.
So, for sake of simplicity we shall lay out the rules for those reading this and thinking, ?My this does seem like a nifty idea, I think I will go do this.?
Rule 1: The most important thing to remember is this, a cult can worship anything from a banana to the mighty Idol Zagmado as long as people are ready to give their life, metaphorically of course. (See sacrifices for more information on this.) If they believe in the cause then they will throw down and declare their possessions void.
Rule 2: If you are oratory wizard or someone who can woo a crowd, you can skip this rule as this only concerns those who are unable to talk a girl's knickers off, let alone talk a crowd into absolute obedience. Take lessons in Leadership and Oratory Speaking, as these will come into importance a lot during your lifelong reign; I hope that's clear we at Cult 101 will not suffer fools if you waste our time we will close your Swiss Bank Accounts and upstage you. For those who are willing to work, we provide the necessary courses:
Jim Jones: ?I got into contact with Cult 101 and soon I had people believing a phoney religion, it was glorious.?
As you can see we aim to please, so if you got any questions concerning Rule 2, feel free to contact us number below.
Rule 3: As you may understand if your subjects are connected to anyone, then those connections must either be severed or those friends or family must accept the cult. We at Cults 101 know this and so we will offer you training from PR Staff and Advertisement Agency. The goal being you will learn how to pitch your cult and make it seem interesting even to the most non-spiritual nihilist. In no time you will have gathered support and sold them on this idea that your cult is better than say the cult next door.
As we at Cults 101 say, ?It's a cult eat cult world out there.? only the fittest will survive.
Rule 4: I am sure you are well aware of the fact that being a leader of cult will profoundly increase your sexual prowess, for to them you are the avatar of God or Gods thus people would see intercourse with you male or female, as the most holy experience. As this is common in our experience we provide a five day safe sex course so you can remember that an unhealthy leader weakens the cult and well I doubt if you have STIs or STDs you will be as worshipped. This is why we put this rule down.
Rule 5: This is one of the most important and it's how many cults failed in the past, well this is what our studies suggest. Stay fantastic, stay enigmatic, stay unknown and stay amazing. To clarify if you act human then people will begin to grow suspicious it's well worth remembering that once you stop appearing like an immortal your cult may survive but there more dangers of your cult being taken over.
Advice Concerning Running a Cult
1. Firstly don't murder them all, since your cult obeys all your commands and thus if you kill them you lose willing people.
2. They must be willing to give everything even their most prized possession an ideal example of this is Dalton Seymore he got a guy to give his glass eye to prove the person support to the cult.
3. Start small and don't expect to have a thousand worthless fools obeying you early on, build it up gradually.
4. Cults can be a family thing, but it's in our experience that running one solo is less hassle.
5. Remember no matter how insane it appears as long as you provide some context and weave a great story, then anything can be believed.
6. Lastly bribing the authorities and other lawful individuals will be necessary in the long run. And if worse comes to the worse, let's just hope you live in High Murder Capital, if you get the drift?
Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RolePlayGateway
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SAN FRANCISCO ? Netflix won?t miss Saturday mail delivery, even though the weekend service helped keep its DVD-by-mail subscribers happy.
The U.S. Postal Service?s planned shift to five days of home delivery a week instead of six may even make Netflix Inc. slightly more profitable by lowering the costs for sending out its familiar red envelopes with DVDs. That?s because subscribers may be able to watch fewer DVDs for the same monthly price.
For Netflix customers, DVDs that used to arrive on Saturday would come on Monday instead, delaying when they could watch a movie and send it back for the next one. Those who want to make sure they have a DVD to watch on the weekend might have to mail the discs back to Netflix a day earlier to ensure that they receive it on Friday.
However, analysts believe few customers are likely to mind. Most Netflix subscribers no longer get DVDs anyway, and those who do often let their discs sit on shelves for days or weeks, so the extra waiting time won?t hurt that much. Complaints are more likely to come from subscribers who try to watch as many DVDS as possible each month ? an unprofitable audience for Netflix anyway.
Investors reacted positively to Wednesday?s announcement that the U.S. Postal Service intends to stop Saturday home delivery beginning Aug. 10. Netflix?s stock gained $10.02, or nearly 6 percent, to close Wednesday at $184.41. Earlier in the session, the stock hit a new 16-month high of $185.14.
