Police find body that matches Phoenix shooter

PHOENIX (AP) ? A landscaper in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa found a body in bushes early Thursday that matches the suspect in an office shooting that killed a man and critically wounded another, police said.

The rented Kia Optima sedan that Arthur Douglas Harmon, 70, was likely driving was also found nearby in a parking lot, authorities said at a news conference. The person who was found died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and a handgun was also found, police said.

Harmon drew a gun and shot both men at the end of a mediation session Wednesday morning at an office building in north-central Phoenix, police said.

Steve Singer, 48, died hours later. Mark Hummels, 43, with the Phoenix law firm Osborn Maledon, was in critical condition. A 32-year-old woman was also shot but suffered non-life threatening injuries.

"We believe the two men were the targets. It was not a random shooting," said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman.

Harmon also shot at someone who tried to follow him to get his license plate number, authorities said.

"As he left the scene, an individual witness got in his own car and actually followed Harmon in his Optima, and he drove into a neighborhood and Harmon actually got out of his car and shot at that witness," Thompson said.

Singer was the CEO of Scottsdale-based Fusion Contact Centers LLC, which had hired Harmon to refurbish office cubicles at two call centers in California.

According to court documents, Harmon was scheduled to go to a law office in the building where the shooting took place for a settlement conference in a lawsuit he filed last April against Fusion.

Fusion said Harmon was paid nearly $30,000 under the $47,000 contract. But the company asked him to repay much of the money when it discovered that the cubicles could not be refurbished, according to the documents.

Harmon argued Fusion hung him out to dry by telling him to remove and store 206 "worthless" work stations after the mix-up was discovered. Harmon said Fusion then told him that the company decided to use a competitor.

Harmon's lawsuit had sought payment for the remainder of the contract, $20,000 in damages and reimbursement for storage fees and legal costs.

Hummels represented Fusion in the lawsuit. Harmon represented himself.

The shooting took place in the building where Pro tempore Judge Ira Schwartz, who scheduled the mediation meeting, has an office.

The response to the shooting centered on the building ? home to insurance, medical and law offices ? but soon spread to a north-Phoenix home and a central-Phoenix high-rise office building where Hummels' office is located.

SWAT teams and two armored vehicles surrounded the house. Police served a search warrant to enter the house, which county property records show was sold by Harmon to his son last year for $26,000.

For a time, officers used a megaphone to ask Harmon to surrender, believing he might be inside the home.

Lois Allen, who has lived across the street from the Harmon home for about eight years, said she was startled to see all the police cars in the neighborhood.

She said she never met Harmon but had seen him walking a dog before.

The gunfire at the office complex prompted terrified workers to lock the doors to their offices and hide far from the windows. SWAT officers searched the building.

"Everyone was just scared, honestly, just scared," said Navika Sood, assistant director of nursing at First at Home Health Services who along with her co-workers locked the entrances to their office.

Sood said police evacuated the office about 30 minutes after she first heard the popping noises.

Becky Neher, who works for a title company in the building, said she heard two gunshots.

"Someone yelled, 'We have a shooter,'" Neher said. She looked out her second-story office and saw two people lying on the ground outside the back of the building.

The shooting took place on the same day that hearings on legislation to address gun violence were convened in Washington, with former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords testifying for stricter gun controls. A gunman shot Giffords in the head during a shooting rampage in Tucson in January 2011.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Paul Davenport, Felicia Fonseca, Terry Tang and Walter Berry in Phoenix, and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/phoenix-police-body-found-matches-shooter-162522601.html

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Congressman Beto O'Rourke Texas 16th Congressional District Responds

Our latest response is from another Representative of Texas, Congressman Beto O'Rourke. He points out two criteria, which will clearly have a no answer in regard to the legislation we have see put forth in the Senate. If you are a resident of his district, please make him know the right answer.?

Dear Mr...,

Thank you for writing to me with your concerns on potential gun control legislation. I appreciate hearing from you on this crucial issue.

Like millions of Americans, I was horrified by the recent tragedies in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado. As a father, I cannot imagine losing a child to random violence. As a Member of Congress, I believe that keeping our children and fellow citizens safe is a primary function of government.?

I represent thousands of responsible gun-owners and sportsmen. I support the Second Amendment and believe in the right of law-abiding Americans to own guns. I also believe in common sense.?

Congress and the American people should be having a candid conversation about how we can prevent future tragedies and what policies we can adopt or improve to make our schools and communities free from gun violence. As this conversation takes place, everything should be on the table, including better enforcement of existing laws, improved access to mental health treatment, and an examination of whether restrictions on high-capacity magazines or assault weapons would prevent future mass shootings.

If specific legislation comes before Congress, I will base my support on two simple criteria: will it make my constituents safer and will it protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

I appreciate the opportunity to be of assistance. If you would like to stay connected to our office with the latest news, legislation, and other useful information, please visit my website at: Orourke.House.Gov. Thank you again for your communication, and please do not hesitate to contact my office with any future questions or comments.
Sincerely,

Beto O'Rourke
Member of Congress

Related Posts:

Source: http://blog.predatorbdu.com/2013/01/congressman-beto-orourke-texas-16th.html

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BlackBerry Q10 official with keyboard, 3.1-inch display

BlackBerry (formerly RIM) has just unveiled the BlackBerry 10 device that, let's face it, many of the faithful really want: the keyboard-equipped Q10. It mates the QWERTY hardware input that BlackBerry fans have known and loved while including a 3.1-inch touchscreen. Yes, it will have LTE, and there's already confirmed plans from Sprint, Verizon and Canadian providers to carry it -- although we've yet to learn pricing or a ship date. Check our hands-on with the Q10 for early impressions.

Gallery: BlackBerry Q10

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Spb3VHNGjZY/

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Arts and Entertainment: Achieving A Perfect Flick With The Aid Of ...

And though thousands of video editing software applications are vastly available these days, it is still far smarter to hire experts in video editing NYC especially if the visual elements produced are a huge deal. You might be bound to dish out a big sum, but what makes it logical is for you to get impeccable results. There are many professional editors in the Big Apple that you don't need to spare weeks of tracking and tracing particularly when money is less of an issue.

Should you want to keep the project within compass, it is vital to put elaborate effort in the search. Video editors are not expected to be hired for a song. And if hell-bent enough on getting your recoded production or film edited perfectly at cut down rate, here are practical approaches you can use systematically.

