Monday, October 31, 2011

UFC 137 weigh-in: Diaz loses it, was there a method to his madness?

UFC 137 weigh-in: Diaz loses it, was there a method to his madness?

Nick Diaz was on his best behavior all week and then came yesterday's weigh-in for UFC 137. Diaz got in B.J. Penn's face and before Dana White could separate the fighters, the Strikeforce import threw a punch/elbow the Hawaiian's way.

If that shots hits Penn, Diaz would've been in a world of hurt and faced a big fine. Worse than that, what if Diaz hits Penn and B.J. couldn't fight tonight? Thankfully, that didn't happen.

Why did it happen? What makes Diaz tick? Yahoo! Sports' lead MMA writer Kevin Iole and former UFC fighter Frank Trigg sat down with myself on ESPN1100/98.9 FM's "The MMA Insiders" show in Las Vegas to explain the mental games played by both Diaz and Penn heading into tonight's tilt at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Roy Nelson and Tyson Griffin made the other news at the weigh-in. Nelson hits the scales in fat suit. He weighed-in at 252 pounds. Sources in his camp said he's closer to 245. That's good news. A focused Nelson, in better condition could be a real player in the heavyweight division.

Griffin went the wrong way missing the featherweight limit of 145 by four pounds. Griffin attempted to lose some weight, but couldn't get down to the allowable 146 pounds. The fight will be waged at 148 and Griffin will be fined 25 percent of his "show" purse.

UFC 137 weigh-in (Courtesy MMAjunkie):

MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view)

Nick Diaz (170) vs. B.J. Penn (169)
Cheick Kongo (234) vs. Matt Mitrione (255)
Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic (235) vs. Roy Nelson (252)
Jeff Curran (134) vs. Scott Jorgensen (135)
Hatsu Hioki (145) vs. George Roop (145)

PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV)

Donald Cerrone (156) vs. Dennis Siver (155)
Tyson Griffin (149) vs. Bart Palaszewski (146)

PRELIMINARY CARD (Facebook)

Eliot Marshall (204) vs. Brandon Vera (205)
Danny Downes (155) vs. Ramsey Nijem (155)
Chris Camozzi (185) vs. Francis Carmont (185)
Dustin Jacoby (185) vs. Clifford Starks (186)

Watch UFC 137 right here on Yahoo! Sports

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/UFC-137-weigh-in-Diaz-loses-it-was-there-a-met?urn=mma-wp8685

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Jobless veterans say military experience is not valued (Reuters)

NAPERVILLE, Ill (Reuters) ? When Matthew Burrell left the Army after eight years of service, he landed a job as a public relations contractor in Iraq. With a salary of $170,000, he figured military experience had finally paid off.

But five months after returning home to Chicago, 33-year old Burrell is unemployed and said his job search has been strange. Despite having six years experience as a public relations officer in the Army, companies treat him as if he just graduated from college.

"I can tell you for a fact that definitely in my field in public relations and marketing, private sector companies do not value (military experience)," Burrell said.

Burrell feels he is more than qualified for a job in the corporate PR world. But Burrell, along with many of what the Department of Labor says are 235,000 unemployed veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, has run into a frustrating problem.

Many U.S. companies, and sometimes veterans themselves, do not know how to translate military experience into civilian job skills. There is a disconnect between companies demanding a college degree and veterans' giving confusing descriptions of their military experience to civilian employers.

MILITARY JARGON

That disconnect has contributed to veterans having an unemployment rate 2.6 percent higher than the general population, according to September's Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report. As U.S. involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars winds down, lawmakers and organizations of all stripes have launched efforts to help veterans find work.

President Barack Obama this week announced measures, including $120 million in total tax breaks to companies that hire veterans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it hopes to get 15,000 veterans hired through 100 job fairs around the country for veterans this year. One of those job fairs was held recently in Naperville, a Chicago suburb, giving 86 companies the chance to meet more than 600 veterans.

One problem is that veterans need to articulate more clearly to companies their experience, said Kevin Schmiegel, vice president of veteran's employment programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Hiring managers who have not served in the military are often bewildered by the jargon used by soldiers and weapons specialists, said Becky Brillon, who directs a program at the Community Career Center in Naperville.

A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

"If somebody was artillery, or a sharpshooter or a sniper, you have to tone that down in the civilian world. It's more about being detail-oriented, precise and focused," Brillon said.

CREDIT FOR SKILLS

But on the other side of that coin, private employers should give more credit to the experience and skills veterans acquire in the military, Schmiegel said.

Veteran unemployment could fall dramatically if companies were willing to give jobs that normally require credentialing or a college diploma to veterans with military experience in the same role, Schmiegel said. He also said companies should offer training to veterans to help connect military experience to workplace skills.

Some military jobs, like a mechanic or technician, are more easily transferred to a private sector job than others.

David Berry served as a medic in the Army 25 years ago, but did not enter the private-sector medical field because of how much extra training he would need, he said.

Berry said he was performing a range of medical treatments in the military that would have required at least an associate college degree to get a similar job in the private sector.

"The private sector has its own set of rules and they don't all correspond with what the military says," Berry said. "I didn't get anything from the military saying, 'He's qualified, and we back this person up for this position because he's done this, this and that.'"

The credentials and certificates that the military does give out for certain forms of training still do not seem to carry much weight.

Rick Combs, a 27-year old who retired as a Sergeant in the Army, says he was given management training in the military as part of becoming a Sergeant. So far, that training has not translated into a comparable private-sector job.

"You can come in, and slap something down that says, 'Here, the military says I can lead people. Give me a department and I will make it dance for you,'" Combs said. "I haven't had the opportunity on the civilian side yet."

Combs said he's going back to school to become a network technician, an area he worked in for the Army.

Schmiegel, from the Chamber of Commerce, said something must be done for veterans to find jobs or the country's voluntary armed forces will not find as many willing recruits.

