FILE - In this Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009 file photo, Lou Reed performs at the Lollapalooza music festival, in Chicago. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/John Smierciak, File)
FILE - In this Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009 file photo, Lou Reed performs at the Lollapalooza music festival, in Chicago. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/John Smierciak, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Rocker Lou Reed's life was decidedly unconventional, but he wanted his estate used for a very traditional purpose: to benefit his wife and other relatives.
Reed's will was filed Monday in a New York City court. The Velvet Underground front man and "Walk on the Wild Side" singer died Oct. 27 of complications from a liver transplant. He was 71 and had no children.
The will leaves his Manhattan penthouse, his home in East Hampton, N.Y., and the bulk of his estate to his wife, musician Laurie Anderson. The longtime couple married in 2008.
Reed's sister inherits about a quarter of his estate and a $500,000 bequest aimed at caring for their mother.
His business manager and accountant are assigned to handle licensing and copyrights for his music.
Continuing to enjoy his time in Brazil, Justin Bieber took advantage of his superstar status by scoring a group of ladies on Sunday (November 3).
While enjoying his time at a local nightclub, the 19-year-old singer invited 10 lucky gals to have a not-so-fancy dinner with him.
The club goers received a meal that included "chicken nuggets, chocolate, lollipops, chips and peanuts."
"We all had to sign contracts saying we wouldn't take any photographs, and, if we did, we agreed not to published," one of the girls Marina Binimeliz told the Daily Mirror. "I was only given my phone back when I left."
The visitor also stated that she didn't leave the home until after Justin called it a night at 9 am the next morning.
"We weren't told to go exactly. Justin just said, 'I'm tired. I think I need to go to bed. He came to me, put his arm around my waist, squeezed me and kissed me on both cheeks," Marina explained.
"He wished me a good night and told me I was very cute. This was a fantastic, perfect moment for me," she added.
It's not the strongest UFC card ever in terms of star power, but it is one filled with rising prospects and middling talent that need to take a step in a direction, one way or the other. At UFC Fight Night 31 (or UFC Fight for the Troops 3, as it's also called), the UFC has put together a card that almost seems as if the matchmaker had a lot of unsettled questions about how good their talent is and used this event as a way to get some answers.
That's less true for the main event, although that bout also has some relatively modest implications for the middleweight division. Will Tim Kennedy get a win in front of the partisan crowd of soldiers? Will Rafael Natal play spoiler to the Army's hopes for Kennedy? I answer these questions and more with my predictions for Wednesday's event.
What: UFC Fight for the Troops 3: Kennedy vs. Natal
Where: Fort Campbell, Kentucky
When: Wednesday, the four-fight Facebook card starts at 3:10 p.m. ET, the four-fight Fox Sports 1 card begins at 5 p.m. ET and the main starts at 7 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
Natal is a bit of a wild fighter. That's less true on the floor, but even then he's a bit of a risk taker with passing and changing position. Generally speaking, he's a bit of a risk taker. That might be enough to given Kennedy problems in spots, but the American is defensively well-rounded enough and patient enough in his offense to slowly whittle Natal down to either a TKO stoppage or decision victory.
Carmouche might have some issues with the slippery, technical proficiency of Davis on the floor, but as long as this fight stays standing, it should be Carmouche's to win. She's the much better athlete of the two, far better striker and heavier hitter. If Davis can drag things to the mat, she's got a chance to tie Carmouche up and make things difficult, at least in terms of executing offense. Over time, however, I have a bit of a hard time seeing how Davis accumulates enough offense to really win the bout.
I'm really not sure what to make of this bout. Both of these guys are horses for the weight class. Romero is the better athlete, but not nearly as well-rounded as Markes. He's also considerably older. Markes can make things boring with a clinch fest and by wearing Romero down, a man whose gas tank I still don't trust. I can also see Romero putting Markes in uncomfortable spots with improved cardio and training now under his belt. Ultimately, I don't know what to expect, but the results will tell us a lot about both competitors. Coin flip time.
This one is another really difficult pick. It's a clear step up for Khabilov, a fighter with some impressive tools, but no real track record of being able to use them against next-level opposition. That's where Masvidal comes in. He's easily the best fighter Khabilov has faced, so this is as much a fight as fact-finding mission. My worry for Masvidal is he can fight both up and down to competition. I don't know if he's serious, but he said he didn't even watch tape on the Russian for this bout. That worries me. My gut tells me Masvidal is capable of beating Khabilov, but won't because he took Khabilov too lightly as a potential threat.
Smith is dropping to lightweight, although under the watchful eye of a master of weight manipulation. Still, one wonders if the cut makes sense in terms of advantages gained, real or perceived. I'm going to side with Chiesa. He's surprisingly lethal with jiu-jitsu transitions and submissions and highly proactive on offense. Smith might try to slow it down and he'll probably have some success with it, but I don't see him being able to do that long enough to really win a decision or put Chiesa away.
