Griffin, Baylor win record-breaking Alamo Bowl (AP)

SAN ANTONIO ? If that really was Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III's final college game, what an incredible way to go out.

Just ask him.

"We went out in style!" Griffin shouted to his teammates.

It was amazing the Baylor quarterback had any breath left at all. Not after a record-shattering Alamo Bowl that might not only be remembered as the highest-scoring regulation bowl game in history, but also possibly as Griffin's last addition to his legacy in Waco.

The AP Player of the Year wasn't dazzling Thursday night, but he didn't need to be as No. 15 Baylor still pulled out an incredible 67-56 victory over Washington.

If it was RG3's final showcase before jumping to the NFL, it was a gripping goodbye to watch. One of the nation's most electrifying players was upstaged by an even more exciting nail-biter that shattered the previous record for points in regulation set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl.

Fans showered Griffin with chants of "One more year! One more year!" as he paraded the Alamo Bowl trophy around the field. He stopped at the front-row stands and showed off his prize to his mother, who has already been looking at her son's NFL draft prospects.

Griffin said he'll start looking, too, soon enough.

For now, there was still the craziness of this game to sort through.

"I want Baylor nation to enjoy this," Griffin said. "It's not about me. I've got about two weeks. I'll enjoy this the next day, and then the next day, and then I'll make it."

The previous bowl record for a regulation game was 102 points in the 2001 GMAC Bowl between Marshall and East Carolina. That game went to double overtime and ended with a combined 125 points, which still stands as the overall bowl record.

Baylor, which a bowl game for the first time since 1992, and Washington (7-6) also set a bowl record for total offense with 1,397 yards.

"We just knew we needed to score," Washington quarterback Keith Price said. "We needed to score fast, just to give our defense a boost."

Griffin had an unremarkable night, throwing just one touchdown pass and running for another score. But Terrance Ganaway starred ably in his place, rushing for 200 yards and five touchdowns. His last was a 43-yard run with 2:28 left to seal Baylor's first 10-win season since 1980.

Price outplayed his Heisman counterpart, going 23 for 27 with 438 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran for another three scores.

"I think we'll have a hard time this bowl season to see a quarterback play as well as he did," Washington coach Steve Sarkisian.

Griffin was 24 of 33 for 295 yards ? and his only touchdown throw came on the game's opening drive.

Blown out in four other games against ranked opponents this season, the Huskies finally made one interesting. Not that it started that way after Baylor ran up 245 yards of offense alone in the first quarter ? awful even by the standards of Washington's defense, which is among the nation's worst.

Price, a sophomore who threw a school-record 29 touchdown passes in his first year as the starter, began cutting into a 21-7 deficit with a 12-yard scoring strike to James Johnson. Seven minutes later, Washington tied it when Devin Aguilar somersaulted over the goal line after catching a 1-yard lob.

The overwhelming crowd of Baylor fans ? decked in green-and-gold Heisman shirts and armed with signs such as "Superman wears RG3 socks" ? stood in stunned silenced. That gave way to disbelieving gasps on the next series, when the typically sure-handed Griffin fumbled after getting popped by Andrew Hudson.

After that, it was practically a free-for-all of big plays.

A 56-yard touchdown dash by Chris Polk. An 80-yard touchdown catch by Washington's Jermaine Kearse two plays into the second half. An 89-yard scoring rumble Ganaway. Kearse again, catching and darting for 60 yards before getting dragged down, setting up Price's fourth touchdown toss the next play.

Back and forth, back and forth. One after another. In all, five plays covered 50 or more yards, three of them for scores.

"That was crazy," Baylor coach Art Briles said.

For an Alamo Bowl short on drama and light on matchups in recent years, it was a thrilling scoring spree that overshadowed the mere novelty of featuring the Heisman winner. And that in itself was a rarity for a bowl of this stature. Not since Ty Detmer took BYU to the Holiday Bowl in 1990, had a Heisman winner played in a bowl before New Year's Day.

Plenty came to see this one.

Anticipating a surge of Heisman gawkers, Alamo Bowl officials added 800 temporary seats and opened up others with obstructed views that required ticket-buyers to sign a form acknowledging the poor sightlines. Those seats sold, anyway, and the announced attendance of 65,256 was the fifth-largest in the bowl's history.

Others had better seats.

That includes Miami Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland, who kicked for Baylor in the late 1980s but was here on business scouting Griffin in case the fourth-year junior enters the draft. Griffin's parents, two sisters and fiancee watched from front-row seats.

Griffin acknowledged this week his parents are looking at his draft prospects but denies having any substantial talks with them.

Win or lose, it was an impressive finale for Washington after stumbling into the postseason losing four of its last six. Particularly against a ranked team after then-Top 25 opponents Nebraska, Stanford, Oregon and USC all crushed the Huskies by an average of 24 points.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111230/ap_on_sp_co_ga_su/fbc_t25_alamo_bowl

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UweMuegge: #SAP is hiring a #Chinese #Translator #Interpreter in #Beijing http://t.co/oElwOFdu #jobs #careers #xl8 #SAPjobs #gstile

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Tourist Finds Human Leg on Florida Beach

Police have few leads on who killed Ronni Chasen

(NEWSER) - The death of celebrity publicist Ronni Chasen is a real-life Hollywood murder mystery, and police are stumped. Nearly half of the Beverly Hills Police Department is working on the case, the Daily Beast reports, but they have little evidence, no motive, and no witnesses. Chasen was found fatally shot in her car?witnesses reported hearing five shots, the New York Times reports?which had crashed into a light post on a street full of million-dollar mansions. The passenger side window was shattered, but police aren't sure if that was the result of the accident, the gunshots, or some other force, the Los Angeles Times reports. Oddly, there was no other gunshot damage to the car, and no bullet casings were found. More?

