iPhone Tips: Tips on How to Unlock Your iPhone 5 Today

If you need to unlock your new or not-so-new iPhone 5 that is locked to AT&T, you have two options: call AT&T and ask them to unlock it or use a third party service like Keys2iPhone.com that sells iPhone unlocks. If you decide to go with option #1, be prepared to give AT&T your current phone number, name and other related information to verify your identity. You can call them directly at their customer support toll-free number: 1-800-331-0500.

At&t has repeatedly stated that as long as you meet their unlocking conditions, they will generate the unlocking code for your device. The conditions may be difficult to meet if you just bought a second hand iPhone from someone else, since they will need to verify that you are the original owner of the device before they can issue an unlock. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous sellers out there who can sell you a locked handset, or, even worse, a blacklisted iPhone in which case you can stop dreaming about getting it officially unlocked!

TIP: Always request the IMEI number of the iPhone you are about to buy and run it in the official Apple IMEI database to check if it has been reported stolen or blacklisted for some other reason.

For the reasons stated above it may be a real chore trying to get your iPhone 5 unlocked on your own. Naturally, the second option is to use a third party facilitating service that via their special relations with carriers secure official unlocks. There are many services out there ? some are more expensive than others. Since you have already invested good money in purchasing your iPhone, it is only wise to pay a little more for a sure thing and avoid unpleasant surprises down the road. You can check customer reviews before ordering an unlock.

AT&T iPhone 5 comes in one version with a nano-SIM card slot for CDMA and GSM networks. The AT&T uses GSM technology and once they unlock your GSM slot, you will be able to use your iPhone with any GSM provider in U.S. and all over the world. The unlock will work with most European carriers that also use GSM technology. Simply check the world GSM coverage map for a list of GSM mobile carriers in your country.

Source: http://www.suunews.com/weblogs/iphone-tips/2013/jun/30/tips-on-how-to-unlock-your-iphone-5-today/

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Mandela remains 'critical but stable'

COMMENTARY | With the sesquis?sequic?.the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as the Fourth of July weekend coming up, it's a good time to beat the heat and see some history. Here are the five best Civil War films to see, and three you might want to take a pass on.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mandela-still-critical-zuma-says-hopes-leave-hospital-110659787.html

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Diamond catalyst shows promise in breaching age-old barrier

June 30, 2013 ? In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison chemist Robert J. Hamers.

Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure.

"The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions," explains Hamers, a UW-Madison professor of chemistry. "There is an enormous barrier you have to overcome to get your final product."

Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia -- by some estimates 2 percent of the world's electrical output -- has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry. Now, that goal may be on the horizon, thanks to a technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues and published June 30, 2013 in the journal Nature Methods.

Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. The iron, combined with high temperature and high pressure, accelerates the reaction rate for converting nitrogen to ammonia by lowering the activation barrier that otherwise keeps nitrogen, one of the most ubiquitous gases on the planet, intact.

"The nitrogen molecule is one of the happiest molecules around," notes Hamers. "It is incredibly stable. It doesn't do anything."

One of the big obstacles, according to Hamers, is that nitrogen binds poorly to catalytic materials like iron.

Hamers and his team, including Di Zhu, Linghong Zhang and Rose E. Ruther, all of UW-Madison, turned to synthetic industrial diamond -- a cheap, gritty, versatile material -- as a potential new catalyst for the reduction process. Diamond, the Wisconsin team found, can facilitate the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia under ambient temperatures and pressures.

Like all chemical reactions, the reduction of nitrogen to ammonia involves moving electrons from one molecule to another. Using hydrogen-coated diamond illuminated by deep ultraviolet light, the Wisconsin team was able to induce a ready stream of electrons into water, which served as a reactant liquid that reduced nitrogen to ammonia under temperature and pressure conditions far more efficient than those required by traditional industrial methods.

"From a chemist's standpoint, nothing is more efficient than electrons in water," says Hamers, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. With the diamond catalyst, "the electrons are unconfined. They flow like lemmings to the sea."

While the method was demonstrated in the context of reducing nitrogen to a valuable agricultural product, the new diamond-centric approach is exciting, Hamers argues, because it can potentially fit a wide range of processes that require catalysis. "This is truly a different way of thinking about inducing reactions that may have more efficiency and applicability. We're doing this with diamond grit. It is infinitely reusable."

The technique devised by Hamers and his colleagues, he notes, still has kinks that need to be worked out to make it a viable alternative to traditional methods. The use of deep ultraviolet light, for example, is a limiting factor. Inducing reactions with visible light is a goal that would enhance the promise of the new technique for applications such as antipollution technology.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/zbzxBs1Pjuc/130630144449.htm

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Apple slowly moving away from Samsung, towards TSMC

+Lewis Curdie ? 2 hours ago ? More articles by Lewis Curdie

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co) is a company we first mentioned late last year, and we?re scribbling about it again today ? in a similar Apple-ditching-Samsung context.

Indeed, it?s much the same story, with Apple said to be sloooowly tiptoeing away from Samsung as a component supplier. Makes sense, since they, like, hate each other and stuff.

The story is reported on The Wall Street Journal, with Jessica E. Lessin and crew writing somewhere in the region of a billion words, though The Verge kindly offers a more concise synopsis.

Essentially, Apple and TSMC have been in talks for some time, as far back as 2010, though a couple of issues have prevented a full-scale Samsung abandonment.

Firstly, Apple reportedly demanded its own factory space, or the right to invest in TSMC, something the Taiwanese weren?t too happy about.

More recently, TSMC is said to be struggling with Apple?s demands in terms of capacity and output and that.

Some sort of deal has supposedly been ironed out, though Apple will still rely on Samsung in the meantime. Indeed, realistically, Apple will likely still rely on Samsung for a long time to come, albeit in a reduced capacity.

Source: http://feeds.mobot.net/~r/mobot/~3/7x4r2NjoON4/apple-slowly-moving-samsung-tsmc-58035

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Divorce early in childhood affects parental relationships in adulthood

June 29, 2013 ? Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say.

"By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychologists are especially interested in childhood experiences, as their impact can extend into adulthood, but studying such early experiences is challenging, as people's memories of particular events vary widely. Parental divorce is a good event to study, he says, as people can accurately report if and when their parents divorced, even if they do not have perfect recollection of the details.

