Apple?s Tim Cook is meeting with China Mobile yesterday in a desperate bid to turn his company?s poor success in the world?s largest potential market around.
While Jobs? Mob has been good at convincing Western Telcos to bankrupt themselves at Apple?s expense by making the iPhone and iPads cheaper with subsidies, the Chinese have not fallen for it. Cook is apparently going to ask the head of China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, Xi Guohua in Beijing why it doesn't offer iPhones and iPads.
Apple is hoping that the talks could pave the way for a long-awaited deal for China Mobile to distribute Apple products on its vast network. Of course Xi might just point out that there is no reason he needs to flog Apple toys at a premium rate when most of his customers want to buy cheaper Samsung and Nokia gear. We don?t think China Mobile became China?s largest supplier of phones by cutting its own throat with heavy subsidies to westerners.
Hard as it might be to believe, Apple has not got the cult status in China that it has in the US. The company also has a reputation for short changing customers on warranties, something only a huge public outcry helped fix.
Apple said last week that its April-June sales in Greater China, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, slumped 43 percent from the previous quarter. Greater China accounted for 13 percent of Apple's quarterly sales, or $5 billion, down from nearly 19 percent in January-March.
NASA is reviewing public proposals for how to handle a hypothetical asteroid bound for impact with Earth.
By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / July 29, 2013
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden visits the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in May to inspect a prototype for a spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid. The agency has received some 400 submissions in response to its Asteroid Grand Challenge, a call for the public's help in defending Earth from asteroids.
Nick Ut/AP
Enlarge
NASA has received more than 400 responses to its Asteroid Grand Challenge, issued last month as part of the agency?s ramped-up effort to build its asteroid-wrangling know-how before an Earth-bound asteroid is spotted.
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The response comes after NASA announced last month that it has identified about ten thousand Near Earth Objects, that is, asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles of Earth?s orbit. Just ten percent of those objects are large enough to causes substantial global damage to Earth ? bigger than about 100 feet wide ? and none of them are on an impact trajectory toward our planet.
Still, precedent suggests that we should be prepared: Most research still indicates that it was an errant asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, clearing the world of its million-of-years-in-the-making ecosystem packed with Brobdingnagian animals. That asteroid was about 9 miles wide.
And in the latest harbinger of what a massive asteroid impact could do to the Earth, a meteor exploded above?Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February, injuring about 1,500 people. NASA telescopes had not seen that meteor coming; the agency?s programs are largely focused on monitoring larger objects.
So NASA?s asteroid-mastering timeline is ambitious: NASA plans to have identified an asteroid target for snatching?at the latest in 2016. That asteroid will then be lassoed in 2019 and flung into a trans-lunar orbit in 2021. The agency also hopes to ferry humans to an asteroid as early as 2025, about five years before the projected date that astronauts are to land on Mars.?
The expensive plan???NASA had?asked for $17.7 billion?for?the fiscal year 2014, $105 million of which would go to the Asteroid Initiative???has been the subject of major discord between the House and the Senate. Earlier this month, the?House Committee on Science, Space and Technology passed a NASA authorization bill that would prohibit NASA from pursuing the?Asteroid Redirect Mission?without further clarifying its vague points.??At the same time, the Senate has proposed legislation that would authorize giving NASA $18.1?billion and a full go-ahead on the project.
Meanwhile, though, the asteroid plan is slowly rolling forward, and NASA wants ? needs, perhaps ? the public?s help. Last month, the agency announced a Grand Challenge,?an open call for proposals tackling some of the most vexing questions in astroengineering, for its Asteroid Initiative.
And the response has been enthusiastic. About a month into the challenge, NASA has received some 400 submissions proposing possible asteroid targets and means of nabbing them. The applications are now under review for possible incorporation into the agency?s plans.
Earth has some built-in asteroid deflection techniques of its own, but our atmosphere protects us from asteroids smaller than about 130 feet in diameter, roughly the length of the long-necked dinosaur, Argentinosaurus huinculensis.
NASA technologist makes traveling to hard-to-reach destinations easierPublic release date: 31-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lori Keesey Lori.j.keesey@nasa.gov 301-258-0192 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Traveling to remote locations sometimes involves navigating through stop-and-go traffic, traversing long stretches of highway and maneuvering sharp turns and steep hills. The same can be said for guiding spacecraft to far-flung destinations in space. It isn't always a straight shot.
A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.
The tool, the Evolutionary Mission Trajectory Generator "offers a paradigm shift from what we normally do," said Jacob Englander, a technologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who devised a concept for his computer-based tool while a doctorate student at the University of Illinois in Champaign. "EMTG will be used, and already is being used, to develop trajectories for proposed Goddard missions that cannot be designed using any other current tool."
Science Unto Itself
Determining mission configurations, which EMTG accomplishes on a standard desktop computer, is a science unto itself.
Early interplanetary missions were confined to Earth's immediate neighbors: first Venus, then Mars. The total change in velocity, which on Earth is akin to stepping on the gas to propel your vehicle even faster, was low enough that direct flights were possible using 1960s chemical-based thruster technology. Travel to more distant destinations, however, required a larger change in velocity, and therefore more propellant not always possible with mass-constrained spacecraft.
A way to overcome that obstacle was executing a planetary flyby, a slingshot-type maneuver where a spacecraft uses the relative movement and gravity of a planet or other celestial body to alter its path and speed. First proposed in 1961, NASA has used this technique in interplanetary missions since Mariner 10 in 1964.
