Commercial Loan Calculator Is often a Life Saving Application | Arty ...

More and more people are using industrial loan calculator to easily examine interest rates and payments. It also helps you figure out how much you can borrow and what your instalments will be on business space.
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It can quickly and easily calculate a loan payment; overall interest and bank loan costs. Also, business loan calculator is a very helpful calculator that figures not only monthly payments, but in addition how much interest you?ll save if you are paying the principal earlier than common on your loan. Your calculation is based about an amortization routine that tells in the event you qualify for a new company loan. To give you an example, the calculations get like this, factor in a different payment on a monthly basis, the actual yearly or the one particular lump sum pay-down. In Addition, go to a full chart of your amortization schedule divided month by month to see your reflection of the additional pay-down. You can easily solve this specific using a commercial finance calculator.
There are several commercial loan calculators available online which you can use for free. But ensure that you are using the appropriate calculator before starting to produce your computations. Generally, there are online sites offering definitions of terminology for the loan calculator. Utilizing commercial loan calculator, it might really help you know your approximate payments. A new lifesaving tool, as they say, the commercial loan calculator is free for your convenience and simply by clicking the submit button, the end result for the payments is going to be ready for you.
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South Sudan Vice-President to attend Business and Security Forum ...

The Vice-President of South Sudan, HE Dr Riek Machar, will join senior ministers from Kenya and other African countries at the forthcoming Africa Forum on Business and Security, it was announced on Monday, July 30th.

Dr Machar has been a key figure in developing the fledgling economy of the world?s newest state since it attained independence from Sudan just over a year ago.

At the Africa Forum on Business and Security, which will be held at Nairobi?s Laico Regency Hotel on September 13th and 14th, 2012, Dr Machar and other statesmen will rub shoulders with business leaders, investors, security experts and decision-makers from all over Africa and beyond.

?The Africa Forum on Business and Security is taking place at a very interesting and important time for Africa,? says Peris Wanjiru of conference organisers ICWE. ?Many African economies are growing at six or seven per cent a year. The one thing that can hold us back now is a failure to address the security challenges that confront us. This ground breaking, pan-African dialogue between the public and private sectors will make a real difference.?

The conference will focus on dealing with persistent problems, attracting investors, protecting vulnerable sectors and securing growth. It will also consider the immense opportunities for African business in delivering security, investment, skills and jobs.

Businesses wanting to take part in the Forum should contact Anna Shigwedha at?anna.shigwedha@newsecurityfoundation.org?for more information.

Related Posts

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2. Overwhelming refugee influx causing crisis in South Sudan
3. South Sudan: M?decins Sans Fronti?res engaged in challenging emergency response after inter-communal violence in Jonglei State
4. South Sudan: Emergencies unfolding one after the other

This entry was posted on Monday, July 30th, 2012 and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://www.shout-africa.com/business/south-sudan-vice-president-to-attend-business-and-security-forum/

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Electricity grids fail across half of India

An Indian barber holding a candle, has a haircut for a customer at his shop in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)

An Indian barber holding a candle, has a haircut for a customer at his shop in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)

A traffic jam following power outage and rains at the Delhi-Gurgaon road on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity in one of the world's biggest-ever blackouts. (AP Photo)

A young Indian boy watches from a window of a stalled train as he waits for the train to resume its services following a power outage at a railway station in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Indian stranded passengers wait inside a stalled train as they wait for the services to resume after a power outage in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Indian people crowd a door of a train as they wait for the train services to resume following a power outage at a railway station in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity for several hours in, by far, the world's biggest blackout. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

NEW DELHI (AP) ? Electric crematoria were snuffed out with bodies inside, New Delhi's Metro shut down and hundreds of coal miners were trapped underground after three Indian electric grids collapsed in a cascade Tuesday, cutting power to 620 million people in the world's biggest blackout.

While Indians were furious and embarrassed, many took the crisis in stride, inured by the constant ? though far less widespread ? outages triggered by the huge electricity deficit stymieing the development of this would-be Asian power.

Hospitals, factories and the airports switched automatically to their diesel generators during the hours-long cut across half of India. Many homes relied on backup systems powered by truck batteries. And hundreds of millions of India's poorest had no electricity to lose.

"The blackout might have been huge, but it wasn't unbearably long," said Satish, the owner of a coffee and juice shop in central Delhi who uses only one name. "It was just as bad as any other five-hour power cut. We just used a generator while the light was out, and it was work as usual."

The crisis was the second record-breaking outage in two days. India's northern grid failed Monday, leaving 370 million people powerless for much of the day, in a collapse blamed on states that drew more than their allotment of power.

At 1:05 p.m. Tuesday, the northern grid collapsed again, energy officials said. This time, it took the eastern grid and the northeastern grid with it. In all, 20 of India's 28 states ? with double the population of the United States ? were hit in a region stretching from the border with Myanmar in the northeast to the Pakistani border about 3,000 kilometers (1,870 miles) away.

Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread jams in New Delhi. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked office workers to go home and rushed generators to coal mines to rescue trapped miners.

Sahiba Narang, 17, was taking the Metro home because school bus drivers were on strike, "but this power failure's messed up everything."

S.K. Jain said he was on his way to file his income tax return when the Metro closed. The 54-year-old held his head, distraught that he would almost certainly miss the deadline. Hours later, the government announced it was giving taxpayers an extra month to file because of the chaos.

By evening, power had been restored to New Delhi and the remote northeast, and much of the northern and eastern grids were back on line. Electricity officials said the system would not be back to 100 percent until Wednesday.

Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said the new crisis had the same root as Monday's collapse.

"Everyone overdraws from the grid. Just this morning I held a meeting with power officials from the states and I gave directions that states that overdraw should be punished. We have given instructions that their power supply could be cut," he said.

But others were skeptical of Shinde's explanation, saying that if overdrawing power from the grid caused this kind of collapse, it would happen all the time.

"I just can't believe that there is no system in place to check whether the states are drawing more than their limit or not," said Samiran Chakraborty, head of research at Standard Chartered, a financial services company. "There has to be a much more technical answer to that question."

At a contentious news conference, R.N. Nayak, chairman of Power Grid Corp., which runs the nation's power system, said his staff was searching for the cause of the problem and pleaded for patience.

"We have been running this grid for decades. ... Please trust us," he said.