"We are telling (recruits) right now that when they leave the service four years from now that they're going to be better off. That they're going to have a better job. That they're going to be more marketable. And the fact is, right now they're not," Schmiegel said.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111029/us_nm/us_economy_jobs_veterans

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Qantas Airways grounds global fleet due to strikes

Brothers Kevin and Chris Crulley, sit on the floor at the Qantas check-in counter at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011, after they were removed from their flight home to England. Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet indefinitely Saturday in a lockout of workers whose strikes have disrupted airline operations for weeks, and the government said it would seek arbitration. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

Brothers Kevin and Chris Crulley, sit on the floor at the Qantas check-in counter at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011, after they were removed from their flight home to England. Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet indefinitely Saturday in a lockout of workers whose strikes have disrupted airline operations for weeks, and the government said it would seek arbitration. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

FILE - In this April 21, 2010 file photo, Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce address the media in Sydney, Australia. Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet indefinitely Saturday in a lockout of workers whose strikes have disrupted airline operations for weeks, and the government said it would seek arbitration. Flights in the air were continuing to their destinations. Booked passengers were being rescheduled at Qantas' expense, chief executive Alan Joyce said. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

FILE - In this June 12, 2011 file photo, Qantas jets sit on the tarmac at the international airport in Sydney, Australia. Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet indefinitely Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011, in a lockout of workers whose strikes have disrupted airline operations for weeks, and the government said it would seek arbitration. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

International travelers walk away from a Qantas check-in desk at Sydney Airport in Sydney, Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011. Qantas Airways grounded all of its aircraft around the world indefinitely due to ongoing strikes by its workers. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

(AP) ? Qantas Airways grounded its global fleet indefinitely Saturday imposing an employee lockout after weeks of disruptive strikes, and the Australian government sought emergency arbitration.

At least 60 flights were in the air and continued to their destinations, but a taxiing flight stopped on the runway, according to one flier. Booked passengers were being rescheduled at Qantas' expense, chief executive Alan Joyce said.

When the grounding was announced, 36 international and 28 domestic Australian flights were in the air, said a Qantas spokeswoman, who declined to be named citing company policy.

She could not confirm an Australian Broadcasting Corp. television report that 13,305 passengers were booked to fly Qantas international flights within 24 hours of the grounding.

Bookings already had collapsed after unions warned travelers to book with other airlines through the busy Christmas-New Year period. Joyce told a news conference in Sydney the unions' actions have caused a crisis for Qantas.

"They are trashing our strategy and our brand," Joyce said. "They are deliberately destabilizing the company and there is no end in sight."

Union leaders criticized the action as extreme. Qantas is the world's 10th largest airline and among the most profitable, but its unions worry a recent restructuring announcement would be a means to move some of Qantas' 35,000 jobs overseas.

The grounding of the largest of Australia's four national domestic airlines will take a major economic toll and could disrupt the national Parliament, due to resume in Canberra on Tuesday after a two-week recess. Qantas' budget subsidiary Jetstar continues to fly.

Qantas was to fly home 17 government leaders on Sunday after the Commonwealth summit in the west coast city of Perth ended, Australian Broadcasting Corp. TV reported.

British tourist Chris Crulley, 25, said the pilot on his Qantas flight informed passengers while taxiing down a Sydney runway that he had to return to the terminal "to take an important phone call." The flight was then grounded.

"We're all set for the flight and settled in and the next thing ? I'm stunned. We're getting back off the plane," the firefighter told The Associated Press from Sydney Airport by phone.

Crulley was happy to be heading home to Newcastle after a five-week vacation when his flight was interrupted. "I've got to get back to the other side of the world by Wednesday for work. It's a nightmare," he added.

Qantas offered him up to 350 Australian dollars ($375) a day for food and accommodation, but Crulley expected to struggle to find a hotel at short notice in Sydney on a Saturday night.

The government has called an emergency arbitration court hearing on Saturday night to rule on the strike action and the airline's response.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said her center-left government, which is affiliated with the trade union movement, had "taken a rare decision" to call an emergency arbitration court hearing on Saturday night to terminate the strike action.

"I believe it is warranted in the circumstances we now face with Qantas ... circumstances with this industrial dispute that could have implications for our national economy," Gillard told reporters.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese described the grounding as "disappointing" and "extraordinary." Albanese was angry that Qantas gave him only three hours' notice.

All 108 aircraft in as many as 22 countries will be grounded until unions representing pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers reach agreements with Qantas over pay and conditions, Joyce said.

"We are locking out until the unions withdraw their extreme claim and reach agreement with us," Joyce said, referring shutting staff out of their work stations.

"This is a crisis for Qantas. If the action continues as the unions have promised, we will have no choice but to close down Qantas part by part," he added.

Staff will not be paid starting Monday, and Joyce estimated the grounding will cost the airline $20 million a day. It already had reduced and rescheduled flights for weeks because of strikes and overtime bans as workers worry their jobs will move overseas.

Richard Woodward, vice president of the pilot's union, the Australian and International Pilots Association, accused Qantas of "holding a knife to the nation's throat" and said Joyce had "gone mad."

Steve Purvinas, federal secretary of the mechanics' union, Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, described the grounding as "an extreme measure."

The recent strike action has most severely affected Qantas domestic flights.

In mid-October, Qantas grounded five jets and reduced domestic flights by almost 100 flights a week because aircraft mechanics had reduced the hours they were prepared to work.

Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand.

The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.

Qantas announced in August that it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million, but warned the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-10-29-AS-Australia-Qantas/id-62c7a289283f4438b20e78670b0638fc

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Sunday, October 30, 2011

5 Surprising Halloween Health Hazards (LiveScience.com)

You're likely aware that Halloween fun can be risky. Time and time again, we hear the same safety tips: Don't accept candy that's unwrapped. Kids should be supervised while trick-or-treating. And those knives you use to carve pumpkins? They're sharp, so be careful.

But some dangers are less obvious. Here are five surprising hazards to keep an eye out for this Halloween.

"Heart attack" licorice: Consuming too much black licorice may cause abnormal heartbeats, or arrhythmias, particularly in order adults, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Black licorice contains the compound glycyrrhizin, which can cause the body's potassium levels to fall.

In some people, this can lead to, besides arrhythmias, edema (swelling), lethargy or congestive heart failure, the FDA says. Several studies have linked black licorice to health problems in people over 40. The agency has the following advice for licorice lovers: Don't eat lots of black licorice all at once; and if you've been binging on the stuff and you experience irregular heartbeats or muscle weakness, contact your doctor.

"Halloween diarrhea": Candy flavored with the sugar substitute sorbitol can cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems. Sorbitol has fewer calories than sugar, and so it is often used in "dietetic" candies, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

[Halloween Health: The Best and Worst Trick-or-Treat Candy]

When adults consume 10 to 50 grams of sorbitol, they may experience a range of gastrointestinal symptoms, from mild gas and bloating to cramps and serve diarrhea, the CSPI says. Children may be affected by smaller amounts.

Flying eggs: Eggs thrown around Halloween time can cause severe eye injuries, according to a landmark study of the issue, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1988. The study documented five cases of eye injuries that resulted after patients were hit with an egg during the week of Halloween that year.

Injuries included blood in the front of the eye, scratches to the cornea and retinal swelling. Four of the five patients required hospitalization, and two were left with severe visual impairments, the researchers said. "Halloween should be added to the list of holidays posing a danger of eye injuries," they wrote.

