The iPhone Is One of the Best Android Phones You Can Buy

The addition of Google Now to the iOS App Store has granted iPhone owners access to one of Google's most useful products. But it did something else, too. It made the iPhone a better Android phone than the vast majority of Android phones you can buy.

The Android Experience

Let's be clear right up front; if you want a top-flight, pure Android phone, you should be looking at the Galaxy S4 or Nexus 4 or HTC One, full stop. Not only do they?and a few other flagship handsets?feature powerful hardware, they're also equipped with Jelly Bean, Google's last major Android update. They're wonderful, you would enjoy them.

But those phones represent a lonesome minority, an elite advanced guard that most existing Android handsets may never join. Only 25 percent of Android devices run Jelly Bean, which means that only one in four can access Google Now.

And most older phones will never get promoted. And even if they do, individual app updates?even for Google products?can take forever.

By contrast, today's addition of Google Now to Google Search means that any phone running iOS 6?which means every iPhone back to and including 2009's 3GS?has access to one of Android's marquee features.

And that's just Google Now. There are 25 Google iPhone apps available in the iOS App Store today. Nearly all of them have been updated in the last three months, and the ones you use the most?Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, etc?are kept up as up to date as their Android counterparts. They work in harmony, too; trying to find directions in Google Now will open Google Maps instead of Apple's mediocre alternative. And as long as you're signed in with your Google account, what you do on one device carries over to any other.

Combine that interwoven goodness with the iPhone's exquisitely chamfered, super-lightweight body, and you've got yourself quite a package. To the extent that the Android experience is the Google experience, you really can't do much better.

What's Missing

There's more to Android than just Google apps, of course. The iOS desktop experience is far more rigid than what you'll find on even the clunkiest Froyo device. And while iOS notifications go a long way towards the seamless integration of Google services, you still can't get anything approaching the customizability Android provides with stock iOS.

But even that objection is largely surmountable. Jailbreaking an iPhone doesn't give you the same godlike powers as rooting an Android device, but it does let you continue to use App Store apps (like Google's) and make the phone look and feel like your own. Or like? Android.

The other big drawback is that some Google apps on iOS will lag behind, say, the latest Nexus release on certain features. But at least you can be more confident that you'll get them eventually.

What a Google Wants

The fact is, Google still doesn't ultimately care what device you're using its services on, just so long as you're using them. That's not going to change any time soon. Openness is baked into all of Google's services. Whereas iMessage's one true aim is to keep you bottled up inside iOS forever, Google has built Drive, Mail, and all of its other pillars to be as platform-neutral as possible. The more people using Google, the more highly relevant ads the company can serve.

And while the iPhone has always benefited from that to some degree?especially since Mountain View took charge of its iOS apps once and for all?Google Now's iOS availability is a strong acknowledgment that the company's willing to prioritize mass adoption of its best features ahead of getting its legacy Android devices up to speed.

What that means for you?since iOS updates bring so many legacy devices along with them?is that you can have more faith that an iPhone you buy today will get future Google bells and whistles than the vast majority of currently available Android phones.

Again, by all means, get an HTC One or a Galaxy S4. But do it for the design or the skin or the camera or the features. If it's Google you're looking for, you might just want to swing by the nearest Apple Store.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-iphone-is-one-of-the-best-android-phones-you-can-bu-484580304

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Deep life: Strange creatures living far below our feet

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Occidental Petroleum says CEO to remain until 2014

(Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp , the fourth-largest U.S. oil company, said Chief Executive Steve Chazen would continue in his role through 2014 with the full support of the board, reducing uncertainty surrounding its CEO succession plans.

The Wall Street Journal said in March there was pressure from Chairman and former CEO Ray Irani for Chazen to leave the post immediately, but the company had denied any fight at the top.

On Monday, Occidental announced cuts in director and CEO compensation among a range of governance measures that also included an upper age limit of 68 for CEOs to retire. Chazen, 66, said the measures were consistent with his personal plans.

Occidental also said former CEOs would not be eligible to serve on the board "going forward". It did not specify whether this rule would apply to 78-year-old Irani, who has said that he plans to retire as chairman at the end of 2014.

Occidental said in mid-February it was seeking a replacement for Chazen, who joined the company in 1994 and took over as CEO in mid-2011.

Morningstar analyst Allen Good called the latest move a positive for the stock as it cleared a lot of uncertainty around the CEO's tenure.

"Giving him (Chazen) more time to execute on his plans certainly should reassure investors at this point," Good said.

Occidental's shares rose 1 percent to $87.68 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Analysts at Simmons & Co said the announcement should help resolve the "overhang" on Occidental's shares.

Occidental also said the discretionary portion of the CEO's bonus would be reduced to "no more than 20 percent" from 40 percent, and that the company's financial performance would be used to evaluate his performance.

The annual common stock grant to non-employee directors would be reduced by at least 20 percent immediately and the director-compensation program would be reviewed this year, the company added.

Occidental said Chazen himself had proposed that he would not be eligible for any bonus or earnings-based pay during his remaining tenure.

(Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan and Garima Goel in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/occidental-petroleum-says-ceo-remain-until-2014-153523766.html

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This Pristine Coffee Grinder Looks Like a Jet Engine

A quality grinder is an essential tool in making good coffee or espresso, but they're often known more for their utility than their beauty. The HG-One, though, is a different beast. Its sleek beauty will make you forget how much cranking is involved.

The HG-One requires good old-fashioned human strength to grind beans into fine grounds. Ironic, considering how futuristic the thing looks. Seems like annoying task to do every morning, but good design always comes at a cost.

What about quality? The grinder uses conical burrs, the standard in good grinders. But it's more than just the burr that matters. The construction must be precise, as any play or misalignment can lead to inconsistent grind size and thus sub-par coffee.