But determining the number and locations of planetary flybys to gain gravitational assists is easier said than done a process requiring the computation of complex mathematical equations calculated by powerful computers.
What makes Englander's technology unique, he said, is the fact that mission developers needn't first make an educated guess as they currently do of a possible spacecraft trajectory or path to a particular target. Unlike other trajectory-design tools, "ours is fully autonomous," explained Englander, who used NASA's Center Innovation Fund support to create the EMTG's algorithms and software.
No Noodling Required
Without any forethought or noodling, all mission developers need to do with his tool is input a series of parameters, such as the spacecraft's point of origin, its final destination and physical characteristics, as well as a range of launch dates and flight times.
The software tool then uses these data points to calculate the most efficient trajectory, including the number of flybys, for reaching a celestial target, whether it is a moon in the outer solar system or a Kuiper Belt object. Better yet, Englander said, the tool can calculate many different possible trajectories at a time, depending on which parameters a mission planner uses. "This dramatically reduces time to calculate a mission configuration," he added.
The tool, which comes in two different versions to calculate the trajectories of chemically (high-thrust) or electrically (low-thrust) propelled spacecraft, is effective, too, Englander said. "The high-thrust (chemical propulsion) version of this EMTG has already achieved a number of successes," Englander said.
Without knowing the precise maneuvers that NASA's Cassini/Huygens mission used to reach Saturn and its moons, Englander used his tool to calculate the mission's flyby sequence and trajectory. "It took only two days of computing time on an ordinary desktop computer and no other user input to reproduce the Cassini mission configuration a trajectory that originally took extremely talented designers many months to develop."
Now that he has shown its effectiveness, Englander said he plans to further improve the EMTG's fidelity. "The purpose of EMTG is to enable the design of new types of missions and reduce costs. Anyone can use this tool."
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NASA technologist makes traveling to hard-to-reach destinations easierPublic release date: 31-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lori Keesey Lori.j.keesey@nasa.gov 301-258-0192 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Traveling to remote locations sometimes involves navigating through stop-and-go traffic, traversing long stretches of highway and maneuvering sharp turns and steep hills. The same can be said for guiding spacecraft to far-flung destinations in space. It isn't always a straight shot.
A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.
The tool, the Evolutionary Mission Trajectory Generator "offers a paradigm shift from what we normally do," said Jacob Englander, a technologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who devised a concept for his computer-based tool while a doctorate student at the University of Illinois in Champaign. "EMTG will be used, and already is being used, to develop trajectories for proposed Goddard missions that cannot be designed using any other current tool."
Science Unto Itself
Determining mission configurations, which EMTG accomplishes on a standard desktop computer, is a science unto itself.
Early interplanetary missions were confined to Earth's immediate neighbors: first Venus, then Mars. The total change in velocity, which on Earth is akin to stepping on the gas to propel your vehicle even faster, was low enough that direct flights were possible using 1960s chemical-based thruster technology. Travel to more distant destinations, however, required a larger change in velocity, and therefore more propellant not always possible with mass-constrained spacecraft.
A way to overcome that obstacle was executing a planetary flyby, a slingshot-type maneuver where a spacecraft uses the relative movement and gravity of a planet or other celestial body to alter its path and speed. First proposed in 1961, NASA has used this technique in interplanetary missions since Mariner 10 in 1964.
But determining the number and locations of planetary flybys to gain gravitational assists is easier said than done a process requiring the computation of complex mathematical equations calculated by powerful computers.
What makes Englander's technology unique, he said, is the fact that mission developers needn't first make an educated guess as they currently do of a possible spacecraft trajectory or path to a particular target. Unlike other trajectory-design tools, "ours is fully autonomous," explained Englander, who used NASA's Center Innovation Fund support to create the EMTG's algorithms and software.
No Noodling Required
Without any forethought or noodling, all mission developers need to do with his tool is input a series of parameters, such as the spacecraft's point of origin, its final destination and physical characteristics, as well as a range of launch dates and flight times.
The software tool then uses these data points to calculate the most efficient trajectory, including the number of flybys, for reaching a celestial target, whether it is a moon in the outer solar system or a Kuiper Belt object. Better yet, Englander said, the tool can calculate many different possible trajectories at a time, depending on which parameters a mission planner uses. "This dramatically reduces time to calculate a mission configuration," he added.
The tool, which comes in two different versions to calculate the trajectories of chemically (high-thrust) or electrically (low-thrust) propelled spacecraft, is effective, too, Englander said. "The high-thrust (chemical propulsion) version of this EMTG has already achieved a number of successes," Englander said.
Without knowing the precise maneuvers that NASA's Cassini/Huygens mission used to reach Saturn and its moons, Englander used his tool to calculate the mission's flyby sequence and trajectory. "It took only two days of computing time on an ordinary desktop computer and no other user input to reproduce the Cassini mission configuration a trajectory that originally took extremely talented designers many months to develop."
Now that he has shown its effectiveness, Englander said he plans to further improve the EMTG's fidelity. "The purpose of EMTG is to enable the design of new types of missions and reduce costs. Anyone can use this tool."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has asked two senior Republican senators to travel to Egypt to meet with its military leaders and the opposition, as Cairo's allies struggle with how to address the turmoil convulsing the country.
Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hope to travel to Egypt next week, Graham said on Tuesday.
"The president reached out to us, and I said obviously I'd be glad to go," Graham told reporters outside the Senate. "We want to deliver a unified message that killing the opposition is becoming more and more like a coup" and to encourage the military to move toward holding elections.