Lead contamination in toys: Paint used to cover Halloween candy buckets and even fake teeth may be contaminated with lead, according to a 2008 study in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The study tested 95 seasonal or holiday products, many of which had a Halloween or Easter theme. Twelve of the products were found to contain levels of lead that were higher than U.S. regulatory limit of 0.06 percent by weight.

Among the tainted products were witch- and skull-shaped candy buckets, a Frankenstein drinking cup, and yes, fake teeth. The so-called "ugly teeth" were painted orange and contained levels of lead in excess of 6 percent, the researchers said. Because this product may end up in a child's mouth, the findings are cause for concern, they said. Lead is a neurotoxin.

Glow stick "poisoning": Calls to poison control centers reporting glow stick "poisoning" appear to increase during Halloween. A 2009 study of calls to a New Jersey poison control center found there were 139 calls related to glow stick products between 2002 and 2007, and the day with highest number of calls, 59, was Halloween 2007.

And a South Carolina poison control center also recently reported getting an especially high number calls regarding glow sticks around Halloween, according to WSPA 7, a local CBS affiliate.

Glow sticks are minimally toxic. Contact with the liquid, such as through digestion, can cause irritation or vomiting, Dr. Jill Michels, director of the Palmetto Poison Center in Columbia, S.C., told CBS. Kids who ingest glow stick liquid shouldn't need to visit the hospital, but their parents should call poison control, Michels said.

This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily staff writer Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner. Like us on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20111028/sc_livescience/5surprisinghalloweenhealthhazards

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Saturday, October 29, 2011

Arrests made at Wall St. protest in Nashville

State Police arrest Occupy Nashville protestors early Friday morning Oct. 28, 2011 at the site where a few dozen Wall Street protesters have been encamped for about three weeks. Authorities began moving in early Friday using a newly enacted state policy that set a curfew for the grounds near the state Capitol, including Legislative Plaza where the protesters had been staying in tents. (AP Photo/JOHN PARTIPILO\ - THE TENNESSEAN)

State Police arrest Occupy Nashville protestors early Friday morning Oct. 28, 2011 at the site where a few dozen Wall Street protesters have been encamped for about three weeks. Authorities began moving in early Friday using a newly enacted state policy that set a curfew for the grounds near the state Capitol, including Legislative Plaza where the protesters had been staying in tents. (AP Photo/JOHN PARTIPILO\ - THE TENNESSEAN)

State Police arrest Occupy Nashville protestors early Friday morning at the site where a few dozen Wall Street protesters have been encamped for about three weeks. Authorities began moving in early Friday using a newly enacted state policy that set a curfew for the grounds near the state Capitol, including Legislative Plaza where the protesters had been staying in tents. (AP Photo/JOHN PARTIPILO\ - THE TENNESSEAN)

State Police arrest Occupy Nashville protestors early Friday morning Oct. 28, 2011 at the site where a few dozen Wall Street protesters have been encamped for about three weeks. Authorities began moving in early Friday using a newly enacted state policy that set a curfew for the grounds near the state Capitol, including Legislative Plaza where the protesters had been staying in tents. (AP Photo/JOHN PARTIPILO\ - THE TENNESSEAN)

(AP) ? Authorities in Tennessee made about 30 arrests early Friday at the site where a few dozen Wall Street protesters have been encamped for about three weeks in Nashville, protesters said.

Authorities began moving in a little after 3 a.m. using a newly enacted state policy that set a curfew for the grounds near the state Capitol, including Legislative Plaza where the protesters had been staying in tents.

The state's new rules specifically ban "overnight occupancy" at the public space and require permits and use fees for rallies.

Katy Savage, one of the protesters, said she peeked out of her tent around 3 a.m. saw that the camp was surrounded by state troopers.

"I was grabbing our stuff to try to get it off the area," she said.

Savage said people who had already decided they would get arrested sat down together and began singing "We Shall Overcome" as troopers dragged some of them to waiting buses.

About 20 protesters, who remained on a sidewalk, were not arrested and were still there later in the morning. Several state troopers stood guard at the steps to the Capitol.

Asked about the arrests, Savage said she was "disgusted and disappointed."

"This was a group of brilliant, wonderful people that I had come to know as family, practicing democratic decision-making on public space. And for that they were dragged away in handcuffs," Savage said.

Occupy Wall Street activists have set up camps in cities around the country to protest economic inequality and what they call corporate greed.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Col. Tracy Trott would not give details about the arrests, saying only that authorities were there "to enforce the general services policy for the plaza and the Capitol area."

State officials planned to hold a news conference later in the morning to discuss the arrests.

Protester Albert Rankin said Thursday that the group intended to face arrests with "no hostility whatsoever" to avoid a repeat of violent shutdowns of protests in other cities this week. In Oakland, Calif., an Iraq war veteran suffered a fractured skull in a scuffle with police, and Atlanta SWAT teams arrested protesters there.

"There were some shouts here and there, but for the most part, it was very peaceful," Rankin said of Friday's arrests in Nashville.

Police last removed protesters from the legislative office complex in March during discussions of anti-union bills. Seven were arrested for disrupting a Senate Commerce Committee meeting and resisting arrest but later acquitted.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-10-28-Occupy%20Nashville/id-1fa1c97027874666b518291d9c9c31b0

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Royal girls to get equal shot at crown

If Will and Kate's first child is a girl, it's now clear that she'll probably become queen one day ? and not even getting a little brother can mess that up.

The Commonwealth countries agreed Friday to change centuries-old rules of succession that put sons on the throne ahead of any older sisters. So that hypothetical daughter of Prince William and Kate Middleton ? now known as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge ? would have a prime place in history: the first princess to beat out any younger brothers and accede to the throne.

Had these rules been in place in the 1500s, Henry VIII would have just been a rather large historical footnote.

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The move is a baby step: Before taking effect, the changes still must be approved by the legislatures of the 16 nations where Queen Elizabeth II is head of state. Still, the agreement, which was reached at a meeting of Commonwealth nations in Perth, Australia, represents a triumph over practices now considered outdated and sexist in much of the world.

Nations including Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway have already taken similar steps.

Will and Kate's lavish April wedding renewed a decades-long debate over succession.

Middleton told a well-wisher in Canada this summer that she hopes to start a family. William has said the same.

Once their honeymoon was over, baby talk started, adding urgency to the dialogue, although officials insist that talk of a pregnancy is premature.

Historians think it's about time.

"You shouldn't muck around too much with the constitution, but it's a good idea to change this at this time," said royal expert Hugo Vickers. "It's much better to have it sorted out before any babies come along."

