Source: http://www.popularmechanics.comhow-the-feds-have-tried-to-fight-leaks-15576474?src=rss
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013
How the Feds Have Tried to Fight Leaks (So Far)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Throughout the Obama presidency, the federal government has struggled to find the right mix of tactics to stop internal leaks such as the major NSA breach by Edward Snowden.
New Survey Will Hunt for Nearby Alien Planets on the Cheap
After it launched into space in 2009, NASA?s Kepler Space Telescope sniffed out thousands of potential planets around other stars, simply by watching for the dips in starlight as planets pass over ? transit ? the disc of their stars.
Among Kepler's portfolio of planets are gas giants like Jupiter, but many of these are so close to their stars that their atmospheres sizzle at over 1,000 degrees. Others are Neptune-sized, or smaller "super-Earths" lurking in their stars? habitable zones.
Yet the great strengths that led to Kepler?s success were also its weakness; it stared at one patch of sky in the Milky Way constantly, amongst the patterns of the constellations Lyra and Cygnus where the density of stars is highest. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]
While the mission may have seen more stars in this area of sky, some of the stars and their transits that Kepler observed are so faint that ground-based telescopes can?t conduct follow-up observations. What?s needed is a telescope, or a set of telescopes, that can look for planetary transits of the closest and brightest stars across a much wider area of sky, researchers say.
Enter the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). It's the successor to the highly successful Super-WASP project, which was assembled on a shoestring budget and sports two observatories in the Canary Islands and South Africa.
NGTS is being built atop Cerro Paranal at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile?s Atacama Desert. It will be the perfect counterpoint to the space-based Kepler, advocates say.
"We have the Kepler machine that has found over 2,000 planet [candidates], which is wonderful," said Didier Queloz, an exoplanet expert who recently joined the University of Cambridge as Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. "Most of them are Neptune-sized, but the problem is that all these planets are so faint that we cannot measure their mass or do anything about them."
Researchers know that these planets are there but, without the necessary instrumentation, there is not much they can do in the way of truly understanding what they and their atmospheres are made of.
"For scientists, it is a lot of frustration because in that sense Kepler is an experiment that brought even bigger questions," Queloz said.??
Searching for small nearby planets
NGTS? job is to find planets around bright or nearby stars for which these questions can be solved. It is not interested in any old planets, but instead mostly the smaller "hot Neptunes" and any super-Earths that if finds.?
Researchers intend to measure the densities of 100 such worlds by getting the radius of the planets from the size of their transits ? the bigger the planet, the more starlight is blocked. Follow-up radial velocity observations by other ground-based instruments, which look at how a star "wobbles" thanks to the gravity of an orbiting planet, will reveal the mass of the planets. [7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets]
"This will be the first statistical sample of measured densities for small planets," said the University of Warwick?s Peter Wheatley, who is NGTS? co-principal investigator. "We believe this sample will allow quantitative tests of planet formation, migration and evolutionary models, and will drive the development of future models."
The NGTS team doesn?t plan to stop there. They are thinking even more ambitiously, with the intent of finding super-Earths and Neptunes around stars bright enough for large telescopes ? such as Hubble, the Very Large Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope ? to characterize their atmospheres using transmission spectroscopy. This method studies the starlight that is absorbed as it passes through the thin atmospheric veils that coat these worlds.
Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdon, who is not a member of the NGTS consortium, said that its findings will be valuable.
"It [NGTS] will likely produce several dozen new detections, which is good because it helps us understand the formation processes and the occurrence rate of Neptune-sized planets better," he said. "Plenty of the candidates that they will find will also have radial velocity follow-ups, which is another good thing as it allows for independent confirmation and, more interestingly, simultaneous determination of planetary radii and masses, which can then be used to estimate planet compositions."
As far as detecting planets in the habitable zone, Wheatley doesn?t rule it out, although he admits it?s not one of NGTS? primary goals (unlike Kepler).
"It is actually possible that we will find planets in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars," he said. "Our simulations show we should be sensitive to two or three habitable zone planets, but we?re not making them one of our primary science goals as they are right at our detection limits."
Of course, whether life could exist on a Neptune planet, be it hot or cold, is uncertain, particularly as scientists don?t yet fully understand the make-up of hot Neptunes. Furthermore, could the telescope array discover something smaller than a hot Neptune?
"We hope to detect perhaps 20 super-Earths around stars brighter than 13th magnitude as well as 60 or more hot Neptunes," said NGTS team member Matt Burleigh of the University of Leicester. "The super-Earths will most likely be found around the smaller radius, lower mass red dwarf stars in the survey area. Some could even be in their host star?s habitable zones, which are much closer to red dwarfs than solar-type stars."
A wider survey
In comparison to the Kepler spacecraft, NGTS? advantage is its total survey area of 100 square degrees, scientists say.
"The field of view of NGTS is similar to that of Kepler, but we are planning to observe around four fields per year for at least four years and so we should cover at least sixteen times the sky area that Kepler does," said Wheatley.?
The idea is that, by covering more sky, the survey will hit upon more brighter and/or nearby stars that Kepler?s restricted field of view misses, in the hope of snaring planets for which it is easier, in the long term, to measure characteristics such as atmospheric composition. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]
NGTS? predecessor, Super-WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets), has detected 65 exoplanets since it went online in 2004. SuperWASP doesn?t have any telescopes to its name, but rather just arrays of camera lenses bought from eBay.
So NGTS, with its custom-built 8-inch (20 centimeters) aperture telescopes, each affixed to its own individual mount and each sporting a large format CCD camera, is a big step up. But it's still dwarfed by its giant neighbors, the four 8-meter telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope, which NGTS will sit next to atop the peak of Cerro Paranal. (NGTS is the first private instrument to be granted permission to build at the ESO site at Cerro Paranal).
Currently being assembled for just less than two million pounds (around $3 million) NGTS will see first light in 2014.