He said specifics of the trip, including with whom he and McCain would meet, had not yet been worked out.
McCain and Graham, two of the Senate's most influential voices on foreign policy matters, have at times been harsh critics of Obama's foreign policy. The White House has recently been reaching out to them on a range of issues.
U.S. officials have been grappling with how to respond to the situation in Egypt since its elected Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, was ousted by the military on July 3.
In particular, they have struggled with how to handle the $1.55 billion in mostly military aid Washington sends to Cairo each year. Egypt has long been an important U.S. ally in a tumultuous region and officials in Washington value their ties to its military leaders, many of whom have studied in the United States.
U.S. law bars sending aid to countries in which there has been a military coup, and Obama administration officials have been scrambling to talk about events in Egypt without using the word.
GLOBAL ANXIETY
Mursi is being held in a secret detention facility in Egypt. Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief, on Monday became the first outsider to see him since he was deposed. His fate - and a deadly crackdown by security forces on his supporters - has raised global anxiety about a possible bid to crush Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood.
Senator Rand Paul has introduced an amendment to a Senate transportation funding bill that would end military aid to Egypt under the law banning aid after coups and redirect the money to domestic infrastructure projects.
Senate Republicans discussed how to deal with the amendment during their weekly lunch meeting on Tuesday. It could come to the Senate floor for a vote on Wednesday, although it was not expected to win much support.
The Obama administration has made clear it does not want to make a decision about events in Egypt - or the aid. Obama's Democrats control hold a majority of seats in the Senate.
Several Republicans, including McCain, Graham and Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also said they thought the situation in Egypt was too fluid for a vote so soon.
"I may come to think we need to cut off aid, but I'd like to go over there and talk to the military and to any members of the government and Brotherhood factions to find out what is going on the ground, and send a clear message to the people in charge of Egypt that there are certain expectations here in America that are bipartisan in nature," Graham said.
Corker said he felt Washington needed to weigh in one way or the other on whether the situation in Egypt was a coup, and look at changing the law if necessary.
"We can't just leave it hanging out there. We are a nation of laws. That's where we need to go," he said. "But now is not the time, September is the time to do after we know the best route forward."
He is if you believe this report from the Daily News, anyway. Which, yes, is a pretty big caveat ? this could very well just be a big bluff communicated to a newspaper which has done a great job over the years carrying the anti-PED crowd?s water ? but we gotta take reports at face value until we have reason not to.
The report: that Bud Selig is prepared to invoke his powers to ?preserve the integrity of the game? in order to keep Alex Rodriguez off the field even if he appeals his discipline. In other words: Selig will essentially void the part of the Joint Drug Agreement that allows players to play pending appeal and suspend him summarily.
Which is absolute madness, of course.
Even if A-Rod has done everything of which he is accused, even if he is the biggest PED user in the history of PED users, even if he has attempted to interfere with MLB?s investigation, he is still owed due process. Everyone is. The Joint Drug Agreement covers all of those offenses, even the interference with an investigation thing. It says that the JDA is the sole basis of discipline in matters arising out of PEDs. To deny a player his appeal rights under that agreement would be a shameful abuse of power, even when the player involved happens to be unpopular. The least of my brothers, and such.
At some point we have to ask ourselves how much of Major League Baseball?s investigation and subsequent discipline of Alex Rodriguez is about penalizing a player for his bad acts and how much of it is about kicking an unliked and unwanted player ? and a player who makes an awful lot of money ? out of the game simply because it would make most people feel good.
Of course, maybe it doesn?t go this far. ?Maybe the point of this is to simply make Bud Selig look tough. After all, this very question ? ?Is Bud Selig going too far to fight the drug users?!? ? serves his legacy interests very, very well.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Australian Businesswomen's Network has developed a number of small business courses - topics include branding, finance and social media.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]A film, a book and a trainer?s death have renewed debate among scientists and animal advocates on the wisdom and morality of keeping killer whales in marine parks.
In a statement, the university said it will "defer publication" of an academic paper, which explains how researchers were able to hack the sophisticated systems.
The academics had hoped to publish the paper at the USENIX Security Conference in Washington next month but German car maker Volkswagen sued to prevent them from disclosing key details of their work, arguing that publicising the flaw would put the security of some of its most expensive vehicles at risk.
The University of Birmingham declined further comment.
Volkswagen also declined comment, citing the ongoing legal proceedings.
A labor rights group Monday accused a Chinese company that makes iPhones for Apple Inc. of abuses including withholding employees' pay and excessive working hours.
China Labor Watch said it found violations of the law and of Apple's pledges about working conditions at factories operated by Pegatron Corp., a Taiwanese company.
Conditions in Chinese factories that produce iPhones and other popular Apple products have been under scrutiny following complaints about labor and environmental violations by a different supplier, Taiwan's Foxconn, a unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.
Apple said in a statement it was "committed to providing safe and fair working conditions" and would investigate the claims about Pegatron. The Taiwanese company's chief executive, in a separate statement, also promised to investigate.
China Labor Watch said its investigation covered two factories in Shanghai and one in Suzhou, a nearby city, that employ a total of 70,000 people. It found violations including discrimination against ethnic minorities and women, excessive work hours, poor living conditions, health and safety problems and pollution.
Pegatron assembles products including the iPhone 4, iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 for Apple, according to the report.
Apple said it confirmed one accusation by China Labor Watch ? that identity cards of some workers were being held by management ? and told Pegatron to stop.