Under the plan, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday, but it would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. The plan, designed to save about $2 billion a year, could face a challenge from Congress.
Investors? reaction might have been different if Saturday mail service had been eliminated three years ago, when the idea was first broached.
Back then, mailing DVDs was still Netflix?s main business. It was so important that Netflix grew into the postal service?s biggest customer. When the total number of Netflix?s subscribers receiving DVDs peaked at 24.6 million during the summer of 2011, the company was spending about $600 million annually for discs to make the round trip between customers? homes and dozens of distribution centers around the U.S.
Netflix began this year with just 8.2 million DVD subscribers, and the number is expected to keep dwindling as the instant gratification of being able to watch video over the Internet makes the notion of watching movies and TV shows on DVDs seem antiquated. By contrast, Netflix had 27.1 million Internet video subscribers in the U.S. at the start of the year. It doesn?t even offer the DVD option in Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom and other markets it?s expanding to.
Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible estimates that Netflix will spend about $300 million on postal expenses this year and perhaps as little as $200 million next year, depending how many more DVD subscribers cancel their service. The company no longer discloses its postal expenses.
The DVD-by-mail service began to shrink in mid-2011 when Netflix unbundled it from its rapidly growing service for streaming video to TVs and other devices with high-speed Internet connections. The change required Netflix customers to pay separate monthly fees if they wanted both Internet video and DVDs through the mail, which offered the latest theatrical releases more quickly.
The switch raised Netflix?s prices by as much as 60 percent for those who wanted both options, much to the anger of hundreds of thousands of subscribers who canceled. Most customers, though, decided to stick with Internet video and dropped DVDs.
If Saturday mail delivery ends as planned this summer, even more subscribers may opt for a streaming-only plan.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter doubts most DVD subscribers will care about the loss of Saturday delivery. The customers most likely to be irked are ones who typically watch eight to 10 DVDs per month, because four or five fewer days of mail delivery each month will make it more difficult to get as many discs. ?Those guys cost them money, so if they quit, it won?t hurt them,? Pachter said.
Netflix makes more money when its subscribers watch fewer DVDs in a month because its expenses go down while the monthly fee remains unchanged. The DVD plans start as $8, as do the ones for Internet streaming.
Even though Netflix has fewer DVD subscribers, that side of the business is still slightly more profitable than the streaming service. That?s mainly because Netflix?s licensing fees for Internet video are higher than its DVD expenses.
Netflix, which is based in Los Gatos, Calif., had little to say about Wednesday?s developments, other than to say it?s ?in favor of a healthy postal service.?
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was more forthcoming during an April 2010 conference call with analysts. If Netflix were to lose Saturday home delivery before the company had more time to expand its streaming service, ?it?s not a good thing for us,? Hastings said then. ?We hope they hold off as long as possible, but we?re also cognizant that the total health of the USPS is at stake, and they may need to make changes that they need to make.?
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Getting Real With Shadra Bruce
To cope with stress (the body can?t tell the difference between sabre tooth tigers and atrocious bosses), the body?s fight or flight response causes a dump of adrenaline,?cortisol and norepinephrine into the body. These are great hormones that make you stronger, more powerful, and quicker on your feet.
Perfect for fighting sabre tooth tigers.
Not so perfect for sitting on your butt, bitching about your boss, and eating a bag of potato chips.
So what happens when you don?t put those stress hormones to good use during stress?
Heart disease. Obesity. Migraines. Diabetes. Potentially even cancer.
You can?t eliminate stress from your life, unless you decide to go live in a day spa and get mani-pedis and massages every day. But you can learn to cope with stress in different ways.
At the first sign of stress, take a deep, calming breath. You really can control the stress response to some degree with a mind-over-bad-boss approach.
If you are going to eat, make sure you choose healthy comfort foods that help relieve stress:
You can train yourself to react to stress in more positive ways than reaching for the bag of potato chips. By reducing stress, learning to cope with stress that you can?t eliminate, and choosing foods that make you healthier, you can turn stress into a positive tool for achieving your goals.
If you enjoy this post, be sure to follow MomsGetReal on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+!
