Millions of acres of farmland flooded; Louisiana braces for onslaught
nike dunk shoesAcross the South and lower Midwest, floodwaters have covered about 3 million acres of farmland, eroding for many farmers what could have been a profitable year for corn, wheat, rice and cotton, officials said Thursday. In Arkansas, the Farm Bureau estimated that damage to the state's agriculture could top more than $500 million as more than 1 million acres of cropland are under water. "It's in about 10 feet of water," Dyersburg, Tennessee, farmer Jimmy Moody said of his 440 acres of winter wheat, which was to be harvested in the coming month. coach factory outletOther farmers in Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas rushed to salvage what wheat they could ahead of the rising water. As for corn, farmers who were able to get into the fields during a soggy planting season in late March and April are seeing their crops in some cases under several feet of water. Farms near and on the Mississippi River are no strangers to flooding, but the 2011 flood is definitely one for the record books. "This is new water that has reached areas for the first time in 75 years," said Lee Maddox of the Tennessee Farm Bureau. Of course, the flooding is covering more than farmland. replica coach handbagsIn Louisiana alone, Gov. Bobby Jindal said, as many as 3 million acres -- of farms, forests and towns -- could be affected. In Mississippi, 600,000 acres of farmland are only part of 1.4 million acres likely to be flooded, said Andy Prosser of the state's Department of Agriculture and Commerce. With the overflowing Mississippi River bearing down on New Orleans, where the water level was already at flood stage, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that it was opening more bays at the Bonnet Carre Spillway. Another 113 bays were being opened, bringing the total to 223 open bays, authorities said. The 350-bay spillway, just north of New Orleans, diverts water into Lake Pontchartrain. The National Weather Service said that as of Thursday afternoon, the river was at 17.13 feet in New Orleans, about an inch and a half above flood stage. It is expected to crest on May 23 at more than 19 feet. hermes birkin"Nobody can wrap their heads around what's going to happen," said Caroline George of Baton Rouge. In a CNN iReport from her hometown, where the 19-year-old is on summer break from college, she said, "I've never seen the river anywhere near where it is now." The floodwaters that have inundated tens of thousands of acres of Missouri farmland and lapped at downtown Memphis, Tennessee, are on a steady, soggy march through Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, bringing damage and devastation to some areas. In Memphis, which endured a record river crest this week, flooding affected between 800 and 1,000 properties, said Steve Schuler of the local emergency management agency. Many small businesses and farms were affected in Shelby County, and the river level was still high Thursday, he said. Rain moved into the area Thursday night, according to county officials, and Shelby residents were being reminded about five shelters. Coach Scarves"Many people who chose to stay in their homes during the flood are now surrounded by floodwater and are in need of food and other supplies," the Shelby County Emergency Operations Center said.
Coach SunglassesThe echoes were unmistakable. On April 24, 1980, President Jimmy Carter sent eight helicopters to rescue the 52 Americans held captive at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. One crashed en route; one turned back; one malfunctioned. Spooked, Carter decided to cut his losses and abort the missionbut not before one of the remaining choppers sliced into a transport plane, igniting a blaze that killed eight servicemen. Carters presidency never recovered. For a brief, anxious moment, President Obamas national-security team, gathered in the West Wing on May 1, suffered a sickening sense of déjà vu. As the helicopter carrying a team of Navy SEALs dipped behind the high concrete walls of Osama bin Ladens headquarters in Abbottabad, Pakistan, it sputtered, then stalled. The moment was indescribably tense, a White House official tells NEWSWEEKnot only for the soldiers, who were about to enter enemy territory without a clear exit strategy, but for President Obama himself, who had ordered up the risky mission, forgoing safer options. replica coach handbagsThe entire Situation Room was thinking the same thing: is this Iran all over again? By now, the whole world knows it wasnt; the commandos landed and got their man. It was a stunning success that will likely end the comparisons to the Georgia Democrat that conservatives have been leveling at Obama since 2008, when they first started calling him a Carteresque rerun (The Washington Times) who is tough on Americas allies and soft on its enemies (National Review). nike sb shoesThe question now, however, is whether one of the gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory, as U.S. counterterrorism chief John Brennan characterized the mission, will help Obama avoid Carters larger fate as well: a one-term presidency that petered out when a tough-talking Republican insurgent convinced voters that their commander in chief was too weak to lead. The early evidence suggests that bin Ladens death is improving public opinion of Obama. A NEWSWEEK/DAILY BEAST survey found no immediate bump, but other polls have him on the upswing. And the presidents numbers were likely to rise further after his scheduled May 5 appearance at Ground Zeroa reprise of the bullhorn address that united the country behind George W. Bush in the days after the towers fell. But ultimately, Abbottabad alone cannot create a renewed sense of purpose among Americans or ensure Obamas reelection. In a week or two, voters will go back to fretting about unemployment and the national debt. For that reason, bin Ladens demise is best understood as an opportunity for Obamaan opportunity to regain control of the national conversation, strengthen his hand in preparation for 2012, and bring the country together. If he seizes it, and if a new terrorist attack doesnt change the game yet again, the Abbottabad raid could become the defining moment of his presidency. Throughout history there have been pivot points for presidents, from Truman s Berlin Airlift in 1948 to Bush after 9/11, says historian Douglas Brinkley. Coach Shoulder BagsAmericans have always liked Obama, but they never knew whether he was a real commander in chief. Now they do.