In two studies published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Fraley and graduate student Marie Heffernan examined the timing and effects of divorce on both parental and romantic relationships, as well as differences in how divorce affects relationships with mothers versus fathers. In the first study, they analyzed data from 7,735 people who participated in a survey about personality and close relationships through yourpersonality.net. More than one-third of the survey participants' parents divorced and the average age of divorce was about 9 years old.

The researchers found that individuals from divorced families were less likely to view their current relationships with their parents as secure. And people who experienced parental divorce between birth and 3 to 5 years of age were more insecure in their current relationships with their parents compared to those whose parents divorced later in childhood.

"A person who has a secure relationship with a parent is more likely than someone who is insecure to feel that they can trust the parent," Fraley says. "Such a person is more comfortable depending on the parent and is confident that the parent will be psychologically available when needed."

Although there was a tendency for people to experience more anxiety about romantic relationships if they were from divorced families, the link between parental divorce and insecurity in romantic relationships was relatively weak. This finding was important, the researchers say, as it shows that divorce does not have a blanket effect on all close relationships in adulthood but rather is selective -- affecting some relationships more than others. They also found that parental divorce tends to predict greater insecurity in people's relationships with their fathers than with their mothers.

To help explain why divorce influences maternal relationships more than paternal ones, and to replicate the first study's findings, Fraley and Heffernan repeated their analysis with a new set of 7,500 survey participants. Unlike in the first study, however, they asked the participants to indicate which of their parents had been awarded primary custody following their divorce. The researchers speculated that paternal relationships were more insecure following divorce because mothers are more likely than fathers to be awarded custody.

The majority of participants -- 74 percent -- indicated that they had lived with their mothers following divorce or separation, while 11 percent indicated living with their fathers; the remainder lived with grandparents or other caretakers. The researchers found that people were more likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with their mother and, conversely, were less likely to have an insecure relationship with their father if they lived with him. The results were similar with respect to mothers.

While it is premature to speculate on the implications of this work for decision-making regarding child custody, the work is valuable as it suggests that "something as basic as the amount of time that one spends with a parent or one's living arrangements" can shape the quality of child-parent relationships, write Fraley and Heffernan.

"People's relationships with their parents and romantic partners play important roles in their lives," Fraley says. "This research brings us one step closer to understanding why it is that some people have relatively secure relationships with close others whereas others have more difficulty opening up to and depending on important people in their lives."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/yQxmCO4tAxw/130629164737.htm

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Verizon starts selling 32GB Samsung Galaxy S 4 online for $299

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Verizon customers -- now's your chance to grab Samsung's latest flagship device with more internal storage. The carrier has started selling the 32GB Galaxy S 4 online, giving buyers another choice besides the 16GB version sold on its website for $199. Shipments aren't promised until July 3rd, but you can buy the 32GB Galaxy S 4 right now for $299 -- assuming you're interested in paying $100 more for storage on a phone that already features expandable memory. If you'd rather shell out more money for an unlocked bootloader, though, Verizon also sells the Developer Edition at the lofty price of $650 each.

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http://www.engadget....sung-galaxy-s4/

Source: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1161884-verizon-starts-selling-32gb-samsung-galaxy-s-4-online-for-299/

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Gene Frenette: There's always been a bully in college football

Source: http://feeds.jacksonville.com/~r/JacksonvillecomSports/~3/5MrTMU8N7Vo/gene-frenette-theres-always-been-bully-college-football

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Brian Austin Green Upped to Anger Management Series Regular

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/brian-austin-green-upped-to-anger-management-series-regular/

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Obama yet to have African legacy like predecessors

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama, center, takes a tour during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

USAID administrator Raj Shah, left, looks on as U.S. President Barack Obama, center, talks to Nimna Diayte, president of the Farmers Federation, front, during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama looks out to sea through the 'Door of No Return,' at the slave house on Goree Island, in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Obama is calling his visit to a Senegalese island from which Africans were said to have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean into slavery, a 'very powerful moment.' President Obama was in Dakar Thursday as part of a weeklong trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black U.S. president's lack of personal engagement during his first term. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

U.S. President Barack Obama looks at rice crops during a food security expo on Friday, June 28, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? President Barack Obama is receiving the embrace you might expect for a long-lost son on his return to his father's home continent, even as he has yet to leave a lasting policy legacy for Africa on the scale of his two predecessors.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed innovative Africa initiatives while in the White House and passionately continue their development work in the region in their presidential afterlife. Obama's efforts here have not been so ambitious, despite his personal ties to the continent.

His first major tour of Africa as president is coming just now, in his fifth year, while Bush and Clinton are frequent fliers to Africa. Bush even will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, next week at the same time as Obama, although they have no plans to meet. Instead, their wives plan to appear together at a summit on empowering African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute, with the former president in attendance.

Spirited crowds greeted Obama on his visit to French-speaking Senegal, Africa's westernmost country, with revelers frequently breaking into song and dance at the sight of the first African-American president. However thrilled they were to see him, many said they wish his visits weren't so rare.

"Two visits in five years, it's not enough," said Faye Mbissine, a 30-year-old nanny who took an early morning bus to come see Obama on Thursday outside the presidential palace. "We hope that he can come more."

Manougou Nbodj, a 21-year-old student, said he hopes Obama will bring American resources like jobs and health care. "If Obama can work with Macky Sall the way that George Bush worked with Africa before him, then we will be happy," he said, referring to the Senegalese president.

One of Bush's chief foreign policy successes was his aid to Africa, including AIDS relief credited with saving millions of lives and grants to reward developing countries for good governance. Bush followed on momentum on African policy that began under Clinton, who allowed several dozen sub-Saharan countries to export to the U.S. duty-free.

Obama has continued the Bush and Clinton programs during tough economic times. But his signature Africa policy thus far has been food security, through less prominent programs designed to address hunger with policy reforms and private investment in agriculture.

On Friday, Obama toured displays in small thatched booths at his hotel grounds on a bluff overlooking the ocean, meeting with farmers and entrepreneurs who are using new methods and technologies to advance the cause of food security.

In brief remarks later, he drew attention to Feed the Future, a public private partnership initiated by his administration that he said has helped seven million small farmers in developing nations, including 7,000 in Senegal.

