Why Is It Still Web 2.0?

Screen Shot 2011-10-21 at 4.57.12 AM Web 2.0 Summit went down in SF?this week and, with the exception of a few speakers who ducked out because of pre-IPO jitters, a good portion of the upper echelon Internet ecosystem was there, including final speaker and Web 3.0 proponent Reid Hoffman. Since Hoffman says we've already surpassed an era defined by social sharing straight into an era defined by the implementation of the data generated by that social sharing, why still call it Web 2.0 Summit?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zyPKeCM9Veg/

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Greece: Riots as austerity steps get 1st approval (AP)

ATHENS, Greece ? Hundreds of youths smashed and looted stores in central Athens and clashed with riot police during a massive anti-government rally against painful new austerity measures that won initial parliamentary approval in a vote Wednesay night.

The rioting came on the first day of a 48-hour nationwide general strike that brought services in much of Greece to a standstill, grounding flights for hours, leaving ferries tied up in port and shutting down customs offices, stores and banks.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets of the Greek capital to demonstrate against the austerity bill, which includes new tax hikes, further pension and salary cuts, the suspension on reduced pay of 30,000 public servants and the suspension of collective labor contracts.

Creditors have demanded the meaures before they give Greece more funds from a euro110 billion ($152.11 billion) package of bailout loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. Greece says it will run out of money in mid-November without the euro8 billion ($11 billion) installment.

But Greek citizens said they already are reeling from more than one-and-a-half years of austerity measures.

"We just can't take it any more. There is desperation, anger and bitterness," said Nikos Anastasopoulos, head of a workers' union for an Athens municipality, as he joined the demonstration early in the day.

The bill won initial approval in the 300-member Parliament late Wednesday, with 154 deputies voting in favor on principle and 141 against. A second vote, on the bill's articles, is due Thursday. Only after that procedure will the bill have passed. A communist party-backed union has vowed to encircle Parliament Thursday in an attempt to prevent deputies from entering the building for the procedure.

The new measures have even prompted some lawmakers from the governing Socialists to threaten not vote for at least some of the articles in the bill. But Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos insisted there was no choice but to accept the hardship.

"We have to explain to all these indignant people who see their lives changing that what the country is experiencing is not the worst stage of the crisis," he said in Parliament. "It is an anguished and necessary effort to avoid the ultimate, deepest and harshest level of the crisis. The difference between a difficult situation and a catastrophe is immense."

Hours before Wednesday's vote, one of Athens' largest demonstrations in years degenerated into violence as masked and hooded youths pelted riot police outside Parliament with gasoline bombs and chunks of marble smashed from buildings, metro stops and sidewalks.

Police responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Authorities said 50 police were injured in the clashes, along with at least three demonstrators, while 33 people were detained for questioning or arrested for alleged involvement in the rioting. At least three journalists covering the riots were also slightly hurt.

Long after Wednesday's demonstration was over, violence continued, with police fighting running street battles with youths setting up burning barricades along the back streets near Athens' main Syntagma Square and near the tourist area of Monastiraki.

Thick black smoke billowed from burning trash and bus-stops, and debris lay strewn along the capital's broad avenues. A hurled gasoline bomb set fire to a sentry post used by the ceremonial presidential guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament.

In Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, protesters smashed the facades of about 10 shops that defied the strike and remained open, as well as five banks and cash machines. Police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades.

The general strike is set to continue Thursday, with all sectors ? from dentists, hospital doctors and lawyers to tax office workers, taxi drivers, prison guards, teachers and dock workers ? staying off the job.

Air traffic controllers scaled back their strike from 48 hours to 12, allowing flights to take off and land after noon on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, European countries are trying to work out a broad solution to the continent's deepening debt crisis, before a weekend summit in Brussels. It became clear earlier this year that the initial bailout for Greece was not working as well as had been hoped, and European leaders agreed on a second, euro109 billion ($151 billion) bailout. But key details of that rescue fund, including the participation of the private sector, remain to be worked out.