Study Ranks 10 Football Helmets for Concussion Safety
cheap nike shoes storeNo magic football helmet can prevent players from sustaining concussions. But thanks to new research out of Virginia Tech, football players, and their parents, now know which equipment could reduce the risks. Over the past decade, the Virginia Tech researchers have compiled data from more than a million head impacts at Virginia Tech football practices and games. From these statistics, scientists were able to specify the speeds and tackling angles that would most likely to lead to concussions. (More on TIME.com: Fan Rage: How Home Team Losses Contribute to Domestic Violence) The scientists tested the safety features of 10 different helmet models, measuring the accelerations, at impact, when the helmets were sped from these multiple distances and angles. Coach JewelryThe data yielded an overall STAR value Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk for each helmet. Taking these values, the Virginia Tech researchers created a ranking system: the safest helmet, the Riddell Revolution Speed, was assigned five stars the top grade and the least safe helmet, the Adams A2000 Pro Elite, was slapped with the label NR: Not Recommended. A paper describing Virginia Tech's methodology will be published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering. This important work could shake up the helmet market. Luxury Coach Outlet"For the first time, consumers can go to a website and see which helmets have the best chance to reduce the risk of a concussion," says Stefan Duma, a professor of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech and head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. The problem of concussion exists at every level of football, threatening players who sustain multiple hits with long-term brain injury. Recent studies of retired pro football players have shown that a history of concussion can lead to dementia-like brain damage associated with depression, suicidal tendencies and memory loss. Studies of former NFL players also show that they are at significantly higher risk of Alzheimer's than the rest of the population. (More on TIME.com: Football Searches for the Cause of Another Tragedy) Better helmets could mean less risk of concussion and brain damage. hermes birkin handbagsThe 10 helmets rated by the Virginia Tech researchers were as follows: Five Stars: Best Available Riddell Revolution Speed Four Stars: Very Good Schutt ION 4D Schutt DNA Pro + Xenith X1 Riddell Revolution Riddell Revolution IQ Three Stars: Good Schutt Air XP Two Stars: Adequate Schutt Air Advantage One Star: Marginal Riddell VSR4 NR: Not Recommended Adams A2000 Pro Elite Coach New ArrivalsPrice was by no means the strongest predictor of safety. The Adams A2000 Pro Elite, with an NR rating, costs $199.95, while the four-star Riddell Revolution and Schutt DNA Pro + cost $182.99 and $169.95, respectively.
Source: U.S. needs permission to interview bin Laden wives
nike dunk shoesPakistan will allow the United States to question or take into custody the apparent wives of Osama bin Laden only if their "country of origin has been asked for permission," a senior Pakistani intelligence source told CNN on Monday. Pakistani officials have said bin Laden's family members will be repatriated to their home countries after initial interrogations. One of bin Laden's wives is from Yemen, the official said, while a well-placed U.S. official who would not speak on the record said the other two are from Saudi Arabia. All three were taken into Pakistani custody after the May 2 raid by U.S. commandos that killed bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist movement. The raid succeeded in scratching the man behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington off the U.S. most-wanted list, but it has strained ties with a key American ally in the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The 29-year-old Yemeni wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, was wounded during the raid. coach factory outlet The U.S. official identified the other two women as Khairiah Sabar, also known as "Umm Hamza," and Siham Sabar, or "Umm Khalid." The official identified the other men killed in the raid as bin Laden's son Khalid; two couriers, known around the town of Abbottabad by the aliases Arshad Khan and Tariq Khan. The official would not provide their real names. The wife of one of the couriers also died, the official said. In Pakistan's parliament Monday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani rejected allegations that his government had failed to adequately pursue the world's most -wanted terrorist.hermes birkin While calling bin Laden's death "justice done," Gilani repeatedly assailed U.S. violation of Pakistani "sovereignty" in conducting the operation without Pakistan's knowledge or involvement. "Allegations of complicity or incompetence are absurd," Gilani said. "We emphatically reject such accusations. Speculative narratives in the public domain are meant to create despondency. We will not allow our detractors to succeed in offloading their own shortcomings and errors of omission and commission in a blame game that stigmatizes Pakistan." Bin Laden was found in a compound in Abbottabad, a city with a heavy military presence about 50 km (31 miles) from Islamabad. That has led several U.S. officials