Apple has published a code of conduct for its suppliers and joined the Fair Labor Association, a worker rights monitoring group. The association inspected Foxconn factories early last year and said in August that improvements it recommended were being carried out ahead of schedule.
Conditions in factories in China are a sensitive issue for foreign companies that outsource production of shoes, consumer electronics and other goods to local contractors.
In its report Monday, China Labor Watch said the majority of Pegatron production employees worked 66 to 69 hours a week, far above China's legal limit of 49 hours. It said pregnant women sometimes were required to work 11-hour days, more than the eight-hour legal limit, and employees were pressured to falsify time cards to conceal the violations.
The group accused Pegatron of "discriminatory hiring practices" including refusing to hire those older than 35 or members of China's Hui, Tibetan, or Uighur ethnic minorities.
The group said production line workers sometimes dump water laced with hazardous chemicals from cutting tools into sewers.
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, said it would send auditors to three Pegatron facilities this week to investigate the report's claims.
The company said it has conducted 15 comprehensive audits of Pegatron facilities since 2007, including surprise audits in the past 18 months. It said the audits covered more than 130,000 employees.
"Apple is committed to providing safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain," the company statement said. "If our audits find that workers have been underpaid or denied compensation for any time they've worked, we will require that Pegatron reimburse them in full."
The company said its own audit found Pegatron employees making Apple products worked 46 hours per week on average.
Pegatron, founded in 2008, also manufactures desktop and notebook personal computers, LCD televisions, broadband and wireless systems and other products.
"We take these allegations very seriously," said Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng in a statement. "We will investigate them fully and take immediate actions to correct any violations to Chinese labor laws and our own code of conduct."
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Beijing Morning News?reports that local ticket scalpers have found a new way to make money on Apple: booking up all available Genius Bar appointments and then offering them for sale online.
Ticket scalpers usually make their money by buying large quantities of event tickets as soon as they go on sale, and then illegally selling them for more than face value once the event is sold-out. With Genius Bar appointments, they don?t even need to fork out cash in the first place: just use a bunch of email addresses to make the appointments, then advertise them online.
Appointments sell for 10- yuan ($1.60-6.40) in a country where the average monthly salary is equivalent to $580.?A?Beijing Morning News reporter found there were no appointments available on the Apple site for iPhone, iPad or iPod. They contacted one of the advertisers asking for an appointment the next day, and were offered a choice of two local stores and two time slots. The reporter was sent login details for the booking by instant messenger, and was then able to access the booking on the Apple site to change the details to their own.
The reporter contacted Apple for comment, and had not received a reply at the time of writing.
Eight Washington Capitals? players will take part of the 2014 Winter Olympics this winter, as the hockey tournament takes place in Sochi, Russia. The Olympic break is set to run from February 9th to the 25th. Below is a team by team breakdown for the Washington Capitals players that are participating.
Canada
Goaltender Braden Holtby and defensemen Mike Green and Karl Alzner received invites to team Canada, along with 44 other players. Holtby will face tough competition as he aims to make the team, with talented NHL goalies Roberto Luongo, Carey Price, Corey Crawford and Mike Smith also receiving invites.
(Tom Turk/THW)
Alzner and Green also face tough odds to make the team, as Stanley Cup champion defensemen Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith received invites. Shea Weber, P.K. Subban, Kristopher Letang, Alex Pietrangelo are almost sure locks for Canada?s roster. There were eight left handed defensemen and nine right handed defensemen invited to camp. You can view the entire Team Canada orientation camp roster, here. I?d say Alzner has a better chance to make the Canada roster than Green, due to his defensive talents and mentality.
Carlson invited to Team USA
Washington?s 23 year old offensive blue liner has a solid chance of making USA?s roster in Russia. He has 97 career points in 234 NHL regular season games, along with 13 points in 37 total playoff contests. Carlson will compete with defensemen Erik Johnson, Jack Johnson, Kevin Shattenkirk, Ryan Suter and Keith Yandle for playing time.
Team USA could boast the best goaltending in the entire tournament, led by L.A. Kings net minder Jonathon Quick. Even Quick?s backups are highly capable of starting for the United States, including Ryan Miller and Jimmy Howard. The goal for the United States? defense should be to generate solid stretch passes to their forwards, especially talented scorers Patrick Kane, Ryan Kesler, Zach Parise, Bobby Ryan and Phil Kessel. Any United States medal would be exceeding expectations in Sochi during 2014.
Team Russia
Forwards Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov are locks to make the Russian squad as their home country hosts the Olympics. Washington?s Captain will join fellow NHL stars Pavel Datsyuk, Evgeni Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk in hopes of obtaining gold. The Russian team will come together in Sochi on August 23rd and 24th for camp. Former Washington Capitals players including Alexander Semin, Sergei Gonchar along with goaltender Semyon Varlamov will join Ovechkin and Kuznetsov at Russian camp prior to the NHL season.
Team Sweden
The Swedish Olympic team meets from August 12-14 prior to the NHL season as Nicklas Backstrom and Marcus Johansson, who is still a restricted free agent, represent the Capitals for team Sweden in Russia. Backstrom, Washington?s first line center heading into next season, gets the opportunity to play with numerous talented forwards including Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Gabriel Landeskog and Henrik Zetterberg.
You can follow Matthew on twitter @m_speck and email him at mspeck21@yahoo.com with any questions or comments.