____

Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111019/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_greece_financial_crisis

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The Best To-Do App for Android [Video]

The Best To-Do App for Android There are more to-do list managers and utilities available for Android that there's no way we could mention every one of them. That said, after testing several apps and companion services, we settled on Wunderlist as the best to-do manager for Android, but it has very stiff competition.


The Best To-Do App for Android

  • Cross-platform, with dedicated apps for iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux in addition to a webapp to access your to-dos when you're on a system without the Wunderlist application installed
  • Syncs all tasks to your Wunderlist account on the web, so no device-to-device sync or third party intermediary services are required
  • Features homescreen widgets so you can see your upcoming to-dos without opening the app
  • Quickly add and manage tasks from the mobile app, assign deadlines and due dates
  • Allows you to send tasks to Wunderlist via email, and supports email reminders when a task is due
  • Allows you to organize and make tasks stand out by starring them, adding notes to help jog your memory, or sorting them into lists or categories
  • Offers multiple backgrounds to personalize your mobile experience/li>

The Best To-Do App for Android

Wunderlist's greatest strength is in its flexibility. The Android app is great and richly featured on its own, and gives you access to all of the features you would want from a mobile to-do manager. You can add tasks easily, move them around between categories or star them to mark them as important, change due dates, and even change the view so you can focus specifically on the most important items you have to work on. Plus, all of your tasks and changes are synchronized to your Wunderlist account on the web so you don't have to sync or push your changes to another device. Additionally, you can share to-dos with other users and collaborate on projects. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Wunderlist is available for virtually every platform, with native apps for iOS, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux in addition to Android and a fully-featured webapp.

The Best To-Do App for Android

Wunderlist's Android app is relatively new, so some users have reported issues getting the homescreen widgets to work just right, or sorting tasks to work. These all worked fine in our tests, but they're worth noting. Also, while Wunderlist does allow you to star tasks and make notes on them for more reference, there's no tagging support. Plus?and this is a big one?Wunderlist has no location-awareness at all. It's a con when you consider some of its competition has it, but it's not as big a drawback when you consider that Wunderlist is completely free and its competitors that do have location-awareness charge for it.

The Best To-Do App for Android

To say there are alternatives on Android to Wunderlist would be a gross understatement. Astrid (Free) was extremely close to taking the top spot. We've mentioned Astrid several times before, most notably in our Lifehacker Pack for Android, and we still think it's a great app. It's free, was one of the first feature-rich to-do list managers for Android, and unlike Wunderlist, syncs with Google Tasks and Producteev as well as its own webapp, partly to make up for lacking a desktop client. If you're already using another web service and want an app that will sync with your Android phone, Astrid is an excellent alternative. If you're willing to put down money, Astrid has a plug-in for location awareness that will set you back $1.49, and a "Power Pack" for $3.99 that includes features like homescreen widgets and voice support.

Taskos (Free) is another free option that looks great and has a lot of great features baked into the free version that other apps include in their paid versions or in-app purchases, like homescreen widgets, alerts, voice actions, and Google Tasks sync. The only downside to Taskos is there's no webapp or desktop app to use when you're at your computer?everything's on your phone.

Also, no discussion of to-do managers would be complete without mentioning ToDo.txt and Todo.txt Touch ($2) for Android, written by our very own founding editor, Gina Trapani. To use Todo.txt Touch, your to-do list needs to be a text file stored in your Dropbox account. Combined with the Todo.txt Command Line Interface (CLI) for Windows, and you have a elegant but powerful way to manage your to-dos on the go or at the computer. Another utility, Epistle (Free), works in similar fashion.

Most other to-do managers for Android are in the "free with paid add-ons" or freemium department. ReQall (Free), has a great Android app that syncs with ReQall's webapp, but syncing is often buggy and its best features, like integration with Evernote and Google Calendar, SMS reminders, and location awareness are only available to $19.99/year ReQall Pro subscribers. GTasks (Free) is an easy-to-use to-do manager that syncs with and is ideal for people who use Google Tasks. It's ad supported, and it'll cost you $6.99 to remove them. Task List (Free) for Android is another great option that features widgets and color and category organization. It's also ad-supported; $1.99 will remove them.