The holidays are coming up, and that often means decadent family feasts. But things might be especially sparse for people who rely on food stamps. The Supplemental Nutrition Program, or SNAP, is being scaled back. Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks with Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution about the possible effect.
By John P. Mello Jr. MacNewsWorld Part of the ECT News Network 11/05/13 5:00 AM PT
After checking out several possible iGoogle replacements, I settled on igHome. The import feature didn't work, but it was a little easier to build the facsimile iGoogle page from scratch. The finished page looked better, too. igHome has better integration with Google. A row of buttons on the igHome page title bar provides direct access to Gmail, Calendar, YouTube and Drive.
Google birthed its personal portal software, iGoogle, during simpler Internet times. Online applications were few. Clamshell handsets were all the rage. Combining the words "social" and "media" was an oxymoron.
It was also the time of the portal wars. Online titans like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google vied for eyeballs and the mantle of most visited Internet destination.
Personal portals emerged from that competition. Sure, a general portal could attract traffic, but even more traffic could be drawn to a website if Web wayfarers could customize their portals.
As we all know, technology marches onward. Portals have become a quaint anachronism. Personal portals have been replaced by Twitter and Facebook feeds.
That's prodded Google to scrap its personal portal app iGoogle. However, just as another Searchzilla casualty, Google Reader, had its stalwarts, iGoogle has a loyal following, too, who will be looking for a replacement now that iGoogle has gone dark. One such replacement is igHome.
Narrowing the Field
After an initial search for an iGoogle replacement, I narrowed the field to three: My Yahoo, Igoogle Portal and igHome.
My Yahoo was the slickest of the three candidates. Since I already had a Yahoo account, that was one less step I needed to take to get rolling with the service. What's more, Yahoo was my personal portal of choice before moving to iGoogle.
What bothered me about My Yahoo, though, was its limited content selections. It had a meager selection of widgets -- portal apps like calculators, calendars, clocks and such. Its news sources for the feeds on the portal page were also underwhelming.
I also got the sense that My Yahoo was pushing Yahoo services at me -- a suspicion fortified by the mysterious switch in the default search engine for my browser from Google to Yahoo.
If I had to move away from one Internet titan, why should I jump into the lap of another? I felt an iGoogle alternative that operated outside the sphere of the behemoths might be in order.
Flawed Import
Igoogle Portal fit the independent bill. It had a good assortment of widgets and a nice offering of news sources. Better yet, I could add RSS feeds to my portal page, and it allowed me to import my iGoogle settings. Exporting those settings was recommended by Google before it shuttered iGoogle.
As I found when importing settings from another Google reject -- Google Reader -- the process was severely flawed. Of the dozen or so items I had on my iGoogle page, less than a handful made it into the Igoogle Portal.
igHome also had an import from iGoogle feature, too. It didn't work any better than Igoogle Portal's.
Among the settings ignored by the iGoogle alternatives was one for a Google Calendar widget. However, igHome had its own widget for that purpose. Unlike the iGoogle one, though, it only lets you see the calendar. You can't add items to it from within the widget.
Better Google Links
Eventually, I settled on igHome for my iGoogle alternative. Since the import feature didn't work, I had to build the facsimile iGoogle page from scratch. It was a little easier to do that with igHome. The finished page looked better, too.
In addition, igHome had better integration with Google. A row of buttons on the igHome page title bar provides direct access to often-used services such as Gmail, Calendar, YouTube and Drive.
There's also a button on the bar for Feedly, which has become the Google Reader alternative for millions of orphans of that program. A Feedly widget is also offered by igHome, but its lack of display options make it difficult to use.
If you're still looking for an iGoogle replacement, igHome offers you an alternative that will help ease any pangs of abandonment you may feel from Google's actions.
Notepad programs are as common as dust motes, but that has never stopped developers from making more of them or scribblers from giving them a spin. A current hot digital notepad at the Mac App Store is Simplenote, by Automattic.
True to its name, the free app is as simple as it gets in a notepad, but the software isn't about fancy features. It's about cross-platform synchronization.
There are versions of Simplenote not only for the Mac, but also for iOS, Android devices and Amazon's Kindle hardware.
There's also a Web app, although the developers are still ironing out snags in running that app in all browsers. I used the app in Google Chrome, and it worked fine in that browser.
Simplenote's cross-platform chops, coupled with its automatic synchronization capabilities, allow you to create and modify notes anywhere and have those changes occur almost immediately on all your other devices -- as long as you create a free account at Simplenote's website.
The program has a typical three-pane interface. One pane lets you filter your notes by tags and check out notes you've trashed. Another lists your notes. Each list item contains a title -- the first line in the note -- and about the first 80 characters of text in the note. When you select an item in the list, its full text will appear in the third pane.
Barebone Text
Text in notes are limited to a single sans serif font. Styling text isn't available -- although you can use smart quotes and dashes, and Markdown extensions are supported -- and links pasted into a note from another source are clickable, although you can't select text and turn it into a link in a note.