Source: http://momsgetreal.com/2013/02/coping-with-stress-without-potato-chips/
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If you're a talented college student hoping to create the next Halo or Call of Duty, you could have a chance to show your chops at this year's E3. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the group behind the annual video game conference, has just announced the E3 College Game Competition, where you and your school could be one of five finalists to have a spotlight on the show floor. Around 400 higher education institutions -- primarily those that offer video game courses -- can each submit one game to represent their school in the competition. Applicants can begin submitting the story and assets of a playable game starting March 15th, with a final deadline of April 19th. The finalists will be contacted on May 10th and the winner will be announced at the show itself. It's a rare opportunity to rub shoulders with video game VIPs, so we suggest aspiring creators convince their universities to get on board and contact the ESA for all the challenge's rules and requirements.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: E3, Entertainment Software Association
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/NVlrxNhRq3Y/
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New Orleans MC ran through his hits on Saturday as fans including Victor Cruz, Kate Upton and Hayden Panettiere partied with him.
By Kelley L. Carter
Lil Wayne performs at the GQ Super Bowl Party
Photo: Gustavo Caballero/ Getty Images
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1701274/lil-wayne-gq-super-bowl-show-performance.jhtml
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Posted by The Mermaid Diaries on January 30, 2013 ? Leave a Comment?
Published in Home & Design Magazine, January 2012.
By Alisa Bowen
Photography by Giovanni Photography
It is only natural that a couple who has lived in major international cities, including Paris and New York, would want to keep an elegant pied-?-terre in paradise together. Inspired to re-create a Pre-War style apartment, the owners wished to pay homage to fond memories of her grandmother?s apartment in New York?s Upper East Side, while expressing a love for the style and design aesthetic of Paris. Their further inspiration for this sophisticated vacation home included a beautiful collection of fine art and family antiques, but came with the challenge of downsizing. After three rounds of interviews with top interior design firms, they enlisted Kevin Steffanni, principal of Kevin Steffanni Design Group based in Naples, Florida and Rocky River, Ohio to help them create this dream-come-true apartment.
The enchanting space has been judiciously planned, and a neutral palette of grays and whites keeps the residents? collection of art and antique furnishings front and center. An eclectic mix of objects collected from their travels around the globe, and from family heirlooms and a vast European art collection, all present rich back stories steeped in the couple?s cherished history. As you enter the home, it is quickly apparent this is Old New York meets ?50s Paris. Classic wooden floors, rich area rugs, an elegant sparkling chandelier, and a gold-gilded mirror from the Parisian flea markets compliment a staircase foyer. The entrance is anchored by a sleek, lacquered chest from Joseph Anfuso.
Design fusion takes center stage in the main living room, where Steffanni listened carefully to the owner?s desire for a further infusion of Hollywood Regency Style. Two white vintage Barcelona chairs and matching ottomans all by Mies van der Rohe are matched effortlessly with a bubblegum-pink sofa designed by George Nelson for Herman Miller Design circa 1950. This seating arrangement sits atop an Art Nouveau, pink and coral, swirled rug which was sourced for the owners locally in Naples. More than anything, however, these homeowners are drawn to what?s ?cool,? yet offbeat. An old-English antique secretary, which was a wedding gift from him to her, is artfully paired with a mid-century modern Philippe Starck Ghost Chair. Seamlessly added to this is his personal collection of accolades from sports and business.
This intimate home opens out to a sunny enclosed sitting room which was converted with Steffanni?s expertise from a classic, Floridian outdoor lanai. Just when you thought you were back in old New York, the expansive views of the golf course remind you of your tropical whereabouts. Framing the entrance to this alcove is a pair of antique, farmhouse corner brackets perched like quotation marks in the upper corners. A rustic writing desk, circa 1880 from Ireland, provides a tucked-in space for quiet correspondence, while the orange armchairs by Ralph Lauren Home at Webster & Company add a vibrant burst of color.? An iron, Barbara Barry end table topped with stone, provides a charming accent. Illustrating the home?s eclectic style perfectly, the wooden antique farm bench ? a coveted family piece ? completes the space.
Steffanni truly excels at space planning. He helped his clients achieve their goal of downsizing, while still maintaining the look and livability of a much larger space. A glass and steel Knoll dining table designed by Warren Platner is crowned with a breathtaking Baccarat crystal chandelier. This charming breakfast nook provides a stylish space for a quiet meal or a more intimate dinner with guests. A classic, Pre-War, New?York-style kitchen was constructed with expert direction from Steffanni, complete with glass cabinetry, white Carrara marble, silver finishes, and antique culinary and cocktail trinkets. It is a 21st century design, including state-of-the-art stainless steel appliances, punctuated with whimsical antique accessories.