Source: http://www.newser.com/story/136332/tourist-finds-human-leg-on-florida-beach.html

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Herb and lavender-stuffed standing pork loin rib roast

The kind of dish that makes you want to friend your local butcher.

I feel kinda cheesy. I admit it, I feel cool about using a butcher. I understand this is lame and that butchers have been around for ages, but, truthfully, in the recent year, we?ve really gotten to know our neighborhood butchers. Growing up in the ?burbs, meat was only bought pre-cut and pre-packaged. Yes, every once in awhile you?d see the grocery store?s butcher come out from behind those weird black, plastic doors with the small square window.

Skip to next paragraph Jonny and Amy Seponara-Sills

Amy and Jonny Seponara-Sills (Amy?s American, Jonny?s English) run the food blog We Are Never Full. Through recipes, anecdotes and podcasts, it chronicles their borderline obsession with food from meals made at home to travels studiously built around the search for authentic regional and national dishes from all over the world.

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After our first attempt at making homemade sausage, I realized how invaluable a butcher is. We live in a country where many people don?t know what kind of animal their meat comes from. Hold up an eggplant to a 10-year old and good chance they may not even know what the hell it is. It?s sad that the neighborhood butcher is starting to become a thing of the past. I live in Brooklyn, NY, one of the most multicultural places on earth and, in my 'hood alone we only have a few butchers left. I?m talking about the neighborhood butcher, not that gourmet food store up the street. You know the place ? the guy/gal behind the counter has butchers hands and fingers, you know his/her name and he/she knows your name, they don?t switch employees as quickly as McDonald?s and they can easily ask you if you want ?the regular." Word is that the decline in these gems is because young people aren?t interested in carrying on the family trade. Maybe with this economic downward spiral Americans will be more willing to work with their hands again and see the beauty how happy meat/poultry can make people.

Jonny and I have wanted to try and make a dish that we ate in Florence, Italy at the awesome Coco Lezzone since the last time we recreated their Pappa al Pomodoro. It was one of those meals from start to finish that will forever stay etched in my mind. Saveur did a cover story on their Herb-Stuffed Pork Loin in their April 2006 issue. We tweaked the recipe just a bit (lavender wasn?t a part of the original recipe) and, thanks to our awesome butcher, the dish turned out phenomenally.

Coco Lezzone's Herb and Lavendar-Stuffed Pork Loin Rib Roast
Serves 6

1 6-rib center-cut pork loin roast (about 4-5 lbs)
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and ground to a paste
2 tablespoons of chopped rosemary
3 tablespoons of chopped sage
2 tablespoons of thyme
1 tablespoon dried lavender
2 tablespoons + 1/4 (or so) cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat over to 475 degrees F.

In a small bowl, add together the garlic, all the herbs and lavender with a pinch of salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Use a fork to make sure it?s all incorporated together.

Push the handle of a long wooden spoon through the center of one end of the pork roast allowing it to poke through the other end?s center. Do this again, moving the handle back and forth and in a circular motion to allow the hole to get bigger. It will end up being about 3/4 of an inch wide.

Reserve about 3/4 of a tablespoon of the herb mixture to be use in a moment. Using your fingers, push some of the herb/garlic mixture into the center hole starting on one side and the finishing on the other. Put roast in a roasting pan.

Pour about 1/4 cup or so of olive oil over the roast. Rub it in a bit. Using the reserved herb mixture, rub all around the top and sides of the rib roast. Season generously with salt and pepper and roast the pork in the oven until golden brown ? about 25 to 30 minutes. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees and continue to roast for an hour longer or until the internal temperature is 160 degrees.

Allow pork to rest about 10 minutes and then carve into individual chops. Serve with the pan drippings (which are DEEE-LISH, by the way!).

Related post: Beef Carbonnade

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of food bloggers. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by The Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own and they are responsible for the content of their blogs and their recipes. All readers are free to make ingredient substitutions to satisfy their dietary preferences, including not using wine (or substituting cooking wine) when a recipe calls for it. To contact us about a blogger, click here.

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David Miles: Europe's Dance of Death

"It's a Ponzi scheme, it's a fraud, it's a sham," observed Jim Rogers this week when interviewed on the BBC World Service. One of the world's most successful investors was, however, not giving his verdict on the dastardly deeds which have confined Bernard Madoff to prison for 150 years, but rather the current strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB) and European leaders in trying to solve the euro zone sovereign debt crisis. For Rogers, their approach is based more on Peter Pan than sound monetary policy.