SuperWASP allowed many scientists like Wheatley and Burleigh to cut their teeth on exoplanet detection, so that when it comes to NGTS they?ll be able to dive straight in.
NGTS is coming along at the vanguard of a new wave of planet-detecting instruments. For example, ESPRESSO, the Echelle SPectrograph or Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, is to be the successor to the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph, which? holds the record for the most exoplanet discoveries from a ground-based instrument, and will be attached to the VLT to make sensitive radial velocity measurements.
Then there's TESS, NASA?s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will perform similar work as NGTS, searching the nearest or brightest stars for transits.?
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency?s CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite), which like TESS is slated to launch in 2017, will target previously confirmed planets in order to improve the measurements of these transits that have been uncovered from Earth.
NGTS will be able to provide planet fodder for all of these missions and instruments to investigate further, in conjunction with the likes of the James Webb Space Telescope or the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
"To confirm our planets and measure their mass and density, we require sensitive radial velocity measurements, initially with HARPS and then also with ESPRESSO on the VLT," Wheatley said. "And to detect the atmospheres of NGTS planets, we need a wide range of VLT and eventually E-ELT instrumentation for transmission spectroscopy and secondary eclipse observations. So we need ESO facilities to achieve our science goals, and ESO needs NGTS to provide small planet targets to the VLT and eventually E-ELT."
This story was provided by?Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/survey-hunt-nearby-alien-planets-cheap-140546654.html
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Monday, June 10, 2013
2 Koreas talk in border village after tensions
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, walks with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won as they leave for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, walks with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won as they leave for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, speaks to the media while standing with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won before leaving for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Visitors take souvenir photos as military soldiers patrol at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A visitor stands on their toes while taking souvenir photos in front of a wire fence covered with ribbons carrying messages left by visitors wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas, at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Visitors look through a wire fence decorated with ribbons carrying messages visitors left wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas, at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects.
The meeting at Panmunjom, where the truce ending the 1950-53 Korean War was signed, is the first of its kind on the Korean Peninsula in more than two years. Success will be judged on whether the delegates can pave the way for a summit between the ministers of each country's department for cross-border affairs, which South Korea has proposed for Wednesday in Seoul. Such ministerial talks haven't happened since 2007.
The intense media interest in what's essentially a meeting of bureaucrats to iron out technical details is an indication of how bad ties between the Koreas have been.
Any dialogue is an improvement on the belligerence that has marked the relationship over recent years, which have seen North Korean nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches, attacks in 2010 blamed on the North that killed 50 South Koreans, and a steady stream in recent months of invective and threats from Pyongyang and counter-vows from Seoul.
"Today's working-level talks will be a chance to take care of administrative and technical issues in order to successfully host the ministers' talks," one of the South Korean delegates, Unification Policy Officer Chun Hae-sung, said in Seoul before the group's departure for Panmunjom.
The southern delegation will keep in mind, he said, "that the development of South and North Korean relations starts from little things and gradual trust-building."
During the morning talks, the delegates discussed the agenda for the ministerial meeting, location, date, the number of participants and how long they will stay in Seoul, if the meeting is held there, the Unification Ministry, which is responsible for North Korea issues, said.
Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk told reporters that there were no major disputes and the talks would continue.
Analysts express wariness about North Korea's intentions, with some seeing the interest in dialogue as part of a pattern where Pyongyang follows aggressive rhetoric and provocations with diplomatic efforts to trade an easing of tension for outside concessions.
Recent months saw North Korean threats of nuclear war, Pyongyang's claim that the Korean War armistice was void, the closing of a jointly run factory park and a North Korean vow to ramp up production of nuclear bomb fuel.
If the Koreas can arrive at an agreement for ministerial talks, that meeting will likely focus on reopening the factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong that was the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, and on other scrapped rapprochement projects and reunions of families separated by the Korean War.
Pyongyang pulled its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong factories in April, and Seoul withdrew its last personnel in May.
Success will also mark a victory for South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who took office in February and has maintained through the heightened tensions a policy that combines vows of strong counter-action to any North Korea provocation with efforts to build trust and re-establish dialogue.
It wasn't immediately clear how long Sunday's meetings would last; reporters weren't being allowed access to the venue.
The Koreas have been communicating on a recently restored Red Cross line that Pyongyang shut down during earlier tensions this spring. The site of Sunday's meeting holds added significance because the armistice ending the Korean War was signed there 60 years ago next month. The Panmunjom truce, however, has never been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically at war.
Representatives of the rival Koreas met on the peninsula in February 2011 and their nuclear envoys met in Beijing later that year, but government officials from both sides have not met since.
The meeting follows a summit by U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California. White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said Obama and Xi found "quite a bit of alignment" on North Korea and agreed that Pyongyang has to abandon its nuclear weapons aspirations.
China provides a lifeline for a North Korea struggling with energy and other economic needs, and views stability in Pyongyang as crucial for its own economy and border security. But after Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, China tightened its cross-border trade inspections and banned its state banks from dealing with North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un late last month sent to China his special envoy, who reportedly told Xi that Pyongyang was willing to return to dialogue. President Park will travel to Beijing to meet Xi later this month.
The talks between the Koreas on Sunday could represent a change in North Korea's approach, analysts said, or could simply be an effort to ease international demands that it end its development of nuclear weapons, a topic crucial to Washington but initially not a part of the envisioned inter-Korean meetings.
Pyongyang, which is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices, has committed a drumbeat of acts that Washington, Seoul and others deem provocative since Kim Jong Un took over in December 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
__
AP writer Sam Kim contributed to this report from Seoul.
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Sunday, June 9, 2013
How would you change Samsung's Series 7 Gamer?
