Sunday, June 30, 2013

Egypt: 4 killed in clashes with Islamists

CAIRO (AP) ? Security officials say suspected Islamists have killed three protesters in the southern city of Assiut, taking to four the number of people killed on a day of massive protests demanding the ouster of Egypt's president.

The officials said Islamists on a motorbike opened fire on protesters outside the local government building in Assiut, killing one and wounding seven. Enraged by the killing, protesters marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice party, political arm of President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.

Gunmen inside the building opened fire, killing at least two, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A protester in Beni Suef was killed earlier outside the local headquarters of the Freedom and Justice party.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-4-killed-clashes-islamists-212644881.html

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'Swan mom:' A Washington woman is surrogate for baby trumpeters

A Washington woman has become a surrogate 'swan mom' for a bevy of baby trumpeter swans. Each summer for 14 years she's raised hatchlings for 80 days and released them into the wild.

By Staff,?Associated Press / June 28, 2013

Five 13-day-old cygnet trumpeter swans gather around "mom", a decoy swan, in their human foster parent Martha Jordan's back yard earlier this week.

AP

Enlarge

All Martha Jordan has to do to get her five baby swans to run across the back yard is pull their "mom" along on a rope ? a life-size, plastic swan decoy.

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The fuzzy cygnets, two weeks old, scurry to keep up in a scene that can only be described as impossibly cute.

For all intents and purposes, though, Ms. Jordan is really the baby birds' mom.

A wildlife biologist and authority on swans, Jordan agreed to raise the cygnets until they can be released into the wild.

The babies were hatched by a mating pair of swans at Northwest Trek, a wildlife park near Eatonville. In past years, some of the cygnets hatched there were lost to some of the other inhabitants of the park.

"They were becoming lunch for the bald eagles who live at the lake," Jordan said.

Jordan will raise the cygnets for about 80 days, after which they'll be released in Eastern Oregon. They become fully grown and ready to fly in just over 100 days, she said.

Though the cygnets' fledgling feathers are softer than silk, Jordan says petting them can condition the birds to human contact and make it harder for them to make it in the wild.

"I try not to handle them," she said.

Jordan has served as a foster?parent?for cygnets for 14 of the past 18 years, she said. Usually, she keeps them only for a few weeks and hands them off to another person who has room to house the cygnets as they get bigger.

An adult swan weighs from 25 to nearly 40 pounds and has a wingspan of 7? to 9 feet, according to Jordan.

The person who usually takes the swans from Jordan can't do it this year, so she is having a larger pen built in the back yard of her south Everett home.

Jordan is coordinator of the Washington Swan Stewards, a subsidiary of the Trumpeter Swan Society, a national non-profit organization. The local group provides education about swans and works on habitat conservation.

Trumpeter swans live only in North America and primarily in the Northwest. The other swan species native to the continent is the tundra swan, some of which also winter in the Northwest.

Trumpeter swans are migratory. Those that winter in Western Washington are among the 26,000 that breed in Alaska in the summer, Jordan said. They leave here in March and return in October.

Trumpeter swans are not endangered but their future is only as stable as that of the farmlands on which they depend for food in the winter, Jordan said.

Swans have historically wintered in local wetlands but as those have disappeared, the birds have adapted by landing at farms and eating the corn and other food put out for the livestock, she said. Farmers generally don't mind, Jordan said.

The Skagit Valley is the largest local wintering area, while the Stillaguamish and Snohomish valleys also attract many of the birds, she said.

Hunting Trumpeter swans in Washington state is illegal. Some of the lakes and fields where the swans land, however, are laden with lead buckshot leftover from decades ago or that's been fired at ducks or other waterfowl that may be legally hunted.

Swans ingest small pebbles as grit to help their digestion, and sometimes mistake the buckshot for pebbles, eat them and die from lead poisoning, she said.

Jordan gets paid for some of her work for the swan groups when grants are available. She goes on rescue missions in addition to banding and documenting the birds' whereabouts. But mostly she makes her living as a massage therapist, she said.

Still, she's recognized around the state as a leading authority on swans. She was asked to write the plan for minimizing the effect on swans from the demolition of the Elwha Dam, she said. Jordan confesses that she's sometimes referred to as the "swan lady."

She didn't set out to be a swan expert. Early in her career as a wildlife biologist working with other birds such as migratory geese, she frequently encountered swans and wound up studying them as part of her work.

In 1985, the state paid her to do a comprehensive swan survey.

"By that time, I was hooked on swans," she said.

It hasn't always been as much fun as watching the cygnets run across the lawn. Since 1999, more than 2,300 swans in the state have died from lead poisoning, according to the swan stewards website.

At the height of the die-off around 2003, "I was handling 4,000 pounds of dead swans," Jordan said.

Other times, she's been beaten up by swans when she got too close to a nest. Swans have claws on their webbed feet and hard edges to the front of their wings that they can swing like clubs.

They also have flexible, serrated bills. "They grab you and pinch and then twist and pull," she said.

Still, when she encounters a banded adult swan that she raised as a baby, or when people tell her stories of how swans have inspired them, it makes it all worthwhile, she said.

"You learn about humans and their connection to the land, and all that has come to me through the swan," she said.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/theculture/~3/b43h9gMY9VE/Swan-mom-A-Washington-woman-is-surrogate-for-baby-trumpeters

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Ethiopia insists on talks with Egypt to solve Nile row | Morocco World ...

ALGIERS, June 30, 2013 (AFP)

Ethiopia is hoping that talks with Egypt will ease a row over sharing the waters of the Nile, Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said on Sunday during a trip to Algeria.

But Tedros did not rule out ?international mediation? if the talks founder.

The dispute erupted after Ethiopia last month began diverting the Blue Nile River for the construction of its 6,000-megawatt Grand Renaissance Dam.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has warned that ?all options are open? because of concerns about the impact on downstream water levels.

?There is no reason that we cannot reach an agreement that benefits? all Nile countries, Tedros said at a joint news conference with Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci.

?Ethiopia is genuinely committed to solving any problem through dialogue and negotiations? we have to cooperate to share what nature has given us.?

Tedros said he would travel soon to Cairo for further talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr following a round of discussions earlier this month in Addis Ababa.