Steffanni cleverly reinvented a nook off the main living room into an ad hoc library complete with an old English smoker?s table from London. This created the perfect vignette in which to showcase the owner?s cherished antique English writing desk from the 1860s. The cozy space is complete with a rich cigar chair by Hans Wagner, a magnificent leather club chair, and a steamer trunk recommended by home lifestyle specialist Mark Fanta of Ralph Lauren Home at Webster & Company. ?The distressed leather on the Ralph Lauren club chair has hints of gold and is magnificent when the light shines on it,? shares Fanta. It offers a comfortable spot for quiet contemplation beneath the beautiful, blue and white, still life paintings displayed on the wall.
A guest bedroom suite outfitted with beds from Switzerland provides visiting grandchildren and friends a tranquil, yet elegant retreat. Every detail in this room shows a diversity of origin. Throw pillows were purchased from a trip to the Far East. The mirror is from the Paris Flea Market that Steffanni picked up on his visit to France this past fall, and the rug was procured by the husband during his travels. The art pieces were purchased at a local gallery on 5th Avenue in Naples, and the mirrored chest is from F. Schumacher & Company. The chairs, from the Charles Faudre private collection acquired during a buying trip to the south of France, hit just the right note.
Clearly there is a compelling backstory and sentiment attached to each piece thoughtfully selected and displayed in this home. Steffanni modeled the master bedroom suite after the couple?s favorite hotel in Paris where they both once lived. Armed with inspiration, Steffanni worked with Fanta to select a bed from the Le Grand Hotel collection to compliment the owner?s existing Barbara Barry pieces. This Louis XV-inspired bed in an Indian Cove Lodge gilt finish allows Steffanni to carry the mix of metal finishes that are found throughout the residence. The silver-leaf, gilded, Adrianna crystal chandelier from Ralph Lauren Lighting glimmers beautifully. The silver-embroidered beading on the Ralph Lauren pillows and the brushed-gold nail heads on the Noble Estate bench dramatically reflect the light. Steffanni grouped the Cannes Ralph Lauren chaise lounge with the Noble Estate crystal lamp and three-tiered, Daniella table lamp to create an area for restful repose and that certain je ne sais quoi.
Hues of coral are imbued in the Schumacher upholstered slipper chair, in the rich Tibetan carpet that Steffanni sourced in Naples, and in the romantic arrangements of fresh tangerine roses on the night table. Steffanni placed artful and meaningful touches throughout the room, such as a framed, vintage, Hanae Mori butterfly scarf. The two, 24-karat gold, gilded twig mirrors, which remind the couple of their Carolina Mountain top estate, are from Webster & Company Antiques and Accessories. A sophisticated Barbara Barry dresser sits under a dramatic starburst mirror from Baker. Steffanni continues the juxtaposition by using the owners existing, dark wood Barbara Barry pieces (favorites of the homeowners), complemented by the light, silk and linen fabrics found on the bed, chaise, and bench. This bedroom is reminiscent of the chic, urban hotels the couple have enjoyed while traveling the globe.
Inspired by the grandeur of Parisian bedroom suites, Steffanni installed French doors with crystal doorknobs that open into the master bath. Dramatic elegance is obtained upon entry, with an antique English china cabinet, the starting point around which the entire room was planned. The cabinet is flanked by two, ?Madame et Monsieur? Waterworks pedestal sinks. The wooden English china cabinet is crowned with an antique, German mantle clock, a piece which was lovingly handed down within the family. European sophistication with a timeless sense of chic is reiterated with a pair of stunning Baccarat crystal candelabras found in Brighton, England circa 1820. These fixtures flank the One Fifth, silver-leaf mirror, also by Ralph Lauren, which hangs over a European slipper tub.
The design fusion works well here in Steffanni?s capable hands. The finished project not only transports the owners back to their memories of Paris and old New York, but delights guests as they completely forget that they are vacationing in a tropical paradise. This lovely pied-a-terre is a veritable jewel box of personal history, the perfect culmination of a chic and stylish lifetime of shared memories.