to question whether some within the Pakistani government or military helped shield bin Laden or failed to look for him. Gilani said Pakistan "attaches high importance" to its relations with the United States. But in a fiery speech frequently interrupted by applause from some lawmakers, he added, "Unilateralism runs the inherent risk of serious consequences." The prime minister insisted that Pakistan's response to the sudden arrival of U.S. forces deep within its territory in the nighttime operation deserves praise. "The air force was ordered to scramble," he said. "Ground units arrived at the scene quickly. Our response demonstrates that our armed forces reacted, as was expected of them."coach outlet Still, he added, "there is no denying the U.S. technological ability to evade our radars." And in an apparent reference to longtime rival India, Gilani said, "No one should underestimate the resolve and capability of our nation and armed forces to defend our sacred homeland." Gilani spoke as Pakistani news reports raised the possibility that a top CIA officer's identity had been disclosed. Pakistani news outlets Monday named a man they identified as the CIA station chief there, but a senior Pakistani intelligence official said the name was inaccurate and he did not know where it came from. "If we were going to release the name, we would release the right one," the official said. A senior U.S. official with knowledge of the matter said that if the report were true, identifying a CIA officer "crosses a red line in intelligence protocol." The CIA would not comment on the issue. But a U.S. official said there is "no current plan to bring home the current chief of station" in Pakistan. "The current CIA station chief is a true pro, someone who knows how to work well with foreign partners and is looking to strengthen cooperation with Pakistani intelligence," the official said. Pakistani armed forces chiefs issued a statement last week admitting "shortcomings in developing intelligence" on the terrorist leader's presence in the country.Coach Scarves Dozens of people in Abbottabad have been arrested because of their suspected connections to the compound where bin Laden was shot and killed, a Pakistani intelligence official said last week, and investigators want to know whether any of the people are al Qaeda members or sympathizers.
Strolling through âNigeriaâs Best Buyâ (A Photo Essay)
cheap nike shoes storeLAGOS, NIGERIA Im in Lagos to speak at an event and decided to come a week early to check out the countrys tech and entrepreneurship scene. Apparently Arrington thought I was kidding when I told him this. But he should know by now, I dont need a lot of arm twisting to visit a country of 150 million people chaotically surging into modernity. Where theres that much opportunity, theres always entrepreneurship. Nigeria has fascinated me for the last few years: It has the largest population of any country in Africa. It has abundant natural resources, most notably oil. And it has a ton of potential outside of oil. According to the World Bank the non-oil economy has grown at 8% per year for most of the last decade. The problem is employment hasnt budged and the country has fifty million unemployed young people. Those are the official figures, but people in the country tell me its actually much higher than that.Coach Handbags That helps explain why Nigeria is more known in the West for 419 email scams than its vast economic potential. Simply put: Nigeria is a nation desperate for more entrepreneurship, but there are some significant challenges for local entrepreneurs and foreign investors. More on the good and the bad in a future post. A lot more. One story includes guys with machetes. But lets talk about Nigerias tech appetite first. Like anyone else they lust for that new, new thing, and many of them go to a place called Computer Village to find it. Its the Nigerian answer to Shenzhens SEG Electronics Market, a crammed, multistory building that holds booths and booths of nearly any component and hardware knock-off you can imagine. SEG is simultaneously thrilling and horrifying for techies, summing up why China is so central to the Valleys modern gadget boom and why its low-cost, copy-cat goods are such a threat at the same time. hermes birkin handbagsYou know you are getting close to SEG, because the street hawkers stop pitching you massages and start offering up illicit copies of Windows. In Lagos, we could tell we were getting close to Computer Village because of the rows of parked trucks of busted out boom-boxes, televisions and other has- been electronics being fixed and rehabed for parts. Hawkers try to get your attention with a sound thats a combination of a kissing-noise and a hissing noise. It surrounds you as you walk through Computer Village, making you feel like youre either walking past a rowdy construction site or a den of snake charmers. Thats a good way to describe the sales tactics too. Nigerian tech entrepreneurs Ive spoken with this week have complained that many of the developers who apply for jobs are too book-trained; that they lack that raw creative problem solving or jugaad as the Indians call it. Coach Kristin CollectionsJugaad is core to what makes startups able to thrive within constraints and outperform giants. And as youll see from the photos below, its on full-display in Computer Village.
