GREELEY, Colo. (AP) ? Two billboards in which images of Native Americans are used to make a gun rights argument are causing a stir with some Colorado residents who say the image is offensive and insensitive.
The billboards in this northern Colorado city show three men dressed in traditional Native American attire and the words "Turn in your arms. The government will take care of you."
Matt Wells, an account executive with Lamar Advertising in Denver, said Monday that a group of local residents purchased the space.
"They have asked to remain anonymous," he said.
He also refused to disclose the cost but said the billboards are only appearing in the Greeley area. Wells said he has not received any complaints so far.
"I think it's a little bit extreme, of course, but I think people are really worried about their gun rights and what liberties are going to be taken away," Wells told the Greeley Tribune (http://tinyurl.com/cdtkgj2).
Greeley resident Kerri Salazar, who is of Native American descent, said she was livid when she learned about it. She said she doesn't have a problem with the gun rights message, but she's offended the Native American people were singled out, apparently without their consent.
"I think we all get that (Second Amendment) message. What I don't understand is how an organization can post something like that and not think about the ripple effect that it's gonna have through the community," she said.
Irene Vernon, a Colorado State University professor and chairwoman of the ethnic studies department, said the message on the billboard is taking a narrow view of a much more complicated history of the Native American plight. She said it's not as if Native Americans just gave up their guns and wound up on reservations.
"It wasn't just about our guns," said Vernon, a Native American.
Greeley resident Maureen Brucker, who has worked with Native American organizations and who frequents the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as an honorary family member, said she thinks the billboards are making light of atrocities the federal government committed against Native Americans.
She said the billboard brings to her mind one of the most horrendous examples of that, the Wounded Knee Massacre on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1890. Historical accounts say the 7th Cavalry had detained a band of Native Americans and asked them to give up their weapons. Troops began firing after a shot rang out. Death toll estimates of Native American men, women and children range from 150 to 300.
Brucker said she thinks those who put up the billboards should come forward to discuss their viewpoints.
"I thought it was pretty cowardly that someone would put something like that up and spend the money for a billboard but didn't have the courage to put their name on it," she said.
___
Information from: Greeley Daily Tribune, http://greeleytribune.com
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Europe's flagship space telescope has stopped working.
The billion-euro Herschel observatory has run out of the liquid helium needed to keep its instruments and detectors at their ultra-low functioning temperature.
This equipment has now warmed, meaning the telescope cannot see the sky.
Herschel, which was sensitive to far-infrared and sub-millimetre light, was launched in 2009 to study the birth of stars and the evolution of galaxies.
Its 3.5m mirror and three state-of-the-art instruments made it the most powerful observatory of its kind ever put in space.
The end of operations is not a surprise. Astronomers always knew the helium store onboard would be a time-limiting factor.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
The telescope gathered images and information in such volume that astronomers have barely scratched database?
End QuoteProf Matt GriffinCardiff University, UK
The "blind" satellite is currently located about 1.5 million km from Earth on the planet's "night side".
Controllers at the European Space Agency's (Esa) operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, will run some final tests on the spacecraft in the coming weeks before putting it in a slow drift around the Sun.
"We will push it out into a heliocentric orbit and pacify it," said Micha Schmidt, the Herschel spacecraft operations manager.
"We will switch off the transponder and the spacecraft will go silent."
Herschel should not come anywhere near the Earth again for several hundred years.
Data legacy
The telescope will be remembered for its great vistas of gas and dust; the billowing clouds and threading filaments that trace the locations where future stars will form.
Over the course of the mission, it gathered thousands of such images. It also acquired detailed spectrographic data on many of its subjects, revealing their chemistry.
All of the information is now being assembled into a public archive.
Jonathan Amos inspected Herschel just before its launch in May 2009
This will become an important resource for future study and a starting point to plan follow-up observations with other astronomical facilities.
This is already happening with the recently opened, ground-based Alma telescope in Chile, which views the sky at frequencies that overlap those pursued by Herschel.
A US-German telescope called Sofia, which is mounted on a converted Boeing 747, can also see some of Herschel's frequencies.
"But the amazing thing about Herschel is that its maximum productivity in science terms probably won't be reached for another five years yet," said Prof Matt Griffin, the principal investigator on Herschel's Spire instrument.
"The telescope gathered images and information in such volume that astronomers have barely scratched the database," the Cardiff University, UK, scientist told BBC News.
Engineers issued an alert early in March warning astronomers that observations were coming to an end.
Herschel used special light detectors in its instruments known as bolometers. Although supremely efficient at capturing light, the technology must be kept close to absolute zero (-273C) to work properly.
This was achieved with the aid of 2,300 litres of liquid helium that was held in a giant flask, or cryostat.
But as the mission progressed, the cryogen gradually boiled away, and, on Monday, the Darmstadt controllers received telemetry from Herschel confirming every last drop was gone.
Continue reading the main story
Herschel Space Telescope
Herschel was one of the largest space telescopes ever launched; its 3.5m diameter mirror perfectly captured infrared light
It clocked more than 1,430 days of operations; making 22,000 hours of scientific observations; resulting in 600 scholarly papers... so far
Infrared shines through gas and dust clouds that can block visible light - Herschel could see deep into dusty, star-forming regions
The telescope was named after the astronomer William Herschel, who discovered infrared radiation while studying the Sun in 1800
The Earth's atmosphere is an infrared absorber, so Herschel was launched in 2009 to get a clear view of the long-wavelength Universe
Herschel's demise occurred close to the time forecast at the start of operations nearly four years ago.
If anything, astronomers got a few months' more observations than they were expecting.
Herschel's cryostat approach to cooling was evolved from a previous Esa mission - the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), which operated in the 1990s.
This approach is described as a "passive" system because once initial conditions are set inside the flask, a continuing presence of helium and good insulation is all that is required to maintain those conditions.
An "active", or mechanical, cooling system was considered for Herschel in the initial feasibility studies. This would have involved a chain of Stirling units that use a cycle of compression and decompression in a fluid to get to low temperatures.
Theoretically, mechanical coolers could have given Herschel more life, but engineers considered such a design to be too risky.
"There was a competitive concept but it involved a lot of stages, a lot of machines," recalls Jean-Jacques Juillet, the director of scientific programmes at Thales Alenia Space, the company that led the industrial development of Herschel.
"If one of those stages had failed, it could have been a disaster for the continuity of the mission. The cryostat option was the safest option," he told BBC News.