Some 86 percent of Nile water flowing to Egypt originates from the Blue Nile out of Ethiopia, and Cairo has said the construction of the dam is a security concern.

Ethiopia?s parliament ratified a controversial treaty in early June ensuring its access to Nile water resources, replacing a colonial-era agreement that granted Egypt and Sudan the majority of water rights.

The new deal allows upstream countries to implement irrigation and hydropower projects without first seeking Egypt?s approval.

Ethiopia says the $4.2-billion (3.2-billion-euro) dam is aimed at generating electricity for export to neighbouring countries, including Kenya and Djibouti.

It is set to become Africa?s largest hydroelectric dam, with completion earmarked for 2017, and is being funded entirely from internal resources.

The Blue Nile joins the White Nile in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to form the Nile, which then flows through Egypt.

Source: http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/06/96045/ethiopia-insists-on-talks-with-egypt-to-solve-nile-row/

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Nate Silver: Hillary Is the Strongest Non-Incumbent Ever (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/315892277?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Rescuers believe American schooner carrying 7 sank

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) ? Rescue crews searching for a classic American schooner carrying seven people believe the boat sank between New Zealand and Australia, although they haven't given up hope of finding survivors.

A third day of aerial searches Friday turned up no sign of the 85-year-old wooden sailboat or its crew. Named Nina, the boat left New Zealand on May 29 bound for Australia. The last known contact with the crew was on June 4. Rescuers were alerted the boat was missing on June 14, but weren't unduly worried at first because the emergency locator beacon had not been activated.

The six Americans on board include captain David Dyche, 58, his wife, Rosemary, 60, and their son David, 17. Also aboard was their friend Evi Nemeth, 73, a man aged 28, a woman aged 18, and a British man aged 35.

The leader of Friday's search efforts, Neville Blakemore of New Zealand's Rescue Coordination Centre, said it's now logical to assume the 70-foot (21-meter) boat sank in a storm but added that it's possible some crew members survived either in the life raft that was aboard or by making land.

On the day the boat went missing, a storm hit the area with winds gusting up to 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour and waves of up to 8 meters (26 feet).

Blakemore said the Southern Hemisphere winter months tend to produce the year's worst storms, although he added that he wouldn't normally expect a sturdy and well-maintained craft like the Nina to sink in a storm like the one in early June.

Friday's search focused on the coastline around northern New Zealand, including the small Three Kings Islands. Rescuers were looking for wreckage or the life raft.

Blakemore said plane searches earlier this week covered a wide band of ocean between New Zealand and Australia. He said searchers were considering their options for the weekend.

He said the logical conclusion is that the boat sank rapidly, preventing the crew from activating the locator beacon or using other devices aboard, including a satellite phone and a spot beacon. He said that unlike many locator beacons, the one aboard the Nina is not activated by water pressure and wouldn't start automatically if the boat sank.

Dyche is a qualified captain, and he and his family are experienced sailors. Blakemore said the family had been sailing around the world for several years and was often joined on different legs by friends and sailors they met along the way.

Susan Payne, harbor master of the St. Andrews Marina near Panama City, Florida, said the couple left Panama City in the Nina a couple of years ago and sailed to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, where they prepared for the trip.

New Zealand meteorologist Bob McDavitt was the last person known to have been in contact with the schooner, when the boat was about 370 nautical miles west of New Zealand.

He said Nemeth called him by satellite phone on June 3 and said, "The weather's turned nasty, how do we get away from it?"

He advised them to head south and brace for the storm.

The next day he got a text message, the last known communication: "ANY UPDATE 4 NINA? ... EVI"

McDavitt said he advised the crew to stay put and ride out the storm another day. He continued sending messages the next few days, but didn't hear back. Friends of the crew got in touch with McDavitt soon after that, and then alerted authorities.

___

Associated Press writer Melissa Nelson-Gabriel in Pensacola, Florida, contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rescuers-believe-american-schooner-carrying-7-sank-053935827.html

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Saturday, June 29, 2013

T-Mobile to acquire 10MHz of LTE spectrum from US Cellular in $308 million deal

LTE spectrum is a hot commodity, and if you're hurting for cash, it might not be a bad time to let some go. US Cellular just inked a deal to unload 10MHz of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum, padding its pocketbook with a whopping $308 million in cash. Pending FCC approval, that wireless load will be making its way over to T-Mobile, which would then own the vast majority of AWS. It's good news for T-Mobile customers, no doubt, especially those in the Southeast -- according to a press release, the spectrum T-Mob just snatched up covers 32 million people in cities like St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock and New Orleans.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: T-Mobile

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/28/t-mobile-buys-lte-spectrum/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Some Truths About Coffee - ArticleSnatch.com

These assist to remove unwanted toxins from your body to help you your body organs to function better. You can buy green coffee beans from shops and physical fitness retail outlets but for anyone who is trying to avoid wasting revenue, it is actually greater which you obtain it in the web from the honest seller. You ought to think of the coffees as an investment.

Japanese American chemist Satori Kato invented the first instant coffee in 1901, freeze-dried coffee followed in 1938. Once you hit forty years of age, whether you're a man or even a woman, one's body starts aging faster than normal, in accordance with studies that centered on numerous nutrients and use. Fair trade could have helped coffee growers, yet what happens on the crops after these are harvested needs being addressed.

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Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Some-Truths-About-Coffee/5186274

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BlackBerry Shipped Just 2.7M BB10 Handsets In Q1 2014

z10-13BlackBerry didn't break out its individual BB10 device sales in its quarterly earnings report released earlier this morning, but during its conference call to discuss its performance CEO Thorsten Heins revealed that it shipped 2.7 million handsets during the quarter, which is not a great number. Nokia shipped 5.6 million Lumia devices in Q1 of 2013, for instance, and AT&T reported 4.8 million iPhone activations alone during its Q1 reporting.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DdFuEP2zlOo/

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Friday, June 28, 2013

How The NSA Still Harvests Online Data - Business Insider

NSA

REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

A cyber security analyst works in a watch and warning center at a Department of Homeland Security cyber security defense lab at the Idaho National Laboratory, September 30, 2011, in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

A review of top-secret NSA documents suggests that the surveillance agency still collects and sifts through large quantities of Americans' online data ? despite the Obama administration's insistence that the program that began under Bush ended in 2011.