"This is a moral imperative," he said. "I believe that Africa is rising and it wants to partner with us not to be dependent but to be self-sufficient.

Witney Schneidman, former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Obama's efforts are not like Bush's AIDS initiative "where you put people on a medicine to save their lives ? very, extremely important. This is more of a structural change, and I think that's going to take time."

Under Clinton and Bush "you had this major funding, major attention, major initiatives going to Africa, and then President Obama came in, and there was a sense of stall, in a way," said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She said that's understandable as he grappled with wars and an economic crisis, and she gave Obama credit for working diplomatically with African governments in his first term.

But, she said, "they weren't big, splashy initiatives that got peoples' attention either in Africa or here at home, and no big money and no big ideas that really helped define what Obama was about in Africa."

That's a disappointed those who were expecting more from the first African-American president, especially after his speech during a brief stopover in Ghana his first summer in office, in which he spoke personally of his father's life in Kenya and declared "a new moment of great promise" in Africa. "I have the blood of Africa within me," Obama said.

Schneidman argued that Obama's personal connection may also have been an impediment to deeper engagement in his first term. "The whole birther movement here in the U.S. that was sort of questioning his place of birth to begin with ... I think it was a real constraint on dealing with Africa," Schneidman said.

Mwangi Kimenyi, a Kenyan who directs the Brookings Institutions' Africa Growth Initiative, said Obama may be a victim of misplaced sky-high expectations on the continent when he was first elected.

"Africans still consider Clinton their president," Kimenyi said. "If you go to Africa and mention Clinton ? I mean, he is a hero, even today. I don't think President Obama is going to approach the level of President Clinton at all, in terms of respect, in terms of what they feel, and it's partly because, as one whose family is from Africa, the expectations were rather high. I mean, they expected him to do more, to do more visits, to actually relate better with Africans, to understand the continent better."

"There is not that feeling that, you know, we have our son there," Kimenyi said. "There's probably more reference of a prodigal son than a, you know, son."

Clinton first drew extensive attention to Africa in 1998 when he made the longest trip ever by a U.S. president, with stops in six countries that had never before been visited by any occupant of the Oval Office. He's scheduled to come back this summer for what has become an annual visit, with his Clinton Foundation investing in myriad wide-ranging projects in Africa on health, agriculture and climate change.

Bush's trip this week is his third in 19 months to promote his Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon partnership to combat breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. On this visit, he and his wife, Laura, plan to help renovate a cervical cancer screening and treatment clinic in Zambia before heading to Tanzania for the African First Ladies Summit advocating investment in programs for women and girls.

Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes said the president is signaling increased engagement with the current trip and hopes it will prove to be a "pivotal moment" of Africa's growth taking off.

"Frankly, Africa is a place that we had not yet been able to devote significant presidential time and attention to," Rhodes said. "And there's nothing that can make an impact more in terms of our foreign policy and our economic and security interests than the president of the United States coming and demonstrating the importance of our commitment to this region."

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Associated Press writer Robbie Corey-Boulet contributed to this report.

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Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-28-Obama/id-8666a207180b495b8230d57fcebe549c

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10 Google Reader Alternatives That Will Ease Your RSS Pain

Google Reader is on its deathbed, slated to meet its end on July 1st. Its demise has been looming in the distance for a while, so this should come as no surprise. And while this is certainly a time of mourning, there's the unseemly business of finding a replacement. Here's a list of platform agnostic alternatives that should help make the transition as painless as possible. We're sorry for your loss.

Feedly

Feedly's one of the best options who need one reader on all their devices. Feedly has finally rolled out its web-based reader in addition to standard Android and iOS apps. It's well designed, but it's a bit more like a newspaper than the constant-flow-of-feeds-to-my-faaaaace Google Reader. But it's free, and Feedly has been out there saying a transition from Google Reader will be "seamless."

Digg Reader

Digg's Reader hasn't come out quite yet, but so far it's looking mighty fine, the grand hope of post-Google readers possibly. Interface-wise, it's as clean and simple as you'd hope for, but it also comes with a few, tiny bonus features like a built-in Instapaper button, and full-on Digg thumbs-up, thumbs-down integration. It's still anyone's game, but those subtle social hooks could make Digg a winner.

AOL Reader

Weird to see AOL popping back on the scene, but AOL Reader is stripped down, simple, and fast. All things you want from your Google Reader replacement. There's nothing too new here, but it's not busted either, and i'll come with a full suite of apps for iOS and Android. It's definitely worth a look.

NewsBlur

NewsBlur's got a solid, Google Reader-esque web app you can try out on the spot if you hop over to their site. And, if you're a mobile user, it also has an Android app as well as iOS versions for the iPhone and iPad. Free accounts max out at 64 feeds, which won't be enough for a real power user, but a real, unlimited subscription is only $1 a month.

The Old Reader

This basically is Google Reader; the interface is practically identically. And you can login right with your Google account import feeds that way, though The Old Reader claims it's flooded at the moment, and won't let you. The downside here is that there are no apps (yet) and social integration is only available by connecting through Facebook. But it's great as a bare-bones replacement for web-use.

NetVibes

NetVibes is a web reader with some powerful customization options. Like any good RSS reader, you can resort to a pure feed approach, but NetVibes also has a dashboard setting that allows you to create and organize "widgets" for specific feeds and folders and move them around. The downside is that there aren't any mobile apps, so you'll be tied to your computer.

Pulse

Pulse (Android) is a flashy, stylish reader that supports the use of multiple columns to organize. And it looks as stunning on your Nexus as it does in your browser.

Flipboard

While a mobile app an never fully fill the hole Google Reader leaves in your desktop browser, Flipboard (Android, iOS) is another great, magazine-like mobile option for folks whose feeds are image-heavy. It's so pretty you might just forgive it for not living on your laptop.

Zite

Zite (Android, iOS) boasts a clean newspapery look with an option for straight-up feed view. Perfect for people who keep their RSS on a second screen.

Twitter?