Ever since euro zone banks snapped up almost half a trillion euros in very low interest three-year loans offered by the ECB last week, the question was to what extent these banks would do the sovereigns a favour, as Nicholas Sarkozy hoped, by buying the bonds of euro zone governments. The answer, based on the results of Italy's latest bond auction on Thursday, is not encouraging. Investors are simply not prepared to lend money to Italy on a long-term basis without a cripplingly high premium, which at 6.98% is barely below the 7% level that forced Ireland, Greece and Portugal to request international bailouts.

If investors in government bonds seem a little nervous at the prospect of buying what until recently were seen as virtually risk-free financial assets, the reason for this reticence, as Jim Rogers observed, is not hard to discern. Money, as Harvard historian Niall Ferguson notes, is about trust and over the last two years the euro zone's political leaders have been extraordinarily successful at blowing every opportunity to solve the debt crisis and restore trust in the single currency project. When ordinary citizens can borrow money at less interest than the Italian state, then it's clear just how serious this crisis has become. For Anthony Crescenzi, executive vice president at Pimco, the largest bond fund in the world, European sovereign debt is "toxic" with about the same status that subprime mortgage assets have had ever since the financial crisis of 2008.

What got rather less attention than the ECB handing out money last week was the news that a large number of euro zone banks actually deposited ?452 billion ($589 billion) with the Frankfurt=based central bank at a paltry rate of interest, and for far less than they could earn making loans to other financial institutions. The reason? These banks are simply too nervous to lend at more profitable rates because they fear not being repaid. Across the euro zone there are zombie banks that have effectively failed and are only being kept alive with funds from the ECB. In this environment even healthy banks would sooner make next to nothing depositing their cash at the ECB, rather than risk lending to a competitor that might run into trouble as the Franco-Belgian bank Dexia did recently. Things wouldn't be so bad if the banks and bond investors had confidence that euro zone governments would step in to support their banking systems the way the UK did in 2008. But given the parlous state of government finances in most euro zone countries, underlined by the recent credit downgrade warnings, the capacity of sovereign states to ride to the rescue of their wounded banks is now heavily circumscribed.

If the markets were convinced that a credible government treasury like that of Germany was standing full square behind Europe's monetary union project, confidence could be restored, but every botched EU summit and failed rescue plan shows just how rickety the euro edifice has become. Resolving a systemic banking crisis requires that the politicians involved in finding a solution recognise that the markets do not move at the glacial pace of government. Investors in sovereign bonds will render judgements swiftly and ruthlessly if the measures taken are not seen as credible. Even as the ECB continues to inject money into the crippled banking system, the hope of its policymakers is that some of this liquidity will either find its way into the real economy or at least bring down the borrowing costs for the euro zone's governments. To paraphrase Jim Rogers, 'Welcome to Never Never Land'! Far more likely is that this suffocating embrace between indebted euro zone governments and their living dead banks will simply ensure that when the day of reckoning comes, when the bond markets finally say "No more money," the pain will be that much greater.

?

Follow David Miles on Twitter: www.twitter.com/globalpolitic

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-miles/europes-dance-of-death_b_1176762.html

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Google Chrome finally gets GPU acceleration features

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

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Venezuela's Chavez: did U.S. give Latin American leaders cancer? (Reuters)

CARACAS (Reuters) ? Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speculated on Wednesday that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina's Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease.

It was a typically controversial statement by Venezuela's socialist leader, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from his pelvis. But he stressed that he was not making any accusations, just thinking aloud.

"It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now ... I don't know. I'm just reflecting," he said in a televised speech to troops at a military base.

"But this is very, very, very strange ... it's a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities."

Chavez, Fernandez, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have all been diagnosed recently with cancer. All of them are leftists.

Doctors say Fernandez has a very good chance of recovery and will not need chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Her diagnosis was made public on Tuesday.

Chavez said other regional leaders should beware, including his close ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales.

"We'll have to take good care of Evo. Take care Evo!" he said.

The 57-year-old is Latin America's loudest critic of U.S. foreign policy along with Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro, and he frequently lashes out at what he calls the "Yankee Empire".

CASTRO'S WARNING

"Fidel always told me, 'Chavez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat ... a little needle and they inject you with I don't know what,'" he said.

In his comments on Wednesday, Chavez also slammed Washington and its European allies for criticizing Russia's recent parliamentary elections - and said they were planning the same thing for Venezuela's presidential election in October, when he will seek re-election.

"They are crying fraud and saying the elections need to be re-run ... They're trying to destabilize no less than Russia, a nuclear power. That's the madness of the Empire," Chavez said.

"I say this because here in Venezuela, the Imperial Yankee, the local bourgeoisie, and a good part of what they call the opposition parties here, are preparing a similar plan," he said.

"I call on the armed forces to be alert, on the Venezuelan people to be alert. Because we are not going to let the Imperial Yankee destabilize Venezuela again like they did in the past."

Details about Chavez's health remain a closely guarded secret, although he now appears to be recovering and is making longer and longer televised appearances.

Earlier this month he made his first official foreign trip after his surgery, to a regional summit in Uruguay.

Since his return he has often appeared sporting something of a younger, new look: a dark sports coat over an open-necked maroon shirt, and is hair is growing back after chemotherapy.

It is far cry from the green fatigues and red beret that he became famous for wearing for much of his 13 years in power.