Samsung isn't normally spoken of in the same breath as Razer, Alienware or Clevo, which is why its 17-inch Series 7 Gamer was such a surprise. But could it run with the big boys? Surprisingly, yes. When we reviewed it, we were impressed by its performance and powerful display -- the only downside was its pitiful (and wholly expected) two-hour battery life. The question is, if you were beavering away in Samsung's laptop design department, what would you have done differently?
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Md3Rr-qtmdE/
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Texas actress charged in Obama ricin threat
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
Shannon Richardson, right, is led from the emergency room at CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System in Texarkana, Texas, Friday, June 7, 2013. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana courtroom after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette, Curt Youngblood) MANDATORY CREDIT
FILE - In this May 31, 2013 file photo, members of an FBI hazardous materials team prepare to enter a residence in New Boston, Texas in connection with a federal investigation surrounding ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two U.S. law enforcement officials say Shannon Richardson of New Boston, Texas, has been arrested Friday, June 7, in the investigation. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette, Evan Lewis) MANDATORY CREDIT
FILE - In this May 31, 2013 file photo, authorities search a residence in New Boston, Texas in connection with a federal investigation surrounding ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two U.S. law enforcement officials say Shannon Richardson of New Boston, Texas, has been arrested Friday, June 7, in the investigation. (AP Texarkana Gazette, Evan Lewis) MANDATORY CREDIT
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) ? A pregnant Texas actress who first told the FBI that her husband sent ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, then allegedly said she sent them because her husband "made her" do it, was charged Friday with threatening the president.
Shannon Guess Richardson, 35, appeared in a Texarkana courtroom after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. The federal charge carries up to 10 years in prison, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said.
Richardson, a mother of five who has played bit roles on television and in movies, was arrested earlier Friday for allegedly mailing the ricin-laced letters last month to the White House, Bloomberg and the mayor's Washington gun-control group. The letters ? which authorities determined were mailed from Richardson's hometown of New Boston or nearby Texarkana and postmarked in Shreveport, La. ? threatened violence against gun-control advocates, authorities said.
Her court-appointed attorney didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.
According to an FBI affidavit, Richardson contacted authorities on May 30 to implicate her estranged husband, Nathaniel Richardson. She later failed a polygraph test, and investigators looking into her story found numerous inconsistencies, the document said.
Among the inconsistencies: Nathaniel Richardson would have been at work at a time when Internet searches tied to the letters were made on the couple's laptop and at the time they were postmarked.
During an interview with authorities Thursday, Shannon Richardson admitted mailing the letters knowing they contained ricin, but she said her husband had typed them and made her print and send them, the affidavit said.
No charges have been filed against Nathaniel Richardson. His attorney, John Delk, told The Associated Press Friday that his client was pleased with his wife's arrest and was working with authorities to prove his innocence.
Delk said he wasn't anticipating that Nathanial Richardson would be arrested. "But until I'm sure they're not looking at him being involved, I can't say much more," he said.
Delk previously told the AP that the couple is going through a divorce and that the 33-year-old Army veteran may have been "set up" by his wife.
FBI agents wearing hazardous material suits were seen going in and out of the Richardsons' house on Wednesday in nearby New Boston, about 150 miles northeast of Dallas near the Arkansas and Oklahoma borders. Authorities conducted a similar search on May 31.
The house is now under quarantine for "environmental or toxic agents," according to a posting at the residence. Multiple samples taken from the couples' home tested positive for ricin, according to the affidavit. Federal agents also found castor beans ? the key ingredient in ricin ? along with syringes and other items that could be used to extract the lethal poison, the affidavit says.
Bloomberg issued a statement Friday thanking local and federal law enforcement agencies "for their outstanding work in apprehending a suspect," saying they worked collaboratively from the outset "and will continue to do so as the investigation continues."
Shannon Richardson appears in movies and on TV under the name Shannon Guess. Her resume on the Internet movie database IMDb said she has had small television roles in "The Vampire Diaries" and "The Walking Dead." She had a minor role in the movie "The Blind Side" and appeared in an Avis commercial, according to the resume.
She was seen leaving a Texarkana hospital on Friday shortly before the court hearing, though it was unclear why she was there. A hospital spokeswoman didn't return a phone message seeking comment.
Delk said the Richardsons were expecting their first child in October. Shannon Richardson also has five children ranging in age from 4 to 19 from other relationships, four of whom had been living with the couple in the New Boston home, the attorney said.
Nathaniel Richardson works as a mechanic at the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, Texas, a facility that repairs tanks, Humvees and other mobile military equipment. He and Shannon were married in October 2011.
According to court records, Shannon Richardson is in federal custody. The government is requesting that she be held without bond, and a detention hearing is scheduled for next Friday, the records show.
The FBI is investigating at least three cases over the past two months in which ricin was mailed to Obama and other public figures. Ricin has been sent to officials sporadically over the years, but experts say that there seems to be a recent uptick and that copycat attacks ? made possible by the relative ease of extracting the poison ? may be the reason.
If inhaled, ricin can cause respiratory failure, among other symptoms. If swallowed, it can shut down the liver and other organs, resulting in death. The amount of ricin that can fit on the head of a pin is said to be enough to kill an adult if properly prepared. No antidote is available, though researchers are trying to develop one.
___
Danny Robbins reported from Dallas. Associated Press writer Adam Goldman contributed to this report from Washington.
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Saturday, June 8, 2013
Hard issues on table at Obama, Xi 'informal' summit
By Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland and John Ruwitch
RANCHO MIRAGE, California (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, launched straight into discussing thorny issues at an informal summit and may delve deeper when they meet again on Saturday.
The two-day talks at a desert retreat near Palm Springs, California, was meant to be an opportunity for Obama and Xi to get to know each other, Chinese and U.S. officials have said, and to inject some warmth into often chilly relations while setting the stage for better cooperation.
After more than two hours of discussions, Xi and Obama said they had agreed on the need to work together to tackle cyber security issues, a major irritant as U.S. accusations of Chinese hacking intensify.