It's by no means a perfect replacement, but it might be able to fill part of the hole depending on your use-case. Twitter doesn't have an "unread" state, so it's only good for here-and-now developements, but many outlets user their Twitters a glorified RSS feeds anyway, and there's no shortage of mobiles apps, for now anyway. If you're a light RSS user, and a heavy Twitter user, you might be able to work something out. Maybe.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/10-google-reader-alternatives-that-will-ease-your-rss-p-5990540

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Skylar Neese Case: Teen Murdered By Two Closest Friends,

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/skylar-neese-case-teen-murdered-by-two-closest-friends/

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Microsoft: We?re not afraid of BlackBerry, proud to be No. 3 in mobile

Impertinent. Mumbling. Offended. Teary-eyed. Rachel Jeantel, star witness for the prosecution in George Zimmerman's murder trial, was all of those, and more, as her testimony Wednesday provided new details into Trayvon Martin?s last moments and infused racially loaded commentary into an already-sensitive trial.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-not-afraid-blackberry-proud-no-3-mobile-205537962.html

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US suspending Bangladesh trade benefits after factory tragedies - source

Retail

Reuters

14 hours ago

ANDREW BIRAJ / Reuters

People rescue garment workers trapped under rubble at the Rana Plaza building after it collapsed, in Savar, 30 km (19 miles) outside Dhaka in this April 24, 2013 file photo. Sources says President Obama will suspend U.S. trade benefits to Bangladesh.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce on Thursday that the United States is suspending trade benefits for Bangladesh after two tragedies in a year in the country's garment sector that killed more than 1,200 workers, a congressional source said.

U.S. trade officials have said they expected Obama to announce a decision on the matter by the end of June. The U.S. Trade Representative's office did not have an immediate comment on whether an announcement would come Thursday.

Suspending Bangladesh from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences program would increase U.S. duties on an array of products the Asian country exports to the United States, such as tobacco, sporting equipment, porcelain china, plastic products and a small amount of textile products.

But it would not directly affect Bangladesh's main export, clothing, since garments are not eligible for duty cuts under the GSP program, which was created in 1976 to help economic development in the world's poorest countries and to reduce import costs for U.S. companies.

In 2012, Bangladesh was spared about $2 million in U.S. duties on about $35 million worth of goods under GSP, but it paid about $732 million in U.S. duties on $4.9 billion of clothing exports not covered by the program, according to Ed Gresser, a trade analyst with the GlobalWorks Foundation.

Still, Obama's decision would be a repudiation of working conditions in Bangladesh following the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in April that killed 1,129 people and the Tazreen factory fire in November that killed 112. Clothing for several American and European retailers is made in Bangladesh.

It also could influence the European Union's decision whether to suspend trade benefits for Bangladesh, which would have far more impact since Bangladesh's clothing and textiles exports receive duty-free treatment there.

The EU imported roughly 9.2 billion euros ($12.13 billion) of goods from Bangladesh last year, according to data from the EU's executive, the European Commission.

Clothing and textile products ranging from towels and bedding accounted for almost 93 percent of those goods.

EU officials have threatened to kick Bangladesh out of the program - a process that could take more than a year - unless it improves worker safety conditions.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663286/s/2de37be3/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Cus0Esuspending0Ebangladesh0Etrade0Ebenefits0Eafter0Efactory0Etragedies0Esource0E6C10A467534/story01.htm

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Egypt prepares for worst ahead of Sunday protest

CAIRO (AP) ? As the streets once again fill with protesters eager to oust the president and Islamists determined to keep him in power, Egyptians are preparing for the worst: days or weeks of urban chaos that could turn their neighborhoods into battlegrounds.

Households already beset by power cuts, fuel shortages and rising prices are stocking up on goods in case the demonstrations drag on. Businesses near protest sites are closing until crowds subside. Fences, barricades and walls are going up near homes and key buildings. And local communities are organizing citizen patrols in case security breaks down.

For yet another time since President Mohammed Morsi took office last year, his palace in Cairo's upscale Heliopolis neighborhood is set to become the focus for popular frustration with his rule. Some protests outside the capital have already turned deadly, and weapons ? including firearms ? have been circulating more openly than in the past.

"We're worried like all Egyptians that a huge crowd will come, and it will get bloody," said Magdy Ezz, owner of a menswear shop across from the walled complex, a blend of Middle Eastern and neoclassical architecture. Besides ordinary roll-down storm shutters, storefronts on the street are sealed off with steel panels.

"We just hope it will be peaceful. But it could be a second revolution," he said. "If it lasts, we'll have to keep the store closed. But it's not like business has been booming here anyway, especially since the problems last year."

Last winter, the area saw some of Cairo's deadliest street violence since the 2011 uprising, with Islamists attacking a sit-in, anarchists throwing gasoline bombs, and police savagely beating protesters.

Morsi's opponents aim to bring out massive crowds starting Sunday, saying the country is fed up with Islamist misrule that has left the economy floundering and security in shambles. They say they have collected 15 million signatures ? around 2 million more than the number of voters who elected Morsi ? calling for him to step down, and they hope the turnout will push him to do just that.

Morsi's Islamist allies say they will defend the mandate of the country's first freely elected president, some with their "souls and blood" if necessary, while hard-liners have vowed to "smash" the protests.

On Friday, thousands of Morsi supporters launched a counterdemonstration, which some plan to continue as an open-ended sit-in at a mosque near the presidential palace ? the endpoint of the main protest march two days later.

Both camps say they intend to be peaceful, but demonstrations could rapidly descend into violence ? especially if the two sides meet. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group has said five of its members were killed in clashes with protesters in Nile Delta provinces over the past days. On Friday, two people were killed in clashes in the port city of Alexandria and at least five Brotherhood offices were torched, while the nation's highest religious authority, Al-Azhar, warned against "civil war."

At the Brotherhood's national headquarters in Cairo's Muqattam district, workers added a final layer of mortar to a brick wall topped with grating to reinforce the main gate. A bank on the corner was completely boarded up. Some fear protesters could descend on the neighborhood to attack the headquarters, as happened last spring when supporters and opponents of the president fought street battles that left 200 wounded.

"The police have to get this place secured. It's their job and I'm sure they will," said Hadi Saad, a designer who lives around the corner from the headquarters. "The demonstrations will be very big across the country, no matter if (Morsi) stays or goes, so we should be prepared here as well."