(Editing by Kieran Murray)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/cancer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111228/hl_nm/us_venezuela_usa_cancer

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techdirt: How Firefly Fans Made One University's Campus Safe For Free Speech http://t.co/scmSeLaN

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New law requires safety features on golf carts

By DORIE TURNER and KATE BRUMBACK

Associated Press

Golf cart owners in Georgia will soon have stricter requirements to follow if they plan to drive their carts on roadways.

A new law taking effect Jan. 1 creates a separate classification of personal transportation vehicles for golf carts. It also sets standards for towns and counties wanting to create ordinances allowing drivers to use the carts on residential streets and multi-purpose pathways. The law requires that golf carts have braking systems, a reverse warning device, tail lamps, a horn and hip restraints.

The carts must weigh less than 1,375 pounds and not top speeds of 20 mph. The carts must also be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The bill was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal this year after his predecessor, Gov. Sonny Perdue, vetoed a similar measure last year. It had backing from one of Georgia's key industries ? golf cart manufacturing.

The Georgia-based International Light Transportation Vehicle Association, formerly known as the National Golf Cars Manufacturers Association ? which prefers the term "car" to "cart" ? estimates that 90 percent of the golf carts used in the U.S. are made in Georgia.

"Safety is what we're concerned about," said Fred L. Somers Jr., secretary of the association. "Unless you put in some safety equipment accessories, you're just asking for trouble."

And, he added, golf carts are a cheaper form of transportation for people who live in cities where they don't need to travel far to go to the grocery store.

Just 23 Georgia cities have golf cart ordinances, with some places like Peachtree City near Atlanta and Hahira in South Georgia creating golf cart lanes along local roadways, according to the Georgia Municipal Association. Spokeswoman Amy Henderson said the ordinances began popping up a couple of years ago when gas prices spiked, pushing people to cheaper alternatives for getting around town.

State lawmakers who sponsored the legislation did not return requests for comment.

Other laws going into effect next week include a measure allowing cities with 911 centers to require retailers selling prepaid cell phones to charge a fee to support the emergency systems. Towns can charge businesses up to 75 cents per sale, though the fee doesn't apply to sales of $5.00 or less.

Key parts of Georgia's new law targeting illegal immigration are also set to take effect. Starting Jan. 1, any employer with 500 or more employees will have to use a federal database called E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of all new hires.

The mandate is being phased in with smaller businesses that have 100 or more employees required to use the database starting July 1, and companies with more than 10 employees to start using E-verify by July 2013.

Employers with 10 or few employees are exempt from this requirement.

The law's sponsor and supporters said they wanted to deter illegal immigrants from coming to Georgia by making it tougher for them to work in the state. Already, any company with a federal contract is required to use E-Verify, and Georgia has required state and local government agencies and their contractors to use the database since 2007.

But the new law could cause trouble for many businesses, experts say.

"Many Georgia businesses are confused with respect to the provisions of the law that have to do with E-Verify," said Atlanta lawyer Teri A. Simmons, who advises businesses on immigration and employment matters. "Within most businesses, human resources professionals are already dealing with so much that it's hard to also fit in E-Verify training and administration."

When Georgia's governor signed the law in May, Georgia joined Arizona and several other states that have recently enacted tough laws taking aim at illegal immigration. Federal judges have since blocked all or parts of the various laws, and Arizona's is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court next year.

Also taking effect Jan. 1 is a provision that any agency administering public benefits must require each applicant to provide at least one "secure and verifiable document." A list of acceptable documents was provided by the attorney general's office over the summer.

The new law also instructs the state agriculture department to submit a report to the governor and the heads of each chamber of the state Legislature by Jan. 1. The department was tasked with examining the effect of immigration on the state's agriculture industry and providing suggestions to reform a federal guest worker program. The department also was supposed to evaluate the feasibility of a state guest worker program.

???

Follow Dorie Turner at http://www.twitter.com/dorieturner and Kate Brumback at http://www.twitter.com/katebrumback.

Source: http://www.ajc.com/news/new-law-requires-safety-1274902.html?cxtype=rss_news_81963

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Windows Phone 7 Crisis: 10 Ways Microsoft Can Fix It

Windows Phone 7 Crisis: 10 Ways Microsoft Can Fix It
( Page 1 of 2 )

Windows Phone 7 is in a state of crisis. At last tally, the operating system owned just 1.5 percent of the market, and its chief competitor, Android, had over half the worldwide market in its pocket. Meanwhile, handset vendors have been showing off Windows Phone 7-based products that have failed to match Apple?s iPhone. Through it all, Microsoft has waited patiently in the hopes that something would change.

But nothing has changed. The chances are the situation isn?t going to change unless the software giant starts making drastic moves to improve its position in the mobile space.

Improving its position in the mobile market might not be so easy. Windows Phone 7 is largely viewed as a joke by consumers, and even enterprise users have been loath to adopt the platform. It?s as if Microsoft has put its operating system into a corner, and it has done nothing to get it out.

Luckily for Microsoft, however, 2012 presents a fresh start for the company to try something new and put its platform into a better position to be successful. Read on to find out what Microsoft should do to address its Windows Phone 7 crisis.

