Hey, the Nexus 5 rumor mill doesn't sleep. These are supposedly some of the first images taken with the smartphone's camera, and from the looks of this shot, it might not be quite as horrible as its predecessor
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CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's top prosecutor on Monday ordered an investigation into a complaint that satirist Bassem Youssef, known as the country's "Jon Stewart," harmed national interests by ridiculing the country's military in his first program of the season.
The decision could be a prelude to further action against the popular comedian such as questioning and a possible trial, posing a litmus test for the deeply divided country's tolerance for criticism of the military and its leaders nearly four months after Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was toppled in a coup.
Critics have expressed concerns that the military could expand a deadly crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, which won a series of elections after the 2011 revolution but came under allegations it was trying to monopolize power.
While most Egyptians appear to support the military's actions against the Islamists, the detentions earlier this year of an Egyptian labor lawyer and a journalist prompted rights activists to complain the military-backed government was trying to silence any dissent.
Youssef could not be reached for comment on the complaints and has remained largely silent on the issue, although he took to Twitter after Friday's show to remind the public: "It is only an episode in a program, people."
Youssef's "Daily Show"-style program has brought a new type of political satire to Egypt, and he gained plaudits for mercilessly skewering Morsi and his Islamist supporters for mixing religion and politics and for failing to implement much-needed reforms amid more than two years of turmoil following the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
But the first show of the season faced a delicate balance as Youssef risked angering his mainly liberal fan base by criticizing the new military-backed government and army leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, lionized in the media as a hero for removing the Brotherhood from power. Anything else would be seen as caving to pressure.
The 39-year-old surgeon-turned-satirist answered in Friday's episode of "El-Bernameg" — Arabic for "The Program" — by taking aim at the over-the-top, pro-military fervor sweeping Egyptians and jabs at el-Sissi with a series of jokes and skits.
The office of chief prosecutor Hesham Barakat said Monday it was investigating Youssef on a complaint that he disturbed the peace, harmed public interests, created chaos, sowed sedition and threatened security and peace. It also alleged that Youssef inappropriately ridiculed the Egyptian people, the armed forces as well as all "honorable national icons" without respect for traditions and customs.
Barakat's office received several complaints against Youssef after the program, but chose just one to be investigated in line with standing policy to focus on the best written and documented allegations.
The show comes against the backdrop of rising bitterness between the sides supporting and opposing Morsi, who has been detained and held at an undisclosed location since July 3. The ousted leader is scheduled to go on trial on Nov. 4 for allegedly inciting supporters to kill protesters outside his presidential palace in Cairo last December.
Many Egyptians are watching what happens to Youssef as a measure of whether the government installed by the military after Morsi's July 3 ouster is serious about shepherding the country toward democracy and freedom.
But activists said the fact that Barakat ordered an investigation into the complaint barely three days after the program was aired did not bode well for Youssef.
Heba Morayef, Human Rights Watch's Egypt director, said that while ordering an investigation into a complaint is routine, publicizing the decision is perceived as a serious step that could lead to an interrogation and a formal indictment.
"He (Barakat) is clearly responding to public pressure, or pressure from someone in particular," she said, without specifying who that might be.
About two dozen military supporters, who say the crackdown is a small price to pay if the country is to defeat what they view as Brotherhood-inspired terrorism, staged an anti-Youssef protest on Monday outside a Cairo courthouse, trampling on posters of the comedian and chanting slogans in favor of el-Sissi.
Youssef also faced legal action for his comedy during Morsi's year in office. The president's supporters sued him for insulting the presidency and Islam. He was questioned for hours by prosecutors, but was not charged with any crime.
Before returning to the air after a four-month absence, Youssef predicted in an article that he will continue to be pursued legally by his new critics "who allegedly love freedom dearly — when it works in their favor."
In another example of how the political divisions are affecting everyday life, relatives and state media said an Egyptian kung fu gold medalist was suspended by the sport's national federation because he displayed an Islamist symbol showing support for Morsi during a tournament in Russia.
The newspaper Al-Ahram's online service posted a photo of Mohammed Youssef wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of an open palm with four yellow fingers — the symbol commemorating a pro-Morsi protest camp violently cleared by security forces in August. In the photo, the athlete held his gold medal with his right hand while punching the air with a clenched left fist during the medal ceremony. He was sent home early from Russia and would be banned from a major tournament next month in Malaysia.
Islamic militants also have stepped up their campaign of violence since Morsi's ouster, mainly targeting Egyptian police and soldiers, especially in the volatile northern part of the Sinai Peninsula that borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.
The militants' campaign mostly has been confined to the troubled peninsula that is separated from the mainland by the Suez Canal, but attacks outside Sinai have grown more frequent in recent weeks.
On Monday, gunmen killed three policemen at a security checkpoint in Mansoura, a city north of Cairo, according to the Interior Ministry.
Winston Churchill opens the new headquarters of a Royal Auxiliary Air Force squadron at Croydon in 1948.
Winston Churchill opens the new headquarters of a Royal Auxiliary Air Force squadron at Croydon in 1948.
This week, Congress dedicates a new bust of Winston Churchill in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. The sculpture is meant to honor the British statesman's legacy of determination and resolve.
It's also a salute to Churchill's friendship with the United States — summed up in an oft-quoted line that Maine Sen. Angus King used during the recent congressional debt-ceiling debate.
As King put it: "Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."
While there are whole volumes dedicated to Churchill's famous sayings, it's that backhanded compliment to America that's especially popular among politicians on this side of the Atlantic.
Republican Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington are just a few of the many American lawmakers who have borrowed that line to add gravitas and a bit of humor to their speeches.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., often turns to the Churchill quote to provide a lighthearted conclusion to an otherwise gloomy message about the U.S. debt burden.
Warner used the line so often, in fact, his staff decided to put it on a plaque or some other memento. But when they went to research the origins of the line, they came up empty, despite blood, toil, tears and sweat.
"I wish I could substantiate that he said it. But so far, I cannot," says Richard Langworth, editor of the journal Finest Hour, published by WinstonChurchill.org.
Langworth has combed through millions of words written by and about Churchill and found no evidence that the former prime minister ever said that about America.
But Langworth says that's not unusual. Like Mark Twain or Yogi Berra, Churchill didn't say half the things he's supposed to have said — including the famous comeback to Lady Astor, who supposedly told Churchill if they were married, she'd put poison in his coffee.
"And Churchill supposedly responds to Lady Astor, 'If I were married to you, I'd drink it.' But that turned out to be F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, Churchill's very, very dear friend, who was much faster off the cuff than he was," Langworth says. "But, of course, because Birkenhead is forgotten, it's been ascribed to Churchill."
Nigel Rees, the host of the long-running BBC quiz show Quote ... Unquote, found so many examples of this oratorical identity theft that he coined a phrase for it: Churchillian Drift.
"What I meant by that was, people — if they don't know who came up with a remark originally or if they can't be bothered to look it up — they automatically ascribe the quotation to somebody who likely said it," Rees says. "And obviously Winston Churchill is a very quotable person. He did say some marvelous things in a very special way."
Thanks to the Internet, Rees says, it's easier these days to check the validity of famous quotations. But it has also gotten easier to spread misinformation.
"If but one person puts on the Internet that Churchill said something — well, then it gets repeated by about 200 other people," he says.
When Warner's staff informed him that Churchill never uttered those words about America reliably doing the right thing, eventually, Warner was only a little bit sheepish.
"If Churchill didn't say it, he should have," Warner says.
That's because the line reflects an underlying optimism in the way Americans see themselves, Warner says.
"Sometimes it takes us stumbling around a little bit, but we ultimately get to the right place," he says. "And Lord knows, we've done an awful lot of stumbling around in the last few years."
So even if this particular line wasn't Churchill's finest hour, don't expect American politicians to stop quoting it. They'll quote him on the beaches. They'll quote him in the streets. And they'll never, never, never, never, never give in.
After tackling The New York Times, Twitter images and several other high-profile social media accounts, the Syrian Electronic Army has now struck the online presence of President Obama. A string of tweets were sent from the @BarrackObama account and messages posted to the President's Facebook fan ...A Norfolk Southern train pulls oil tank units on its way to the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City, Del. As U.S. oil production outpaces its pipeline capacity, more and more companies are looking to the railways to transport crude oil.
A Norfolk Southern train pulls oil tank units on its way to the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City, Del. As U.S. oil production outpaces its pipeline capacity, more and more companies are looking to the railways to transport crude oil.
On a quiet fall morning in the Delaware countryside, a lone sustained whistle pierces the air. Within moments, a train sweeps around a broad curve, its two heavy locomotives hauling dozens of white, cylindrical rail cars, loaded with 70,000 barrels of crude oil.
It's a scene playing out with growing frequency across the United States and Canada. The U.S. is awash in oil, due in large part to advances in drilling techniques such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. U.S. production hit a 24-year-high in September. Yet there is a challenge getting the crude from the field to the refinery.
Most oil is moved by pipeline and, five years ago, refiners pinned their hopes on the Keystone XL project. The 1,700-mile, Canadian-built pipeline would carry millions of gallons of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, south to refineries along the Gulf Coast. But the Obama administration has yet to decide whether to allow the project to go forward, in large part because of environmental concerns.
In the meantime, soaring production in the U.S. — especially light sweet crude coming out of North Dakota and Texas — has outpaced U.S. pipeline capability. So oil refiners and producers are turning increasingly to other transportation networks to move crude: barges, trucks and, in particular, railways.
The use of rail cars to ship crude is growing enormously, jumping from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 234,000 carloads last year, according to the Association of American Railroads. Canadian National Railway says moving crude oil by rail is one of its fastest growing businesses — despite increasing questions about rail safety, especially in the wake of a deadly crash in Quebec last July, when an oil train derailed, killing dozens of people.
Sandy Fielden, an analyst with RBN Energy, says that hasn't slowed down refiners wanting to move oil. It's less expensive to transfer crude by pipelines, but that can be offset by storage costs refiners have to pay if the pipelines are too congested. Fielden says laying rail track or upgrading refineries for trains is not as expensive as building a new pipeline. He says railways also require shorter and less rigid agreements with refiners.
"They only need to commit to about two years' worth, compared to 10 to 15 years on a pipeline — which means there's much less risk," says Fielden.
Refineries, Railways Making Necessary Changes
Michael Murray, a Roman Catholic priest in Elkton, Md., has studied and written about the rail industry for 40 years, and knows some of the best vantage points for spotting trains and studying oil refineries along the East Coast.
On a recent morning, he peers across an open field overlooking the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City, Del. From here, a mile-long Norfolk Southern train being unloaded is visible.
Murray says the railroad recently reconfigured its tracks outside the refinery, apparently to better maneuver the oil trains. PBF Energy says it installed new oval tracks — which Murray calls "loops" — at the refinery to more efficiently unload the large amounts of oil coming in by rail.
"The loops ... can at present unload 20 to 25 tank cars at a time," he says. "They're able to unload 70,000 barrels of oil in about eight to 10 hours."
Murray says the mile-long oil trains — often called "rolling pipelines" — don't really stop.
"In the 2,000 miles it takes to get from ... North Dakota and Canada to here, the only time they stop is to refuel the locomotives and to change the crew," he says. "They are hot trains ... nothing gets in their way."
Texas-based Valero Energy is one company that's increasingly relying on rail. It signed on to use the Keystone XL pipeline several years ago to ship heavy Canadian crude to its terminals on the Gulf Coast.
But spokesman Bill Day says given the long delay to build pipeline, Valero began buying rail cars and reworking some of its refineries to bring in trains. Day says Valero likes having alternatives.
"We like getting oil from different sources. If we can bring it in by ship and by pipeline and by rail, and even by truck in some instances, that gives us more flexibility," he says. "The more options we have, the better off we are."
Day says given the amount of oil being produced these days, even if construction of the Keystone pipeline went ahead tomorrow, Valero would continue to use rail.
With High Mobility‘s hardware installed in a car, a driver could park next to a parking meter, get out of the car and walk away. The car pays for the parking itself using the driver’s smartphone and a dealer-installed High Mobility hardware. Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe, the company claims the interaction is seamless for the user, that more features are on the horizon, and that their product solves a big problem for auto manufacturers.
The current state of automotive telematics and smartphone integration is a mess. As High Mobility explained on the Disrupt Stage, every OEM has a different solution based on a long development cycle – a fact I can attest to. Currently, automakers develop for a 5-7 year product cycle, therefore, technology that is in most automobiles is outdated when the vehicle is brand new, and downright archaic when it hits the used market. High Mobility’s solution puts breaking edge connectivity in cars now, although it’s still a stop-gap measure.