With the cryostat path adopted, engineers then set about constructing the largest possible helium vessel they could fit inside an Ariane launch rocket.
Esa hopes to join a future far-infrared telescope project called Spica. This is a Japanese venture that could fly in the early 2020s.
Europe would provide important components, including the primary mirror and a spectrograph. Unlike Herschel, Spica is likely to use mechanical coolers.
Continue reading the main story
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
A bearded Richard Branson (center) gets a congratulatory hug from SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan. Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Mark Sirangelo, who was involved in the development of SpaceShipTwo's hybrid rocket engine, can be seen just to the right of Rutan.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin companies operate airplanes and trains, sell music and phones, offer games and radio shows. He's an adventurer who has flown balloons over oceans, has swum with sharks and whales, and has even started up his own ocean exploration venture. He's had his own reality-TV series?and played cameo roles in "Around the World in 80 Days,"?"Casino Royale" and "Superman Returns." But what really gets the 62-year-old's juices flowing is outer space: Even in a Virgin Mobile?TV commercial, Branson's dream of going weightless serves as the kicker.
So it's debatable whether anyone was happier than Branson to see Monday's first blastoff by SpaceShipTwo, the rocket plane that he hopes will take hundreds of regular people (with $200,000 to spend) on quick suborbital trips into outer space. Over the past eight and a half years, Branson has spent tens of millions of dollars to get his Virgin Galactic venture this far, and if the tests continue to go smoothly, he and his kids may soon be getting on the space plane themselves.
Exactly when will that be? Branson's predictions have been uniformly over-optimistic: 2007? 2008??2012? 2013? Now he says commercial service will start next year. The fact that the future time frame is shrinking suggests that Branson is getting closer to being right. In a quick Q&A, the rebel billionaire talked about the "very long road" behind him and the road that lies ahead:
Cosmic Log: You've talked about how you and your family are looking forward to this. After today's launch, are you looking forward to it even more?
Richard Branson: Of course. It was a thrilling day today. Everything went absolutely according to plan. It looked magnificent. The pilots just loved the experience. I think they were tempted to go straight into space, but knew they'd get fired if they did. We're very much looking forward to getting there either at the end of this year or very early next year.
Mark Greenberg / Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic's billionaire backer, Richard Branson, gets a "high-ten" hand-slap from SpaceShipTwo pilot Mark Stucky. George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's CEO and president, is to Branson's right.
Q: What has this effort meant to you? I don't know if people could have predicted that it would take eight and a half years to get to this point after SpaceShipOne. Has this been a longer road than you thought it would be? Does that make it taste sweeter when things go right?
A: Yes, it's been a very long road. But as far as putting people into space, Virgin Galactic is the only company that has gotten this far. Quite a few other companies have also been working hard to get this far. Today was such an important milestone, in that we knew the rockets were finally working. We knew the spaceship worked on its own. But we obviously needed to test the two together to make sure that the designers got it right. We're absolutely delighted that it broke the sound barrier on its very first flight, and that everything went so smoothly. So we really are on the way now. We've overcome the biggest hurdle, and there are no major hurdles left except for the normal test flights that are needed before we go into space.
Q: How many test flights do you think will be needed? You've already mentioned that you are hoping the first spaceflights could happen by the end of this year, and commercial service would follow. Now that the first powered test has taken place, what does the schedule ahead look like?
A: There will be many test flights between now and the end of the year, before we actually go into space. We'll do as many tests as we feel are necessary before we actually turn it over to myself, my children and other people. We'll be working with the FAA and others to get as many flights under our belts as we feel are needed, but I do think we'll be ready by the end of the year.?
Q: When you saw SpaceShipTwo fire up its engine, were there any surprises, or was it totally the way you expected it to go. Did you ever think to yourself, "Whoa, I didn't think it was going to work that way"?
A: Fortunately, there were no surprises. Until it happens, you have to be nervous, even though you have the best team in the world working with it. What was incredible was how clear it was, just looking up without binoculars. You could visibly see the spaceship getting faster and faster. There's an old saying, "It's not rocket science." But this is rocket science, and that's why it's taken eight and a half years to get this far.
Q: You have more than 500 people who have already put money down for a flight, and many more who are interested in the idea of flying into outer space. What would you say to them about the significance of today's test, and what they can expect in the years ahead?
A: Today was the most significant day in the program. I think that for those people who have been good enough to stick with us for the last eight years, who signed up early on, their time to become astronauts is very soon now. I'd just say, 'Thank you very much for sticking with it.' We'll soon be able to make their dreams come true.
More reactions to the SpaceShipTwo test:
Charles Lurio, writer of The Lurio Report on private space development: ?It?s been a long eight and a half years, but this is the kind of thing that happens in development programs.?
Commercial Spaceflight Federation: "We are one step closer to achieving safe, routine and cost-effective access to space that will create abundant opportunities for space-based research and that will inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists."
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.: SpaceShipTwo's supersonic flight is a "major milestone in commercial space travel, bringing us one step closer to offering private commercial space travel and solidifying the Mojave Air and Space Port as our nation?s premier aerospace research, development and test flight center for this emerging space industry."
Spaceport America: "Today's?successful powered flight means we are getting closer to the day when the first Virgin Galactic passenger flight will be taking place from Spaceport America in New Mexico."
More about SpaceShipTwo:
Click through scenes from the construction of Virgin Galactic's suborbital passenger spaceship.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the?Cosmic Log?community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage,?sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. The Obama administration's controversial proposal to "means-test" Medicare recipients is ostensibly aimed at generating more cash for the government from those who can afford it or squeezing more money out of upper-income seniors, depending upon one's point of view. But according to a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits, the Medicare program is already means-tested.
Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says whenever the issue of cutting Medicare emerges, one of the first ideas to "fix" the program is to make its upper-income beneficiaries pay more.
"Indeed, the claim is often advanced that it is silly if not offensive to have low-income workers pay higher taxes so that wealthy beneficiaries can receive subsidized benefits from the Medicare program," said Kaplan, the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor at Illinois. "But the underlying premise is that Medicare is not already means-tested, and that is simply not the case."
Medicare Part A is financed by a 2.9 percent payroll tax imposed on all wages, salaries and income from self-employment, so higher-earning people already pay more for their Part A benefits. Starting this year, individuals with annual earnings above $200,000 and married couples with annual earnings above $250,000 will owe an additional 0.9 percent in Medicare tax, according to Kaplan.