The new rules would only apply to future heirs and would have no impact on the current line of succession.

William is second in line to the throne after his father, Prince Charles, who is the queen's firstborn child. Charles' sister, Anne, is lower in the line of succession than her younger brothers Andrew and Edward by virtue of their male gender.

Charles had only sons, William and Prince Harry, so the issue of gender was never raised.

In 2009, the government of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown considered a bill that would end the custom of putting males ahead of females in the succession line. It also would lift a ban on British monarchs marrying Roman Catholics. The government did not have time to pursue it before Brown left office.

The rule has kept women from succeeding to the throne in the past. Queen Victoria's first child was a daughter ? also called Victoria ? but it was her younger brother who became King Edward VII.

If Queen Victoria had been able to pass her crown to her firstborn, Britain's Princess Victoria would have had a brief reign before her death in 1901.

That would have made her son ? Wilhelm II, who at that time was the German Kaiser ? king. With Wilhelm II ruling both Germany and Britain, there may not have been two world wars.

Story: Hear ye, hear ye: UK royal heirs may wed Catholics

Earlier history might also have been drastically different if women had had equal rights to the throne.

Neither Henry VIII nor Charles I would have been king because both had older sisters who, under the new rules, would have been monarch.

As king, Henry VIII set in motion the creation of the Church of England. His six marriages left an insecure succession ? one sickly son and two princesses, according to the monarchy's official website. Charles I's reign in the 17th century led to a bloody civil war.

Prince William and his wife have been credited with freshening up a staid monarchy, and new succession rules seem to fit right in.

"In this day and age, why should a royal son be more important than a royal daughter?" said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine.

The same goes for the decision Friday in Perth to lift a ban on monarchs marrying Roman Catholics. Critics had called the rule blatantly discriminatory since royals are free to wed Jews, Muslims, Hindus or members of any other religion."Britain is no longer the religious country that it once was," Little said. "While not denigrating the importance of religion, it plays much less of a role now then it did 60 years ago."

Video: Royal daughters win equal right to throne (on this page)

Still, some Britons are wary of a Catholic monarch.

"The pope is responsible for some horrors," said Anna Marsh, 73, who was cycling in London.

Her biking buddy Jill Gregory, 71, was fine with the idea ? and also fully in favor of giving firstborn girls an equal right to the throne.

"In terms of ability, I don't think women are any different than men," Gregory said, pointing to the queen and her late mother.

Elizabeth II succeeded her father, King George VI, because he had no sons. If she had had a younger brother, he would have jumped above her in the line of succession.

Prime Minister David Cameron had pushed for the changes, calling it a matter of equality.

New Zealand will now chair a working group of Commonwealth countries to discuss how to accomplish the reforms. It's not a simple process. Getting all 16 countries to begin the legislative changes is what has held them up for decades.

However long it takes, Patricia Wager of London said it would clear up something that should not be an issue in the modern world.

"It's a good idea, and a long time coming," she said.

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45073553/ns/world_news-europe/

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Friday, October 28, 2011

How to make a fat man jiggle in 3D animation

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent

For cartoon characters like the hapless Homer Simpson, being fat is often a matter of pride.

But for 3D animators who have to model body fat - and the way it jiggles about as a rotund character moves - it's a major problem: doing it convincingly requires large amounts of computer processing power and expensive rendering time.

Computer scientists Junggon Kim and Nancy Pollard at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, say that instead of simply modelling a 3D cartoon character as a deformable human shape, they should additionally build a separate skeleton into the body - and model the way the deformable material (flesh and fat) behaves as the skeleton moves it.

While skeletons are widely used to animate 3D characters, driven by?motion captured from a human, they have rarely interacted with the deformable material that surrounds them. Kim and Pollard's innovation was working out an algorithm that can do that with the fewest possible processing cycles - and so the shortest rendering time, making it more economically feasible for animation studios.

Their 3D graphics algorithm attaches the volume pixels ("voxels") of the deformable body to the skeleton. "So when the skeleton moves, the fixed body points also move along the bones and this leads to the passive jiggling movement of the deformable body," Kim says. But they have also geared their algorithm for processing on parallel graphics processor units (GPUs) which, in the case of the 'Fatman' animation above, sped rendering by 10 times.

"Normally, this is a very time-consuming task because of the massive computation required to capture dynamic deformation of an elastic body," says Kim. "Our technique boosts the simulation speed by orders of magnitude while preserving the quality of the simulated motion."?Their work also applies to nonhuman forms - you can see how they have applied it to the animation of a trapped starfish escaping from a box (like they do)?on this page, where they reveal how these animations can be controlled.

Journal reference: ACM Transactions on Graphics, DOI: 10.1145/2019627.2019640

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[OOC] Life in Horse Stables

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The Original Pets Addict Site Gets a Website Makeover ? Changes ...

Body:

Good Pets for Children, formerly known as Pets Addict recently made a site makeover after 2 years on the internet. The website owner wanted the site to be revamped and look more modern and stylish ? which is very contrasting to the previous layout and design. There are a lot of changes made to make the site look more attractive to site visitors. First, the Wordpress theme was changed to Thesis 1.7 ? a very powerful Wordpress theme that enables users to make great modifications on the site layout and design. To complete the design overhaul, the webmaster did some background modifications as the previous one looks so busy. She changed it to plain pink, making the site radiate a clean feel. A header that complements the new name of the site was also created from scratch. There are different colors involved to make the site still look upbeat while maintaining that clean look.

A website overhaul would not be complete without new website content. Several pages were added to the original list making the present number of pages 11 in total. The recent pages of the site include: dog training, pet insurance, veterinary secrets, cat secrets, dog walking business, healthy food for dogs, healthy food for dogs, dog tools, privacy, terms and conditions, contact, and blog. Each page contains an in depth information about the pet trainings and guides being offered and some valuable blog posts that involves a wide array of topics about pet cats and dogs. The last part of the site makeover is the creation of a static page where a welcome message is posted to provide a warm welcome to the site visitors. The new feel of the Good Pets for Children website is more personalized, so people who visit the site can feel at ease reading through the contents and eventually be able to find the product that they need for their pet dog or cat.

Source: http://www.briefingwire.com/pr/the-original-pets-addict-site-gets-a-website-makeover-changes-website-name-too

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Storage Guardian

Type
Business, Enterprise
OS Compatibility
Windows Vista, Windows XP, Linux, Windows 7
More

Editor's Note: Product not yet tested. The following information is from the manufacturer.

Storage Guardian offers complete backup of mulitple Windows and Unix computers' critical data on a "pay-as-you-go" basis to a secure off-site location. Starting at just $50 a month per terabyte of storage, is suitable for small, mid-size, and enterprise-wide, multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want secure, off-site backup.?