High Mobility is a small connectivity device installed at a dealership or factory. It adds a host of functions all powered by Bluetooth 4.0. Right now, High Mobility is focusing on payments using iBeacon, touting that when installed, a car can pay for a parking meter or gas pump by simply parking within 50 meters. Instead of using the vehicle’s infotainment screen for the interaction, a smartphone is used. This frees the driver from storing payment information within the car and instead uses a device they’re already very comfortable with (and already likely use to conduct transactions).
From the auto manufacturer’s perspective, High Mobility allows them to offer advanced smartphone integration within current models rather easily; it allows them to add more selling points to cars that might be getting a bit stale; it allows auto manufacturers to become more competitive, fast — something the High Mobility team understands very well.
The High Mobility team is composed of former employees of Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover, Fiat and Koensigsegg. The young company participated in Startup Bootcamp Berlin, receiving $15k in funding and another $7,000 from a design contest.
The startup is currently solidifying a relationship with Mercedes-Benz and is seeking other partnerships. The device already works in nearly every car.
In a real way, High Mobility solves a big problem for car makers. When installed, cars will offer highly advanced features. The system has the ability, although it’s not currently enabled, to also control locks, climate system, and even preset cars based on which smartphone is active on the account. But while these features seem advanced today, there will come a time when they, too, will be outdated. The High Mobility device is update-able, and either the company, or automaker, can push updates themselves, but of course High Mobility will one day be outdated as well. Until then, this little device, a simple PCM that started as several stacked Ardunios, is about the best way to add mobile payments and smartphone integration to an automobile.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The doctor convicted of killing Michael Jackson was released from jail Monday after serving nearly two years of a four-year sentence.
Conrad Murray was released from a downtown Los Angeles jail at 12:01 a.m., according to the sheriff's office. A change in California law allowed his incarceration time to be significantly cut down.
"He was elated to be out of there," Murray's attorney Valerie Wass said. She said the former physician plans to spend time with his girlfriend and children and to readjust to his life outside jail.
The former cardiologist was convicted in 2011 of causing Jackson's death in June 2009 by providing the superstar with an overdose of the powerful anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid. Jackson was in the midst of preparations for a series of comeback concerts and Murray was serving as his personal physician.
Murray's prospects are uncertain: At age 60 his license to practice medicine has been suspended or revoked in three states and his face and name are well known due to his association with Jackson and his highly publicized involuntary manslaughter trial.
Wass said Murray did a lot of writing while incarcerated, but she didn't know if he had plans for a book or any other projects that would allow him to earn a living.
The former doctor is appealing his conviction, although an appeals court has questioned whether it needs to hear the case. His attorney has argued that the court should not dismiss the appeal because it could alter his overall sentence and reduce some of the stigma his conviction has caused.
Despite being jailed, Murray hasn't been entirely silent. Audio recordings of his calls have been posted on celebrity website TMZ and the ex-doctor told the Today show that he cried tears of joy after a civil jury recently determined that the promoters of Jackson's comeback shows did not negligently hire Murray.
He did not, however, testify in the civil case or take the stand during his criminal trial.
Murray previously maintained clinics in Houston and Las Vegas and frequently complained about conditions in jail after his conviction. He was allowed to serve his entire sentence in a Los Angeles jail rather than a state prison due to a law aimed at easing overcrowding by shifting nonviolent offenders to local lockups.
"Dr. Murray has not received any special treatment in jail and in fact has many less privileges than most inmates because of his notoriety," Wass said in a statement earlier this year.
Jurors in a lawsuit filed by Jackson's mother against concert giant AEG Live LLC determined that the doctor was not unfit or incompetent to serve as Jackson's tour doctor earlier this month. The panel heard testimony about Jackson and Murray's relationship throughout the five-month trial, but the panel said it did not condone the physician's conduct.
"That doesn't mean we felt he was ethical," jury foreman Gregg Barden said of Murray after the AEG Live verdict.
No doctor or medical expert has condoned Murray's treatments of Jackson during either the ex-doctor's criminal case or the civil litigation. The former cardiologist told police he gave the superstar nightly doses of propofol to help him sleep but lacked the proper medical or monitoring equipment that's required to administer anesthesia.
Although widely used, propofol is intended only for surgical settings and experts have noted that its effects are not actually sleep.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-28-Michael%20Jackson-Doctor/id-239fcadd224d48629b98ed5cd7042c3a