Padres beat Giants 5-3 on safety squeeze in 13th

San Diego Padres' Andrew Cashner hits an RBI bunt against the San Francisco Giants' in the 13th inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

San Diego Padres' Andrew Cashner hits an RBI bunt against the San Francisco Giants' in the 13th inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

San Diego Padres' Alexi Amarista reacts after scoring against the San Francisco Giants in the 13th inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

San Diego Padres' Chris Denorfia swings for an RBI double off San Francisco Giants' Barry Zito in the third inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

San Francisco Giants' Barry Zito works against the San Diego Padres in the first inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

San Diego Padres' Edinson Volquez works against the San Francisco Giants in the first inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Andrew Cashner provided quite the thrilling warmup for his Tuesday start against San Francisco: a tiebreaking bunt as a pinch hitter in the 13th inning Monday night.

Will Venable made an incredible catch to save San Diego, Cashner drove in the go-ahead run with a perfect safety squeeze, and the Padres extended their season-best winning streak to seven games with a 5-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants.

"That was pretty cool," Cashner said. "I've never had a game-winning RBI. But if Will Venable doesn't have that catch ... it's one of the best catches I've ever seen."

Well, he didn't exactly see it live. Cashner was in the batting cage taking swings.

Venable's diving grab on the center-field warning track with his back to home plate ended the 12th and stole a game-winning hit from Juan Perez.

"The wind was funny tonight," Padres manager Bud Black said. "Off the bat, I thought Will was going to run back and catch it, and then it kept carrying."

Moments later, Alexi Amarista started the winning rally with a single and went to third on Chris Denorfia's single. Cashner came up to face Jose Mijares (0-1) and dropped a bunt single between the mound and third base for his sixth career hit and second RBI.

San Diego added another run on a bases-loaded walk from Jake Dunning. Giants manager Bruce Bochy had made a double switch to bring in Dunning and had intended to have a fresh Buster Posey lead off the next inning, but mistakenly put him in the seventh hole.

"I messed up the double switch. I got distracted," Bochy said. "I was out there arguing and I totally brain-cramped on that. Once I said it wrong, I was done. I knew that. That's a first. I probably should have stepped back and thought a little bit. ... Once I called it wrong I can't take it back. Got distracted, you're upset a little bit, that shouldn't happen but it did."

Nick Vincent (1-0) pitched two scoreless innings. Huston Street finished the 4-hour, 35-minute game for his 14th save in 15 chances. It was San Francisco's longest game of the year.

The Padres finally came through after they had two runners on and one out in the 11th and 12th, but Giants relievers Sandy Rosario and Javier Lopez got a pair of strikeouts to end each threat.

Chase Headley hit a tying single in the seventh against Jean Machi, who induced an inning-ending double play by Jesus Guzman to avoid further damage.

The Giants (35-34) couldn't hold a 3-1 lead for Barry Zito and dropped into fourth place in the NL West for the first time since April 8.

Logan Forsythe had his first three-hit game this year for San Diego, swept in San Francisco's waterfront ballpark April 19-21.

Joaquin Arias hit a sacrifice fly, Brandon Belt and Hector Sanchez each had an RBI single and Perez added two hits and a defensive gem on a night when the road-weary, injury-plagued Giants sent out a lineup largely of backups.

They landed in San Francisco about 3 a.m. Monday after a night game in Atlanta, showed up late to the ballpark and didn't take batting practice before the game. San Francisco just completed a grueling stretch with 14 of 18 games away from AT&T Park.

Zito struck out a season-high eight and got back on track at home where he pitches so well, but had nothing to show for it as the Padres rallied against the bullpen. The lefty walked off to a standing ovation from the sellout crowd with two outs in the sixth and runners on first and third.

Machi relieved and threw a wild pitch that allowed a run to score, then retired pinch-hitter Nick Hundley on a groundout. Machi has allowed a run in six straight outings and 10 of his last 11.

Zito had his most strikeouts since getting 10 against Atlanta on Aug. 6, 2010.

Padres starter Edinson Volquez struck out six in five innings. He doubled leading off the third and scored on Denorfia's double for San Diego's first run.

Volquez knew Venable was going to make the clutch catch.

"I said, 'That ball, it's not going to bounce,'" the pitcher recalled saying. "He can run. He said he let down the team down because he struck out."

San Francisco shortstop Brandon Crawford went 1 for 6 while batting third for the first time this season.

Bochy was asked before the game why he used Crawford there.

"Crawford asked me the same thing," Bochy said. "I just said, 'Maybe I got into the wine too much last night.'"

NOTES: San Diego is still waiting to determine whether SS Everth Cabrera and OF Carlos Quentin will need a stint on the disabled list. Cabrera came out of Sunday's game after the eighth inning with a left hamstring injury. Quentin missed his third straight game Monday because of left shoulder soreness. ... Giants 3B Pablo Sandoval (strained left foot) and CF Angel Pagan (strained left hamstring) are expected to be activated for the start of a series at Dodger Stadium beginning next Monday. Sandoval played catch and hit in the cage without a walking boot Monday. He is tentatively slated to begin a rehab assignment Friday with Class-A San Jose, and Pagan will likely go out on rehab soon, too. ... San Francisco reliever Santiago Casilla, who had right knee surgery, is expected to throw off a mound within a week. ... San Francisco hosted second-round draft pick INF-RHP Ryder Jones. His late grandfather, Ron Brown, who died last August of cancer, was a huge Giants fan. "This is so cool, because he would have loved this," said Jones' mother, Tiffani, fighting tears in the dugout. ... The Giants are 20-12 against the NL West. ... RHP Matt Cain (5-3) pitches Tuesday night for the Giants against Cashner (5-3).

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-06-18-Padres-Giants/id-0cb6cc8a43d844d1a5767077eae42550

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Academics earn street cred with TED Talks but no points from peers, IU research shows

Public release date: 18-Jun-2013
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Contact: Steve Chaplin
stjchap@iu.edu
812-856-1896
Indiana University

Though fewer in number, presentations by academics preferred by public

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- TED Talks, the most popular conference and events website in the world with over 1 billion informational videos viewed, provides academics with increased popular exposure but does nothing to boost citations of their work by peers, new research led by Indiana University has found.