Finally, Remember The Milk (Free) is another option, and the service updated just this week to make the Android app free to all users, not just those willing to pay $25/year for a pro account. Still, even though the app is free, you can only sync with RTM's servers every 24-hours and you'll have to do it manually. To unlock the app's true potential, you'll have to pay for it.

This isn't an exhaustive list of to-do apps for Android to say the least. There are dozens in the Android App Market, some of which serve as stand-alone organization tools and others that are just third-party conduits to popular web services. Do you have a favorite that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.


Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.


You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/7sXLnfUpxL0/the-best-to+do-manager-for-android

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Steelers' Polamalu could play Sunday

Troy Polamalu

By WILL GRAVES

updated 2:26 p.m. ET Oct. 18, 2011

PITTSBURGH - A violent collision with Jacksonville running back Maurice Jones-Drew's churning knees won't be enough to keep Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu out of the lineup.

Coach Mike Tomlin said Tuesday the 2010 NFL Defensive Player of the Year is "good to go" after passing a concussion test. The team removed Polamalu from the game midway through the fourth quarter of Sunday's 17-13 win over the Jaguars with concussion-like symptoms.

Tomlin believes Polamalu was injured while diving at Jones-Drew's legs on a third-and-1 play. Polamalu stuffed Jones-Drew no gain, forcing the Jaguars to punt. The All-Pro safety watched Pittsburgh's final two defensive series from the sidelines as the Steelers (4-2) held on to win their second straight.

"We anticipate him practicing tomorrow and moving on throughout the week like everyone else on our football team," Tomlin said.

The Steelers initially termed Polamalu's condition as a "very mild" concussion and took him out of the game as a precaution. Polamalu kept his helmet on save for a brief phone conversation with his wife.

The call is technically in violation of league rules, though Tomlin doesn't expect Polamalu ? who declined to speak to reporters after the game ? to be disciplined. Tomlin said it was important for Polamalu, who has a history of concussions, to assure his family he was OK.

"He wasn't checking his bank account," Tomlin said.

The Steelers will need Polamalu if they want to keep Arizona wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald in check. Fitzgerald torched the Steelers for 127 yards and two touchdowns in the 2009 Super Bowl, though Pittsburgh rallied for a 27-23 victory.

"He's the best in the world at what he does," Tomlin said of Fitzgerald.

So, arguably, is Polamalu. The nine-year veteran is second on the team with 40 tackles for the NFL's top-ranked defense.

Tomlin is pleased with how the defense is performing, but knows stiffer tests lay ahead. The four teams the Steelers have beaten rank 19th (Tennessee), 30th (Seattle), 31st (Indianapolis) and 32nd (Jacksonville) in the league in yards per game.

Even so, Pittsburgh hasn't been dominant. The Steelers have collected an NFL-low two turnovers through six games and barely escaped upsets at the hands of the lowly Colts and Jaguars, who are a combined 1-11.

Tomlin would like to see more "signature" plays from the defense but not at the price of being out of position.

"What we're not going to do is take calculated risks," Tomlin said.

They don't see one in clearing Polamalu to play.

"He met with our neurosurgeon," Tomlin said, "and they're very comfortable with where he is."

The Steelers will once again play without linebacker James Harrison (eye), nose tackle Casey Hampton (knee) and defensive end Aaron Smith (foot). Guard Doug Legursky will be out several weeks after suffering a dislocated toe against Jacksonville, though the line should be helped by the return of Chris Kemoeatu and Marcus Gilbert. Kemoeatu has missed two straight games with a knee injury while Gilbert didn't play against the Jaguars because of an issue with his left shoulder.

Tomlin is hopeful both players can help an offense that has only put together two solid halves once in the season's first six weeks.

Pittsburgh dominated Jacksonville for two quarters on Sunday, piling up 315 yards. The Steelers managed just 70 in the second half as quarterback Ben Roethlisberger completed just one pass and was sacked three times, allowing the Jaguars to get back in the game.

"We weren't up to stuff," Tomlin said.

The Steelers will need to be on Sunday against the desperate Cardinals (1-4). Pittsburgh is just 1-2 on the road and easily could be winless if not for a game-winning drive in the final minutes against the Colts.