They also discussed the importance of improved military-to-military ties, an area hindered in the past by mistrust and poor communication.
"We are more likely to achieve our objectives of prosperity and security of our peoples if we are working cooperatively rather than engaged in conflict," Obama told reporters.
Ties between Beijing and Washington have been buffeted in recent months by strains over trade disputes, North Korea, human rights and each country's military intentions.
The United States says Chinese hackers have accessed American military secrets, an accusation China denies, and the White House itself faces questions at home over its own surveillance of emails and phone records.
In a reminder of how serious the United States is taking cyber security, the Washington Post on Saturday published details of what it said was a top secret document in which Obama last year called on national security leaders to develop destructive cyber warfare capabilities that could be triggered with "little or no warning" against adversaries around the world.
Obama said the two countries must strike a balance between competition and cooperation to overcome the challenges that divide them, and Xi pushed for a relationship that takes into account China's ascendancy.
Xi is expected to voice discomfort over Washington's strategic pivot toward Asia, a military rebalancing of U.S. forces toward the Pacific that Beijing sees as an effort to hamper its economic and political expansion.
Obama and Xi are due to hold a total of more than five hours of talks in Sunnylands, a 200-acre (81-hectare) estate on Bob Hope Drive that has hosted presidents including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and where afternoon June temperatures soar to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) or more.
Obama will be looking to build on growing Chinese impatience with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, a shift that could bring Beijing - the closest thing Pyongyang has to an ally - closer to Washington's position.
"I think it's perhaps the most important meeting that they'll have in their tenure," said Paul Haenle, former China director on the National Security Council and director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.
"The biggest problem with the relationship is that we haven't had the deep and personal engagement at the very senior level that's required now to move forward to take the relationship to a new point."
(Editing by Louise Ireland and Sandra Maler)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cyber-disputes-loom-large-obama-meets-chinas-xi-020327713.html
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Belmont Stakes could be wet, wide-open race
NEW YORK (AP) ? Orb and Oxbow. Oxbow and Orb. Anyway you draw it up, there will not be a Triple Crown on the line in the $1 million Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
Even without a Triple try, the Belmont is still an intriguing race. It matches Kentucky Derby winner Orb against Preakness winner Oxbow, Todd Pletcher sending out a record five horses and one of the largest fields in the 145-year history of a race also known as the "Test of the Champion."
So let's not overanalyze the rematch because there are many more story lines that will unfold when the 14-horse field begins its 1? -mile run around Belmont Park on what could be a wet track following 24 hours of rain.
Orb is looking to bounce back after his fourth-place finish in the Preakness, following his 2? -length win in the Derby. Oxbow is out to show his wire-to-wire Preakness win was not a fluke.
Todd Pletcher's quintet includes the filly Unlimited Budget, with Rosie Napravnik looking to become the second female jockey to win a Triple Crown race. Up-and-coming Freedom Child joins the Triple Crown fray for the first time off his 13? -length romp in the Peter Pan Stakes four weeks ago over a sloppy track at Belmont Park. And Kenny McPeek, who won the 2002 Belmont with Sarava at record odds of 70-1, is back again with 30-1 shot Frac Daddy.
"There's probably a few in there that don't figure, but they've got just as much license to run as Orb or Oxbow or anybody else," said Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey, whose Derby winner is the 3-1 morning-line favorite. "I'm not going to worry about because it makes this a good, solid field."
Revolutionary is the second choice at 9-2, with Oxbow third at 5-1 and Unlimited Budget and Freedom Child each at 8-1 in the field of 14 ? the largest since 1996 and one shy of the record set in 1983.
Weather could be a factor. A steady rain began early Friday and was expected to continue through Saturday morning, with as much as 3 inches predicted by the National Weather Service. The track was rolled and sealed after Thursday's races to compress the dirt so water doesn't seep into the racing surface.
If the track comes up wet, Orb, Golden Soul and Revolutionary ? the first three finishers in the Derby run over a sloppy track at Churchill Downs ? should be able to deal with it. So, too, should Freedom Child.
"I like what I'm seeing," said Freedom Child's trainer Tom Albertrani. "I'm getting all the good signs. He couldn't be doing any better."
The last Belmont run over the slop was two years ago when 24-1 long shot Ruler On Ice won. It also was the most recent Derby winner vs. Preakness winner matchup, with Preakness winner Shackleford fifth and Derby winner Animal Kingdom sixth.
In addition to Frac Daddy, there are few other long shots worth a look in 20-1 Will Take Charge and 15-1 Palace Malice.
D. Wayne Lukas will be out to win his 15th Triple Crown race with Oxbow, and he also trains Will Take Charge. The big colt may not have the nifty moves of some of his rivals, but Lukas says once he builds up a head of steam "he's dangerous."
Palace Malice is among Pletcher's squad ? the others are the filly, Revolutionary, Overanalyze and Midnight Taboo. Despite only one win in seven starts, Palace Malice, the son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin, looks to have the potential to win at the top level.
"He's always impressed us in his training, and he's shown hints of that in some of his races although he hasn't completely followed through and won a big race that we feel like he's capable of doing," said Pletcher. "We think he's well meant for this race."
The Belmont is known as a rider's race because it takes a savvy jockey familiar with the lay of the land to navigate the nation's only 1? -mile oval. Belmont Park is like the Grand Canyon of racetracks, a much wider track than Churchill Downs or Pimlico, with long, sweeping turns.
It's also deceiving. Judging distance can be difficult. For example, at the top of the turn at Belmont, there's still a half mile left in the race. At other tracks, there's only a quarter mile to go.
Gary Stevens, who will be aboard Oxbow, knows all about the intricacies of the track. In 1997, he moved too soon aboard Silver Charm and had his Triple Crown spoiled by Touch Gold. A year later, he spoiled Real Quiet's Triple bid when Kent Desormeaux moved too early and Stevens' Victory Gallop won by a nose.