Can the HG-One deliver on that front? You'll have to plunk down about $900 to find out. But for now, might as well just sit back and enjoy the view. [HG-One Grinder via NotCot]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-pristine-coffee-grinder-looks-like-a-jet-engine-484341263

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Bringing major corporations to book for their crimes

Two new books tell the complex, fascinating and sometimes frustrating tale of attempts to hold multinationals to account for environmental and social crimes

• Book information
• Just Business: Multinational corporations and human rights by John Gerard Ruggie
• Published by: Norton
• Price: ?14.99

• Book information
• Make It a Green Peace! The rise of countercultural environmentalism by Frank Zelko
• Published by: Oxford University Press
• Price: ?22.50

Still no justice, nearly 30 years after the world's worst industrial disaster (Image: Raghu Rai/Magnum)

IT WAS the world's worst industrial accident. More than 3000 people died one winter night in 1984 in the Indian city of Bhopal, poisoned by methyl isocyanate gas belching from an agrochemicals factory owned by US-based Union Carbide. Tens of thousands were disabled. The cause was unambiguous, culpability seemed clear. But how to bring the company to justice?

There was a US parent company, but also an Indian subsidiary. Court cases proliferated in both countries. US judges decreed it was up to the Indian judiciary, but the US government declined to extradite company boss Warren Anderson to face charges there. In the end, the only people convicted were a few lowly Indian managers, who had been given charge of what many said was a defective plant.

The case remains a textbook example of the persistent failure of legal systems to hold multinational corporations to account for their failures. It features in Just Business, John Gerard Ruggie's fascinating account of his journey through the minefield of corporate accountability, on behalf of the UN.

Other examples he discusses include the toxic solvents and child labour used to make fashionable Nike sportswear in the 1990s, and the 60-year battle of the impoverished Ogoni people in Nigeria against Royal Dutch Shell, whose shareholders made billions as the Ogoni forests were poisoned by oil. Then there is Yahoo's widely condemned release of subscriber information to the Chinese authorities, which resulted in a whistle-blowing Chinese journalist receiving a 10-year jail term. Ruggie also points to the existence of child slaves on cocoa farms, recklessly polluting mining companies, and many more corporate villains.

Ruggie found that in each case, there was a failure to manage technology safely, to make proper use of the scientific evidence about toxicity and environmental pollution, or to recognise ethical dilemmas created by new data systems. Those failures were partly due to a global "race to the bottom", as corporations sought to cut costs. In each case, too, national laws seemed incapable of holding the new class of global corporations to account.

Ruggie's task for the UN was not only to try to pin down the issues, but also to find ways to help corporations to recognise that they ultimately had a vested interested in creating and abiding by codes of good citizenship.

Along the way, he devised what are now known as the Ruggie Principles. In essence, these hold that states must protect people against human rights abuses, including environmental abuse, while companies must respect those rights and show due diligence when trading with others, and that those who are harmed must have proper redress.

This is good as far as it goes. But Ruggie recognises that with law mostly constrained by national borders, corporate gunslingers have plenty of places to hide. As jurisprudence falters, public opprobrium may be a more potent weapon. Like capital, it cares little for borders. And while corporations appear strong, their brands ? the crucial interface with their customers ? are uniquely vulnerable to reputational damage. Long before the legal cases over Bhopal, Union Carbide was commercially crippled by the disgust caused by its killing of thousands of Indians. It was eventually bought out by a rival.

These days, to hurry such villains to the gallows, there is a new breed of multinational organisation dedicated to drawing attention to the failings of big corporations. Non-governmental organisations like Global Witness and Greenpeace bring these cases to the court of public opinion.

In Make It a Green Peace!, historian Frank Zelko charts the rise of Greenpeace. It began in the US as a bunch of west-coast hippies who, copies of the I Ching in hand, sailed into nuclear test zones in the Pacific to disrupt whalers. He records its transformation into professional campaigners, using media-savvy PR to wage war on brands they deem responsible for trashing rainforests, releasing toxins or warming the planet.

Early Greenpeace pioneers have written their own entertaining memoirs, but this densely sourced narrative is the definitive independent account, especially of the early years ? and is highly readable. Greenpeace emerges as a kind of green version of the Spanish Inquisition, engaged in crude but effective intimidation of corporate foes. When faced with a media frenzy over their activities, the companies swiftly "find" the road to green salvation.

Of course, the irony is that in the process, Greenpeace, too, has become a brand. It is still tainted, Zelko notes, by some false accusations it made in the 1990s against Shell, when the company ditched a decommissioned oil rig into the Atlantic deeps.

The stakes are high, but the lesson is that when it comes to holding mega-corporations to account, power over global media often trumps national law.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Nowhere to run..."

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Pyongyang glitters but most of NKorea still dark

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? The heart of this city, once famous for its Dickensian darkness, now pulsates with neon.

Glossy new construction downtown has altered the Pyongyang skyline. Inside supermarkets where shopgirls wear faux French designer labels, people with money can buy Italian wine, Swiss chocolates, kiwifruit imported from New Zealand and fresh-baked croissants. They can get facials, lie in tanning booths, play a round of mini golf or sip cappuccinos.

Nearly 2 million people are using cell phones. Computer shops can't keep up with demand for North Korea's locally distributed tablet computer, popularly known here as "iPads." A shiny new cancer institute features a $900,000 X-ray machine imported from Europe.

Pyongyang has long been a city apart from the rest of North Korea, the showcase capital dubbed a "socialist fairyland" by state media.

But a year after new leader Kim Jong Un promised publicly to bring an end to the "era of belt-tightening" and economic hardship in North Korea, the gap between the haves and have-nots so far has only grown with Pyongyang's transformation.

Beyond the paved main streets of the capital, life remains grindingly tough. Food is rationed, electricity is a precious commodity and people get around by walking, cycling or hopping into the backs of trucks. Most homes lack running water or plumbing. Health care is free, but aid workers say medicine is in short supply.