In addition to tagging notes, you can search through them. Searches are dynamic. Results constantly change as you type the characters in your search term.
Common Mac functions -- spelling, grammar, speech and such -- are supported in toolbar menus. There's also a pulldown menu on the program's interface.
The pulldown menu displays the number of words in the item's listing information and item itself. It also lets you pin an item to the top of the listing pane for quick access, collaborate with others on the note by adding their email address on the note's tag line and view a history of the note with the ability to restore it to a previous version.
You can also publish the note to a Web page, although how that feature functioned was a mystery to me.
Simplenote may appear to be a simple notepad, but its cross-platform support and synchronization capabilities make it more than that. Once you start using it, you may decide to trash any other notepad apps clogging your hard drive.
John Mello is a freelance technology writer and former special correspondent for Government Security News.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton speaks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif before the start of two days of closed-door nuclear talks at the U.N. offices in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday.
Martial Trezzini/EPA /LANDOV
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton speaks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif before the start of two days of closed-door nuclear talks at the U.N. offices in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday.
There's guarded optimism as the second round of talks between Iran and international powers over the Islamic republic's nuclear program got under way in Geneva.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met for an hour with Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, ahead of Thursday's talks. A tweet from Ashton's spokesman Michael Mann described the meeting as "good."
The two-day talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – as well as Germany will focus on the nuclear program that Tehran says is civilian in nature.
The West suspects Iran of building nuclear weapons – a charge Tehran denies. The BBC reports that the West wants Iran to agree on a first step to stop advancing its nuclear program further.
"The Geneva talks are a test for assessment of the 5+1 group, and in these negotiations their political will to reach a solution will be put to the test," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Wednesday.
A previous round of talks held last month was described as "substantive and forward-looking." The talks were the first since President Hassan Rouhani, who is seen as a relative moderate, assumed office in August.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos lauded a partial agreement with the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and said negotiations in Havana would continue ahead of elections in May.
"We must continue. We must persevere," he said on television Wednesday following the announcement of the partial deal struck by negotiators in Havana. "Failure to do so would be to betray the hopes of millions of Colombians and future generations."
The government and rebels are trying to end a five-decade armed conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced thousands of others.
At talks in Havana, where negotiations have been ongoing since November, the two sides agreed on guarantees, conditions and support for new political parties, the BBC reported. FARC also agreed to lay down its weapons and become a political movement, The Associated Press reports.
Talks are centered on a six-point agenda: land reform, political participation, disarmament, illicit drugs, rights of the victims and peace deal implementation.
Previous attempts at peace talks failed, but FARC was weakened by operations conducted by former President Alvaro Uribe.
Longtime Tajik President Emomali Rahmon was re-elected for a seven-year term with more than 83 percent of the vote.
Rahmon, who has been president of the former Soviet republic since 1994, faced five challengers. The official news agency reported that Olimjon Boboev, candidate of the Party of Economic Reforms, won 3.8 percent of the vote, while Tolibbek Bukhoriev of the Agrarian Party received 4.5 percent.
The BBC reports that human rights activists Oynihol Bobonazarova, who was widely seen as the only genuine opposition candidate, wasn't allowed to contest the polls as the country's electoral commission said she failed to get the necessary 21,000 signatures to be a candidate.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which monitored the elections, said in a statement that the vote was peaceful, "but lacking in pluralism and genuine choice."
The electoral commission declared the results valid.
Educational video games can boost motivation to learn, NYU, CUNY study shows
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
6-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: James Devitt james.devitt@nyu.edu 212-998-6808 New York University
Math video games can enhance students' motivation to learn, but it may depend on how students play, researchers at New York University and the City University of New York have found in a study of middle-schoolers.
While playing a math video game either competitively or collaboratively with another playeras compared to playing alonestudents adopted a mastery mindset that is highly conducive to learning. Moreover, students' interest and enjoyment in playing the math video game increased when they played with another student.
Their findings, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, point to new ways in which computer, console, or mobile educational games may yield learning benefits.
"We found support for claims that well-designed games can motivate students to learn less popular subjects, such as math, and that game-based learning can actually get students interested in the subject matterand can broaden their focus beyond just collecting stars or points," says Jan Plass, a professor in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and one of the study's lead authors.
"Educational games may be able to help circumvent major problems plaguing classrooms by placing students in a frame of mind that is conducive to learning rather than worrying about how smart they look," adds co-lead author Paul O'Keefe, an NYU postdoctoral fellow at the time of the study and now at Stanford University's Department of Psychology.
The researchers focused on how students' motivation to learn, as well as their interest and performance in math, was affected by playing a math video game either individually, competitively, or collaboratively.
Specifically, they looked at two main types of motivational orientations: mastery goal orientation, in which students focus on learning, improvement, and the development of abilities, and performance goal orientation, in which students focus on validating their abilities. For instance, in the classroom, a student may be focused on improving their math skills (mastery), or, instead, trying to prove how smart they are or trying to avoid looking incompetent compared their classmates (performance).
