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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Polish Politicians Don Anonymous Masks To Protest EU Counterfeiting Agreement [Image Cache]
What a Drag
Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), the diminutive protagonist of Rodrigo Garcia?s film of the same name, works as a waiter in a posh hotel in late 19th-century Dublin. He speaks little and, when he does, reveals still less. Outside of a cordial master/servant relationship with Dr. Holloran (Brendan Gleeson), a hard-drinking physician in residence at the hotel, the passive, blank-faced Nobbs seems to have no friendships at all. As he prepares for bed one night in his tiny, drab bedchamber, we learn the truth about this cipher of a man: Albert is in fact a woman who?s been passing as male since her hardscrabble teenage years in order to find work and avoid harassment at the hands of men.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=f22faeb4e7d9b5ea76b4af5bb1064cdc
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Student charged in Utah school bomb plot (AP)
ROY, Utah ? The two teens had a detailed plot, blueprints of the school and security systems, but no explosives. They had hours of flight simulator training on a home computer and a plan to flee the country, but no plane.
Still, the police chief in this small Utah town said, the plot was real.
"It wasn't like they were hanging out playing video games," Roy Police Chief Gregory Whinham said Friday. "They put a lot of effort into it."
Dallin Morgan, 18, and a 16-year-old friend were arrested Wednesday at Roy High School, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, after a fellow student reported that she received ominous text messages from one of the suspects.
"If I tell you one day not to go to school, make damn sure you and your brother are not there," one message read, according to court records. "We ain't gonna crash it, we're just gonna kill and fly our way to a country that won't send us back to the U.S.," read another message.
While police don't have a motive, one text message noted they sought "revenge on the world."
The suspects say they were inspired by the deadly 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., and the younger suspect even visited the school last month to interview the principal about the shootings and security measures.
However, one suspect told authorities it was offensive to be compared to the Columbine shooters because "those killers only completed 1 percent of their plan," according to a probable cause statement.
The teens had so studied their own school's security system that they knew how to avoid being seen on the facility's surveillance cameras, authorities said.
Whinham said the "very smart kids" had spent at least hundreds of dollars on flight simulator programs, books and manuals, studying them in anticipation of carrying out their plan to bomb an assembly at the 1,500-student high school.
While authorities said the suspects believed they could pull it off, experts said, it would have been a long shot.
Royal Eccles, manager at the Ogden-Hinckley Airport, about a mile from the school, said it would have been nearly impossible for the students to steal a plane or get the knowledge to fly one using flight simulator programs.
"It's highly improbable," Eccles said. "That's how naive these kids are."
Whinham said authorities searched two homes and two cars and found no explosives, but added that police continue to search other locations. The chief said it appeared that "a key component of their plan was not developed."
"I wouldn't want to say that they don't have it or that they weren't ready for it," he said. "I'm just saying that we haven't found anything that says they were ready for it yet."
Whinham said it appeared the suspects, who have no criminal history, also had prepared alternate attack plans, but he declined to elaborate. He also declined to say whether any firearms were found during their searches.
"Most houses have firearms in them," he said. "This is the state of Utah."
While authorities have said they have not found any explosives, they charged Morgan on Friday with possession of a weapon of mass destruction.
The basis for the charge wasn't immediately clear, though one of the elements of that offense is conspiracy to use a weapon, not necessarily possessing one. Prosecutors say they are considering additional charges.
Morgan has been released on bond, pending a court hearing Wednesday. The 16-year-old, whom The Associated Press isn't naming because he's a minor, remained held pending further court hearings.
Whinham said he knew both suspects personally, given the small size of the suburban Utah town of roughly 36,000 people. He said he had met with both of the suspects' parents and they were "devastated."
The 16-year-old suspect's father declined comment Friday, and no one answered the door at Morgan's home.
The plot "was months in planning," said Whinham, who also noted Morgan told investigators the 16-year-old had previously made a pipe bomb using gun powder and rocket fuel.
In Colorado, Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis confirmed Friday he met with the 16-year-old suspect on Dec. 12 after the teenager told him he was doing a story for his school newspaper on the shootings.
DeAngelis said he frequently gets requests from students doing research on the shootings, and the request from this one wasn't unusual.
"He asked the same questions I get from many callers and visitors asking about the shooting," DeAngelis said. He said the student wanted details about the shooting, the aftermath and the steps taken since then to protect the school.
Police said the student told them Roy school officials would not allow him to write the story.
DeAngelis said he was shocked when he got a call from Utah police on Wednesday asking if he had met with the youth. He said the interview raised no red flags but that he would do things differently with future requests.
"This was definitely a wake-up call. This is the first time this has happened," DeAngelis said.
Police credit the suspects' schoolmate with helping foil their plan, though Whinham said the school didn't have any assemblies set, and the suspects revealed no specific dates to pull off the attack.
Sophomore Bailey Gerhardt told The Salt Lake Tribune she received alarming text messages from one of the suspects and alerted school administrators.
"I get the feeling you know what I'm planning," read one of the messages, according to court records. "Explosives, airport, airplane."
___
Associated Press writer Steven K. Paulson in Denver contributed to this report.
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Japan's Tepco set for $13 billion bailout: sources (Reuters)
TOKYO (Reuters) ? The owner of Japan's stricken nuclear reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co, will agree to be taken over by the government in a near-$13 billion bailout, sources said on Thursday, even as the country debates the future of nuclear power.
The injection of 1 trillion yen ($12.8 billion) in public funds would effectively nationalize Tepco (9501.T), supplier of power to almost 45 million people including Tokyo residents, in one of the world's biggest bailouts outside the banking sector.
Tepco has been dragging its feet over a proposal for the state-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund to take at least a two-thirds stake in the company, which has been swamped by liabilities associated with the earthquake and tsunami which ruined its Fukushima nuclear power plant in March.
"If the government has a two-thirds stake, they have a right to control management, so naturally, Tepco doesn't like that," said one source familiar with the matter.
Tepco's future as an independent firm has been in doubt since the disaster, which triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years and left the utility with huge compensation payments, cleanup costs and rising fuel bills as public concerns over safety make it hard to restart other off-line reactors.
Its plight has become emblematic of problems facing Japan's entire nuclear power industry, much of which has been idled since the disaster while authorities work to regain some public trust in an industry that had provided a third of Japan's power.
Tepco's fate is also being watched for clues as to whether Japan will deregulate its system of monopolistic regional utilities that both generate and distribute electricity.