Matthew Speck is the Washington Capitals writer for The Hockey Writers. He also is a credentialed AHL writer, covering the Hershey Bears for Inside Hockey. You can email him at mspeck21@yahoo.com with any questions or comments.
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Tags: Braden Holtby, John Carlson, Karl Alzner, Mike Green
Syrian troops drove insurgents from central Homs on Monday, tightening their siege on remaining rebel bastions in the strategically important city, which links Damascus to the Mediterranean heartland of President Bashar al-Assad?s Alawite sect.
The military?s gains in Khalidiya district follow a counter-offensive by Assad?s forces, which have pushed back rebels around the Syrian capital and retaken several towns near the border with Lebanon in the last few weeks.
?As of this morning the armed forces, in collaboration with the National Defence Force, took full control of Khalidiya,? an army officer said, referring to the NDF militia which has fought in the offensive, along with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
?The fate of terrorists will be under our feet,? he said, claiming that all Homs will soon be ?cleansed? of rebels.
Shattered, deserted ruins and weeds sprouting a metre high in the rubble-filled streets around him showed the scale of the destruction and neglect in a city which was once an industrial powerhouse in Syria.
Also badly damaged in the Khalidiya fighting was the distinctive black and white stone mosque housing the shrine of early Islamic military leader Khalid ibn al-Walid.
Some activists disputed the capture of Khalidiya district, saying heavy clashes continued on Monday morning, but conceded the army had control of almost the entire neighbourhood.
The army?s progress in Khalidiya comes a month after it launched an offensive in Homs city, building on its capture of the border towns of Qusair and Tel Kalakh, which were both used to bring the rebels arms and fighters from Lebanon.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group which supports the activists, said government troops had overrun most of the neighbourhood apart from a few pockets of resistance in its southern areas.
Another member of the opposition, who wished to remain anonymous, conceded that the battle for Khalidiya was ?almost over?.
Homs has been the target of a brutal and relentless siege for around a month, with rebels losing more and more ground to the combined forces of the Syrian army, paramilitary groups sympathetic to President Bashar al-Assad and troops from the Lebanese Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
In early June, regime forces captured the key border towns of Qusair and Talkalakh in the Homs province, not far from Lebanon.
The province is Syria's largest, running from the Lebanese frontier in the west to the border with Iraq and Jordan in the east. Homs itself holds strategic value because it is a crossroads between Damascus in the north and the coastal region that is a stronghold for President Assad's Alawite sect.
Khalidiya used to have a population of about 80,000, but with residents fleeing the violence and fighting over the past two years reducing many buildings to rubble, only around 2,000 people remain there today.
ABOARD THE PAPAL AIRCRAFT (AP) ? Pope Francis is reaching out to gays, saying he won't judge priests for their sexual orientation, in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returns from his first foreign trip.
Francis says: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"
His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, authored a document that said men with deep-rooted homosexual tendencies should not be priests. Francis is being much more conciliatory, saying gay clergymen should be forgiven and their sins forgotten.
His remarks came Monday during a plane journey back to the Vatican from his first foreign trip in Brazil.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Charlize Theron is about to get real with Bunim/Murray Productions.
Theron's Denver & Delilah production company is pairing with Bunim/Murray for a reality series "Whose Closet Is it Anyway?"
The series, which is based on a format from Keshet International that first aired in Israel in 2011, explores what would happen if someone swapped your entire closet with somebody else's. In each episode, three women, each with a distinct style and a strong fashion sense, trade their entire closets and have to cope with each of the other women's wardrobes. Each woman has to change her entire look and try on styles that are totally different from her own, all while going about her usual routine. What does it feel like to walk in another woman's stilettos? Will her family like her new look? What will her boss have to say?
This marks the first reality venture for Denver & Delilah, and the first joint production venture for Bunim/Murray.
"Charlize and her Denver & Delilah team have wonderful instincts and a fresh perspective which we think is a big plus in creating and selling reality television," said Jonathan Murray, Chairman of Bunim/Murray Productions.
Colleen Ocean Hall, whose credits include Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films and Television, has been named senior vice president of development for the venture.
NBA?superstars never stop, not even for government officials.
Playing at Jamal Crawford's Pro-Am Game in Seattle,?Tyreke?Evans took the city's mayor, Michael?McGinn, to exhibition school.
Going at?McGinn?with his left hand, Evans crossed over to his right, fooling his defender and laying the ball in for an easy two.
Evans' crossover earned a "cool-hand move" from the announcer, the highest of praises from anyone who's evidently attempting to curb their enthusiasm.
Not to be outdone,?McGinn?showed off some handles of his own on the next trip up the floor.
After turning to the crowd while sporting a "did that just happen?" face?which bore a striking resemblance to?LeBron James' "who, me?" frown?McGinn?put down a crossover of his own.
Dribbling with his right hand, he crossed over to his left, then dropped a one-handed dime off to a cutting teammate for the basket.
To answer your question, no, Evans did not provide the necessary help defense.
McGinn's response wasn't as flamboyant as his counterpart's, but it was equally effective. Both drew applause from the crowd and culminated in a made bucket. Nothing else matters.
Well, that's not entirely true.
Any time you see a bureaucrat going all NBA on the basketball court, it's impressive?and as you can see, worth writing/reading about.
Evans does this for a living. Exploiting the nonexistent lateral quickness of a 53-year-old politician isn't exactly a chore.
When that public servant gets into the paint and completes a show-stopping offensive set of his own, that's news.
His point guard-esque court vision is really something to commend. If you're devoid of a true floor general (see New York Knicks), you might want to consider offering him a 10-day contract.