The Interrupted Reading: The Kids with George W. Bush on 9/11
nike dunk shoesThere has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla. Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble with no less than the Commander in Chief but he wasn't sure why. " hermes birkinIn a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?" (See pictures of people celebrating Osama bin Laden's death.) Similar fears started running through Mariah Williams' head. "I don't remember the story we were reading was it about pigs?" says Williams, 16. "But I'll always remember watching his face turn red. He got really serious all of a sudden. But I was clueless. I was just 7. I'm just glad he didn't get up and leave, because then I would have been more scared and confused." Chantal Guerrero, 16, agrees. Even today, she's grateful that Bush regained his composure and stayed with the students until The Pet Goat was finished. "I think the President was trying to keep us from finding out," says Guerrero, "so we all wouldn't freak out." Even if that didn't happen, it's apparent that the sharing of that terrifying Tuesday with Bush has affected those students in the decade since and, they say, it made the news of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's killing by U.S. commandos on May 1 all the more meaningful. Dubrocq, now a junior at Riverview High School in Sarasota, doubts that he would be a student in the rigorous international-baccalaureate program if he hadn't been with the President as one of history's most infamous global events unfolded. Coach Handbags"Because of that," he says, "I came to realize as I grew up that the world is a much bigger place and that there are differing opinions about us out there, not all of them good." (See pictures of the evolution of Ground Zero.) Guerrero, today a junior at the Sarasota Military Academy, believes the experience "has since given us all a better understanding of the situation, sort of made us take it all more seriously. At that age, I couldn't understand how anyone could take innocent lives that way. And I still of course can't. But today I can problem-solve it all a lot better, maybe better than other kids because I was kind of part of it." Williams, also a junior at the military academy, says those moments spent with Bush conferred on the kids a sort of historical authority as they grew up. " Coach ScarvesToday, when we talk about 9/11 in class and you hear kids make mistakes about what happened with the President that day, I can tell them they're wrong," she says, "because I was there." (Watch TIME's video of the celebration at Ground Zero after Osama bin Laden's death.)
Most Unwanted: William and Kate and the Specter of Bin Laden
nike sb shoes"Of course it explains why the royal couple postponed their honeymoon to Abbottabad," joked Jimmy Kimmel, one of the first U.S. television hosts to start mining Osama Bin Laden's death for comedy. The funniest thing about Kimmel's quip was that it appeared to contain a grain of truth. The announcement, the day after the wedding of the newly styled Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, that the couple had "chosen not to depart for a honeymoon immediately" and that the groom would instead report back for duty at his air force base in Wales after a "private weekend" in the U.K., caught royal-watchers on the hop. Yet the wedding had been so meticulously planned and its secrets so jealously guarded (The dress! The Aston Martin!) that the newlyweds' decision to opt for a short budget break over long-haul luxury seemed just another exercise in wrong-footing the paparazzi who had already packed their Speedos in preparation for following them to a tropical paradise. Then came news of the storming of the compound in Abbottabad, planned in the week leading up to the nuptials and carried out two days after the event. hermes birkin bagThe British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Express, diligently found a security expert who agreed there could be a link between Kate and William's homespun holiday and the covert operation to eliminate the world's most wanted terrorist. "I would not be surprised if the reason the royal honeymoon was put off had to do with forewarning that this might be happening," said Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham. "The Government would probably have been told that now would not be a good time for the royal couple to travel off to the other side of the world." The theory was not implausible. It was, however, wrongassuming in a skeptical age that demands documentary proof of births, marriages and deaths we are prepared to take palace officials at their regal word. coach factory outlet"There is no link between honeymoon delay (a personal choice of the couple and one made weeks ago) and OBL," emails one such official. "The decision to delay a honeymoon was taken several weeks ago," concurs another in a separate conversation. Sources in Westminster and Whitehall confirm their version of events. What is also true is that the police and security services are now alert to the possibility of revenge attacks directed at prominent sites and public figures. Five men were arrested as they photographed the Sellafield nuclear plant in northwest England on Monday, and a Scotland Yard source told the Daily Telegraph that Bin Laden's slaying had changed the "threat picture" ahead of the state visit to Britain of the President and First Lady later this month. Coach Madison CollectionsThe Obamas will be guests of the Queen at Buckingham Palace; whether they get to pass on congratulations directly to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge depends on the scheduling of that delayed honeymoon, which the Daily Mail confidently reports is planned for "mid-May" at an Indian Ocean resort "surrounded by coconut groves."