Tepco's share price soared on the news, jumping 8 percent in heavy trade to 219 yen.
Tepco, which together with the fund is drafting a business reconstruction plan to be unveiled in March, is also seeking about 1 trillion yen in additional bank loans, sources said.
Under the plan, the utility is expected to swing to profit in fiscal 2014 and resume issuing bonds two years later, the Nikkei business newspaper reported.
The plan calls for government control to end in six or seven years, the Nikkei added, though other reports have said it might last about a decade.
According to the plan, Tepco is expected to post a parent-only net loss of about 580 billion yen in the year ending March 31 and next fiscal year, followed by a net profit of 37.7 billion yen in fiscal 2013, largely on the sale of real estate, the Nikkei said. Tepco is also expected to generate a pretax profit of 159.1 billion yen in fiscal 2014, it added.
The projection for improved earnings is based on the assumption Tepco will increase household electricity rates by 10 percent in October and reduce fuel costs by restarting reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in fiscal 2013 -- moves the utility will find difficult to execute, the daily said.
Tepco shareholders will need to approve an increase in its authorized share capital at an annual meeting in June before the nationalization plan could go ahead.
(Reporting by Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore, Osamu Tsukimori and Nobuhiro Kubo in Tokyo; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Mark Bendeich)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120126/bs_nm/us_tepco
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Boeing 2012 earnings to be hit by pension expense (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? Boeing Co (BA.N) said on Wednesday that a pension expense larger than Wall Street had anticipated would weigh on its 2012 earnings, but it handed investors good news with expectations for increased commercial aircraft deliveries this year.
The world's largest aerospace and defense company said the expense would amount to 83 cents per share, and it forecast earnings, including the expense, of $4.05 to $4.25 per share on revenue of $78 billion to $80 billion.
Analysts, on average, had expected 2012 earnings of $4.96 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Boeing gave the outlook as part of its fourth-quarter earnings report, which showed higher-than-expected profit on the strength of its commercial airplane deliveries.
"People had been expecting the pension expense was going to go up, but the amount of the increase was more than I was looking for," said Kenneth Herbert, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "I was looking for something in the range of 50 cents."
Shares of Boeing, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, were up 0.47 percent at $75.72, after an earlier decline that took its shares to $72.85.
"It's too early for me to say if it's another incremental expense in 2013," Herbert said.
Boeing said the pension expense was partly due to lower interest rates on its pension fund investments over the last two years.
"SOLID OPERATING QUARTER"
Boeing reported fourth-quarter net profit of $1.4 billion, or $1.84 per share, compared with $1.2 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding a favorable tax settlement of 52 cents per share, the company earned $1.31 per share, beating an average Wall Street forecast of $1.01, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company, which competes with Airbus (EAD.PA) for orders, said revenue had risen to $19.6 billion compared with $16.6 billion.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard said in a research note that Boeing had a "solid operating quarter" driven by good margins on its commercial and defense sides.
Revenue for its commercial planes division increased by 31 percent to $10.7 billion. Boeing delivered 477 planes last year, up from 462 in 2010. The company gets paid for airplanes at delivery.
Boeing predicted that it would deliver 585 to 600 commercial airplanes in 2012, more than the 570 Airbus has said it expects to deliver this year. Boeing said that its forecast included an expected 70 to 85 deliveries, half of which will be 787 aircraft and the rest 747-8s.
Revenue for its defense, space and security business rose 4 percent to $8.5 billion.
The company, which boasted an order backlog worth $356 billion, splits its operations between commercial airplanes and defense programs. The defense side of Boeing's business is grappling with government spending constraints, but Boeing said it expects greater spending in international markets.
"We enter 2012 with renewed momentum," Chief Executive Jim McNerney said in a statement. "Our priorities for the year are to continue with disciplined increases in production rates for our commercial airplane customers," he said.
LOFTY GOALS
The company lost the 2011 commercial airplane order race to Airbus. Boeing orders, adjusted for cancellations, totaled 805, compared with 1,419 for Airbus.
Boeing has pledged to strike back in 2012 with sales of its revamped narrowbody, the 737 MAX, which features a new, fuel-efficient engine. The plane is due to enter service in 2017.
Boeing won its first firm orders for the MAX in December as part of a $19 billion deal with Southwest Airlines (LUV.N). The company said it had more than 1,000 orders and commitments for the MAX at the end of 2011, and said that could reach 1,500 by the end of 2012.
The MAX competes with the Airbus A320neo, which also has a new engine. Airbus overtook Boeing in the global passenger jet market in 2003.
Boeing is working to increase production rates on its commercial airplane programs, including the 787 Dreamliner, its new, long-delayed, carbon-composite aircraft. The first delivery of the Dreamliner was made in September after three years of delays.
The company wants to produce 10 787s per month by the end of 2013.
Aviation industry experts have said the target is too ambitious , but Boeing is standing by it.
"I think as each week passes, each month passes, my confidence does grow," McNerney told analysts on a conference call. "These ramp-ups are always difficult and it has our attention."
(Reporting By Kyle Peterson; editing by John Wallace.)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/bs_nm/us_boeing
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Apple iPhone now more popular than all Android smartphones in US combined: report (Digital Trends)
In the US, Apple?s iPhone has surpassed the smartphone market share of all Android devices combined, according to new numbers out from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, as reported by Reuters. But the difference is almost invisible: Apple now owns 44.9 percent of the market; handsets running Google?s Android operating system now own just 44.8 percent.
Though the difference in popularity may be small, Apple?s growth is anything but. By Kantar?s count, Apple?s market share has doubled over the past year alone, while Android devices have fallen about 5 percent, from a high of 50 percent. Windows Phone devices now account for less than 2 percent, on average, across nine key world markets.
A recent study from Nielsen corroborates Kantar?s numbers. According to Nielsen, 44.5 percent of customers who purchased a smartphone during the last three months of 2012 bought an iPhone, and 57 percent of those buyers got the iPhone 4S, Apple?s newest handset. At that time, Android still remained the No. 1 smartphone category, with 46.9 percent of buyers going for a Google-powered device. ?
News of Apple?s new-found dominance in the US smartphone game follows the company?s latest quarterly earnings report, which showed record iPhone and iPad sales, and a record revenue of $46.3 billion. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones during the quarter (which spanned the final three months of 2011), a 128 percent increase over the same period in 2010. And iPad sales jumped 111 percent year-over-year, to 15.43 million.