"It's very obvious we've performed to a winning level at home, we haven't done so on the road," Tomlin said. "We've got to perform better on the road than we have."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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PFT: The surprising Raiders acquired quarterback Carson Palmer from the Bengals in exchange for a 1st-round draft pick and a conditional future pick.

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Education makes political comeback in Washington (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A rare show of bipartisanship in a divided Congress produced a deal to fix an education law long considered flawed, until a single senator stalled progress Wednesday.

The delay would be short and would not deter the committee working on one of the most significant overhauls of the No Child Left Behind law since it was passed in 2002, the chairman said.

A little more than an hour into the hearing by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Rand Paul used a procedural maneuver to put the brakes on the discussion.

The renewed focus in Washington on education comes as the 2012 campaign begins to unfold.

President Barack Obama has chided Congress for not acting to revise the law and has told states they can seek waivers from some unpopular requirements. He also has made saving teachers' jobs an essential part of his $447 billion jobs plan.

The Senate committee chairman, Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, and the top Republican, Wyoming's Mike Enzi, announced a bipartisan bill on Monday that seeks to give more control over education to states and local districts.

At the hearing, Harkin and Enzi said they were unhappy with parts of the measure, but pleased they could achieve a consensus on the issue.

Paul, R-Ky., complained that he wasn't given enough time to review the more than 800-page bill and said there haven't been hearings on the bill this year.

He said the federal government would retain too much control over education and that students still would be tested every year.

Paul used a procedural maneuver to put a halt on the hearing, citing a rule that says a committee cannot meet when the Senate is in session. That rule typically is waived.

"I think it's a mistake to continue No Child Left Behind in any form or fashion," Paul told the committee.

Harkin said the committee had hearings last year on the issue, and that Paul's move would not deter the committee's work.

He said the committee could return to work as early as Wednesday night and that he would allow Paul, who has indicated to file more than 70 amendments, to go ahead.

A coalition of 20 civil rights, disability rights and business groups, including the NAACP and the Chamber of Commerce, expressed criticism of the overhaul.

They said "states would not have to set any measurable achievement and progress targets or even graduation rate goals" and huge numbers of low-achieving kids would slip through the cracks.

Earlier, the administration said it wasn't pleased that the bill left out a requirement on teacher and principal evaluations.

Obama said last month that he was so frustrated that Congress hadn't fixed No Child Left Behind that he was allowing states that met certain conditions to get around some parts of the law. At least 39 states, in addition to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have told the Education Department they intend to seek a waiver.

A GOP-led House committee has forwarded three bills that would revise the law. But some of the more contentious issues, such as teacher accountability and effectiveness, have not yet been addressed.

Obama has made saving teachers' jobs an essential part of his effort to sell his $447 billion jobs plan. But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has compared Obama's jobs plan to "bailouts" that perpetuate economic problems, not solve them.

The White House has said that nearly 300,000 jobs in the education sector have disappeared since 2008 and that Obama's plan would support the hiring or re-hiring of 400,000 educators.

When the president's jobs plan was brought up in the Senate last week, not a single Republican senator supported it and it died.

Democrats said they would bring up parts of it separately, starting with the effort to save the jobs of teachers and first responders. The chances of passing the component on saving jobs for teachers and first responders appear dim.

___

Online:

No Child Left Behind: http://www2.ed.gov/nclb

___

Kimberly Hefling can be followed at http://twitter.com/khefling

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/uscongress/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111019/ap_on_go_co/us_education_politics

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French credit review threatens euro zone rescues (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) ? Moody's decision to review France's triple-A credit rating cast new doubt on Tuesday on Europe's hopes of drawing a line under its sovereign debt crisis, five days before a crucial EU summit.

The U.S. ratings agency said late on Monday it may slap a negative outlook on France's Aaa rating in the next three months if the costs for helping bail out banks and other euro zone members stretch its budget too much.

The warning, which sent the risk premium on French government bonds shooting up to a euro lifetime high, came as European Union leaders are preparing measures to protect the region's financial system from a potential Greek debt default.

That plan includes a new rescue plan reducing Greece's debt, strengthening the capital of banks with exposure to troubled euro zone sovereigns and leveraging the euro zone's rescue fund to prevent market contagion to bigger economies.