Shawn Turner, the Obama administration's director of communications for National Intelligence, told the Guardian that "the internet metadata collection program authorized by the Fisa court was discontinued in 2011 for operational and resource reasons and has not been restarted."

But the documents indicate that the amount of internet metadata harvested, viewed, processed and overseen by the Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate inside the NSA is extensive.

While there is no reference to any specific program currently collecting purely domestic internet metadata in bulk, it is clear that the agency collects and analyzes significant amounts of data from US communications systems in the course of monitoring foreign targets.

On December 26 2012, SSO announced what it described as a new capability to allow it to collect far more internet traffic and data than ever before. With this new system, the NSA is able to direct more than half of the internet traffic it intercepts from its collection points into its own repositories. One end of the communications collected are inside the United States.

The NSA called it the "One-End Foreign (1EF) solution". It intended the program, codenamed EvilOlive, for "broadening the scope" of what it is able to collect. It relied, legally, on "FAA Authority", a reference to the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act that relaxed surveillance restrictions.

This new system, SSO stated in December, enables vastly increased collection by the NSA of internet traffic. "The 1EF solution is allowing more than 75% of the traffic to pass through the filter," the SSO December document reads. "This milestone not only opened the aperture of the access but allowed the possibility for more traffic to be identified, selected and forwarded to NSA repositories."

It continued: "After the EvilOlive deployment, traffic has literally doubled."

The scale of the NSA's metadata collection is highlighted by references in the documents to another NSA program, codenamed ShellTrumpet.

On December 31, 2012, an SSO official wrote that ShellTrumpet had just "processed its One Trillionth metadata record".

It is not clear how much of this collection concerns foreigners' online records and how much concerns those of Americans. Also unclear is the claimed legal authority for this collection.

Explaining that the five-year old program "began as a near-real-time metadata analyzer ? for a classic collection system", the SSO official noted: "In its five year history, numerous other systems from across the Agency have come to use ShellTrumpet's processing capabilities for performance monitoring" and other tasks, such as "direct email tip alerting."

Almost half of those trillion pieces of internet metadata were processed in 2012, the document detailed: "though it took five years to get to the one trillion mark, almost half of this volume was processed in this calendar year".

Another SSO entry, dated February 6, 2013, described ongoing plans to expand metadata collection. A joint surveillance collection operation with an unnamed partner agency yielded a new program "to query metadata" that was "turned on in the Fall 2012". Two others, called MoonLightPath and Spinneret, "are planned to be added by September 2013."

A substantial portion of the internet metadata still collected and analyzed by the NSA comes from allied governments, including its British counterpart, GCHQ.

An SSO entry dated September 21, 2012, announced that "Transient Thurible, a new Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) managed XKeyScore (XKS) Deep Dive was declared operational." The entry states that GCHQ "modified" an existing program so the NSA could "benefit" from what GCHQ harvested.

"Transient Thurible metadata [has been] flowing into NSA repositories since 13 August 2012," the entry states.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-nsa-still-harvests-online-data-2013-6

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Thursday, June 27, 2013

How Would Immigration Reform Affect Small Businesses ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]An immigration lawyer talks about how she built her law firm and the potential impact of reform.

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/how-would-immigration-reform-affect-small-businesses/

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Ancient horse is oldest creature to reveal DNA sequence

CAPTIONS

Ancient skull
This skull of a Late Pleistocene horse, Equus lambei, was found in permafrost in the Klondike region of the Canadian Yukon. (D.G. Froese / University of Alberta /June 26, 2013)

June 26, 2013, 3:46 p.m.

Researchers have unraveled the genetic code of a wild horse that loped across the frozen Yukon about 700,000 years ago, making it the oldest creature by far to reveal its DNA to modern science.

Until recently, experts believed it was impossible to recover useful amounts of DNA from fossils that old. The previous record holder for oldest genome belonged to a polar bear that lived more than 110,000 years ago. The horse sequence, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, amounts to a dramatic increase in how far back scientists can peer into the biochemical history of advanced life.

The DNA was extracted from a 6-inch slice of a fossilized horse leg bone that was found nine years ago. Under normal conditions, DNA begins to degrade soon after death. But this bone was preserved in permafrost at Thistle Creek in Canada's Yukon Territory.

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Dating techniques revealed that the animal lived in an epoch when woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats and giant beavers shared turf with ancestral humans.

The work "opens great perspectives as to the level of details we can reconstruct of our origins and the evolutionary history of every animal on the planet," said study leader Ludovic Orlando of the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Orlando and an international team of collaborators pieced together even the tiniest of DNA fragments recovered from the bone. Such genetic puzzle assembly generally includes multiple samples from each part of the genome, sometimes as many as five or 10. In this case, the so-called coverage was just 1.12.

That's not enough detail to say much about what the horse looked like, said Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark who worked on the study. Team members suggested the horse was about the size of a modern Icelandic or Arabian horse, though it probably was less muscular, and perhaps slower.

"If they were fast runners, it was not because of the same genes we know of today," Orlando said.

As part of the genetic sleuthing, the team also sequenced the DNA of a 43,000-year-old horse fossil, five modern domesticated horses, a wild Przewalski's horse native to the Mongolian steppes, and a donkey from the Copenhagen Zoo named Willy.

By comparing all of these genomes, the researchers determined that the most recent common ancestor of all these species ? as well as zebras ? lived 4 million to 4.5 million years ago. That's about 2 million years earlier than previously thought, and allows for far more time for horses to have evolved into the animals we know today.

The findings offered a window into 29 regions of the domestic horse's genome that differed from that of the wild Przewalski's horse, suggesting these changes were part of their evolutionary path toward domestication. Some of those changes involved the immune and olfactory systems.

The analysis also offers hope for the fate of the Przewalski's horse, an endangered animal whose DNA showed no signs of interbreeding with modern horses.

"It is 100% wild," Willerslev said. "There is no domestic genetics present in that horse. Which of course suggests these guys are really worth preserving."

The DNA analysis revealed that the species has enough genetic variety to enable it to recover if conservation efforts can be sustained. Once considered extinct in the wild, the horse was reintroduced to the Mongolian steppes in 1985.