Other neighbors said they don't expect a repeat of violence in the area, a hill overlooking the rest of the city. Only a handful of police patrolled the neighborhood ahead of the weekend protests, corralling a 100-car queue to the main avenue's gas station.

Engineer Hasan Farag, also a neighbor, said residents were "hoping for the best." Some have begun to resent the Brotherhood's presence, however, and a petition to force the offices out has been circulating.

"The neighborhood is divided ? some don't mind the headquarters being here, others do," Saad said.

Security has been redoubled at the presidential palace in Heliopolis. Walls set up last year still block some traffic access, and curved concrete slabs designed to prevent climbing now protect the main gates. Shipping containers also line much of the perimeter, and nearby apartment buildings have blocked off their parking lots and side streets with barbed wire. On Friday, authorities built a new wall of concrete blocks to surround the complex.

Peter Soliman, a communications student who lives in the neighborhood, said most residents don't know what to expect.

"Of course, parents are worried about their children going out to demonstrate by the palace, especially if the Brotherhood shows up," he said. "People fear things will turn bloody and divide the country."

Other Heliopolis residents and protest organizers say neighborhood watch groups are already being formed.

In the city center, concrete walls continue to block off the Interior Ministry and southern access routes to Tahrir Square, epicenter of the uprising that overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Protesters began gathering at the square ahead of the weekend, saying they plan to dig in for a protracted conflict.

The nearby Semiramis Hotel is taking no chances, even though Tahrir is expected to be a sideshow compared to Sunday's march to the palace. The site of repeated clashes between stone-throwing youths and riot police this past year, the luxury hotel has just finished fortifying itself with a spiked metal fence topped with razor-sharp blades.

To the south, in the leafy Garden City neighborhood ? an area that has sometimes seen spillover violence from Tahrir ? some residents were securing their homes.

Metalworker Sameh Haddad used an arc welder to put the final touches on an apartment building's new wrought iron gate before hurrying to other appointments. "For once, business has been great," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-prepares-worst-ahead-sunday-protest-074010870.html

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These Great Lego Game of Thrones Minifigs Are Now for Sale

Game of Thrones' and Lego fans rejoice: the Warden of the North, Arya, the Mother of Dragons?sadly with only one baby dragon?John Snow and Tyrion Lannister can be all yours in precious minifig form for $70, a price that will feel something between the Red Wedding and Theon Greyjoy's torture to your credit card.

According to the manufacturer on Etsy, "they are being made in very limited numbers and won't be available long!" They say that all these minifigs have been designed by their house artist and custom pad printed?which means they are high quality. Pad printing is the same printing method Lego uses.

These are not Lego or Game of Thrones' official products. They are not the first Game of Thrones' minifigs either?Lego expert Sam Beattie made his own characters last year. Sam's minifigs are not as faithful as these ones, but they are are really good, as you can see here:

The Starks

The Lannisters

The Baratheon Brothers

The Small Council

The Clegane Brothers

Jorah, Daenerys and Drogo

Sansa, Bran, Hodor (Hodor!) and Rickon Stark

If you have Game of Thrones' withdrawal syndrome you can go to this Lego site fully dedicated to Game of Thrones. Or just do like me and read the Wikipedia entries to know everything that's going to happen because you are too impatient to wait or read the books.

Source: http://lego.gizmodo.com/these-great-lego-game-of-thrones-minifigs-are-now-for-s-605042215

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PFT: Cops impound SUV believed used in '12 murder

AP

At at time when the authorities and the Patriots have taken stunning and decisive action against Aaron Hernandez, the National Football League has done nothing.

The NFL will continue to do nothing, until it has a reason to do something.

?NFL clubs were advised today that if Aaron Hernandez enters into a player contract prior to the resolution of the charges pending against him, the contract will not be approved or take effect until Commissioner Roger Goodell holds a hearing,? the league said in a statement forwarded to PFT by NFL spokesman Greg Aiello.? ?The purpose of the hearing would be to determine whether Hernandez should be suspended or face other action prior to the charges being resolved.?

The league?s position makes sense.? Why suspend a guy who is unemployed, and currently unemployable?? The league?s stance makes teams even less likely to be interested in Hernandez, since it makes clear that, if anyone tries to give the guy a job, they?ll first have to deal with persuading Goodell to let them employ Hernandez.

As a result, Hernandez?s status won?t be relevant unless and until he is cleared on murder charges.? And things could get interesting if he?s acquitted in an O.J. Simpson-style outcome, where half of the country or more believes that, even though he was found not guilty, he still did it.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/27/cops-impound-suv-that-may-connect-hernandez-to-2012-killings/related/

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Obama: I don't need 'photo op' with Mandela

President Obama is heading to South Africa from Senegal as part of his African tour, where Nelson Mandela's daughter says he might visit Mandela if doctors approve. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

By Stacey Klein and Ian Johnston, NBC News

Barack Obama said Friday that he did not need a ?photo op? with Nelson Mandela, saying the ?last thing? he wanted to do was be intrusive at a time when the anti-apartheid icon?s family are concerned about his health.

However, the president did not rule out a meeting with Mandela, whose ex-wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela said Friday had made a ?great improvement? compared to a few days ago.

On Tuesday, Mandela's daughter Zindzi said that her father ?opened his eyes and gave me a smile? when she told him Obama was coming.

Speaking about her ex-husband Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela says, 'From what he was a few days ago, there is great improvement' in the former South African president's condition.

Speaking on Air Force One as he flew to South Africa from Senegal, Obama said that ?we?ll see what the situation is when we land.?

?I don't need photo op," he said. "The last thing I want to do is be intrusive at a time when the family is concerned? with Mandela?s condition.

He said the main message he wanted to deliver was ?profound gratitude? for Mandela?s leadership and to say that ?the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with him, his family and his country.?

This message could be delivered to his family and not directly to Mandela, the president said.

On Thursday, Obama said he had already had the "privilege of meeting Madiba [Mandela's clan name] and speaking to him."

"And he's a personal hero, but I don't think I'm unique in that regard," Obama added. "If and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."

Madikizela-Mandela, speaking outside Mandela's former home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, said her ex-husband seemed to be getting better.

?I?m not a doctor but I can say that from what he was a few days ago there is great improvement," she said.