Those taxpayers also will owe a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on their investment income in excess of those same thresholds.
Medicare Part B and Part D employ a more direct form of means-testing namely, increased premiums based on taxable income during one's retirement years, Kaplan said.
"Eschewing the precise mechanics of the applicable provisions, any Medicare beneficiary whose income exceeds an annually determined threshold pays an increased amount for coverage under these components of Medicare," Kaplan said.
"Thus, once taxable income with certain adjustments reaches the specified threshold, the amount paid by enrollees in either Medicare Part B or Medicare Part D is increased according to a four-step rate schedule."
Moreover, the formula was made more severe when the health care reform legislation enacted in 2010 froze the applicable income thresholds for the next 10 years, Kaplan said.
"Those thresholds are not indexed for inflation and will therefore affect more people over time," he said. "Furthermore, the Obama administration has proposed adding additional brackets a total of nine brackets versus the four we have now so that charges rise faster as income goes up."
Kaplan said that unlike Social Security benefits, which bear a close relationship to one's pre-retirement earnings, there is no correlation between one's pre-retirement earnings and the benefits a person receives from Medicare Part A.
"The value of Medicare benefits received correlates with a person's health, not wealth, so a less-healthy retiree will receive more from Medicare than a healthier retiree," he said. "To the extent that wealthy retirees are healthier than their poorer counterparts, there is an inverse relationship between income prior to retirement and benefits received from the Medicare program."
According to Kaplan, some policymakers oppose the very concept of means-testing benefits, regardless of the specific formula employed, arguing that Medicare is a social insurance program and should provide equal benefits to all participants regardless of their individual resources.
"Means-testing benefits, in their view, risks converting Medicare into another welfare-oriented program, with the possible erosion of popular support and potential exposure to the sort of reductions that such programs often suffer in difficult economic times," Kaplan said. "Other policymakers oppose means-testing Medicare because they regard reducing promised benefits on the basis of income as a disguised tax, a penalty on 'success,' in their view."
Thus, the idea that Medicare benefits should be means-tested raises genuine philosophical issues and is not a policy "slam dunk."
"The bottom line is that the individual components of Medicare are means-tested currently," Kaplan said. "Some lawmakers, no doubt, might prefer that the degree to which Medicare is means-tested be increased, but the fact remains that Medicare is already means-tested."
Kaplan's paper, "Top Ten Myths of Medicare," was published in The Elder Law Journal.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Richard L. Kaplan, call 217-333-2499; email rkaplan@illinois.edu.
The article, "Top Ten Myths of Medicare," is available online.
[ | 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.
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. The Obama administration's controversial proposal to "means-test" Medicare recipients is ostensibly aimed at generating more cash for the government from those who can afford it or squeezing more money out of upper-income seniors, depending upon one's point of view. But according to a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits, the Medicare program is already means-tested.
Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says whenever the issue of cutting Medicare emerges, one of the first ideas to "fix" the program is to make its upper-income beneficiaries pay more.
"Indeed, the claim is often advanced that it is silly if not offensive to have low-income workers pay higher taxes so that wealthy beneficiaries can receive subsidized benefits from the Medicare program," said Kaplan, the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor at Illinois. "But the underlying premise is that Medicare is not already means-tested, and that is simply not the case."
Medicare Part A is financed by a 2.9 percent payroll tax imposed on all wages, salaries and income from self-employment, so higher-earning people already pay more for their Part A benefits. Starting this year, individuals with annual earnings above $200,000 and married couples with annual earnings above $250,000 will owe an additional 0.9 percent in Medicare tax, according to Kaplan.
Those taxpayers also will owe a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on their investment income in excess of those same thresholds.
Medicare Part B and Part D employ a more direct form of means-testing namely, increased premiums based on taxable income during one's retirement years, Kaplan said.
"Eschewing the precise mechanics of the applicable provisions, any Medicare beneficiary whose income exceeds an annually determined threshold pays an increased amount for coverage under these components of Medicare," Kaplan said.
"Thus, once taxable income with certain adjustments reaches the specified threshold, the amount paid by enrollees in either Medicare Part B or Medicare Part D is increased according to a four-step rate schedule."
Moreover, the formula was made more severe when the health care reform legislation enacted in 2010 froze the applicable income thresholds for the next 10 years, Kaplan said.
"Those thresholds are not indexed for inflation and will therefore affect more people over time," he said. "Furthermore, the Obama administration has proposed adding additional brackets a total of nine brackets versus the four we have now so that charges rise faster as income goes up."
Kaplan said that unlike Social Security benefits, which bear a close relationship to one's pre-retirement earnings, there is no correlation between one's pre-retirement earnings and the benefits a person receives from Medicare Part A.
"The value of Medicare benefits received correlates with a person's health, not wealth, so a less-healthy retiree will receive more from Medicare than a healthier retiree," he said. "To the extent that wealthy retirees are healthier than their poorer counterparts, there is an inverse relationship between income prior to retirement and benefits received from the Medicare program."
According to Kaplan, some policymakers oppose the very concept of means-testing benefits, regardless of the specific formula employed, arguing that Medicare is a social insurance program and should provide equal benefits to all participants regardless of their individual resources.
"Means-testing benefits, in their view, risks converting Medicare into another welfare-oriented program, with the possible erosion of popular support and potential exposure to the sort of reductions that such programs often suffer in difficult economic times," Kaplan said. "Other policymakers oppose means-testing Medicare because they regard reducing promised benefits on the basis of income as a disguised tax, a penalty on 'success,' in their view."
Thus, the idea that Medicare benefits should be means-tested raises genuine philosophical issues and is not a policy "slam dunk."
"The bottom line is that the individual components of Medicare are means-tested currently," Kaplan said. "Some lawmakers, no doubt, might prefer that the degree to which Medicare is means-tested be increased, but the fact remains that Medicare is already means-tested."
Kaplan's paper, "Top Ten Myths of Medicare," was published in The Elder Law Journal.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Richard L. Kaplan, call 217-333-2499; email rkaplan@illinois.edu.
The article, "Top Ten Myths of Medicare," is available online.
[ | 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.
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If North Korea's bellicose rhetoric threatening the United States and South Korea with nuclear war was aimed at dragging Washington to the negotiating table, it has likely failed.
Pyongyang may once again feel it needs to up the ante.
Two months of shrill threats following the North's nuclear test in February appeared at times to drag the Korean peninsula close to war as its young leader celebrated a year in power with a fusillade of verbal aggression that has now died down.