Other scientists who specialize in sequencing ancient DNA praised the work on the Canadian horse. But they cautioned that it wouldn't help them decode the DNA of human ancestors who lived so long ago.

"We've known for a long time now that DNA preservation is exceptionally good in permafrost compared to other environments," said Mark Stoneking, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in the study. "Unfortunately, with the exception of Otzi the Iceman, none of our ancestors have been so obliging as to die under circumstances where the remains are frozen soon after death and remain frozen until discovery."

Paleogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain, who has studied the Neanderthal genome, was also pessimistic: "We are not going to find very ancient humans preserved in permafrost."

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/ZumkkKE1GbE/la-sci-ancient-horse-genome-20130627,0,2514595.story

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Rule of Law Dying in America | RedState







chieftain (Diary) ?|? ?|?

RESIZE: AAA

The US Supreme Court shows no restraint in assuming legislative power as evidenced by the DOMA strike down.
Activist mobs in Texas and Wisconsin interfere with the legislative process drowning out any civil discussion or civility in process.
Bondholder rights summarily taken away to enrich Unions in GM bankruptcy.
Congressmen trade stocks on companies in real time while they legislate laws that move the stock price.
Crony capitalists funnel money, mortgage deals, below market loans, real estate gifts and partnerships to Congressmen in exchange for legislative favors, or protection from unfavorable legislation.
Copyright is continually extended on existing copyrighted works, without any public interest in these extensions; Congressmen rewarded by corporate copyright holder cash.
The Federal Regulatory bureaucracy lies to Congress, takes the 5th, targets groups for special treatment based upon political views and gathers massive amounts of information from innocent citizens and journalists and their parents.
Secret courts are used to authorize invasions of privacy and sweeping data collection.
DNA collected by force.
Parental rights usurped by federal law created by tyrannical judges with respect to drugs and sex.
and on and on and on.
Citizen assets forceably taken and redistributed to non-citizen criminals who are freed of legal liability and given special status.
State laws to ensure free and fair elections interfered with by federal employees. Federal laws to ensure free and fair elections are selectively enforced.
The will of the majority is subverted again and again by an elite few in organizations that range from the judiciary at both federal & state levels to churches to non-profits like Boy Scouts,
Tocqueville, Madison and Franklin warned us.

and at the core, is sin. Greed, gluttony, anger, sloth, envy, lust, pride.

Serious people are needed to speak the truth to the free lunch crowd.
Serious people need to use prudence in discourse to speak the truth.
Serious people need to refrain from gotcha, or in kind, attacks.
Serious people, shining a light, with an unwavering hand,
to reveal truth to a people in need.
and those people in need, too often turn away lacking the courage to face truth.
Serious people need patience and humility and courage and fortitude.
Be steadfast. Don?t dwell on the death of law around you. Instead tend the dying with comfort and plant seeds where they may grow. Help one another. Do not turn from the political process, rather engage it. If you are able, shift your volunteer hours to help drain the political swamp. Attend local political party meetings and shine the light; be the light. Want better politicians. Become one; but better. Help give people a better choice. If we don?t, who will?

Source: http://www.redstate.com/chieftain/2013/06/26/rule-of-law-dying-in-america/

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News in Brief: Cradled galaxies betray violent past

News in Brief: Cradled galaxies betray violent past

Hubble snaps ?the Penguin? and its egg-shaped companion

Hubble snaps ?the Penguin? and its egg-shaped companion

By Jessica Shugart

Web edition: June 25, 2013


NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The Hubble Space Telescope?s latest portrait of deep space reveals two galaxies interacting in a scene reminiscent of a penguin safeguarding its egg. But the placid pair ? collectively called Arp 142 ? actually bears the scars of a destructive past. The galaxy NGC 2936 (top) was once a spiral like the Milky Way, until the gravitational pull from the egg-shaped galaxy NGC 2937 (bottom) warped it into avian form. Remnants of NGC 2936?s spiral arms radiate out from the bird?s eye, which once formed the galaxy?s core. The system lies 326 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra.


European Space Agency. Hubble spots galaxies in close encounter. Photo release, June 20, 2013. Last accessed June 25, 2013. [Go to]


A. Witze. Clutch of distant galaxies reveals the infant universe. Science News. January 12, 2013, Vol. 183, p. 5. [Go to]

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/351208/title/News_in_Brief_Cradled_galaxies_betray_violent_past

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

PHOTO: Justin Bieber Posts Shirtless Pic!

The singer reveals backstage photo after his performance! Check out other cute and candid moments from the stars

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/celebrity-twitter-pictures/1-b-229669?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Acelebrity-twitter-pictures-229669

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Dot Earth Blog: Obama?s Ambitious Global Warming Action Plan

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The White House unveils a long-awaited plan to cut carbon pollution along with risks from unavoidable warming.
    


Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/obamas-global-warming-action-plan/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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'Active surveillance' may miss aggressive prostate cancers in black ...

A Johns Hopkins study of more than 1,800 men ages 52 to 62 suggests that African-Americans diagnosed with very-low-risk prostate cancers are much more likely than white men to actually have aggressive disease that goes unrecognized with current diagnostic approaches. Although prior studies have found it safe to delay treatment and monitor some presumably slow-growing or low-risk prostate cancers, such "active surveillance" (AS) does not appear to be a good idea for black men, the study concludes.

"This study offers the most conclusive evidence to date that broad application of active surveillance recommendations may not be suitable for African-Americans," says urologist Edward M. Schaeffer, M.D., Ph.D., a co-author of the study. "This is critical information because if African-American men do have more aggressive cancers, as statistics would suggest, then simply monitoring even small cancers that are very low risk would not be a good idea because aggressive cancers are less likely to be cured," he says. "We think we are following a small, nonaggressive cancer, but in reality, this study highlights that in black men, these tumors are sometimes more aggressive than previously thought. It turns out that black men have a much higher chance of having a more aggressive tumor developing in a location that is not easily sampled by a standard prostate biopsy."

A report of the study, posted online and ahead of the print version in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, describes it as the largest analysis of potential race-based health disparities among men diagnosed with a slow-growing, very nonaggressive form of prostate cancer.