Kevin Steffanni Design Group
Naples, Florida, 239.495.5821
Rocky River, Ohio, 440.333.3630
www.kevinsteffannidesigngroup.com
Ralph Lauren Home at Webster & Company
Webster & Company Antiques & Accessories
Miromar Design Center
10800 Corkscrew Road, Suites 348, 302
Estero, Florida 33928
239.498.9074
www.webstercompany.com
Source: http://alisabowen.com/2013/01/30/pied-a-terre/
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Source: http://upstart-dotting.blogspot.com/2013/02/garypoterxy-pied-terre-alisa-bowen.html
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>>> also in turkey tonight new details are emerging about the suicide bomber who attacked the u.s. embassy in ankora killing a turkish security guard and himself. nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel is in ankora with that and developing news out of egypt tonight as well.
>> reporter: we are learning from turkish officials the bomber was a well known militant from a far left group and he served more than four years in a turkish prison, was involved in a hunger strike , and was eventually released from jail for medical reasons. he left the country and then returned from greece on a fake passport , but turkish officials don't know how long he's been in the country. they think he's been in ankora for ten days. this isn't the only situation u.s. officials are concerned about in the region. there is also egypt . u.s. officials are worried that ongoing clashes in egypt , including ones in front of the presidential palace , could be a signal that the egyptian government , led by president morsi of the muslim brotherhood is losing control of the streets of egypt , which would be a major problem for not only egypt but also the united states especially if the egyptian government were to collapse.
>> richard engel in ankora tonight, thank you.
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50679843/
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Feb. 1, 2013 ? On July 18, 2012, a fairly small explosion of light burst off the lower right limb of the sun. Such flares often come with an associated eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME -- but this one did not. Something interesting did happen, however. Magnetic field lines in this area of the sun's atmosphere, the corona, began to twist and kink, generating the hottest solar material -- a charged gas called plasma -- to trace out the newly-formed slinky shape. The plasma glowed brightly in extreme ultraviolet images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and scientists were able to watch for the first time the very formation of something they had long theorized was at the heart of many eruptive events on the sun: a flux rope.
Eight hours later, on July 19, the same region flared again. This time the flux rope's connection to the sun was severed, and the magnetic fields escaped into space, dragging billions of tons of solar material along for the ride -- a classic CME.
"Seeing this structure was amazing," says Angelos Vourlidas, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. "It looks exactly like the cartoon sketches theorists have been drawing of flux ropes since the 1970s. It was a series of figure eights lined up to look like a giant slinky on the sun."
More than just gorgeous to see, such direct observation offers one case study on how this crucial kernel at the heart of a CME forms. Such flux ropes have been seen in images of CMEs as they fly away from the sun, but it's never been known -- indeed, has been strongly debated -- whether the flux rope formed before or in conjunction with a CME's launch. This case shows a clear-cut example of the flux rope forming ahead of time. Vourlidas is a co-author, along with Spiro Patsourakos and Guillermo Stenborg, of a paper on these results published in the Astrophysical Journal on Jan. 31, 2013.
Spotting such a foreshadowing of a CME could help scientists develop ways to predict them, says Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for SDO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "By telling us when and where flux ropes will erupt," Pesnell says. "SDO helps us predict a major source of space weather."
Scientific research is always a dance between hypothesis and experimental confirmation, and the history of the flux rope is no exception. Plasma physicists suggested that such coils of magnetic field lines were at the heart of flares in the 1970s and spacecraft near Earth provided in-situ measurements that occasionally traced out helical structures inside CMEs. Later, the flux ropes were spotted in images of CMEs captured by the joint ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) -- which launched in 1995 -- using the mission's Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), a telescope that blocks out the bright light of the solar disk in order to better see the tenuous corona around it. They are now a regular appearance on coronagraph and heliospheric imaging observations.
When it came to watching them form in a CME, however, the task was much harder. Since CMEs can form quite suddenly -- known as impulsive CMEs -- the associated flux ropes are smaller and closer to the surface, making it difficult to spot them amongst the many structures in the corona.
In the absence of direct observational evidence, theorists have produced two theories based on general physics of plasmas and magnetic fields of how and when the flux rope might form. In one, the magnetic structure of the rope exists before the CME, and as it evolves over time it twists and kinks becoming increasingly unstable. Eventually it erupts from the sun, releasing enormous amounts of energy and solar plasma. In the second version, the CME erupts when looping magnetic field lines are severed from the sun's surface. While the great blob of solar material streams off the sun, the fields reconnect with each other to form a classic flux rope shape.