North Korea has made it clear it will not talk unless its right to a nuclear deterrent - its "treasured sword" - is recognized by the United States, while Washington insists any talks would be conditional on denuclearization.
That may lead to Pyongyang staging a new long-range rocket launch - which critics say is designed to prove missile technology - or a fourth nuclear test, or a small-scale military confrontation with South Korea in a bid to force talks and perhaps split Seoul from Washington.
"The difference in positions between the United States and North Korea is greater than ever," said Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's former national security advisor who left office in February and took part in framing U.N. sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear test that month.
Chun took part in meetings with North Korean negotiators as part of "six-party talks", a series that ran from 2003 among the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia that were aimed at stemming the North's progress towards a nuclear bomb. He participated in talks in 2006 and in 2008, the last round.
The North has said it wants the United States to sign a formal peace treaty formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War, an end to U.N. sanctions and a pledge from Washington and Seoul not to attack it, as well as nuclear recognition.
"It has become much more difficult to seek common ground and find the right conditions for talks," said Chun, referring to the preconditions set out by Pyongyang.
North Korea has a long history of spurning engagement and trust-building measures. During the six-party talks, it agreed to abandon all of its nuclear weapons programs in 2005, only to stage nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 as well as this year.
As recently as last year, it said it would allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, not launch any long-range rockets and go back to talks in exchange for U.S. food aid.
Just a few weeks later as Kim Jong-un formally took power, it undertook another rocket launch, scuppering the deal.
The lack of trust and verification means that once bitten, President Barack Obama is unlikely to fall for a second North Korean ploy, especially after crude propaganda films depicted the United States in flames from a North Korean attack.
"Because it is North Korea, the decision goes all the way to the Oval Office and I just don't see President Obama wanting to make any investment in this," said Victor Cha, formerly President George W. Bush's top advisor on North Korean affairs.
CHINA CARD?
Beijing is North Korea's one ally and could provide a route back into talks, although it too has expressed its frustration with the North's young leader.
When Kim Jong-un took office, there were hopes he would break with his father's push for nuclear weapons and embark on Chinese-style economic reforms.
But a year later, the young leader has still not paid a visit to Beijing. And instead of reforming, he has spent the past year purging the military and shuffling his close advisors. He has now staged two long-range rocket launches and one nuclear test.
"China is not very happy with Kim Jong-un for creating trouble," a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said.
"Kim Jong-un has been testing his control over the military through mobilization, but he overdid it."
Despite Beijing's displeasure, the young Kim may feel he has little more to lose.
Most analysts say that despite agreeing to sanctions on North Korea after February's nuclear test, Beijing will not economically strangle a client state that provides a buffer between it and U.S. forces stationed in South Korea.
South Korea's new President Park Geun-hye will meet Obama in Washington on May 7, providing the North with something it could use as another leverage point for a missile launch, nuclear test or other show of military strength.
North Korea carried out its February nuclear test just as Park was about to take office and as new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry took up his post. The test also came at around the time of leadership transitions in Tokyo and Beijing.
"The reason things calmed down over the past 10 days or so ... was not bluster fatigue setting in, or not deciding strategically to tone things down now after having been on the rampage for so long, but more to catch their adversaries off their guard," said Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor of Korean Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the United States.
(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim in BEIJING; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Mark Bendeich)
In this image taken from video obtained from Aleppo Media Center AMC, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the damaged famed 12th century Umayyad mosque, background, which was destroyed by shelling, in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. The minaret of a famed 12th century Sunni mosque in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed Wednesday, leaving the once-soaring stone tower a pile of rubble and twisted metal scattered in the tiled courtyard. President Bashar Assad's regime and anti-government activists traded blame for the attack against the Umayyad mosque, which occurred in the heart Aleppo's walled Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was the second time in just over a week that a historic Sunni mosque in Syria has been seriously damaged. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)
In this image taken from video obtained from Aleppo Media Center AMC, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the damaged famed 12th century Umayyad mosque, background, which was destroyed by shelling, in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, April 24, 2013. The minaret of a famed 12th century Sunni mosque in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was destroyed Wednesday, leaving the once-soaring stone tower a pile of rubble and twisted metal scattered in the tiled courtyard. President Bashar Assad's regime and anti-government activists traded blame for the attack against the Umayyad mosque, which occurred in the heart Aleppo's walled Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was the second time in just over a week that a historic Sunni mosque in Syria has been seriously damaged. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC)
BEIRUT (AP) ? After five weeks of battle, Syrian government troops captured a strategic town near Damascus, cutting an arms route for rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, state media and activists said Thursday.
By taking the town of Otaybah, east of the capital, the army has dealt a major setback to opposition forces, who in the past months have made gains near the city they eventually hope to storm.
With fresh supplies of weapons from foreign backers, the rebels have recently seized military bases and towns south of the capital in the strategically important region between Damascus and the border with Jordan, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) away.
The regime has largely kept the rebels at bay in Damascus, although opposition fighters control several suburbs of the capital from which they have threatened the heart of the city, the seat of Assad's power. Last month government troops launched a massive campaign to repel the rebel advances near the capital, deploying elite army units to the rebellious Damascus suburbs and pounding rebel positions with airstrikes.
The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said government troops regained control of Otaybah late Wednesday.
State-run SANA news agency said Thursday that the army has "restored complete control" over Otaybah. The official news services also said Assad's troops "discovered a number of tunnels which were used by terrorists to move and transfer weapons and ammunitions."
The regime and state media refer to rebels as terrorists and accuse them of being part of a foreign plot seeking to destroy Syria.
"It's a huge victory for the regime, and a big blow to the opposition that is now in danger of losing other towns and villages around Damascus," Abdul-Rahman said of the army's campaign.
Otaybah is located on a road linking Damascus to its international airport, along which rebels have been transporting weapons and other supplies from neighboring Jordan. The capital's surrounding towns and neighborhoods have been opposition strongholds during the 2-year-old conflict.
Losing control of the town will make the defense of rebel enclaves in southern suburbs such as Douma, Harasta and others very difficult, Abdul-Rahman said. The loss of the arms supply route is a major blow to opposition forces trying to overthrow Assad.
The Syrian conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war.
The fighting has exacted a huge toll on the country, killing more than 70,000 people, laying waste to cities, towns and villages and forcing more than a million people to flee their homes and seek refuge abroad. Millions have also been displaced inside Syria.