___

For decades, North Korea seemed a country trapped in time. Rickety streetcars shuddered past concrete-block apartment buildings with broken window panes, chipping pastel paint and crumbling front steps.

But since 2010, as part of the campaign to build a new city for their new leader, Pyongyang has been under construction. Scaffolding covers the fronts of scores of buildings across the city. Red banners painted with slogan "At a breath" ? implying breakneck work at a breathless pace ? flutter from the skeletons of skyscrapers built by soldiers.

Often, the soldiers are scrawny conscripts in thin canvas sneakers piling bricks onto stretchers or hauling them by hand. In 2011, they set up temporary work camps along the Taedong River, makeshift shantytowns decorated by red flags.

Their work focused on downtown Changjon Street, where ramshackle cottages were torn down to make way for department stores, restaurants and high-rise apartments.

Today, the street would not look out of place in Seoul or Shanghai. Indeed, many of the goods ? Hershey's Kisses, Coca-Cola and Doritos ? on sale at the new supermarket were imported from China and Singapore.

"What is a 'delicatessen'?" a North Korean asked as a butcher in a white chef's hat sliced tuna for takeaway sashimi beneath a deli sign written in English. Upstairs, baristas were serving Italian espressos, bakers were churning out baguettes and white wedding cakes.

___

One new Changjon Street resident, Mun Kang Sun, gave The Associated Press a tour of the apartment she and her husband were granted in recognition for her work at the Kim Jong Suk Textile Factory.

A framed wedding portrait hangs on the wall above their Western-style bed. There's a washing machine in the bathroom, an IBM computer in the study and a 42-inch widescreen TV. AP was not allowed to visit other apartments to compare whether the furnishings are typical for Pyongyang residents.

Orphaned as a child, Mun said she began working in factories at age 16. She earned the title "hero of the republic" after exceeding her work quota by 200 percent for 13 years. She says she accomplished that by dashing around the factory floor operating four or five machines at once.

"When we heard the news that we'd get a nest where we can rest, and we got the key for our apartment and took a look around, we were totally shocked because the house is so nice," said her husband, Kim Hyok. "It's still hard to believe this is my home; it still feels like we're living in a hotel."

Though the apartment has faucets, old habits die hard. The bathtub was still filled with water, a bucket bobbing in the tub, as in countless homes across the country where water is pumped from a well, carried in by hand and used sparingly.

___

Elsewhere in the city, aging buildings are getting upgraded. But most are still drafty, the walls poorly insulated, even in the capital. Elevators and heat are rare. North Koreans are accustomed to wearing winter jackets and thermal underwear indoors from October to April.

Power cuts have been less frequent in Pyongyang since the opening of a hydroelectric power station to the northwest, but it's still common for the lights to go out in the middle of dinner. Most people just carry on drinking and eating.

Outside Pyongyang, nightfall comes early. In Ryonggang, west of the capital, lights were out as soon as the sun set. At one inn, two women stood chatting quietly in a lobby lit with a candle as a shrill voice from a radio broadcast chortled from loudspeakers nearby.

Kim Jong Jin's farm cottage in Hamhung has a generator, allowing him and his wife to watch DVDs at night on a TV they carefully cover during the day with a frilly lace veil.

Their thimble of a home is simple but spotless, the papered floors clean enough to eat from. Water is piped into a well in the kitchen. Heat comes from the traditional Korean "ondol" system of feeding an underground furnace with wood. Waste is turned into methane gas for cooking. Food for the household comes from the garden outside.

But not everyone lives in such relative comfort as the Kims, whose home government officials are willing to show off. There are stark signs of poverty across the country. A mother huddles over a child as she sits shivering by the side of the road. Barefoot boys in a village destroyed by floods scamper about dressed in little more than underwear. Sharp shoulders and splotchy faces betray the gnawing hunger of young soldiers.

Beyond the paved, pocked highways that radiate from Pyongyang, there are few roads between the denuded mountains, just dirt paths that become dangerously muddy with rainfall and treacherously slippery in winter. Villagers struggle to clear snow with makeshift shovels crafted out of planks of wood.

Private cars are a rarity outside the capital, and gasoline is scarce. In Hamhung, North Korea's second-largest city, soldiers cram into the backs of trucks powered by wood-burning stoves that send smoke billowing behind them.

Goods are strapped to the back of bicycles, from firewood to dead pigs. Old men sit crouched by the side of the road with bike pumps, offering to fix flats. Oxen, and people, plod past pulling carts.

The closest most may get to the capital in their lifetime is by seeing it on state TV. For them, Pyongyang would truly seem like a fairyland.

___

Life in the North Korean countryside would be familiar to South Koreans old enough to recall the poverty in their nation just after the Korean War. Indeed, into the 1970s, North Korea was the richer of the two Koreas.

Today, newly affluent South Korea has the world's 15th-largest economy. In North Korea, meanwhile, two-thirds of people struggle to find their daily meal, according to the World Food Program.

North Koreans acknowledge the devastating economic loss of the Soviet safety net in the early 1990s. But they blame the county's growing international isolation on the U.S., its Korean War foe, which has led efforts to punish North Korea for developing its nuclear weapons program.

Pyongyang instead has turned to fledgling trade with companies in China, Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Egypt and elsewhere. These joint ventures keep the shelves in the capital stocked with goods, computer labs filled with PCs, streets crowded with VWs, in spite of sanctions.

For years, foreign goods and customs were regarded with practiced suspicion, even as they were secretly coveted. Kim Jong Un has addressed that curiosity by encouraging trade and by quoting his father in saying North Korea is "looking out onto the world" ? a country that must become familiar with international customs even if it continues to prefer its own.