The blackouts came amid consumer anger with the recent increase in power fees, including a 26 percent hike in Delhi, that government officials said were needed to pay for the steep rise in fuel costs.

The Confederation of Indian Industry said the two outages cost business hundreds of millions of dollars, though they did not affect the financial center of Mumbai and the global outsourcing powerhouses of Bangalore and Hyderabad in the south. Like many, the group demanded a widespread reform of India's power sector, which has been unable to keep up with the soaring demand for electricity as the economy expanded and Indians grew more affluent and energy hungry.

"India has outgrown its own infrastructure," said Jagannadham Thunuguntla, a strategist at SMC Global Securities.

India's Central Electricity Authority reported power deficits of more than 8 percent in recent months, and many economists said the power deficit is dragging down India's economy.

"Without power we cannot run an economy at 8 percent, 9 percent growth or whatever your ambition is," Chakraborty said.

Part of the problem is that India relies on coal for more than half its power generation and the coal supply is controlled by a near state monopoly that is widely considered a shambles.

A recent survey showed nearly all the coal-fueled plants had less than seven days of coal stock, a critical level, said Chakraborty, and many of the country's power plants were running below capacity. Government bureaucracy has made it difficult to bring more plants online.

In addition, vast amounts of power bleeds out of India's antiquated distribution system or is pirated through unauthorized wiring. Farmers, with a guarantee of free electricity that is driving many state electric boards to bankruptcy, have no incentive to conserve energy.

The power deficit was worsened this year by a weak monsoon that lowered hydroelectric generation, spurred farmers to use pumps to irrigate their fields long after the rains would normally have come and kept temperatures higher, keeping air conditioners and fans running longer.

The opposition said officials should have located the first fault and fixed it before getting the whole system back on line Monday.

"The power minister owes an answer to the prime minister, owes an answer to the nation why this is happening," Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.

Instead, as part of a planned Cabinet shuffle, Shinde was promoted in the middle of the day to the powerful job of home minister, putting him in charge of the nation's internal security even as the power crisis dragged on.

By contrast, the power chief in the state of Uttar Pradesh was summarily fired by his chief minister Monday for his handling of the first power crisis.

___

Associated Press writer Nasr ul Hadi contributed to this report from New Delhi and Prasanta Pal contributed from Kolkata.

___

Follow Ravi Nessman on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ravinessman

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-07-31-India-Power%20Outage/id-635984d12d754afa83d2391648d13c00

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Massachusetts Eye and Ear researchers discover ... - Health Centers

? Eye / Vision Problems ? ? Genetics ? Jul 30, 2012

Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, The Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia, Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Division and their collaborators have isolated an elusive human gene that causes a common form of Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a relatively rare but devastating form of early-onset blindness. The new LCA gene is called NMNAT1. Finding the specific gene mutated in patients with LCA is the first step towards developing sight-saving gene therapy.

LCA is an inherited retinal degenerative disease characterized by reduced vision in infancy. Within the first few months of life, parents usually notice a lack of visual responsiveness and unusual roving eye movements known as nystagmus. LCA typically involves only vision problems, but can be accompanied by disease in other organ systems in a minority of patients. LCA is a common reason children are enrolled in schools for the blind.

?The immediate benefit of this discovery is that affected patients with mutations in this new LCA gene now know the cause of their condition,? said Eric Pierce, M.D., Ph.D., co-senior author and director of the Ocular Genomics Institute at Mass. Eye and Ear. ?Scientists now have another piece to the puzzle as to why some children are born with LCA and decreased vision. The long-term goal of our research is to develop therapies to limit or prevent vision loss from these disorders.?

NMNAT1 is the 18th identified LCA gene. The gene resides in a region that was known to harbor an LCA gene since 2003, but the specific disease gene has been undiscovered until now. These findings will be published on July 29 in the online edition of Nature Genetics.

To identify NMNAT1, scientists performed whole exome sequencing of the family of two siblings who initially presented for evaluation of LCA but who had no mutations in any of the known LCA genes. Being seen by a multi-disciplinary team that took the case from careful clinical characterization to genetic testing to the research laboratory was an essential ingredient for success.

?By using whole exome sequencing, we found a mutation in a gene that no one could have predicted would be associated with LCA,? said Dr. Pierce.

?Whereas most of the known LCA genes involve dysfunction of retinal ciliary proteins necessary for light detection in the eye, NMNAT1 is uniquely distinguished by being the first metabolic enzyme linked to LCA,? said Marni J. Falk, M.D., co-first author and Clinical Geneticist at The Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Having found a mutation in NMNAT1 in this one family, the investigators next asked if mutations in NMNAT1 also cause disease in other patients with LCA. Screening of 284 unrelated patients with LCA from the United States, England, France and India allowed them to identify 13 other patients with mutations in NMNAT1 as the cause of their disease.

Drs. Falk, Pierce and colleagues also studied how the identified mutations in NMNAT1 affect the function of the NMNAT1 protein, and thus may cause dysfunction and death of the light sensitive photoreceptor cells in the retina. Working together with Eiko Nakamaru-Ogiso, Ph.D., in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at The University of Pennsylvania, they found that mutations in NMNAT1 appear to decrease the ability of the NMNAT1 protein to produce NAD+, a key mediator of cellular signaling and energetics.

Early treatment for patients with NMNAT1-related LCA could be especially beneficial.

Researchers found that all but the youngest patient with NMNAT1 mutations had damage to the macula, the center of the retina that is needed for central vision. ?This 4-year-old girl who doesn?t have central vision loss yet can possibly benefit substantially if we can devise a therapy for her NMNAT1-mediated LCA that prevents her from developing severe central vision loss,? Dr. Pierce said.