International aid agencies have been pleading for funds to help refugees in neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon. They have also been asking the Syrian government to allow aid convoys into the country and facilitate access to the area inside cities and towns that have been affected by fighting.
Apr. 24, 2013 ? An invisible barrier separates land animals in Australia from those in south-east Asia may also restrict the spillover of animal-borne diseases like avian flu, but researchers have found that fruit bats on either side of this line can carry Nipah virus, a pathogen that causes severe human disease.
The findings are published April 24 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Andrew Breed from the University of Queensland, Australia and colleagues from other institutions.
Previous studies have suggested that this biogeographic boundary, named Wallace's line, may have played a role in protecting Australia from the spread of the avian flu H5N1. In the current study, researchers assessed whether this boundary could restrict the distribution of Nipah virus, which has caused severe outbreaks of human and domestic animal disease in the past.
"We found evidence that Nipah Virus occurs on the eastern side of Wallace's Line and much closer to Australia than previously recognized," says Breed. "We also found that the epidemiology of Nipah virus, and related viruses, is complex and these viruses are not restricted to flying-foxes (Pteropus bats) in this region."
They found that fruit bats from regions on both sides of the line tested positive for Nipah virus and other related viruses called henipaviruses. Only certain species of fruit bats carried Nipah virus but even in their absence, other bat species could still carry these related viruses. Henipaviruses were also detected in some species not previously known to carry these viruses. Based on these results, the authors conclude that Wallace's line is not a restricting factor for the transmission of Nipah virus. Their results also extend the known regions where Nipah virus has been detected by over 2500 km, to the island of Timor.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.
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Journal Reference:
Andrew C. Breed, Joanne Meers, Indrawati Sendow, Katharine N. Bossart, Jennifer A. Barr, Ina Smith, Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, Linfa Wang, Hume E. Field. The Distribution of Henipaviruses in Southeast Asia and Australasia: Is Wallace?s Line a Barrier to Nipah Virus?PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e61316 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061316
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Apr. 23, 2013 ? For sea turtle hatchlings struggling to reach the ocean, success may depend on having flexible wrists that allow them to move without disturbing too much sand. A similar wrist also helps a robot known as "FlipperBot" move through a test bed, demonstrating how animals and bio-inspired robots can together provide new information on the principles governing locomotion on granular surfaces.
Both the baby turtles and FlipperBot run into trouble under the same conditions: traversing granular media disturbed by previous steps. Information from the robot research helped scientists understand why some of the hatchlings they studied experienced trouble, creating a unique feedback loop from animal to robot -- and back to animal.
The research could help robot designers better understand locomotion on complex surfaces and lead biologists to a clearer picture of how seat turtles and other animals like mudskippers use their flippers. The research could also help explain how animals evolved limbs -- including flippers -- for walking on land.
The research is scheduled to be published April 24 in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Program, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
"We are looking at different ways that robots can move about on sand," said Daniel Goldman, an associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "We wanted to make a systematic study of what makes flippers useful or effective. We've learned that the flow of the materials plays a large role in the strategy that can be used by either animals or robots."
The research began in 2010 with a six-week study of hatchling loggerhead sea turtles emerging at night from nests on Jekyll Island, one of Georgia's coastal islands. The research was done in collaboration with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
Nicole Mazouchova, then a graduate student in the Georgia Tech School of Biology, studied the baby turtles using a trackway filled with beach sand and housed in a truck parked near the beach. She recorded kinematic and biomechanical data as the turtles moved in darkness toward an LED light that simulated the moon.
Mazouchova and Goldman studied data from the 25 hatchlings, and were surprised to learn that they managed to maintain their speed regardless of the surface on which they were running.
"On soft sand, the animals move their limbs in such a way that they don't create a yielding of the material on which they're walking," said Goldman. "That means the material doesn't flow around the limbs and they don't slip. The surprising thing to us was that the turtles had comparable performance when they were running on hard ground or soft sand."
The key maintaining performance seemed to be the ability of the hatchlings to control their wrists, allowing them to change how they used their flippers under different sand conditions.
"On hard ground, their wrists locked in place, and they pivoted about a fixed arm," Goldman explained. "On soft sand, they put their flippers into the sand and the wrist would bend as they moved forward. We decided to investigate this using a robot model."
That led to development of FlipperBot, with assistance from Paul Umbanhowar, a research associate professor at Northwestern University. The robot measures about 19 centimeters in length, weighs about 970 grams, and has two flippers driven by servo-motors. Like the turtles, the robot has flexible wrists that allow variations in its movement. To move through a track bed filled with poppy seeds that simulate sand, the robot lifts its flippers up, drops them into the seeds, then moves the flippers backward to propel itself.
Mazouchova, now a Ph.D. student at Temple University, studied many variations of gait and wrist position and found that the free-moving mechanical wrist also provided an advantage to the robot.
"In the robot, the free wrist does provide some advantage," said Goldman. "For the most part, the wrist confers advantage for moving forward without slipping. The wrist flexibility minimizes material yielding, which disturbs less ground. The flexible wrist also allows both the robot and turtles to maintain a high angle of attack for their bodies, which reduces performance-impeding drag from belly friction."
The researchers also noted that the robot often failed when limbs encountered material that the same limbs had already disturbed. That led them to re-examine the data collected on the hatchling turtles, some of which had also experienced difficulty walking across the soft sand.
"When we saw the turtles moving poorly, they appeared to be suffering from the same failure mode that we saw in the robot," Goldman explained. "When they interacted with materials that had been previously disturbed, they tended to lose performance."
Mazouchova and Goldman then worked with Umbanhowar to model the robot's performance in an effort to predict how the turtle hatchlings should respond to different conditions. The predictions closely matched what was actually observed, closing the loop between robot and animal.
"The robot study allowed us to test how principles applied to the animals," Goldman said. While the results may not directly improve robot designs, what the researchers learned should contribute to a better understanding of the principles governing movement using flippers. That would be useful to the designers of robots that must swim through water and walk on land.
"A multi-modal robot might need to use paddles for swimming in water, but it might also need to walk in an effective way on the beach," Goldman said. "This work can provide fundamental information on what makes flippers good or bad. This information could give robot designers clues to appendage designs and control techniques for robots moving in these environments."
The research could ultimately provide clues to how turtles evolved to walk on land with appendages designed for swimming.