The Johns Hopkins study also showed that the rate of increased pathologic risk, as measured by the Cancer of the Prostate Risk Assessment (CAPRA), was also significantly higher in African-Americans (14.8 percent vs. 6.9 percent). The 12-point CAPRA score is an accepted predictor of biochemical disease recurrence based on blood levels of prostate specific antigen, Gleason score, lymph node involvement, extracapsular extension, seminal vesicle invasion, and positive surgical margins. Schaeffer and his team say their data suggest that "very-low-risk" African-Americans have different regional distributions of their cancers and appear to also develop more high-grade cancers. Researchers added that these tumors hide in the anterior prostate ? a region that is quite difficult to assess using current biopsy techniques.

All study participants, of whom 1,473 were white and 256 black, met current National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) criteria for very-low-risk prostate cancer, and were thus good candidates for AS. The study showed that preoperative characteristics were similar for very-low-risk whites and blacks, although black men had slightly worse Charlson comorbidity index scores, a commonly used scale for assessing life expectancy. Detailed analysis showed that black men had a lower rate of organ-confined cancers (87.9 percent vs. 91.0 percent), a higher rate of Gleason score upgrading (27.3 percent vs. 14.4 percent) and a significantly higher hazard of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) defined biochemical recurrence (BCR) of prostate cancer. The latter measure is widely used for reporting the outcome of surgical prostate removal.

According to Schaeffer, the median age of men in his study was 58, younger than the median ages (62 to 70) of most men in AS groups. And he cautioned that the age difference is a potential "confounder" of his results, highlighting the need for more studies to gauge the safety of AS.

Schaeffer, associate professor of urology, oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of global urologic services for Johns Hopkins Medicine International and co-director of the Prostate Cancer Multi-Disciplinary Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital's James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute, emphasizes that "the criteria physicians use to define very-low-risk prostate cancer works well in whites ? this makes sense, since the studies used to validate the commonly used risk classification systems are largely based on white men." But, he adds, "Among the vast majority of African-American males with very-low-risk cancer who underwent surgical removal of the prostate, we discovered that they face an entirely different set of risks."

"Alternate race-specific surveillance entry criteria should be developed and utilized for African-American men to ensure oncologic parity with their white counterparts. Our research team, in collaboration with the internationally recognized Hopkins pathologist Dr. Jonathan Epstein, is currently developing new race-based risk tables that begin to solve this key issue," adds Schaeffer.

All of the men whose records were analyzed for the current study were selected from a group of 19,142 who had surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital between 1992 and 2012 to remove the prostate gland and some of the tissue around it.

Previous published research, Schaeffer says, revealed significant racial disparities in prostate cancer, with African-Americans having a much higher incidence of death from the disease than Caucasian men. According to the National Cancer Institute, black men have considerably higher incidence rates (236 cases per 100,000 from 2005 to 2009) than white men (146.9 cases per 100,000 per 2005 to 2009). The reasons for this are unclear.

"In the laboratory, we are developing new strategies to more accurately risk-classify African-Americans with newly diagnosed prostate cancer, in order to determine whether a patient should undergo active surveillance or have immediate treatment," says Schaeffer. "And we are beginning to work out the science behind why prostate cancers have a tendency to hide out in the anterior prostate, specifically in African-Americans."

Schaeffer says the main limitation to their study is that it is a retrospective analysis of the experience of a single academic medical center. "The results of our study do not support the universal rejection of AS in black men, but, rather, should promote future studies to address whether alternate race-specific surveillance entry criteria should be used for African-American men to ensure oncologic parity with their white counterparts," adds Schaeffer.

Source: http://www.sciencecodex.com/active_surveillance_may_miss_aggressive_prostate_cancers_in_black_men-114661

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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Fujifilm X-M1 mirrorless ILC ships in July with 16.3-megapixel APS-C sensor, $700 price tag

Fujifilm XM1 mirrorless ILC ships in July with 163megapixel APSC sensor, $700 price tag

In January of 2012, Fujifilm first detailed its APS-C X-Trans CMOS sensor -- the company promised superior image quality, thanks to a design that omitted an optical low-pass filter, and it delivered, in the form of the X-Pro1. That camera's relatively massive footprint and $1,700 price tag limited its appeal, however, though Fujifilm unveiled a smaller, and much more affordable variant, the X-E1, several months later. Now the saga continues. Today, the Japanese manufacturer is announcing an X-Trans-equipped model for the masses. The X-M1 includes the same 16.3-megapixel sensor as both the X-Pro1 and X-E1, yet it's housed in a lightweight body that's due to ship next month for just $700.

The X-M1 tips the scale at 11.6 ounces, including the battery and memory card, but without a lens attached. As for optics, the ILC will be available as part of a kit with a brand new f/3.5-5.6 16-50mm (24-76mm equivalent) lens with optical image stabilization for $800, and will be compatible with the existing XF and XC lineup, including a variety of prime and zoom options. There's a 3-inch 920k-dot tilting LCD (but no EVF), a built-in flash, dedicated mode dial and on-board WiFi, letting you transfer images and movies to Android and iOS devices via a dedicated app. The EXR Processor II enables the camera to start up in 0.5 seconds, with a 0.05-second shutter lag and a maximum burst shot speed of 5.6 fps for 30 consecutive frames. The cam sports a fairly standard sensitivity range of ISO 100-25,600. The X-M1 is set to hit stores in July with black and silver finishes for $700, or $800 with the lens. A brown version (body only) will also be available come August for $700.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/24/fujifilm-x-m1/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Analysis: Another China central bank worry; companies push into lending

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese companies are getting more creative in the business of money lending as they struggle to keep profits ticking over in a cooling economy, raising concerns they are adding to the mountain of debt risks building in the world's No.2 economy.

Big state companies in industries struggling with over-capacity but with easy access to credit are borrowing funds, not to invest in their business but to lend to smaller firms sometimes at several times the official interest rate, part of an informal lending market in China that authorities are taking aim at.

China's central bank increased pressure on banks to rein in such informal lending and speculative trading last week in money markets, letting short-term interest rates spike to extraordinary levels.

In the $3.7 trillion so-called shadow banking market, the fastest growing area is in so-called entrusted loans, which are arranged by banks on the companies' behalf, and in bankers' acceptance notes, tradable securities that give a steady flow of cash.