Start with the people who have used the service. Expertise is a crucial factor to consider. While there are millions of cheats and tricks in working on a flick through the high-end software applications, technical adroitness is simply beyond question. However knowing that tricks are not only apparent in doing such stuff, but in monetary progress as well, it is best to pay close attention to the personal assessment of other people. That being necessary, it will be a lot wiser of you to get suggestions from these individuals.

Dig out names of the reputable ones. Experts who have made names in the industry can be assumed ideal. Of course, they would not have been regarded that way if they were not able to impress their clients. Ask for three to five highly-recognized companies before moving on with the still-hunt.

Focus greatly on the highlights. Keep note on the strengths and weaknesses of the recommended entities. Remember that just because your pals are quite certain about the impressive ability of these editors doesn't mean you can plunge into them in a snap. Take things slow and look into the critical aspects.

Personally consult your flick with the editors. You can't make a sound choice without deliberating the project thoroughly with the editors. Carry along your video and let them check up on it. Ask for their ideas and note down what appeals to you best.

Price quote is important. Before getting into action, it is necessary to get a clue on how much you will be paying later. Never expect the same estimates from different editors. The lowest, however, is not always your best bet. So size up very carefully.

Look around the studio. State-of-the-art equipment can no doubt do magic. Although traditional means are still favorable, you can for sure make a difference using the offbeat. Odd is, you need extra cash for that. If that is what you want, it will surely not hurt.

Study the contract circumspectly. Most people may find this pretty exhausting, but it is what you need to ascertain the sincerity and commitment of the experts in video editing NYC you are hoping to hire. Before signing, make sure you have understood everything from top to bottom and ask relevant questions when necessary.

Source: http://aae4u.blogspot.com/2013/01/achieving-perfect-flick-with-aid-of.html

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Self-insured plans, HSAs, HRAs must pay research fees ? Business ...

To determine what works in providing medical care, the Affordable Care Act health care reform law created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research In??sti??tute (PCORI). For seven plan years, PCORI will be funded with fees on plan sponsors of self-insured plans, including retiree-only and COBRA plans.

Key: Sponsors of insured plans who offer em???ployees health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and certain health flexible spending accounts (FSAs) must also pay fees. Final regulations implementing this provision became effective Dec. 6, 2012, and apply to plan years ending after Oct. 1, 2012, and before Oct. 1, 2019.

Heads up: Calendar year plans must begin to collect data now. (77 F.R. 72721, 12-6-12)

$1 and counting

The fee is $1 per average number of covered lives for plan years ending on or after Oct. 1, 2012, and before Oct. 1, 2013, and $2 for plan years ending on or after Oct. 1, 2013, and before Oct. 1, 2014. After that, the fee is adjusted.

Break: For plan years that began before July 11, 2012, and those ending on or after Oct. 1, 2012, you may determine the average number of covered lives using any reasonable method. Warning: Since the fee is imposed on plan sponsors, the Department of Labor has determined that no part of a plan?s assets can be used to pay it. The fees are payable annually on July 31 of the year following the end of the plan year, along with Form 720.

Covered lives

The final regs clarify that when figuring the average number of covered lives, you may disregard employees and dependents who participate in an insured plan, if you sponsor both an insured plan and a self-insured plan.

Similar to the proposed regs, the final regs provide four choices for determining the average number of covered lives. You must use the same method to determine the number of covered lives for a plan year, but you can use another method for the next plan year.

• Actual count method: Add the total number of covered lives for each day of the plan year and divide by the number of days in the plan year.
• Two snapshot methods: Pick a date?say, the first day of each calendar quarter?add the total covered lives on that date and divide by the number of dates on which the count is made. The final regs also make clear that the dates used for snapshots in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters must be within three days of the date of your first-quarter date, and that the 30th or 31st day of a month is treated as the last day of a month.

1. For the snapshot factor method, the number of lives is the total number of participants who have self-only coverage, and those who have family coverage multiplied by 2.35.
2. For the snapshot count method, count the actual number of lives on the designated date.

• Form 5500 method: Count the number of participants you report on Form 5500. For plans offering only self-only coverage, this figure is the number of participants at the beginning and end of the plan year, divided by two. For plans that offer self-only and family coverage, this figure is the sum of the total number of participants at the beginning and end of the plan year.

Excepted benefits

The final regs confirm that fees aren?t due on excepted benefits. What are excepted benefits? Excepted benefits include employee assistance plans, disease management programs and wellness programs, as long as they don?t provide significant medical care or treatment; limited scope dental and vision plans; and specific disease or hospital/fixed indemnity plans that employees pay for with after-tax dollars and that are offered as independent, noncoordinated benefits.

FSAs and HRAs

FSAs can be offered to employees in conjunction with a self-insured or an insured plan. Regardless of how the health plan is funded,

FSAs aren?t subject to the fees if they are excepted benefits?employees are offered other major medical coverage and the maximum FSA payout is limited to twice employees? pretax contributions, or, if greater, $500 plus employees? pretax contributions.

FSAs that aren?t considered excepted benefits, including FSAs offered by sponsors with insured plans, and all HRAs are subject to the fees.

Break: Self-insured plans don?t have to pay separate fees for FSAs and HRAs that have the same plan sponsor and the same plan year as the self-insured plan, and that are integrated into major medical coverage.

Special counting rule: If you must pay fees, you may treat each participant?s FSA or HRA as covering only one life.

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Cat Financial Announces 2012 Year-End Results ? World Leasing ...

Cat Financial Announces 2012 Year-End Results

Full-Year 2012 vs. Full-Year 2011
Cat Financial reported revenues of?$2.69 billion?for 2012, an increase of?$48 million, or 2 percent, compared with 2011. Profit after tax was?$432 million, a?$54 million, or 14 percent, increase from 2011.

The increase in revenues was primarily due to a?$223 million?favorable impact from higher average earning assets (finance receivables and operating leases at constant rates), partially offset by a?$139 million?unfavorable impact from lower average financing rates on new and existing finance receivables and operating leases and a?$33 millionunfavorable impact from returned or repossessed equipment.

Profit before income taxes was?$591 million?for 2012, compared with?$504 million?for 2011. The increase was primarily due to an?$89 million?favorable impact from higher average earning assets, a?$22 million?favorable impact from mark-to-market adjustments that were recorded on interest rate derivative contracts and a?$15 million?decrease in the provision for credit losses. These increases in pre-tax profit were partially offset by a?$33 million?unfavorable impact from returned or repossessed equipment.

The provision for income taxes reflects an annual tax rate of 25 percent for both 2012 and 2011. The 2011 provision for income taxes included a?$15 million?benefit related to prior years.