Just remember to make sure he's never tasked with defending?Evans.
FILE - In this July 25, 2013 file photo, a derailed train car is lifted by a crane at the site of a train accident in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. A Spanish court official said Monday July 29, 2013 that judicial police would soon begin extracting information from the ?black box? of a train that crashed last week killing 79 people and injuring some 130 in the country?s worst train accident in decades. It is hoped the box might establish what happened in the final seconds prior to the crash. The investigation has increasingly focused on why the driver failed to brake in time to stop the train from hurtling into a dangerous curve, where it careered off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall. On Monday, Spain?s royal family and leading politicians were to attend a somber Mass in homage to the victims killed and injured. (AP Photo/Lalo R, Villar, File)
FILE - In this July 25, 2013 file photo, a derailed train car is lifted by a crane at the site of a train accident in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. A Spanish court official said Monday July 29, 2013 that judicial police would soon begin extracting information from the ?black box? of a train that crashed last week killing 79 people and injuring some 130 in the country?s worst train accident in decades. It is hoped the box might establish what happened in the final seconds prior to the crash. The investigation has increasingly focused on why the driver failed to brake in time to stop the train from hurtling into a dangerous curve, where it careered off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall. On Monday, Spain?s royal family and leading politicians were to attend a somber Mass in homage to the victims killed and injured. (AP Photo/Lalo R, Villar, File)
In this photo taken on Wednesday July 24 2013, train driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo is helped by two men as he is evacuated from the site of a train accident in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Police say they have detained the driver of a train that crashed in northwestern Spain and killed 78 people. Galicia region National Police Chief Jaime Iglesias says driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo was officially detained in the hospital where is recovering. (AP Photo/La Voz de Galicia/Xoan Soler)
FILE - In this July 25, 2013 file photo, a rail personnel worker checks the cabin of a derailed train following an accident in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. A Spanish court official said Monday July 29, 2013 that judicial police would soon begin extracting information from the ?black box? of a train that crashed last week killing 79 people and injuring some 130 in the country?s worst train accident in decades. It is hoped the box might establish what happened in the final seconds prior to the crash. The investigation has increasingly focused on why the driver failed to brake in time to stop the train from hurtling into a dangerous curve, where it careered off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall. On Monday, Spain?s royal family and leading politicians were to attend a somber Mass in homage to the victims killed and injured. (AP Photo/Lalo R. Villar)
MADRID (AP) ? The driver of the train that derailed and killed 79 people in Spain was on the phone and traveling at 95 mph (153 kph) ? almost twice the speed limit ? when the crash happened last week, according to a preliminary investigation released Tuesday.
The train had been going as fast as 119 mph (192 kph) shortly before the derailment, and the driver activated the brakes "seconds before the crash," according to a written statement from the court in Santiago de Compostela, whose investigators gleaned the information from two "black box" data recorders recovered from the train.
The speed limit on the section of track was 50 mph (80 kph).
The crash occurred near Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, and was the country's worst rail accident in decades. Some 66 people are still hospitalized for injuries, 15 of whom are in critical condition.
The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time, the statement said. Garzon was provisionally charged Sunday with multiple counts of negligent homicide.
The driver received a call on his work phone in the cabin, not his personal cellphone, to tell him what approach to take toward his final destination. The Renfe employee on the telephone "appears to be a controller," the statement said.
"From the contents of the conversation and from the background noise it seems that the driver (was) consulting a plan or similar paper document," the statement said.
Investigators from the Santiago de Compostela court, forensic police experts, the Ministry of Transport and Renfe examined the contents of the two black boxes recovered from the lead and rear cars of the train.
The investigation is ongoing. The next steps include measuring the wheels on the cars and examining the locomotive, the statement said without providing an explanation for those checks. Sniffer dogs will also be used to search for human remains in the wreckage, it said.
The train was carrying 218 passengers when it hurtled off the tracks last Wednesday evening. It slammed into a concrete wall, and some of the cars caught fire. The Spanish rail agency has said the brakes should have been applied four kilometers (2.5 miles) before the train hit the curve.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks rose in early trading on Wall Street Tuesday after several big companies turned in solid earnings. An increase in U.S. home prices sent home builder stocks higher.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 46 points, or 0.3 percent, to 15,568 in the first hour of trading.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up five points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,690. Seven of the index's 10 industry sectors rose, led by utilities and technology companies.
The Nasdaq composite rose 18 points, or 0.5 percent, to 3,617.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber jumped 12 percent to $19.06, the biggest gain in the S&P 500, after reporting that its second-quarter earnings more than doubled. Sales in Latin America rose sharply.
Investors were also keeping a close eye on the Federal Reserve. The central bank began a two-day policy meeting Tuesday.
The Federal Reserve has been buying $85 billion in bonds every month to keep interest rates low and encourage borrowing and hiring. The Fed has said it might start to pull back on the stimulus later this year if the economy continues to improve, but the timing remains uncertain.
The Fed has also kept its benchmark short-term interest rate close to zero and has said it would stay there until the unemployment rate dips below 6.5 percent. The rate currently stands at 7.6 percent.
Shares of homebuilders rose after a report showing that U.S. home prices jumped 12.2 percent in May compared with a year ago, the biggest yearly gain since March 2006.
KB Home rose 21 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $17.09 and PulteGroup rose 16 cents, or 1 percent, to $16.55.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index surged 2.4 percent in May from April, nearly matching the previous monthly gain of 2.6 percent ? the highest on record.