1. Create a Nexus-like strategy

Google made the intelligent move to brand high-quality Android-based smartphones ?Nexus.? Although the company isn?t developing its own smartphones, Google is playing a role in the Nexus product development. That?s important. The Google brand is a big name, and it carries with it respect from consumers and enterprise users. Maybe Microsoft should develop its own ?Nexus? alternative with hardware vendors.

2. Start playing nice with carriers

Microsoft hasn?t been so nice to carriers over the last year. The company has pushed its software on device makers, told them how the hardware should operate and left carriers with all the risk of marketing those products. At what point will Microsoft realize that the sooner it acts to seriously help carriers the sooner it will see sales rise?

3. Give developers what they want

Developers are an integral piece of the puzzle for Windows Phone 7. If Microsoft can find a way to attract developers from Android to Windows Phone 7, the company can go a long way in improving the platform?s chances of success. Coaxing developers will mean offering better profit-sharing plans. Improving the Windows Phone 7 app ecosystem might even require Microsoft to acquire some developers. Microsoft has a huge amount of cash on-hand. It?s about time it starts using it to improve its position in apps.

4. Buy a handset maker

Aside from apps, Microsoft should also use its cash to start the process of acquiring a handset maker. Whether it?s RIM, Nokia, or any other company that might come along, Microsoft must drop a few billion dollars to buy a big name handset maker. It might ostracize other vendors, but if Google can do it with Motorola Mobility, why can?t Microsoft follow suit?

Source: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Windows-Phone-7-Crisis-10-Ways-Microsoft-Can-Fix-It-582266/?kc=rss

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Pone, Chris Fishbeatz, Rick hertz, Shawn Whitlow - NicPro, K-9 - Community Service

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The official mixtape from an up and coming artist. Real life and new sounds. Enjoy this and enjoy the Community Service

DJ: Pone, Chris Fishbeatz, Rick hertz, Shawn Whitlow

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DailyIdeafeed: Africa's Rapidly Growing Middle Class http://t.co/OBtaiqRa via @bigthink

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'Anonymous' hackers target US security think tank

LONDON?? The loose-knit hacking movement "Anonymous" claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.

Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential client list, which includes entities ranging from Apple to the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

"Not so private and secret anymore?" the group taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Anonymous said the client list it posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them ? an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

Lt. Col. John Dorrian, public affairs officer for the Air Force, said that "for obvious reasons" the Air Force doesn't discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats or responses to them.

"The Air Force will continue to monitor the situation and, as always, take appropriate action as necessary to protect Air Force networks and information," he said in an email.

Miami Police Department spokesman Sgt. Freddie Cruz Jr. said that he could not confirm that the agency was a client of Stratfor, and he said he had not received any information about a security breach involving the police department.

It soon became clear that proprietary information about the companies and government agencies that subscribe to Stratfor's newsletters did not appear to be at any significant risk, and that the main threat was posed to individual employees.

Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor's client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with the names, addresses and account details.

"Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the "A"s," read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

It also linked to images online that it suggested were receipts for charitable donations made by the group manipulating the credit card data it stole.

"Thank you! Defense Intelligence Agency," read the text above one image that appeared to show a transaction summary indicating that an agency employee's information was used to donate $250 to a non-profit.

One receipt ? to the American Red Cross ? had Allen Barr's name on it.

Barr, of Austin, Texas, recently retired from the Texas Department of Banking and said he discovered last Friday that a total of $700 had been spent from his account. Barr, who has spent more than a decade dealing with cybercrime at banks, said five transactions were made in total.

"It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children. So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn't sure whether I was just donating," said Barr, who wasn't aware until a reporter with the AP called that his information had been compromised when Stratfor's computers were hacked.

"It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account."

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," said the email, passed on to The Associated Press by subscribers. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

The email, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman, said the company is "working closely with law enforcement to identify who is behind the breach."

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," Friedman wrote.

Repeated calls to Stratfor went unanswered Sunday and an answering machine thanked callers for contacting the "No. 1 source for global intelligence." Stratfor's website was down, with a banner saying "site is currently undergoing maintenance."

Wishing everyone a "Merry LulzXMas" ? a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security ? Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.

The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.

"They took money I did not have," he told the AP in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. "I think 'Why me?' I am not rich."

One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists ? "corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox" news ? had been hacked and used to "steal a million dollars" and make donations.

It was impossible to verify where credit card details were used. Fox News was not on the excerpted list of Stratfor members posted online, but other media organizations including MSNBC and Al-Jazeera English appeared in the file.

Anonymous warned it has "enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of LulzXmas through the entire next week."

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as others in the music industry and the Church of Scientology.

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

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45787767/ns/technology_and_science-security/

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Japan quake and tsunami propel charity focused on orphan care

SENDAI, Japan _ Japan's natural disaster in March was only hours old when the Tokyo-based charity got on the line to the old man.

He'd just arrived in Uganda, an exhausting trip for a 77-year-old whose knees are so weak he sometimes needs a wheelchair to get around.

"Come back," the charity implored its founder. "We need you."

Two days later, Yoshiomi Tamai not only returned to Japan, but he headed straight for this provincial city 190 miles north of Tokyo. The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami was rising into the thousands. Parents along the nation's northeast coast had been swept away by the surging water, leaving behind confused and vulnerable orphans.