"''Belmont Park is like the ocean," said the recently unretired Stevens. "You can have a lot of fun in it, but it can hurt you if you don't respect it.
"It's a tricky place. It may look simple, but it's not simple. I think the best horse usually wins the Belmont, other than jockey error."
In the Preakness, Oxbow took charge from the start, set a slow pace and had enough left to win by 1? lengths. He should have plenty of company if he decides to gun for the lead on Saturday.
Look for Freedom Child, Frac Daddy and Palace Malice to give chase, with Orb, Golden Soul and Revolutionary back in the pack, most likely behind the mid-packers such as Unlimited Budget, Overanalyze and Will Take Charge. As the leaders move into the far turn, the real race riding should begin, with jockeys trying to pick the precise moment to ask their horse for a winning move.
Pletcher's Rags to Riches became the first filly in 102 years to win the Belmont in 2007. He believes any of his starters has a chance depending on how the race unfolds.
"The Belmont can be a very demanding race," he said. "Pace was a factor in both the Derby and Preakness and it'll dictate who is going to do what. A slower pace will allow some of these horses to run a little further and a fast pace will really expose some of them."
Despite the absence of a Triple Crown attempt, there's still a lot riding on the outcome. Says New Yorker Mike Repole, who owns Unlimited Budget, Overanalyze and Midnight Taboo: "Some owners get Kentucky Derby fever. I get Belmont Stakes fever."
___
Follow Richard Rosenblatt on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/rosenblattap
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/belmont-stakes-could-wet-wide-open-race-191516266.html
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Depositors, senior lenders safe in EU bank restructurings: EC official
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Depositors and senior debt holders would be shielded from losses in any bank restructurings ordered by the European Commission, a senior Commission official said on Friday, the latest attempt to reassure savers that they would not be hit by bank problems.
Gert-Jan Koopman, deputy director-general for state aid at the EU executive body, said shareholders and junior debt holders would bear the burden under updated state aid rules that are set to come into force in August.
"If necessary, equity will be fully written down. The same goes for junior debt. But senior debt holders or depositors will not be required to be bailed in," Koopman told Reuters.
Concerns arose about whether depositors would be hit in bank rescues after Cyprus controversially forced savers to foot part of the bill for bailing out its banks.
Koopman said rescued banks, which need EU regulatory approval for their bailouts, would have to exploit their capital-raising ability to the maximum extent possible.
"Often banks have other means of contribution. One is to reduce their risk-weighted assets," Koopman said.
The European Commission is updating its rules governing when countries are allowed to assist banks in trouble. As regulator in such state-aid cases across the European Union, it has the power to set conditions, including the restructuring of a bank, or freezing dividend and coupon payments.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by John O'Donnell and Greg Mahlich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/depositors-senior-lenders-safe-eu-bank-restructurings-ec-095949153.html
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A Hubble view of NGC 1579: The Trifid of the North
June 7, 2013 ? Unlike the venomous fictional plants that share its name, the Trifid of the North, otherwise known as the Northern Trifid or NGC 1579, poses no threat to your vision. The nebula's moniker is inspired by the better-known Messier 20, the Trifid Nebula, which lies very much further south in the sky and displays strikingly similar swirling clouds of gas and dust.
The Trifid of the North is a large, dusty region that is currently forming new stars. These stars are very hot and therefore appear to be very blue. During their short lives they radiate strongly into the gas surrounding them, causing it to glow brightly. Many regions like the Trifid of the North -- named H II regions -- are clumpy and strangely shaped due to the powerful winds emanating from the stars within them. H II regions also have relatively short lives, furiously forming baby stars until the immense winds from these bodies blow the gas and dust away, leaving just stars behind.
The image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the bright body of the nebula, with dark dust lanes snaking across the frame. The Trifid of the North glows strongly due to the many stars within it, like young binary EM* LkHA 101. Visible to the bottom right of the image, this binary is thought to be surrounded by a hundred or so fainter and less massive stars, making up a recently formed cluster. It lies behind a cloud of dust so thick that it is almost invisible to astronomers at optical wavelengths. Infrared imaging has now penetrated this dusty veil and is uncovering the secrets of this binary star, which is about five thousand times brighter than our own sun.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/fJrFi_5zcuI/130607153636.htm
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Marathon men: Superstars who wrestled more than once in a night
It might have well been called, ?Monday Night Daniel Bryan? on June 3, as the submission specialist took over Raw by competing in two grueling matches in his latest attempt to prove to himself that he is not Team Hell No?s ?weak link.?
Kicking the night off with an explosive Six-Man Tag Team Match against The Shield, Bryan then made the somewhat rash decision to take on the ever-hungry Ryback later in the night.
Watch Bryan go berserk!
As remarkable as Bryan?s performance was, though, the former World Heavyweight Champion is hardly the first to perform double-duty on a given night of squared-circle action. After all, as WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair used to say, he?d wrestle six days a week, then twice on Sundays.
But to do what WWE?s submission specialist did on Raw is truly an accomplishment, as are the following examples of Superstars locking up more than once over the course of a given show.
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Friday, June 7, 2013
PFT: Peer blames head injuries for Jones' death
Getty ImagesThe Packers and Brett Favre are inching and lurching toward an inevitable reunion, with Favre returning to Lambeau Field as the prodigal son who is celebrated, not shunned.
Aaron Rodgers has openly supported a reconciliation.? CEO Mark Murphy has said the franchise needs Favre ?back in the family.?
Favre has now weighed in, via a radio interview with WGR 550 in Buffalo.
?[T]he things that transpired that led to us ?breaking up? if you will, to me, are over and done with,? Favre said, via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.? ?When will that happen?? I don?t think either side is trying to push the issue . I think Mark Murphy ? and Mark really came in the last few weeks of my career in Green Bay ? he kind of came into a hornet?s nest if you will.? He?s been extremely great in trying to make this work.? In our discussions, it will happen.? I think both sides are genuine.? I?know they are.? And that?s the way it has to come across because that?s the way it should be.? We don?t want to go out there waving to the crowd with our backs to each other.? And I?don?t think that?s going to happen.?