"To understand the mechanics of how the first terrestrial animals moved, you have to understand how their flipper-like limbs interacted with complex, yielding substrates like mud flats," said Goldman. "We don't have solid results on the evolutionary questions yet, but this certainly points to a way that we could address these issues."
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CMMI-0825480 and the Physics of Living Systems PoLS program, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's (ARL) Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Program under cooperative agreement W911NF-08-2-0004, the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF, ARL or ARO.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology, Research Communications. The original article was written by John Toon.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Nicole Mazouchova, Paul B. Umbanhowar and Daniel I. Goldman. Flipper-driven terrestrial locomotion of a sea turtle-inspired robot. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2013
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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
SAN FRANCISCO ? Cody Ross tried his best to follow Pat Burrell?s example.
You know. Return to your former home. Soak up the polite applause. Then dig into the batter?s box, pop a home run, and enjoy a steady shower of boos thereafter.
Ross didn?t hit a home run. He did hit a two-run single, though ? and sprawled in the dirt to take a sure RBI double away from Buster Posey in the sixth. Ross the Boss did everything he could to put a stamp on the joint in his first game at AT&T Park as a former Giant.
But Posey has a way of grabbing attention?
Posey smoked a game tying, two-run home run in the eighth inning, and Brandon Belt set aside his struggles long enough to hit a walk-off single in the ninth as the Giants rallied for a 5-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night.
Posey was hit in the throat by a pitch in the dirt earlier in the game, but he didn?t stay down for long. In many other parks, he would?ve had a three-homer night.
He was the difference maker as the Giants took the first of what promises to be 19 hard-fought meetings between these last two NL West champs.
Starting pitching report
Last year, Ryan Vogelsong threw quality starts in 19 of his first 20 assignments. He?s only done it once in four tries this year.
He allowed four runs on seven hits and two walks in seven innings, although it could?ve been worse considering how his night started. The Diamondbacks loaded the bases with no outs on two singles and a double.
Miguel Montero struck out but Ross reached out and poked a high and outside fastball to right field, plating two runs. Vogelsong escaped futher damage when he struck out Didi Gregorius to strand runners at the corners.
Vogelsong retired 11 of 12 hitters before pitcher Wade Miley hit a towering, tiebreaking, Bondsian home run into the right field arcade. Vogelsong snapped a fresh ball into his glove, obviously unhappy at giving up a homer to a career .146 hitter who only had two extra-base hits (both doubles) in 97 plate appearances.
It was the third home run the Giants have allowed to a pitcher this month, counting the Dodgers? Clayton Kershaw and the Brewers? Yovani Gallardo. The Giants hadn?t given up three homers to pitchers in a month since June, 1953.
It was a bad night to live up in the strike zone, as the ball carried through unseasonably warm air. Vogelsong paid for one more mistake, when Eric Chavez parked one in the sixth inning.
He was on the hook for the loss before Posey?s shot in the eighth bailed him out.
Bullpen report
Jean Machi pitched a scoreless seventh inning and Jose Mijares was on the verge of doing the same when Cliff Pennington hit a two-out double in the eighth.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy went straight to his closer, following standard protocol for a tie game at home. It became an instantly intriguing matchup when Arizona sent up pinch hitter Eric Hinske, who so memorably homered off Romo in the 2010 NLDS at Atlanta.
Simply put, Romo is a different pitcher now. He didn?t have that two-seamer, which he threw in a perfect spot. The first pitch broke just enough to hit off the end of Hinske?s bat, resulting in a slow grounder to second base to end the inning.
With that pitch, Romo preserved the tie ? and ended up receiving the victory when the Giants won it in the ninth.
At the plate
The Giants got to Miley for a pair of runs in the first inning when Marco Scutaro, Pablo Sandoval and Posey hit consecutive doubles. Poseys? shot was a deep drive into right-center that would?ve been a home run in almost any other ballpark.
They couldn?t touch Miley again, but they came close in the sixth after Scutaro led off with a single. Posey followed with a shot into the right field corner that kept carrying, but Ross played it perfectly. He laid out on the warning track as the ball lodged in the palm of his glove.
There was no catching what came off Posey?s bat the next time, though. He followed Sandoval?s single with a shot to dead center off right-hander David Hernandez. It was his second home run in as many nights.
The Giants set up their winning rally against left-hander Tony Sipp when Andres Torres singled and Brandon Crawford put down a sacrifice bunt. Up stepped Belt, who entered as part of a double switch in the top half of the inning.
Belt was just 1 for 12 against left-handed pitching, had lost his starting gig against southpaws and entered the day with just a .227 on-base percentage for the season. He had an intensive early batting practice session with Bochy, and some of those lessons must?ve stuck.
Belt laid off an 0-1 slider, then stayed back on another breaking ball while serving it to left field for the game winner.
In field
Ross made the play of the game, but Crawford made another short-hop look easy when Miley sent a low line drive his way in the seventh.
Center fielder Angel Pagan had a tough night, as he got two bad reads off the bat on balls that dropped in front of him.
Attendance
The Giants announced 41,294 paid on a warm night in China Basin. For once, you could use your coat as a seat cushion.
Up next
The Giants and Diamondbacks continue their three-game series at AT&T Park on Tuesday. The Giants will send Matt Cain (0-2, 7.15) to the mound hoping to win on his day for the first time in five tries. Left-hander Patrick Corbin (2-0, 1.42) gets the start for Arizona. First pitch is scheduled for 7:15 p.m. PDT.
It is claimed up to 50 congregations may leave the Church of Scotland if the General Assembly votes next month to allow the ordination of?ministers who are in same-sex sexual relationships.
The Church of Scotland ordains lesbian and gay ministers ? although they have to be celibate ? whereas ministers who are in married mixed-sex sexual relationships can be ordained without the same requirement.
Following a 2011 report on the issue of gay relationships and the ministry, the General Assembly has been considering whether the church should ease the restrictions on lesbian and gay ministers.
The Scotsman reports up to 50 congregations may leave the Church of Scotland if it chooses to do so.
Although the Church of Scotland has more than 1,400 congregations, such an exodus would represent the biggest split in its ranks since the 19th-century schism which led to the Free Church of Scotland?s formation.
Commenting on the reports of a possible exodus, a Church of Scotland spokesman said: ?We regret and are saddened that any ministers or individuals feel they are obliged to, or feel the need to, leave over this issue but no-one knows how the General Assembly will vote or what it will decide until the day of the debate.?