German leaders on Monday doused market hopes of a miracle cure at Sunday's Brussels summit, saying no one should expect a "definitive solution.

Finance Minister Francois Baroin insisted that France's AAA status was not at risk but acknowledged that the 1.75 percent growth forecast on which the government has based its 2012 budget was over-optimistic and would have to be revised down.

"It (France's AAA credit rating) is not in danger because... we will even be ahead of schedule on passing deficit reduction measures," Baroin said on France 2 television.

Asked if next year's growth forecast would have to be reduced in light of weak economic prospects, he added: "It is probably too high compared to the development of the economic situation. We will not adapt it today.

"We will adapt it, that much is clear.

France and Germany, the two strongest economies among the 17 euro zone members, form the backbone of the 440-billion-euro EFSF rescue fund and are drafting a crisis-fighting strategy for Sunday's summit.

Without France's triple-A rating, the whole edifice of rescue measures for troubled peripheral euro zone states would begin to crumble, putting more weight on Germany, where there is a strong public backlash against bailouts.

Moody's said Paris' progress on crucial fiscal and economic reforms as well as potential adverse developments in financial markets and the economy would be taken into account in the review.

Monday's review was only a preliminary step, but a negative outlook would be a sign that Moody's could downgrade its rating on France in the next couple of years. Moody's placed the United States's Aaa rating on negative outlook in August.

The two other major ratings agencies, Standard & Poor's and Fitch, reaffirmed Paris' triple-A rating in August when French banks came under fierce market pressure over their exposure to the weakest euro zone sovereigns.

FRENCH SPREAD HITS RECORD

In early market reaction on Tuesday, the spread on French 10-year bonds over benchmark German bunds jumped to a 16-year high of 101 basis points, more than 1 percentage point.

Safe-haven German Bund futures rose on ebbing hopes of a quick solution to the euro zone debt crisis after Moody's warning on France's triple-A rating.

European shares fell, partly due to news that China's growth slowed slightly more than expected in the third quarter. chief Josef Ackermann, who is also chairman of the IIF, resisting pressure on both fronts.

Ackermann has objected to efforts to force banks to raise more capital and IIF lead negotiator Charles Dallara told Reuters on Monday that bigger writedowns on Greek bonds could only happen if policymakers addressed broader sovereign debt issues in Europe.

(Additional reporting by Walter Brandimarte in New York, Nick Vinocur in Paris, a Emelia Sithole-Matarise in London, Edward Taylor in Frankfurt; Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Mike Peacock)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111018/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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Herman Cain: The Koch Brothers, 999 origins, and drunk-driving laws (The Christian Science Monitor)

Washington ? At the front of the GOP presidential pack, former Godfather?s Pizza CEO Herman Cain is having his moment in the political sun. Which also means he?s going under the journalistic microscope. This morning?s papers are packed with pieces on Cain.

To help you keep up with the media?s continued vetting of Cain, here?s a review of the top pieces from this weekend and Monday:

1. Herman Cain?s appearance on NBC?s ?Meet The Press? Sunday.

Two bits of news emerged from this interview. First, as Decoder wrote this weekend, Cain said his applause line at a recent rally - about installing a fence along the Mexican border with electric barbed wire capable of killing those trying to enter the US illegally - was a ?joke? and that America ?needs to get a sense of humor.?

Second, Cain acknowledged that some Americans would pay more in taxes under his ?999 plan.? Which Americans, specifically? According to Cain: ?The people who spend more money on new goods.?

2. Herman Cain and the Koch Brothers

The Washington Post inspected Cain?s ties to the left?s favorite monied GOP bogeymen, Charles and David Koch, finding:

Cain?s campaign manager and a number of aides have worked for Americans for Prosperity, or AFP, the advocacy group founded with support from [the Kochs], which lobbies for lower taxes and less government regulation and spending. Cain credits a businessman who served on an AFP advisory board with helping devise his ?9-9-9? plan to rewrite the nation?s tax code. And his years of speaking at AFP events have given the businessman and radio host a network of loyal grassroots fans.

3. The history of ?999?

The Wall Street Journal?s Neil King, Jr. digs into the formation of the ?999 Plan,? finding Cain and economic advisor Rich Lowrie sought - and received - a blessing from conservative tax guru Arthur Laffer. Laffer, ?often viewed as the father of supply-side economics,? reportedly signed 999 with a red A+.

In practice, Mr. Lowrie?s design combines two ideas that have figured prominently in conservative tax debates in recent years. One idea is a flat tax (Mr. Laffer for years has championed this idea). The other is a national sales tax.

Admirers see it as a breath of fresh air in what is often a stultifying debate over how to rewrite the mammoth U.S. tax code. Many conservative economists have praised the Cain approach?s shift to taxing consumption while encouraging savings and investment. But some business people?particularly retailers but also home builders?cringe at the prospect of a national sales tax. And liberals worry it would raise taxes on lower-income people, or deepen the current deficits, or maybe both.

4. Is Herman Cain a serious contender?

Two pieces dig into whether Cain, who has only recently rocketed up to top-tier status, has the desire and/or ability to start building the kind of team necessary to compete with the serious organizations of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

Neil King, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal writes:

Now, under increasing scrutiny, [Cain] needs to hone his message, rapidly build a campaign organization to capture the swell and, perhaps most importantly in the eyes of national GOP operatives, give himself over to the discipline of a national campaign?.

Cain aides say they are hiring campaign staff at a breakneck pace, looking to nearly double the payroll to about 60 by the end of the month. They opened a South Carolina headquarters 10 days ago and are bulking up operations in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Mr. Cain has shot up in the polls.

The Washington Post?s Amy Gardner begins her piece by looking at Cain?s current lack of such an organization:

As presidential contender Herman Cain launched a bus tour across Tennessee this weekend, his advisers couldn?t explain why he would spend precious time in a state that is far down the list of crucial primaries.

Moments away from an appearance at a diner in Concord, N.H., Cain?s people didn?t know the name or address of the place.

And Cain?s organization is so thin in key early states that one New Hampshire strategist said that when activists have asked where to learn more about the candidate, there was no one in the state to refer them to.

Still, Cain is drawing massive crowds and - so far, at least - the more traditional trappings haven?t paid off much for Perry or Romney.

?If Facebook could be used to topple the Egyptian government, then perhaps Herman Cain can use it to win Iowa,? said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist who most recently worked for the short-lived presidential bid of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. ?Thus far, the traditional approach to running for president in 2012 has paid few dividends, and the old must-dos have proven to be less important milestones than expected.?

5. Lobbying against stricter drunk driving regulations?

As head of the National Restaurant Association, Cain lobbied against a national law imposing a .08 percent blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for a driving under the influence charge, Benjy Sarlin of Talking Points Memo writes:

?The problem is not the responsible drinker,? Cain wrote in one letter to the editor.? It is the alcohol-abuser who gets behind the wheel of a car. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, two-thirds of all alcohol-related fatalities are caused by drivers with a BAC of 0.15 or higher.?

Go beyond:

Find out if Herman Cain will be in your state by checking out his schedule.

Follow @TheHermanCain on Twitter.

Like your politics unscrambled - with a side of humor? Check out DCDecoder.com.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20111017/ts_csm/416090

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New, higher estimates of endangered humpback whales in the North Pacific

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 18-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Jim Milbury
jim.milbury@noaa.gov
310-245-7114
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service

Scientists have increased the estimate on the number of humpback whales in the North Pacific Ocean in a paper published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. The increase follows a refined statistical analysis of data compiled in 2008 from the largest whale survey ever undertaken to assess humpback whale populations throughout the North Pacific.

The number of North Pacific Humpback Whales in the 2008 study known as the Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpbacks, or SPLASH, was estimated at just under 20,000 based on a preliminary look at the data. This new research indicates the population to be over 21,000 and possibly even higher a significant improvement to the scant 1400 humpback whales estimated in the North Pacific Ocean at the end of commercial whaling in 1966.

"These improved numbers are encouraging, especially after we have reduced most of the biases inherent in any statistical model," said Jay Barlow, NOAAs Fisheries Service marine mammal biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. "We feel the numbers may even be larger since there have been across-the-board increases in known population areas and unknown areas have probably seen the same increases."