Crude oil fell $1 to $103.56 a barrel in New York. The price of gold fell $5.90 to $1,322.50 an ounce. The dollar rose against the euro and the Japanese yen.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note edged down to 2.58 percent from 2.60 percent the day before.
Among other stocks making big moves:
? Time Warner Cable fell $1.59, or 1.3 percent, to $113.70. The giant cable company is enmeshed in a nasty fee dispute with CBS over programming fees and threatening to pull the broadcaster off its systems.
? Pfizer rose 42 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $29.97 after the pharmaceutical company reported that its income more than quadrupled, helped by the sale of its animal health business.
? Masco jumped $1.33, or 6.7 percent. The home furnishings company posted earnings that beat the forecasts of financial analysts as the company benefited from a surge in home construction.
CLEVELAND (AP) ? One of three women held captive in a Cleveland home for a decade appeared at a public event for the first time since her rescue, a day after her abductor pleaded guilty in the case.
Amanda Berry made a surprise appearance at the daylong concert RoverFest in Cleveland on Saturday night, walking on stage with her family and waving at the cheering crowd. Wearing sunglasses and dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, Berry smiled broadly while acknowledging the applause, but she didn't address the crowd. The rapper Nelly called Berry back to the stage after his music set.
The appearance came a day after Ariel Castro, a former school bus driver, pleaded guilty to 937 counts in a deal that will send him to prison for life without parole, plus 1,000 years.
Berry, now 27, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight disappeared between 2002 and 2004 when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They escaped in May when Berry kicked out part of a door and called to neighbors for help.
Berry told a police dispatcher in a dramatic 911 call: "Help me. I'm Amanda Berry. I've been kidnapped, and I've been missing for 10 years, and I'm, I'm here, I'm free now."
Castro, 53, who was arrested and jailed shortly afterward, was accused of raping and beating the three repeatedly. He also fathered a 6-year-old daughter with Berry, authorities say.
The women didn't attend the court proceeding but said in a statement that they were relieved by the conviction and looking forward to the end of the legal proceedings.
Berry and the other women said she had accepted a ride from Castro, who had remained friends with DeJesus' family and attended vigils over the years marking her disappearance.
Castro was accused of restraining the women, sometimes chaining them to a pole in a basement, to a bedroom heater or inside a van. The indictment included two counts of aggravated murder related to accusations that he punched and starved one of the women until she miscarried.
Earlier this month, the three women offered thanks on YouTube for emotional and financial backing they've received since going "through hell and back."
A helicopter crashed into a heavily wooded area of northeastern Pennsylvania, claiming the lives of all five people on board, state police said.
The crash occurred late Saturday in a rugged area in Noxen, Wyoming County, Pa., the Federal Aviation Agency said. The aircraft was discovered Sunday afternoon.
The helicopter was traveling from the Greater Binghamton, N.Y. airport to the Jake Arner Memorial Airport in Lehighton, Pa., Saturday night when an alert was issued after the aircraft lost radar and communication contact, the FAA said.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.
The identities of those killed was unavailable Sunday evening.?
Parasites are all around us ? humans alone have 100 ? yet they receive little attention. That should change, says ecologist Kevin Lafferty
Why did you choose to focus your work on parasites, the least loved of creatures? I wasn't interested in parasites until I was asked to be a teacher's assistant for a parasitology course. I hadn't taken the course; I was totally disgusted by the subject. But I became fascinated when we brought in fish, sharks and invertebrates for the students to dissect. As a marine biologist, I thought I knew pretty much everything about these organisms. Yet no one ever told me to look inside them for parasites. When we did, we found lots of species. It struck me that an entire component of my education had been neglected. At that point I decided that there's a real need to know more about the role of parasites.
How significant are parasites in nature? We don't know for sure, but we do know that parasitism is the most popular lifestyle on Earth. Most animal species are probably parasitic. For humans alone, there are more than 100 host-specific parasites. Among described species on the planet, the ratio of free-living to parasitic is about 60:40, but that's a gross underestimate. In reality, the numbers are probably much more in favour of the parasites.
If they are so prevalent, why don't they get more attention? Almost all intellectual effort focused on parasites is directed at how we can kill and prevent them. That's not the best way to get an insight into their ecological role. Early ecologists were well aware of parasites, but in more modern times that aspect of thinking was dropped. There has been little training to look inside organisms. Fortunately that has changed in the last 10 years and we have seen an incredible surge of interest.
How important are parasites to ecosystems? Parasites are integral, basic components. The more intact the ecosystem, the more parasites you tend to find there. That can be shocking to people, who usually think parasites are a sign that a system is out of balance. In general, though, we tend to find lots of parasites in pristine places.
But I don't want to sound romantic about parasites and tell you they are great ? I mean, they are our enemies. Anybody with parasites doesn't harbour any warm feelings towards them.
How will climate change affect parasites? For free-living species, what we expect to see with climate change is that there will be some winners and some losers. Parasites, for the most part, are going to follow similar patterns. They will shift ranges, and those that can't will be reduced as a consequence. For example, the whole map of malaria risk in Africa is likely to change, but not necessarily become worse. That's a pretty controversial statement to make because there has been an awful lot written about how climate change is going to lead to a sicker world.
Have you been host to any interesting ones? My first experience with a parasite was at summer camp when I had a tick on my testicle. It was emotionally scarring. All the kids looked on as a camp counsellor burned the tick off with a match.