Favre added that he ?really [doesn't] hold any regrets? about his entire career, but he realizes that the final days in Green Bay were awkward and ugly.
?It is what it is,? Favre said.? ?It?s over and done with.? I was at fault.? I feel that both sides had a part in it.? If you could go back would I or them have done things differently?? I?m sure both sides would.? But you can?t.?
He?s right that both sides were at fault.? Favre?s annual indecision about retiring compelled the team to draft Rodgers in 2005, and after three years on the bench the Packers were ready to use him.? So the Packers, instead of cutting Favre or trading him in the offseason, pushed Favre for a definitive answer as to his plans for 2008 in February, knowing that if pressed for an answer in any February his answer would be, ?I?m done.?
And then the Packers hoped to create an outcome in which Favre played neither for them nor anyone else ? especially not in the NFC North.? The Packers, once it became clear Favre wanted to play after the calendar reached the months when his desire typically returned, set up a clumsy showdown, forcing Favre to show up and putting him on the sidelines and ultimately engineering a trade to anywhere but Minnesota.
Which of course made Favre even more determined to play for the Vikings and stick it to the Packers.? Which he did in 2009, sweeping his former team.
But Green Bay had the last laugh.? After watching Favre?s Vikings blow a chance at getting to the Super Bowl, the Packers swept Brett in 2010 amid embarrassing revelations about his alleged texting habits ? and then won the Super Bowl without him.
So, yes, both sides were at fault and, yes, the Packers and Favre need to publicly reconcile, not via sound bites but from the middle of the 50 yard line at Lambeau Field.
The problem is that, with the cover that comes from being in a crowded stadium, there will be plenty of boos.? Enough to be heard.? And the only thing that will make them less audible will be the passage of time.
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Thursday, June 6, 2013
Jumble of education topics facing Congress
WASHINGTON (AP) ? From pre-kindergarten to No Child Left Behind, from broadband-wired schools to college loans, students in every age group are suddenly finding the spotlight on Capitol Hill.
After months of relative neglect, education issues are getting the attention of lawmakers from both parties ? as well as President Barack Obama ? just as the school year is ending and, for many college students, the cost of education is about to go up.
Interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent if Congress doesn't act by July 1, but talks between Democrats and Republicans have largely broken down.
"Nobody's even sitting at the table. That's a problem," said Andrew Kelly, an education scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The Republican-led House already has taken action on loans ? and drawn a veto threat from Obama. The Senate is set to take up student loans Thursday with competing Republican and Democratic versions of legislation. It's not certain either can clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
Just before the Senate began to talk about student loans, Senate Republicans introduced their rewrite of the sweeping education law known as No Child Left Behind. Two days earlier, Democratic lawmakers introduced theirs.
House Republicans, too, are planning their own version of No Child Left Behind in coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been promoting Obama's early childhood program, although it seems headed nowhere. Obama has proposed working with states to set up programs for all 4-year-olds, and eventually all 3-year-olds, to prepare them for kindergarten.
And Obama is heading to North Carolina on Thursday to talk about putting high-speed Internet in schools.
In short: Scattershot ideas on education are tugging at Americans' attention and dividing Congress' priorities.
"You can't tell the bills without a program," said Terry Hartle, a top official with the higher-education lobbying group the American Council on Education.
Those are just the proposals getting serious or immediate consideration. Others ? Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposal to offer students loans at the same rates available to Wall Street, for example, and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's proposal to consolidate educational tax breaks ? are still sidelined despite fevered popularity among some constituencies in their parties.
Come July, college students will be hit with an extra $1,000 in student loan payments each year.
"If Congress doesn't act, student loans are going to be more expensive for students and parents struggling to pay for college," said Pauline Abernathy, a vice president at the Institute for College Access and Success.
Partisans are trying to find political advantage in their own positions and attempting to embarrass rivals. The committee devoted to electing Republicans to the Senate criticized potential Democratic candidates for joining other members of their party in voting against the GOP student loan bill in the House. Obama countered with a campaign-style event at White House event last week to criticize Republicans.
"Under normal circumstances, finding a way to avoid this should not be beyond the capability of Congress and the executive branch," said Hartle. "But in the current environment, when every minor skirmish turns into the Battle of Gettysburg, it becomes very hard to take care of things that would have been taken care of before."
Even so, other education advocates still see the potential for a deal similar to last summer's eleventh-hour agreement ? it came during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign ? that kept interest rates low for one more year.
"There's no question there's nothing like a deadline to force Congress' attention," said Abernathy, a former senior official in the White House and Education Department. "We have a July 1 deadline on student loans. The deadlines on the other issues have long since passed, such as No Child Left Behind. It's no question that it gets tougher to focus attention without that deadline."
Congress let the 2007 deadline for No Child Left Behind pass without action. Student loans, however, are a more immediate priority for families than standardized tests.
"It's a bread-and-butter, middle-class issue, paying for college," Kelly said. "Neither party wants to come across as the draconian one, or the one standing in the way of sustainable system."