This study is an example of the multidisciplinary collaboration among the three institutions, using exome sequencing to discover genes involved in inherited diseases caused by mutations of a single gene. ?With the robust database and pipeline that we have developed, we have analyzed more than 300 whole exomes of patients and families with single-gene diseases,? said Dr. Xiaowu Gai, co-senior author and director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. ?We are following up on a number of strong candidate genes. We are sequencing many new samples and expect similar exciting discoveries for other diseases.?
###

About Massachusetts Eye and Ear

Mass. Eye and Ear clinicians and scientists are driven by a mission to find cures for blindness, deafness and diseases of the head and neck. After uniting with Schepens Eye Research Institute in 2011, Mass. Eye and Ear in Boston became the world?s largest vision and hearing research center, offering hope and healing to patients everywhere through discovery and innovation. Mass. Eye and Ear is a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital and trains future medical leaders in ophthalmology and otolaryngology, through residency as well as clinical and research fellowships. Internationally acclaimed since its founding in 1824, Mass. Eye and Ear employs full-time, board-certified physicians who offer high-quality and affordable specialty care that ranges from the routine to the very complex. U.S. News & World Report?s ?Best Hospitals Survey? has consistently ranked the Mass. Eye and Ear Departments of Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology as top five in the nation. Mass. Eye and Ear is home to the Ocular Genomics Institute which aims to translate the promise of personalized genomic medicine into clinical care for ophthalmic disorders. For more information about life-changing care and research, or to learn how you can help, please visit MassEyeAndEar.org.

Grant support:

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health [RO1-EY12910 (E.A.P.), R03-DK082446 (M.J.F.), R01-GM097409 (E.N-O), P30HD026979 (M.J.F.,R.X.) and P30EY014104 (MEEI core support)]; the Foundation Fighting Blindness USA (I.A.,A.D.B.,E.L.B.,S.S.B.,Q.L.,A.T.M., D.S.M.,E.A.P., J-A.S.,S.M-S., A.R.W.); Rosanne Silbermann Foundation (E.A.P.); Penn Genome Frontiers Institute (E.A.P, X.G.); Institutional Fund to the Center for Biomedical Informatics by the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine (X.G.); the Foerderer Award for Excellence from the Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia (M.J.F. and X.G.); The Angelina Foundation Fund from the Division of Child Development and Metabolic Disease at The Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia (M.J.F.); The Clinical and Translational Research Center at The Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia (UL1-RR-024134) (M.J.F. and E.A.P.); the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and the Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal (C.K); the Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation (C.K.); a senior research fellowship from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (R.S.); Foundation Voir et Entendre (C.Z.), Ville de Paris and R?gion Ille de France; RP Fighting Blindness (UK)(A.R.W.), Fight For Sight (UK) (A.D.B.,S.S.B.,A.T.M., D.S.M.,A.R.W.), Moorfields Eye Hospital NIHR BRC for Ophthalmology (A.D.B.,S.S.B.,A.T.M.,D.S.M.,A.R.W.), Special Trustees of Moorfields Eye Hospital (A.D.B., S.S.B.,A.T.M.,D.S.M.,A.R.W.).

###

Mary Leach
61-705-734-170
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary

Provided by ArmMed Media

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Source: http://www.health.am/ab/more/massachusetts-eye-and-ear-researchers-discover-elusive-gene/

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What the medals tally tells us about the G7 and BRICS

(Reuters) - During the Cold War, the relative power of the United States and the Soviet Union were regularly measured in gold, silver and bronze. The last couple of Olympic Summer Games have been a race between China and the United States, with America triumphing in Athens in 2004, and China, on home turf, overtaking its rival four years later. Many commentators saw that shift as a symbol of U.S. decline and of China's growing economic clout.

The 21st century is likely to be a multi-polar world, however. What does the medal tally say about shifting global power today?

One way to measure change is to compare the relative success of the Group of Seven, or G7, which is made up of seven rich, mostly western countries, and the BRICS, five fast-growing developing states.

Over the past four Summer Games, the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States - has kept its lead over the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

But the gap is narrowing. In 1996, the G7 won 38 percent of available gold medals, more than twice the BRICS share of 17 percent. In the 2008 games, the G7 won 32 percent compared to the BRICS' 26 percent.

There are several ways to measure medal success. As well as comparing gold medal share, we looked at each group's share of all medals by attributing three points for a gold medal, two for silver and one for bronze.

"A medal score like that is how you get a sense of the totality of achievement," said Simon Shibli, professor of sports management at Sheffield Hallam University. By looking at what Shibli calls "market share" you also account for the increase in the number of events.

A fair analysis can really only be made since 1996, when Russia started competing independently again. But by using the Soviet Union as a rough proxy for Russia, it is possible to get a comparison over a much longer period.

Reuters looked at the medal data going back to the first modern games in Athens in 1896 and found some interesting trends. Broadly speaking, you can divide the past 116 years into four main periods:

* The first half of the 20th century - in the Olympics, as in the real world - is a story of Western domination. That's not surprising. From the BRICS - the name wasn't coined until 2001 - only India and South Africa competed in the Olympics on any sort of regular basis.

* In the three decades after World War Two, the growing sporting power of the Soviet Union helped the BRICS to catch up with the G7. China's long boycott of the Games meant that, until 1980, the Soviet Union accounted for more than 95 percent of the BRICS' medal haul.

* Thanks to boycotts by the United States and then the Soviets, the 1980s were characterized by lots of static. Hard to tell too much here, though the top two countries are obvious: the USSR won 39 percent of all gold medals at the 1980 games in Moscow and the United States 37 percent in 1984 in Los Angeles.

* The last two decades are the first in which we see a straight race between the BRICS and the G7. The demise of the Soviet Union means Russia has been Russia again and China, which returned to the games in 1984 after a long absence, has taken the games much more seriously.

CHINA

The driving force behind the recent growth of the BRICS - as in the real world - is China, which overtook a slowly fading Russia in 2008 as the BRICS' top medal winner. China benefited from being host at the last Games but its growing dominance is also a result of the massive resources devoted to achieving Olympic glory, according to Shibli.

The country's performance in 1988, when it ranked 11th on the medals table, "was seen as a national humiliation," he said. "In 2008, China's one hundred medals represented the accumulated achievement of an estimated $8 billion of investment."

In pure market share, the BRICS' sporting prowess still lags behind its economic growth, according to John Hawksworth, chief economist at Price Waterhouse Coopers.

"The rise in BRICS' economic performance in terms of GDP isn't really evident in the same way in the Olympics data aside from China, which has risen sharply on both measures," he said. "Part of the reason is that India just doesn't feature. In India, they're cricket mad and hockey is the only Olympic sport where India has had consistent past success."

The Beijing games were the first in which India won more than one medal since 1952.

South Africa, too, "has a sporting culture but it is focused around sports such as football and cricket which are not in the Olympics," said Hawksworth. "So their share of medals isn't that high within the BRICS."