In February, the Rev Dominic Smart and his congregation of 300 at Gilcomston South in Aberdeen left the Church of Scotland.
The congregation took issue with the General Assembly approving the appointment of the openly gay minister Scott Rennie to Queen?s Cross church in Aberdeen in 2009.
Last month, the Aberdeen presbytery agreed to let Rev Smart and his congregation use their old church on a?temporary?basis.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. ??Federal authorities have asked to speak with the wife of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and her lawyer said Sunday he is discussing with them how to proceed.
John Tlumacki / Boston Globe / Getty Images Contributor
Police officers with their guns drawn hear the second explosion down the street. The first explosion knocked down a runner at the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon.
Amato DeLuca told The Associated Press that Katherine Russell Tsarnaev did not speak to federal officials who came to her parents' home in North Kingstown, R.I., Sunday evening, where she has been staying since her husband was killed during a getaway attempt early Friday.
Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar, 19, two ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia, are accused of planting two explosives near the marathon finish line Monday, killing three people and injuring more than 180. A motive remains unclear.
DeLuca said he spoke with the officials instead, but would not offer further details.
"I spoke to them, and that's all I can say right now," he said. "We're deciding what we want to do and how we want to approach this."
DeLuca also offered new details on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's movements in the days after the bombings, saying the last day he was alive that "he was home" when his wife left for work. When asked whether anything seemed amiss to his wife following the bombings, DeLuca responded, "Not as far as I know." He said she learned her husband was a suspect in the bombings by seeing it on TV. He would not elaborate.
DeLuca said his client did not suspect her husband of anything, and that there was no reason for her to have suspected him. He said she had been working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week as a home health care aide. While she was at work, her husband cared for their toddler daughter, DeLuca said.
In the mountainous region of Dagestan, relatives and friends of the suspected Boston bombers are in shock that two of their own may have been responsible for the marathon bombings. NBC's Adrienne Mong reports.
"When this allegedly was going on, she was working, and had been working all week to support her family," he told the AP.
He said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was off at college and she saw him "not at all" at the apartment they shared with her mother-in-law.
Katherine Russell Tsarnaev was attending Suffolk University in Boston when friends introduced her to her future husband at a nightclub, DeLuca said. They dated on and off, then married in 2009 or 2010, he said.
She was raised Christian, but at some point after meeting Tamerlan Tsarnaev, she converted to Islam, he said. When asked why she converted, he replied: "She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Koran. She believes in God."
Related:
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
"Late Show" host David Letterman went straight to the topic on everyone's minds when starlet Lindsay Lohan sat down for an interview Tuesday night: her rehab sentence.?
Her troubles weren't exactly what she was there to discuss. The actress is currently promoting her guest role as Charlie Sheen's love interest on the sitcom "Anger Management," as well as a cameo in "Scary Movie 5." In a clip released by CBS, the actress is giggling happily until Letterman asked her, "Aren't you supposed to be in rehab now?"
Her laughter died instantly as she shot back, "Do you not watch anything that goes on? Are you a tabloid now? May 2nd."
In March, she admitted to a Los Angeles judge that she had violated probation, and accepted a plea deal that requires her to stay 90 days in a "locked rehab facility." She is required to prove by May 2 that she has enrolled in treatment.
After Letterman got a few answers from her regarding the length of her stay in rehab and the number of times she's received treatment, Lohan sounded like she wasn't too happy with the line of questioning.?
"We didn't discuss this in the pre-interview, just saying to everyone," she told the audience.
But the comedian pressed on for details before she finally cut him off. "To be honest, I'm the happiest when I'm working, and the healthiest. And I think this is an opportunity for me to, you know, focus on what I love in life," she said. "And I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's a blessing ... and not a curse."
But Letterman still wasn't done with the subject. "Do you have addiction problems?" he asked.
After a stony silence, Lohan finally replied, "Now you sound like Dr. Phil," and wouldn't give him details.
Tuesday's interview is the first one she's done since November 2012.
Watch her entire interview Tuesday when "Late Show With David Letterman" airs at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.
Heavy metal band Jamrud and a major Indonesian Islamist party throw a gig together. That's one of the smallest changes in Indonesian politics.
By Dan Murphy,?Staff writer / April 9, 2013
When I moved to Indonesia in 1993, the Indonesian media and political spheres were closed shops. There were only three legal political parties and the media, particularly broadcast media, were tightly controlled. The scenes around me now, in this corner of the archipelago, reveal just how much the nation has transformed itself.?
Skip to next paragraph Dan Murphy
Staff writer
Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.?Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.
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Twenty years ago, nightly news reports largely consisted of long, loving accounts of the latest factory opening by President Soeharto, the self-styled "father of Indonesian development" (the old 50,000 rupiah note carried a beaming Soeharto with this title beneath), followed by an account of the latest foreign dignitary he received and then, perhaps, sports.?
There were red lines everywhere for reporters and film and television producers. Most important was to never, ever discuss in a critical tone the 1965 coup that brought him to power and the anti-Communist purge that followed, leaving an estimated 500,000 dead. There was an official narrative that everyone had to adhere to: Evil communists tried to take over and brave young Soeharto saved the day, pushing the first president of Indonesia,?Sukarno, from power for having unsavory friends. End of story. Or else.
It wasn't until 2000, two years after Soeharto was pushed from power, that the mawkish 1983 romance "The Year of Living Dangerously," set amid Indonesia's 1965 turmoil, was allowed to be shown here, with Indonesians in the audience twittering at the accents of the Filipino actors when they spoke Indonesian.
Even almost 30 years later, Soeharto's regime still played masterfully with the fear and paranoia generated by the national tragedy of 1965. In that time, he built an order (which he called the "New Order") based on rigid political control. In the years after taking power he forced Indonesia's existing political parties into two super-parties that, for decades, represented the loyal (very, very, very loyal) opposition: the United Development Party (PPP) for Islamist political groups and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) for more secular nationalist ones.
And then there was the new party to rule them all: His Golkar, an acronym that means "Functional Groups."
In the early 1990s, the protest movement that would help galvanize opinion against Soeharto in 1998 was being born, though no one really understood it back then. It was much like Egypt when I arrived there a decade ago: activists hounded by the state, organizing, seeking to make links to labor unions, often getting their heads kicked in by the police or the military in what seemed like a hopeless cause.