Among the product's standout features is the ability to perform "bare metal restores"?restoring the entire operating system, applications, settings and data for an entire machine?onto a new machine with different hardware than the original one. Networked computers needn't even install local backup software agents: One running on a server sends all client PC's backup data to Storage Guardian's servers.

For faster restoring, Storage Guardian can maintain a local network copy of the backed up data. Its "send once" technology recognizes where data is duplicated across a network and sends only one copy to the server, minimizing your costs and increasing efficiency. And its Message Level Restore feature lets you restore email data down to a single email message for a specific user.

Security features include AES encryption, authentication, and delta compression, and included reporting utilities help administrators plan bandwidth and server upgrades. Storage Guardian's automated, unattended backups take advantage of multitasking and multithreading operations for increased speed.

More Backup Reviews:
??? Rebit 5
??? LaptopSentry 3.1
??? Amazon Cloud Drive
??? Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite 2011
??? iPartition 3.3.1
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/dVBgyyqDfEE/0,2817,2395304,00.asp

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Russian Heat Wave Statistically Linked to Climate Change

Link Information - Click to View

Russian Heat Wave Statistically Linked to Climate Change
A new method of crunching climate data could make it possible to put a figure on climate change's contribution to freak weather events, something that's been difficult to do with empirical precision. The debut subject: The Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and was unprecedented since record keeping began in the 19th century. According to the analysis, there's an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible.

Source: Wired
Posted on: Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011, 9:12am
Views: 17

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/114609/Russian_Heat_Wave_Statistically_Linked_to_Climate_Change

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A guide to the fall television series cancellations (Reuters)

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) ? The broadcast networks have canceled (or all-but canceled) five shows so far this season, exactly the number pulled from the airwaves by this time a year ago. But one crucial difference between this year and last: this year has some breakout hits.

The cancellations help illuminate several trends about the season: funny women are thriving. The dramas that have done the worst, as a group, are the ones that made the most naked attempts at sex appeal.

And NBC has been hit the hardest by cancellations.

A closer look at some of the trends:

The Great Jigglevision Experiment of 2011 Has Failed

Three shows this season -- NBC's "The Playboy Club," and ABC's "Charlie's Angels" and "Pan Am" -- tried to lure men and women alike by putting bold women in dramatic situations and tight clothing. It didn't work with "The Playboy Club" or "Charlie's Angels," the first and only two dramas of the season to be canceled.

"Pan Am," easily the smartest and least jiggly of the three shows, is earning only decent ratings and trying hard to fly right. Its cast is on a promotional tear to draw more eyes to the series.

NBC's Still Struggling

So far every network has been hit with a cancellation except for Fox. Only NBC has suffered two: "The Playboy Club" and "Free Agents," which took a sometimes somber look at the dating habits of grown-ups. NBC seized on the cancellations to try to promote two shows for which it has high hopes.

We'll Say It Yet Again: Female-Centric Comedies Are Thriving

The most successful shows of the new season includes CBS's "2 Broke Girls," the biggest new show overall, and Fox's "The New Girl," the most successful new show on the network. NBC's high hopes for "Whitney" are obvious -- the network is trying to increase sampling of the show by giving it the timeslot "Free Agents" left behind.

Here's our roundup of the new fall shows that have fallen so far. We'll miss them. Well, some of them.

CANCELED

THE PLAYBOY CLUB (NBC)

Debuted: Monday, September 19, 10 p.m.

Canceled: NBC nipped the tail of its bouncy bunny drama on Tuesday, October 4, the day after its third airing received a mere 1.2 rating in the cherished 18 to 49 demographic. Now we'll never know if Bunny Maureen and lawyer Nick can keep hiding the -- wait, you have no idea who these people are? Unfortunately for NBC, you aren't alone.

Status: Pulled from the airwaves and replaced with repeats of the low-rated "Prime Suspect," for which NBC hopes to increase sampling.

Why it failed: Contrary to everything cynics might have expected, viewers didn't want to watch beautiful women in revealing clothes.

Or maybe they did, but we live in a world where that kind of thing is readily available, without commercial interruptions, a 1960s setting, and subplots involving fictional, half-century-old political campaigns.

FREE AGENTS (NBC)

Debuted: Wednesday, September 14, 10:30 p.m.; moved the next week to its regular time, 8:30 p.m.

Canceled: Again showing decisiveness in defeat, NBC canceled the Hank Azaria-Kathryn Hahn comedy on October 6, the day after it scored a mere 1.0 rating with its fourth episode -- just as it canceled "The Playboy Club" the day after its third airing earned a paltry rating.

Status: Pulled from the airwaves and replaced with repeats of "Whitney."

Why it failed: "Free Agents" had an at-least decent lead-in from "Up All Night," the Will Arnett-Christina Applegate-Maya Rudolph new-baby comedy. But its sometimes dark take on relationships made it a tough sell. Its first episode featured a grown-man crying after sex in the first scene.

CHARLIE'S ANGELS (ABC)

Debuted: Thursday, September 22, 8 p.m.

Canceled: Proving that the failure of Jigglevision isn't limited to period pieces, the ultra-modern "Charlie's Angels" was canceled October 14 after four episodes. By then it had fallen from its decent 2.1 premiere rating to a 1.3.

Status: Remaining episodes are airing in its original timeslot.

Why it failed: This year's poster girl for the "TV has no new ideas" whiners couldn't capture the dumb fun of its 1970s predecessor. The notion of hot women solving crimes in sexy disguises is a bit anachronistic, so the show took itself awfully seriously to make up for those outfits.

ALL-BUT CANCELED

HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN (CBS)

Debuted: Thursday, September 29, 8:30 p.m.

Status: "Gentleman" isn't technically, officially, 100 percent canceled. But it's very unlikely to come back. Production has been halted on the show and its remaining episodes are airing Saturday nights -- the TV equivalent of the pasture. If it somehow becomes a big hit on Saturdays, it could theoretically go back into production. But nothing hits big on Saturdays.

Why it failed: It debuted to a 2.7 demo rating, down 33 percent from the eventually canceled "$#*! My Dad Says." In its second week, it fell to a 2.5. Those numbers wouldn't be so bad, except that the show's lead-in, "The Big Bang Theory," is a huge hit: It managed a 4.4 rating on the night "Gentleman" scored only a 2.5. CBS moved it to Saturdays on October 7, after its second episode, and then quietly shut it down.

We had high hopes for the show given its pedigree: creator-star David Hornsby is very funny as a writer and actor on FX's brilliant "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," the supporting cast includes comic genius Dave Foley, and we've always liked Mary Lynn Rajskub and Kevin Dillon.