In the comprehensive study of over 1,200 TED Talks videos and their presenters, lead author Cassidy R. Sugimoto, an assistant professor in IU Bloomington's Department of Information and Library Science, and a team of researchers from Great Britain and Canada, also looked at the demographic make-up of TED Talks presenters -- only 21 percent were academics, and of those only about one-quarter were women -- and the relationship between a presenter's credentials and a video's popularity.

Data gathered from the TED website and from YouTube also found that male-authored videos on YouTube were more popular and more liked than those authored by women -- possibly because research has shown that females are less likely to comment on YouTube than males -- and that videos by academics were commented upon more often than those presented by non-academics. While YouTube videos by male presenters were more viewed than those by women, this was not true of the TED website.

"Overall, academic presenters were in the minority, yet their videos were preferred," Sugimoto said. "This runs counter to past research that has argued that the public, because of a lack of literacy on the subject, has a negative perception of science and technology that has been fostered by the media."

The new work instead finds positive associations with science and technology information and possibly, Sugimoto noted, some discerning characteristics in the public between presentations by academics and non-academics.

"While TED does not increase the impact of work by scientists within the academic community as seen through more citations, it does popularize research outside of academia," she said. "Academics are receiving greater online visibility, but there is no evidence that TED Talks leads to an increase in the traditional metric of academic capital: citations."

Sugimoto said the Matthew Effect is likely in play -- that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer -- as it's possible TED academic presenters are chosen at least partly because they are already recognized scholars.

In general, most TED video presenters were male (73 percent) and non-academic (79 percent). Within the 21 percent that were academics, the researchers found that 73 percent of those held the rank of at least professor; 75 percent were based in the U.S.; 71 percent had their own Wikipedia page; and 77 percent were cited more frequently than the average. While viewers commented more on videos by academics than non-academics, viewers did not popularize one academic over another based upon age or university affiliation.

"Either university affiliation doesn't register with or is irrelevant to the online audience, or if it is relevant, it may be offset by those academics from less prestigious universities working harder to be invited to present at TED or have their video published," Sugimoto said.

And as far as boosting citations via TED presentations, the researchers looked at citations for an academic for three years before and after TED presentation and found no hike in citations after appearing on the TED website.

"The suggestion is that TED doesn't promote a scientist's work within their own community or that any positive impact is offset by peers questioning the presenter's motivations," Sugimoto said.

The team used both bibliometric (most commonly, academic journal citation analysis) and webometric techniques, which include biodirectional hyperlink analysis of Web-based products.

Co-authors with Sugimoto on "Scientists Popularizing Science: Characteristics and Impact of TED Talk Presenters," were IU doctoral student Andrew Tsou; Mike Thelwall of University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom; Vincent Lariviere and Benoit Macaluso of Universite de Montreal and the Universite du Quebec a Montreal; and Philippe Mongeon, Universite de Montreal. The new research appeared in PLoS ONE.

The work was funded by the Digging Into Data initiative, a multinational funding program to promote "big data" research. Teams must be composed of scholars from at least two countries and receive funding from one of a number of potential national scholars. The U.S. portion of this grant was funded by the National Science Foundation. For more about the initiative, see this previous press release on IU's Digging Into Data scholars.

As a researcher studying doctoral education and scholarly communication in the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing, Sugimoto is interested in the public's perception of science, how the public consumes scientific information and the resulting relationship with the public's perception and knowledge of science. She received a Ph.D. in information and library science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010 and came to IU the same year.

###

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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.

Public release date: 18-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Steve Chaplin
stjchap@iu.edu
812-856-1896
Indiana University

Though fewer in number, presentations by academics preferred by public

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- TED Talks, the most popular conference and events website in the world with over 1 billion informational videos viewed, provides academics with increased popular exposure but does nothing to boost citations of their work by peers, new research led by Indiana University has found.

In the comprehensive study of over 1,200 TED Talks videos and their presenters, lead author Cassidy R. Sugimoto, an assistant professor in IU Bloomington's Department of Information and Library Science, and a team of researchers from Great Britain and Canada, also looked at the demographic make-up of TED Talks presenters -- only 21 percent were academics, and of those only about one-quarter were women -- and the relationship between a presenter's credentials and a video's popularity.

Data gathered from the TED website and from YouTube also found that male-authored videos on YouTube were more popular and more liked than those authored by women -- possibly because research has shown that females are less likely to comment on YouTube than males -- and that videos by academics were commented upon more often than those presented by non-academics. While YouTube videos by male presenters were more viewed than those by women, this was not true of the TED website.

"Overall, academic presenters were in the minority, yet their videos were preferred," Sugimoto said. "This runs counter to past research that has argued that the public, because of a lack of literacy on the subject, has a negative perception of science and technology that has been fostered by the media."

The new work instead finds positive associations with science and technology information and possibly, Sugimoto noted, some discerning characteristics in the public between presentations by academics and non-academics.

"While TED does not increase the impact of work by scientists within the academic community as seen through more citations, it does popularize research outside of academia," she said. "Academics are receiving greater online visibility, but there is no evidence that TED Talks leads to an increase in the traditional metric of academic capital: citations."

Sugimoto said the Matthew Effect is likely in play -- that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer -- as it's possible TED academic presenters are chosen at least partly because they are already recognized scholars.

In general, most TED video presenters were male (73 percent) and non-academic (79 percent). Within the 21 percent that were academics, the researchers found that 73 percent of those held the rank of at least professor; 75 percent were based in the U.S.; 71 percent had their own Wikipedia page; and 77 percent were cited more frequently than the average. While viewers commented more on videos by academics than non-academics, viewers did not popularize one academic over another based upon age or university affiliation.

"Either university affiliation doesn't register with or is irrelevant to the online audience, or if it is relevant, it may be offset by those academics from less prestigious universities working harder to be invited to present at TED or have their video published," Sugimoto said.