Brazil has won more medals over the past four Games, but its Olympic record still lags its economic growth. Brazil is now the world's sixth biggest economy but it has never come that high on the medals table.

The G7's share has declined slightly in recent decades, Hawksworth notes, but not as dramatically as their share of world GDP. The G7 countries and the United States in particular continue to dominate the Games; corporate sponsorship and the professionalization of sports have kept the standard of their competitors very high.

Olympic performance will never exactly mirror economic standings, of course.

Australia, which came fourth in the gold medal tally in its home summer games in 2000, is rich and sports-mad but is hardly threatening as the next global super power. Kenya and Ethiopia regularly rank high in the medal tables, but that has little to do with their economic station or political heft (poor, and relatively weak) and more to do with their incredible ability to fuse topography and genes into brilliant distance runners. Canada's economy is booming but it doesn't win as many medals as it did in the 1980s and ?90s.

Still, the table does tell us stories. When you sit down to watch your favorite Olympic sport over the next few weeks, enjoy the precision, ball skills and strength of the athletes. But watch out for the geo-political shifts as well.

(Reporting by Himanshu Ojha; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/medals-tally-tells-us-g7-brics-115946256--spt.html

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SaintPetersblog: At #Pinellas GOP straw poll, @JimFrishe beats @JeffreyBrandes 254 votes to 174 votes. #sayfie #TooBadFrisheDoesntHave250KFromUSChamber

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Hope Solo Calls Out Brandi Chastain: Shut Up!

Remember that whole Olympic spirit thing? Someone should tell Hope Solo about it.

The U.S. Soccer Team's starting goalie may have been responsible for a shutout against against Colombia yesterday, but the former Dancing with the Stars contestant didn't celebrate much afterward.

She slammed former World Cup hero Brandi Chastain instead.

Displeased with Chastain's analysis as an announcer, specifically her criticism of defender Rachel Buehler, Solo went off on a multiple-part Twitter rant against the retired player:

• "Its 2 bad we cant have commentators who better represents the team&knows more about the game."
• "Lay off commentating about defending and gking until you get more educated @brandichastain the game has changed from a decade ago.
• "I feel bad 4 our fans that have 2 push mute."

Chastain is best known for nailing the World Cup-winning shootout kick against China in 1999. She's played in 192 international teams for her country and did not respond to these taunts.

Solo, meanwhile, is unafraid to speak her mind. Earlier this month, she detailed the significant amount of sex that went on in the Olympic Village four years ago.

[Photos: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/07/hope-solo-calls-out-brandi-chastain/

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Ticket backlash overshadows Games

LONDON (Reuters) - Olympic organisers scrambled on Sunday to quell a backlash over depressing TV images of half-empty stands at the London Olympics as a government minister said an urgent inquiry had been launched to identify just who had failed to show up and why.

Sports fans from all over Britain who had been charmed by the Olympic publicity offensive but let down by a complex ballot system for the 8.8 million tickets, have been outraged by footage of empty seats at key venues including Wimbledon, one of the hottest tickets in world tennis.

Chairman Sebastian Coe, who threatened to name and shame sponsors that did not fill their seats, said missing spectators were mostly officials from international sports federations, other Olympic officials, their families and friends.

"It doesn't obviously appear to be a sponsorship issue at the moment," Coe said, after Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt said he thought the vacant seats had belonged to sponsors.

Coe, a former Olympic gold medallist on the track, said that only eight percent of allocated tickets went to big corporate sponsors such as Visa and Coca-Cola and that 75 percent of tickets were in the hands of the public.

Sponsors P&G, Visa, McDonald's, BMW and Coca-Cola have all issued statements reassuring officials, fans and athletes that their allocated tickets have been and will be used by winners of promotional contests, partners, customers and employees.

"All of our guests are incredibly excited to be able to be a part of London 2012 and we believe that usage levels of our tickets have been extremely high so far," Coca-Cola said in a statement on Sunday.

Another storm may be looming over attendance figures for the Olympic Park, where more than 20,000 journalists are on duty for the Games but which park visitors have repeatedly described as "spacious".

Media officials from the London organising committee (LOCOG) have been unable to answer repeated requests from Reuters since Saturday morning about the number of ticketholders who have entered the 2.5 square km park in east London housing the Olympic stadium, aquatics centre, velodrome and other venues.

Tickets for park entrance cost 10 pounds ($15.71) for adults and 5 pounds for those under 16 or over 60.

They give the holder the opportunity to stroll around, take in the street entertainment, watch live sports on the big screen on the rolling meadows in the centre of the park and, crucially, to buy on-the-spot recycled tickets for some of the events where there are empty seats.

The cycling road race and rowing events were filled on Saturday, Coe said, but added that other events such as basketball, gymnastics, swimming and tennis had seats going empty because they had been held open for officials like himself making short visits to venues or wrestling with busy schedules.

"There are tens of thousands of people at the moment within the accredited family (of sports officials and guests) who are trying to figure out what their day looks like," Coe said.

He said London organisers were trying to fill spare seats by inviting local children and teachers to use spare tickets, selling more tickets, handing tickets to the military and upgrading other ticketholders.

He said LOCOG sold 1,000 tickets on Saturday and put soldiers into seats at the gymnastics.

"I don't think this is going to be an issue, certainly it's not going to be an issue right through the Games," he added.

But there was a loud public outcry on Sunday.

"As a Londoner with two kids desperate to take part we feel excluded and it is especially galling when you see all those empty seats," said Sara Jourdan, a 42-year-old teacher. "We would love to be there."

A Twitter account called @Olympicseat was created, and had 4,900 followers at 19:50 GMT on Sunday.

One tweet said: "I feel so empty."

Organisers said they were already in touch with the International Olympic Committee to discover who failed to show up and why.

A Games official told Reuters it was still unclear whether the empty seats in several events, including Wimbledon, swimming, gymnastics and basketball, had been allocated to sponsors, international federations and athletes' families.

"We are trying to find out who these tickets belonged to," said the official.

British Olympic Association Chairman Colin Moynihan told a briefing on Sunday one solution might be a 30-minute rule whereby fans would be allowed to take up vacant seats if spectators were late or did not arrive.

SUNDAY NO-SHOWS

Moynihan said the search was on for those who had not taken up tickets. "Where you have large blocks of seats you can pretty quickly know," Moynihan said.

More vacant seats were reported on Sunday.