Issuance of entrusted loans and bankers' acceptance notes has more than doubled to 1.6 trillion yuan ($261 billion) in the first four months of this year from 636 billion yuan a year ago.

"Can we use the money to expand production? Definitely not," said a deputy general manager at a state-owned steel firm in the eastern Shandong province, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We will lose more if we produce more. We can only rely on other channels," he added, noting the firm loses an average 100-200 yuan per metric ton (1.1023 tons) of steel sold.

China's economic growth is widely expected to slow further in the current quarter as exporters struggle with weak global markets, making lending money an increasingly attractive business option.

But there are concerns that some of the money is going into areas the government would rather it did not, for example real estate speculation, raising the risk of it turning bad while not helping the economy out of its current slowdown.

Indeed, debt is shaping up to be China's biggest financial problem. The cabinet has said it would control the flow of new money into industries struggling with overcapacity.

Beijing worries the shadow banking market is creating asset-price bubbles, and the central bank has tried to put a barrier in the way of it in recent weeks by declining to inject major funds into money markets.

The shadow banking system has arisen because main stream banking is focused on the needs of big state-owned enterprises.

Ratings agency S&P has estimated that outstanding shadow banking credit totaled $3.7 trillion by the end of 2012, equal to 44 percent of GDP.

Fitch has put it at about 60 percent, saying "torrid growth" has made the total of all forms of credit, including regular lending, shadow and hidden underground lending, as much as 200 percent of GDP.

"This is a very, very big problem for the economy," said Wei Yao, China economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong.

"The existence of all these arbitrage efforts shows that in the real economy, there are few opportunities. You've limited all the opportunities for real growth, then you open a window in the financial markets; of course everyone goes there!"

NEW TECHNIQUES

With entrusted loans, a company provides the funds but, to circumvent a ban on direct lending to other firms, it designates a commercial bank to lend the money to a specific borrower.

The lender stipulates the amount, tenor, and rate of the loan, while the banks earn fees from both sides without the loans showing up on their balance sheets.

The average monthly amount of new entrusted loans was 179 billion yuan in the first four months of 2013, up from an average of 106 billion yuan a month last year.

The steel company manager said he borrows from banks around the 6 percent official rate, then issues an entrusted loan to a borrower at up to twice that rate.

The general manager of a local government-controlled glass company in the northern province of Hebei said his company has increased the use of such practices as business slowed, lending about 30 to 40 million yuan so far this year at around 6 to 7 percent mainly to related firms.

Some private companies are also cashing in. Zhejiang Longsheng Group Co Ltd, a specialty chemicals maker based near Shanghai, detailed 50 entrusted loans worth 3 billion yuan outstanding in its 2012 annual report.

The company lent to subsidiaries at rates of 6 to 7 percent, but unrelated companies were charged as much as 25 percent. It said one of the loans, with a rate of 20 percent, would be rolled over as the borrower had difficulty repaying it.

Companies are also buying bank acceptance notes, transferable bills issued by other banks that can be sold for cash. These companies sell the bills and use part of the cash raised to make loans and the rest to buy more bills, thus ensuring a continuous churn of funds and income.

The average monthly amount of bank acceptance bills issued so far this year has more than doubled to 222.8 billion yuan compared with an average of 87.5 billion yuan for all of 2012.

REAL ESTATE A WORRY

A chief worry is that the newly generated money is finding its way into speculative real estate, complicating China's three-year fight against a property bubble. New home prices in May rose from a year earlier at their fastest pace in more than two years.

An official at the statistics department of the central bank's Dalian office, who asked not to be identified, said that among all the entrusted loans issued in 2012 in the northeastern city, about 30 percent went to the real estate sector at an average interest rate of 12 percent.

Another official at the central bank's Chongqing office said finance companies and credit guarantee firms affiliated to state-owned enterprises are major issuers of such loans.

"In our city, there is an estimated 50 percent or more of such loans flowing into the property sector and local government financing vehicles," said the official. "The injection of entrusted loans partially helps pull down the bad loan ratio in the property sector and local financing firms, but the risks keep brewing there and could become acute if the economy slows further."

($1=6.1282 yuan)

(Reporting by Aileen Wang, Lu Jianxin and Pete Sweeney: Editing by Jonathan Standing, Vidya Ranganathan and Neil Fullick)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-another-china-central-bank-worry-companies-push-035439097.html

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Pelosi's defense of NSA surveillance draws boos

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) ? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has disappointed some of her liberal base with her defense of the Obama administration's classified surveillance of U.S. residents' phone and Internet records.

Some of the activists attending the annual Netroots Nation political conference Saturday booed and interrupted the San Francisco Democrat when she commented on the surveillance programs carried out by the National Security Agency and revealed by a former contractor, Edward Snowden, The San Jose Mercury News reports (http://bit.ly/19fB6U4).

The boos came when Pelosi said that Snowden had violated the law and that the government needed to strike a balance between security and privacy.

As she was attempting to argue that Obama's approach to citizen surveillance was an improvement over the policies under President George W. Bush, an activist, identified by the Mercury News as Mac Perkel of Gilroy, stood up and tried loudly to question her, prompting security guards to escort him out of the convention hall.

"Leave him alone!" audience members shouted. Others yelled "Secrets and lies!," ''No secret courts!" and "Protect the First Amendment!," according to the Mercury News.

Perkel told the newspaper that he thinks Pelosi does not fully understand what the NSA is up to.

Several others in the audience walked out in support of Perkel.

"We're listening to our progressive leaders who are supposed to be on our side of the team saying it's OK for us to get targeted" for online surveillance, said Jana Thrift of Eugene, Ore. "It's crazy. I don't know who Nancy Pelosi really is."

Netroots Nation is an organizing and training convention for progressive political leaders. Pelosi was Saturday's keynote speaker at the event, which opened Thursday at the San Jose Convention Center and was scheduled to conclude Sunday.

Her remarks criticizing the Republican majority in the House and encouraging powerful women brought applause, cheers and laughs.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pelosis-defense-nsa-surveillance-draws-boos-183845402.html

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Monday, June 24, 2013

Paula Deen Thanks Food Network Following Firing, Issues Second Apology

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/paula-deen-thanks-food-network-following-firing-issues-second-ap/

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Man Jokes About Having Sex With Goats, Gets Arrested

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/man-jokes-about-having-sex-with-goats-gets-arrested/

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No bail for Fla. sex offender charged in death

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) ? A judge on Sunday denied bail to a registered sex offender accused of abducting and killing an 8-year-old Florida girl.

Donald James Smith, of Jacksonville, was charged Saturday with murder and kidnapping in the death of Cherish Perrywinkle.

Authorities said Smith befriended the girl and her mother while they shopped at a dollar store Friday night.

Smith took them to a Wal-Mart, where he offered to buy them clothes and hamburgers, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

Instead of buying the snacks, Smith walked out of the store with the girl, the sheriff's office said. The girl's mother called 911 when she noticed they were missing.

A tip led investigators to the girl's body in the woods near a church Saturday morning. Police arrested Smith after stopping his van on Interstate 95. Authorities have not said how Cherish died.

Smith's public defender, Fred Gazaleh, told The Florida Times-Union (http://bit.ly/10dmKxy) before the hearing that Smith didn't have a chance of getting bail.

Gazaleh did not immediately respond to messages left Sunday by The Associated Press.

Smith's next court appearance is scheduled July 16.

Authorities initially spelled the girl's name Charish Perriwinkle in an Amber Alert on Saturday, but on Sunday said it was Cherish Perrywinkle.

Smith did not immediately cooperate with investigators after his arrest, said Mike Williams, director of investigations at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

Smith has been a registered sex offender since a 1993 conviction in Duval County for attempted kidnapping and selling obscene materials. He has been arrested several times since then, most recently in 2009 on a charge of child abuse after making obscene phone calls to a 10-year-old girl, making verbal threats, and impersonating a social worker with the Florida Department of Children and Families who claimed to be investigating the girl's family.

Smith pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in that case and was released from jail May 31. He had just met with police Friday morning to comply with a state law that requires sex offenders to verify their address once a year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/no-bail-fla-sex-offender-charged-death-202225050.html

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Sunday, June 23, 2013

Report: Jan Ullrich admits blood doping

BERLIN (AP) ? Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour de France winner, has admitted for the first time that he received blood-doping treatment from Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes during his career, according to an interview with a German magazine published Saturday.

Ullrich had previously acknowledged having unspecified "contact" with Fuentes, but went further in an interview with the weekly Focus.

"Yes, I received treatment from Fuentes," the German rider was quoted as saying.

Asked if he only engaged in blood doping with Fuentes, Ullrich replied that "the doctor's diagnosis says that." He said he couldn't remember how many times he had received treatment from Fuentes.

In February 2012, the Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Ullrich for two years for blood doping.

The CAS ruled that the German was "fully engaged" in Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes' doping program, exposed in the Operation Puerto probe. The court stripped him of his third-place finish at the 2005 Tour. Ullrich retired in 2007.

Ullrich didn't contest the CAS ruling, saying at the time that he wanted to "put an end to the issue."

IOC vice president Thomas Bach said the confession is "too little, too late."

"Jan Ullrich had his chance for a creditable admission a couple of years ago and he missed it," Bach said in an emailed statement. "Today's confirmation of some of the already well known and established facts does not help Jan Ullrich nor cycling."

In Saturday's interview, the 39-year-old Ullrich said that while he had made bad decisions during his career, "I did not harm or defraud anyone."

"Almost everyone took performance-enhancing substances then. I took nothing that the others didn't also take," he was quoted as saying. "For me, fraud starts when I gain an advantage. That wasn't the case. I wanted to ensure equality of opportunities.

"The issue is dealt with for me. I only want to look forward, and never again backward."

Ullrich's interview comes after Lance Armstrong, the dominant cyclist of his generation, acknowledged in January that he doped for all seven of his Tour wins from 1999-2005. On three of those occasions, Ullrich finished second.

"I am no better than Armstrong, but no worse either," Ullrich was quoted as saying. "The great 'heroes' of earlier years are now people with failures that they have to come to terms with."

Earlier this year, Armstrong said doping became so routine it was "like saying we have to have air in our tires or water in our bottles."

Asked about that comment, Ullrich told Focus: "I can't understand that. I always knew that I was doing something forbidden and wrong."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/report-jan-ullrich-admits-blood-doping-091803638.html

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Video: Santelli's Morning Bond Update

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/52273882/

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Chinese censors approve ?White House Down' for late July release (Exclusive)

By Lucas Shaw

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Sony has locked a late July release date in China for "White House Down," Roland Emmerich's latest disaster film starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, TheWrap has learned. The film opens June 28 in the United States and several other territories before gradually expanding elsewhere over the summer and early fall.

It does not open in most of Europe until September, but a Sony spokesman confirmed that the movie will debut in China about a month after its U.S. debut.

That should add millions more to the movie's bottom line since China has blossomed into the second largest film market in the world in terms of box office revenue. "Iron Man 3" made $125 million in China alone.

Every studio faces hurdles in gaining approval from Chinese censors; they often change parts of movies or filming alternate versions to placate them. Paramount made slight alterations to "World War Z" before even submitting it to censors, but still could not get it approved.

Sony already cleared "After Earth" to play in China while Warner Bros. got approval for "Man of Steel" and "Pacific Rim."

The Chinese censors can be very fickle, selecting "After Earth" in large part because the film commission likes Will Smith, according to a knowledgeable insider.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-censors-approve-white-house-down-july-release-002310888.html

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Friday, June 21, 2013

Stocks extend slide as China adds to worries

Specialist John Urbanowicz works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Financial markets are sliding after the Federal Reserve said it could end its huge bond-buying program by the middle of next year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist John Urbanowicz works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Financial markets are sliding after the Federal Reserve said it could end its huge bond-buying program by the middle of next year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist Mario Picone works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Financial markets are sliding after the Federal Reserve said it could end its huge bond-buying program by the middle of next year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist John O'Hara works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Financial markets are sliding after the Federal Reserve said it could end its huge bond-buying program by the middle of next year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Justin Flinn works in a booth on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 20, 2013. Financial markets are sliding after the Federal Reserve said it could end its huge bond-buying program by the middle of next year. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

(AP) ? For investors, there was no place to go on Thursday.