Ditch the Piggybank. Teach Kids Financial Literacy Instead
cheap nike shoes store"Is money important?" my 3-year-old asked this week. I answered truthfully with a hearty "Yes." I explained it to her simply, telling her that we need money to pay for our house and our food and her ballet class. Maybe it's because we're trying to claw our way out of a recession, but financial entrepreneurs seem to have jumped on the fact that, historically, parents haven't done a very good job of teaching their kids to manage money. And so, piggybanks, around for ages, now have a new twist: you don't just collect pennies anymore; you manage them divvying them up between saving, spending and charity. (More on Time.com: When Parents Favor One Kid Over the Other, Is It Okay to Admit It?) The issue of money and why we need it has come up a lot in our household lately. My 6-year-old is smitten with the idea of selling anything she doesn't like anymore, from cast-off pebbles in her rock collection to formerly beloved dolls.hermes birkin bagRecently, she channeled her commercial spirit into doing good creating artwork and selling it on the street to raise money for Japan. Where should the money she raises go? First stop: her Moonjar. A three-piece tin box, the Moonjar does the heavy lifting of creating a money-savvy citizen of the world for you. Each container is labeled "spend," "save" or "share." My husband found out about Moonjars when the company became his client; he told me about them because we'd been struggling to figure out how to instill smart financial habits in our kids. Mary Ryan Karges, Moonjar's CEO, says 13 states have financial literacy educational requirements but not until high school. "That's too late," she says. "Our notion is that if you start teaching save, spend, share when kids are young, they'll grow with that. Coach OutletIf we teach save, spend, share with the same vigor that we teach stop, look, listen, we won't run into so many financial problems." (More on Time.com: Should Radiation from Japan Scuttle Spring Break in Hawaii? A Mom Agonizes) According to the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, 45% of college students carry credit card debt (the average debt is upwards of $3,000). That's hardly surprising considering that just 21% of students between the ages of 16 and 22 say they've studied personal finance in school. Parents aren't picking up the slack, either: just 26% of kids ages 13 to 21 say their parents taught them to manage money. Any parent who's ever strolled the aisles of Target with a kid begging first for a Pillow Pet, then for Silly Bandz, knows the drill: no, no, no, O.K., fine, but just this once. But meting out allowance, as my husband and I are finding, reframes the dynamic. "It changes that moment in the store from, 'I want that,' to, 'How much money is in your spend box?'" says Karges. Coach Madison CollectionsTeaching kids the discipline of saving what my dad called "delaying gratification" is as vital as teaching them to read and write, says Lori Mackey, founder of Prosperity4Kids, which sells products she created because parents told her they didn't know how to teach their children about money. (More on Time.com: Why Having Kids Is Bad for Your Health)
Nike outletEven before the sun had risen, the crowd attending the beatification of Pope John Paul II had overfilled the square around the St. Peter's basilica. By the time dawn broke, the faithful had spilled down the road towards the Tiber and into the side streets around the Vatican, where the ceremony the first major milestone towards sainthood was set to take place. Many had spent the night, in tents or on blankets spread over the cobblestones. More than a million had risen early Sunday morning in order to join in the veneration of a larger-than-life Polish pope, who many felt had personally touched their lives. "I felt, when he was alive, that if I met him on the street, he would know my name," said Danuta Kowalik, 36, a teacher who had driven from Poland for the occasion. (See a photographic look back at the papacy of Pope John Paul II.) As the hour approached, the air above the crowd waved with flags: Mexican, Slovakian, French, Cuban, Lithuanian, but most of all Polish. "The entire world his here," said one Ecuadorian pilgrim.birkin bag Kowalik and her group of Polish Catholics had risen at 2 a.m. and driven through the dark in order to get to Rome on time. "In every gas station [on the three-day journey down through Italy], everybody was speaking Polish," she said. On the outskirts of the crowd, pilgrims sat down for picnics. Children tucked into biscuits and Nutella. An Italian priest led a group of worshipers through Ave Marias. Elizabeth Langenkamp, a 20-year-old sophomore at the Franciscan University in Steubenville in Ohio, had traveled from Austria, where she was studying for the semester at the university's overseas branch. Coach Outlet She had come to Rome with her class after the school had rescheduled the finals to allow for the trip. "It's important to us and for the world to recognize the great man that he was," she said. (Read "Is the Vatican Rushing John Paul's Path to Sainthood?") Pilgrims held up their cameras as Pope Benedict XVI arrived by open-top popemobile and ascended to the altar. The timing makes John Paul's beatification the fastest in modern times, initiated just days instead of the customary years after his death in 2005, from Parkinson's disease, when millions gathered outside the Vatican to chant "Santo Subito" "Sainthood Now." Though John Paul remains the most popular pontiff in recent times, and perhaps even church history, some have questioned the speed with which he is being moved towards sainthood particularly in the light of his handling of the sex abuse crisis, which unfolded during his papacy. But few were in attendance Sunday. Coach OP Art Bags"If the Lord had not wanted him beatified now, he would not have granted the miracle," said Carl Anderson, head of U.S.-based the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic lay organization. Before John Paul could be beatified, a miracle had to be attributed to him. In January, Benedict announced that the recovery of a French nun, who had lost her symptoms of Parkinson's disease after praying to the late Pope, satisfied that condition.
nike sb shoesOver two months after she was badly beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo's Tahrir Square, CBS's Lara Logan is recounting the ordeal for Sunday's 60 Minutes (I can't embed the CBS video in our blog template, but here's a link). She's also done an interview with the New York Times' Brian Stelter, now online, in which she details the attackFor an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands"but also the process of publicly acknowledging it and the stories of assault against other women in Cairo, and female journalists elsewhere. Maybe the most unsettling thing about the video linked above is the camera footage taken moments before the assault began, as the camera lights go out and Logan and crew realize that they're in danger. hermes birkinI would expect that CBS would not have used the footage had Logan not approved and felt it necessary. For her part, she tells the Times, she "decided almost immediately that she would speak out about sexual violence both on behalf of other journalists and on behalf of 'millions of voiceless women who are subjected to attacks like this and worse.' She also adds, understandably, that she does not plan to do further interviews about the rape after 60 Minutes airs: I don't want this to define me. Coach OutletThe 60 Minutes pieces airs Sunday night; Logan had her first day back at work yesterday.
The Most Misused Song in GOP Politics: Van Halenâs âRight Nowâ
nike dunk shoesIf Republicans are on the campaign trail, Van Halen is back in vogue. For years, Republican candidates and politicians have been using Van Halens song, Right Now, as the walk-in jingle at rallies and events. The first time I recorded its use was November 5, 2006, when then-President George W. Bush used the tune to enter a rally in Greeley, Colo., not far from the slaughterhouse in a hall that smelled of cow manure. McCain used it in 2008, and over the weekend, Sarah Palin used the song to enter a rally in Wisconsin over the weekend. Connoisseurs of early -1990s hair rock know this is funny, even if Palin, Bush, and McCain never seem to get the joke. The song was cut for Van Halens ninth studio album, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, which not only refers to criminal sodomy in its title, but also makes a snappy, not-so-Republican acronym. hermes birkin handbagsAs Sammy Hagar, the lead singer, explained at the time, I wanted to name the album just fk. The song also spawned one of the great rock videos in hey day of music television. As the band sings, phrases like Right now oil companies and old men are in control flash across the screen. During its 2004 reunion tour, Van Halen flashed phrases on a video screen as it played the song. One of them read,Right now, nothing is more expensive than regret, superimposed over visuals of President George W. Bush. Perhaps the greatest irony is that Van Halen has long tried to stop Republicans from using the song at events. Coach Outlet After McCain piped it in after announcing Palin as his running mate in Ohio, Van Halens management released a statement to TMZ saying, Permission was not sought or granted nor would it have been given.
Apocalypse Today: Visiting Chernobyl, 25 Years Later
nike sb shoesThe 18.5-mile (30 km) radius around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is known officially as the "zone of alienation." Abandoned cars, tractors, buildings and homes litter the landscape and are slowly being devoured by trees and shrubs. A classroom bulletin board not far from the central Lenin Street in the town where the plant workers used to live reads, "No return. Farewell, Prypyat, April 28, 1986." This eerie landscape about 50 miles (80 km) from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, provides a snapshot in time of the frenzied evacuation following the meltdown 25 years ago today of reactor core No. 4, a meltdown that produced a radioactive plume across the northern hemisphere in the worst nuclear accident in history. It also presents a stark vision of the possible future thousands of miles away in Fukushima prefecture, Japan, where emergency workers are in the seventh week of a battle to cool several partially melted reactor cores. (See pictures of the Chernobyl zone, 25 years after the nuclear disaster.) Even now, the effort to contain the Chernobyl accident is far from over: workers in white suits and respirator masks show up for work every day, constructing a new concrete shield to replace a massive sarcophagus built in 1986. hermes birkin handbags The sarcophagus, which contains the molten core, is starting to crumble and could collapse, which could release another radioactive cloud into the air. Chernobyl offers many lessons about what Princeton University physics professor Robert Socolow calls the "afterheat" of a nuclear disaster but it's the generational lesson that's the most important one. Because the isotopes released during a nuclear accident remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years, cleanup is the work not just of first responders, but also of their descendants and their descendants' descendants. cheap coach handbags outletIt's messy, it's expensive, and it's the kind of job that forever denies the workers themselves the satisfaction of standing back and admiring the results of their efforts. Asked when the reactor site would again become inhabitable, Ihor Gramotkin, director of the Chernobyl power plant, replies "at least 20,000 years." (See pictures of the worst nuclear disasters.) That timescale makes things more than simply frustrating. Over the course of millennia, after all, how can safety measures be maintained? Already, the financing of cleanup and maintenance operations is proving difficult. On April 19, the Ukrainian government hosted an international donor conference in Kiev to raise money for the $1.1 billion concrete shelter. Coach Scarves The government fell some $300 million short of that goal and is holding out for further pledges. But even the gigantic concrete shield which is 360 ft. (110 meters) high and weighs 29,000 tons has a woefully brief life when measured in radiological time: it will need to be replaced in a century unless the extremely radioactive and molten core inside can be safely removed and stored somewhere else, itself an expensive and difficult operation. "Neither Ukraine nor the world community has the right to turn its back [on Chernobyl]," Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said at the end of the conference. "The accident left a deep wound that we will have to cope with for many years." Everything to do with radiation moves at an insidiously slow pace. coach handbags outlet Exposure to radioactive particles increases the risk of cancer, but the level of the danger depends on the dose and the age and health of the affected population. When radiation does kill, it can still take years. Around Chernobyl, no accurate dose estimates on the most heavily affected population were made until after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and, as a result, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine all use different techniques for measuring exposure.