___
Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/philip_elliott
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jumble-education-topics-facing-congress-074817359.html
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'Hercules' Writer to Adapt Japanese Animated Movie 'Vexille' for Universal
"We are making history in Florida," said Florida Lottery Secretary?Cynthia O'Connell at a Tallahassee?press conference on Wednesday afternoon, before announcing that a still myserious 84-year-old woman named Gloria C. Mackenzie had finally claimed last month's Powerball jackpot, worth over?$590 million. "We make history every day, because we have a lot of winners in Florida," she added, before discussing the details of what she said was the "largest winning lottery ticket in American lottery history." (The second largest was $550 million, in November 2012. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hercules-writer-adapt-japanese-animated-movie-vexille-universal-234150326.html
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With 35M Unique Viewers A Month, Twitch Hires An In-House Ad Sales Team To Ramp Up Monetization
E-sports streaming startup Twitch has already seen massive growth in its audience since launching to the public just about two years ago. Now it's hoping to better monetize that audience, with the creation of an in-house sales team to go after big advertisers in the video game industry.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ESRuozeZffE/
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US govt secretly collecting data on millions of Verizon users: Report
General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, speaks to reporters??Can you hear me now? Eep. The National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers ? right down to local call data ? under a top-secret court order issued in April, Britain?s The Guardian newspaper reported late Wednesday.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order, the Guardian reported, Verizon Business Services must provide the NSA ?on an ongoing daily basis? with information from calls between the U.S. and overseas ? but also with calls entirely inside the United States. Calls made entirely overseas were not affected. It was unclear whether phones in other Verizon divisions -- its regular cell phone operations, for instance -- were similarly targeted.
Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald, a frequent and fierce critic of the national security state?s expansion since 9-11, writes in his bombshell report that:
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk ? regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The order, issued April 25 and valid through July 19, requires Verizon to turn over the numbers of both parties, location data, call duration, and other information ? though not the contents of the calls.
Judge Roger Vinson?s order relies on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. That part of the law, also known as the ?business records provision,? permits FBI agents to seek a court order for ?any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)? it deems relevant to an investigation.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the way the government interprets that provision -- though he is sharply limited in what he can say about classified information. Wyden and Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, another committee member, wrote a scathing letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in Sept. 2011 warning that Americans would be "stunned" if they learned what the government was doing.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) denounced the scope of the surveillance. "It?s analogous to the FBI stationing an agent outside every home in the country to track who goes in and who comes out," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU Deputy Legal Director. The organization's Legislative Counsel, Michelle Richardson, bluntly branded the surveillance "unconstitutional" and insisted that "the government should end it and disclose its full scope, and Congress should initiate a full investigation."
The White House declined to comment -- but former vice president Al Gore, on Twitter, sharply condemned the government's actions:
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Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Churches split on Scouts' welcoming of gay youth
In suburban Atlanta, northern Idaho and a number of other places, churches have moved swiftly to sever ties with the Boy Scouts of America in protest over the vote last month to let openly gay boys participate in Scouting.
To date, it's far from the mass defection that some conservatives had predicted before the vote by the BSA's National Council. But the exodus could soon swell, depending on the outcome of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting next week in Houston.
Baptist leaders say the agenda is likely to include a resolution encouraging SBC-affiliated churches to phase out their sponsorships of Scout units.
"I would bet there would be a resolution expressing disappointment with the Boy Scouts' decision and calling on Southern Baptist churches to prepare for the need for alternatives," said the Rev. Russell Moore, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
"How quickly that happens will probably differ from congregation to congregation," Moore said. "I do think most Southern Baptists see the Boy Scouts moving in a direction that's not going to be consistent with our beliefs."
The Southern Baptists ? the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. ? already have a youth program for boys, the Royal Ambassadors. SBC leaders have suggested it could expand to accommodate boys leaving the Scouts.
According to BSA figures, Baptist churches sponsor Scout units serving about 108,000 of the BSA's 2.6 million youth members.
While many Baptist churches may be awaiting the outcome of next week's meeting, some already have decided to break with the BSA.
In Marietta, Ga., pastor Ernest Easley said his Roswell Street Baptist Church is ending its affiliation with Boy Scout Troop 204 that dates back to 1945.
"I never dreamed I'd have to stand up publicly and say to parents: 'Pull your kids out of the Boy Scouts,'" Easley told Baptist Press, the SBC's official news agency.
Baptist churches in Elizabethtown and Rineyville, Ky., Helena and Pelham, Ala., and Jacksonville, Ark., also say they're cutting ties with the BSA.
Tim Reed, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Gravel Ridge in Jacksonville, said in an e-mail that his congregation ? including a 15-year-old boy on track to win the coveted Eagle Scout rank ? strongly backed the decision to end sponsorship of a Scout troop.
"He was set to be one of the youngest boys to make Eagle," Reed wrote. "He said that he must uphold God's word over the Boy Scouts' decision no matter what the personal cost."
Among the latest to cut ties was Candlelight Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational church in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which announced this week that it would end its charter of a Boy Scout troop at the end of this year.
"We're a Bible-believing church, and the Boy Scouts have opted to pursue a different moral path," said the associate pastor, Buck Storm. "It's a sad time for us."
In all, about 70 percent of the 116,000 Scout units in the United States are sponsored by religious organizations.
Some are liberal denominations that welcomed the change of policy on gay youths and want the Boy Scouts to go further by lifting the still-intact ban on gays serving as adult leaders. But some of the largest sponsors are relatively conservative churches that had long supported the Scouts' no-gays policy, and have been wrestling with how to respond to the May 23 vote.
To the relief of BSA leaders, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said it accepts the new youth policy and will not cut ties. The Mormons sponsor more Scout units than any other organization, serving about 430,000 boys.
The United Methodist Church, the second-largest sponsor serving about 363,000 boys, has shied away from official endorsement or rejection of the BSA policy change. Some individual Methodist leaders have been critical, while the General Commission on United Methodist Men, which oversees the denomination's youth programs, says it will continue to support Scouting.
Similar divisions have surfaced within the Roman Catholic Church, the third-largest Scout sponsor serving about 273,000 youths.
A Catholic pastor in Bremerton, Wash., the Rev. Derek Lappe of Our Lady Star of the Sea, wrote an open letter to his parishioners announcing that the parish would cut its ties with the Scouts and develop new youth programs of its own.
"I am very aware that my objection to the change ... is increasingly considered bigoted and backward," Lappe wrote. "But I won't put public opinion ahead of the good of the boys and young men in my parish."