But it's tough to sell a show with an actual gentleman at its center, so the show was promoted as an "Odd Couple" rehash. Viewers weren't interested.

H8R

Debuted: Wednesday, September 14, 8 p.m.

Status: Like "Gentleman," "H8R" isn't officially canceled. But on October 6 it was pulled from the CW's schedule, with no plans to air its remaining episodes until summer, at earliest. If it thrives there, it could theoretically, be given another chance.

Why it failed: "H8R" has a fun concept: fans meet celebrities they despise. But the show watered down the H8Rade by inevitably doing damage control for those celebrities. Like everything on the young CW network, the show also didn't draw as many eyes as shows on the more established broadcasters. Its last episode had only a 0.4 rating in the demo.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111025/tv_nm/us_cancellations

the patriot

Corning's 3Q profit rises 3 percent

(AP) ? Specialty glass maker Corning Inc. said Wednesday its profit rose 3 percent in the third quarter, lifted by surging sales of glass for flat-panel televisions and optical fiber.

The results handily beat Wall Street expectations. Its shares rose more than 6 percent in premarket trading.

The world's largest maker of liquid-crystal-display glass reported net income of $811 million, or 51 cents per share, in the July-September period. That's up from $785 million, or 50 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding special items, earnings were 51 cents per share. That was well above Wall Street expectations of 42 cents per share.

Revenue jumped 30 percent to $2.08 billion from $1.6 billion. Analysts expected $2.03 billion.

Its shares rose 91 cents, or 6.6 percent, to $14.63 in premarket trading.

Sales of LCD glass jumped 26 percent in the quarter to $815 million, and sales of the telecommunications unit rose 21 percent to $560 million. Corning also saw growth in its other three business units ? cover glass, auto-pollution filters and research labware.

Corning commands more than 60 percent of the global market in LCD glass, which is its biggest business by far.

A soft economy has been cutting into U.S. demand for flat-screen televisions and, as a result, the glass Corning makes. But the company did better in glass production this summer than it projected in early September.

Volume in its wholly owned business increased in the mid-single digits compared with the second quarter and fell more than 20 percent in its joint venture with South Korea's Samsung Electronics. The combined total glass volume fell about 10 percent sequentially.

Corning had warned that it expected volume in its wholly owned business to be level with the second quarter and volume in its joint venture to dip 30 percent.

Propelled by ultra-strong Gorilla glass, which is now migrating from handheld and tablet devices to high-end TVs, specialty materials revenue swelled almost 90 percent to $299 million.

Three months ago, Corning lowered its 2011 sales forecast for Gorilla to $800 million from $1 billion. Invented in 1962, Gorilla found commercial use only in 2008 and sales surged to $250 million in 2010.

Environmental technologies revenue jumped 19 percent to $247 million, driven by robust demand for auto-pollution filters.

Life-sciences revenue rose 22 percent to $153 million, reflecting Corning's acquisition of Axygen BioScience Inc. as it shifts beyond a heavy focus on display glass. It bought the maker of plastic labware and liquid handling products for research labs for about $400 million in September 2009.

Surging revenue in Corning's telecommunications unit was driven by a more than 30 percent increase in higher demand for fiber-to-the-home products in North America and Europe.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-10-26-Earns-Corning/id-c4453893fd7e4e249fa13d47b274b667

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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

DeMarco: Washington becoming a rock star of sorts

Rangers' manager becoming must-see TV with exuberance, love for game

Image: WashingtonAP

Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington waves to some fans before the start of Game 5 on Monday.

OPINION

By Tony DeMarco

NBCSports.com contributor

updated 7:40 p.m. ET Oct. 24, 2011

Tony DeMarco

ARLINGTON, Texas - Somewhere along the way during the last two World Series, Ron Washington has gone from the baseball lifer/longtime coach who finally got a shot at managing to something of a rock star.

Part of that comes with the territory of managing a back-to-back World Series participant. As Washington said yesterday, "We have fans everywhere now. You know it's only because we're a winner. Everybody loves a winner.''

But the Wash metamorphosis runs deeper. Remember that 'Little Wash' kid last postseason? Now, the real Wash is in theaters near you ? as a character portrayed by actor Brent Jennings in the Moneyball movie.

And in this postseason, the television cameras can't get enough of Wash's dugout antics. He's become must-see TV when the Rangers are doing something ? anything ? exciting.

"I think when people look at his exuberance in the dugout, I think they know it's who he is,'' said Rangers owner Nolan Ryan. "It's true. It's pure. It's not a show. It's been brought to the forefront with this postseason, but that's who Ron is on a day-to-day basis.''

Washington doesn't apologize for who he is, either.

"This is my second time at the World Series; I understand what's expected,'' he said. "But I think in order to get the best out of yourself, you have to be relaxed, and more than that, you have to trust what you feel you bring to the table.

"If my players saw me acting uptight, that would be a reason for them to be uptight. I don't get uptight, so they've got no reason to be uptight.''

He is a motivator and teacher first, but his strategic approach is an aggressive, attacking one taught to him in an adult life spent in the game.

"They call it unorthodox; I just call it reacting to what the game asks you to do,'' Washington said. "We went from the bottom to the top on the style of baseball that I've learned to play since I've been in the game. I don't call it unorthodox. I call it taking it to you. I just call it playing baseball. That's what I do.''

And never one to pass up a one-liner, Washington then said: "I'm not as dumb, either, as people think I am.''

? 2011 NBC Sports.com? Reprints

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Rangers, Cards battle in Game 5

LIVE: The Rangers and Cardinals are tied as they compete in Game 5 of the World Series. The winner of tonight's game will be one win away from a title.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45024426/ns/sports-baseball/

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Is she a heroic mom or a shrewd killer?

Something shocking happened one cold night a decade ago in this quiet country town of 500 people, but even now, just one fact about it all is undisputed:

Tracey Roberts, at home with her three children, fired 9 shots from two guns into her 20-year-old neighbor, leaving him dead on the floor of her bedroom.

Tall and thin with curly brown hair and blue eyes, she was 35 at the time. It wasn't long before her image appeared in newspaper coverage of the shooting and even on a national TV talk show, where she was celebrated as a heroic mother who acted in self-defense to protect herself and her young children from men who broke into her home and assaulted her.

But today, folks in Early are weighing a contradictory view and a slew of questions: Could she be a master manipulator who planned the killing and concocted an elaborate hoax that let her get away with murder? What exactly is written in the pink journal that police found, and does it show she was justified, or that she's guilty?