And as far as boosting citations via TED presentations, the researchers looked at citations for an academic for three years before and after TED presentation and found no hike in citations after appearing on the TED website.

"The suggestion is that TED doesn't promote a scientist's work within their own community or that any positive impact is offset by peers questioning the presenter's motivations," Sugimoto said.

The team used both bibliometric (most commonly, academic journal citation analysis) and webometric techniques, which include biodirectional hyperlink analysis of Web-based products.

Co-authors with Sugimoto on "Scientists Popularizing Science: Characteristics and Impact of TED Talk Presenters," were IU doctoral student Andrew Tsou; Mike Thelwall of University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom; Vincent Lariviere and Benoit Macaluso of Universite de Montreal and the Universite du Quebec a Montreal; and Philippe Mongeon, Universite de Montreal. The new research appeared in PLoS ONE.

The work was funded by the Digging Into Data initiative, a multinational funding program to promote "big data" research. Teams must be composed of scholars from at least two countries and receive funding from one of a number of potential national scholars. The U.S. portion of this grant was funded by the National Science Foundation. For more about the initiative, see this previous press release on IU's Digging Into Data scholars.

As a researcher studying doctoral education and scholarly communication in the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing, Sugimoto is interested in the public's perception of science, how the public consumes scientific information and the resulting relationship with the public's perception and knowledge of science. She received a Ph.D. in information and library science from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010 and came to IU the same year.

###

---

[ | 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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/iu-aes061813.php

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Surviving 'hell' to become a Navy SEAL - Business Management Daily

Eric Greitens became a Navy SEAL by becoming a leader.

He figured the best way to start Hell Week would be to pull together a team of seven and keep them together, using the chaos of night to their advantage.

As air-raid sirens blared, artillery simulators exploded and guns ripped through rounds of ammunition, ?Greitens diverted his team from the ?grinder,? an infamous concrete compound where soaked, exhausted men were doing pushups.

They paused, ran down to the beach and planned. After another pause, Greitens said: ?Gentlemen, let?s go join the party. Stay connected. Hold on tight to the man in front of you. We are about to have a great time.?

Once inside the grinder, they continued their subversive tactics, knowing that hell lay ahead.

SEALs, Greitens says, are supposed to take advantage of chaos, and he felt they?d won the first round, even though he?d been told it was harder to lead than to follow.

?It seemed to me that leading could, in fact, be easier,? he says. ?For fear to take hold of you, it needed to be given room to run. As a leader, all the space in your mind was taken up by a focus on your men.?

? Adapted from The Warrior?s Heart, Eric Greitens, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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Oculus snags $16 million from investors to bring virtual reality to the masses

Oculus announced its first round of funding today, wherein the company secured $16 million from investors specifically aimed at putting the Oculus Rift in consumer hands. The nascent virtual reality hardware company has repeatedly said its end goal with the Rift is to make it a consumer product; currently, only folks who backed the Rift on Kickstarter and those willing to spend $300 on a developer kit have access. A handful of games support the Rift, though more and more developers are promising not just support in their games, but entire games built from the ground up with VR in mind. An HD version of the headset was also introduced at last week's E3 gaming show.

Oculus' new business partners apparently see enough financial potential in the Rift to not only invest heavily, but to also take on board positions -- both Santo Politi of Spark Capital and Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners are now on the Oculus board of directors. "What Palmer, Brendan and the team are building at Oculus so closely matches the Metaverse that we had to be part of it. Working with them to get this platform to market at scale will be enormously exciting," Rodriguez said of today's news.

The company launched last year with a Kickstarter campaign targeting $250,000 -- the project eventually raised just shy of $2.5 million, and now sells its Rift dev kit outside of the Kickstarter campaign.

Comments

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

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Guardian: Snowden won't return voluntarily to US

WASHINGTON (AP) ? NSA leaker Edward Snowden is defending his disclosure of top-secret U.S. spying programs in an online chat Monday with The Guardian and is attacking U.S. officials for calling him a traitor.

"The U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he said. He added the government "immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home," by labeling him a traitor, and indicated he would not return to the U.S. voluntarily.

Congressional leaders have called Snowden a traitor for revealing once-secret surveillance programs two weeks ago in the Guardian and The Washington Post. The National Security Agency programs collect records of millions of Americans' telephone calls and Internet usage as a counterterror tool. The disclosures revealed the scope of the collections, which surprised many Americans and have sparked debate about how much privacy the government can take away in the name of national security.

"It would be foolish to volunteer yourself to" possible arrest and criminal charges "if you can do more good outside of prison than in it," he said.

In one posted reply to a question, Snowden dismissed being called a traitor by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who made the allegations in an interview this week on Fox News Sunday. Cheney was echoing a charge by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.,

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein...the better off we all are," he said. "This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead," he added, referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The Guardian announced that its website was hosting an online chat with Snowden, in hiding in Hong Kong, with reporter Glenn Greenwald receiving and posting his questions. The Associated Press couldn't independently verify that Snowden was the man who posted 19 replies to questions.

In answer to a question about charges made by Cheney and other U.S. officials that he might be spying for China, and trading information for asylum, Snowden wrote, "Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

He added later, "I have had no contact with the Chinese government."

Snowden explained that he had not flown directly to Iceland, where he has said he would like to seek asylum, because of the restrictions on travel for U.S. government employees with top clearances that require permission 30 days in advance, making Hong Kong the more accessible option.

Snowden dismissed the U.S. government's claims that the NSA surveillance programs had helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks in more than 20 countries, including the 2009 al-Qaida plot by Afghan American Najibullah Zazi to blow up New York subways.

"Journalists should ask a specific question: ... how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive (sic) that, and ask yourself if it was worth it."

He added that "Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

Snowden was working as a contractor for NSA at the time he had access to the then-secret programs. He defended his actions and said he considered what to reveal and what not to, saying he did not reveal any U.S. operations against what he called legitimate military targets, but instead showed that the NSA is hacking civilian infrastructure like universities and private businesses.