After almost 45 years of aiding grieving children, the grandfatherly figure excels at responding to a crisis. Since he began helping children left parentless from Japanese traffic fatalities in 1967, his Ashinaga charity has supported more than 80,000 children worldwide who have lost one or both parents.

These include young ones left behind after New York's 2001 terrorist attack; Hurricane Katrina; earthquakes in Iran, Turkey and Kobe, Japan; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and famine and AIDS in Africa.

Ashinaga's strength lies in its speed. While Japanese government officials debated a belabored response that would take weeks to deliver, the charity was in motion within hours, providing food, clothing and emotional aid.

The group later published a study showing the depth of the social damage, including the fact that, because they had remained in the disaster area, barely a third of guardians for tsunami orphans had jobs to support their young charges. The government is using the study in its own long-term assessment of how to help tsunami orphans.

In Japan, many orphans are often cast into a life of hardship, raised by distant relatives who might as well be strangers. Tamai knows that such trauma scars the survivors. Like the teenage boy who watched his father drown and developed an extreme fear of the water. Or the grade-school girl forced to leave her trapped and mortally injured mother behind to save her own life.

"Even now I can't stop crying when I remember," she later wrote to workers at Ashinaga. "At the end, when I was leaving, I said to my mother 'Thank you' and 'I love you' again and again. Then I swam away."

Ashinaga's staff includes nearly two dozen older orphans who work as counselors and case workers. Tamai's theory: Orphans can best grasp the plight of other orphans.

"We've all received his help and have returned to pay it forward," said Yukichi Okazaki, the group's general director.

The name of Tamai's charity, Ashinaga, is the Japanese translation of "Daddy-Long-Legs," the title of the 1912 American novel by Jean Webster in which an orphaned girl is helped by a tall, mysterious stranger she sees only once.

True to the novel's spirit, the group relies on anonymous benefactors. Although it does not help place parentless children in homes, it assists with both their immediate and long-term needs.

Ashinaga runs short-term counseling centers known as Rainbow Houses, which feature a rubber-walled "volcano room," where orphans can hit punching bags to vent frustrations, and a "quiet room" to discuss their fears. It also operates an annual summer camp where orphans from around the world learn that being parentless is a problem without national borders.

For longer-term help, the group each year offers $22 million in no-interest loans for scholarships. More than 21,000 orphans have received vocational school and college degrees with Ashinaga's assistance.

Tamai, who lost his wife, Yumi, to cancer in 1989 and has no children, has spent most of his life listening to orphans. In 1966, soon after the death of his mother in a car crash, Tamai, then 32, took it upon himself to launch a crusade to change Japanese laws on compensating children whose parents had died in traffic accidents.

One of the first children who touched Tamai deeply was a 10-year-old boy who wrote a poem to his dead father. Sponsored by Tamai, the child recited the poem on live TV:

Please hold me one more time,

Play with me once more, my father,

Tell me, please, father, why you left us behind.

The boy then broke into tears, unable to go on. Tamai said. "And the rest of us, everyone in the studio that day, cried too."

The TV program was instrumental in prodding the government to provide greater assistance for young orphans. But Tamai soon saw a need beyond Japan, and he started expanding his work to children worldwide.

The idea for the Rainbow House centers came after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Ashinaga encouraged orphans from that disaster to use art to describe their loss. One child painted what Tamai calls a black rainbow of pain, a work that inspired Tamai to open healing centers in Kobe, Tokyo and Uganda.

"We've tried to take that black rainbow and make it brighter," Tamai said.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

But the disaster in March has been the group's biggest challenge.

Tamai knew that a streamlined response was needed. Before leaving Uganda, he'd seen televised images of bereft children left without homes or even clothes.

Ashinaga quickly identified 1,800 orphans for cash assistance of $6,500 to $12,500 each, not a loan for some faraway college education, but immediate monetary help that would not have to be repaid.

After vetting applications, the group gives the money to the children's caretakers, who supervise the spending of the donation.

"Children know what they want right now, not tomorrow," Tamai said. "They've had their lives erased, so we're trying to give them an immediate lift to get some of it back."

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

Now Tamai wants to build a permanent Rainbow House center in Sendai. This summer, Tamai led a group of orphans to tell their stories as a way to attract donations for the project. The group visited New York, Paris and China, and has plans to travel to Los Angeles and other cities early next year to help raise $20 million still needed for construction.

These days, in the Sendai office that Ashinaga opened a day after the March disaster, the telephone still rings constantly.

One recent caller, a childless single woman in her 40s who had taken custody of a 12-year-old nephew, needed parenting advice: The boy, orphaned in the tsunami, still cried at night. What should she do?

Then there was the mother of the boy who had witnessed his father's drowning. The woman called to say her 17-year-old had overcome his fear of water and used his assistance money to train to become an emergency response diver; he wants to shield others from the fate of watching a parent die.

The old man smiles when he hears such stories.

___

(c)2011 the Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

_____

PHOTO (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): JAPAN-ORPHANS

_____

Topics: t000037113,t000002533,t000139823

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Source: http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2011/dec/25/japan-quake-and-tsunami-propel-charity-focused-on/

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Golf: Paul Casey places Ryder Cup return high on list of targets

Published on Saturday 24 December 2011 04:28

FRUSTRATED for much of this year by a lingering foot injury, Paul Casey has set his sights on a healthy 2012 campaign, another victory on the US PGA Tour and a long coveted return to the European Ryder Cup team.