This article appeared in print under the headline "One minute with... Kevin Lafferty"
Profile
Kevin Lafferty is a research ecologist who specialises in parasite and conservation biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the US Geological Survey
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LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Nearly four months after his son's suicide, popular pastor Rick Warren returned to the pulpit Saturday afternoon at the Southern California megachurch he founded.
Warren, dressed in his usual casual black T-shirt and jeans, took the stage at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. with wife, Kay Warren, and was greeted with a long standing ovation by the congregation.
A shout of "We love you!" came from the crowd before Warren began.
"I love you, too," a smiling Warren replied. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"
It was the first time Warren had taken the Saddleback pulpit since his 27-year-old son Matthew shot and killed himself on April 5.
In the sermon, first in a series called "How To Get Through What You're Going Through," Rick Warren said he had the perfect role model for his struggles.
"God knows what it's like to lose a son," Warren said.
He remained mostly composed, but choked back tears at times, including when he thanked his surviving two children.
"How proud I was of Amy and Josh, who for 27 years loved their younger brother," Warren said. "They talked him off the ledge time after time. They are really my heroes."
He delivered a formal, prepared speech with notes and quotes from Scripture but often broke off to talk frankly about his son.
"I was in shock for at least a month after Matthew took his life," Warren said.
But, Warren said he was grateful to come from "a family of spiritual redwoods."
"Satan picked the wrong team to pick on," he said.
Warren has been an essential figure in the modern, megachurch brand of Christianity.
His multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life" made him a national star in the realms of religion and self-help, and he delivered the opening prayer at President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration.
Saddleback, the church he founded in 1980, has grown to 20,000 members, according to Warren's biography on the church's website.
But in April, Matthew Warren, after a lifetime of struggle with depression, shot and killed himself in what Warren at the time called "a momentary wave of despair."
"For 27 years I prayed every day of my life for God to heal my son's mental illness," Warren said.
But Warren said Saturday that he intended to turn his grief into a message of service and hope.
"God wants to take your greatest sorrow and turn it into your life's greatest message," he said.
More than 1,200 inmates escaped from a Benghazi prison; authorities are looking for the gunman?s ...
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More than 1,200 inmates escaped from a Benghazi prison; authorities are looking for the gunman?s motive; host of "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" dies.
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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem July 28, 2013. Netanyahu on Sunday urged divided rightists in his cabinet to approve the release of 104 Arab prisoners in order to restart peace talk with the Palestinians.
By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News
Talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators ??stalled for three years ??are set to resume in Washington, D.C., this week, the State Department said in a news release on Sunday.
Teams of negotiators from the two countries have accepted invitations to ?resume direct final status negotiations," according to the release.
According to a senior U.S. official, the meeting will take place over two days beginning Monday evening before an iftar dinner,??a meal that breaks the day of fasting during Ramadan. Those meetings will tentatively lay a groundwork for further negotiations in the coming months, according to the release.
All meetings will take place at the State Department, the official said.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho will travel to the U.S. to represent Israel, while Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh will represent the Palestinians.
"Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point.? We are grateful for their leadership," Secretary of State John Kerry said in the statement.?
News of the meetings came shortly after the Israel?s cabinet approved the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, whose freedom knocked aside a barrier for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to come to the negotiating table.??
"This moment is not easy for me, is not easy for the cabinet ministers, and is not easy especially for the bereaved families, whose feelings I understand," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to families who have lost members in militant attacks, according to Reuters.
"But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the nation and this is one of those moments," Netanyahu said.
While in Amman, Jordan on July 19, Kerry told reporters that the two countries had begun to lay the groundwork to resume talks after months of intense shuttle diplomacy by America?s newly appointed chief diplomat.
"The representatives of two proud people today have decided that the difficult road ahead is worth traveling," Kerry said at the time.
On again, off again negotiations have taken place over the last two decades. U.S.-sponsored talks broke down in late 2010 over a disputed Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East War.
But the 13-7 vote, with two abstentions, by the Israeli government to release the prisoners cleared the way for peace talks to resume.
Netanyahu said on his Facebook page that the inmates would be freed only after talks began and would be released in groups based on the progress of the talks. Following the vote, hundreds of Israelis took to the streets to protest, including family members who lost loved ones killed by Palestinian militants.
Palestinians have long demanded the release of the prisoners who have been jailed in Israel since before 1993, when both countries signed an interim peace treaty known as the Oslo Accords.
Erekat commend Israel for setting in motion the steps to release the prisoners, but added that the move was well overdue.?
"We call on Israel to seize the opportunity ... to put an end to decades of occupation and exile and to start a new stage of justice, freedom and peace for Israel, Palestine and the rest of the region,'' he said, according to Reuters.?
The release of the prisoners gives Netanyahu flexibility to negotiate around other Palestinian demands, like stopping the expansion of Jewish settlements and the guarantee that talks over borders will be based on boundaries drawn before the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel took the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.
Israeli officials have insisted that the country be able to keep East Jerusalem and several settlement blocs as part of any peace deal.
Negotiations would likely take months to complete, and no more details about the framework of a possible deal have been released.
Also on Sunday, officials told NBC News that Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel who now serves as director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, will be named as the new Middle East envoy.
Indyk served in a variety of diplomatic roles during President Bill Clinton?s administration and has remained engaged with Arab leaders through his work at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Indyk will likely take over much of the shuttling that Kerry, who has already visited the Middle East six times as secretary, has been tasked with to help facilitate talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.??
NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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Public release date: 31-Jul-2013
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