"These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash," he said, though he gave no examples of what systems have crashed or in which countries.

"Congress hasn't declared war on the countries ? the majority of them are our allies ? but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people," he said. "And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?"

Snowden was referring to Prism, one of the programs he disclosed. The program sweeps up Internet usage data from all over the world that goes through nine major U.S.-based Internet providers. The NSA can look at foreign usage without any warrants, and says the program doesn't target Americans.

U.S. officials say the data-gathering programs are legal and operated under secret court supervision.

Snowden explained his claim that from his desk, he could "wiretap" any phone call or email ? a claim top intelligence officials have denied. "If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT (signals intelligence) databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want," he wrote in the answer posted on the Guardian site. "Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on ? it's all the same."

The NSA did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said that the kind of data that can be accessed and who can access it is severely limited.

Snowden said the restrictions on what could be seen by an individual analyst vary according to policy changes, which can happen "at any time," and said that a technical "filter" on NSA data-gathering meant to filter out U.S. communications is "weak," such that U.S. communications often get ingested.

The former contractor also added that NSA provides Congress "with a special immunity to its surveillance," without explaining further.

Snowden defended U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning for his disclosures of documents to Wikileaks, which he called a "legitimate journalistic outlet," which "carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest." He said the Wikileaks release of unredacted material was "due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase," which led to the charge against Manning that he dumped the documents, which Snowden called an attempt to smear Manning.

Manning is currently on trial at Fort Meade ? the same Army base where the NSA is headquartered ? on charges of aiding the enemy for releasing documents to Wikileaks.

Snowden defended his description of his salary as being $200,000 a year, calling that a "career high," but saying he did take a pay cut to take the job at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked as a contractor at an NSA facility in Hawaii. When Booz Allen fired him, they said his salary was $122,000.

In one of his final replies, Snowden attacked the "mainstream media" for its coverage, saying it "now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicion-less surveillance in human history."

__

On the web:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower#start-of-comments

Follow Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/guardian-snowden-wont-return-voluntarily-us-175208935.html

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Poll: Hong Kongers would not back extradition of Edward Snowden

About 50 percent say the NSA whistleblower should not be surrendered, 17.6 percent said he should be turned over, and a third aren't sure yet, according to poll published today.

By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / June 16, 2013

A TV screen shows the news of Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, in the underground train in Hong Kong Sunday.

Kin Cheung/AP

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By a three-to-one margin, Hong Kongers do not want their government to hand over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden if Washington demands his extradition.

Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

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Whether it is because they support Mr. Snowden?s free-speech and privacy agendas, or because they are upset by his claims that the US National Security Agency has been hacking into Hong Kong?s computer network, 49.9 percent of people asked in a poll published here?Sunday?said he should not be surrendered. Another 17.6 percent said he should be turned over. A third of respondents had not made up their minds.

?Nobody welcomes a fugitive, but now he is here we have to safeguard his rights,? said Freddy Chu, a young privacy activist, as he brandished a photo of Snowden at a small rally in support of the American in central Hong Kong?on Saturday.

Snowden is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Hong Kong, from where he divulged his identity to The Guardian newspaper a week ago. Since then, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, he has accused the NSA of hacking into the backbone of Hong Kong?s Internet system.?

?He is welcome to Hong Kong,? said another demonstrator, James Hon, as he helped hold up a banner belonging to the League in Defense of Hong Kong?s Freedoms. ?He is upholding our core values ? freedom of expression and privacy. He is a brother.??

Snowden?s presence here puts the former British colony in a difficult spot, potentially subject to pressure from both Washington and Beijing. For the time being, the United States has not lodged an extradition request and Chinese officials have not tipped their hand about what they think should happen to Snowden. But many Hong Kongers are uncomfortable.?

That may explain the low turnout at Saturday?s demonstration outside the US Consulate. Persistent rain did not help, but few people here see Snowden?s fate as very important to their own lives.?

Still, his suggestions that the NSA has been hacking in Hong Kong have won him a measure of sympathy. ?When we learned that they had hacked into our Internet hub at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, all of us with a computer felt we had been targeted,? said Yves Azemar, a French expatriate dealer in rare books.?

Snowden?s presence here also draws international attention to Hong Kong?s unique status as a ?special administrative region? of China, where the rules are very different from the mainland.?

?This is a golden opportunity for Hong Kong to explain to the world ? that we still enjoy judicial autonomy,? says Alan Leong, a legislator and head of the pro-democracy Civic Party. ?It?s a chance to say how proud we are that Snowden chose Hong Kong as a refuge.??

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/fawwZmoqluQ/Poll-Hong-Kongers-would-not-back-extradition-of-Edward-Snowden

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Green Chemists Synthesise Vanillin From Sawdust

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128649/Green_Chemists_Synthesise_Vanillin_From_Sawdust

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North Korea proposes talks with U.S.

By Jane Chung

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Sunday offered high-level talks with the United States to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, only days after it canceled planned official talks with South Korea for the first time in over two years.

Planned high-level talks between North and South Korea were scrapped last week after the North abruptly called off the talks. The North blamed the South for scuttling discussions that sought to mend estranged ties between the rival Koreas.

North Korea National Defence Commission in a statement carried by KCNA news agency on Sunday said Washington can pick a date and place for talks and the two sides can discuss a range of issues, but no preconditions should be attached.

"In order to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and to achieve regional peace and safety, we propose to hold high-level talks between the DPRK and the United States, " said the spokesman for the North's National Defence Commission in the statement. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"If the U.S. is truly interested in securing regional peace and safety and easing tensions, it should not mention of preconditions for the talks," the statement said.

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear and missile strikes against South Korea and the United States after it was hit with U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear weapons test.

In the statement, Pyongyang reiterated it was willing to discuss disarmament but the world should also be denuclearized including its southern neighbor. It added it wants the United States to sign a formal peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War that divided the two Koreas.

Korea was divided after the Second World War and when the Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a permanent peace treaty, leaving the two countries technically at war.

North Korea agreed a denuclearization-for-aid deal in 2005 but later backed out of that accord. It has said its nuclear arms are a "treasured sword" that it will not abandon.