When asked by NBC News Special Correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault?whether the family would welcome a visit by Obama, Zindzi Mandela said Thursday she wasn't aware of any formal request. However, she added that decision would be left with doctors treating the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Ahead of his arrival in Johannesburg on Friday, an anti-Obama protest was held not far from the hospital where Mandela is being treated with one demonstrator claiming the U.S. president had been a ?disappointment.?

Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters

Protesters protest the visit of President Barack Obama in Pretoria Friday. One said he viewed Obama as a "disappointment" and thought Nelson Mandela would too.

Reuters reported that nearly 1,000 trade unionists, Muslim activists, South African Communist Party members and others marched to the U.S. Embassy where they burned a U.S. flag, calling Obama's foreign policy ?arrogant and oppressive.?

"We had expectations of America's first black president. Knowing Africa's history, we expected more,? Khomotso Makola, a 19-year-old law student, told Reuters. He said Obama was a ?disappointment, I think Mandela too would be disappointed and feel let down.?

South African critics of Obama have focused in particular on his support for U.S. drone strikes overseas, which they say have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and his failure to deliver on a pledge to close the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba housing terrorism suspects.

However, Nigerian painter Sanusi Olatunji, 31, had brought portraits of both Mandela and Obama to add to a growing number of flowers, tribute notes and gifts outside the hospital.

?These are the two great men of my lifetime,? he told Reuters. ?To me, Mandela is a prophet who brought peace and opportunity. He made it possible for a black man like me to live in a country that was only for whites.?

/

View images of civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, who went from anti-apartheid activist to prisoner to South Africa's first black president.

In the latest statement on Mandela?s condition, South African President Jacob Zuma said the 94-year-old was ?much better? on Thursday than he had been the previous night. "The medical team continues to do a sterling job," he added.

A statement issued by Zuma?s office said he and Obama would hold ?crucial bilateral talks that will take forward relations between the two countries? on Saturday.

?South Africa values its warm and mutually beneficial relationship with the United States immensely. This is a significant visit which will take political, economic and people to people relations between the two countries to a higher level, while also enhancing cooperation between U.S. and the African continent at large,? it said.

The statement noted Obama?s visit was being made as South Africa prepares to celebrate ?20 years of freedom? ? 1994 saw the first elections in the country in which all its citizens were eligible to vote. Mandela voted for the first time in his life in that year and was elected the country?s first black president, serving until 1999.

?South Africa greatly appreciates the solidarity provided by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United States during the struggle for liberation,? the statement said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

This story was originally published on Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:05 AM EDT

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663309/s/2ded2716/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C280C191842150Eobama0Ei0Edont0Eneed0Ephoto0Eop0Ewith0Emandela0Dlite/story01.htm

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Exclusive 'Europa Report' Clip Makes An Emergency Landing

Characters in movies should probably know by now that ambitious, privately funded trips to the moons of other planets don't tend to go very well. That's the case in the new thriller starring Sharlto Copley from "District 9," "Europa Report," which tells the story of a crew of astronauts sent to look for life on [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/06/28/europa-report-clip/

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The Internet Chooses the Movies at This Clever Stoop Cinema

We've seen loads of pop-up urbanism over the past few years, from parks to libraries, all designed to turn dead urban space into lively ones. But how do you stop people from immersing themselves in their phone screens in public? By building a larger screen, where they can be immersed together!

A group of designers in Auckland?who go by the name Oh No Sumo?installed this tiny theater on a street corner that they describe as a "hardscape," where "members of the public retreat individually into the media offered on their mobile phones." The timber-and-fabric tent is designed to counteract that innocuous behavior: YouTube videos and short films, playing on the screen from a projector above the entrence of the building, give people a reason to stop by and hang out.

Who chose the videos? The public, via the internet, of course. People could suggest videos and films online, and the Oh No Sumo team would add them to the playlist. "Short movies previously shared online, are projected for the public to enjoy, offering similar media to that sought out on their phones," explain the designers. "A community must be linked not only virtually but also physically." This particular pop-up theater is now a thing of the past, but keep your eyes peeled?this seems to be a trend. [CollabCubed]

Photo by Simon Devitt.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-internet-chooses-the-movies-at-this-clever-stoop-ci-602564034

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Friend: Trayvon Martin encounter racially charged

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? George Zimmerman's defense attorney insisted during several testy exchanges with a key prosecution witness Thursday that Trayvon Martin injected race into a confrontation with the neighborhood watch volunteer and insinuated the young woman was not believable because of inconsistencies in her story.

However, 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel stood firm in her testimony about the night Zimmerman shot the unarmed black 17-year-old after a fight that Jeantel said she overheard while on the phone with Martin. Jeantel has said Martin told her he was being followed by a "creepy-ass cracker" ? implying Martin was being followed by a white man because of his race.

Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic. Race has permeated nationwide discussions of the case since the February 2012 shooting, which prompted nationwide protests and claims from critics that police took too long to arrest Zimmerman.

The neighborhood watch volunteer has pleaded not guilty and says he acted in self-defense.

Defense attorney Don West also zeroed in on slight differences among three different accounts of what happened before Martin's killing, in an apparent effort to discredit her. Jeantel has described what she heard over the phone in a deposition; a letter to Martin's mother; and an interview with the Martin family attorney. Among the differences highlighted by West:

? In some accounts, she said race was an issue but not in others.

? Jeantel testified Wednesday that her friend's last words were "Get off! Get off!" before Martin's phone went silent. But on Thursday, under cross-examination, she conceded that she hadn't mentioned that in her account of what happened to Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton. She had left out some details to spare Fulton's feelings, and also because neither Fulton nor the Martin family attorney asked her directly about them, Jeantel said.

? After Martin asks why he is being followed, Zimmerman responds, "What are you doing around here?" in one account by Jeantel. In another account, according to West, she says Zimmerman said, "What are you talking about?"

Zimmerman, 29, could get life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder. Zimmerman followed Martin in his truck and called a police dispatch number before he and the teen got into a fight.

Zimmerman has said he opened fire only after the teenager jumped him and began slamming his head against the concrete sidewalk. Zimmerman has denied the confrontation had anything to do with race, as Martin's family and their supporters have claimed.

Jeantel testified Thursday that she thought race was an issue because Martin told her he was being followed by a white man.