The SPLASH research was a three-year project begun in 2004 involving NOAA scientists and hundreds of other researchers from the United States, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala and was the first systematic survey ever attempted to determine the humpback whales' overall population, structure, and genetic makeup in the North Pacific.

Researchers were able to quantify the number of humpback whales by photographing and cataloguing over 18,000 pictures of the animals' tail, or fluke because the pigmentation patterns on the fluke act like a fingerprint and are unique to each animal. Scientists determined population numbers by comparing photographs taken in northern feeding grounds (around the Pacific Rim from California to Kamchatka) compared with matches of the same animals in the warm tropical waters of southern breeding areas as far as 3000 miles away.

"This latest revision to the study provides an accurate estimate for humpback whales in an entire ocean that could not have been possible without researchers working together to pool data," said John Calambokidis, senior research biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research. "While populations of some other whale species remain very low this shows that humpback whales are among those that have recovered strongly from whaling."

###

Barlow. J, Calambokidis. J, Falcone. E, Baker. C. S, Burdin. A. Clapham. P, Ford. J, Gabriele. C, LeDuc. R, Mattila. D, Quinn II. T, Rojas-Bracho. L, Straley. J, Taylor. B, Urbn. J, Wade. P, Weller. D, Witteveen. B, Yamaguchi. M, "Humpback whale abundance in the North Pacific estimated by photographic capture-recapture with bias correction from simulation studies", Marine Mammal Science, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, DOI:10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00444.x http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00444.x/abstract


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[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 18-Oct-2011
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Jim Milbury
jim.milbury@noaa.gov
310-245-7114
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service

Scientists have increased the estimate on the number of humpback whales in the North Pacific Ocean in a paper published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. The increase follows a refined statistical analysis of data compiled in 2008 from the largest whale survey ever undertaken to assess humpback whale populations throughout the North Pacific.

The number of North Pacific Humpback Whales in the 2008 study known as the Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpbacks, or SPLASH, was estimated at just under 20,000 based on a preliminary look at the data. This new research indicates the population to be over 21,000 and possibly even higher a significant improvement to the scant 1400 humpback whales estimated in the North Pacific Ocean at the end of commercial whaling in 1966.

"These improved numbers are encouraging, especially after we have reduced most of the biases inherent in any statistical model," said Jay Barlow, NOAAs Fisheries Service marine mammal biologist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. "We feel the numbers may even be larger since there have been across-the-board increases in known population areas and unknown areas have probably seen the same increases."

The SPLASH research was a three-year project begun in 2004 involving NOAA scientists and hundreds of other researchers from the United States, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala and was the first systematic survey ever attempted to determine the humpback whales' overall population, structure, and genetic makeup in the North Pacific.

Researchers were able to quantify the number of humpback whales by photographing and cataloguing over 18,000 pictures of the animals' tail, or fluke because the pigmentation patterns on the fluke act like a fingerprint and are unique to each animal. Scientists determined population numbers by comparing photographs taken in northern feeding grounds (around the Pacific Rim from California to Kamchatka) compared with matches of the same animals in the warm tropical waters of southern breeding areas as far as 3000 miles away.

"This latest revision to the study provides an accurate estimate for humpback whales in an entire ocean that could not have been possible without researchers working together to pool data," said John Calambokidis, senior research biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research. "While populations of some other whale species remain very low this shows that humpback whales are among those that have recovered strongly from whaling."

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Barlow. J, Calambokidis. J, Falcone. E, Baker. C. S, Burdin. A. Clapham. P, Ford. J, Gabriele. C, LeDuc. R, Mattila. D, Quinn II. T, Rojas-Bracho. L, Straley. J, Taylor. B, Urbn. J, Wade. P, Weller. D, Witteveen. B, Yamaguchi. M, "Humpback whale abundance in the North Pacific estimated by photographic capture-recapture with bias correction from simulation studies", Marine Mammal Science, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, DOI:10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00444.x http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-7692.2010.00444.x/abstract


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Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/nnmf-nhe101811.php

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