North Korea's one major diplomatic ally, China, has urged Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program and return to talks.

The North has a long record of making threats to secure concessions from the United States and South Korea.

North Korea's 30-year-old leader, Kim Jong-un, took power in December 2011 and has since carried out two long-range rocket launches and a nuclear weapons test, as well as a campaign of threats against South Korea and the United States.

Threats have waned in the past month, showing signs of easing tensions such as proposing talks with South Korea in early June. The talks had been intended to discuss issues resuming operations of joint commercial projects and families split during the 1950-53 Korean War.

(Reporting By Jane Chung, Editing by Jack Kim, Michael Perry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-proposes-high-level-talks-u-kcna-014322264.html

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Here's the List of Macs Compatible With OS X Mavericks

Yesterday's announcement of OS X Mavericks unveiled some pretty cool new features coming to your Mac?but Cook and co forgot to explain just which computers would support the new OS. Fortunately, Apple Insider has chatted with people familiar with the Mavericks Developer Preview to draw up a list of the Macs which are compatible with the software.

The list runs:

• iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

The computer will also need to be running Mac OS X 10.6.7 Snow Leopard or higher, with 8GB of free disk space for installation. Essentially, that's the exact same computer and specification requirements as Mountain Lion required?so if you installed that, you can be confident that Mavericks will run on your machine. [Apple Insider]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/heres-the-list-of-macs-compatible-with-os-x-mavericks-512550369

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The Brilliant Insanity Behind the New Mac Pro's Design

The last we heard of the Power Mac G4 Cube?a computer everyone loved, but no one could quite figure out?was in a press release from 2001. Twelve years later, we've finally met its beautiful, brilliant, and not altogether sane successor.

Back in July of 2001, the future of the Cube wasn't entirely clear. In a press release, Apple's reps explained their reasoning:

?Apple? today announced that it will suspend production of the Power Mac? G4 Cube indefinitely. The company said there is a small chance it will reintroduce an upgraded model of the unique computer in the future, but that there are no plans to do so at this time.

?Cube owners love their Cubes, but most customers decided to buy our powerful Power Mac G4 minitowers instead,? said Philip Schiller, Apple?s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.?

And with that, Apple killed one of the most innovative personal computers it had ever produced. Placed between Apple?s entry-level iMac and high-end Power Mac, the Cube was too expensive for consumers and not expandable enough for pros. Still, everyone loved it because it was, for lack of a better description, awesome. And so, for the last twelve years, we hung onto that ?small chance" that Apple would reintroduce the Cube, hoping that someday, the product?s concept would finally make sense.

That day came yesterday.

The Concept

Last week, I wrote about the future of the Mac Pro, a time-tested machine that had slowly become the most anachronistic product from Apple?s hardware offerings. As I saw it, the company had four options: kill the Mac Pro, give the current Mac Pro case a spec bump, evolve the design, or completely change the game.

Apple obviously went with the fourth option. It?s important to consider why they would choose this path over the others. Successful revolutions of product archetypes occur when a team realizes that an underlying technology has advanced or been replaced. This is what happened with the iPhone. Every mobile phone company in the world had touchscreen designs they never released; Apple, though, was the first to realize that touch screens had caught up in usability and manufacturability. In cases like this, it pays to be the first to discover and take advantage of the opportunity. Usually, it puts you years ahead of the competition, which is stuck making products the old way.

Conversely, sometimes the archetype is too advanced for the underlying technology. For example, Alan Kay came up with the idea for a thin device with a keyboard that could be carried around like a book back in the 1970s. But it wasn?t until the 90s that computing technology could even approach what he had in mind, and it wasn?t until the 2010s that the tablet truly came of age. You can?t force an idea if the tech isn?t there to support it.

The concept of the new Mac Pro is very similar to that of the old Cube: A powerhouse PC that is very small and externally upgradable. That concept was not viable in 2000, when all we had for I/O was FireWire 400 and USB 1.1. Fast forward to 2013, and the technology has caught up to the archetype. We now have Thunderbolt 2, 802.11ac, and USB 3, not to mention cloud storage options. The expandability limitations are gone.

Put simply, we?ve come to a tipping point where the internals of a tower PC limit upgradability more than the externals do. There will be users who will miss optical media and PCI card slots?just like there were users who missed SCSI and floppy drives?but the vast majority of what gets added on to a pro computer today is done externally.

The Design

Let me just say this about the Mac Pro: this type of design can only be produced by a company that is first, truly led by its industrial design team, and second, completely nuts. No sane engineer would ever let this leave the design stage because it goes against everything you?re supposed to do with electronics. You?re supposed to arrange boards parallel to each other to maximize space efficiency. You?re supposed to have I/O ports that attach to the board in parallel, not perpendicularly. You?re supposed to end up with something that is roughly the shape of a box, because that's the easiest and most efficient way to manufacture a device.

To get a design that looks like this on the outside, you have to start with the inside. Like the Cube, the new Mac Pro is designed around a thermal core that pulls air from the bottom to the top of the machine. Unlike the Cube, which relied on convection cooling alone, the Pro has a fan located at the top of the machine to accelerate the air moving through it. Apple is using some of the same tricks it first used on the Retina MacBook Pro to ensure the fan runs as quietly as possible with a specially designed blade.

The triangular thermal core is a single piece of extruded aluminum that has been machined and anodized black. Extruding aluminum is a lot like using the old Play-Doh Extruder, except you?re using aluminum instead of Play-Doh. Large, solid billets of aluminum are heated in an oven and then forced through a small die. That triangular-shaped core comes out of the extruder as one large tube. Here's a video demonstrating the process:

After the tube is cooled, it gets cut into shorter sections and then goes through a series of secondary machining operations, creating mounting fixtures that allow other parts to attach directly to the core. Herein lies the beauty of the thermal core design. Not only does it act as a cooling chamber, it also provides the underlying structure for the entire device. Every component attaches directly to the core?boards, fan, the base, and even the outer housing. It?s an extension of Apple?s "unibody" philosophy: Several parts are replaced by one well-designed part. This allows Apple to reduce complexity and invest money in making the remaining parts much higher quality.