"We've got a few empty seats, so please shout twice as loud for those empty ones," announcer Ian Oswald said at one men's weight-lifting event.

Empty seats were reported at the women's gymnastics, particularly close to the mat. Soldiers, apparently who had been on security duty, occupied some of the empty chairs.

Seats were also vacant at the eventing dressage despite the appearance of Zara Phillips, Queen Elizabeth's grand-daughter, who is part of the British team.

Although fencing and boxing were pretty full, there were clumps of empty seats at the canoe slalom and at Wimbledon for tennis a large number of seats stood empty with stickers saying "athlete" and others that were designated for Olympic sports officials.

At the basketball, journalists unable to find seats in the press area who had migrated to empty corporate sponsorship seats were moved on, after the sponsors arrived late due to a traffic jam in London.

A block reserved for the Olympic family even remained empty at the popular beach volleyball for most of the time.

Hunt, the minister responsible for the Olympics, said he was disappointed by the footage of rows of empty seats.

"LOCOG are doing a full investigation into what happened," Hunt told the BBC after a widely praised surreal and exuberant opening ceremony starring the Queen, Paul McCartney and actor Rowan Atkinson.

"We think it was accredited seats that belong to sponsors, but if they are not going to turn up, we want those tickets to be available for members of the public," Hunt said on Saturday.

'SOLD OUT'

LOCOG became used to putting up the "sold out" sign within minutes of each tranche of tickets going on sale to the public.

On Saturday some ticket box offices at venues in the park still had queues of people seeking to buy tickets for selected sports.

LOCOG has declined to provide a figure for the number of people in the park or how many tickets had been sold but said that 11 million people would attend the Games.

By early June, 7 million of the total 8.8 million Olympic tickets had been sold, and about half of the 2.45 million Paralympic tickets, in a process that began last year.

But the combination of a complex and opaque online ticketing system which appeared unable to cope with the huge demand and seemed skewed towards those prepared to bid for thousands of pounds worth of tickets, resulted in a wary public.

In early June, LOCOG still had about 550,000 tickets to sell with just weeks to go.

A large chunk of them were so-called contingency tickets which had been held back while logistics such as TV camera positions were resolved.

Jin Horne, a 29-year-old financial analyst in London's financial district, said on her way into see the gymnastics on Sunday morning that she could not get tickets for her friend visiting town.

"I heard my company had loads of tickets but they were only for very important people," she said.

($1 = 0.6364 British pounds)

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann and Paul Casciato, additional reporting by Keith Weir, writing by Peter Millership and Ossian Shine, editing by Ed Osmond, Jason Neely and Justin Palmer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ticket-backlash-overshadows-games-203011508--nba.html

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NYT claims Apple has dallied with investing 'hundreds of millions' in Twitter

Apple has been on a social networking kick lately, what with Twitter's footings in iOS 5 and OS X Mountain Lion as well as Facebook's upcoming presence in iOS 6. From what the New York Times hears, that fascination could become more of a fixation. The company has reportedly chatted with Twitter in past months about the possibility of investing money on the scale you'd normally expect from a later-stage venture capitalist: the newspaper is talking "hundreds of millions" of dollars based on Twitter being valued at more than $10 billion. Any such deal would be less about funding (Twitter purportedly has $600 million-plus in the bank) and more about getting cozy in a social world where Apple still has some learning to do. Apple might equally want to dissuade competitors from getting any ideas, we'd add. Neither side will comment, and the negotiations aren't even supposed to be active at present. Regardless, that Apple might have even toyed with a social networking investment could represent a major change in tack for a company that's not always known for playing well with others.

Filed under: Internet

NYT claims Apple has dallied with investing 'hundreds of millions' in Twitter originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 23:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Conrad Murray to Katherine Jackson: Let's Chat!

Conrad Murray is sitting in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson.

Yet this doctor somehow thinks he's the one who can fix the ongoing Jackson family saga, which has centered around contention over the late singer's will and the whereabouts of his mother, Katherine Jackson, for nearly two weeks now.

Katherine is now back at home with her grandchildren, but even young Prince Jackson is suspicious over why she was taken by other relatives in the first place.

"I've been told that she has a desire to speak with me before she departs this life," Murray said in a statement released to CNN through his attorneys. "Seeing that she is up in age and in questionable health, and the fact that she is the mother of a very dear departed friend, it would give me great pleasure to sit with her one on one and answer any questions she might have."

Katherine Jackson spoke out this week and claimed she simply needed a vacation, but major questions still surround the situation, namely: Why didn't she contact her grandkids while away?

"I do not want Mrs. Jackson to suffer. She remains as dear to me as my own mother, unbeknownst to her," Murray added, saying Katherine is on his prison visitor list and referring to her as "extremely sad."

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/07/conrad-murray-to-katherine-jackson-lets-chat/

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The Olympics and bare feet: What have we learned?

Friday, July 27, 2012

Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila made history when he earned a gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. His speed and agility won him the gold, but it was barefoot running that made him a legend.

When the shoes Bikila was given for the race didn't fit comfortably, he ditched them for his bare feet. After all, that's the way he had trained for the Olympics in his homeland.

Racing shoeless led to success for Bikila, and now, more than 50 years later, runners are continuing to take barefoot strides. Several Olympic runners have followed Bikila and nationally the trend has exploded over the past decade. There's even a national association dedicated to barefoot running. However, scientists are stuck on whether it either prevents or increases injuries.

"Bikila may have been on to something," said Carey Rothschild, an instructor of physical therapy at the University of Central Florida in Orlando who specializes in orthopedic sports injuries. "The research is really not conclusive on whether one approach is better than the other. But what is clear is that it's really a matter of developing a good running form and sticking to it, not suddenly changing it."

Rothschild, a 12-year runner who has completed the Boston Marathon three times, reviewed research and found injuries happened with or without shoes. So she conducted a survey with the help of the Track Shack in Orlando to get to the bottom of the controversy.

What she found was striking.

Most people said they turned to barefoot running in the hopes of improving performance and reducing injuries. Ironically, those who said they never tried it avoided it for fear it would cause injuries and slow their times.

However, research shows that there are risks to running no matter what someone puts on his or her feet.

Barefoot runners tend to land on their mid or forefoot as opposed to the heel, which good athletic shoes try to cushion.