Though the Englishman won two tournaments in 2011, his form and consistency were adversely affected by a sore right toe, which was never accurately diagnosed until months later.

?It?s been incredibly frustrating,? Casey said. ?The trouble with the injury was that I picked it up in late May, battled through it and didn?t get a full diagnosis until August. By then, it was too late to take a medical [exemption] so I tried to play through it and got into a lot of bad habits.?

An 11-times winner on the European Tour, whose only PGA Tour victory came at the 2009 Houston Open, Casey played with a plate in his right shoe and his toes taped up over the last six months.

?A joint in my foot wasn?t allowing my foot to move correctly and that put pressure on my toe,? the world number 21 said. ?What?s interesting is that if I swing the club correctly and the way I used to swing it, the toe is fine. But that led to erratic golf. My weight got back on the heels and the club started to go up rather than around. Very simply, it was too steep.?

Casey has worked hard to shift his weight back on to his toes, and on to the balls of the feet.

?That?s where it should be,? he said. ?I need to do a better job of turning because I ended up hitting the ball with the hands and the arms this year a lot. I just need to put those things right.?

Of his 2011 campaign, Casey added: ?I?ve managed to win twice around the world, but not on the PGA Tour, and I?ve sort of clung on to a world ranking. I am still ranked twenty-something and that?s with playing very average golf for me. Touch wood, I can stay healthy and 2012 can be a great season.?

An inveterate goal setter whose most recent victory came at the Korean tour?s Shinhan Donghae Open in October, Casey has established clear-cut targets for next year.

?My very lofty goals I haven?t yet achieved so they?re going to be the same in 2012, and those will be the majors and World Golf [Championships] events,? he said. ?But I have other goals ... winning tournaments, winning a certain number of world ranking points, making the Ryder Cup team, being back in the winner?s circle on the PGA Tour.?

Casey is especially motivated to represent Europe at the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah, Illinois, having failed to qualify for the 2010 team that regained the trophy at Celtic Manor in Wales.

?I am really hungry to get back on that team,? said the 34-year-old. ?With the depth of talent in Europe, it?s probably going to be the most difficult team to make since I?ve been on tour.?

Source: http://www.scotsman.com/golf_paul_casey_places_ryder_cup_return_high_on_list_of_targets_1_2023877

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Did Our Founding Fathers Believe in Free Markets? (The Motley Fool)

It used to be that you only encountered people in colonial-era dress at historical reenactments. These days, though, you're likely to see tri-cornered hats, evoking the nation's Founding Fathers, at political rallies for tea-party favorites such as Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann. These adherents of the Tea Party generally pursue an "anti-tax, limited government" agenda as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently put it.

Paradoxically, some supporters of Occupy Wall Street blithely assure the media that our country's founders never intended the present-day disparity of incomes between rich and poor, or the legal recognition of corporations as people; increased taxation of the very rich and increased regulation of Wall Street and business, some argue, must be introduced to correct these problems.

While it may be politically convenient to invoke our nation's founders to support our arguments today, how much do any of us really understand about the Founding Fathers' thoughts on capitalism, free markets and the economy? For most Americans, however politically engaged, the answer may be: Not a great deal, and not in any detail.

Plundering the past to make debate points?
Putting it matter-of-factly, Alan Pell Crawford, author of Twilight at Monticello: The Final Days of Thomas Jefferson says, "Rightwing politicians and their publicists, like their liberal counterparts, are interested in the past only as repository of pseudo-facts. They plunder the past to make debating points, most of which are unsupportable."

Crawford cites the Founders' views on government regulation as an example. "The evidence seems to suggest that Jefferson and Washington and the men of their time and place had no problem with government regulation of markets," he says.

"County courts in Virginia exercised what conservatives today would consider outrageous power over economic relationships and transactions. They could set the prices innkeepers could charge their customers -- that sort of thing. We might now recognize such powers as unwise or misguided, but Jefferson and Washington seem to have taken it for granted," he adds.

"This isn't to suggest today's conservatives are incorrect in their economics," Crawford concludes, "only that they are incorrect to attribute their views to people who could not possibly have shared them."

The market as innocent until proven guilty
Dr. Hugh Rockoff, a professor of economics at Rutgers University and co-author of History of the American Economy, offers a complementary view: "Madison and Hamilton envisioned a society in which the bulk of economic activity would be carried out in private markets by private individuals trying to get the best returns they could on their labor and capital."

"I think the founders saw this sort of economy both as efficient -- as the best way of generating a large flow of goods and services -- and as a way of protecting other personal liberties from despots," says Rockoff.

While the Founders' ideas largely came from Scottish Enlightenment-era economic thinker Adam Smith, as Rockoff explains, Smith is himself often misunderstood. "Nowadays we tend to think of Smith as a rigid free-market ideologue," he says. "But as anyone who has actually read Smith from cover to cover can tell you, Smith was anything but."

As Rockoff puts it, "Smith believed that the presumption should be that we leave people free to go about their private business as they see fit until experience has shown us that their liberties have to be constrained for the common good. It's a court of law: the market is innocent until proven guilty."