The outer housing is made through a process called impact extrusion, shown in the video above. This process is commonly used to make products like Sigg water bottles. A solid puck of aluminum, called a slug, is loaded into the machine and then punched into shape in one quick motion. After this step, the part goes through a series of secondary operations that cut the holes for the I/O and add the now-trademark Apple polished chamfer. The part is then polished and anodized black, creating a mirrored black finish.

Here again, Apple took the hard way out. A typical sandblasted finish?like you would see on the back of the iPhone 5?hides imperfections in the surface. Polishing makes imperfections more pronounced. Basically, Apple needs to get the housing absolutely perfect before it gets polished.

Small Details That Caught My Eye

• The location of power button could be problematic. Maybe people will be more likely to leave their Mac Pros on their desks now that they are so tiny, but no one will be able to hide them under a desk because the power button is hidden amongst the back ports. Of course, why would you want to hide something that looks this good, but it?s still a pain in the butt. Another point?because the housing is polished, you?re going to leave a ton of fingerprints on the case when you hunt around for the power. A possible solution: What if the top of thermal core, inside the outer housing where I think the antennas are located, was one large power button? It would be hidden from view and would be a cool way to interact with the machine.

• Black. Everything?the board, the aluminum inner structure, the fasteners?is jet black. It looks sinister. In a good way.

• Backlit ports. The ports on the back are backlit when you turn the machine around to plug in a new device. Of course they do.

• Polished chamfer. The detail that was first seen on the iPhone 5 and then propagated over to the iPod line and iPad mini shows up here as well. This is typically an expensive process, but Apple gets away with it because of economies of scale. A classic Ive & Cook mindmeld. If you use an expensive process on your entire product line over the course of millions of products, you?re going to dramatically lower its cost. Aesthetically, I like it much more on the Mac Pro than I do on Apple?s other products. On the Pro it?s a nice detail that makes you want to peer into the core of the beast. On products like the iPhone 5, I think it?s a bit too distracting.

• Antennas. After trying to figure out how Apple was sending Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals through the all metal casing, I think I found an the answer. The antennas seem to be located at the very top of the Mac Pro, just inside the opening to the thermal core. It?s likely that the domed part that covers the fan?s motor is a material that allows signals to pass through it. Possibly glass or plastic.

• Assembled in the US. To get this designation, you have to meaningfully modify the components to get the product to its finished state. You can?t just ship a product to the US, put it in a box and slap a ?Assembled in USA? sticker on it. If I had to guess, most of the electronics were made overseas, while the housing, assembly of the product, and packaging were made in the US. Good for Apple for taking another step down this route.

• Beyond the desktop. Can you imagine how cool server farms of these things are going to look? If I had to design a data center I would, without a doubt, arrange Mac Pros like the pod towers from The Matrix.

It?s hard not to gush about the Mac Pro. The conceptual thinking behind the device is equalled by its design execution. If the final product Apple releases later this year matches the promise made yesterday, this is as close to perfect as you can make a pro desktop computer in 2013.

Looking at this machine, you can understand the 8 Mile, ?Lose Yourself? moment Phil Schiller had on stage yesterday. ?Can?t innovate anymore my ass,? he said, literally losing himself in the moment and looking to pick a fight. If you go back and listen to his introduction you can practically hear the adrenaline rushing through his voice as he shoved the question of Apple losing its touch back in the face of its critics. This machine has swagger?and apparently, Apple still does too.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-brilliant-insanity-behind-the-new-mac-pros-design-512574427

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The Real Housewives of New Jersey Recap: Let's Get Real

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/the-real-housewives-of-new-jersey-recap-lets-get-real/

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Inside the different Android Versions

If you've heard of Android, chances are you've heard all about its various versions. Some call it fragmentation, some say it's the nature of open-source, but in reality it's both a curse and a blessing. Regardless, it's good to have a little context about what all these version numbers and names mean when you see them posted on the Internet.

Each major version of Android has a dessert-based nickname, and they are all in alphabetical order. We like to think it's because of the delicious things they each have offered, but the folks at Google are pretty tight-lipped about why they used the internal code names they did. They certainly have a good sense of humor, and seem to like tasty deserts.

Below is a quick primer on the the different versions of Android that are still alive and kicking, from newest to oldest:

read more

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

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iTunes Radio: Apple's Pandora Service Is Finally Here.

After boundless speculation over the last year, Apple has finally announced its online streaming and music discovery service. This is how millions of people will listen to music from now on.

What we're looking at here is a Pandora-like radio service that's built directly into the standard iTunes app across all of Apple's platforms including, iOS 7, OS X, and Apple TV. It's free with advertisements, or you can get it for ad-free if you're an iTunes Match subscriber.

From the demo we saw more or less what we would expect. Artist based radio, a nice tap friendly interface, with voice search, and iCloud integration so that your radio stations sync across all of your devices. If you like a song, Apple will gladly sell it to you through iTunes.

But basically, nothing all that interesting. Still, with all the active iTunes accounts out there, don't be surprised if iTunes Radio is a hit?even if it's not a very exciting one. As always, we'll reserve final judgement until we've had a chance to play with the service. [iTunes]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/itunes-radio-apples-pandora-service-is-finally-here-512264218

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South Africa: family visits Nelson Mandela

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Nelson Mandela received visits from family members on Sunday at a hospital where the former president and anti-apartheid leader was being treated for a recurring lung infection, while South Africans expressed their appreciation for a man widely regarded as the father of the nation.

There was no official update on 94-year-old Mandela after his second night in the hospital. His condition was described as "serious but stable" on Saturday.

The office of President Jacob Zuma had said that Mandela was taken to a Pretoria hospital after his condition deteriorated at around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday.

The anti-apartheid leader has now been taken to a hospital four times since December, with the last discharge coming on April 6 after doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and drained fluid from his lung area.