Kim has not made it significantly easier for North Koreans to travel, channel surf or read travelogues posted online, but he is arranging to bring the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben to them in the form of a miniature world park slated to open later this year.

The flow of cash and goods has created a burgeoning middle class in the capital. Pyongyang now has a parade of fashionistas in eye-popping belted jackets, sparkly barrettes clipped to their hair, fingernails painted with a clear gloss. At one European-style restaurant last week, a young couple on a date sipped cocktails topped off with Maraschino cherries and feasted on pizza, their cellphones laid on the table.

At one beauty salon, the rage is for short cuts made popular by singers from the all-girl military Moranbong band who have jazzed up North Korea's staid performance scene with their bobbed hair, little black dresses and electric guitars.

"There are so many young women asking to get their hair done like them," hairstylist Chae Cho Yong said.

___

While the differences between the showcase capital and the hardscrabble countryside are growing starker, one thing remains the same: the authoritarian rule and the intricate web of laws governing life in the Stalinist state.

Even as they laugh, North Koreans calibrate their words. Criticism of the state and leadership is not only taboo but dangerous; when asked for their opinion, most people parrot phrases they've heard in state media, still the safest way to answer questions in a country where state security remains tight and terrifying.

Very few have access to the Internet, cable TV, international phone lines. It's still illegal for them to interact without permission with foreigners, who are kept on a tight leash and discouraged from making impromptu visits to homes, shops, restaurants and offices.

Around Chae, the cavernous barber shop was empty, not a single customer in the brand new swivel seats.

An employee explained that most North Koreans are at weekly ideology study sessions on Saturdays, the only day of the week foreigners are allowed inside.

___

Follow AP's bureau chief for Pyongyang and Seoul at www.twitter.com/newsjean.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pyongyang-glitters-most-nkorea-still-dark-050645191.html

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95% Gimme The Loot

All Critics (41) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (39) | Rotten (2)

A thousand-watt jolt of mischief, a spunky, funky, ebullient indie that packs its 81 minutes with cinematic exhilaration.

It may be a slight movie, but it has its sunny charms.

A movie about teenage taggers in the Bronx should be fast and raw, scruffy and loose, and Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot is just that.

As it lopes along, the movie offers a warm but very sharp portrait of New York's have-nots and their uneasy relationship with the haves.

"Gimme the Loot" shouldn't be as appealing and exuberant as it is, it really shouldn't.

Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson are terrific in the main roles. So is Zo? Lescaze as Ginnie, a spoiled white kid who teaches the taggers a thing or two about drift and being dissolute.

A slim, low-budget coming-of-age tale whose richness lies entirely in its interstices. A keenly observed work that celebrates the unfettered joys of youth, and rewards by reminding of the power of a simple tale told well.

Simultaneously real and hopeful, "Loot" has almost no plot, but when the setting is so fresh and the characters feel so raw and alive, who needs one?

Ghetto laughs with a sophisticated point of view.

...a magical, summery treat.

Promotes robbery and can't be serious in expecting us to care whether Malcolm and Sofia become more than friends.

The winner of the Indie Spirit 'One to Watch' award could never work again and will always have a memorable New York City film to his credit.

An impressive debut feature, Gimme the Loot is also an unusual take on characters who want to leave their stamp on "the city that never sleeps."

Much more grownup than it looks, Gimme the Loot is that rare teen-centric film whose brisk pace is unburdened by sentimentality.

Writer-director Adam Leon has crafted a classic New York story, a film imbued with the fast rhythms and muggy sensations of city life during the summer.

No quotes approved yet for Gimme The Loot. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gimme_the_loot_2012/

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Google Kills Chrome's Unpopular Redesigned New Tab Page Before It Hits Stable Channel

At the end of last year, Google announced that it would start testing a number of changes to Chrome’s New Tab page. The changes that were currently percolating through the development channels were anything but popular. Instead of the usual eight links to your most-visited sites, the Chrome beta channel currently features a large Google Search box and just your four most-visited links. Now, it looks like Google is giving up on these changes. The other major change that was massively annoying (and made me switch back to the stable channel, too), was that Google added an “Apps” tab to the bookmarks bar and removed the usual shortcuts to web apps from the Chrome Web Store from the second page of the New Tab page. The latest beta version of Chrome has now reverted back to the old New Tab page. As intrepid Google watcher (and now Google employee) Francois Beaufort noticed last week, the offline version of Chrome now renders two rows with four tiles each again, with the Google Search box still sitting above these, though). Chances are this design will now make its way through the release channels. It’s not clear what will happen to the “Apps” icon in the bookmarks bar, though. You can still see what the experience would have looked like by switching the “Enable Instant extended API” to “enabled” in the latest Chrome beta.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/GHAP7-YmU5Q/

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Turkey's leader hits a nerve over country's "national drink"

By Jonathon Burch

ANKARA (Reuters) - If you are looking for one sure way to split public opinion in Turkey, just bring up the word alcohol.

That is what Turkey's often divisive prime minister did late on Friday when he pronounced that the national drink was not beer, nor the aniseed spirit raki - choice tipple of Turkey's founding father - but the non-alcoholic yoghurt drink ayran.

Given the setting of his speech - a symposium on global alcohol policy in Istanbul - Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's comments appeared far from controversial, but so sensitive is the topic that the mere mention of it by the pious leader, known for his dislike of alcohol, has Turkey's secularists up in arms.

During the single-party rule of the Turkish Republic's early years by what is now the country's main - and staunchly secularist - opposition party, state promotion of alcohol amounted to propaganda, Erdogan said.

"Beer was unfortunately presented as a national drink. However, our national drink is ayran," he said, referring to the staple lunchtime refreshment of yoghurt, water and salt, usually swilled down with a meaty kebab.

"There is no way you can defend as a lifestyle the consumption of alcohol which has no benefit to society, but on the contrary inflicts harm," Erdogan continued.

No sooner had he made his remarks, broadcast live on television, than social media lit up with derisive comments symptomatic of the gaping divide between Turkey's conservative Muslims on the one hand and secularists on the other.

"It's true, all of you drink ayran with your pasta inside your mosques," read one comment directed at Erdogan's official Twitter account.

"We take example from our FOREFATHER who drank our National Drink: raki," the message continued, referring to Turkey's founder, soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was often photographed with a glass of the anisette spirit in hand.

"Erdogan, will you do a shot of ayran with me?" taunted another user on Twitter, while others lamented the prime minister's intrusion into their lives: "What's it to you what the nation drinks? You go drink ayran. Leave me alone."

SECULAR UNEASE

Behind the jibes lies a deeper unease among Erdogan's opponents who say his government, which has its roots in political Islam, is eroding the secular foundation of modern Turkey, not least through its policies on alcohol.

Erdogan's government has imposed some of the highest consumption taxes on alcohol in the world, and under its tenure an increasing number of municipalities have imposed restrictions on drinking in public as well as on national advertising.

Most recently it banned alcohol sales on all domestic and some international flights of its national carrier.

The government says it is not attempting to interfere in people's lives and is simply trying to bring the country up to European norms by controlling alcohol sales and protecting the younger generation as it negotiates to enter the European Union.

But unlike Western countries, which also impose restrictions, Turkey does not have an alcohol problem. Only six percent of Turkish households consumed alcoholic drinks in 2008, down from eight percent in 2003, according to the Betam research centre at Istanbul's Bahcesehir University.

For many Turks it is simply the prime minister's authoritarian style they have an issue with. Often brusque in manner, Erdogan can come across as a stern father, also lecturing people on the dangers of cigarettes and even suggesting how many children families should have.

But in a country where Erdogan has dominated politics virtually unchallenged for the past decade, his word is final. Shares in Turkey's top listed dairy producer Pinar Sut, which makes ayran, rose 3 percent shortly after Erdogan's remarks.

(Writing by Jonathon Burch; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkeys-leader-hits-nerve-over-countrys-national-drink-115036245.html

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Grocery delivery service is greener than driving to the store

Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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Contact: Michelle Ma
mcma@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."

Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.

As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.

They also discovered significant savings for companies 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.

"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."

The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.

The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.

Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.

In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.

###

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu or 206-543-3747.

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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Contact: Michelle Ma
mcma@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.

University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."

Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.

As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.

They also discovered significant savings for companies 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.

"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."

The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.

The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.

They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.

Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.

"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.

Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.

In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.

###

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu or 206-543-3747.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uow-gd042613.php

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Pattern seen in alleged chemical arms use in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) ? The instances in which chemical weapons are alleged to have been used in Syria were purportedly small in scale: nothing along the lines of Saddam Hussein's 1988 attack in Kurdish Iraq that killed thousands.

That raises the question of who would stand to gain as President Bashar Assad's regime and the opposition trade blame for the alleged attacks, and proof remains elusive.

Analysts say the answer could lie in the past ? the regime has a pattern of gradually introducing a weapon to the conflict to test the international community's response.

The U.S. said last week that intelligence indicates the Syrian military has likely used sarin, a deadly nerve agent, on at least two occasions in the civil war, echoing similar assessments from Israel, France and Britain. Syria's rebels accuse the regime of firing chemical weapons on at least four occasions, while the government denies the charges and says opposition fighters have used chemical agents in a bid to frame it.

But using chemical weapons to try to force foreign intervention would be a huge gamble for the opposition, and one that could easily backfire. It would undoubtedly taint the rebellion in the eyes of the international community and seriously strain its credibility.

Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva, said it would also be difficult for the rebels to successfully employ chemical agents.

"It's very difficult to weaponize chemical weapons," he said. "It needs a special warhead, for the artillery a special fuse."

In the chaos of Syria's civil war, pinning down definitive proof on the alleged use of weapons of mass destruction is a tricky task with high stakes. President Barack Obama has said any use of chemical arms ? or the transfer of stockpiles to terrorists ? would cross a "red line" and carry "enormous consequences."

Already, the White House's announcement that the Syrian regime appears to have used chemical arms has ratcheted up the pressure on Obama to move forcefully. He has sought to temper expectations of a quick U.S. response, saying too little is known about the alleged attacks to take action now.

Analysts suggest that a limited introduction of the weapons, with little ostensible military gain, could be an attempt by the Syrian government to test the West's resolve while retaining the veil of plausible deniability. This approach would also allow foreign powers eager to avoid a costly intervention in Syria to remain on the sidelines, while at the same time opening the door for the regime to use the weapons down the road.

"If it's testing the water, and we're going to turn a blind eye, it could be used widely, repeatedly," Alani said. "If you are silent once, you will be silent twice."

The slow introduction of a weapon to gauge the West's response fits a pattern of behavior the Assad regime has demonstrated since the uprising began in March 2011, according to Joseph Holliday, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

When largely peaceful protesters initially took to the streets, the regime responded with small arms fire and a wave of arrests. As the government ramped up its violent crackdown, the opposition began to take up arms in late 2011, prompting yet another escalation in force by the regime.

In early 2012, government troops began using heavy weapons, first in a relatively restrained manner on military targets.

"Once they could confirm that there wasn't going to be a major reaction from the West, they were able to expand the use of artillery," Holliday said.

By the summer of 2012, government troops were pounding rebellious neighborhoods with tank fire, field cannons and mortars, but the rebellion was stronger than ever, prompting Assad to turn to his air force, and the regime's MiG fighter jets and helicopter gunships began to strike military targets in rural areas.

After the government was satisfied that the international community wasn't going to impose a no-fly zone like NATO did in Libya, Assad unleashed the full might of his air power, and warplanes have been indiscriminately bombing rebel-held areas since.