Some studies suggest that barefoot running causes a higher level of stress fractures on the front part of the foot and increased soreness in the calves. But runners who wear athletic shoes can also suffer everything from knee injuries to hip problems, related to repeated stress from impact forces at the heel.

"There is no perfect recipe," said Rothschild, a resident of Winter Park.

In a paper publishing in the August edition of the Journal of Strength And Conditioning, Rothschild reviews the research and provides a guide for those who want to explore barefoot running as a way to train for marathons. It's a 10-12 week program that slowly eases people who run in shoes onto their bare feet.

She suggests getting a thorough physical examination and biomechanical assessment from a physical therapist or other trained professional so that strength and flexibility deficits can be identified and addressed first. That should be done before gradually transitioning to bare feet.

"The bottom line is that when a runner goes from shoes to no shoes, their body may not automatically change its gait," Rothschild said. "But there are ways to help make that transition smoother and lower the risk of injuries."

The researcher concludes that barefoot running in and of itself is neither good nor bad. As with running in shoes, proper training and conditioning are essential.

However, Rothschild does offer a warning.

Anyone with lower extremity or deformity or with a disease that creates a lack of sensation on the feet should probably avoid barefoot running because they can't necessarily feel injuries resulting from running on hard surfaces.

###

University of Central Florida: http://www.ucf.edu

Thanks to University of Central Florida for this article.

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APNewsBreak: China ex-official's wife OKs lawyers

This photo taken on Friday, July 27, 2012 shows Hefei Intermediate People's Court which will take up the case of Gu Kailai, wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai in Hefei in central China's Anhui province. Gu's day in court will likely be soon - and short. Now that the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo has been indicted for murder, Chinese authorities are expected to proceed quickly on orders of a leadership keen to move past a huge scandal that has complicated its once-a-decade political transition. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

This photo taken on Friday, July 27, 2012 shows Hefei Intermediate People's Court which will take up the case of Gu Kailai, wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai in Hefei in central China's Anhui province. Gu's day in court will likely be soon - and short. Now that the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo has been indicted for murder, Chinese authorities are expected to proceed quickly on orders of a leadership keen to move past a huge scandal that has complicated its once-a-decade political transition. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

BEIJING (AP) ? The wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai has agreed to be defended by two government-appointed lawyers in the murder case against her, two different lawyers with knowledge of the case said Saturday. Her decision could be the latest sign that a resolution to her case is near.

Gu Kailai's lawyers are based in Anhui province, where her trial is to be held. It is hundreds of kilometers (miles) from Chongqing city, where Gu is alleged to have killed a British businessman and where her husband, Bo Xilai, was the Communist Party boss until earlier this year.

A lawyer close to the case said Gu and her family have accepted the court appointment of Anhui lawyer Jiang Min, a director of the provincial lawyers' association, as her defense lawyer, along with a second lawyer, Zhou Yuhao of Wuhu, another Anhui city.

The lawyer did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case. Another lawyer with knowledge of Gu's case, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Jiang would represent Gu but did not know the name of her second lawyer.

Jiang and Zhou could not be reached for comment Saturday.

The government announced Thursday that Gu and a family aide had been charged with murdering Neil Heywood, a British businessman with whom the Bo family had close ties. Chinese authorities are now also expected to quickly move ahead with the trial, which has overshadowed preparations for a once-a-decade political transition later this year.

Bo had been expected to be part of the transition until a fall from power earlier this year after his former police chief fled to a U.S. consulate and divulged suspicions that Gu was involved in Heywood's death. Three months ago, the government announced that Gu and Zhang Xiaojun, the family aide, were being investigated and that Bo was being suspended from the powerful Politburo for discipline violations that were not detailed.

Bo remains under a separate, party investigation for unspecified wrongdoings. There have been no clear signals yet on what China's leaders plan for him.

Also unclear is why Gu's case is being heard in the central city of Hefei when Heywood died in Chongqing. But there are precedents for trials of politicians to be held in cities outside their power bases. The 2008 corruption trial of former Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu was held in Tianjin.

Carl Minzer, a China law and governance expert at the Fordham Law School, said Gu's acceptance of government-appointed lawyers may indicate behind-the-doors negotiations.

When announcing the charges against Gu and Zhang, Xinhua made clear the government considers the verdict a foregone conclusion. "The facts of the two defendants' crime are clear, and the evidence is irrefutable and substantial," the report said.

If found guilty of intentional homicide, Gu and Zhang face punishment ranging from more than 10 years' imprisonment to life in jail or the death penalty.

Probably in preparation for Gu's trial, French architect Patrick Devillers arrived in China last week from Cambodia, where he had been living. Devillers reportedly knew Gu and Bo when Bo was mayor of the northeastern city of Dalian in the 1990s. Devillers told French diplomats that he was traveling to China to assist in an investigation.

___

Associated Press writer Didi Tang contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-07-28-China-Political%20Scandal/id-011842e8a9f24cfdb3b6800f0d2f90aa

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Simmering Science: Can Your House's Color Reduce Your Summer Energy Bill?

TOO DARN HOT!: In this activity, you'll find you can beat the heat with a change of color. Image: George Retseck

Key concepts
Light
Energy
Heat
Colors
Absorption
Reflectivity

Introduction
Have you ever wondered if changing the color of your house does anything other than alter its appearance? Could it also be doing something as practical as influencing how much money is spent on energy bills? On hot summer days, people consume a lot of energy to keep their houses cool. If less energy could be used to do this, not only would it save people money, it might also help the environment by decreasing the amount of energy we use! In this activity, you will test which colors may keep a house from getting quite as hot. Maybe you'll even find a good color to repaint your home!

Background
How does the color of your house affect the temperature inside? To answer this question, think about the clothes that you would wear on a hot, sunny day. Would you rather wear a light-colored shirt or a dark one? You'd probably get much warmer in a dark shirt compared with a light one. This is because the lighter shirt reflects more light than the darker one, which absorbs much more light, or energy, warming up the shirt. It then transfers the heat to your body, warming you more than the light-colored shirt would. The house color works on the same principle.

Materials
???? Black, white and gray construction paper
???? Scissors
???? Three cardboard boxes, all the same size.? For example, this could be three shoe boxes or three cereal boxes
???? Rubber cement
???? Thermometer
???? A sunny spot outside on a hot day

Preparation
???? Carefully cut the white construction paper into pieces so that it can cover the entire surface of one of the cardboard boxes.
???? Use the rubber cement to attach the paper to the box, attaching the paper as smoothly as possible so that there are no air pockets between the paper and the box below it.
???? Just as you did with the white box, attach the gray and black construction paper, cementing each color on one of the other two boxes. You should now have a white box, a gray box, and a black box.

Procedure
???? Put the thermometer in the white box, close it, and take it outside.
???? Place the white box in the sunny spot you picked. Leave it there for 30 minutes.
???? After 30 minutes, open the box and quickly read the temperature on the thermometer. How hot was it inside the box?
???? Put the thermometer in the shade somewhere near the box (still outside). After it has adjusted to the shade, read the temperature. How hot was it in the shade?
???? Repeat these steps with the gray and black boxes, separately. How hot was it inside the gray and black boxes after 30 minutes? How did the temperature in the boxes compare with the temperature in the shade nearby?
???? Which box was the hottest after 30 minutes, and which was the coolest? How did their temperatures compare with the temperatures in the shade?
???? Tip: Try to test all three boxes in the same cloud conditions. For example, try to test them all when it is sunny for the 30 minutes or test them all when it is partly cloudy for the 30 minutes. If cloud conditions change while testing one of the boxes, try retesting it again later during similar conditions.
???? Extra: How does a house's color affect how warm it stays during the winter? You can investigate this by repeating this activity but this time test the boxes on top of a tray of ice (covered with a white plastic bag to keep the boxes dry). Which color box stays the warmest in winterlike conditions?
???? Extra: What about colors other than black, white and gray? To more closely mimic a real house you can repeat this activity, but instead of using construction paper, paint the boxes different colors. Most major paint manufacturers can tell you the light reflectance value (LRV) of any color paint. For example, white usually reflects 80 percent of the light that shines on it whereas for black it is 5 percent. Conduct your test for a series of colors with different LRV values. How does the temperature change with the paint color's LRV?
???? Extra: House color is only one aspect of house design. Does the material you choose on the outside of your house make a difference? In this activity you used a box wrapped in paper material to simulate a painted house. What about real materials used to cover houses? Try this activity again using different materials: adobe, stucco, wood, siding, metal, etcetera. Do some materials keep the house cooler than others in hot weather?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=f26c5deb854147a0c25467ae05679801

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Analysis: Fight over Islam, money and power brings violence to Volga

KAZAN, Russia (Reuters) - Not far from glitzy boulevards where an oil boom has sent up stadiums and high-rises overlooking the Volga River, women in headscarves wander through Islamic bookstores selling pamphlets on the institution of sharia in Russia.

Kazan, capital of Russia's mainly-Muslim Tatarstan region, has long had an image as a showcase of religious tolerance. But that reputation was shattered last week by car bomb and shooting attacks carried out only hours before the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

On the wall outside the bookshop, a flyer in the local Tatar language calls Muslims to unite against the region's top religious leader, Mufti Ildus Faizov, who was wounded in the attacks which also killed his deputy.

"Things will only get worse here and Muslims will be the ones who suffer the most," said Anisa Karabayeva, 43, her face framed by a white hijab, or traditional headscarf.

"Will there be more bombs? Probably," she says flatly, standing in front of a display case stocked with Korans and prayer rugs.

The attacks came against a background of anger among many Muslims who complain that the authorities in Tatarstan are restricting Islam in the name of fighting radicalism. It is a dispute that also involves a struggle for money and influence in the increasingly prosperous oil-producing region.

President Vladimir Putin, who started a new six-year term in May, has repeatedly called for national unity and religious concord in a predominantly Orthodox Christian nation with deep-rooted ethnic minorities, many of them Muslim.

For decades, Russia has endured violence in mostly Muslim provinces in the North Caucasus on its southern fringe, where tens of thousands of people were killed in two separatist wars in Chechnya after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and insurgents are still fighting to set up an Islamic state.

But booming Tatarstan - 2000 km (1,200 miles) away from the war zones - had largely avoided unrest until now.

Moderate Muslims in Tatarstan blame the violence on the arrival of radical groups, such as followers of Sunni Islam's strict Salafi movement and the outlawed organization Hizb ut-Tahrir which seeks an Islamic caliphate.

Last week's attack resembles strikes against moderate muftis in places like the Caucasus region of Dagestan next door to Chechnya. Kazan is now on increased alert for more attacks. Outside of mosques, police rifle through the belongings and bags of the faithful, who line up in front of metal detectors.

"Today Islam is growing strongly in Kazan... But there are different sects and movements that you simply cannot control," said Ramil Mingarayev, an imam at the al Marjani Mosque.

"We try to fight radicals, we have tried to clean our city of them, but there are hidden mosques, where they gather and distribute forbidden literature, in basements and in the forests."

Some of those fears arise from threats made by North Caucasus militants far away. Russia's most wanted man, Chechen Islamist guerrilla leader Doku Umarov, called for an uprising among Russia's Muslims last year, mentioning Tatarstan by name.

"I want to appeal to the Muslim brothers who live on Russian-occupied Muslim land... I call on you to destroy the enemies of Allah wherever you are. I call on you to destroy them where your hand reaches and to open fronts of jihad," he said in a video posted on insurgency-affiliated website Kavkaz Centre.

SELLING TOURS

Since becoming head of the Tatarstan branch of the Russian state's Spiritual Directorate of Muslims in April last year, Faizov has been praised by Kremlin authorities for what they say are measures to clamp down on radical sentiment and encourage traditional forms of Islamic practice seen as more moderate.

Religion is also a big business, which has made him enemies. Four months ago Faizov gave near-exclusive rights in Tatarstan to sell tours to Mecca for the annual haj pilgrimage to Tatar Business World, a company his office's web site says it controls. Many Muslims complained that the price went up.

Rustem Gataullin, the chairman of the company that previously had rights to sell pilgrimage tours, was one of between 40 and 100 people who were detained in relation to last week's attacks, according to Interfax.

"He had his enemies," said Gabid Hayruddinov, 73, who reads prayers for the Muslim faithful who come to him in search of help in the city's main mosque of Kul Sharif.

"He promised to make the haj tours cheaper, but instead they became even more expensive: they went from 120,000 to 150,000 roubles ($4,600)," he said, his light blue eyes set deep against his dark wizened skin.

Small protests against Faizov had bubbled throughout the year in Kazan, culminating with an open letter to him published in Russian and Tatar in various newspapers and on the Internet, calling for the price of haj tours to be cut.

Faizov was unavailable to talk when Reuters called his office. His deputy was likewise unavailable as was another imam with strong ties to the directorate.

A MORE JUST SOCIETY

Beneath the 18th century al Marjani mosque a dark tunnel leads from the room for prayer to the Islamic school across the street. Five times a day the dozens of students make their way through the stone entrance, perform ablutions, pray and return.

For those who experience Russia's failing social welfare programs and chronically corrupt court system and police force, stricter versions of Islam hold out the hope for a more just society.

"It's good we have the authorities - without them there would be chaos," said Zakhid Anovarov, a burly 20-year-old student with a thin black beard.

"But it's not a just system, because it's a man-made system. If we were governed by shariah, then life would be better, more just," he said of the Islamic law code.

Many of the students are migrants from elsewhere in Russia or other former Soviet states to Kazan, where construction money has created new jobs, including sprucing up the city to hold the World University Games next year.

Zarifa Kamilova came to Kazan in 2004 to escape the aftermath of the second Chechen War in her hometown of Grozny, where federal forces had toppled a separatist government.

Like other Chechens in Kazan, she was drawn to its Muslim majority and the possibility to find work. But she says she fears pressure by the authorities will marginalize Muslims, leading more and more of them to radicalism.

"I have already taken five books off my shelves this year because they were considered too radical," she said, referring to an ever-expanding list of literature outlawed by Russia's Justice Ministry. She and other Muslims say they have felt increasing pressure since Faizov assumed his post.

"This alone is turning normal people into radicals. It's not that more people are becoming radical it's that their definition is encompassing more and more people," she said.

She says she fears a government crackdown on Muslims that will ban more religious literature she would otherwise sell in her store, where everything from electronic Korans to prayer rugs to Chinese-made clocks with prayers on them is on offer.

Referring to previous crackdowns on illegal groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, which thrives in Central Asia and has been brought to Russia by immigrants, she says she has never faced arrest. But: "I have learned one thing, never think it can't happen to you".

Muslims in Kazan say Faizov also launched a bid to take over leadership at the Kul Sharif Mosque, a visual symbol of the renaissance of Islam in Kazan. Completed in 2005, it sits on the site of a medieval mosque destroyed in the 16th century by Ivan the Terrible, who conquered the Kazan Khanate, a Tatar state ruled by descendents of Genghis Khan.

TAKEN IN THE NIGHT

In his battle with radical Islam, perhaps none of Faizov's efforts were as divisive as his demand that imams of all mosques undergo a course in traditional Hanafi Islam, the movement traditionally associated with Tatarstan.

In December, angry Muslims stormed the main mosque in the town of Almetevsk, 270 km (170 miles) and for hours refused to let local religious authorities enter. The confrontation was eventually defused by Faizov, but resentment still burns.

Near Almetevsk, in the village of Novoye Nadyrovo where roosters and chickens wander freely along gravel paths, authorities removed the local imam, Ilnar Kharisov, from his post a few months ago. Friends say he was detained on Friday night, the day after the explosions in Kazan.

Kharisov, a young scholar who had studied abroad and taken the name Abdulmalik, still has a religious following in the village and his sacking as imam split the community. Neighbors say a former communist functionary has been placed in charge of the village mosque. They speak darkly of Kharisov's arrest.

"They've taken all the good imams away and they've replaced them with clowns in their places, and they protect them there with police. People are very unhappy here," said a neighbor of Kharisov who gave his name only as Ramil. ($1 = 32.7652 Russian roubles)

(Reporting by Thomas Grove; Editing by Peter Graff)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-fight-over-islam-money-power-brings-violence-070715643.html

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Gov't stepping up fight against health care fraud

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration is upping the ante in the fight against health care fraud, joining forces with private insurers and state investigators on a scale not previously seen in an attempt to stanch tens of billions of dollars in losses.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement Thursday that the new public-private partnership "puts criminals on notice that we will find them and stop them," while Attorney General Eric Holder called it "a critical step forward" against fraud, an endemic problem plaguing programs like Medicare and Medicare as well as private insurance companies.

Details of the collaboration remain to be worked out, but the possibilities include sharing information on new fraud schemes as they pop up, using claims data to catch scams such as payments billed to different insurers on the same day for care purportedly delivered to the same patient in different cities, and using computer analysis to spot emerging patterns of fraud.

The agreement is also unusual because it brings the Obama administration and longtime foes in the insurance industry together to tackle a common problem. While carrying out the requirements of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, insurers are also lobbying to roll back some of its provisions, such as new taxes on the industry and cuts to private plans offered through Medicare. Obama continues to rail against industry "abuses."

Fraud is estimated to cost Medicare about $60 billion a year, and the Obama administration has beefed up the government's efforts to stop it, bringing in record settlements with drug companies for marketing violations as well as using new powers in the health care law to pursue low-level fraudsters with greater zeal.

Yet, although Medicare is becoming a harder target, it's too early to say if the tide has turned.

Some antifraud efforts launched with great fanfare have yet to deliver convincing results. For example, a $77-million computer system unveiled last summer to stop Medicare fraud before it happens had prevented just one suspicious payment by Christmas.

Likewise, the new public-private collaboration could face problems. Privacy advocates may object to extensive scrutiny of claims data, and doctors have traditionally pushed back against routine computerized monitoring of their practice patterns.

A formal announcement of the campaign was scheduled Thursday afternoon at the White House, with top insurance industry officials participating. Supporting the partnership are America's Health Insurance Plans, the leading industry lobbying group, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and major companies including UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint, Inc. Formal working meetings are scheduled for September.

The analysis of data from Medicare, Medicaid and private health plans will look for suspicious patterns and other evidence that might indicate fraud, White House officials said. A "trusted third party" would comb through the data and turn questionable billing over to insurers or federal investigators.

Officials said those who submit fraudulent claims often do so for both government programs and private insurance plans. Separately, such claims might not raise suspicions, but taken together they could raise a red flag, such as when a doctor bills for more than 24 hours in a day.

Law enforcement organizations taking part in the collaboration include the FBI, the Health and Human Services Inspector General's Office, the Justice Department, and state and private insurance fraud control units.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/govt-stepping-fight-against-health-care-fraud-144836542.html

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