Members of Mandela's family on Sunday were seen visiting the Pretoria hospital where he is believed to be staying. They included Makaziwe Mandela, the eldest of the ex-leader's three surviving children, and Ndileka Mandela, one of his 17 grandchildren.

Worshippers at a Sunday church service in the Johannesburg township of Soweto prayed for the recovery of Mandela, who was freed in 1990 after 27 years as a prisoner of white racist rule and won election to the presidency in all-race elections in 1994. He retired from public life years ago and had received medical care at his Johannesburg home until his latest transfer to a hospital.

At the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, Father Sebastian Rousso said Mandela, seen by many as a symbol of reconciliation for his peacemaking efforts, played a key role "not only for ourselves as South Africans, but for the world."

There is a stained glass image of Mandela with arms raised in the Catholic church, a center of protests and funeral services for activists during the apartheid years.

"We still need him in our lives because he did so much for us," said Mantsho Moralo, a receptionist who was in the congregation. Siyabonga Nyembe, a student, described Mandela as a "pillar of strength" for South Africans.

A stream of tourists visited Mandela's former home, now a museum, on Vilakazi Street in Soweto. Visitors and vendors wished a quick recovery for the man whose sacrifices in the fight against apartheid made their lives better, even if South Africa today is struggling today with high unemployment and other severe challenges.

"He's like one in a million. I don't think we're ever going to get a leader like him. We're living the life that we have because of him and for that we wish him well," said Seponono Kekana, who toured the brick, one-storey house.

On April 29, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Zuma and other leaders of the ruling African National Congress to Mandela's home. Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage - the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year - showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been particularly vulnerable to respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his long imprisonment. The bulk of that period was spent on Robben Island, an outpost off the coast of Cape Town where Mandela and other prisoners spent part of the time toiling in a stone quarry.

The Sunday Times, a South African newspaper, quoted Andrew Mlangeni, an old friend of Mandela, as saying he wished the former president would get better but noted his infirmity had become a drawn-out process. He said Mandela had been taken to the hospital "too many times" and that there was a possibility he would not be well again.

"The family must release him so that God may have his own way. They must release him spiritually and put their faith in the hands of God," said Mlangeni, a co-defendant of Mandela in the 1960s trial on sabotage charges that led to a sentence of life imprisonment for them and other anti-apartheid leaders.

"Once the family releases him, the people of South Africa will follow. We will say thank you, God, you have given us this man, and we will release him too," Mlangeni told the newspaper.

Nhlanhla Ngcobobo, a street vendor who works a few steps from the Mandela Family Restaurant next to the former leader's old home, said the ailing Mandela was a kind of psychological anchor for his compatriots. South Africa has held peaceful elections since 1994 and remains an economic powerhouse on the continent, but many worry that the sense of promise that Mandela represented in the early years of democracy is in peril.

"There's a lot of corruption and when Mandela dies, people will start feeling they can do what they like and corruption will be worse than it is," Ngcobobo said. "By him being alive, there's a lot more order."

---

Associated Press writer Wandoo Makurdi in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-family-visits-nelson-mandela-142009627.html

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Insider attack kills 3 US troops in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A man in an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on the American troops working with him in the country's east on Saturday, killing three of them, while an attacker with a grenade killed an Italian soldier in the west, officials said.

The shooting in Paktika province was the latest in a string of so-called "insider attacks" in which Afghan forces open fire on their own comrades or international troops. The incidents threaten to shake the confidence and trust of the two sides as the 2014 withdrawal of most of the international forces approaches.

An argument between the Afghan soldier and his trainers appeared to have led to Saturday's shooting on an Afghan National Army base in Paktika's Kher Qot district, according to a statement from the provincial governor's office. The international military coalition in Afghanistan confirmed that three U.S. service members died in an insider attack but gave few other details.

The angry Afghan soldier opened fire during the argument, killing the three foreign trainers and wounding three others, according to the governor's statement. The foreigners returned fire and killed the Afghan soldier, who had no known connection to the insurgency.

So far this year, there have been five insider attacks on foreign forces, with a total of eight troops and one U.S. contractor killed. Afghan security forces also are targets of such attacks. Last month, two recently rehired Afghan police opened fire on their commander at a checkpoint in a remote district in the country's south, killing him and six of his men.

The Taliban insurgents claim most of the insider attacks, saying they have infiltrated Afghan security forces or persuaded soldiers and police to join their side. However, the international coalition has said many of them are sparked by personal disputes.

In the western province of Farah, meanwhile, an Italian soldier was killed and three others wounded when an attacker lobbed explosives into their armored vehicle in western Afghanistan, Italy's government said.

The Defense Ministry said the attack in Farah province came as the Italian soldiers were returning to their base from training Afghan security forces.

The Italian convoy of three armored vehicle apparently had been slowed by traffic near an intersection when an attacker ran up and threw an explosive device into the lead vehicle, the ministry said. It added that the three wounded soldiers' injuries were not life-threatening.

The Taliban quickly took responsibility for the attack, with spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claiming that the attacker was an 11-year-old boy.

But Farah province provincial government spokesman Abdul Rahman Zhawandai says an adult man was seen throwing a grenade, then escaping by blending into the crowd at a nearby vegetable market.

Taliban insurgents have launched intense attacks across the country as Afghan forces take over most security responsibility ahead of most foreign troops' withdrawal next year.

Saturday's deaths brought to 16 the number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this month. On Thursday, seven Georgian soldiers died in a truck bombing at their base in the south.

___

Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insider-attack-kills-3-us-troops-afghanistan-123010368.html

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Triple or not, 5 things to watch for in Belmont

NEW YORK (AP) ? A large field of 3-year-olds is set to run in the $1 million Belmont Stakes on Saturday. Among the competitors are Kentucky Derby winner Orb, Preakness winner Oxbow and a record five horses trained by Todd Pletcher, including Unlimited Budget with Rosie Napravnik attempting to become the second female jockey to win a Triple Crown race.

A rematch between the Derby and Preakness winners sure didn't scare off the competition. The field of 14 matches the largest since 1996, one shy of the record set in 1983.