New retail financing for 2012 was?$13.96 billion, an increase of?$2.63 billion, or 23 percent, from 2011. The increase was a result of growth across all operating segments, with the largest increases occurring in our?Europe?and Caterpillar Power Finance,?Asia/Pacific?and Mining operating segments.

During 2012, Cat Financial?s overall portfolio quality reflected continued improvement. At the end of 2012, past dues were 2.26 percent compared with 2.80 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2012 and 2.89 percent at the end of 2011.

Write-offs, net of recoveries, were?$102 million?for the full-year 2012, compared with?$158 million?for 2011. Full-year 2012 write-offs, net of recoveries, were 0.42 percent of average annual retail portfolio, compared with 0.70 percent in 2011.

At year-end 2012, Cat Financial?s allowance for credit losses totaled?$426 million?or 1.49 percent of net finance receivables, compared with?$369 million?or 1.47 percent of net finance receivables at year-end 2011. The overall increase of?$57 million?in allowance for credit losses during the year reflects a?$51 million?increase in allowance due to an increase in the Cat Financial net finance receivables portfolio and a?$6 million?increase associated with the higher allowance rate.

Fourth-Quarter 2012 vs. Fourth-Quarter 2011
Cat Financial reported fourth-quarter 2012 revenues of?$679 million, an increase of?$17 million, or 3 percent, compared with the fourth quarter of 2011. Fourth-quarter profit after tax was?$99 million, a?$4 million, or 4 percent, increase from the fourth quarter of 2011.

The increase in revenues was primarily due to an?$80 million?favorable impact from higher average earning assets (finance receivables and operating leases at constant rates), partially offset by a?$52 million?unfavorable impact from lower average financing rates on new and existing finance receivables and operating leases and a?$12 millionunfavorable impact from returned or repossessed equipment.

Profit before income taxes was?$124 million?for the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with?$111 million?for the fourth quarter of 2011. The increase was primarily due to a?$32 million?favorable impact from higher average earning assets, a?$6 million?decrease in general, operating and administrative expense and a?$5 million?favorable impact from mark-to-market adjustments that were recorded on interest rate derivative contracts. These increases were partially offset by a?$17 million?increase in the provision for credit losses and a?$12 million?unfavorable impact from returned or repossessed equipment.

The provision for income taxes in the fourth quarter reflects an annual tax rate of 25 percent for both 2012 and 2011. The 2011 fourth-quarter provision for income taxes included an?$18 million?benefit related to prior years.

New retail financing in the fourth quarter of 2012 was?$3.85 billion, an increase of?$840 million, or 28 percent, from the fourth quarter of 2011. The increase was a result of growth across all operating segments, with the largest increases occurring in our?North America,?Europe?and Caterpillar Power Finance and Latin America operating segments.

?We are very pleased with the growth in our new retail financing volume and the performance of our portfolio during 2012,? said?Kent Adams, Cat Financial president and vice president of Caterpillar Inc. ?Past dues and write-offs also improved during the year, and are at the lowest levels since 2007. We continue to be well positioned to serve Caterpillar, Cat dealers, and our customers world-wide.?

For over 30 years, Cat Financial, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc., has been providing financial service excellence to Cat customers. The company offers a wide range of financing alternatives to customers and Cat dealers for Cat machinery and engines, Solar? gas turbines and other equipment and marine vessels. Cat Financial has offices and subsidiaries located throughout the Americas, Asia,?Australia?and?Europe, with headquarters inNashville, Tennessee.

STATISTICAL HIGHLIGHTS:

FOURTH QUARTER 2012 VS. FOURTH QUARTER 2011(ENDED?DECEMBER 31) (Millions of dollars)
	2012	2011	CHANGE
Revenues	$ 679	$ 662	3%
Profit Before Income Taxes	$ 124	$ 111	12%
Profit After Tax	$ 99	$ 95	4%
New Retail Financing	$ 3,850	$ 3,010	28%
Total Assets	$34,742	$30,112	15%
FULL YEAR 2012 VS. FULL YEAR 2011(ENDED?DECEMBER 31) (Millions of dollars)
	2012	2011	CHANGE
Revenues	$ 2,693	$ 2,645	2%
Profit Before Income Taxes	$ 591	$ 504	17%
Profit After Tax	$ 432	$ 378	14%
New Retail Financing	$13,958	$11,323	23%

?

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain statements contained in this earnings release may be considered ?forward-looking statements? as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may relate to future events or our future financial performance, which may involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievement to be materially different from those expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. From time to time, we may also provide forward-looking statements in oral presentations to the public or in other materials we issue to the public. Forward-looking statements give current expectations or forecasts of future events about the company. You may identify these statements by the fact that they do not relate to historical or current facts and may use words such as ?believes,? ?expects,? ?estimates,? ?anticipates,? ?will,? ?should,? ?plan,? ?project,? ?intend,? ?could? and similar words or phrases. These statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially due to factors that affect international businesses, including changes in economic conditions and ongoing challenges in the global financial and credit markets, and changes in laws and regulations (including regulations implemented under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act) and political stability, as well as factors specific to Cat Financial and the markets we serve, including the market?s acceptance of our products and services, the creditworthiness of our customers, interest rate and currency rate fluctuations and estimated residual values of leased equipment. These risk factors may not be exhaustive. We operate in a continually changing business environment, and new risk factors emerge from time to time. We cannot predict these new risk factors, nor can we assess the impact, if any, of these new risk factors on our businesses or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as a prediction of actual results. Moreover, we do not assume responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of those statements. All of the forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by reference to the factors discussed under the captions ?Risk Factors? and ?Management?s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations? in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended?December 31, 2011, and similar sections in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, that describe risks and factors that could cause results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Cat Financial undertakes no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE: Cat Financial

Source: http://www.worldleasingnews.com/news/cat-financial-announces-2012-year-end-results/

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Gravity-Controlled Pac-Man Is Now Available for iOS and Android?and It Looks Quite Fun

I thought Not Pacman—a version of Pac-Man that uses gravity to control the yellow hungry monster—was awesome and needed to be ported to iOS and Android ASAP. Gizmodo reader Pierre-Yves Gatouillat agreed with that opinion and he did just that. He sent this via email: More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/I0TXX0FhkHA/gravity+controlled-pac+man-is-now-available-for-ios-and-android++and-it-looks-like-fun

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App Smart Extra: On the Slopes - NYTimes.com

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Q&A: Fixing Flash Player Settings

If a Facebook game will not work properly in the Firefox browser, check the settings for the Adobe Flash Player software that works with the browser.