"It all fits the pattern of being able to do this incrementally," Holliday said.

"It's been important for the regime to introduce these capabilities as gradually as possible so that they don't trip the international community's red lines," he added. "I think this is basically a modus operandi that the Assad regime has established and tested with the United States, and confirmed that it works, and he's using it again with chemical weapons."

Syria has never confirmed it even has chemical weapons. But it is believed to possess substantial stockpiles of mustard gas and a range of nerve agents, including sarin, a highly toxic substance that can suffocate its victims by paralyzing muscles around their lungs.

Concern rose last summer when then-Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a news conference that Damascus would only use chemical or biological weapons in case of foreign attack, not against its own people. The ministry then tried to blur the issue, saying it had never acknowledged having such arms.

Weapons of mass destruction are generally viewed as a deterrent against foreign attack, and their use a sign of desperation. But Assad appears far from desperate at the moment, and in fact is operating from a position of relative strength.

While much of northern Syria has fallen to the rebels, the government's hold on Damascus is firm and its forces have been on the offensive in the capital's suburbs and in the countryside near the border with Lebanon. In the northwest, regime troops recently opened up a key supply road to soldiers fighting in the embattled city of Aleppo.

Two of the alleged attacks the Syrian opposition blames on the regime took place in and around Aleppo: one in Khan al-Assal west of the city on March 19, and another in the contested Shiekh Maqsoud neighborhood on April 13. The other alleged instances were in the central city of Homs on Dec. 23 and in the village of Otaybah outside Damascus on March 19.

It is not clear exactly how many people died in those attacks because of the scarcity of credible information. The Syrian government seals off areas it controls to journalists and outside observers, making details of the attacks sketchy. But reports from anti-Assad activists and the government provide a basic outline.

Opposition activists have posted videos and pictures online of alleged victims of the attacks foaming at the mouth or with blister burns ? symptoms consistent with chemical weapons attacks, but also other munitions. The Syrian state news agency, after one attack it blamed on rebels, published photos of casualties, including children. None showed signs of physical injuries.

Both sides in the civil war, which has already killed more than 70,000 people, have tried to use the issue to sway international opinion.

Rebels have been clamoring for more robust international action against the Assad regime. At a recent gathering in Turkey of the rebellion's international supporters, the opposition political leadership demanded drone strikes on regime targets and the imposition of a no-fly zone, and it reiterated calls for transfers of heavier weapons to its fighters.

The regime has seized on the opposition's demands for outside support to bolster its argument that rebels may have used chemical weapons to frame the government and precipitate foreign intervention.

In December, after rebels captured a chlorine factory in Aleppo, the government warned the opposition could be planning a chemical attack to frame the regime. To back up its assertions, the state news agency pointed to internet videos that purported to show regime opponents experimenting with poisons on mice and rabbits.

In the video, a masked man mixes gases in a glass box containing two rabbits. About a minute later, the animals start to spasm and then collapse. A narrator then says, "This is what will happen to you, Assad supporters." The origin of the video was not known.

Alani dismissed the possibility of the rebels, including Islamic extremist groups among the most powerful opposition fighting factions, carrying out a chlorine attack.

He noted that al-Qaida militants used chlorine on at least two occasions in Iraq in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, but abandoned the practice because "the impact of the chlorine was far less than conventional explosives."

___

Follow Ryan Lucas on Twitter at www.twitter.com/relucasz

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pattern-seen-alleged-chemical-arms-syria-191327590.html

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Egypt's Mursi climbs down, to seek compromise on judges

By Paul Taylor and Omar Fahmy

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi and top judges agreed on Sunday to seek a compromise to defuse a battle over Islamist attempts to force out thousands of judges that have deeply polarized the Arab world's most populous nation.

Mursi's Islamist allies had proposed legislation to purge more than 3,000 judges at a stroke by reducing their mandatory retirement age to 60 from 70 to sweep away senior jurists appointed under autocratic former President Hosni Mubarak.

But after nearly three hours of talks, the president's office and the Supreme Judicial Council said they had agreed to launch a conference on the future of the justice system that would work out a reform acceptable to both sides.

The deal appeared to be a significant climbdown by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the face of fierce resistance to its push for a fast-track law to "cleanse the judiciary".

A presidential spokesman said in a statement read on state television that Mursi had praised the idea of a justice conference and would start preparatory sessions at the presidency on Tuesday.

Mursi would "personally adopt all the conclusions of this conference from project laws to present it to the legislative council," he said.

Mohamed Mumtaz, president of the Supreme Judicial Council, gave an almost identically worded statement.

A judicial source said discussion of the Islamist draft law that sparked an outcry among judges, lawyers, opposition parties and civil rights groups, would be frozen until after the conference and the president would present a new draft.

REMNANTS OR SAVIOURS?

The Brotherhood accuses many judges of being remnants of the previous regime, who abuse their position to obstruct elections and laws proposed by bodies elected since the uprising that overthrew Mubarak in 2011, and of frustrating efforts to bring corrupt former officials to justice.

The secular, liberal and left-wing opposition, as well as ultra-conservative Salafi Islamists, charge that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to monopolize power by purging independent judges to make way for its own place men in key courts.

The opposition is also demanding the removal of Prosecutor General Talaat Ibrahim, whose appointment by Mursi was ruled illegal by an appeals court. Ibrahim, accused of bias towards the Islamists in his conduct, is appealing against the ruling.

Several thousand judges held a protest rally last week to denounce the planned amendment of the Judicial Authority Law in the upper house of parliament as unconstitutional.

But the floor leader of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Essam El-Arian, said on Friday lawmakers should press ahead with the new law without delay.