There may not be a Triple Crown on the line, but here are five things to watch for while the field is negotiating one long, mile-and-a-half race known as the "Test of the Champion."

? HELLO, MUDDER: The New York area got a soaking on Friday. There's also a chance of afternoon showers on Saturday, leaving the possibility of a wet track by post time at 6:36 p.m. So who likes the mud? A bunch of 'em, starting with the top three finishers in the Derby. Orb romped past 16 horses in the final half mile and won over slop at Churchill Downs. Golden Soul, who was 2 1/2 lengths back in second, obviously had no issues with the track, and Revolutionary finished strong after a bumpy start to get third. The most intriguing mudder could be Freedom Child, who flourished in the slop at Belmont and led wire-to-wire in a stunning 13 1/4-length romp in the Peter Pan four weeks ago. Vyjack won on the slop at Aqueduct, but did not handle it well in the Derby, finishing 18th. The filly Unlimited Budget opened her career with a win over a good track at Aqueduct back in November.

? HELLO, FATHER: If you're looking for champion bloodlines, here's a bunch: Incognito is a son of 1992 Belmont winner and Horse of the Year A.P. Indy; Preakness winner Oxbow is a son of 1998 Breeders' Cup Classic winner Awesome Again; Palace Malice is a son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin; and Unlimited Budget is a daughter of 2007 Derby winner Street Sense. Also, Derby winner Orb and Peter Pan winner Freedom Child were both sired by Malibu Moon.

? FILLY, FEMALE: Unlimited Budget will attempt to become the fourth filly to win the Belmont, and the first to win a Triple Crown race with a female jockey in Rosie Napravnik. The two got together at the Fair Grounds in February and won the Rachel Alexandra, and the filly is the co-fourth choice at 8-1. Napravnik finished third in the Derby and fifth in the Preakness aboard Mylute, and will attempt to join Julie Krone (winner of the 1993 Belmont aboard Colonial Affair) as the only women to win a Triple Crown race.

? THE O FACTOR: Don't tell us you should have bet the imaginary O-trifecta when one of the three horses in the field whose name begins with the letter O wins. Orb won the Derby, Oxbow won the Preakness, and Overanalyze is back for the Belmont after an 11th place finish in the Derby. The only time O horses ruled the Derby, Preakness and Belmont was 1935, when Omaha became the third of 11 horses to win the Triple Crown.

? ANOTHER TRY 5 FOR TODD: For the third time, trainer Todd Pletcher will send out five horses in a single Triple Crown race. He's done it twice in the Derby and came back a 10-time loser, and he's got a few big chances to get it done in the Belmont because he has five of the 14 horses (35.7 percent of the field) ? Revolutionary, Unlimited Budget, Palace Malice, Overanalyze and Midnight Taboo. His Derby losers in 2007 were Circular Quay (sixth), Any Given Saturday (eighth), Sam P. (ninth), Scat Daddy (18th) and Cowtown Cat (20th). In last month's Derby, it was Revolutionary (third), Charming Kitten (ninth), Overanalyze (11th), Palace Malice (12th) and Verrazano (14th).

___

Follow Richard Rosenblatt on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/rosenblattap

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/triple-not-5-things-watch-belmont-074755680.html

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Former China railways boss goes on trial for graft

BEIJING (AP) ? The man who once ran China's powerful railways ministry wept as he admitted his guilt and sought leniency Sunday at his trial on corruption charges, one of the country's highest-level graft cases in years.

Liu Zhijun, 60, who oversaw the ministry's high-profile bullet train development, has been accused of taking massive bribes and steering lucrative projects to associates. The case is seen as an indicator of how top-level officials might fare in an anti-corruption campaign that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has vowed will target both high and low officials.

The case presents a thorny challenge to the Chinese government, which wants to appear tough on graft but is mindful of how the prosecution of a massive case like Liu's could further hurt public confidence in the railways system. Such a case raises questions of whether the corruption affected the construction, management and operation of the railways that serve millions of Chinese every day.

Liu's defense attorney, Qian Lieyang, said after the trial that his client admitted guilt and expressed remorse during the proceedings, weeping as he read out a personal statement. Qian also said he asked the court to consider Liu's contributions in spearheading the much-admired high-speed train system when drawing up the sentence.

Even prosecutors asked the court for lenience on Liu's behalf, saying that he showed a positive attitude during investigations and confessed to many wrongdoings on his own accord, Qian told reporters.

Qian's account of the prosecution's approach suggests that authorities were trying to lay the legal groundwork for delivering a sentence that would be appear tough on corruption, while not being too severe on a person whose name is so closely tied with the high-speed railways ? a source of national pride.

"When the court makes a decision on sentencing, I hope it will consider his contributions to the country," Qian said.

Liu went on trial at Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court amid relatively tight security. Police cars were parked around the court's perimeter and officers stood on the sidewalk to prevent onlookers from getting close to the entrance or to a group of reporters gathered outside. Court officials and police told foreign journalists to leave the premises.

The trial concluded by midday Sunday. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that prosecutors accuse Liu of using his position of influence to help about 11 business associates win promotions and project contracts and accepted 64.6 million Chinese yuan ($10.5 million) in unspecified bribes between 1986 and 2011.

"Liu's malpractice led to huge losses of public assets and damage to the interests of the state and people," the indictment said, according to Xinhua.

State broadcaster China Central Television showed Liu, a thin, bespectacled man with a comb-over, being escorted into a courtroom and standing during part of the procedure, his face expressionless.

Qian said he had argued for the severity of the charges to be reduced on the basis of Liu's remorseful attitude, his contributions to national development and questions over whether part of the bribery charges actually amounted to bribery by legal definition,

The court said it would announce a verdict at a later, unspecified date.

Liu was ousted in February 2011 for unspecified discipline violations. Months later, a high-speed train crash killed 40 people near the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou.

Earlier this year, Beijing dismantled the Ministry of Railways and separated its regulatory and commercial arms in a bid to reduce bureaucracy and boost efficiency.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-china-railways-boss-goes-trial-graft-094947776.html

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