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App Smart Extra: More Ways to Record With Your Smartphone

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At the International Consumer Electronics Show, manufacturers tantalized consumers with new electronics soon to hit the shelves, which may offer a savings opportunity for TVs but not as much for laptops.

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Microsoft Office 2013 is due soon but if you cannot wait for it, you can buy the current edition now and get a free upgrade to Office 2013 when it arrives.

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About Gadgetwise

Gadgetwise is a blog about everything related to buying and using tech products. From figuring out which gadget to buy and how to get the best deal on it to configuring it once it?s out of the box, Gadgetwise offers a mix of information, analysis and opinion to help you get the most out of your personal tech.

Contributors

J.D. Biersdorfer answers reader questions about computer-based technology.

Warren Buckleitner reviews children?s technology ? gadgets, apps, toys and software.

Damon Darlin is The Times's Technology Editor.

Roy Furchgott covers cellphones, smartphones, mobile applications and accessories.

Gregory Schmidt writes about consumer gadgets, apps and accessories.

Source: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/app-smart-extra-on-the-slopes/

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West continues to drift into Democrats' column

DENVER (AP) ? A political generation ago, the West signaled the nation's rightward swing ? from the emergence of Ronald Reagan to the success of tax-limitation ballot measures in California and Colorado. But now the fabled expanse of jagged peaks, arid deserts and emerald coastlines is trending in a different direction.

From Washington state ? where voters in November legalized marijuana and upheld the legality of gay marriage ? to New Mexico, once a hotly contested swing state that Republicans ceded to Democrats in the presidential campaign, the West has become largely Democratic terrain.

There are, as always, exceptions. Lightly populated Idaho and Wyoming remain strongly Republican, as does Utah. And Democrats are struggling in Arizona, where a bruising immigration debate has given Republicans a lock on statewide offices but may provide Democrats an opening by firming up their support among the state's growing Hispanic population. Still, the overall trend is clear, according to analysts on all sides of the political spectrum.

"It's just a different world," said Bill Carrick, a veteran Democratic strategist in Los Angeles who has worked widely in the region. "Nevada became the next California and now Arizona looks like it will become the next Nevada. ... It's just pushing the West further and further from Republicans."

The shift is due to a combination of factors: the fusion of the region's libertarian spirit with both an influx of transplants from more liberal states seeking a better quality of life, and a growing immigrant population alienated by increasingly hardline Republican immigration proposals.

"Look at the migration patterns," said Sig Rogich, a Republican consultant in Las Vegas who worked on Reagan's presidential campaigns. "You're seeing the aftermath of a new generation of young men and women whose parents moved westward."

Politics is different in the region. Western states generally have weak political parties, part of the legacy of their political maturation during the progressive era at the start of the 20th century. Most local elections are nonpartisan affairs and voters often have the right to unilaterally set policy via ballot initiative. Western voters have long cherished nonpartisan independence, even when they voted a relatively straight party ticket.

"The West is the most American part of America," said Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Denver. "It is a place where you have much more respect for individual choice and you have more ability to be who you want to be."

During the 1980s and 1990s, that libertarian streak fed a series of Republican victories as voters approved tax-limitation initiatives, protested federal environmental regulations and kept statehouses firmly in the GOP's hands. But nowadays it means something else, Carrick said.

"The libertarian thing is no longer about property rights or gun rights," he said. "It's now about letting people live their lives as they choose."

Ironically, Republicans' success may have contributed to that shift. The party managed to enshrine staunch anti-tax measures in several states' constitutions through ballot initiatives, making it very difficult to raise taxes in California, Colorado and Washington state. As a result, Democrats can't easily raise revenue ? but they also can't be attacked for doing so, said Ron Dotzauer, a Seattle-based Democratic strategist. "They can't be defined as the pro-tax group because they can't tax," he said.

There are prominent Republicans who demonstrate that the party can still win the region. Brian Sandoval in Nevada and Susana Martinez in New Mexico are popular Republican governors, but their relatively moderate stances often put them at odds with the national party. Both, for example, just agreed to the Medicaid expansion under President Barack Obama's health care plan, something that is anathema to many conservative Republicans.

"People appreciate a leader who takes more pragmatic approaches," said Nicole McCleskey, a New Mexico-based GOP pollster who advises Martinez. She argued that Democrats' success in the region is overstated and noted that, outside of California, Republicans in 2012 only lost one Western congressional seat. As an example of how Republicans can succeed, she cited New Mexico, where the party picked up seats in the state Legislature despite the Obama wave.

But McCleskey acknowledged that New Mexico Republicans were helped by the national GOP basically giving up on the presidential race in the state. GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney did not contest the state, minimizing the damage of a divisive presidential campaign.

"We were able to localize a lot of these races and build on the change that has taken place with a strong Republican governor," she said. "Republicans fought on state issues and the Democrats tried to fight on national issues."

Jill Hanauer is a Democratic strategist who engineered her party's takeover of the Colorado state Legislature in 2004. She agrees with McCleskey that the West cannot be considered a Democratic lock.

"The reason Democrats or progressives are winning is that Republicans got fat and happy," said Hanauer, who is now president of Project New America, a political data and strategy company in Denver. "The worst thing that can happen for Democrats is to take it for granted."

In 2002, Ruy Teixeira, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic strategist, co-wrote "The Emerging Democratic Majority," which predicted that demographic and social trends would turn parts of the country that were deep red, like the interior Mountain West, into Democratic-leaning states. The book was published shortly after Republicans took back the U.S. Senate in the 2002 midterm elections and was received skeptically.

Last year, Teixeira and a bevy of other researchers published a new book on the Mountain West as America's new swing region. Now there was little pushback.

Teixeira said the West's shift has been dramatic because of the heavy migration to the region. Another factor is the ballot initiative process, which magnifies political trends by making it easier to enact dramatic policy changes like marijuana legalization.

But he argued in an interview that what's happened to the West is not very different from what's taking place across the country. Surveys for his book last year found it only slightly more libertarian on social issues and holding similar views toward government and taxation as other parts of the country. That, he said, is bad news for Republicans ? their problem is national, not regional.

"It's not like there's something in the water in state X that's making them harder for Republicans," Teixeira said. "It's just the same series of changes that are working themselves out in all states."