But West responded, "It was racial because Trayvon put race in this?"

She answered no.

The exchanges got testier as the day progressed.

When asked by West if she had previously told investigators that she heard what sounded like somebody being hit at the end of her call with Martin, Jeantel said, "Trayvon got hit."

"You don't know that? Do you? You don't know that Trayvon got hit," West answered angrily. "You don't know that Trayvon didn't at that moment take his fists and drive them into George Zimmerman's face."

Later in the morning, West accused Jeantel of not calling police after Martin's phone went dead because she thought it was a fight he had provoked.

"That's why you weren't worried. That's why you didn't do anything because Trayvon Martin started the fight, and you knew that," West said.

"No sir!" Jeantel said. "I don't know what you're talking about."

At one point, West handed her a letter she had written with the help of a friend to Martin's mother explaining what happened. She looked at it but then said she couldn't read cursive handwriting. Jeantel later explained she is of Haitian descent and grew up speaking Creole and Spanish.

Thursday's testimony began with a more subdued tone that it did a day earlier, when Jeantel frequently bristled at West's questions and she at one point told him to move on to the next question: "You can go. You can go."

West took note of her calmer demeanor in the morning. She answered many of West's early questions by repeating "yes, sir," almost in a whisper.

"You feeling OK today? You seem different than yesterday," West said.

"I got some sleep," she answered.

After Jeantel left the witness stand, a mobile phone manager testified about Martin's cell phone records and a former neighbor of Zimmerman testified she heard yelps for help outside her townhome on the night Martin was shot. Jenna Lauer said she couldn't tell who was screaming.

"They were being hurt," Lauer said, describing the person screaming.

___

Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KHightower

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/friend-trayvon-martin-encounter-racially-charged-134457254.html

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Android 4.3 spotted on Samsung Galaxy S 4, available to test now

A new version of Android (4.3, and still called Jelly Bean) is already doing the testing rounds on Samsung's Galaxy S 4 and thanks to some porting work from SAMMobile, it's apparently working on both the Google Play and original iterations. We've caught a glance of Android 4.3 on LG's Nexus 4 already, but we're now getting a second look at a refreshed camera interface, some minor design tweaks (like more regular appearances of a share button) and, well, we're still perusing the gallery for more nuggets. If you know what you're doing (and don't fear voiding your warranty) you can find the files at the source -- early reports suggest that the GS4 is "fully working" on this early build. We'll update this post if we find anything else new, but early impressions suggest it's a relatively gentle upgrade from the existing mobile OS.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

Comments

Via: Sammy Hub

Source: SAMMobile (1), (2)

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/ZyYeX5GbyXc/

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Aiming At Small Business And Headed By Ex-Yahoo Head ...

NumberFour, founded in 2009 by former senior Yahoo executive Marco Boerries in Berlin to re-engineer small business processes, has secured an enormous $38 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures, specifically Mike Volpi. Volpi Participating in the round is Allen&Co, T-Venture/Deutsche Telekom, Andreas von Bechtolsheim, former Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Klaus Hommels and Lars Hinrichs among others. Unusually, the company has remained almost completely quiet since its foundation four years ago. It will obviously compete against a number of players, not least Salesforce among them.

Also participating in the round was German entrepreneur Andy Bechtolsheim who co-founded Sun Microsystems and Simon Levene, a former partner of Accel Partners, and executive at Excite@Home and Yahoo!.

Perhaps oddly, its business platform and apps are not yet publicly available. The company said ?an announcement will follow at an appropriate time.? The startup is producing apps on smartphones, tablets and PCs. It has offices in Berlin, Hamburg, Germany and Palo Alto, California.

The round is Europe?s biggest in the last two years since Rovio raised $42m in 2011. Out of the largest Series A rounds in the last few years, Spotify raised $21.6m in 2008 and iZettle raised $11.2m in 2011 (also led by Index Ventures).

NumberFour?s long-in-the-tooth history is in marked contrast to many other businesses that raise similar rounds, such as the ill-fated Color which, with $41m to play with, rushed out a widely-derided product.
Colour?s Peter Pham recently revealed that he was pushed to get a product out along with the funding announcement and that it simply wasn?t ready. A salutary tale.

NumberFour says it has a platform that provides productivity, communication, sales, production, procurement, delivery, reservation and financial tools for offline and online businesses. Boerries? vision is that in the future, most small businesses should have the efficiencies and scale effects that large enterprises enjoy. Why NumberFour? It?s his fourth company, as I explain below.

In statements, Boerries said: ?I deeply care about enabling small businesses to become more competitive and successful. Having started four businesses myself, I know how hard and rewarding it can be at the same time. Small is beautiful!?

Mike Volpi, Partner, Index Ventures said: ?From a technology perspective, small businesses are the most underserved market in the world. NumberFour is the first comprehensive business platform that offers amazing technology, wrapped in apps with a stunningly simple user interface.?

Klaus Hommels an investor in NumberFour said: ?NumberFour combines huge market potential, scale effects and passion ? paired with the powerful and meticulous leadership of one of the best and most experienced entrepreneurs. It is a truly special opportunity.? Klaus Hommels is one of Europe?s leading business angels and has invested in Skype, Facebook, Xing and Spotify, among others.

Lars Hinrichs, Founder of XING and investor stated, ?NumberFour has the potential to become the leader for small business software, a multi-billion opportunity. Marco is a successful serial entrepreneur and has proven multiple times that he can make big ideas work.? Hinrichs founded LinkedIn competitor Xing and is now best known for founding the startup accelerator HackFwd.

Inspired by a high school visit to Silicon Valley as an exchange student Borries founded Star Division out of his family garage L?neburg . There here developed the software StarWriter which became StarOffice and later developed into OpenOffice, as an alternative to the office suites from Microsoft. In 1999 he sold eventually StarDivision to Sun Microsystems, where he stayed briefly.

His Hamburg-based Star Financial created StarMoney and developed into a major supplier of home banking software. In early 2001, he sold his shares and founded founded Borries VerdiSoft.

This developed software for the Yahoo! Go mobile product and was picked up by Yahoo in 2005, where Borries became executive vice president in the Connected Life division, until he left in to 2009.

It was after this that he returned first to Hamburg and then moved to Berlin to start NumberFour (fourth after StarOffice, StarMoney and VerdiSoft).