An enlightened, experience-based approach
No matter the ongoing political debate, the Founders' approach to the economy sets a good example for present-day Americans, argues Rockoff.

"We need to think through our policy toward each sector of the economy in the light of experience," he says. "We can't know what the founders would say about current problems, but we can adopt their 'enlightened,' experienced-based approach to trying to solve them."

What is called for, it seems, is less arguing and further study.

For a highly readable account of our nation's most recent financial crisis, check out Motley Fool columnist Morgan Housel's 99-cent ebook, Everyone Believes It; Most Will Be Wrong: Motley Thoughts on Investing and the Economy,available here.

The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/fool/20111222/bs_fool_fool/rx170607

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Win the 10 best science books of 2011

Tiffany O'Callaghan, CultureLab editor

(Image: Adam Goff for New Scientist)

HERE at New Scientist we aim to keep you up to date with the wonderful world of science, from cosmology and quantum physics to evolution and the brain. By necessity we have to be brief: so much to report, so little time.

Now and then it is a pleasure to delve deeper. That is one reason why our CultureLab section exists - to keep track of popular science books and bring the very best to your attention. For bibliophiles, 2011 has been a bumper year, and we'd like to give you an opportunity to fill your shelves with 10 of the best.

We have three sets of the year's best science books to give away, including a signed copy of The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, which explores whether we are truly becoming less violent as a species, and copies of books by Mark Changizi, Richard Dawkins, David Deutsch and Robert Trivers.

Also in the collection is Incognito by David Eagleman, in which he sets out to challenge any "unexamined sense of "I" that enables most of us to believe we are in charge of our senses, our thoughts and feelings" and Richard Fortey's Survivors, which proves a riveting "meander into and out of deep time".

Additional eye-opening works include a tour through multiverses offered up by Brian Greene, Daniel Kahneman's head-scratching insights into our own fallible sense of intuition, and Lisa Randall's insider's guide to modern particle physics.

The competition is open to subscribers and registered users. See the full terms and conditions and go to our competition page for your chance to win a set of all 10 books.

Follow @CultureLabNS on Twitter

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The biggest Web outages of 2011

Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty Images

Emma Roberts attends the Missoni for Target Collection launch Sept. 7 in New York City. Online demand was so heavy for the new line that it crashed the site.

By Suzanne Choney

Bank of America's website outage, along with those of Netflix, Target and Reddit, were among the biggest Web fails this year, but there's good news: "Though we witnessed a number of minor?website outages and performance declines in 2011, we're encouraged to report that there were fewer significant website outages this year than in 2010."

That's the word from SmartBear Software, which put together the list. Last year's fails ? you may well remember these like they were yesterday ? included Facebook, Twitter, MasterCard, Visa, JCPenney and Tumblr.

As for this year's list, the "winners" are:

Netflix, under fire for its price increases, "had a number of short website interruptions this year, which collectively resulted in prolonged service disruption to millions of Netflix subscribers." The first outage was March 22; "On this day, we tested Netflix's home page 20 times between 6:22 p.m. ET and 7:59 p.m. ET. Of those samples, only two successfully loaded the home page, revealing that?the site was unusable for most users during that time frame," says SmartBear.

Another outage lasted several hours June 19, and the site "also experienced performance issues" July 20 and Aug. 22. (We recall Netflix having some log-in issues with its site in late November, as well.)

Reddit, Foursquare, Hootsuite, "et al":
In April, "one of the greatest concerns of cloud patrons was confirmed when Amazon Web Services went down, taking Reddit, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Quora, and a number of other social websites offline with it." AWS serves as the Web hosting and storage center for the sites, and what happened " exemplified the need for cloud customers to do their due diligence and maintain a sense of ownership and responsibility" over their "uptime," says SmartBear.

Target
The retail giant's website "came crashing down" Sept. 13 with an "unprecedented number of shoppers" trying to order items from the new Missoni for Target line. "The trouble continued throughout the day with shoppers later greeted, at least, by a customized error page," says SmartBear. "The incident led to a firestorm of criticism and disappointment from shoppers."

Bank of America
The bank was "no stranger to website trouble this year, as the company experienced several website outages that make this year's list. On Jan. 14,?bankofamerica.com was only 41 percent available and delivered response times in excess of 90 seconds.

"A month and a half later, the site experienced another brief, though noteworthy, outage," says SmartBear. "On March 1, Bank of America delivered?83.09 percent availability and response times over 15 seconds to users."

October brought the worst woes for the site, though, with "one of the most extended periods of performance trouble we've witnessed in recent times." Because of that outage, SmartBear ranks it as the biggest Web outage of the year.?

"For six consecutive days, the site delivered a series of slowdowns and outages, which the bank attributed to a combination of technical issues and higher than anticipated website traffic. The issues began just one day after BofA announced plans to charge a $5 monthly debit card fee," which it rescinded Nov. 1. Coincidence? Perhaps.

The list from SmartBear, which provides Web load-testing and monitoring tools, does not include website fails caused by hackers, such as Anonymous. Its first widely known denial-of-service attack was launched last December against MasterCard,?Visa, PayPal and other financial institutions which disrupted donations to WikiLeaks.

Related stories:

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/20/9584022-the-biggest-web-outages-of-2011

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