___

Follow Nicholas Riccardi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/nickriccardi

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-26-West's%20Leftward%20Swing/id-80365a35ff7543e2a9d59562d641fd07

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Huawei tests 2Tbps data transmission over Vodafone's German network, calls it a 'first'

As terabit speeds go, Huawei's latest fiber feat falls on the lower end of recent industry achievements. At 2Tbps, the Chinese company's field test -- one it's hailing as a "world's first" -- comes nowhere close to the 100Tbps-plus experiments conducted by the likes of NEC and NICT. But top speed isn't entirely the point here; real-world performance is. By leveraging existing fiber infrastructure owned by Vodafone across portions of lower Germany, Huawei was able to successfully demonstrate two record-breaking, 200G transmissions: one spanning 1,500km and the other 3,325km over an "ultra-long-haul solution." To give you a bit of perspective on just what sort of data haul theoretical networks of this kind can achieve, Huawei claims this ultra-fast connection is "equivalent to downloading 40 HD videos in one second." Impressive, indeed. But don't go ditching that TWC wideband or FiOS contract just yet. While it's nice to know this tech exists, practical deployment is still a ways off. Until then, gigabit's the buzz word.

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Huawei and Vodafone Complete World's First 2 Tbit/s WDM Field Trial

Shenzhen, China, 24 January 2013:

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology solutions provider, and Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile communications companies, today announced the successful trial of 2 Tbit/s optical fiber transmission technologies on Vodafone's live network. The field trial achieved 2 Tbit/s transmission capabilities of over 3,325km. This provides a data highway capacity 20-times higher than current commercially deployed 100Gbit/s systems and has a speed equivalent to downloading 40 HD videos in one second. This marks an important step forward for optical transport technology advances beyond 100G.

Traffic on carrier backbone networks is growing exponentially, driving global momentum for commercial 100G deployments and attracting attention on optical transport beyond 100G. Riding on cutting-edge technologies such as flex oDSP, super SD-FEC, and flex modulation format, this field trial achieved a record-breaking transmission distance of 1,500 km using a super-channel PDM-16QAM-based high spectral efficiency solution, and a second record-breaking transmission distance of 3,325 km using a super-channel Nyquist PDM-QPSK-based ultra-long-haul solution. Both transmissions were on a link with G.652 fibers and erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) without electrical regeneration. The link used in the trial was on Vodafone's backbone network, passing through a few cities across middle and south Germany.

"We are at the forefront of global 100G deployments, and have taken the lead in delivering key breakthroughs in technologies beyond 100G. Through collaboration with Vodafone and other leading international operators and customer-centric R&D, Huawei is always ready to build advanced optical networks for customers," said Jack Wang, president of Huawei's transport network product line.

To help customers optimize their overall technical architecture and adopt next-generation transport networks, Huawei conducted the world's first 2T WDM field trial and pan- European 400G field trial in 2012, and also unveiled a series of scientific research achievements in optical transmission. According to Ovum, Huawei ranks No. 1 in the WDM/OTN, 40G, 100G, and global optical network markets, as of Q3 2012.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/CNoT_8azUMs/

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French-backed Mali forces push towards rebel-held Gao

SEGOU/BAMAKO, Mali (Reuters) - French-backed government forces advanced into northern Mali towards the Islamist rebel stronghold of Gao on Friday, recapturing the town of Hombori and forcing al Qaeda-allied fighters to pull back under relentless French air strikes.

France sent troops and aircraft to its former colony two weeks ago to block a southward offensive by Islamists occupying Mali's north. French and Malian troops have been pushing forward on either side of the Niger River, securing several farming towns recaptured over the last week.

Leaders gathered at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa appealed for logistical support, supplies and funding from the international community to allow a nearly 6,000-strong African ground force to deploy fully.

Malian officials said government forces entered Hombori, about 160 km (100 miles) southwest of Gao, late on Thursday and said an offensive against Gao could take place in the next few days.

Gao, with the other Saharan desert towns of Timbuktu and Kidal, has been occupied since last year by an Islamist alliance that includes AQIM, the north African franchise of al Qaeda.

"Our troops supported by French forces entered Hombori yesterday evening without any combat. The Islamists had already deserted the town," a Malian military officer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Mali's national radio said Hombori's inhabitants turned out to cheer the government soldiers.

South of Mopti, a Reuters reporter saw a large column of French armored vehicles and supply trucks rolling northeast along the main road in the direction of Gao.

Western and African leaders say the U.N.-backed intervention in Mali is necessary to stop the country's north - a vast, lawless tract of desert and mountains that juts into the Sahara - from becoming a safe haven for radical Islamist jihadists seeking to launch international attacks.

The United States and the European Union are helping with the airlift of French troops and equipment to Mali but have ruled out sending any combat troops. An EU mission to help train the Malian army will start next month.

Britain said it was sending a Sentinel manned surveillance aircraft to assist the campaign against the insurgents.

ISLAMISTS BLOW ROAD BRIDGE

Malian officials said French air raids on Thursday hit rebel positions at Ansongo, 95 km (60 miles) south of Gao. This is on the road to neighboring Niger, where Nigerien and Chadian forces are poised to join the fight against the Islamists.

But in a sign of Islamist rebel resistance, a Malian officer and residents living in the area south of Gao reported the militants had blown up a bridge at Tassiga, south of Ansongo, on the road following the Niger River down to Niger.

Two civilians were reported killed when their vehicle drove off the destroyed bridge, the same sources said.

French Rafale jets and Tiger helicopter gunships have been harrying the rebel fighters with air strikes on their vehicles, bases and stores.

The rebels have abandoned caches of munitions, including one, at Diabaly in central Mali, found to contain rockets for a Soviet-made BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher, witnesses said.

Despite the optimism now being shown by Malian military commanders, French officials have said their Islamist opponents appear well trained and well equipped, and are likely to resort to hit-and-run guerrilla warfare rather than committing to a conventional battle.

On Thursday, a split emerged in the Islamist militant coalition. One Tuareg leader of the Malian Ansar Dine group announced the creation of a new faction, said he wanted talks and rejected any alliance with AQIM. [ID:nL6N0ATBN1]

France has 2,500 soldiers on the ground in Mali as part of its Operation Serval (Wildcat), while a total of 3,700 French armed forces members are involved in the whole operation, according to the French Defense Ministry.

Only around 1,200 soldiers of the African intervention force for Mali, known as AFISMA and to be mostly comprised of troops from neighboring West African nations, have so far arrived in the country. Troops from Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Niger and Chad are being deployed.

LOGISTICS AN OBSTACLE

Asked what was holding back the full deployment of the African force, the AU's peace and security commissioner, Ramtane Lamamra, told Reuters in Addis Ababa: "One word, logistics."

The AFISMA force needed airlift support, ammunition, telecoms equipment, field hospitals, food and water, he said. It also required training to operate in Mali's desert and arid mountains.