The full press release is here.

NumberFour is a business platform paired with a collection of versatile, easy to use apps that run on smartphones, tablets and personal computers. It was founded in 2009 by Marco Boerries. NumberFour?s solution creates a level playing field by giving small businesses instant access to the tools, capabilities insights normally only available to larger companies. Their goal is to provide the majority of small businesses around the world with similar efficiencies and scale effects to those that...

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/26/%EF%BF%BCnumberfour-de-cloaks-in-berlin-with-a-38m-series-a-europes-biggest-to-date/

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70 vote goal vanishes as Senate near immigration reform vote

The Senate will vote on a sweeping immigration reform bill on Thursday morning, and a recently hashed-out compromise on border security is expected to win over some conservative support for the measure.

The "Gang of Eight," a bipartisan group of senators who drafted the bill, had hoped to get 70 out of 100 senators to vote to pass the bill and send a strong signal to the Republican-controlled house that the legislation is bipartisan. But on Wednesday, test votes drew only 67 votes each, suggesting the bill might fall short of that goal.

The reform would implement a mandatory, national employment verification system, allow for more legal immigration of low- and high-skilled workers, beef up border security and eventually give green cards to most of the nation's 11 million unauthorized immigrants.

The bill has moved to the right in the Senate on border security, thanks to an amendment adopted last week that will double the number of Border Patrol officers and increase fencing on the southern border by hundreds of miles before any unauthorized immigrants are offered permanent legal status. But House members working on their own version of immigration reform told The Hill this is not enough: They would prefer that no unauthorized immigrant be offered even temporary legal status until all the border security measures in the bill are fully implemented.

Union leaders representing both Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers say they oppose the bill, and groups that seek lower immigration levels have tried to rally members to call and write senators asking them to kill the bill. But so far, the critics of the bill have been outnumbered. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has worked as a conservative ambassador for the legislation. Rubio will deliver a "closing argument" for immigration reform, highlighting his parents' journey to the United States.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/news/senate-takes-immigration-vote-supporters-back-off-70-143951088.html

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Realistic robot carp created: First robot fish with autonomous 3-D movement in Asia

June 26, 2013 ? A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering has developed a robot fish that mimics the movements of a carp. This robot which is essentially an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is ready for applications, as it can be programmed to perform specific functions, for example, for underwater archaeology such as exploring nooks and corners of wreckage -- or sunken city which are difficult for divers or traditional AUVs to access. Other applications include military activities, pipeline leakage detection, and the laying of communication cable.

The team comprises Professor Xu Jianxin, Mr Fan Lupeng, graduating Electrical Engineering student and Research Fellow, Dr Ren Qinyuan. Mr Fan worked on the project for his final year which won the High Achievement Award at the Faculty's 27th Innovation and Research Award. It will also be featured at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, a top international conference on intelligent robots, in Tokyo on 3-7 November 2013.

Said Prof Xu, "Currently, robot fish capable of 2-D movements are common, meaning that these models are not able to dive into the water. Our model is capable of 3-D movements as it can dive and float, using its fins like a real fish. Compared to traditional AUVs, they are certainly more mobile, with greater manoeuvrability. If used for military purpose, fish robots would definitely be more difficult to detect by the enemy."

Fish robots are also quieter and consume less energy, compared to traditional AUVs. Said Mr Fan who studied the movements of real life carps for three months, in order to develop their robot, "We chose to study carps because most fish swim like them. There is no literature at all on designing a mathematical model on the locomotion of fish and so we had to start from scratch. We used a camera to capture all the possible movements of a carp and then converted the data mathematically so that we could transfer the locomotion of real carp to our robot using different actuators."

This has been most challenging as fish use a lot of different muscles to move, and many actuators are required to enable the robot to move in the same manner.

Added Dr Ren, "Some fish can achieve almost 180 degree turning in a small turning radius through bending their body while traditional underwater vehicles have a much larger turning radius. Hence it is quite a feat for us to achieve this movement in our robot fish."

Other challenges included waterproofing the fish body, the motor and the control box. The fins and tails also need to be flexible and the team decided to use very fine (1mm) acrylic board for these. Buoyancy and balance for the robot is maintained by using plastic foams attached to both sides. For the diving mechanism, their robot fish is equipped with an internal ballast system to change density. The system is sophisticated enough to enable the fish to dive suddenly, as well as to the precise depth intended.

The team has constructed two fish robots. The larger prototype is about one and half metres in length, weighing about 10kg and it can dive to a depth of 1.8 metres. The smaller robot is about 60 centimetres long and weighs a mere 1.5kg. It is developed for investigation on 2D motion control and motion planning in a small place, and it can only swim at water surface.

"To my knowledge, the world's smallest fish robot is one about 12.7 centimetres (5 inches) in length. It was designed by MIT for specific military purpose and could go to a depth of 1.5 metres," said Dr Ren.

Moving forward

Underwater vehicles have long gone past the days of the submarines, said Mr Fan. Fish robots, besides being a micro submarine, can also be fully autonomous and can be programmed to perform many difficult and dangerous tasks.

The team hopes to make their robot fish even smaller and more realistic. Said Mr Fan, "We intend to equip it with more sensors like GPS and video camera to improve autonomous 3-D movement. We also intend to test out our fish with more challenging tasks such as object detection."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/Hexvc4gQL0o/130626113027.htm

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Google Play Books, separate 'Games' section now available in Ireland

Two new categories arrive in the Play Store for Irish users

Google Play users in Ireland should now have access to both the Play Books store as well as a separate "Games" section on their devices starting today. As pointed out to us by one of our eagle-eyed readers, the Play Store in Ireland now offers four different sub-categories for users to choose from, adding to the previous availability of both paid apps and Google Play Music in the country. Unfortunately the Play Store for Ireland is still lacking both Magazines and Movies & TV, but it's a step in the right direction at least.

The Google Play Help pages, which have been updated today, also indicate that Play Books are now available in Ireland. We haven't tracked down an official post from Google indicating whether or not the full book catalogue will be available to Irish users just yet, but we would guess that the service would not launch without all of the proper deals in place.

More: Google Play Help; Thanks, John!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/8D3xo-O0W7k/story01.htm

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