While Apple?s iPhone sales are staggering, it?s more surprising that the entire Android market put together is failing to beat back a single line of handsets ? even if they are Apple handsets. We would be surprised in Android doesn?t surge back into first place over the coming months, as more and more customers go for far faster 4G LTE-enabled devices, which the iPhone 4S is not.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
More from Digital Trends
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Rumor: Apple working on smaller, more affordable iPhones
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Letter from Ohio: Insurance-scoring ban wouldn't serve consumers ...
Except for public health and some reasonable safety measures, when the government tells an industry how to run its core operations, the impact is not generally favorable to consumers. It?s true in manufacturing, transportation, utilities and also in financial services. In the insurance business, beating up or overregulating insurance companies or agents as a group may satisfy political needs, but it almost never has a positive impact on insurance customers.? As a general proposition, if you find a state with low premiums, it is also a state where the insurance companies are most anxious to compete for the business, and regulation of the industry is reasonable and predictable.
Insurance is unlike almost every other kind of business for one reason: the cost is never known when the price of the policy is calculated. Since the price is essentially a guess, companies over the years have worked on developing the most sophisticated guesses possible. If they guess low, they go out of business. If they guess high they may lose business to other companies over the long-run. The more basic the tools (i.e. the less information available) the bigger the guesses.
As modern insurance practice has developed, rating engines used to calculate prices for auto and homeowner insurance policies have been stuffed with different factors to test them all out for predictability over a large numbers of customers. Certain combinations using information from credit reports and personal driving records have proven to be the most accurate in separating customers into groups who share the highest likelihood of having the same loss impact on their companies.? These multiple factor proprietary formulas can be somewhat different for each company and can be used for either underwriting or pricing to some effect.? Since most insurance claims are created by accidents, there is no way to tell which specific customers will be afflicted with what kinds of accidents and losses, but there are very useful ways to guess that a group with a certain risk profile will tend to produce more losses for a company through the claims process than another group.
State after state have concluded that formulas using credit-based factors are not effective proxies for ancestry, geography, race, income, sex, age, marital status and other categories that people do not welcome as dividing lines.? Some wealthy people have terrible insurance scores because of their aggressive use of credit. And unlike banks and other lending institutions, which use credit information to determine if people can successfully service a debt, with insurance, there is no ?redlining? or favoritism between a city?s neighborhoods.
Many states, including Ohio and most of her neighbors, have already considered and/or passed laws dealing with the use of credit factors to determine insurance coverage, 
as the formulas are not made public and are often difficult to explain.? There have been dozens of studies of insurance scoring by states, trade associations, consumer groups and the U.S. General Accounting Office, some involving millions of policyholders. There was a lawsuit brought in the state directly north of us.? The sum of this confirms that a ban on this kind of tool for insurance companies, such as that currently proposed by an Ohio lawmaker, would not be good for Ohio policyholders.
They should do their homework, and think of something else if they really want to help Ohio drivers and homeowners.
Workers to pump oil from grounded cruise Saturday
An Italian Navy officer talks on a walkie-talkie in the harbor of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia run aground, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Italian officials say Monday two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15. The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
An Italian Navy officer talks on a walkie-talkie in the harbor of the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, where the cruise ship Costa Concordia run aground, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Italian officials say Monday two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15. The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
The grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia lies on its side off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Salvage experts can begin pumping fuel from a capsized cruise ship as early as Tuesday to avert a possible environmental catastrophe and the ship is stable enough that search efforts for the missing can continue, Italian officials said. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
In this undated photo released by Vigili del Fuoco (Italian firefighters) Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 scuba divers of the firefighters unit inspect the Costa Concordia cruise ship, off the tiny Giglio island, Italy. Italian officials say Monday two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15. The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe. (AP Photo/Vigili del Fuoco)
In this undated photo released by Vigili del Fuoco (Italian firefighters) Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 rocks emerge from the Costa Concordia cruise ship, off the tiny Giglio island, Italy. Italian officials say Monday two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15. The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe. (AP Photo/Vigili del Fuoco)
Italian Guardia di Finanza and Civil Protection officers recover pieces of furniture from the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Italian officials say Monday two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15. The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
GIGLIO, Italy (AP) ? A barge carrying a crane and other equipment hitched itself to the toppled Costa Concordia on Tuesday, signaling the start of preliminary operations to remove a half-million gallons of fuel from the grounded cruise ship before it leaks into the pristine Tuscan sea.
Actual pumping of the oil isn't expected to begin until Saturday, but teams from the Dutch shipwreck salvage firm Smit were working on the bow of the Concordia on Tuesday and divers were to make underwater inspections to identify the precise locations of the fuel tanks.
They were at work on the now-hitched Meloria barge as divers who blasted through a submerged section of the third-floor deck located another body from the wreckage, bringing the death toll to 16.
The Concordia ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio on Jan. 13 after the captain veered from his approved course and gashed the ship's hull on a reef, forcing the panicked evacuation of 4,200 passengers and crew.
The 16 bodies found so far include the one located on the third-floor deck Tuesday. Seven of the badly decomposed bodies remain unidentified and are presumed to be among some of the 17 passengers and crew still unaccounted for. On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Italy David Thorne was at Giglio's port where he had lunch with relatives of two missing Americans, Gerald and Barbara Heil of Minnesota.
"I think it's a tragedy, we feel very badly for all the families," Thorne told journalists after the meeting.
Giglio and its waters are part of a protected seven-island marine park, favored by VIPs and known for its clear waters and porpoises, dolphins and whales.
Officials have identified an initial six fuel tanks that will be drilled into, tapped and outfitted with hoses to vacuum out the oil from the Costa Concordia. Franco Gabrielli, head of the national civil protection agency, told reporters Tuesday that once those initial six tanks are emptied, 50 percent of the fuel aboard the ship will have been extracted.
The pumping will continue 24 hours a day barring rough seas or technical glitches, he said, noting that these six tanks are relatively easy to access.
"At this stage we don't see a big risk in an oil spill, but if weather deteriorates nobody can tell what the vessel will do," Bart Huizing, head of operations at Smit, told The Associated Press.
The disaster prompted the U.N. cultural organization to ask the Italian government to restrict access of large cruise ships to Venice, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO charged that the liners cause water tides that erode building foundations, pollute the waterways and are an eyesore.
Italy's environment minister, Corrado Clini, appeared to take up the cause Tuesday. "The aim is to free St. Mark's basin from the big ships once new canals have been dug," Clini was quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA as saying during a public appearance in northern Italy. He did not elaborate.