Lamamra said the fast-moving situation in Mali had shown up the need for the African continental body to improve its ability to deploy its rapid-reaction military force.

"This is one of the first lessons learned (from Mali) and we will be working hard on that," Lamamra said, speaking on the sidelines of the AU summit.

Chad and Niger are readying troops with desert fighting experience to cross the border from Niger towards Gao in a separate flanking offensive.

But Chadian Foreign Minister Moussa Faki told Reuters in Addis Ababa his country was having problems finding planes to ferry armored troop vehicles to Niger for its contingent.

"We're waiting for assistance from the international community to help us deploy all of the equipment," he said.

A conference of donors to support the Mali intervention will be held in Addis Ababa, on January 29 after the AU summit.

Lamamra said hundreds of millions of dollars would be sought to train, arm and deploy Malian and African troops. Earlier this week France put the targeted figure at about 340 million euros ($452 million) for a full year.

The European Union has earmarked 50 million euros to pay the salaries of the African ground troops, a French diplomatic source said. It was not clear what period this would cover.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Maasho and Richard Lough in Addis Ababa, John Irish in Paris and David Lewis in Dakar; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Daniel Flynn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/malian-forces-push-north-toward-islamist-stronghold-gao-092529343.html

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Facebook Clarifies Developer Policies - Business Insider

Under fire for cutting off popular new apps,?Facebook has announced new rules for developers using its social network.

It is now requiring developers to show "reciprocity," which means their apps must let users easily post content to Facebook, in order to use Facebook's friend-finding features.

The change comes as Facebook abruptly cut off access to Twitter's new Vine video-sharing app and Wonder, a social search app from Yandex, a Russia-based search engine.

For years, Facebook has encouraged app developers on the Web and on mobile devices to use Facebook as a default login and a way of finding friends who are also using the service, a key strategy for making it ubiquitous.

But it has repeatedly clashed with players like Google and Twitter, viewing their attempts to connect with Facebook as an attempt to build up competing social networks at Facebook's expense.

Here's the old rule Facebook had for developers:

Competing social networks: (a) You may not use Facebook Platform to export user data into a competing social network without our permission; (b) Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social network.

And the new rule:

Reciprocity and Replicating core functionality: (a) Reciprocity: Facebook Platform enables developers to build personalized, social experiences via the Graph API and related APIs. If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook. (b) Replicating core functionality: You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission.

The reciprocity requirement around sharing content and the prohibition on replicating Facebook services are new, but it closely matches a controversial changes Twitter made last year to crack down on apps that mostly acted as clients for reading and posting tweets.

Still, what constitutes "replication," and how easy must sharing be? Facebook, it seems, will decide that.

Vine, Twitter's new video app, allows content to be shared easily, in the form of a link and a preview image. But unlike Facebook-owned Instagram, which injects photos directly into Facebook users' profiles, Vine does not actually post the videos on Facebook.

That mirrors the restricted way with which Instagram interacts with Twitter: Instagram no longer displays photos on Twitter's website or mobile apps, forcing users to click through to the Instagram website to view and interact with them.

Enforcement seems arbitrary. Facebook allows Twitter users to crosspost updates from Twitter to Facebook, but LinkedIn users can no longer crosspost Twitter updates to the professional network. Facebook allows Google's YouTube and Yahoo's Flickr to share photos and videos while using friend-finding features. Twitter likewise allows Flickr users to find Twitter friends, but Instagram users can't.

Consumers pay the price, ultimately, since they must laboriously rebuild their lists of friends on any new service that's innovative enough to threaten dominant players like Twitter or Facebook, or just offered by a company that's not on sufficiently friendly terms with them.

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to a request to discuss the new policies in greater detail.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-clarifies-developer-policies-2013-1

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Power Plant Causes 'Unique' Snow Near Pittsburgh

Accuweather:

The snow was not fluorescent and not radioactive, as some people joked on social media, but it did take a special set of "ingredients" to form.

Read the whole story at Accuweather

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/power-plant-causes_n_2543080.html

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Karen Cioffi Writing and Marketing: Ten Ways to Know if Your ...

Reprinted from Author Marketing Experts Newsletter

So you're out there marketing. You're doing all the right things (or so you think). You're following the book marketing advice of some leaders in the industry. You've got a checklist and you're methodically checking off your goals. But how do you know you're doing everything right? The fact is, most of us don't. Yet we forge ahead, keeping pace with our marketing plan, without ever knowing if it's paying off. We don't see it in sales.
Does that mean it's not working? Not at all. You could be seeing the effects in other places but just aren't keeping track of it.

I find that especially in social media you need to keep a close eye on what's working and what's not. If you've spent *any* kind of time online you know that you can be in front of your computer for what seems like 20 minutes and yet three hours have gone by. If the three hours of marketing is paying off, then it's fine to spend the time. But you need to know the difference. Here are a few things you can review to measure the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of your marketing.

1. Jumping in without a plan: Set clear, measureable goals because most marketing is invisible. Let's face it, you send an email and wonder half the time if the intended recipient got it or if it ended up in a spam filter, never to be seen again. That's the power behind goals. You need them and you need to run your campaign by them. So what are your goals? And no, you may not say sell books. Yes, that factors in - but there are a million small steps along the way before you even get to sales. Consider these goals and see if any of them fit your book, topic, and future:

a. Establish yourself as an expert or get known in your particular field. Hey, maybe you just want to be known as the go-to person for everything related to paranormal romance. That's great and it's a realistic, attainable goal.

b. Increase the visibility of your brand. OK, sort of the same as the bullet before this one but more geared to the non-fiction author.

c. Increase traffic and incoming links to your website. This is a great goal. Whether you are fiction or non-fiction, it's a great focus.

d. Do what makes sense for your book: If your followers aren't on Twitter then why have you spent the last month or so promoting yourself on there? Mind you, Twitter works for most of the books we manage, but there are a few that don't make sense. Twitter skews older than most people think so don't be surprised if your YA reader isn't on there. Before you launch head first into a campaign, make sure it fits your demographic.

2. Neglecting other marketing: I know it's easy to get all a-twitter about Twitter, but what else are you doing to promote yourself and your book? If you're good at events and speaking, are you still focused on that? Don't get too myopic on doing just one thing for your marketing. The truth is, you need to do a lot of different things, balanced out over a week or a month for your marketing to really make sense.