This is the story of a case that baffled investigators and stalled for years. Of an agent whose work resurrected the case and a rookie prosecutor who became obsessed with it. Of the quiet young man whose death ripped apart his family. Of townspeople who panicked after the shooting but soon suspected the official account did not add up.

Above all, it is the story of a woman who left a trail of deceit from Chicago to Nebraska and has a history of making sensational allegations that are never proven.

She insists she is telling the truth.

In a trial starting Tuesday, jurors will decide whom to believe.

___

It was a Thursday evening, Dec. 13, 2001, and Kenlee Schomaker and his wife Jane, emergency medical technicians for the volunteer fire department, were sitting in their Early home when the pager went off.

Shots had been fired a few doors down in their neighborhood. At least one person was injured and one or more suspects were on the loose. The EMT couple rushed to the blue, two-story colonial on South Avenue where Tracey and Michael Roberts lived. It was one of the nicest houses in town.

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Kenlee Schomaker remembered what they had been taught about scene safety: Do not enter a home until it is secure. Three sheriff's deputies arrived, scoured the house, found no suspects inside and waved them in.

Climbing stairs to the bedroom, the EMTs spotted a man slumped at the bottom of the bed in a pool of blood. Shell casings scattered the room. One bullet had gone into the back of his head and out through his eye socket. His eye was gone.

He had no pulse, and Schomaker told a deputy that rescue attempts would be futile.

As the EMTs left, they heard Tracey Roberts, in the kitchen with her three kids and deputies, screaming.

Her report that two other intruders escaped sent deputies canvassing everywhere. Fear quickly spread in a town where folks usually leave their doors unlocked. One of the Schomakers' neighbors would spend that night at their house. Another borrowed shells to load his shotgun.

The dead man was Dustin Wehde. He mowed the grass at property Schomaker owned; nice if you knew him, quiet if you didn't. He had few friends; folks remembered him as a kid who played golf and liked video games. Was he the type to break into anyone's home?

Besides, he was close to the Robertses, who took him to church and to play paintball. His mother, Mona Wehde, was a real estate agent who was among the first to welcome them to town.

Had Dustin been trying to protect Tracey from the other man and been killed in a mixup? Or was it something else entirely?

Whatever happened, Schomaker told a reporter two days after the shooting, Tracey Roberts had to go through hell to be scared like that, to have fired so many times.

___

Just three days after the shooting, Roberts showed up alone at the back door of Mary Cullen's home 15 miles away in Storm Lake. Cullen gave piano lessons to Roberts' 11-year-old son Bert, but the visit wasn't about that.

Cullen's husband John was publisher of the Storm Lake Times, and Roberts wanted to get her story out. John's brother Art, the paper's editor, conducted the interview.

Her retelling of the ordeal crackled with drama: With her husband on a business trip, she was home with her three children ? Bert, 3-year-old Noah and 1-year-old Mason ? when Wehde and another man barged through her unlocked door. One of the men choked her with panty hose that had been hanging from the staircase. She lost her glasses and blacked out. She woke to the sound of Bert screaming; he was holding a baseball bat to protect his younger siblings.

Roberts continued: She ran to the bedroom and reached for the gun safe. Wehde tugged at her hair and yanked on her feet. When the safe opened, she grabbed a 9 mm handgun and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The safety was on. She groped, unlocked it, then fired. Most of the shots hit.

Next, she said, she grabbed a revolver from the safe. She spotted Wehde trying to get up and fired that gun at him. His movement stopped. The second man fled the house (She would later explain she was mistaken when she initially told a deputy two men had gotten away).

Bert dialed 911.

"TRACEY ROBERTS TELLS HER STORY," was the Dec. 19 headline. Subheads added: "Strangled with panty hose, she warded off attackers to protect her children," and "'You're next,' intruder tells boy." The Times published a picture of her apparently bruised neck, which was checked out at a hospital.

TV personality Montel Williams invited Roberts to tell the story to a national audience.

Before the cameras, she and husband Michael held hands as she calmly spoke: "I did what I had to do to protect my family."

Applauding, Williams called her actions justifiable homicide.

___

An investigation by the Sac County Sheriff's Department and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation remained open but no second intruder was ever found and no charges were filed as of late 2002.

On Thanksgiving Day, Dustin's father, Brett Wehde, took a walk through the cemetery where his son was buried alongside relatives, his marble headstone emblazoned with engravings of his interests ? a snowmobile, a golf cart, a computer ? and inscribed, "Brett and Mona's beloved son."

After Dustin was killed, Brett and Mona broke up and filed for divorce. Brett was distraught over the crumbling of his family. At the graveside, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

The suicide of the well-known Brett hit Early hard.

Mona wanted answers. She filed a wrongful death lawsuit attempting to hold Tracey Roberts accountable for Dustin's death and to learn what happened that night. Why had Roberts really killed Dustin?

Her attorney picked up on inconsistencies in Roberts' story as she told and retold it. In one account, she knew it was Dustin pulling at her legs; in another, she did not find out the victim's identity until later. In different accounts, she fired from different positions.

In the end, Mona Wehde dropped the lawsuit just days before trial. State lawyers argued the planned testimony of a DCI agent could hamper the investigation.

But what investigation? Though never closed, it seemed to go nowhere. And years passed.

___

In January 2011, Sac County had a new prosecutor.

Ben Smith had left his job as a young lawyer for the attorney general's office and moved home with his parents months earlier to run for county attorney. A former running back at nearby Buena Vista University, he won handily. Now, taking office, he was inexperienced and swamped with work.

On his second day, DCI Special Agent Trent Vileta stopped by to welcome him ? but added, "I want to tell you about this one case."

Vileta, a former Milwaukee police officer, had been assigned to take a fresh look at Wehde's death in 2008. He had gone through the evidence, re-interviewed those involved, re-read Tracey's statements, traded emails with her.

He'd helped bring in an expert on blood splatters who concluded the last three shots went through the back of Dustin's head while he was face down on the ground.

Smith remembered hearing reports about Wehde's death when he was in college, and thinking: "Stupid kids. That's what happens when you break into a home." He hadn't thought about the case since and told Vileta he needed time to settle into his new job before he could.

But the agent wouldn't let it go. He'd send Smith photos of the crime scene to pique his interest. After hours, they'd spend time playing "Call of Duty," the prosecutor's favorite video game. Finally, Smith promised he'd spend a weekend reviewing the case ? and he was immediately hooked.

Working late nights and weekends, he went through years of files, putting together what he would later call 10 years of motive for the shooting and 10 years of twists and turns since.

The effort was exhausting. Smith's mother told him attending church would be a stress reliever. But there, a reading from Jeremiah instead gave him goosebumps. "To you I have entrusted my cause," the biblical passage began ? but the reader said "case" instead. "For he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked."