But Clini added that "in the meantime, it will be up to the port authority and to the city to decide which (sea) traffic is sustainable and compatible" with Venice's particular situation."
Venice officials have said that since tug boats guide the big cruise ships through the part of the lagoon weaving through the city, the risk of accidents is virtually eliminated.
Divers, meanwhile, continued blasting holes inside the steel-hulled ship to ease access for crews searching for the missing. The search and rescue operation will continue in tandem with the fuel removal operation.
Smit officials say the first thing divers will do is drill holes into the tanks and attach valves onto them. The sludge-like oil will then be heated and hoses attached to the valves to suck out the oil as seawater is pumped into displace it.
"It's never a routine, there is always a risk, but we've done this before, so at this moment we don't see any problems," Huizing told AP. "But still it is difficult because it's really heavy fuel oil which we most probably need to heat before we can pump."
On Monday, islanders and officials spotted an oil film on the water about 300 meters (yards) from the wreck. Absorbent panels were put around the oil to soak up the substance and officials said Tuesday it was a very thin film that didn't present any significant levels of toxicity.
Gabrielli said he had formally asked Costa Crociere SpA, the owner of the Concordia, to come up with a plan for what to do with the innards of the ship that are floating away ? the tables and chairs and other furniture that are knocking into divers and being hauled away by barge on a daily basis. And he said he had asked provincial authorities to designate a site on the mainland where the material can be dumped.
Costa is a unit of Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's biggest cruise operator.
It has blamed the captain, Francesco Schettino, for the disaster, saying he made an unauthorized and unapproved deviation from the route. Schettino remains under house arrest facing accusations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all passengers were off.
Early Tuesday, amid continued outrage by passengers of the chaotic evacuation, Costa promised to refund the full cost of the cruise, reimburse all travel expenses to and from the ship, all on-board expenses and any medical expenses incurred as a result of the grounding.
"Every effort will be made to return the valuables left in the cabin safe," Costa said in a statement.
___
Dorothee Thiesing contributed from Giglio.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
This Week's Top Downloads [Download Roundup]
Jan 21, 2012 5:00 PM 17,306 
2
2 - Boxer is a Free DOS Game Emulator for your Mac (Mac) Computer games have come a long way since the days of Doom, Zork, Tie Fighter, and Castle Wolfenstein, but many of us who grew up with those games would like to replay them. Boxer is a free app that will let you play any DOS game on your Mac.
- iBoostUp Cleans Out Your Mac's System File Clutter in a Minute (Mac) iBoostUp cleans out the crap on your drive and fine-tunes your system for better performance. It's simple, it's quick, and it's free.
- AntiCrop "Uncrops" Your Photos by Extending the Picture's Background (iOS) If you've ever taken a hasty photo on your phone and didn't leave enough room on the outside, AntiCrop is the app can "uncrop" those photos by filling in the edges with just a few swipes.
- Untethered Jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iOS 5 Is Finally Here (iOS) iPhone-hacking group Chronic Dev Team just released the first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1. We've explained why a tethered jailbreak can be such a hassle, which is why we've been waiting to recommend jailbreaking your up-to-date iPhone. Luckily, that wait is over.
- Clean My Desktop Sorts Files Into Content Specific Folders (Mac) A desktop filled with hundreds of files in a variety of formats can be a headache to clean up, but Clean My Desktop makes it easy by sorting everything into content specific folders based on the file type.
- MindNode Is a Mind Mapping App that Makes Brainstorming Simple and Easy (Mac/iOS) Regardless of the type of work that you do, brainstorming is an important part of generating new ideas and new approaches to getting your work done more efficiently. Mind mapping is a brainstorming technique that helps you get all of your interconnected thoughts out in a diagram, and there are a number of complicated tools designed to help you do it. MindNode for Mac and iOS is pricey, but it's one of the best tools we've seen for the job.
- Pomodroido Is an Elegant Pomodoro Timer for Your Android Phone (Pomodroido) If you're a fan of the Pomodoro productivity technique, you know that part of the philosophy is to work in short, focused, timed bursts and then take periodic breaks to relax. To do this, you'll need a timer, and Pomodroido is a free app that turns your Android phone into one that follows you everywhere.
- Forismatic Is a Free App that Helps You Relax and Keeps You Inspired Every Day (Mac) Computers are supposed to make our work easier, but in reality they often just bring us more work and stress us out. Give your Mac the opportunity to help you relax for a change with Forismatic, a free app that sits in the menubar until you need a little inspiration to help you keep going, and will remind you to take a break now and again to relax.
- Breathing Zone Guides You Towards Slower Breathing to Help Reduce Stress and Anxiety (Mac/iOS) Breathing Zone is a simple app that helps slow your breathing rhythm to calm you down and make you feel more relaxed. If you're a bit stressed or anxious, it's a good way to help you alleviate those feelings in just a few minutes.
- WatchMe Is a Desktop Timer that Keeps Track of Multiple Alarms at Once (Windows) Unfortunately, few of us have the luxury of only keeping track of one thing at a time. There are plenty of great timers available to help you keep track of how long you've been working or when you need to take a break, but if you need to track multiple times or set more than one timer, you may be out of luck. WatchMe is a timer that allows you to set multiple alerts and multiple timers so you're alerted at different times for different things.
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/94J0DABeIrw/this-weeks-top-downloads
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BlackBerry maker's CEOs hand reins to insider (Reuters)
WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) ? Research In Motion's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have bowed to investor pressure and resigned as co-CEOs, handing the top job to an insider with four years at the struggling BlackBerry maker.
Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens AG executive who has risen steadily through RIM's upper management ranks since joining the Canadian company in late 2007, took over as CEO on Saturday, RIM said on Sunday.
The shift ends the two-decade long partnership of Lazaridis and Balsillie atop a once-pioneering technology company that now struggles against Apple and Google.
With RIM's share price plummeting to eight-year lows, a flurry of speculation that RIM was up for sale has enveloped the company in recent months. But investors have pointed to the domineering presence of Lazaridis and Balsillie as one reason a sale would prove difficult.
Activist investors have clamored in recent months for a new, "transformational" leader who could revitalize RIM's product line and resuscitate its once cutting-edge image. It remains to be seen whether RIM has found such a leader in Heins, analysts said.
"It's the first positive thing that they have done in months," said Charter Equity analyst Ed Snyder, even as he expressed caution over the choice of Heins, a longtime lieutenant of Lazaridis and Balsillie. "My feeling is that it's a figure-head change."
Michael Urlocker, an analyst with GMP Securities, questioned whether Heins had the right background for the job that faces him. "I am not sure that an engineer as new CEO really gets to the central issues faced by RIM," he said.
Lazaridis and Balsillie also gave up their shared role as chairman of RIM's board. Barbara Stymiest, an independent board member who once headed the Toronto Stock Exchange, will take over in that capacity.
The pair, who together built Lazaridis' 1985 start-up into a global business with $20 billion in sales last year, have weathered a storm of criticism in recent years as Apple's iPhone and the army of devices powered by Google's innovative Android system eclipsed their email-focused BlackBerry.
"There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now," Lazaridis said in a hastily arranged interview at RIM's Waterloo headquarters, flanked by Balsillie and Heins and with Stymiest joining via telephone.
DEPICTED AS ORDERLY TRANSITION
The executives were keen to paint the shuffle as an orderly transition on a succession plan mapped out at least a year ago, and not a retreat in the face of a plummeting share price, shrinking U.S. market share and criticism of their products.
Both Lazaridis and Balsillie - two of RIM's three largest shareholders with more than 5 percent each - will remain board members, with Lazaridis keeping a particularly active role as vice-chair and head of a newly created innovation committee.
Lazaridis said he plans to buy an additional $50 million of RIM shares on the open market.
In the group interview announcing the change, Heins said his most immediate concern is to sell RIM's current lineup of BlackBerry 7 touchscreen devices, deliver on a promised software upgrade for its PlayBook tablet computer by February, and rally RIM's troops to launch the next-generation BlackBerry 10 phones later this year.
"Their problems are deep-rooted, and it's going to take time," Snyder said.
In the longer term, Heins, previously one of RIM's chief operating officers, said he would push for more rigorous product development and place greater emphasis on executing on the company's marketing and development plans.
"We need to get a bit more disciplined in our own processes," he said in a YouTube video posted by RIM. "We are a great, innovative but sometimes we innovate too much while we are building a product." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUFwhpcrCTw)
Heins said RIM, which suffered a damaging outage of much of its network last year, has embarked on a global search for a chief marketing officer to improve advertising and other communication with consumers. Consumers now account for the majority of RIM's sales even though the BlackBerry built its reputation as a business tool.
For RIM critics, the focus on customers may seem long overdue. The company seemed blindsided by Apple's introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and was also slow to launch a competitor to the iPad. When its PlayBook tablet finally hit the market last spring, it was not equipped with RIM's trademark email service. The reviews were scathing, sales were anemic and the company has been forced to offer steep discounts.
Heins said it would be wrong of RIM to focus on licensing its software or integrated email package, a strategy that many analysts and investors have thought the company might pursue. Even so, the new CEO said the company would certainly be open to discussions of that nature.
Neither Lazaridis nor Basillie detailed any future plans outside RIM, with Lazaridis particularly eager to point out his still-active role as a confidante to the new CEO.
Both have other interests outside of RIM. Lazaridis donated hundreds of millions of dollars to set up an independent theoretical physics institute and also a quantum computing institute attached to his alma mater, the University of Waterloo. Balsillie heads a think-tank in international governance and long dreamed of owning a National Hockey League franchise.
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Additional reporting by Edwin Chan in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and Janet Guttsman)
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Why Humans Love To Keep Pets
By Krystal D'Costa
(Click here for the original article)
I?ll never forget the day S brought home a live chicken. When we lived in Queens, there were a number of fresh poultry and livestock suppliers that catered to the growing West Indian community so live poultry was readily available, but there were also a few backyard farmers in the neighborhood. S was at a gas station when he heard a cheeping noise. He knelt down to investigate and when he straightened up, found a chick sitting on the mat in the car. ?What was I supposed to do?? he asked showing me the chick later that day. ?It jumped in the car.?
His affinity with animals is nothing new. He trained goldfish. He has refused to kill mice, insisting on releasing them into the wild. At fifteen, he nursed a pigeon back to health after setting its broken wing. During a trip to Trinidad, he befriended a bull?despite being warned away by my uncles?by sitting in the mud with it for hours. And today, we are the proud parents of two cats (we did not keep Chicken Little) who can?t seem to get enough of him. I am definitely second fiddle in their feline minds?though handy to have around when they need to be fed.
S is not alone. Pat Shipman (2010) notes the significance of pets?and animals?in our lives:
In both the United States and Australia, 63% of households include pets, compared to 43% of British and 20% of Japanese households. In the United States, the proportion of households with pets is larger than those with children (522).
This relationship, dubbed the animal connection by Shipman, may have played an important role in human evolution, linking the traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other mammals. How is it that some animals transitioned from food to friends, and what is the significance of this relationship?
The animal connection is the process by which pets or livestock become companions and/or partners, and are treated as members of the family. It refers to the close relationship between animals and humans starting 2.6 million years ago (mya), beginning with the use and study of animals by humans, and leading to regular social interactions. Today this is manifested in the adoption of animals and the care provided to them in the course of that relationship. The roots of this relationship may be found in the development of three often recognized traits of humans: making and using tools, symbolic behavior (including language, adornment, and rituals), and domestication of other species. Shipman views the animal connection as a fourth trait, tying the other three together and having an immense effect on human evolution, genetics, and behavior (2010: 522).
Though tool use has been documented in other nonhuman mammals, the manufacture and use of tools by humans is an extremely complex behavior. Modern chimpanzees are often recognized for their tool usage, but this usage varies whereas humans consistently use tools. Early humans used tools to process carcasses, and we have evidence of this from the marks left on the bones after contact with implements. Stone tools gave humans an advantage: they no longer needed to compete with scavengers. They could hunt game on their own and/or drive off those scavengers if needed. The increased meat in the human diet meant that humans occupied a predatory niche, and as such necessarily needed to disperse so that their localities could support their needs. While Shipman makes clear that the fossil record supports that expansion of geographic range about 2 mya, the more interesting point, in my opinion, is that in seeking out live game, humans needed to learn about their prey, which opened the door for a more meaningful relationship with animals.
Wild animals are certainly able to communicate with each other, but language has thus far largely been relegated to humans, who have a clearly identifiable syntax and grammar (520). Animals have alarm calls, but there are limits to what they can communicate. For instance, a chimp alerting his troupe about a snake cannot provide details about the snake: The chimp cannot say it is a brown snake. (Or maybe it can, and we just don?t know.) And while educated apes may have a vocabulary of about 400 words, they don?t apply syntax and grammar to those words (520). Language allows humans to share information, and we have developed delightfully complicated means of doing so:
Ritual, art, ochre, and personal adornment are used to transmit information about such concepts as beliefs, group membership, or style, leaving physical manifestations visible in the archaeological record. Nothing interpreted as art, ritual, the use of ochre, or personal adornment has been reported in nonhuman mammals in the wild (521).