"In this case, we saw this big eruption on July 19," says Vourlidas. "We wanted to analyze the eruption and we started going back in time -- a few minutes, then an hour, then eight hours. And then we saw it. A flux rope that looked just like the cartoons scientists have been drawing for decades."
Vourlidas credits this first sighting to three things. First, the team looked far enough back in time, when previous searches have often only looked a few minutes back. Second, the sun obliged its viewers with the perfect angle at which to see the tell-tale loops of the flux rope. SDO's cameras could look right down the center of the rope, like looking down the tunneled center of a slinky. Third, AIA's cameras capture imagery that no other cameras do: light at the 131 Angstrom wavelength, which shows solar material heated to temperatures of 10,000,000 K (18,000,000 F / 10,000,000 C). In images of the same region at the same time showing cooler material, the flux rope doesn't show up at all. AIA scientists chose to include a filter to view this unprecedentedly high temperature because they posited that flares could heat the corona to those temperatures. Apparently the same incredibly hot plasma helped highlight the flux rope that would later give rise to a CME.
Over the course of the next eight hours after the July 18 flux rope formed, the rope did show up faintly in images of cooler material, suggesting that the hot material from the flare cooled down over time as the flux rope also rose in space. Then eight hours later, on July 19, the material got hot again, the region flared, and the flux rope escaped into space.
"We could verify that the flux rope was there in the coronagraph from SOHO. We could see the typical slinky structure with multiple round loops inside it," says Vourlidas. "We looked at it with other NASA telescopes, too. We looked at it with everything we've got. It's a wonderful time to be a solar physicist, because thanks to the large number of telescopes we have in space at the moment, we can see things like this from every angle."
Vourlidas says that images from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) also helped with analysis. Since the two STEREO spacecraft observe the sun from a different perspective than does SDO, the team got a top-down view of the flux rope with STEREO-A's EUV Imager, which helped unravel the 3-D structure of the flux rope. The foot points of the rope touched in widely separated areas of the solar surface -- an interesting structural development in of itself that is worth further study.
The team will certainly look for other examples in the images of the hottest plasma, searching for evidence of pre-formed flux ropes further back in time. But even one such example of direct evidence adds an important step to the constant scientific cycle of theory and observation, helping refine and improve the theories of what causes these giant explosions on the sun.
For more information about NASA's SDO mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/sdo
For high resolution versions of this media, visit: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011100/a011180/
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/k7EPC4ymbr0/130201092746.htm
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An embassy security guard asks for help at the US embassy just minutes after a suicide bomber has detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, At least two people are dead, officials said. An Associated Press journalist on Friday saw a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. (AP Photo/Yavuz Ozden, Milliyet) TURKEY OUT - INTERNET OUT
An embassy security guard asks for help at the US embassy just minutes after a suicide bomber has detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, At least two people are dead, officials said. An Associated Press journalist on Friday saw a body in the street in front of an embassy side entrance. (AP Photo/Yavuz Ozden, Milliyet) TURKEY OUT - INTERNET OUT
Satellite map locates Ankara, Turkey site of a U.S. embassy explosion.
Medics and firefighters carry an injured woman on a stretcher to an ambulances after a suicide bomber had detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013. A suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital on Friday, killing himself and one other person, officials said. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
FILE - In this April 14, 2012 file photo, Didem Tuncay, then a diplomatic reporter for Turkish news channel NTV, interviews Iran's Chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul, Turkey. Tuncay, a respected television journalist, 38, was injured after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, A hospital official said she was " not in a critical conditoion." (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici, File)
Emergency personnel are seen in front of a side entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, after a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device, Friday Feb. 1, 2013. The bomb appeared to have exploded inside the security checkpoint at the entrance of the visa section of the embassy. A police official said at least two people are dead. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) ? The suicide bomber who struck the U.S. Embassy in Ankara spent several years in prison on terrorism charges but was released on probation after being diagnosed with a hunger strike-related brain disorder, officials said Saturday.
The bomber, identified as 40-year-old leftist militant Ecevit Sanli, killed himself and a Turkish security guard on Friday, in what U.S. officials said was a terrorist attack. Sanli was armed with enough TNT to blow up a two-story building and also detonated a hand grenade, officials said.
Sanli had fled Turkey after he was released from jail in 2001, but managed to come back to the country "illegally," using a fake ID, Interior Muammer Guler said. It was not clear how long before the attack he returned to Turkey.