Researchers consistently find that a mastery goal orientation facilitates learning because students are focused on accruing knowledge and developing abilities. They also view mistakes and difficulties as part of the learning processrather than an indictment of their lack of ability. By contrast, performance goal orientations may hurt the learning process, particularly for those who do not feel competentfor instance, students who fear looking less intelligent than their classmates may avoid opportunities that would, in fact, bolster their understanding of the material.
However, scholarship has shown that typical educational contextsnotably, classroomslead students to adopt stronger performance goal orientations than a mastery goal orientation.
Consequently, researchers have sought to understand how to promote students' mastery goal orientations and weaken the performance goal orientations that lead students to avoid potential learning opportunities.
One candidate is educational video games, which, at first glance, would seem to result in performance rather than mastery orientations given their competitive focus and that they are often played with others. But, given the popularity of gaming among school-aged students, exploring their potential value intrigued the study's authors.
To test this possibility, the researchers had middle-school students play the video game FactorReactor, which is designed to build math skills through problem solving and therefore serves as diagnostic for learning.
In order to test the impact of different settings on learning, students were randomly assigned to play the game alone, competitively against another student, or collaboratively with another student. The researchers controlled for students' abilities by conducting a pre-test.
The findings revealed that students who played the math game either competitively or collaboratively reported the strongest mastery goal orientations, which indicates that students adopted an optimal mindset for learning while playing the video game with others.
Their results also showed that students playing under competitive situations performed best in the game. In addition, those playing in both competitive and collaborative conditions experienced the greatest interest and enjoyment.
"The increased interest we observed in the competitive and collaborative conditions suggests that educational games can promote a desire to learn and intentions to re-engage in the material, and in the long run, may create independent and self-determined learners," notes O'Keefe.
The authors caution about generalizing their results, however.
"Although we found a host of beneficial outcomes associated with playing the game with a partner, our results may be limited to the educational content of the game, its design, or our experimental procedure," says Plass. "Future research will need to examine design features that optimize learning across curricula."
###
The study's other co-authors included: Elizabeth Hayward, Murphy Stein, and Ken Perlin of New York University and Bruce Homer and Jennifer Case of the City University of New York's Graduate Center, all of whom are members of the multi-institutional Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), co-directed by Perlin and Plass. The Games for Learning Institute is funded by Microsoft Research.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Educational video games can boost motivation to learn, NYU, CUNY study shows
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
6-Nov-2013
[
| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: James Devitt james.devitt@nyu.edu 212-998-6808 New York University
Math video games can enhance students' motivation to learn, but it may depend on how students play, researchers at New York University and the City University of New York have found in a study of middle-schoolers.
While playing a math video game either competitively or collaboratively with another playeras compared to playing alonestudents adopted a mastery mindset that is highly conducive to learning. Moreover, students' interest and enjoyment in playing the math video game increased when they played with another student.
Their findings, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, point to new ways in which computer, console, or mobile educational games may yield learning benefits.
"We found support for claims that well-designed games can motivate students to learn less popular subjects, such as math, and that game-based learning can actually get students interested in the subject matterand can broaden their focus beyond just collecting stars or points," says Jan Plass, a professor in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and one of the study's lead authors.
"Educational games may be able to help circumvent major problems plaguing classrooms by placing students in a frame of mind that is conducive to learning rather than worrying about how smart they look," adds co-lead author Paul O'Keefe, an NYU postdoctoral fellow at the time of the study and now at Stanford University's Department of Psychology.
The researchers focused on how students' motivation to learn, as well as their interest and performance in math, was affected by playing a math video game either individually, competitively, or collaboratively.
Specifically, they looked at two main types of motivational orientations: mastery goal orientation, in which students focus on learning, improvement, and the development of abilities, and performance goal orientation, in which students focus on validating their abilities. For instance, in the classroom, a student may be focused on improving their math skills (mastery), or, instead, trying to prove how smart they are or trying to avoid looking incompetent compared their classmates (performance).
Researchers consistently find that a mastery goal orientation facilitates learning because students are focused on accruing knowledge and developing abilities. They also view mistakes and difficulties as part of the learning processrather than an indictment of their lack of ability. By contrast, performance goal orientations may hurt the learning process, particularly for those who do not feel competentfor instance, students who fear looking less intelligent than their classmates may avoid opportunities that would, in fact, bolster their understanding of the material.
However, scholarship has shown that typical educational contextsnotably, classroomslead students to adopt stronger performance goal orientations than a mastery goal orientation.
Consequently, researchers have sought to understand how to promote students' mastery goal orientations and weaken the performance goal orientations that lead students to avoid potential learning opportunities.
One candidate is educational video games, which, at first glance, would seem to result in performance rather than mastery orientations given their competitive focus and that they are often played with others. But, given the popularity of gaming among school-aged students, exploring their potential value intrigued the study's authors.
To test this possibility, the researchers had middle-school students play the video game FactorReactor, which is designed to build math skills through problem solving and therefore serves as diagnostic for learning.