In the Chicago suburb of Crystal Lake, the pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church notified local Scout leaders that the church would no longer sponsor a Cub Scout pack and Boy Scout troop. In a letter conveying the decision, the Rev. Brian Grady wrote that it would be "not only unjust, but immoral" for straight boys to have to share tents on camping trips with gay Scouts.
And in Arlington, Va., Catholic Bishop Paul Loverde issued a statement saying the new membership policy "forces us to prayerfully reconsider whether a continued partnership with the BSA will be possible."
"It is highly disappointing to see the Boy Scouts of America succumb to external pressures and political causes at the cost of its moral integrity," said Loverde, who predicted the policy change will bring "continuing controversy, policy fights and discord."
However, the National Catholic Committee on Scouting ? which works with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to coordinate the church's involvement in Scouting ? has taken a more positive view of the policy change.
"We should be encouraged that the change in BSA's youth membership standard is not in conflict with Catholic teaching," Edward Martin, the committee's chairman, wrote last week in an open letter to Catholics involved in Scouting.
Martin, an Eagle Scout with five children who've been Scouts, said his committee would form a task force to work with Catholic dioceses and parishes on how best to go forward in light of the change.
"Our youth don't want to leave Scouting. Scouting is still the best program around," Martin wrote. "Let's continue this important journey together."
Another conservative denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, says it is "deeply concerned" by the policy change, and continues to deliberate on how it will respond.
From its headquarters in Texas, the BSA has formed a task force to smooth the path of implementing the new policy, which will take effect on Jan. 1, 2014.
Meanwhile, the BSA says it is reaching out to the organizations that sponsor Scout troops, including those which oppose the policy change.
"We're finding that for many people, when they read the new policy they see it is reflective of the beliefs of most of Scouting's major religious chartered organizations," said BSA spokesman Deron Smith.
Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist official, said he doubted the Scouts' outreach would succeed in overcoming his denomination's opposition to the policy change, in part because of a sense that the BSA will eventually lift the ban on gay adults serving as leaders.
"Most Southern Baptists are seeing a trajectory that we've seen before in other cultural institutions," Moore said. "We know how this movie ends."
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Online:
Boy Scouts: http://www.scouting.org/
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Follow David Crary on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/craryap
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/churches-split-scouts-welcoming-gay-youth-192048337.html
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Obama names Rice as national security adviser
President Barack Obama stands with UN Ambassador Susan Rice, his choice to be his next National Security Adviser, right, current National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, who is resigning, second from right, and Samantha Power, his nominee to be the next UN Ambassador, left, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, where he made the announcement. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama stands with UN Ambassador Susan Rice, his choice to be his next National Security Adviser, right, current National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, who is resigning, second from right, and Samantha Power, his nominee to be the next UN Ambassador, left, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, where he made the announcement. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama stands with, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, his choice to be his next National Security Adviser, right, current National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, who is resigning and Samantha Power, his nominee to be the next United Nations Ambassador, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Shaking up his national security team, President Barack Obama tapped diplomat Susan Rice as his national security adviser, defying Republicans who have vigorously criticized her faulty explanation about the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
"Susan is the consummate public servant ? a patriot who puts her country first," Obama said while announcing Rice's appointment Wednesday during a Rose Garden ceremony.
Rice will take over the top national security post from Tom Donilon, who is resigning after four years in the White House. Obama lauded the 58-year-old Donilon for having "shaped every single national security policy of my presidency," including the renewed U.S. focus on ties with Asia.
The president also announced the nomination of former White House aide Samantha Power to replace Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power is a human rights advocate and expert on genocide.
It's unclear whether the changes signal a significant shift in Obama's foreign policy, particularly in Syria, where the U.S. is being pressured to act against President Bashar Assad.
Power is seen as a proponent of American intervention on humanitarian grounds and Rice backed greater U.S. involvement in Libya, though administration officials have made clear they don't draw direct comparisons between the current situation in Syria and the 2011 push to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. In that situation, the U.S. Britain and France maintained a no-fly zone to allow rebels to fight back against Gadhafi.
For Rice ? a longtime Obama ally and close confidante of the president ? the appointment is a bit of redemption after she was forced to withdraw from consideration as Obama's second-term secretary of State amid criticism of her handling of the Benghazi attacks. Rice said at the time that she did not want her confirmation hearing to become a distraction for the White House. The national security post does not require Senate confirmation.
Neither Obama nor Rice mentioned the Benghazi controversy during Wednesday's ceremony. Rice said she looked forward to working with lawmakers from both parties "to protect the United States, advance our global leadership and promote the values Americans hold dear."
Rice's selection was greeted by a muted response from some Republicans who had earlier accused her of being part of an administration cover-up in the Benghazi attacks.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, one of Rice's harshest critics, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that he disagreed with her appointment but would "make every effort" to work with her on important matters. And Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the foreign relations committee, said he had spoken with Rice and looked forward "to working with her on shaping important foreign policy and national security issues."
Rice, who first started working for Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, has a close relationship with the president and many of his advisers. Her long-standing ties to Obama are expected to afford her significant influence within the White House.
The 48-year-old also served in various national security positions during the Clinton administration, including in key roles on peacekeeping and African affairs. Her world view is said to have been shaped by Clinton's decision to not intervene in the Rwandan genocide, a move Rice said later deeply affected her.
Power won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for her book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which examined U.S. foreign policy toward genocide in the 20th century. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
According to a biography on the White House website, Power also served as a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she taught courses on U.S. foreign policy, human rights, and extremism.
The White House official said Donilon is expected to stay on the job until early July, after Obama wraps up overseas trips to Europe and Africa, as well as an unusual summit in California later this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Donilon has overseen a foreign policy agenda at the White House that put increased emphasis on the U.S. relationship with Asia. He's also played a key role in the administration's counterterrorism strategy, including the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, and in managing the complex U.S. ties with Russia.
_
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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