3. Set goals - be clear on what you hope to achieve in social media: What are your goals for Twitter? If it's just about gathering followers then you are missing a big piece of this social networking tool. For many marketing people it's all about the number, but numbers don't make as much sense unless they are driving interest to you and your book. If the numbers keep growing, along with traffic to your website, then you're on the right track. But if you're just growing numbers for the sake of being able to say that you have 10,000 followers then it makes no sense. That's like buying a fancy car you can't really afford. Eventually the debt of it will drag you down. It's the same with Twitter and Facebook and any other social media site. It's not about the numbers. It's about the activity.

4. Be clear on who you are trying to reach: Many of you say you're trying to reach readers, but is that really true? We all want to sell books, but who are you really going after? In all likelihood you will have a variety of different targets you are going after. Consider these: booksellers, speaking opportunities, interviews, bulk sale targets, reviewers, and readers to name a few.

5. Measure effectively: In order to know if stuff is working you'll need to measure effectively. As I pointed out earlier on in this article you may not want to do that by fans or followers - instead consider these ideas as ways to measure your success:

a. Retweets on Twitter: The best sign of success on Twitter is the amount of retweets. Are you getting them and if so, how often? If your tweets are good and your followers are active, you should see a few a week at least (depending on the amount of followers you have). If you're curious about the amount of Tweets that get RT'd - check out retweetrank.com. Twitter Analyzer (twitteranalyzer.com) is another great tool for determining how far tweets have traveled.

b. Site hits: Are the hits to your site increasing? Are you watching your analytics to be sure? If you're not, you should be. Watch your site stats closely and monitor the increase in traffic and where it's coming from.

c. Inbound links: How many new ones are you getting? Did you do a vanity search before you started this campaign? If not, do that now. Make sure you know how many new incoming links you're getting as a result of your efforts.

d. Sign-ups to your mailing list: Are they increasing? If you're doing the right stuff in your social media they should be increasing weekly.

6. Increasing the contacts in your industry: Remember that social media marketing is just like going to a networking meeting. You want to expand your reach and get to know others in your industry. If you're not increasing your reach and contact base, then you need to be. This is another great way to gauge how effective your marketing is.

We always want to make progress in our marketing but we're not always sure how to do it or if what we're doing is making a difference. Follow these steps and see if it doesn't help your marketing momentum. If it's paying off, you'll know sooner rather than later and you can keep doing the good stuff, and punt the bad.

Bonus: additional tools for tracking marketing

Bit.ly: This site serves as both a URL shortener and also as a measurement tool. Bit.ly can help get you real-time results on clicks to links you are posting to Facebook and Twitter.

Google Analytics: If you don't have any back end web analytics (and even if you do), Google gives you a lot of valuable data.

Trackur: This is a great monitoring site to see what's being featured on you online and off. It's not free like Google Alerts, but much more comprehensive. Their basic package is $18 a month.

Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques. http://www.amarketingexpert.com

~~~~~

RECOMMENDED TOOL: TURN WORDS INTO TRAFFIC

Turn Words into Traffic with pro marketer Jim Edwards. Jim will show you his quick and easy techniques for pumping out high-quality, persuasive, and professional articles, along with getting great guest blogging spots. He even goes into PLRs, articles written by someone else that you can claim as your own.
Check it out for yourself HERE.

~~~~~
To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).

Karen Cioffi
Multi-award Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter, Editor, Online Marketing Instructor, Affiliate Marketer
Writer?s Digest Website of the Week, June 25, 2012

Online Marketing Ebooks and Ecourses:
http://karencioffi.com

Karen Cioffi Professional Writing Services
http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/karen-cioffi-writing-services/

Source: http://www.karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com/2013/01/ten-ways-to-know-if-your-internet.html

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Movie Reviews: 'Quartet'; 'Parker' - Breaking News - Providence ...

Quartet (2012) ****
Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Billy Connolly, Michael Gambon. Residents of a retirement home for musicians face the music when one of the principal singers in their fund-raising Verdi concert is put out of commission. The arrival of a new resident, an opera diva, offers hope, but she was once married to one of the home's residents and refuses to sing. Great septuagenarian British cast breathes life into this sunny, lively comedy directed by Dustin Hoffman. (1:37/PG-13)

Check movie times, theaters, and add your own review of "Quartet" at Things to Do.

Parker (2013) ****
Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis. A thief double-crossed by his mob plots payback revenge in this taut, thrilling action movie. (1:58/R)

Check movie times, theaters, and add your own review of "Parker" at Things to Do.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) **
Gemma Arterton, Jeremy Renner, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare. Now all grown up, Hansel and Gretel are witch hunters for hire, now on the trail of the Great Witch in a horror-action-comedy-fairytale that doesn't work on any of those levels. (1:26/R)

Check movie times, theaters, and add your own review of "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" at Things to Do.

Beware of Mr. Baker (2012) ****
Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Johnny Rotten. Profile of the brilliant, but difficult, legendary rock drummer. (1:40/NR)

Check movie times, theaters, and add your own review of "Beware of Mr. Baker" at Things to Do.

Source: http://news.providencejournal.com/arts-entertainment/2013/01/movie-reviews-quartet-parker-hansel-gretel-witch-hunters-beware-of-mr-baker.html

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One-of-a-Kind Chemistry Autograph Collection Goes Digital

Paywalls are a problem when it comes to sharing chemical research with a wider audience, but they're a factor in physics, astronomy,

http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]

Free preprints for physics and astronomy (and a lot of other stuff, just no bio). I'd like to see more of those too. I think every time aaronson posts something on his blog it should hit/. for example.

I've seen some truly inscrutable theoretical physics and mathematics stories here where half the comments were "LOLWTF someone explain,"

I can agree with that. From the front page of Nature Chemisty (paywall alert) we've got

"Molecular cages" by Cooper, mistakes in this summary are solely my fault, something like you can now nano-engineer a really tiny pasta strainer to catch certain specific molecular shapes, in this paper

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/6Ds_gA9LNzU/story01.htm

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Latest reports tip Samsung Galaxy S4 for April release following March 'Unpacked' event

The latest round of reports have Samsung’s Galaxy S3 successor coming to market this April, following an unveiling at a March “Unpacked” event in the United States.

Firstly, Korean news outlet Asian Economies reports via “telecommunications industry” sources that Samsung is planning to unveil the Galaxy S4 at an "Unpacked" event in the U.S. in late March. Specifically, Friday, March 22 was highlighted as a likely date for Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2013, which is said to be the largest such event yet. If accurate, it’d be the first major Unpacked event in the U.S. since the original Galaxy S made its debut in 2010.