In order to test the impact of different settings on learning, students were randomly assigned to play the game alone, competitively against another student, or collaboratively with another student. The researchers controlled for students' abilities by conducting a pre-test.
The findings revealed that students who played the math game either competitively or collaboratively reported the strongest mastery goal orientations, which indicates that students adopted an optimal mindset for learning while playing the video game with others.
Their results also showed that students playing under competitive situations performed best in the game. In addition, those playing in both competitive and collaborative conditions experienced the greatest interest and enjoyment.
"The increased interest we observed in the competitive and collaborative conditions suggests that educational games can promote a desire to learn and intentions to re-engage in the material, and in the long run, may create independent and self-determined learners," notes O'Keefe.
The authors caution about generalizing their results, however.
"Although we found a host of beneficial outcomes associated with playing the game with a partner, our results may be limited to the educational content of the game, its design, or our experimental procedure," says Plass. "Future research will need to examine design features that optimize learning across curricula."
###
The study's other co-authors included: Elizabeth Hayward, Murphy Stein, and Ken Perlin of New York University and Bruce Homer and Jennifer Case of the City University of New York's Graduate Center, all of whom are members of the multi-institutional Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), co-directed by Perlin and Plass. The Games for Learning Institute is funded by Microsoft Research.
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BEIRUT (AP) — Bombs targeting the entrance of a landmark Ottoman railway building in Damascus and a feared security agency in Syria's southeast killed at least 16 people on Wednesday, activists reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but rebels tied to al-Qaida have previously claimed bombings of security institutions and have also targeted the center of the capital, trying to take the war to the heart of President Bashar Assad's power.
Eight died and at least 50 more people were wounded in the blast at the country's railways authority, housed in a century-old structure that was once the main Damascus train station, reported state news agency SANA and activists.
State TV broadcast images showing several wounded people walking away from the site of the blast, passing apartment buildings and shops with their windows blown out. Part of the railway building's wooden roof was shattered.
Also Wednesday, a suicide car bomb smashed into the entrance of the air force intelligence agency in the southeast city of Sweida, killing eight people, said activists. State media reported a blast but did not say it hit the security compound.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a high-ranking officer was killed, and the other slain belonged to the security agency. Syria's air force intelligence is notorious for running detention centers where detainees are abused and sometimes tortured.
The blast in Sweida was a rare attack targeting a city dominated by Druse, a small, secretive Muslim sect who have mostly stayed on the sidelines of the Syrian war.
Syria's 23 million people belong to a startling patchwork of different religious groups, and the three-year conflict has taken increasingly sectarian overtones in the past year. Syrian rebels are overwhelmingly Sunni and some of the strongest fighting brigades are formed of al-Qaida loyalists. Assad's security services are dominated by Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam to which the Syrian leader belongs.
Syria's minority Christians and Shiites have been targeted in previous attacks because Sunni rebels perceive them as siding with Assad.
The Syrian railways authority is housed in a structure was built during the rule of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, according to a plaque affixed to the building.
It was part of the Hijaz train line that once stretched from the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul to the holy Muslim city of Medina in what is now Saudi Arabia. It began running through Damascus in 1908, the plaque said. The Hijaz line was halted years after it was created.
But Syria's internal railway system — partly built off the old Ottoman lines — was only halted during this uprising after rebels attacked part of the railway lines.
_____
Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Barbara Surk in Beirut and contributed to this report.
BEIRUT (AP) — Bombs targeting the entrance of a landmark Ottoman railway building in Damascus and a feared security agency in Syria's southeast killed at least 16 people on Wednesday, activists reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but rebels tied to al-Qaida have previously claimed bombings of security institutions and have also targeted the center of the capital, trying to take the war to the heart of President Bashar Assad's power.
Eight died and at least 50 more people were wounded in the blast at the country's railways authority, housed in a century-old structure that was once the main Damascus train station, reported state news agency SANA and activists.
State TV broadcast images showing several wounded people walking away from the site of the blast, passing apartment buildings and shops with their windows blown out. Part of the railway building's wooden roof was shattered.
Also Wednesday, a suicide car bomb smashed into the entrance of the air force intelligence agency in the southeast city of Sweida, killing eight people, said activists. State media reported a blast but did not say it hit the security compound.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a high-ranking officer was killed, and the other slain belonged to the security agency. Syria's air force intelligence is notorious for running detention centers where detainees are abused and sometimes tortured.
The blast in Sweida was a rare attack targeting a city dominated by Druse, a small, secretive Muslim sect who have mostly stayed on the sidelines of the Syrian war.
Syria's 23 million people belong to a startling patchwork of different religious groups, and the three-year conflict has taken increasingly sectarian overtones in the past year. Syrian rebels are overwhelmingly Sunni and some of the strongest fighting brigades are formed of al-Qaida loyalists. Assad's security services are dominated by Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam to which the Syrian leader belongs.
Syria's minority Christians and Shiites have been targeted in previous attacks because Sunni rebels perceive them as siding with Assad.