The battle over the judiciary has triggered street violence with the Brotherhood holding a mass demonstration on April 19 to demand a "cleansing of the judiciary" that ended in clashes.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-mursi-climbs-down-seek-compromise-judges-155547288.html

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Rambler Takes Home The Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon Grand Prize, Learn To Drive And Radical Are Runners Up

The past 24 hours have just flown by for the hundreds of hackers here at the Disrupt NY Hackathon, but the sun is finally up and it’s time to pass judgment on their caffeine-fueled projects. As it turns out, there’s a ton of them here — with 164 registered projects this is our biggest Hackathon yet, and each presenter only had 60 seconds to wow our judges (not to mention the rest of the audience). As you might guess there was no shortage of amazing projects that came together in a single day, but our judges could only choose one team to take home our $5,000 grand prize. Anyway, that’s enough out of me — meet our newest Hackathon winner! Winner: Rambler Rambler, created by William Hockey, Zach Perret and Michael Kelly, is a web app that lets users view their credit and debit card transactions on a map. During the dev process, the team tapped the Foursquare API for locations and the Plaid API to access user spending data. Runner-up #1: Learn To Drive Learn To Drive, created by Jared Zoneraich, Jemma Issroff, Kenny Song, and Nicholas Joseph, is an app for the GM vehicle platform that acts as a virtual driving instructor by speaking driving instructions aloud and display driving statistics like miles driven, hours driven, and hours driven at night. Runner-up #2: Radical Radical, created by Sam Saccone, Carl Sednaoui, and Jeff Escalante, allows users to create attractive calendars and embed on webpages with a single line of code. These three teams will also demo their projects on the main Disrupt stage on Wednesday afternoon, but that’s not to say everyone else is going home empty-handed. Hackathon sponsors Appery.io, AT&T, CrunchBase, General Motors, Microsoft Bizspark, Microsoft Skydrive, NewAer, Pearson, Samsung, Twilio, Visa, Wrigley and Yammer have also graciously doled out prizes of their own for the most innovative and interesting uses of their APIs and services. And just who decided the fate of these sleep-deprived hackers? Our panel of judges includes Mahaya CEO Tarikh Korula, Path101 co-founder Charlie O?Donnell, founder/CEO of The Muse Kathryn Minshew, bit.ly chief?scientist?Hilary Mason, FuturePerfect Ventures founding partner Jalak Jobanputra, and TechStars NYC Managing Director David Tisch.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Ugb3ZVF49D4/

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Mother of bomb suspects found deeper spirituality

BOSTON (AP) ? In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.

But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.

Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.

Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons ? Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured ? are innocent.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Amid the scrutiny, Tsarnaeva and her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, say they have put off the idea of any trip to the U.S. to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit Dzhokhar in jail. Tsarnaev told the AP on Sunday he was too ill to travel to the U.S. Tsarnaeva faces a 2012 shoplifting charge in a Boston suburb, though it was unclear whether that was a deterrent.

At a news conference in Dagestan with Anzor last week, Tsarnaeva appeared overwhelmed with grief one moment, defiant the next. "They already are talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist," she said. "They already want me, him and all of us to look (like) terrorists."

Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Mass. With four children, Anzor and Zubeidat qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.

Zubeidat took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor, who had studied law, fixed cars.

By some accounts, the family was tolerant.

Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat's two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.

"I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was," Smith told the newspaper. "Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter."

Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.

"I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said.

By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.

"She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised," Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog. "She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting."

Kilzer wrote that Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings. But she stopped visiting the family's home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, she "started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims."

"It's real," Tsarnaeva said, according to Kilzer. "My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet."

In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat's eldest son got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a child who is about 3 years old.

Zubeidat married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.

It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor and Zubeidat divorced in 2011.

About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service.

The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010. That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan at the family's home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother's name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.

After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan. The Russians also recorded Zubeidat talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

Anzor's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.

While Tamerlan was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Mass., and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a department store.

She failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.

___

Seddon reported from Makhachkala, Russia. Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mother-bomb-suspects-found-deeper-spirituality-224317582.html

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Lawyer: Jailed pair shocked by Boston bomb claims

BOSTON (AP) ? Two college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who were jailed by immigration authorities the day after his capture had nothing to do with the deadly attack and had seen no hints that he harbored any violent thoughts or terrorist sympathies, a lawyer for one of them said Friday.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, who are from Kazakhstan, were classmates with Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. They appeared alongside him in a recent photograph of a group of young men visiting New York City's Times Square. They were detained April 20 after being questioned in connection with the bombing, which had killed three people and injured more than 260 others a few days earlier.

"These kids are just as shocked and horrified about what happened as everyone else," Kadyrbayev's lawyer, Robert Stahl, said in a phone interview. "They can't even fathom something like this from a kid who seemed to be a typical young college student."

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev have been interviewed at length, twice, by FBI agents and have cooperated fully, said Stahl, a former federal prosecutor. They are not suspects but are being held for violating their student visas by not regularly attending classes, Stahl said. They are being detained at a county jail in Boston.

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry said Monday night that U.S. authorities came across the two while searching for "possible links and contacts" to Tsarnaev, a sophomore at the university. U.S. immigration officials have declined to discuss the reasons why the men were detained.

John Hoey, an assistant chancellor at UMass Dartmouth, said Kadyrbayev is no longer enrolled; he was last a student in the fall. Tazhayakov is enrolled.

The pair had lived at an off-campus apartment in New Bedford, about 60 miles south of Boston, and got around in a car registered to Kadyrbayev with a souvenir plate that says "Terrorista (hash)1." The car was pictured on Tsarnaev's Twitter feed in March.

That plate was just a joke gift from some of Kadyrbayev's friends, meant to invoke his penchant for late-night partying rather than his political sentiments, Stahl said.

"It's such a silly thing. Bad timing," Stahl said. "His desire is to be released so he can return home. He would like to go home to the comfort of his family. You can imagine being 19 years old and having SWAT teams break down your door. It's a terrible situation."