nike sb shoesLast week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that President Obama's order to cut $400 billion from national-security spending over the next 12 years will force the U.S. military to curtail some of its far-flung duties. "This needs to be a process that is driven by the analysis," he said, "as well as missions that our elected officials decide we should not have to perform, or can't perform anymore, because we don't have the resources." Well, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile. While working on a recent piece on how to cut $1 trillion from the $7-trillion-plus U.S. defense budget over the coming decade, I stumbled upon a provocative analysis by Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Princeton University. He says the U.S. has "mis-allocated" -- others might say "wasted" -- $8 trillion since 1976 protecting the oil flow from the Persian Gulf that fuels much of the global economy. Especially since in 2010, when the U.S. was the destination of less than 10 percent of the oil flowing out of the Gulf. The U.S. has insisted, since the days of the Carter Administration, that the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf is a vital national-security interest of the U.S. Beyond that, Presidents and the Pentagon have said, the narrow Strait of Hormuz is a vulnerable bottleneck for shipping headed out of the Gulf. cheap hermes birkinAny troublemaker -- especially Iran -- could bring the U.S. and world economies to their collective knees by shutting it down by sinking a couple of tankers as they pass through. Consequently, the U.S. has poured tons of money into the region since then, including three wars. It has bulked up its military forces in the neighborhood -- including the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, headquarters in Bahrain, smack dab in the middle of the gulf -- to keep the oil flowing. Balderdash, says Stern. He uses more technical terms, but his bottom line is the same: Iran and other nations in the region have just as much, if not more, need to keep the oil flowing than the U.S. Think of it as your right hand -- angry at your left hand for some casus belli -- pinching their shared aorta to punish the left hand. Both would quickly begin turning blue.cheap coach handbags More critically, Stern argues, the U.S. military's emphasis on the Gulf has diverted precious defense resources away from the western Pacific, where China poses a far graver long-term threat to American interests. "On an annual basis, the Persian Gulf mission now costs about as much as did the Cold War," Stern says in his paper, which appeared in Energy Policy, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, in April 2010 to scant notice. Coach Colette Handbags He also suggested it could be costly in more ways than one: "Without the extensive long-term US military presence in the Persian Gulf, it seems an open question whether anti-US suicide terrorism such as the USS Cole and 9/11 attacks would have taken place."
The Slap that Triggered the Arab Spring "Was Impossible"
nike dunk shoesIt was an injustice that led a 26-year-old Tunisian street trader called Mohammed Bouazizi to douse himself in petrol and strike a match. The resulting conflagration killed Bouazizi, crackled through Tunisia, chasing out its despised President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, and sparked uprisings across the region that are still burning fiercely. On December 17, Bouazizi, a fruit and vegetable seller, was quietly doing business on the street in his home town of Sidi Bouzid when a female municipal inspector confiscated his cart and his wares and, adding grave insult to financial injury, slapped him. Bouazizi wasn't killed instantly by the fire he set but clung on until Jan. cheap hermes birkin4. Ten days later Ben Ali fled the country. The rest is history in the makingexcept for Bouazizi's story, which appears to be history in the remaking. The municipal inspector Fedia Hamdi has broken her silence to contest this version of events. A British journalist Elizabeth Day tracked down Hamdi, 46, after a tribunal cleared her of the assault last Tuesday. The sole accuser claiming to have seen the slap had a grudge against Hamdi; four witnesses disputed his evidence. Hamdi herself claims when she asked Bouazizi to leavehe was hawking his wares without licencehe became angry and grabbed her hand, hurting her finger. cheap coach handbags"I would never have hit him. It was impossible because I am a woman, first of all, and I live in a traditionally Arab community which bans a woman from hitting a man. And, secondly, I was frightened," Hamdi told Day. Hamdi spent 111 days in detention awaiting the tribunal and says now she has been "a scapegoat." Coach Kristin HandbagsBouazizi's suffering triggered the Arab Spring, but it seems he may not have been the only victim that day last December.
nike dunk shoesIt was the "Little White Donkey" incident that pushed many readers over the edge. That's the name of the piano tune that Amy Chua, Yale law professor and self-described "tiger mother," forced her 7-year-old daughter Lulu to practice for hours on end "right through dinner into the night," with no breaks for water or even the bathroom, until at last Lulu learned to play the piece. For other readers, it was Chua calling her older daughter Sophia "garbage" after the girl behaved disrespectfully the same thing Chua had been called as a child by her strict Chinese father. (See a TIME Q&A with Amy Chua.) And, oh, yes, for some readers it was the card that young Lulu made for her mother's birthday. hermes birkin handbags "I don't want this," Chua announced, adding that she expected to receive a drawing that Lulu had "put some thought and effort into." Throwing the card back at her daughter, she told her, "I deserve better than this. So I reject this." Even before Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua's proudly politically incorrect account of raising her children "the Chinese way," arrived in bookstores Jan. 11, her parenting methods were the incredulous, indignant talk of every playground, supermarket and coffee shop. A prepublication excerpt in the Wall Street Journal (titled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior") started the ferocious buzz; the online version has been read more than 1 million times and attracted more than 7,000 comments so far. coach handbags outletWhen Chua appeared Jan. 11 on the Today show, the usually sunny host Meredith Vieira could hardly contain her contempt as she read aloud a sample of viewer comments: "She's a monster"; "The way she raised her kids is outrageous"; "Where is the love, the acceptance?" Chua, a petite 48-year-old who carries off a short-skirted wardrobe that could easily be worn by her daughters (now 15 and 18), gave as good as she got. "To be perfectly honest, I know that a lot of Asian parents are secretly shocked and horrified by many aspects of Western parenting," including "how much time Westerners allow their kids to waste hours on Facebook and computer games and in some ways, how poorly they prepare them for the future," she told Vieira with a toss of her long hair. "It's a tough world out there." (See Nancy Gibbs' take on the challenges of parenting.) Chua's reports from the trenches of authoritarian parenthood are indeed disconcerting, even shocking, in their candid admission of maternal ruthlessness. Her book is a Mommie Dearest for the age of the memoir, when we tell tales on ourselves instead of our relatives. Coach Heels&Sandals But there's something else behind the intense reaction to Tiger Mother, which has shot to the top of best-seller lists even as it's been denounced on the airwaves and the Internet. Though Chua was born and raised in the U.S., her invocation of what she describes as traditional "Chinese parenting" has hit hard at a national sore spot: our fears about losing ground to China and other rising powers and about adequately preparing our children to survive in the global economy. Her stories of never accepting a grade lower than an A, of insisting on hours of math and spelling drills and piano and violin practice each day (weekends and vacations included), of not allowing playdates or sleepovers or television or computer games or even school plays, for goodness' sake, have left many readers outraged but also defensive. The tiger mother's cubs are being raised to rule the world, the book clearly implies, while the offspring of "weak-willed," "indulgent" Westerners are growing up ill equipped to compete in a fierce global marketplace. One of those permissive American parents is Chua's husband, Jed Rubenfeld (also a professor at Yale Law School). He makes the occasional cameo appearance in Tiger Mother, cast as the tenderhearted foil to Chua's merciless taskmaster. When Rubenfeld protested Chua's harangues over "The Little White Donkey," for instance, Chua informed him that his older daughter Sophia could play the piece when she was Lulu's age. Sophia and Lulu are different people, Rubenfeld remonstrated reasonably.cheap coach handbags "Oh, no, not this," Chua shot back, adopting a mocking tone: "Everyone is special in their special own way. Even losers are special in their own special way."
Nike outletA week after launching the official release of Firefox 4, Mozilla is following up today with Mobile Firefox for Android and Maemo phones (for all twelve of you Maemo fans out there). For Android, the browser is now available on the Android Market,. The Android browser fairly rocks. It almost makes me want to switch to Android. The mobile browser syncs all of your bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and even open tabs with your Firefox browser on your desktop. So you can pick up browsing where you left off when you leave your desk. This syncing is huge. birkin bag The browser wont be availabl for the iPhoen anytime soon because of restrictions Apple places on browsing appsfor one thing, it doesnt use Webkit. (But Mozilla does offer an iPhone app that syncs mobile Safari with your Firefox desktop browser). One thing Firefox mobile doesnt have is support for Flash, even though Android has a big partnership with Adobe to make Flash work on mobile. replica coach handbags I spoke with some folks from Mozilla yesterday about this topic. Eventually, Firefox mobile will support Flash, but it is just not there yet in terms of responsiveness. The focus right now is on HTML5 and CSS. It is amazing some of the 3D effects, animations, video, and other in-browser graphics you can now get with HTML5. Check out some of the demos here after you download Firefox to your phone. Some other features I really like in the browser is the way it handles tabbed browsing, its snapping zoom, and the Awesome Screen. Your tabs are always available in a thin column on the left which can be accessed with a simple swipe. If you are on a webpage that is not optimized for a mobile device, you can snap the zoom with a double tap to align with a column or box on the page and then scroll up and down normally. The Awesome Screen is the mobile version of the Awesome Bar on FireFox desktop.replica coach outlet As you type, it makes suggestions based on your previous browsing history, bookmarks, and open tabs.
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Hunting for Planets from the Comfort of Your Own Home
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Finland's Educational Success? The AntiâTiger Mother Approach
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