The Syrian railways authority is housed in a structure was built during the rule of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, according to a plaque affixed to the building.
It was part of the Hijaz train line that once stretched from the Ottoman Empire's capital of Istanbul to the holy Muslim city of Medina in what is now Saudi Arabia. It began running through Damascus in 1908, the plaque said. The Hijaz line was halted years after it was created.
But Syria's internal railway system — partly built off the old Ottoman lines — was only halted during this uprising after rebels attacked part of the railway lines.
_____
Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus and Barbara Surk in Beirut and contributed to this report.
UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez had one MRI on his left shoulder and is going to get another in order to determine if he needs surgery, his manager, Bob Cook told Yahoo Sports.
Mexico has long been seen as a prime market for the UFC. Boxing matches in Mexico do extraordinarily well on television and White has long believed mixed martial arts would become popular there as soon as a television deal was announced. The UFC announced a deal with Televisa in July, and there has been much speculation about when the first card would be in Mexico.
Milenio.com reported that it would be in April, but White disputed that.
"We haven't offered anyone a fight for that card and Cain is injured right now and might need surgery," White said. "Obviously, we're not going to Mexico without Cain Velasquez."
Cook said that Velasquez injured his shoulder during his title defense with Junior dos Santos at UFC 165 on Oct. 19 in Houston.
"He's had one MRI already, but we're going to get another one that is hopefully of better quality," Cook said. "He hurt it during the fight, but we're not exactly sure when or how it happened. Right now, we're waiting to get this other MRI before we know what we have to do, whether there's a need for minor surgery or just rehab."
Cook said he wouldn't know whether Velasquez could be ready for an April show until after the champion is examined by doctors. He said he hopes to have that completed by sometime next week.
Javier Mendez, Velasquez's trainer, said Velasquez first mentioned the injury to him after the fight ended. Mendez said that he doesn't think it is major and that it is not out of the question that Velasquez could be ready to fight in April if the UFC wanted him to do so.
"It was one of those things where it had no impact on him in the fight, but after it's over and the adrenaline isn't going as much, you go, 'Uh oh, I may have done something,' " Mendez said. "He never said a thing about it during the fight, but I was with him after just before we went to the press conference and he told me he thought he hurt his shoulder.
"Hopefully, it's just something that will need rehab. I don't think it's major, but then Cain has such an amazingly high threshold for pain, you don't know for sure. We just need to get it checked out properly and then we can proceed."
A player from the Vatican's new cricket team of priests and seminarians returns a ball during a training session at the Mater Ecclesiae Catholic college in Rome last month. The Vatican officially declared its intention to defeat the Church of England — not in a theological re-match nearly 500 years after they split, but on the cricket pitch.
Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters /Landov
A player from the Vatican's new cricket team of priests and seminarians returns a ball during a training session at the Mater Ecclesiae Catholic college in Rome last month. The Vatican officially declared its intention to defeat the Church of England — not in a theological re-match nearly 500 years after they split, but on the cricket pitch.
Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters /Landov
Some 500 years after England's King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican is vowing to defeat the Church of England — not in the pews, but on the cricket pitch.
The Vatican has launched its own cricket club — a move aimed at forging ties with teams of other faiths.
Rome's Capannelle Cricket Club is hosting training matches that will lead to the creation of the Vatican team, the St. Peter's Cricket Club.
The Catholic Church has long championed sports as good for mind, body and soul. And one of the players, Sri Lankan seminarian Antony Fernando, says sports are particularly important for those aspiring to the priesthood.
"Learn a lot of things in sports, to accept both victory and defeat, in life of priesthood we need to accept things, because in the future as a priest we know that things are not going that easy," he says.
The Vatican already has its Clericus Cup soccer tournament, which pitches the Swiss Guards against seminarians. Now, its cricket team will sport the official colors of the tiny city-state, yellow and white, and players' jackets will have the seal of the papacy, two crossed keys.
The image some people have of cricket is that of the well-to-do in white playing on country estates. But sponsors of the Vatican initiative say that image is very dated. Today, cricket is one of the world's most popular sports, with a mass following in Asia and Oceania.
A Natural Talent Pool
Sri Lankan Francis Jayarajah is president of Italy's national cricket team. He says the latest Vatican initiative can count on up to 350 potential players — priests and seminarians from cricket-playing countries who live and study in Rome.
"Indians, Pakistanis, Australians, New Zealanders, during leisure time they play cricket in their small football grounds in various colleges," Jayarajah says.
One of those colleges is Mater Ecclesiae. The spiritual director, the Rev. Eamon O'Higgins, is an enthusiastic sports fan.
"In ... competitive sport, you combat, you're taking on an opposition," O'Higgins says. "There is a challenge, and the aim is to win."
But he says the creation of the Vatican cricket team also has a broader purpose: forging interfaith relations by taking on teams of Hindus and Muslims. This is also in line with Pope Francis' vision of a church reaching out to the poorest and to all corners of the globe.