A day after the Federal Reserve roiled Wall Street when it said it could reduce its aggressive economic stimulus program later this year, financial markets around the world plunged. A slowdown in Chinese manufacturing and reports of a squeeze in the world's second-biggest economy heightened worries.

The global selloff began in Asia and quickly spread to Europe and then the U.S., where the Dow Jones industrial average fell 353 points, wiping out six weeks of gains.

But the damage wasn't just in stocks. Bond prices fell, and the yield on the benchmark 10-year note rose to 2.42 percent, its highest level since August 2011, although still low by historical standards. Oil and gold also slid.

"People are worried about higher interest rates," said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist at Banyan Partners. "Higher rates have the ability to cut across all sectors of the economy."

The question now is whether the markets' moves on Thursday were an overreaction or a sign of volatility to come. What is becoming clearer is that traders and investors are looking for a new equilibrium after a period of ultra-low rates, due to the Fed's bond-buying, which spawned one of the great bull markets of all time.

It doesn't mean the stock run-up is over. After all, the S&P 500 is still up 11.4 percent for the year and 135 percent since a recession low in March 2009. But it may suggest the start of a new phase in which the fortunes of the stock market are tied more closely to the fundamentals of the economy.

And that might not be a bad thing. The reason the Fed is pulling back on the bond-buying is because its forecast for the economy is getting brighter.

The job market is improving, corporations are making record profits and the housing market is recovering.

"People are overreacting a little bit," said Gene Goldman, head of research at Cetera Financial Group. "It goes back to the fundamentals, the economy is improving."

The Dow's drop Thursday ? which knocked the average down 2.3 percent to 14,758.32 ? was its biggest since November 2011. It comes just three weeks after the blue-chip index reached an all-time high of 15,409. The index has lost 560 points in the past two days, wiping out its gains from May and June

The Standard & Poor's 500 lost 40.74 points, or 2.5 percent, to 1,588.19. It also reached a record high last month, peaking at 1,669.

Small-company stocks fell more than the rest of the market Thursday, a sign that investors are aggressively reducing risk. The Russell 2000 index, which includes such stocks, slumped 25.98 points, or 2.6 percent, to 960.52. The index closed at a record high of 999.99 points Tuesday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.42 percent, from 2.35 percent Wednesday. The yield, which rises as the price of the note falls, surged 0.16 percentage point Wednesday after the Fed's comments. It's up sharply since May 3, when it hit a year low of 1.63 percent.

A Fed policy statement and comments from Chairman Ben Bernanke started the selling in stocks and bonds Wednesday.

Bernanke said that the Fed expects to scale back its massive bond-buying program later this year and end it entirely by mid-2014 if the economy continues to improve.

The bank has been buying $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds, a program that has made cheap for consumers and business. It has also helped boost the stock market.

Alec Young, a global equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, said investors weren't expecting Bernanke to say the program could end so quickly, and are adjusting their portfolios in anticipation of higher U.S. interest rates.

"What we're seeing is a pretty significant sea-change in investor strategy," Young said

For much of the year, stocks rose with barely an interruption. The S&P 500 climbed for seven months straight from November 2012 through May. Investors, fearful of missing out on the rally, pounced on any dips and pushed markets to record highs. On Thursday, those opportunistic buyers were absent and nobody wanted to stand in the way of the market's slide.

As markets dropped, investors likely put the proceeds of their sales in cash as they waited for the dust to settle, said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial.

Investors "are raising cash right now, for fear the deterioration will continue," said Krosby.

The sharp increase in bond yields prompted investors to sell the stocks of homebuilders, whose business could be hurt if the pace of home buying slows down.

Their stocks fell even though the National Association of Realtors said Thursday U.S. sales of previously occupied homes surpassed the 5 million mark in May, the first time that had happened in 3 ? years.

PulteGroup plunged $1.89, or 9.1 percent, to $18.87. D.R. Horton fell $2.13, also 9.1 percent, to $21.31.

Markets were also unnerved after manufacturing in China slowed at a faster pace this month as demand weakened. That added to concerns about growth in the world's second-largest economy. A monthly purchasing managers index from HSBC fell to a nine-month low of 48.3 in June. Numbers below 50 indicate a contraction.

A big jump in the so-called overnight lending rate in China also unsettled investors, said Brad Reynolds, a financial advisor at LJPR. The rate measures how much banks charge each other to borrow short-term money. The People's Bank of China was forced to pump about 50 billion yuan, about $8 billion, into the Chinese financial system to alleviate the squeeze, Bloomberg News reported.

Before trading began Thursday on Wall Street, Japan's Nikkei index lost 1.7 percent. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares fell 3 percent while Germany's DAX dropped 3.3 percent.

In currency trading, the dollar rose against the euro and the Japanese yen.

In commodities trading, gold plunged to its lowest point since September 2010, falling $87.80, or 6.4 percent, to $1,286.20 an ounce.

Traders sold gold as its appeal as insurance against inflation and a weak dollar faded. Both became less of an issue after the Fed said it was contemplating an end to its bond-buying program.

The rising dollar pushed oil prices lower. A stronger dollar makes oil more expensive for holders of other currencies. The price of crude oil fell $2.84, or 2.9 percent, to finish at $95.40 a barrel in New York, its biggest drop since November

Some investors said the sell-off in stocks may be overdone. The Fed is considering easing back on its stimulus because the economy is improving. The central bank has upgraded its outlook for unemployment and economic growth.

The S&P 500 is still up 11.3 percent, for the year, not far from its full-year increase of 13.4 percent last year.

In other trading, the Nasdaq composite fell 78.57 points, or 2.3 percent, to 3,364.63.

Among other stocks making big moves:

? GameStop, a video game store chain that sells new and used games, rose $2.41, or 6.3 percent, to $40.94 after Microsoft backpedaled and said that there will be no limitations on sharing games on its upcoming Xbox One gaming console.

? Rite Aid fell 23 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $2.88 after the nation's third-largest drugstore chain lowered its forecast for 2014 earnings.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-06-20-Wall%20Street/id-e4f0620007ff4c11ac664d679d282367

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