Sanli had been a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s but has been relatively quiet in recent years. Compared to al-Qaida, it has not been seen as a strong terrorist threat.
Sanli's motives were still unclear. But some Turkish government officials have linked the attack to the arrest last month of dozens of suspected members of the group in a nationwide sweep.
Speculation has also abounded that the bombing was related to the perceived support of the U.S. for Turkey's harsh criticism of the regime in Syria, whose brutal civil war has forced tens of thousands of Syrian refugees to seek shelter in Turkey. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied that.
Officials said Sanli was arrested in 1997 for alleged involvement in attacks on Istanbul's police headquarters and a military guesthouse and jailed on charges of membership in the group.
While in prison awaiting trial, he took part in a major hunger strike that led to the deaths of dozens of inmates, according to a statement from the Ankara governor's office. The protesters opposed a maximum-security system in which prisoners were held in small cells instead of large wards.
Sanli was diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and released on probation in 2001, following the introduction of legislation that allowed hunger strikers with the disorder to get appropriate treatment. The syndrome is a malnutrition-related brain illness that affects vision, muscle coordination and memory and that can cause hallucinations.
Sanli fled Turkey after his release and was wanted by Turkish authorities. He was convicted in absentia in 2002.
The U.S. flag at the embassy flew at half-staff on Saturday and already tight security was increased. Police sealed off a street in front of the security checkpoint where the explosion knocked a door off its hinges and littered the road with debris. Police vehicles were parked in streets surrounding the building.
The Ankara governor's office, citing the findings of a bomb squad that inspected the site, said Sanli had used 6 kilograms of TNT for the suicide attack and also detonated a hand grenade. That amount of TNT can demolish "a two-story reinforced building," according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.
Officials had earlier said that the bomber detonated a suicide vest at the checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the compound.
The guard who was killed was standing outside the checkpoint. The U.S. ambassador on Saturday attended his funeral in a town just outside of Ankara.
A Turkish TV journalist was seriously wounded and two other guards had lighter wounds.
DHKP-C's forerunner, Devrimci Sol, or Revolutionary Left, was formed in 1978 as a Marxist group openly opposed to the United States and NATO. It has attacked Turkish, U.S. and other foreign targets since then, including two U.S. military contractors and a U.S. Air Force officer.
The group, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and other European allies, changed its name to DHKP-C in 1994.
The attack came as NATO deployed six Patriot anti-missile systems to protect ally Turkey from a possible spillover from the civil war raging across the border in Syria. The United States, Netherlands and Germany are each providing two Patriot batteries.
Ozcan, the terrorism expert, said that the Syrian regime, which had backed terrorist groups in Turkey, including autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, during the Cold War era and through the 1990s, had recently revived ties with these groups.
As Turkey began to support the Syrian opposition, Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime began to try "rebuilding its ties with these organizations," Ozcan said.
Radikal newspaper reported that the DHKP-C had recently been taking an interest in "regional issues," reviving its anti-American stance and taking on "a more pro-Assad position."
Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, speculated that the masterminds of the embassy bombing may have been partly motivated by U.S.-Turkish policy on Syria.
"A successful attack would embarrass the Turkish government and security forces, and it would have struck at the United States, which is widely ? if wrongly ? thought to have manipulated the Erdogan government into breaking with Bashar al-Assad and supporting efforts to remove him from power," Wilson, director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, wrote in an analysis.
"That might rekindle public support for the group. Alas for DHPK/C, this seems unlikely," he wrote.
Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University in the United States, said the bombing showed that a "relatively isolated and obscure group" still has the capacity to cause havoc.
"They really fall outside of our comfortable narratives," Eissenstat wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "And they do seem to have been left in an ideological time warp. There is something distinctly cult-like about them."
The attack drew quick condemnation from Turkey, the U.S., Britain and other nations, and officials from both Turkey and the U.S. pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
It was the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in five months. On Sept. 11, 2012, terrorists attacked a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attackers in Libya were suspected to have ties to Islamist extremists, and one is in custody in Egypt.
U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey have been targeted previously by terrorists. In 2008, an attack blamed on al-Qaida-affiliated militants outside the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.
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Associated Press writers Ezgi Akin and Burhan Ozbilici and Christopher Torchia in Istanbul contributed to this report.
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