"Pope Francis has wanted to globalize the church so that there is an international representation here of all the different cultures throughout the world," O'Higgins says. "And cricket ... has made such a vast impact on cultures that perhaps have not always been represented sufficiently here."
More immediately, Father O'Higgins says, the Vatican team has laid down its first challenge to the Church of England and has asked for a match at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, known as the home of the sport.
"That is going to be historic," he says. "Who knows what can happen there, more than just a cricket match."
The tentative date for a match pitting the Vatican against the Anglicans has been set for next September.
ATLANTA (AP) — Jason Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter and a Democratic state senator from Atlanta, tells The Associated Press he plans to run for governor of Georgia next year.
Carter, who is 38, said Thursday in a phone interview that the state can't wait to start addressing an education system he says is on the brink and an economy that's not working for the middle class.
Carter's decision shakes up the 2014 race as Republican Gov. Nathan Deal seeks re-election. Deal is already facing two primary opponents and will now have to deal with the prospect of a Carter campaign that will likely be well-financed.
Carter's decision was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The hardware inside the PlayStation 4 is quite obviously more powerful than that of its eight-year-old predecessor. But Sony's newest console owes more to its success than just specs. As Wired found in an in-depth look at how the PS4 was designed, it has the creator of Marble Madness to thank.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, center, is greeted by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, right, as she is escorted by the committee's Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, prior to testifying before the committee's hearing on the difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The massive failure at healthcare.gov website is getting new criticism for lack of proper cybersecurity protections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, center, is greeted by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, right, as she is escorted by the committee's Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, prior to testifying before the committee's hearing on the difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The massive failure at healthcare.gov website is getting new criticism for lack of proper cybersecurity protections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Finance Committee member Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, as she testified before the committee's hearing on the difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The massive failure at healthcare.gov website is getting new criticism for lack of proper cybersecurity protections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, before the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,. The massive failure at healthcare.gov website is getting new criticism for lack of proper cybersecurity protections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
File-This April 17, 2013 file photo Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. questions Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as she testifies on Capitol Hill before the committee's hearing on President Barack Obama's budget proposal for fiscal year 2014. After warning months ago that a “train wreck” was coming in implementing the nation’s new health care law, Baucus now says he thinks the rollout can get back on track after a bumbling beginning. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite,File)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, before the Senate Finance Committee hearing on the difficulties plaguing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,. The massive failure at healthcare.gov website is getting new criticism for lack of proper cybersecurity protections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans blistered Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday over the nation's controversial health care law, bluntly challenging her honesty, pushing for her resignation and demanding unsuccessfully she concede that President Barack Obama deliberately misled the public about his signature domestic program.
"We're not in it to just give you a rough time. We're in it to try and hopefully get it right," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, at a hearing where Republicans — all of whom had voted against "Obamacare" — focused on the program's flawed sign-up website as well as costs, policy cancellations, security concerns and other issues.
During two hours in the Senate Finance Committee witness chair, Sebelius parried some thrusts and listened impassively to others. Treated more gently by Democrats than Republicans, she said at one point: "Clearly the opposition is still quite ferocious, and I'm just hoping that people understand what their options are, what their benefits could be and what their opportunities are."
She offered few if any concessions about a program she pointedly observed "passed both houses of Congress, was signed by the president and upheld by the Supreme Court."
Nor did she provide much in the way of new information about the launch of a website that she has conceded was deeply flawed. She disclosed that the so-called punch list for repairs had included "a couple of hundred functional fixes" at the time the administration launched its urgent rescue mission last month.
Even now, she said, "we're not where we need to be."
She added that the Web portal now is handling large volumes of material with fewer errors. However, as she testified, the website, www.healthcare.gov ., was running sluggishly, with some users encountering difficulty and others receiving error messages.
At a Dallas synagogue Wednesday, Obama assured volunteers that their efforts to sign people up for coverage would be well worth the trouble. "As challenging as this may seem sometimes, as frustrating as HealthCare.gov may be sometimes, we are going to get his done," Obama said.
Just before leaving Washington, Obama met with 16 Democratic senators facing re-election in 2014 to discuss the troubled website rollout. They pressed him to extend the March 31 enrollment deadline, but White House press secretary Jay Carney rejected the idea.
Republican criticism and questions have turned in recent days into other areas, some blending policy and politics.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of Sebelius' most aggressive questioners, read aloud from a page of the White House website that says: "If you like your plan, you can keep it and you don't have to change a thing due to the health care law."
Turning to Sebelius, he said, "Well, we know that lying to Congress is a crime, but unfortunately lying to the American people is not. I'd just like to ask you a simple true-or-false question. Is that statement on the White House website true or is it false?" Sebelius said, "Sir, I think the statement is that. ..." before Cornyn cut her off.
"Is it true or is it false, Madame Secretary?" he asked.