As more sophisticated stone tools were developed, humans could pursue larger game. But this might often require collaboration, which encouraged language. Perhaps the strongest example of this is prehistoric art which depicts animals extensively, revealing morphology, coloring, behaviors, and sexual dimorphism (Shipman 2010: 524). It creates a record to be shared with others.
Domestication required humans to select for desirable behavioral traits and control the reproductive and genetic output over generations. They lived in close proximity to the animals, historically even bringing them into the home. Indeed, the physical closeness of humans to animals has allowed some infectious diseases to enter the human population from animal hosts, e.g., measles (dogs), mumps (poultry), tuberculosis (cattle), and the common cold (horses) (529). However, the benefits have outweighed the costs when it comes to keeping animals near?animals are much more than a food source:
The Goyet dog is at least 17,000 years older than the next oldest domesticate (also a dog) ? animals were domesticated first because their treatment was an extension of tool making (Shipman 2010: 524).
Animals were domesticated as living tools. They expanded the reach of humans and made other resources more accessible. Animals could provide labor, milk, wool, and opportunities for the production of tools and clothing. And domestication was hedged on an understanding of biology, ecology, physiology, temperament and intelligence.
While much has been made of the monkey who appears to have adopted a cat, such cross-species alloparenting is rare. Humans are the exception. We routinely take in animals integrate them into our families, creating a beneficial relationship. Our connection to Fido may be deeply rooted in our evolutionary history.
?
Reference:
Shipman, P. (2010). The Animal Connection and Human Evolution Current Anthropology, 51 (4), 519-538 DOI: 10.1086/653816
Also on HuffPost:
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RIM's Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are out, new CEO Thorsten Heins may license BlackBerry 10
Startlingly, Heins also asserted that he's "confident" in the existing lineup of BlackBerry handsets and the software update recently made available for the PlayBook; call us crazy, but he'd be wise to just spout out reality and make clear that RIM's existing lineup is nowhere near competitive in the grand scheme of things. As for Mike and Jim? The former will become "vice-chair of the board with special duties to examine innovation," with the latter becoming a traditional director. In an interesting move, outgoing co-CEO Lazaridis stated the following: "I think it's that unwillingness to sacrifice our long-term value for short-term gain. That's why we didn't choose Android. That's why we decided to build the future on QNX." So wait, RIM had the chance to choose Android... and didn't? No time like the present to reach back and shake things up, Mr. Thorsten.
RIM's Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are out, new CEO Thorsten Heins may license BlackBerry 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The Wall Street Journal (1), (2), The Globe and Mail, RIM | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/22/rim-ceo-quits/
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Elusive Z- DNA found on nucleosomes
Friday, January 20, 2012
New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell & Bioscience is the first to show that left-handed Z-DNA, normally only found at sites where DNA is being copied, can also form on nucleosomes.
The structure of DNA which provides the blueprint for life has famously been described as a double helix. To save space inside the nucleus, DNA is tightly wound around proteins to form nucleosomes which are then further wound and compacted into chromatin, which is further compacted into chromosomes.
But this familiar image of a right handed coil (also called B-DNA) is not the only form of DNA. At sites where DNA is being copied into RNA (the messenger which is used as the instruction to make proteins) the DNA needs to unwind, and, in a process of negative supercoiling, can form a left-handed variety of the DNA double helix (Z-DNA).
It was originally thought that Z-DNA could only be formed in the presence of active RNA polymerase (the enzyme which assembles RNA). However more recently it has been discovered that SWI/SNF, a protein involved in remodeling nucleosomes and allowing RNA polymerase access to DNA, can convert certain sequences of B to Z-DNA.
The team of researchers led by Dr Keji Zhao discovered that they could convert B-DNA to Z-DNA on nucleosomes by the addition of SWI/SNF and ATP (the cell's energy source) and that the Z-nucleosome formed was a novel structure.
Dr Zhao, from the NIH, explained, "The fact that we have found Z-DNA on nucleosomes is a new step in understanding the roles of chromosome remodeling and Z-DNA in regulating gene expression. While the Z-nucleosome is likely to be a transient structure it nevertheless provides a window of opportunity for the placement of DNA binding proteins which may recruit, regulate, or block the transcription machinery and hence protein expression."
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BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com
Thanks to BioMed Central for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116908/Elusive_Z__DNA_found_on_nucleosomes
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Here Come The iPad 2S/3 Cases!
It's that time again, friends. Apple rumors are swirling and case makers are trying to get a jump in their competitive field. So much so that a Chinese manufacturing company "Chineestyle Co., Limited" is actually selling cases for the next-gen iPad, which they are calling the iPad 2S. Yep, it's that time again.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VMEmqSgrioI/
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APNewsBreak: Exxon reaches $1.6M spill settlement (AP)
BILLINGS, Mont. ? Exxon Mobil agreed Thursday to pay the state of Montana $1.6 million in penalties over water pollution caused by a pipeline break last summer that fouled dozens of miles of shoreline along the scenic Yellowstone River.
Montana Department of Environmental Quality director Richard Opper told The Associated Press that the penalty marks the largest in the agency's history.
The Texas oil company will pay $300,000 in cash and spend $1.3 million on future environmental projects, Opper said.
Also Thursday, Exxon increased its estimate of how much crude spilled into the river during the July 1 accident near Laurel to 1,509 barrels, or more than 63,000 gallons.
That's up from earlier estimates of 1,000 barrels spilled ? a number that Gov. Brian Schweitzer had disputed as too low.
Only about 10 barrels of crude were recovered by cleanup crews. That's less than 1 percent of the total spilled, federal officials have said.
Thursday's settlement over water pollution violations came after more than three months of negotiations between attorneys for Exxon and the state. It contains provisions to shield the company against any future lawsuits from state agencies, although it will not become final until after a 30-day comment period.
"It was a significant violation. There were hundreds and hundreds of acres of land affected and it was a major oil spill," Opper said. He added the penalties likely would have been "a lot higher" if Exxon had not cooperated on the cleanup.
"It doesn't mean they were perfect. They were responsible, but they really were committed to undoing the damage that was caused," he said.
The settlement requires continued monitoring of environmental damage by Exxon, and requires the company to clean up any more oil that is discovered. That includes any crude that might be stirred up when the Yellowstone rises again in the spring as mountain snow begins to melt.
Testing of river sediments near public water supply intakes also will be required.
Opper said company representatives were expected to sign the deal late Thursday.
As part of the settlement, Exxon also will reimburse more than $760,000 in emergency response costs racked up by state agencies.
In an emailed statement regarding the settlement, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers reiterated that the company "takes full responsibility for the cleanup."
"We are pleased to be able to resolve this environmental compliance issue with the State of Montana," Jeffers wrote.
Regarding the change in how much crude spilled, Jeffers said the company recalculated the volume after discovering the pipeline had been completely severed during the July 1 accident near Laurel. Jeffers says pipeline breaches typically involve a crack or fissure. That was the assumption used to craft the initial estimate.
Jeffers added that the higher estimate would not have changed the response to the spill, which at its peak involved more than 1,000 Exxon Mobil contractors working to clean up oil-soaked sandbars, log jams and vegetation.
"We had a lot of people and a lot of resources brought to bear in response to the spill," he said. "None of this would have made any difference."
Still pending against the company is a lawsuit from a group of riverfront property owners who are seeking tens of millions of dollars in damages over allegations that the company failed to properly clean up after the spill.
Attorneys for Exxon have asked U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings to dismiss the case. A decision is pending.
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Friday, January 20, 2012
Video: Will Romney?s taxes become his campaign?s greatest vulnerability?
Silva: Breaking down AFC, NFC championship games
Silva: The NFL's crucial weekend has arrived. Four teams, two title games and the winners advance to Super Bowl XLVI. Here's breakdown of the divisional games this weekend, which focuses on each team's strengths, weaknesses, X-factors and the keys to winning.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46046378#46046378
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YouTube plots 'Your Film Festival' for users (AP)
NEW YORK ? YouTube is launching a film festival that will play out online and ultimately send 10 finalists to the Venice Film Festival.
The Google Inc.-owned video site announced Thursday that Your Film Festival will take submissions of short films up to 15 minutes in length between Feb. 2 and March 31. Fifty semi-finalists will be selected by Scott Free Productions, Ridley and Tony Scott's production company.
Those 50 films will form a channel on YouTube: http://www.YouTube.com/yourfilmfestival. There, users will be able to view the films and vote for their favorites.
The 10 finalists will be flown to the 69th annual Venice Film Festival, where their films will be screened in August. Ridley Scott will lead a jury in selecting a winner, who will receive a $500,000 grant from YouTube to produce a work with Scott Free.
"Through this program, YouTube will give filmmakers the opportunity to reach a vast audience, screen their work during the Venice Film Festival and potentially be rewarded in a career-changing way," Robert Kyncl, global head of content at YouTube, said in a statement.
Last year, YouTube released the film "Life in a Day," which was co-produced by Scott. The feature-length documentary stitched together videos submitted by YouTube users.
Though anyone can submit a film, Your Film Festival is particularly hoping to reward young filmmakers and producers. YouTube said that it will be doing outreach at both the Sundance Film Festival and South By Southwest to spur filmmakers to participate in Your Film Festival and urge them to consider YouTube a pathway to industry attention.
"Short filmmaking is exactly where I started my career 50 years ago, so to be helping new filmmakers find an entry point like this into the industry is fantastic," said Scott.
YouTube has held film contests in the past, but the global Your Film Festival is on a much larger scale. International films will have subtitles added. Basically the only restrictions beside length are that entrants must be at least 18 years old and that the work can't have been distributed prior to Jan. 1, 2010.
"We've always wanted to do something like this, but there were limitations in the past that prevented us from doing it," says Nate Weinstein, YouTube entertainment marketing manager. "The time also seemed right given the work that the organization is doing within original channels."
YouTube hopes the Your Film Festival channel will be a one-stop-shop for high-quality programming, and YouTube is increasing focus on the channels. YouTube is pushing to make its platform more conducive to longer viewing visits and to advertisers that want their brands aligned with quality programming.
YouTube's most dramatic push into original programming was announced last fall with the launch of more than 100 video channels from partners including an array of Hollywood production companies, celebrities and new media groups.
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Thursday, January 19, 2012
South Florida?s real estate crisis in one chart
South Florida?s housing crash may be old news, but recent data offer some valuable perspective.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency maintains appreciation indices for metropolitan areas, which are similar to the famous Case-Shiller index but more local. By stacking up Broward and Miami-Dade?s indices to the nation?s, the warning signs are hard to miss.
The chart anchors all three indices to the first quarter of 2000, so the numbers show appreciation since then. Real estate got out of hand across the country, with appreciation peaking nationally at 166 percent in 2007. But in Broward, values soared 272 percent. Miami-Dade did even better, up 283 percent.
It?s easy to see how quickly values collapsed, but the chart also points out something that tends to be overlooked amid the wreckage of real estate. Home values are still ahead of where they were in 2003.
But perhaps more surprising, local property has actually held its value better than the average home in the United States. According to the FHFA, the average U.S. home is worth about 40 percent more than it was at the start of 2000. In Broward, the average home is worth 49 percent more. In Miami-Dade, it?s 56 percent more valuable.
A sign of resiliency, or a hint that South Florida still has some dropping to do? We?ll probably find out this year.
The Miami Herald?s Economic Time Machine charts South Florida?s recovery from the Great Recession by comparing current conditions to levels set before the downturn.
The ETM crunches 60 local indicators to measure the economic activity, then finds when each indicator was at that level before the 2007-2009 recession. At the moment, the current economy most resembles where it was in June 2002. Visit miamiherald.com/economic-time-machine for updates and analysis of the latest economic data.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/18/2595440/south-floridas-real-estate-crisis.html
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Wanted Women: Pakistani neuroscientist was on US 'kill or capture' list
We have an excerpt from a new book published Tuesday about the war on terror,?"Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui," by?Deborah Scroggins.
"Wanted Women"?tells the story of two extraordinary women catapulted to fame by the war on terror. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born activist and author of the bestselling autobiography "Infidel," whose life was threatened for her criticism of Islam. Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three serving an 86-year prison sentence for firing on United States personnel who came to question her in Afghanistan. Siddiqui disappeared in 2003, shortly after the FBI listed her as wanted for questioning about her ties to al-Qaeda. Many Pakistanis believe she was kidnapped and spent the missing years leading up to her capture in 2008 in a secret US or Pakistani prison. But as author Deborah Scroggins describes in this excerpt from her new book, CIA officials say that they were still hunting for Siddiqui during that period.
An excerpt from Chapter 5 of "Wanted Women":
To the outside world, Aafia seemed forgotten. Many wondered by the end of 2005 if she was locked in a secret CIA prison. But the silver-haired former head of the weapons of mass destruction unit at the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, told me after he retired that, far from being under arrest, Aafia remained for him the stuff of nightmares.
Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three serving an 86-year prison sentence for firing on United States personnel who came to question her in Afghanistan.
Mowatt-Larssen had a special deck of fifty-two playing cards made up. Each carried the face of a suspected terrorist he feared might be planning the next big attack. Aafia was the queen of spades, the only woman in the deck. Mowatt-Larssen wouldn?t have put her at the top of his list of potential mass murderers, but he couldn?t rule her out. She was his wild card.
As an intelligence officer, Mowatt-Larssen tried to put himself in the place of al-Qaeda?s leaders and to think as they would. He believed that they had been close, several times, to obtaining weap?ons that could have caused huge casualties. In 2003, for example, the CIA heard that al-Qaeda had devised a small handheld weapon that could disperse hydrogen cyanide throughout an enclosed area, killing dozens or even hundreds of people. Al-Qaeda called it the mubtakkar, Arabic for ?invention.? Around the time KSM was cap?tured and Aafia went missing, the United States received information that an al-Qaeda cell in Bahrain had been ready to mount a mubtakkar attack on New York City?s subways but that Zawahiri had canceled the plan. Why did he cancel? Mowatt-Larssen feared that al-Qaeda?s number two had pulled back to work on a more spectacular strike.
The group?s biological and chemical weapons expert, an Egyptian named Abu Khabab al-Masri, was still at large.
Mowatt-Larssen believed that if al-Qaeda used Aafia properly, she could be of huge value. His hope was that, whether because she was a woman or because her bossy manner got on the nerves of its male leaders, al-Qaeda wouldn?t be able to exploit her full potential.
It wasn?t Aafia?s prowess as a scientist that worried Mowatt-Larssen the most. The FBI had gone through her records from MIT and Brandeis. She had not taken any notably advanced biology and chemistry courses, and there was no obvious application to jihad in her neuroscience Ph.D. What set her apart in his eyes was her combination of high intelligence (including general scientific know-how), religious zeal, and years of experience in the United States. ?So far they have had very few people who have been able to come to the U.S. and thrive,? he said. ?Aafia is different. She knows about U.S. immigration procedures and visas. She knows how to enroll in American educational institutions. She can open bank accounts and transfer money. She knows how things work here. She could have been very useful to them simply for her understanding of the U.S.?
Mowatt-Larssen and his team had not forgotten the documents found in the Qadoos house at the time of KSM?s arrest. They had shown that Abu Khabab al-Masri, the Egyptian weapons expert, was ready to produce botulinum, salmonella, and cyanide, and was close to producing anthrax. They believed Aafia had a connection both to the Qadoos family and to Amir Aziz, the Lahore orthopedic surgeon who had been accused of helping al-Qaeda obtain anthrax. They also thought she was better equipped than any of them to be creative in using such poisons against the United States. ?She had the imagi?nation to come up with the next 9/11,? Mowatt-Larssen said. ?The question was whether they would listen to her.?
He felt they might take some of her suggestions but might leave her out of the loop when it came to operational planning. He had heard what detainees such as Aafia?s second husband, Ali, had said about her. (Alas, the reports of these interrogations are still deeply secret.) Even with the hardest core of al-Qaeda operatives, she had a reputation for being headstrong. ?I remember thinking at the time, ?She must drive them crazy,?? Mowatt-Larsson told me. But he couldn?t be sure. The CIA had never pinned down her exact role. They just knew that ?she was always in the picture. Connections between her and other people the FBI was looking at surfaced in just about every al-Qaeda investigation with a U.S. angle. She was always on our radar.?
At the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Aafia?s name was prominent on a different list, another former official in the Bush administration told me. This was a list of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists whom the U.S. government had authorized the CIA to ?kill or capture? on sight. Once again, Aafia wasn?t at the top of the list. But she was on it and she stayed there.
Unfortunately from the U.S. point of view, the CIA could not easily operate by itself in Pakistan. Thus, when it came to finding Aafia or anyone else on the list, it usually had to rely on the ISI. And most of the time the ISI gave the Americans nothing. Despite the millions of dollars in rewards that Washington was offering, the ISI seldom, on its own initiative, arrested even foreign al-Qaeda sus?pects, much less Pakistanis.
So the CIA wasn?t surprised that its Pakistani counterparts showed little interest in finding a fellow Pakistani who was also a woman. ?Everyone has patrons and protectors,? Mowatt-Larssen said. And Aafia, as a female and a member of a respected Deobandi family, was even more sheltered than most from the prying of U.S. investigators.
The Americans tried to escape their dependence on Pakistani intelligence by playing from an American strength: technology. The phones and e-mails of Pakistanis suspected of links to people on the target list were tapped by the National Security Agency. Ismat and Fowzia no doubt fell into that suspect category, as did some senior politicians and generals who the United States believed were shield?ing militants. The former official in the Bush administration said that if the Americans happened to overhear the whereabouts of one of their targets, they would go to President Musharraf with the in?formation. They would ask him for permission to capture the person and take ?lethal action? if they failed to capture him.
But Musharraf didn?t always agree. If he didn?t want to go along, he might say, and in some cases he might be telling the truth, that the targeted person was actually an ISI asset whom the Pakistanis were using to infiltrate al-Qaeda. (Later it would be widely rumored that?the ISI used Aafia to gather information on militant circles.) In?that case, the United States refrained from action. In the years before the Americans began using drones to attack suspected mili?tants (and eventually a Navy SEAL team to kill Osama bin Laden) in Pakistan, there was nothing else they could do.
But I have yet to find a source who recalls any such discussion of Aafia. She seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Journalist Deborah Scroggins is the author of the new book "Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui."
Excerpt?from?"Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui," (c) Deborah Scroggins.? Printed courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Deborah Scroggins'?book "Emma?s War" was translated into ten languages and won the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize.
Scroggins has written for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Nation, Vogue, Granta, and many other publications.
She?won two Overseas Press Club awards and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award as a foreign correspondent for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She lives with her family in Massachusetts.?
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