Within months, Smith would file a first-degree murder charge against Tracey, who now goes by her maiden name of Richter.

____

The criminal complaint cited a key piece of evidence found by investigators in Dustin's car. After months of speculation in town, prosecutors revealed this month it was a pink spiral notebook that claimed to be his diary.

In Dustin's sloppy handwriting, it suggested he had been hired as a hitman by a "mysterious fellow" named John Pitman III, who was Tracey's first husband.

"J.P. wants me to get/force his ex T.R. to kill her son Burt and then commit suicide, and if that plan fails Plan B is to make it appear as though T.R. had committed the murder of her son & then committed suicide," he wrote.

While it was Dustin's writing, investigators never believed it was credible. Dustin, a special education student, did not like to write and he'd never met Pitman. They decided to keep the journal's existence and contents a secret. Anyone who had knowledge of it could be involved in setting up Dustin.

Prosecutors suspect Tracey had convinced Dustin to write the diary, perhaps on the day of his death. Mona Wehde says Tracey had asked the day before to have Dustin come over to do some "copy work" for their computer business.

An old acquaintance of Tracey Roberts later came forward and said Tracey told her about the notebook days after the shooting and that her ex-husband would soon be arrested in connection with the home invasion.

Tracey and Pitman, a plastic surgeon, had been married in Chicago in 1988 and split up four years later after having Bert. (He has not responded to AP requests for comment on his mother's case.) During a bitter divorce, child support and custody litigation, Tracey went to police claiming that Pitman had sexually abused the 3-year-old boy.

Pitman called the allegation false and spent years trying to clear his name. When the divorce was finalized in 1996, a judge ruled there was zero evidence to support the claim.

Later in 1996, Tracey married Australian businessman Michael Roberts and they would move to Iowa and have two kids together. But her feuding with Pitman continued.

In early 2001, she went to authorities with new allegations that Pitman had abused Bert, which were quickly dismissed. Pitman responded by filing legal actions claiming she was interfering with his visitation rights and alienating him from his son. Tracey worried about possibly losing custody of Bert and having to travel to Chicago for court.

A judge ordered that she be deposed days before Dustin was shot, but it was cancelled at the last minute.

At the time, another strange legal case involving Tracey was also wrapping up. She had filed a lawsuit in 1998 accusing a Chicago dentist of sexually assaulting her while she was sedated during a procedure. He called her claims bogus. In the end, she received a small settlement and dropped the suit ? again, just days before Dustin was killed.

___

In the decade since the shooting, Tracey's life has taken more bizarre turns.

After Roberts filed for divorce from her in 2004, she tried to pin involvement in the home invasion and Dustin's death on him. She told the county sheriff that he used to talk in his sleep and would mention something about a journal that would set him free.

She started a Web site calling him a deadbeat dad and alleging that he may have been the second intruder. He told police that she tried to kill him ? twice ? but these and other allegations were dismissed by law enforcement as bogus he-said, she-said claims.

After she moved to Omaha, she told police in 2009 her Lexus had been broken into and Michael Roberts was likely to blame. Investigators found no evidence of a break-in but learned she had carried out an elaborate scheme to assume a fake identity.

She'd altered her divorce decree to give herself a fabricated maiden name ? Sophie Edwards ? which she then used to obtain a driver's license, a new Social Security number and a passport. She pleaded no contest to welfare fraud in Nebraska and was convicted of vehicle licensing perjury in Iowa, but she avoided jail. Federal passport fraud charges are pending.

___

For all the complexity swirling around his client, defense attorney Scott Bandstra said her defense in the murder case will actually be simple for jurors to understand.

It's about self-defense, about a mother protecting her children from intruders, and an investigation that failed to find the truth. He said he looks forward to telling "Tracey's story ? and by story I mean her statement of what happened." He will present a theory about who the second intruder could be.

"Dec. 13, 2001 was a nightmare for Tracey. The nightmare is not over."

Now 45 and facing life in prison if convicted, she has been held on $1 million bail at the jail in Sac City. She's getting support from her fianc? in Omaha and her parents, who live up the road in Rembrandt. Her father, Bernard Richter declined comment, saying reporters write about defendants without thinking about "their poor family." He said he knows from experience: he's a retired Chicago homicide detective.

At the courtroom in Fort Dodge, Smith will be joined by an experienced prosecutor with the Iowa Attorney General's office. The county attorney said he hopes to get justice for Mona Wehde ? and then quickly put the case that has consumed his life behind him.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45007535/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Can Obama kickstart the economy without Congress' help? (The Week)

New York ? His jobs plan blocked by the GOP, President Obama is unveiling a slew of executive orders to juice the economy without involving his Beltway nemeses

President Obama's big legislative push to juice the economy, the $447 billion American Jobs Act, is running into a brick wall of Republican opposition in Congress. So he's replacing his refrain of "Pass this bill" with a new mantra: "We can't wait." The substance behind the new slogan is a series of executive orders and other unilateral changes Obama is scheduled to roll out through the end of the year, to do what he can to help the economy without Congress. First up, on Monday, was an expanded Home Affordable Modification Program (HARP) designed to help struggling homeowners refinance at lower interest rates. Obama will follow that up with relief for student loans. Will these measures do any good??

These efforts are "pathetic": Housing is the millstone around the economy's neck, but HARP, which began in 2009, has barely lightened the load, refinancing a sorry 30,000 homes a month in its first two years, says Felix Salmon at?Reuters. The expanded HARP II won't do much better, and we're "never going to make a dent in the mountain of 11 million underwater mortgages at that rate." In fact, "this whole exercise is so obviously pathetic" that unless Obama's other ideas are a lot better, it "bodes very ill for the economy."
"Obama's pathetic refinancing initiative"

Actually, the new HARP could do wonders: Obama's much-improved mortgage-relief plan is "a good start," says Joseph Gagnon at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. If he gets the details right and the Federal Reserve commits to keeping mortgage rates low for at least a year, the wave of refinancing could save U.S. households $80 billion a year, providing a long-term stimulus that would boost the broader economy, "perhaps creating 4 million extra jobs."
"The last bullet"

But it won't help Obama in 2012: HARP II might well have "a nice stimulative effect ? possibly kicking in in time for the next president to enjoy," says Andrew Leonard at?Salon. Which is why Obama and his economic advisers should have done something like this ? or bigger ? three years ago. Now, belatedly, this will help qualifying homeowners, but it won't do much for Obama before the election. In that context, "the refrain 'We can't wait' doesn't just ring hollow ? it actively begs for mockery."
"Can Obama fix Geithner?s housing bust?"

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