News of a possible Galaxy S4 unveiling this March, also fits with the second report we’re seeing today, which comes via Samsung fansite SamMobile. SamMobile’s sources have a pretty consistent track record in revealing details of pre-release Samsung handsets, and today the site claims that the Galaxy S4 is on track for launch sometime in April.

The S4, supposedly known internally by the codename “Altius,” is said to come in black and white color options initially. It’s reported that current shipping timetables call for the device to become available from week 15 of this year -- that's the week commencing April 15. Other information reported by SamMobile includes details of the phone’s battery -- allegedly a 2600mAh unit -- and apparent confirmation of earlier rumors of an optional wireless charging back. This accessory is to be sold separately within "a couple of weeks” of the S4’s launch, the site claims. (That’d be an improvement on the lag time of several months for official Galaxy phone accessories in years past.)

It’s worth taking reports of this nature with a pretty major pinch of salt until the official confirmation arrives. Nevertheless, the more reliable Galaxy S4 rumors seem to be crystallizing around a late Q1 or early Q2 launch window. A stateside unveiling would certainly make sense for Samsung, given the importance of the U.S. market. What’s more, an Unpacked event less than a month after Mobile World Congress would minimize the amount of breathing space given to Android rivals like HTC, which is expected to use MWC to unveil its major 2013 handsets. Keep it locked to Android Central in the months ahead -- it’s going to be a crazy year, and things are just getting started.

Source: Asian Economies via PhoneArena; SamMobile

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/gs2kqiuCO4s/story01.htm

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In China, signs that one-child policy may be coming to an end

JIUQUAN, China (Reuters) - China could be considering relaxing its harsh one-child policy because of women like Hu Yanqin, who lives in a village at the edge of the Gobi desert.

When Hu married a construction worker seven years ago, she knew she was going to have only one child, although the area where she lives, the Jiuquan region in northwestern Gansu province, is one of the rare places in China where those living in rural areas have been free to have two children since 1985.

"Those people with two children are those who are better off," said Hu, 32, dropping her six-year-old son off at kindergarten. "The majority of people in my village only have one child."

Advocates of reforming China's one-child policy use Hu and millions like her as evidence that relaxing the law will not lead to a surge of births in the world's most populous nation.

Jiuquan has a birth rate of 8 to 9 per 1,000 people, lower than the national average of about 12 births per 1,000 people.

The policy, implemented since 1980 alongside reforms that have led to rapid economic expansion, is increasingly being seen as an impediment to growth and the harbinger of social problems.

The country's labor force, at about 930 million, will start declining in 2025 at a rate of about 10 million a year, projections show. Meanwhile, China's elderly population will hit 360 million by 2030, from about 200 million in 2013.

"If this goes on, there will be no taxpayers, no workers and no caregivers for the elderly," said Gu Baochang, a demography professor at Renmin University.

China's top statistician, Ma Jiantang, said last Friday that the country should look into "an appropriate and scientific family planning policy" after data showed that the country's working-age population, aged 15 to 59, fell for the first time.

Economists say the policy is also responsible for China's high savings rate. A single child often must take care of two - and four in the case of married couples - retired parents, increasing the likelihood that working adults will save money for their old age rather than spend.

That has delayed the "rebalancing" of Beijing's economy toward more consumption, a step economists believe China needs to take to keep its growth going.

Expectations that Beijing will ease the restrictions, by gradually allowing couples to have two children, have been building since outgoing President Hu Jintao conspicuously dropped the phrase "maintain a low birth rate" in a work report to a Communist Party congress in November.

It was the first time in a decade that a major speech by a top leader had omitted such a reference and could signal that the new government led by Xi Jinping is leaning toward reform.

"I think that the 18th Party Congress report indicates that, and this is my personal interpretation, the one-child policy is going to be adjusted," said Ji Baocheng, a delegate to China's rubber stamp parliament who advocates change in the policy.

BRUTAL

The one-child policy covers 63 per cent of the country's population and Beijing says it has averted 400 million births since 1980.

Its enforcement can be brutal. Couples who flout family planning laws are, at minimum, fined, some lose their jobs, and in some cases mothers are forced to abort their babies or be sterilized.

Last summer, a woman who was seven months pregnant was forced to have an abortion, triggering outrage on China's Internet and international condemnation.

But evidence has been mounting for years that the policy may be unnecessary to control population growth.

In 2008, Renmin University's Gu and the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy published a study on two-child policy programs in four regions, home to about 8 million people. They concluded that the high cost of having children is enough to hold down birthrates, but the freedom to have a second child results in a less skewed gender disparity.

The next year, sources told Reuters, the National Population and Family Planning Commission decided, as a first step, to expand pilot programs to relax the policy in four to five other regions.

The proposal was dropped for lack of a consensus among the leadership, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

The new leadership in Beijing, which assumes power formally in March, is likely to make another run at change, reform advocates believe.

"The adjustment of the policy is certain, it's only a question of time," said a recently retired official from the family planning commission, who maintains close ties with the agency.

BOYS AND GIRLS

A skewed gender ratio is another unwelcome effect of the one-child policy.

Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons. Many families abort female fetuses and abandon baby girls to ensure their one child is a son, so about 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, against a global average of 103 to 107.

In Jiuquan, there are 110 boys for every 100 girls, far less skewed than the national average, because of the freedom to have two children.

Tian Xueyuan, one of the drafters of the original one-child policy, told Reuters that he had warned top officials nearly a decade ago of the flaws.

"A substantial portion of China's men will not be able to find a match ... and that will be a major factor of social instability," Tian said he told party leaders.

The usefulness of the one-child policy, he said, has run its course. "It's a special policy with a time limit, specifically, to control the births of one generation," Tian told Reuters.

Still, there are significant pockets of resistance. Last week, Wang Xia, the minister in charge of the family planning commission, said China will "unswervingly adhere" to its family planning policy.

Her remarks dismayed reformers expecting change from the new government, and ignited an outcry among Chinese Internet users.

Analysts said Wang's remarks did not necessarily reflect the thinking of the incoming government. The commission declined to comment.

In Jiuquan today, though the one-child policy is relaxed, women are still subject to strict family planning rules. They are fitted with intra-uterine devices after their first child, sterilized after their second. Anyone who defies the two-child quota pays a 30,000 yuan fine.

Few do. The women in Jiuquan complain about expensive school fees and other expenses of bringing up children.

"It's hard to raise a child," said Xing Juan, a 26-year-old with one son. "The burden is heavy."

(Editing by Bill Powell and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-signs-one-child-policy-may-coming-end-212319820--business.html

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