Stahl said the young Kazakhs didn't see Tsarnaev in the days before or after the April 15 bombing.

Tazhayakov's lawyer, Thomas Kirsch, did not immediately return a phone call or an email message Friday evening.

Tsarnaev, who was captured hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston yard after a lengthy manhunt, is in federal custody. His older brother, the other identified suspect in the bombing, died after a shootout with police. Their mother has said the allegations against them are lies.

___

Associated Press writer Erika Niedowski contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lawyer-jailed-pair-shocked-boston-bomb-claims-014232408.html

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Jews ease back into Tunisia for famed pilgrimage

Jewish pilgrims gather for a procession at the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. They come to celebrate the annual rites at El-Ghriba, the oldest Jewish monument built in Africa more than 2,500 years ago. On April 11, 2002 a deadly attack on the synagogue killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.(AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

Jewish pilgrims gather for a procession at the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. They come to celebrate the annual rites at El-Ghriba, the oldest Jewish monument built in Africa more than 2,500 years ago. On April 11, 2002 a deadly attack on the synagogue killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.(AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

Jewish pilgrims are gathered for a procession at the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. They come to celebrate the annual rites at El-Ghriba, the oldest Jewish monument built in Africa more than 2,500 years ago. On April 11, 2002 a deadly attack on the synagogue killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.(AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

Jewish pilgrims are gathered for a procession at the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. They come to celebrate the annual rites at El-Ghriba, the oldest Jewish monument built in Africa more than 2,500 years ago. On April 11, 2002 a deadly attack on the synagogue killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.(AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

Rabbi Mamou reads a holy book during the annual Jewish pilgrimage at the Ghriba synagogue in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. The pilgrimage to the synagogue commemorates the April 11, 2002 deadly attack on the synagogue that killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

Jewish pilgrims are gathered at the entrance of the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage in the resort of Djerba, Tunisia, Friday April 26, 2013. The pilgrimage to the synagogue commemorates the April 11, 2002 deadly attack on the synagogue that killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.(AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

DJERBA, Tunisia (AP) ? Under a bright Mediterranean sun Saturday, Jews whose forebears once thronged Tunisia are trekking to a celebrated synagogue under the protection of police ? as organizers try to inject new momentum to an annual pilgrimage that's been depleted in recent years by fears of anti-Semitism.

Jewish leaders hope the three-day pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest, on the island of Djerba is regaining momentum after attendance plummeted in the wake of a 2002 al-Qaida bombing and lingering safety concerns following Tunisia's revolution two years ago.

The pilgrimage evokes a larger issue for Tunisia: How to convince Jews and other foreigners that stability has returned enough to merit a visit and help revive a weakened economy. The tourism trade accounts for about 400,000 jobs and 7 percent of economic output in Tunisia, an overwhelmingly Muslim country of nearly 11 million.

Despite the setbacks in recent years, Tunisia's Jews were sounding optimistic.

"This year will be better. The atmosphere is good, and the preparations have been made carefully," said Perez Trabelsi, the president of Ghriba's operating committee, and a Djerba native. "Attendance will go up from one year to the next, to return to its top level ? like before."

At its peak in 2000, about 8,000 Jews came ? many from Israel, Italy and France, where they or their forebears had moved over the years. Such crowds haven't returned since an al-Qaida-linked militant detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue in 2002, killing 21 people, mostly German tourists ? and badly jolting the now-tiny Jewish community.

The pilgrimage was called off in 2011 in the wake of Tunisia's revolution, when major street protests ousted longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia, and some ultraconservative Muslims called Salafis chanted anti-Semitic slogans at their rallies. Last year, the pilgrimage resumed on a tiny scale: Only 100 or so foreigners came. This year, community leaders hope 300 to 500 will have come.

Rene Trabelsi, a Paris-based tour operator, said the Tunisian government ? led by the moderate Islamic party Ennahda ? has "gone beyond our hopes" in providing security measures, police and troops for the pilgrimage.

After Saturday's Sabbath, the three-day pilgrimage was expected to culminate Sunday with the sale of necklaces, scarves and other craftwork to raise money for the synagogue. On Friday, as it got underway, families lit candles and the faithful marched through a white-washed archway lined with bunting and Tunisia's red crescent-and-star flag into the ornate, blue-and-white synagogue.

Jews have been living in Djerba since 500 B.C. The Jewish population has shrunk to 1,500, down from 100,000 in the 1960s. Most left following the 1967 war between Israel and Arab countries, and Socialist economic policies adopted by the government in the late 1960s also drove away many Jewish business owners.

Djerba, a dusty island of palm trees and olive groves, lures hundreds of thousands of tourists every year ? mainly Germans and French ? for its sandy beaches and rich history. The Ghriba synagogue, said to date to 586 B.C., itself once drew up to 2,000 visitors per day, Jewish leaders have said.

The site is rich with legend. The first Jews who arrived were said to have brought a stone from the ancient temple of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Babylonians. The stone is kept in a grotto at the synagogue. Women and children descend into the grotto to place eggs scrawled with wishful messages on them.

The pilgrims, mostly Sephardic Jews with roots in Tunisia, come for the festivities starting 33 days after the Jewish holiday of Passover that include singing, dancing and drinking the traditional "boukha" brandy made from dates or figs.

At poolside at a posh Djerba hotel, some pilgrims reveled in the festivities ? and brushed off any concerns.

Emile Arki, a 63-year-old businessman who splits his time between Paris and California, said all too often "what's happening in Tunisia is exaggerated with an alarmist tone ... We were well greeted at the airport. The people are smiling. I don't see why anybody should be afraid."

The religious affairs minister sent an adviser to "congratulate our Jewish brothers during their festival," and the tourism minister was expected on Sunday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-27-Tunisia-Jewish%20Pilgrimage/id-bd947c280c1440e8a68860608f770972

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