She said "a vast majority" of people who are insured through their jobs would keep their plans and "a majority" of the 11 million in the individual market will keep plans with stronger coverage while "others will have to choose if they have to choose if they have a brand new plan and not a grandfathered — have to choose of a plan that they no longer get medically underwritten. ..."
Cornyn responded, "I will just ask that the record ... note that you have refused to answer my question whether it's true or false."
At the heart of his questioning was the recent flood of millions of cancellation notices that insurance companies have sent to individual policyholders, despite assurances dating to 2009 by the president that people would be able to keep their coverage if they liked it.
Several other Republicans also referred to the cancellations when their turn came to question Sebelius.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., asked if it violated Obama's promise that so many plans were canceled for falling short of the law's coverage requirements. Avoiding a direct response, Sebelius said, "For the vast majority of people who get employer-based health care, are in a public plan, are in the VA plan, are in Medicare, are part of the insurance market, their plans are very much in place. There is change coming in the individual marketplace with consumer protections that many people have never" had.
As senior Republican on the panel, Hatch led off. "While I'm glad that you are accepting responsibility for this disastrous rollout, I would have preferred that you and the rest of the administration were honest with us to begin with," he said.
Rather than ask Sebelius questions, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas — the secretary is a former governor of the state — used his allotted time to raise numerous complaints about the law and her performance as the administration official in charge.
Roberts, who faces a tea party challenger in a bid for re-election next year, noted delays in parts of the law and said website woes have caused public uncertainty and fear.
"Your main goal should have been to protect Americans, to lessen their risk and to ensure their safety. But in your zeal to implement this law, not warnings, not advice, not counsel would deter you from implementing the exchanges," he said. "You have said America should hold you for — accountable, which is why today, Madam Secretary, I repeat my request for you to resign."
Sebelius did not respond.
Applicants' ID security was another focus. Republicans said the administration put in jeopardy the personal information of Americans by taking the website live before security testing was fully completed.
"So not only can millions of Americans not log in to the website successfully, but those who have actually succeeded could now find themselves at the mercy of identity thieves across the globe," said Hatch.
Sebelius said security issues were taken very seriously and "no one suggested that the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward" with the Oct. 1 launch date for the new insurance markets.
No major breaches have been reported, although in one publicized case the personal information of a South Carolina man was delivered to a website user who lives in North Carolina.
Broader security concerns have arisen because the part of the website that consumers interact with directly was not fully tested.
Federal law requires all government computer systems to have a security certification before going live. Yet on Sept. 27, Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, agreed to a temporary permit that said, "Aspects of the system that were not tested due to the ongoing development exposed a level of uncertainty that can be deemed as a high risk."
Separately, officials said the chief information security officer at the agency, Tony Trenkle, who was involved in the decision to issue the certificate, is resigning to take a job in the private sector. CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille sidestepped questions about the reasons for the departure.
___
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.
Audio output sounds great in some apps — and lousy in others, especially with spoken-word playback
Two things you need to know about the the speakers on the Nexus 5: First, there's only one speaker. Never mind that you see a pair of speaker grilles — there's only one speaker hidden back there. As we first learned on the LG G2 — a close cousin, insofar as the hardware goes — there's a speaker, and there's a microphone. Not two speakers. That's been confirmed by iFixit's teardown, as well, not that it was a surprise. Stick your finger over one of the speakers and it's readily apparent.
There other thing we've discovered is that the Nexus 5 speaker can be pretty decent, or it can be downright horrible — and it appears that software may be to blame here.
Yancy Medeiros' UFC ended abruptly due to injury. His follow-up fight at UFC Fight for the Troops 3 on Wednesday night also ended early, but this time it was Medeiros doing the winning as he stopped Yves Edwards in the first round.
The two started off trading bombs and it was the UFC veteran in Edwards who was getting the better of the exchanges. Edwards was both able to counter with overhand rights as well as mix in body kicks and other key combinations. So often was Edwards landing that Medeiros waved in Edwards a number of times after being hit very hard.
In this sport, however, one shot changes everything.
As the two exchanged at close range, Medeiros fired a right hand that missed, but snuck in a devastating uppercut that buckled Edwards and immediately sent him crashing backwards to the mat.
Medeiros followed up on the hurt opponent and drove three more shots to Edwards' face, forcing referee 'Big' John McCarthy to halt the bout. The end came at 2:47 of the very first round.
Medeiros climbs to 10-1 in MMA while Edwards drops to 42-21-1. The loss is also Edwards' third in a row.
The most interesting room in the American Museum of Natural History is one you'll never see. Its inhabitants are millions of years old, its proprietors among the brightest in their field. This is the big bone room, home to what is arguably the largest and most important collection of mammal bones in the world. And we got a first-hand look.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t4tGgxAO8RLPFoasKd0hWSxcE7Hm24rhy7jwg_kh_yVHhUoAzqPuMUpGD-8IUi7Gq8x9JoJSWm7LGqHXksuhyELSw6R7ktMpOvQQIKskI=s0-d){kind=small}
Share
Source: 
Source: 
Source: