Drones over America: How unmanned fliers are already helping cops

Nidhi Subbaraman , NBC News ? ? ? 7 hrs.

It was getting dark, and the sheriff of Nelson County, N.D., was in a standoff with a family of suspected cattle rustlers. They were armed, and the last thing anybody wanted was a shoot out.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which monitors police radio chatter, offered to help. Their Predator was flying back to its roost at the Grand Forks Air Force base and could provide aerial support. Did the sheriff want the assist?

Yep.

"We were able to detect that one of the sons was sitting at the end of the driveway with a gun. We also knew that there were small children involved," Sheriff Kelly Janke told NBC News, remembering that tricky encounter in the early summer of 2011. "Someone would have gotten seriously injured if we had gone in on the farm that night." He decided to wait.

The next day, the drone gave them an edge again by helping them choose the safest moment to make a move. "We were able to surprise them ? took them into custody," Janke said. They also collected six stolen cows.

Rodney Brossart, the arrested farmer, sued the state, in part because of the cop's use of a drone. But a district judge ruled that the Predator's service was not untoward.

When advocates express concern about government drones threatening people's privacy, the Brossart case is one they bring up. It's one of the first instances of a flying robot doing a cop's dirty work, and this kind of intervention is likely to be more and more commonplace, as the FAA fulfills a congressional mandate to increase its granting of drone permits ? certificates of authorization, or COAs.

Cops and flying robots
At the moment, there are only 327 active COAs, all held by these organizations, and all for unarmed crafts, of course. A tiny sliver of these permits are in the hands of law enforcement agencies, and from them, we're seeing the first glimpses of drone use in policing and emergency response.

"The FAA has approved us to cover a 16-county area," Sheriff Bob Rost of Grand Forks County, N.D., said of their COA. "To look for missing children, to look for escaped criminals and in the case of emergencies." In the spring, they will use two mini-copter drones ? a trusty DraganFlyer X6 and an AeroVironment Qube ? to check on flooded farms.

The police department in Arlington, Texas, also recently got FAA clearance to fly their drones after two years of testing. The two battery-powered Leptron Avenger helicopter drones won't be used for high-speed chases or routine patrol, the department explains. In fact, the crafts will be driven in a truck to where they're needed, and when they're launched to scope out incidents, local air traffic control will be informed.

In Mesa County, Colo., the police department has used drones to find missing people, do an aerial landfill survey and help out firefighters at a burning church. For them, it's seen as a cost-cutting technology.

"It's the Wal-Mart version of what we'd normally get at Saks Fifth Avenue," said Benjamin Miller, who leads the drones program in Mesa County, comparing drones to manned helicopters that would otherwise give police officers help from the sky.

In Seattle, the police department received an FAA permit ? but had to give back its drones when the mayor banned their use, following protests in October 2012.

Protests and red tape
"Hasn't anyone heard of George Orwell's '1984'?" the Seattle Times quoted a protester as saying. "This is the militarization of our streets and now the air above us."

Protesters, not just in Seattle, seek more legal definition of what a drone can or can't do, and debate whether or not current laws sufficiently protect citizens from unauthorized surveillance and other abuses.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks of police drones as an inevitability ? "We're going to have them," he recently said in a radio interview ? while those on the police (and drone) side say the fears are unfounded.

"This hysteria of [a drone] hovering outside your backyard taking a video of you smoking a joint, it's just that ? hysteria," said Al Frazier, an ex-cop from Los Angeles who is now an assistant professor of aeronautics at the University of North Dakota, and a deputy at the Grand Forks sheriff's office.

The reason the sky isn't lousy with drones already mostly has to do with red tape. The FAA's highly restricted drone application for government agencies is supposed to take about 60 days, though unofficially, we're told it's much longer. COAs are also very strict about where, when and by whom a drone is flown.

"I think there are many agencies who would like to use [drones] for public good, but they're stymied by the process," Frazier said.

That's likely to change ? and soon. Last February, Obama signed a mandate that encourages the FAA to let civil and commercial drones join the airspace by 2015. This will take new regulations from the FAA for safe commercial drone flight, and it may take some convincing of local anti-drone activists (who sometimes don't differentiate between drones great and small). It may even require the passing of a few new privacy laws.

Folks like Frazier and Miller don't see the permit process getting easier any time soon but eventually ? inevitably ? and for better or worse, your local police department will get its drone.

Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.

Related:

The drones are coming ... but our laws aren't ready

Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs

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Kenyan Supreme Court upholds election result

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? Kenya's Supreme Court on Saturday upheld the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the country's next president and the loser accepted that verdict, ending an election season that riveted the nation with fears of a repeat of the 2007-08 postelection violence.

Jubilant Kenyatta supporters flooded the streets of downtown Nairobi, honking horns, blowing plastic noisemakers and chanting.

But supporters of defeated Prime Minister Raila Odinga angrily protested after the verdict and police fired tear gas at them outside the Supreme Court as well as in the lakeside city of Kisumu, Odinga's hometown.

Two young men participating in riots were fatally shot in Kisumu, police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi told The Associated Press, although it was not clear by whom, and residents there said they could hear gunshots late in the night.

Outbreaks of violence by Odinga supporters were also reported in some Nairobi slums and truckloads of police were called in to quell the demonstrations, according to reports on a police radio heard by an Associated Press reporter.

In a victory speech late Saturday, Kenyatta urged Kenyans to move past the election and pledged to "work with, and serve, all Kenyans without discrimination whatsoever."

"Above all, let us continue to pray for peace in our country," he said.

Odinga, who had challenged the election results, accepted the court ruling and urged national unity and peace.

"It is our view that this court process is another long road in our march toward democracy, for which we have long fought," he said. "The future of Kenya is bright. Let us not allow elections to divide us."

However, Odinga said it was unfortunate that some of his legal team's evidence had been disallowed by the court. This, he said after the court's verdict, means that "in the end Kenyans lost the right to know what indeed happened" in the counting of votes.

"Although we may not agree with some of its findings, and despite all the anomalies we have pointed out, our belief in constitutionalism remains supreme," he said. "Casting doubt on the judgment of the court could lead to higher political and economic uncertainty, and make it more difficult for our country to move forward."

Odinga wished Kenyatta success and said he hopes the incoming government "will have fidelity to our constitution, and implement it to the letter for the betterment of our people."

Saturday's Supreme Court verdict ? following a drawn-out court case that raised tensions across the nation ? means that Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first president, is to be sworn in as president on April 9. He will become the second sitting president in Africa to face charges at the International Criminal Court.

Kenyatta and Deputy President-elect William Ruto both face charges that they helped orchestrate the 2007-08 postelection violence in which more than 1,000 people died. Both deny the charges. Ruto's trial is set to begin in late May; Kenyatta's is to start in July. Kenyatta has promised to report to The Hague.

Kenyatta's win may complicate the U.S. relationship with Kenya, which has the largest American embassy in Africa. Because of the ICC charges against Kenyatta, the U.S, Britain and other European countries have said they may have limited contact with Kenya's new president.

But Western powers can't completely sever the relationship. Kenya is a key component in the fight against the al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab. Additionally, as East Africa's largest economy, China is strongly courting Kenya's leaders, and the West will be loath to lose economic influence here.

The office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose government did not congratulate Kenyatta by name after he was declared the winner, said in a statement that Cameron wrote to Kenyatta on Saturday to note "his strong commitment to the partnership that exists between Kenya and the U.K." The statement said "the Kenyan people had made their sovereign choice" in electing Kenyatta.

The White House congratulated Kenyatta in a statement, which urged Kenyans "to peacefully accept the results of the election."

Lawyers for Odinga, the loser in Kenya's last two elections, had argued before the Supreme Court that the election was marred by irregularities and that Kenyatta did not win enough votes to avoid a runoff election. According to official results, Kenyatta won 50.07 percent of the vote, narrowly avoiding a runoff election against Odinga, who said his case before the Supreme Court would put Kenya's democracy on trial.

But the Supreme Court's unanimous decision, read out by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, said the election was "conducted in compliance with the constitution and the law" and that Kenyatta and Ruto were legally elected.

"It is the decision of the court that (Kenyatta and Ruto) were validly elected," the ruling said. The reasons behind the judges' decision were not given Saturday. The chief justice said a detailed judgment would be delivered within two weeks.

Unlike after the 2007 election, which degenerated into tribe-on-tribe violence that damaged Kenya's reputation as a stable country, this time Odinga said he had faith in the judiciary's ability to give him a fair hearing.

The court's ruling ended days of anxiety since March 9, when Kenyatta was declared the winner of the March 4 vote that many described as the most complex in Kenya's history. More than 12 million Kenyans participated in the election. Some observers had expected a low registration of voters because of apathy following the 2007-08 violence, but campaigns by Kenyatta, Odinga and other presidential candidates led to the highest registration in the country ever. Kenya's electoral commission registered 14.3 million people.

Election day, though, did not go as planned. An electronic voter ID system intended to prevent fraud failed for reasons yet to be explained by the electoral commission. Vote officials instead used manual voter rolls.

After the polls closed, results were to be sent electronically to Nairobi, where officials would quickly tabulate a preliminary vote count in order to maximize transparency after rigging accusations following the 2007 vote. But that system failed, too. Election officials have indicated that computer servers were overloaded but have yet to fully explain the problem.

As the early count system was still being used, election results showed more than 330,000 rejected ballots, an unusually high number. But after the count resumed with the arrival in Nairobi of manual tallies, the number of rejected ballots was greatly reduced, and the election commission said the computer was mistakenly multiplying the number of rejected ballots by a factor of eight.

Odinga's lawyers told the Supreme Court this week that the switch from electronic voter identification to manual voter roll was contrived to allow inflation of Kenyatta's votes to take him past the 50 percent threshold. That accusation was vehemently denied by the electoral commission and Kenyatta's legal team.

___

Associated Press reporters Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, and Jason Straziuso in Mombasa, Kenya, contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyan-supreme-court-upholds-election-result-164134832.html

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Survey: Samsung takes the lead from Nokia, BlackBerry in key emerging markets

By Jason Szep SIT KWIN, Myanmar (Reuters) - The Muslims of Sit Kwin were always a small group who numbered no more than 100 of the village's 2,000 people. But as sectarian violence led by Buddhist mobs spreads across central Myanmar, they and many other Muslims are disappearing. Their homes, shops and mosques destroyed, some end up in refugee camps or hide in the homes of friends or relatives. Dozens have been killed. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/survey-samsung-takes-lead-nokia-blackberry-key-emerging-233306758.html

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'Nasty piece of work': Cloud over London's 'sunshine' mayor Boris Johnson

Matthew Lloyd / Getty Images, file

London mayor Boris Johnson (right) and Irvine Sellar, developer of the new skyscraper The Shard, cut a ribbon.

By Alastair Jamieson, Staff writer, NBC News

LONDON -- He is the goofy London mayor whose jovial self-deprecation and quick intellect have rescued him from a string of political missteps and personal indignities. But floppy-haired Boris Johnson?s happy-go-lucky reputation took a battering this week, just as he revealed his ambition to one day become Britain?s prime minister.

New York-born Johnson -- memorably caught on camera dangling from a broken zip-wire during the London Olympics?-- was accused of being a ?nasty piece of work? in a train-wreck television interview that surfaced a darker side to his persona.

The mayor was asked about a number of embarrassing episodes in his past including being fired from his former job as a reporter with The Times newspaper for making up a quote, losing his opposition cabinet role after lying to his Conservative party leader about an affair and the accusation that he agreed to provide a reporter?s address to his friend, a convicted fraudster, so the journalist could be beaten up.

There were no new revelations in Sunday?s interview, which was hardly in the mold of Frost vs Nixon. But the feline approach of BBC presenter Eddie Mair exposed a testy, evasive side to Johnson that observers say has undermined his affable public image.

?What?s remarkable is not that the interview happened but the fact that it hasn?t happened before,? said Johnson?s biographer, Sonia Purnell.

?He has always used his jovial fellow act and has never really been challenged like that in an interview until now.

?It is true that he is very charismatic, very clever and engaging. But there is a dark side to his character. He has a ferocious temper and he bears grudges.?

The clash was in stark contrast to Johnson?s winning encounter on ?Late Show with David Letterman? last year, when he entertained the studio audience and shrugged the gibe that he cut his own hair.

It has sparked a debate in Britain about whether the mayor, a keen cyclist and classical scholar whose full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson -- can still be taken seriously as a contender to replace David Cameron as prime minister and leader of his Conservative party.

Mair teased Johnson about his repeated refusal to admit that he harbors ambitions to replace Cameron, with whom he has a mild personal rivalry that dates back to their shared time at Eton, Britain?s most elite private school.

Jan Kruger / Getty Images, file

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson warm up for a tennis match during the London Olympics.

?What should viewers make of your inability to give a straight answer to a straight question?" asked Mair, adding: ?You?re a nasty piece of work, aren?t you??

An online Guardian newspaper poll found 62 percent of its readers thought Johnson could no longer be considered a candidate for Britain?s top job. The interview ?was inevitably described as a car crash, but in the case of Johnson, it was more of a bicycle crash: spokes all over the road, wheels mangled and a reputation badly dented,? wrote the newspaper?s veteran political editor, Patrick Wintour.

Purnell added: ?I think it left a tidemark in people?s minds about Boris?s character.?

However, conservative commentator Toby Young said Johnson?s leadership prospects remain unchanged. ?It's an elementary rule of politics that if you have any skeletons lurking in your closet that are likely to make an appearance during an election campaign, better to get them out in the open now,? he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. ?Not only will it rob them of their bad juju, it will enable his supporters to claim -- yet again -- that he's popular?in spite of?his character flaws, not because the public isn't aware of them.?

Matthew Norman, in The Independent, asked: ?Boris would be a disastrous PM. So why do I quite like the idea?? He wrote: ?Life for diarists and political pundits would improve immeasurably, which strikes me as a very reasonable price to pay for the national shame of having Boris Johnson as prime minister.?

Johnson, 48, has long been a grassroots favorite to lead the Conservatives if Cameron stood down or lost office. However, to be prime minister he would first need to stand again for election to the House of Commons, which he quit in 2008 to run to be mayor of London. He is currently serving his second four-year term and has remained coy about whether he will quit early and return to parliament.

London mayor Boris Johnson attempts to make a dramatic entrance at an Olympic party?but gets stranded on a zip wire instead. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

His mix of conservative economics and liberal social values -- he supports gay marriage and an amnesty for immigrants -- helped secure his election in a city long dominated by left-of-center politics, but it may not sit well with the U.K.-wide Conservative party.

His personal morality may also hinder his progress: He has acknowledged a number of affairs and has been likened to Italy?s serial philanderer and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi by satirical magazine editor Ian Hislop.

Then there is Johnson?s apparent lack of attention to detail. Purnell, who worked alongside him in the Brussels bureau of the Daily Telegraph, said: ?Some of the things he wrote were on the limits of the truth. He was, at best, creative.?

Max Hastings, a former editor of Johnson's during his time as a journalist, described Johnson as "utterly chaotic,"?adding: "Supposing he became prime minister, the idea of Boris Johnson's finger on the nuclear button ... one day he would get it mixed up with the one to call the maid."

However, there remains a lot of affection for a man whose unvarnished approach is a breath of political fresh air.

?He is a sunshine politician and people like that,? said Ross Lydall, chief news correspondent of London?s Evening Standard newspaper, which supports Johnson.

?The way he has improved life for cyclists in London is remarkable -- as a cyclist myself, it certainly puts a smile on my face. He represents a sense of optimism compared to the old, miserable municipal politics of London.?

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/2a274445/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C30A0C1750A23550Enasty0Epiece0Eof0Ework0Ecloud0Eover0Elondons0Esunshine0Emayor0Eboris0Ejohnson0Dlite/story01.htm

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Video: Obama tries to console Miami basketball fans (cbsnews)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

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Google?s ?Babble? cross-platform messaging service gets detailed in purported leak

By Simon Evans MIAMI (Reuters) - World number one Serena Williams fought back from a set down to beat Maria Sharapova 4-6 6-3 6-0 and win the Sony Open for a record sixth time on Saturday as she continued her dominance over her closest rival. With the win, Williams, who struggled with her serve in the first two sets, becomes only the fourth woman in the Open era to win the same WTA tournament six times, joining Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf. "I finally have some record," Williams said. "Like it's really cool. I can't seem to catch up with Margaret Court or Steffi or ...

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Tetris Blitz to offer deeper, faster take on classic puzzle game

This ain't your daddy's Tetris - get as many rows as you can in two minutes and customize with power-ups

At GDC 2013, we took some time to talk with EA about the latest mobile iteration of the classic puzzle game franchise, Tetris. Tetris Blitz promises to be a whole new experience: there's no failure, just two frantic minutes of dropping blocks and lining up rows as quickly as possible.

read more

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Shroud of Turin authenticity up for debate again after new report

Scientists at the University of Padua in Italy have used infrared light and spectroscopy (the study of a physical object's interaction with electromagnetic radiation) to examine the shroud and found that it's actually much older than a previous study found.

By Marc Lallanilla,?LiveScience Assistant editor / March 29, 2013

Williams Jones, Shenadoah, Pa., shows some of the points of interest in the Shroud of Turin replica on display in front of the altar after the Divine Liturgy during the Shroud of Turin exhibit at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Shenandoah, Pa., in Feb.

Jacqueline Dormer/The Republican-Herald/AP

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The Shroud of Turin, an icon of faith and controversy among Christians, is back in the news.

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The linen cloth, allegedly the burial shroud of Jesus, was closely examined in 1988 in laboratories in Switzerland, England and the United States using carbon-14 dating techniques, the?Telegraph?reports.

Those examinations of the shroud ? which bears the image of a man's face and torso ? dated the cloth from 1260 to 1390, supporting claims that it's merely an elaborate medieval hoax, as Jesus' life is thought to have come to an end in A.D. 33.

Some believers, however, insisted that the linen fibers used in the 1988 examinations were not from the original shroud, but rather from a portion of the cloth that had been repaired after suffering fire damage in the Middle Ages.

Now, scientists at the University of Padua in Italy have used infrared light and spectroscopy (the study of a physical object's interaction with electromagnetic radiation) to examine the shroud and found that it's actually much older, the Telegraph reports.?

In his recent book, "Il Mistero della Sindone," translated as "The Mystery of the Shroud," (Rizzoli, 2013), Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical engineering at Padua University, said his analysis proves the shroud dates from 280 B.C. to A.D. 220 ? meaning it existed during Jesus' lifetime, the?Guardian?reports. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

The Shroud of Turin is said to be the cloth that covered Jesus' body after the crucifiction. Previous examinations that dated the shroud to the Middle Ages mesh with historical records, which don't start mentioning the cloth until that time. But some researchers believe the shroud is older. Thomas de Wesselow, author of "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection" (Dutton Adult, 2012), argues that medieval artists did not paint in photorealistic style, and that a forged shroud created in the Middle Ages would be an anachronism.?

That doesn't mean the shroud is evidence of a miracle, however, de Wesselow told LiveScience last year. He believes natural chemical reactions caused by a decomposing body and annoiting oils could have created the body imprint on the shroud, which may have then been?used as evidence of Christ's resurrection.?

For the first time in 30 years, the shroud will be shown on television this Saturday (March 30), the Guardian reports. Before leaving the papacy,?Benedict XVI?approved a special broadcast of the shroud to be held at the Turin Cathedral, where the cloth is preserved in a climate-controlled case.

And for those who want an even more intimate examination of the cloth, a new mobile app, Shroud 2.0, was just released on Good Friday (March 29),?Zenit.org?reports.

Designed in collaboration with the Museum of the Holy Shroud and the Archdiocese of Turin, Shroud 2.0 synthesizes 1,649 high-definition photographs into a single 12-billion-pixel image. An Android version is also being developed, Zenit reports.

Follow Marc Lallanilla on?Twitter?and?Google+. Follow us?@livescience,?Facebook?&?Google+. Original article onLiveScience.com.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/mqx3wwYN9f4/Shroud-of-Turin-authenticity-up-for-debate-again-after-new-report

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Imagine All the People Turning Blue And Green

Science writer Dennis Meredith talks about his new science fiction book The Rainbow Virus, in which a bioterror plot turns people all the colors of the rainbow.

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Science writer Dennis Meredith talks about his new science fiction book The Rainbow Virus, in which a bioterror plot turns people all the colors of the rainbow and more.

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Cheese Curd In Paradise: Recipe Swap: Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken

Time for a Recipe Swap!

The theme for this swap is blogger's choice and I was assigned Alison's blog Sparks from the Kitchen. Alison has tons of delicious recipes (I made her quiche for the special occasion swap) and it was hard to decide! She had some yummy sounding crockpot recipes and as a fellow crockpot lover I decided to make Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken.? In her post she used the chicken for tacos/burritos and I decided I wanted to make a burrito bowl using the chicken, rice and black bean/pinto bean blend. The recipe is really easy and the chicken was delicious. We topped ours with sliced black olives, cheddar cheese and sour cream.? I love finding new and delicious crockpot recipes! I kept close to the original recipe with the exception of using cilantro lime diced tomatoes over the tomatoes with?green chilies. I think the green chilies would have been delicious, but when I saw the cilantro lime at the store I couldn't resist. Thank you Alison for a delicious recipe and thank you to Sarah for hosting our wonderful swap!

Ingredients

11/2?lbs boneless and skinless chicken breast

14.4 oz can diced tomatoes with cilantro and lime (you could also use tomatoes with green chilies)

4 oz can green chilies

10?oz frozen corn

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 cups?chicken stock?

3 scallions, chopped

11/2 tsp garlic powder

1 1/2?tsp onion powder

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Place chicken in crockpot. In a medium bowl, mix all other ingredients together. Pour over chicken. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.? 30 min-1 hour before serving shred the chicken and allow it to continue cooking on low. Serve as a taco filling or over rice and beans.

Source: http://cheesecurdinparadise.blogspot.com/2013/03/recipe-swap-crockpot-santa-fe-chicken.html

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Foursquare's API Is A Pillar Of The Mobile App Ecosystem ...

Editor?s note:?Jonathan Barouch?is the founder and CEO of location-based startup?Roamz, developer of?social media business product Local Measure. Follow him on Twitter @jbarouch.?

Foursquare has become entrenched in the fabric of the local web, providing an API that delivers common good for developers. Any destabilization in Foursquare or its developer tools would fundamentally affect the stability of the mobile web.

Now I?m not suggesting that they are so important to the U.S. economy that Ben Bernanke and the Fed should step in to participate in Foursquare?s?rumored Series D. However, I do think that?Keith Rabois? comment?about Foursquare having a small user base firmly misses the point. Even among all the lovers and haters duking it out on Twitter, no one stopped to consider what the sheer size of Foursquare?s developer base means for the industry.

Dennis Crowley said at the Mobile World Congress that?40,000 developers?use Foursquare location data via their API. Let?s examine the effect on Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foodspotting and many other apps if Foursquare and its API were to no longer exist.

The App Ecosystem

Pick up your smartphone. Search through some of your favorite apps. Do you have Uber? Maybe Foodspotting? Surely you have Instagram.?These apps, as well as a significant amount of the most popular apps in Apple?s App Store and Google Play, use Foursquare location data. For developers who have user actions or content tied to Foursquare venue IDs it would be difficult (if not impossible in some cases) to migrate their services off the Foursquare location database.

I would guess that by adding together the unique users of the popular apps that Foursquare powers, you would find that its data touches several hundred million users. Foursquare remaining healthy and maintaining an open API is critically important to Apple given the reliance on Foursquare of so many popular iOS apps.

And while Google has an excellent Places database of its own, it too has an interest in ensuring Foursquare?s longevity. Those same app developers that fill up Apple?s App Store charts are also pumping out apps on Google Play that rely on Foursquare data.

For the moment Facebook appears to be somewhat dependent on Foursquare?s success.

Foursquare Over Facebook Places

Almost a year after Facebook acquired Instagram, the photo-sharing app, with its more than 100 million active users, continues to use Foursquare location data rather than Facebook?s own Place API. This would seem to suggest that even Facebook values the location data generated by Foursquare?s 5 million daily check-ins.

For Instagram it would be a significant engineering effort to migrate off Foursquare?s data, given that there isn?t a global harmonized version of the two location data sets. (I have seen first-hand how tricky it is to algorithmically match places across the data sets.)

For the moment Facebook appears to be somewhat dependent on Foursquare?s success. Foursquare also generates a lot of its traffic via Facebook?s open graph and other timeline integrations so there seems to at least be mutual dependence on things not changing.

Twitter?s Tied

What seems to have been missed in Twitter?s Vine acquisition?was that it was Twitter?s first app that allows users to geo-tag a social media post to a physical place. With Twitter?s own apps, the location feature simply adds a user?s longitude and latitude without reference to the place where it was tweeted. Given that Vine has now set the precedent allowing users to tag their content to a (Foursquare) location, Twitter also seems somewhat tied to Foursquare?s location data.

Location is a huge opportunity for Twitter, and Vine?s use of Foursquare?s API might be the first step for Twitter toward a future of having more granular location data attached to tweets.

These examples illustrate that Foursquare?s value is less about the size of its active user base and more related to the reach of its location database. Its API is fast becoming the de facto location layer of the mobile web and touches almost every user of location-based apps.

The problem for investors is that they don?t appear to have figured out how to monetize this enviable position. With so many companies dependent on Foursquare?s location data, a lot of people are hoping that they work it out ? and fast.

Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by ?checking in? via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...

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Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/29/the-internet-needs-foursquare-to-succeed/

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Business Insider's Owen Thomas Is In Talks To Be The New Editor At ReadWrite

My old boss Owen Thomas is very close to becoming the new editor-in-chief at the SAY Media-owned tech site ReadWrite, according to sources with knowledge of the company. I'm hearing that it's not quite a done deal, but that it's looking very likely. Naturally, I called Owen to ask if this was the case, but he declined to comment. A SAY spokesperson told me, "There's obviously a lot of interest in ReadWrite. There are a lot of good candidates in the mix, and no one's been hired yet." (Just to reiterate ? I'm not saying he's been hired, just that the discussions are pretty far along.)

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

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Suicide attack kills 6 in northwest Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) ? A suicide bomber attacked a convoy carrying a paramilitary police commander in northwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least six people, including two women, police said.

The apparent target of the attack in the main northwest city of Peshawar, Abdul Majeed Marwat who heads the Frontier Constabulary, was not hurt, said police official Dost Mohammed Khan.

The dead included three members of the security forces and three civilians, said Khan. Two of the civilians were women. Over 15 people were wounded, said Khan.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Peshawar is located on the border with Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region, the main sanctuary for Taliban militants in the country. The Pakistani Taliban have carried out many bombings in the city and other parts of the country targeting both security forces and civilians.

There is concern that the militants could step up the pace of attacks ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suicide-attack-kills-6-northwest-pakistan-055523486.html

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Former SAC Capital portfolio manager arrested in NYC, FBI says

Staff reports , CNBC.com ? ? ? 10 hrs.

FBI agents arrested former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager Michael Steinberg on Friday morning following an investigation into insider trading, an FBI spokesman told CNBC.

Details of the charges will be made public later on Friday. A spokesman for the SAC was not immediately available for comment.

Barry Berke, attorney for Steinberg, told CNBC that the former SAC portfolio manager had done "absolutely nothing wrong".

"At all times, his trading decisions were based on detailed analysis as well as information he understood had been properly obtained through the types of channels that institutional investors rely upon on a daily basis. Caught in the crossfire of aggressive investigations of others, there is no basis for even the slightest blemish on his spotless reputation," he said in a statement.

Steinberg, 40, is the most senior SAC Capital Advisors employee to be charged in the U.S. government's probe into how hedge funds may use illegally obtained information to trade. Including Steinberg, nine people have been either charged or implicated with wrongful trading while they were employed at the Stamford, Connecticut-headquartered SAC.

Steinberg's arrest had been widely expected after Jon Horvath, a former SAC analyst who worked closely with him, pleaded guilty last year to using illegally obtained information to trade in Dell and Nvidia Corp. Horvath has been cooperating with the government and had implicated Steinberg.

SAC Capital suspended Steinberg from his post in October 2012, and he has been moving among several hotels in New York City in recent weeks, according to Reuters sources, as he wanted to avoid being arrested at his Upper East Side home where he lives with his wife and two children.

The arrest comes two weeks after SAC agreed to pay a record $616 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle civil charges of insider trading. SAC neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing at that time.

But the government made clear that that settlement did not preclude further charges.

As part of that settlement, SAC Capital agreed to pay $14 million to settle charges of improper trading in Dell, in which a former trader who reported to Steinberg had been involved.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a22460d/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Cformer0Esac0Ecapital0Eportfolio0Emanager0Earrested0Enyc0Efbi0Esays0E1C9139747/story01.htm

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First love child of human, Neanderthal believed found

Getty Images

Neanderthals like the one depicted in this museum reconstruction died out tens of thousands of years ago.

By Jennifer Viegas
Discover News

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.

If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The present study focuses on the individual?s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.

?From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin,? co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.

Condemi is the CNRS research director at the University of Ai-Marseille. She and her colleagues studied the remains via DNA analysis and 3-D imaging. They then compared those results with the same features from Homo sapiens.

The genetic analysis shows that the individual?s mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal. Since this DNA is transmitted from a mother to her child, the researchers conclude that it was a ?female Neanderthal who mated with male Homo sapiens.?

By the time modern humans arrived in the area, the Neanderthals had already established their own culture, Mousterian, which lasted some 200,000 years. Numerous flint tools, such as axes and spear points, have been associated with the Mousterian. The artifacts are typically found in rock shelters, such as the Riparo di Mezzena, and caves throughout Europe.

The researchers found that, although the hybridization between the two hominid species likely took place, the Neanderthals continued to uphold their own cultural traditions.

That's an intriguing clue, because it suggests that the two populations did not simply meet, mate and merge into a single group.

As Condemi and her colleagues wrote, the mandible supports the theory of "a slow process of replacement of Neanderthals by the invading modern human populations, as well as additional evidence of the upholding of the Neanderthals' cultural identity.?

Prior fossil finds indicate that modern humans were living in a southern Italy cave as early as 45,000 years ago. Modern humans and Neanderthals therefore lived in roughly the same regions for thousands of years, but the new human arrivals, from the Neanderthal perspective, might not have been welcome, and for good reason. The research team hints that the modern humans may have raped female Neanderthals, bringing to mind modern cases of "ethnic cleansing."

Ian Tattersall is one of the world?s leading experts on Neanderthals and the human fossil record. He is a paleoanthropologist and a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History.

Tattersall told Discovery News that the hypothesis, presented in the new paper, ?is very intriguing and one that invites more research.?

Neanderthal culture and purebred Neanderthals all died out 35,000-30,000 years ago.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2a1a9e94/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C280C1750A28590Efirst0Elove0Echild0Eof0Ehuman0Eneanderthal0Ebelieved0Efound0Dlite/story01.htm

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How Many Peeps and Cadbury Easter Eggs Can a 50 Cal Rifle Shoot Through?

You probably never wondered this before but the Internet is always about answering questions you never knew you had. Like, how many Peeps and Cadbury Easter Eggs can a 50 cal rifle shoot through? Rated R on YouTube decided to give it a try and blasted through your favorite Easter treats so you don't have to. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/zKcXBbdol2w/how-many-peeps-and-cadbury-easter-eggs-can-a-50-cal-rifle-shoot-through

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Nobody is declaring a state of drought in California, but ...

When snow surveyors headed into the Sierra Nevada on Thursday for the most important measurement of the season, they found only about half the snowpack that is normal for the date.

It could have been a lot worse ? considering that the last three months in California have been the driest of any January-through-March period on record, going back to 1895.

It has been a winter of extremes in the state, beginning with an unusually wet November and December and ending with a string of parched months. "It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ? the changes we've had," said climatologist Kelly Redmond of the Western Regional Climate Center.

Storage in the state's two largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, is a bit above normal for the date, thanks to the big storms in the Northern Sierra that turned the final three months of last year into the 10th-wettest on record for that region.

But with statewide snowpack at only 52% of the norm for this time of year ? when it is usually at its peak ? state and federal water managers are expecting below-normal runoff this spring and falling reservoir levels.

Although no one is declaring drought, the state last week cut projected water deliveries to Southern California. And farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley may get only a fifth of the federal irrigation supplies they have contracts for.

The delivery cutbacks have underscored problems with getting supplies through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the perennial bottleneck in north-to-south water shipments.

Water officials say protections for the imperiled delta smelt severely restricted delta pumping when the early winter storms were pouring water into the system. Had a controversial diversion system proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration been in place, they say the big government water projects could have shipped a lot more water south to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

"If we had that delta fix in place, we'd have moved another 800,000 acre-feet plus already," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. (One acre-foot is enough to supply two average families for a year.)

Metropolitan is a major backer ? and future funder ? of a proposed $14-billion tunnel system, which would carry supplies from the Sacramento River to existing pumps in the south delta. Proponents hope that changing the diversion point will improve the ecological health of the delta and loosen environmental restrictions on pumping. Opponents, who include delta farmers and commercial salmon fishermen, say the answer to the delta's problems is to take less water from it, not to construct two massive tunnels they fear will increase exports.

Although the State Water Project, which supplies Metropolitan, expects to meet only 35% of contractor requests this year, Kightlinger said Metropolitan has ample reserves stored in the Southland to tide the region over. "We're in solid, solid shape," he said.

It is rare that the giant Westlands Water District and other irrigation districts on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley get full contract deliveries from the federal Central Valley Project. But this year's allocation of 20% is particularly low, eliciting protests that the west side's farm economy is being sacrificed for the delta smelt.

"The decrease in our water allocation once again demonstrates how broken the state's water system has become.... Our priorities are misaligned," Tom Birmingham, Westlands' general manager, said in a statement. He said fields will be left unplanted for lack of water.

But the west side's supply picture is not as bad as a 20% allocation would suggest. According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Westlands and other districts have about 400,000 acre-feet stored in San Luis Reservoir, the south-of-the-delta holding pool shared by the federal and state water projects. More than half of that amount is left over from last year's deliveries and the rest was purchased from other irrigation districts.

Elsewhere in the Central Valley, farmers with senior rights to large volumes of water on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers will get 100% of their contract supplies this year.

Metropolitan is also expecting normal deliveries from the Colorado River, even though the Colorado Basin remains stuck in a stubborn drought. A wet year in 2011 boosted levels of the Colorado's two main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Two years ago Powell was the fullest it had been in a decade, raising hopes that the drought was finally easing.

But since then the Colorado's flow has been well below average. The river system's total storage is only 54% full, compared with 63% last year.

"We are closer than ever to getting shortage" on the Colorado, Kightlinger said.

bettina.boxall@latimes.com

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/zScLuSS1e_U/la-me-water-dry-20130329,0,4305768.story

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MTV Movie Awards Promo Outtakes: Channing Tatum Is On It

Channing Tatum knows how to fake drive, like, really well. That's what you need to take away from the newest 2013 MTV Movie Awards promo outtake. Check out the clip above to see Tatum and your Movie Awards host Rebel Wilson try to make a convincing escape in a limo with an RPG. It takes [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/03/28/movie-awards-outtakes-rebel-channing/

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Visualized: step inside CERN's particle-detecting Compact Muon Solenoid

It's spring maintenance time over at the Large Hadron Collider, and the folks at CERN have seen fit to crack open the Compact Muon Solenoid to get at some of its loose connectors. You see, after three years, 99-percent of the the lead tungstate-based electromagnetic calorimeter's channels are currently operational -- but its keepers think it can do better, working on a less than reliable connection that has the preshower down to a paltry 97-percent. Naturally, they've cracked the thing open and thankfully given us a peek inside the beast.

Filed under: Science

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Source: CERN

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/VCbaNRIZQqE/

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College student loan interest rates set to double

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Incoming college freshmen could end up paying $5,000 more for the same student loans their older siblings have if Congress doesn't stop interest rates from doubling.

Sound familiar? The same warnings came last year. But now the presidential election is over and mandatory budget cuts are taking place, making a deal to avert a doubling of interest rates much more elusive before a July 1 deadline.

"What is definitely clear, this time around, there doesn't seem to be as much outcry," said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. "We're advising our members to tell students that the interest rates are going to double on new student loans, to 6.8 percent."

That rate hike only hits students taking out new subsidized loans. Students with outstanding subsidized loans are not expected to see their loan rates increase unless they take out a new subsidized Stafford loan. Students' non-subsidized loans are not expected to change, nor are loans taken from commercial lenders.

The difference between 3.4 percent and 6.8 percent interest rates is a $6 billion tab for taxpayers ? set against a backdrop of budget negotiations that have pitted the two parties in a standoff. President Barack Obama is expected to release his budget proposal in the coming weeks, adding another perspective to the debate.

Last year, with the presidential and congressional elections looming, students got a one-year reprieve on the doubling of interest rates. That expires July 1.

Neither party's budget proposal in Congress has money specifically set aside to keep student loans at their current rate. House Republicans' budget would double the interest rates on newly issued subsidized loans to help balance the federal budget in a decade. Senate Democrats say they want to keep the interest rates at their current levels but the budget they passed last week does not set aside money to keep the rates low.

In any event, neither side is likely to get what it wants. And that could lead to confusion for students as they receive their college admission letters and financial aid packages.

"Two ideas ... have been introduced so far ? neither of which is likely to go very far," said Terry Hartle, the top lobbyist for colleges at the American Council on Education.

House Republicans, led by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, have outlined a spending plan that would shift the interest rates back to their pre-2008 levels. Congress in 2007 lowered the rate to 6 percent for new loans started during the 2008 academic year, then down to 5.6 percent in 2009, down to 4.5 percent in 2010 and then to the current 3.4 percent a year later.

Some two-thirds of students are graduating with loans exceeding $25,000; one in 10 borrowers owes more than $54,000 in loans. And student loan debt now tops $1 trillion. For those students, the rates make significant differences in how much they have to pay back each month.

For some, the rates seem arbitrary and have little to do with interest rates available for other purchases such as homes or cars.

"Burdening students with 6.8 percent loans when interest rates in the economy are at historic lows makes no sense," said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit organization.

Both House Education Committee Chairman John Kline of Minnesota and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. George Miller of California, prefer to keep rates at their current levels but have not outlined how they might accomplish that goal.

Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat, last week introduced a proposal that would permanently cap the interest rate at 3.4 percent.

Senate Democrats say their budget proposal would permanently keep the student rates low. But their budget document doesn't explicitly cover the $6 billion annual cost. Instead, its committee report included a window for the Senate Health Education and Pension Committee to pass a student loan rate fix down the road.

But so far, the money isn't there. And if the committee wants to keep the rates where they are, they will have to find a way to pay for them, either through cuts to programs in the budget or by adding new taxes.

"Spending is measured in numbers, not words," said Jason Delisle, a former Republican staffer on the Senate Budget Committee and now director of the New America Foundation's Federal Budget Project. "The Murray budget does not include funding for any changes to student loans."

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that of the almost $113 billion in new student loans the government made this year, more than $38 billion will be lost to defaults, even after Washington collects what it can through wage garnishments.

The net cost to taxpayers after most students pay back their loans with interest is $5.7 billion. If the rate increases, Washington will be collecting more interest from new students' loans.

But those who lobbied lawmakers a year ago said they were pessimistic before Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney both came out in support of keeping the rates low.

"We were at this point and we knew this issue was looming. But it wasn't anything we had any real traction with," said Tobin Van Ostern, deputy director of Campus Progress at the liberal Center for American Progress. "At this point, I didn't think we'd prevent them from doubling."

This time, he's looking at the July 1 deadline with the same concern.

"Having a deadline does help. It's much easier to deal with one specific date," Van Ostern said. "But if Congress can't come together ... interest rates are going to double. There tends to be a tendency for inaction."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/neither-party-cash-student-loan-rate-fix-185759359--politics.html

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Google TV's PrimeTime app update welcomes Amazon Prime content

An update to the PrimeTime Android app for Google TV has been released, bringing with it some bug fixes, as well as a "subscription selector" which means Netflix, HBO Go and Amazon Prime content now shows up as free if you're paying for any of those services. Wait, Amazon Prime content, you say? Well yes, we did, as the Amazon Prime Instant Video catalogue has been worked into the new version of the guide and recommendation app. Yet more ways to make sure we're up to date with The Good Wife? Sounds fine to us.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, HD, Amazon

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Source: Google Play store

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/28/google-tv-primetime-app-update-adds-amazon-prime-content/

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US Sen. Hagan of NC backs same-sex marriage rights

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) ? North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan said Wednesday she backs marriage rights for same-sex couples, joining a growing number of Democratic Party politicians ahead of her re-election race next year.

Hagan announced her position as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law that denies federal benefits to married same-sex couples.

"Marriage equality is a complex issue with strong feelings on both sides, and I have a great deal of respect for varying opinions on the issue," Hagan said on her official Facebook account. "After much thought and prayer, I have come to my own personal conclusion that we shouldn't tell people who they can love or who they can marry."

Hagan last year opposed a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, saying it could make it more difficult for companies to recruit talent. President Barack Obama announced his support for the unions the day after 61 percent of North Carolina voters backed the gay-marriage amendment last May.

The amendment reflected North Carolina's urban-rural divide on social issues. The question passed in 92 of North Carolina's 100 counties, while the counties surrounding Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham and Charlotte among those where the question was defeated.

Hagan's position puts her in step with fellow Democrats like U.S. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Mark Warner of Virginia, all of whom this week declared support for gay marriage. Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio took that step last week.

But Hagan's statement carries political risks. She was elected in 2008 on the day that Obama won North Carolina by just 14,000 votes, marking the first victory for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1976. But North Carolina was the only battleground state Obama lost last year to Mitt Romney on the way to re-election.

An Election Day exit poll of voters conducted for The Associated Press in November found that just one-third of voters said they supported same-sex marriage.

Hagan said she believes religious institutions should not have to conduct same-sex marriages if that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs.

"But I think as a civil institution, this issue's time has come and we need to move forward," Hagan said. "The fabric of North Carolina and what makes our state so special is our families and our common desire for a brighter future for our children. No matter what your family looks like, we all want the same thing for our families - happiness, health, prosperity, a bright future for our children and grandchildren."

___

Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-sen-hagan-nc-backs-same-sex-marriage-165156223--election.html

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