In 1993, Soeharto made one of his great miscalculations. Though he had show-elections every five years, which his government called "festivals of democracy," both PDI and PPP were allowed some scraps of parliamentary representation as rewards for good behavior. At the time, some members of the PDI, however, were pushing to engage politics in a real way, and Soeharto's government sought to directly control the election of a new party leader. However, the PDI succeeded in naming Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno's daughter, as the head of the party.
While she had neither political skills nor governing ability of her own, a group of bright political operators seeking political change gathered around her, and were important players when the curtain came down on Soeharto's 32-year reign. Megawati ended up Indonesia's first post-Soeharto vice president and its second president, in a political era in which the country exploded from just three parties to over 100.
Today, Indonesia's raucous political environment is a stunning change from a decade ago. South Maluku, of which Ambon is the capital, is gearing up for gubernatorial elections (under Soeharto, all local politicians down to the district level were appointed by Jakarta) and the island is awash in political posters and canvassers. Judging from a few days traveling in the province, there are at least five candidates with some money behind them, and the bottoms of their billboards show the support they've aligned in each case from dozens of national parties.
Speaking to an old friend from Indonesia recently, who describes himself as a "glass half-empty guy," he nevertheless said direct local elections and a commitment to the political process has been one of the great successes of Indonesia since Soeharto. Sure, crooks often get into office, "but they end up getting voted out."
Indonesia's next big "festival of democracy" (this time, a real one) is scheduled for next year. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is being term-limited from office, and the jockeying to replace him has already begun.
The old three parties have had mixed fortunes in the years since democracy came to Indonesia. The PDI (which came to be known as the PDI-P, or "Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle") leads the opposition in parliament, with about 17 percent of the seats. Golkar, which has parlayed backing from big businesses and years of organization into ongoing support, is the junior partner in the governing coalition with about 19 percent of the seats. And the PPP? A shadow of their former selves, with 7 percent of the seats in parliament.
But I switched on the TV here two nights ago before going to bed, and came across the PPP's 40th anniversary rally in Surabaya, East Java. Having spent much of the past decade in the Middle East, and having covered the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Indonesia, I was transfixed. A crowd of thousands of enthusiastic young Indonesians, the girls in headscarves, were head-banging to the heavy metal band Jamrud, which was headlining a party for an avowedly Islamist political group.
With apologies to Mark Levine, who wrote an excellent book on the alternative music scene in the Arab world called "Heavy Metal Islam," this was the real thing. I wish I could find an online video of the show. But though its absent the PPP's green flag, with the Kabbah in Mecca in the middle waving above the music, this is what Jamrud sounds like:
And it reminded me that a unique political culture is evolving here that can consistently confound expectations and preconceptions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the "About" or "First-Time Visitor" pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can?subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here?to enter my free $50.53 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is April 30th, 2013. The following is a guest post by?Kevin Watts, the creator of the blog,Graduating from Debt.?Enjoy! I was like millions of recent college graduates in heavy debt with very little hope. With the right attitude and discipline, I took control of my financial picture, and now I can say proudly that I am debt free.? Here below are some practical tips that helped me pay off my student loans: If you have just graduated from college, or you are in the process of repaying student loans, then these practical tips can help you maintain your loan debts under control. By being aware of your financial obligations, you will avoid incurring massive interest costs and extra fees for late payments. Moreover, it will be easier for you to keep all debt payments affordable while securing a good credit rating. Forget about stressing out on your loan payments, and check out these 5 relevant tips that will help you manage your debts while ensuring your financial stability:
1. Keep track of your loans.
It is important to be completely aware of your lenders, loan balance, and current repayment status for your loans. These relevant pieces of information will give you an idea about your existing options when it comes to loan forgiveness and repayment. If you are uncertain about these details, then the best thing to do is to inquire from your lender. By doing so, you will learn more about the status of your federal loans. Additionally, you may want to review your most current billing statement, as well as the original documents that you have signed. In case you are unable to locate these documents, you may consult your school for a backup of these records.
2. Determine your loan's grace period.
You should understand that each loan has its own grace period, which pertains to the waiting time before you can make your initial payment. For Stafford federal loans, the grace period is typically six months, while it is zero months for Perkins federal loans. If you have an existing PLUS loan (federal), then the grace period depends on the date when the loan was issued. Regardless of the grace period for your student loans, make it a point to pay on time to avoid late charges. Moreover, you should never fail to inform your lender when you have changed your mailing address or contact details since all mails about your loans may be sent to an incorrect address, and this can cause you a huge problem. In fact, ignoring all bills can lead to a default, which can lead to severe and long-term consequences on your financial situation.
3. Choose your preferred loan repayment option.
When you have a federal loan that is already due, the payment will be based on the 10-year standard loan repayment scheme. For some people, the standard plan is barely reasonable, so they consider other repayment options that will be more practical for them. Furthermore, you may want to change the plan entirely when necessary. While extending the repayment period to up to 10 years may result to more affordable monthly fees, you are likely to pay more interest costs throughout the duration of your loan. Hence, you may choose another option, such as an income-based plan, that will cap the monthly payments at a percentage of your annual income. This repayment program will also forgive any debts that are remaining after the 25 years of loan payments. However, loan forgiveness may only be available when you have incurred at least 10 years of loan payments, as long as you are employed in a non-profit or public sector. It is also worth mentioning that private loans for students do not qualify for other deferments, forgiveness, forbearance programs, and payment plans available for federal loans. Nevertheless, private lenders may offer their clients a type of forbearance that comes with a fee. With this in mind, it is best to inquire from your lender, so you can learn more about your repayment options.
4. Reduce your principal.
If you decide to make a payment for your federal student loan, the amount covers any incurred late fees, interest costs, and the principal. When you have the means of paying more than the required monthly fee, you can massively reduce your principal while minimizing the interest costs of your loan. You may prepare a written request or notification to your lender, so you can make sure that the additional amount is applied immediately to your loan principal.Then, keep all paperwork for your records, and review them to ensure that the overpayment has reflected on your account.
5. Pay off all loans that have the highest amount.
In case you wish to pay off your loans before the due date, then you should consider settling the fees for the one with the most expensive interest rate. You should also begin paying off your private loans followed by your federal loans, since the former have higher rates and do not come with a flexible repayment scheme. With these practical tips, you can keep your debts in control while making sure that no loan remains unpaid during the designated repayment schedule.How about you all? What about student loans do you wish that you knew back when you were a student that you have learned "the hard way?" Did you take advantage of any of the tips mentioned above in this post during your student loan payoff? Share your experiences by commenting below!
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Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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