China says 'religious extremists' behind Xinjiang attack

BEIJING (Reuters) - The deadliest unrest in years in China's western region of Xinjiang was carried out by a gang engaged in "religious extremist activities", state media reported, saying the group had been busy buying weapons and raising money.

Beijing initially called last week's incident in which 35 people were killed a "terrorist attack".

Xinjiang is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language. Many deeply resent what they call Chinese government restrictions on their culture, language and religion. Beijing accuses extremists of separatism.

The animosity between the majority Han Chinese and the Uighurs poses a major challenge for China's Communist Party leaders. President Xi Jinping, who took office in March, has called for the unity of all ethnic groups in China.

According to reports on the government website of Xinjiang and the state news agency Xinhua, last week's attacks occurred after police arrested a member of the gang.

The next day the same gang went on a rampage in the remote township of Lukqun, about 200 km (120 miles) southeast of Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi.

The group attacked a police station, shops and a construction site. Twenty-four civilians, both Uighur and Han Chinese, and police were killed, along with 11 gang members.

"Since February, Ahmatniyaz Siddiq and others were engaged in religious extremist activities, listening to violent terrorist recordings," said the reports.

"They formed a violent terrorist group of 17 members, and since mid-June were raising money, and buying knives, gasoline and other tools for crime."

Last week's killings marked the deadliest unrest since July 2009, when nearly 200 people were killed in riots pitting Uighurs against ethnic Chinese in the region's capital Urumqi.

"Terrorist organizations should be aware that the Chinese nation and its people are determined to safeguard the country's territorial integrity and national unity against all enemies," Xinhua said in a separate commentary on Sunday.

"Any attempt to sabotage will eventually fail."

Two days after the deadly attack, more than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knives, attacked a police station in Xinjiang, state media reported.

(Reporting by Li Hui and Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-says-religious-extremists-behind-xinjiang-attack-111225914.html

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Why states that ban gay marriage are resting easy after Supreme Court rulings

As gay marriage supporters celebrate this week's rulings at the US Supreme Court, states that prohibit same-sex marriage are also elated, reassured that their bans are not in legal jeopardy.

By Mark Guarino,?Staff writer / June 28, 2013

Equality Alabama held a rally in support of same-sex marriage at Al's on Seventh, in Birmingham, Ala.,Wednesday.

Tamika Moore/AP/AL.com

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The two gay marriage rulings from the US Supreme Court this week have prompted big sighs of relief coming from the 35 states with bans on same-sex marriage. Nothing in the high court's actions imperil their bans, say officials from those states, and in fact the justices affirmed the rights of states to define legal marriage how they see fit.

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That may seem counterintuitive, given that gay rights supporters heralded the Supreme Court's moves, and that, as a result of its actions, gay marriages will soon resume in California, despite that state's voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8.

States with gay marriage bans can feel confident that those laws are not in legal jeopardy because the?justices did not rule on the merits of same-sex marriage itself, only on the issue of federal benefits for those whom states deem to be married, says John Dinan, a political scientist and state constitutional expert at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.?In the case involving the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, describes the burden of DOMA on same-sex couples, but it does not venture into territory such as advising states with bans to change course or make adjustments.

?Legally, we?re in the same place today that we were at the beginning of the week. No real new ground has been broken in that direction,? Professor Dinan says. ?Nothing came out of the two decisions that changed the legal terrain that would make those states vulnerable.?

Officials from such states asserted likewise.?

?The US Supreme Court ruled that states, not the federal government, retain the constitutional authority to define marriage. Michigan?s constitution stands, and the will of people to define marriage as between one man and one woman endures in the Great Lakes State,? said Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette in a statement released soon after the ruling. Michigan?s voter-approved constitutional ban of same-sex marriage was established in 2004.?

US Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R) of Kansas told reporters that the ?one good thing out of the decision was the court did not declare that there was a constitutional right for same-sex marriage? and that Kansas ?will be able to maintain its marriage amendment? prohibiting gay marriage.

In a 5-to-4 decision issued Wednesday, the Supreme Court said Congress cannot treat same-sex married couples differently than opposite-sex married couples for purposes of qualifying for some 1,100 federal benefits, thereby overturning the guts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). As a result, same-sex couples residing in one of the 13 states where gay marriage is legal are soon to be entitled to all the federal benefits that heterosexual married couples receive.

In a separate ruling issued the same day, the high court dismissed the appeal from backers of California's Proposition 8, saying they did not have legal standing. That means a lower federal court ruling that California's ban is unconstitutional prevails in that state.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/5BNU5II0iXA/Why-states-that-ban-gay-marriage-are-resting-easy-after-Supreme-Court-rulings

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Kerry meeting with Palestinian president

JERUSALEM (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday for the second time in two days, continuing his rushed round of shuttle diplomacy to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Kerry is shuttling between meetings in Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, to find a way to coax both sides back into negotiations to craft a two-state solution to their long-running conflict.

U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials have all declined to disclose details of the talks. "Working hard," is all Kerry would say when a reporter asked him, during a photo-op before the Abbas meeting, whether progress was being made.

For the past three days, Kerry, who is on a two-week swing through the Mideast and Asia, has been conducting meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials at a frenetic pace. A few days ago, Kerry added a stop in Abu Dhabi to his itinerary, but it was later canceled because of his ongoing discussions on the Mideast peace process.

He had a four-hour dinner meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday night in Jerusalem followed by a more than two-hour lunch with Abbas on Friday in Amman at the home of the Palestinian ambassador to Jordan. Then it was back to Jerusalem for another meeting with Netanyahu and dinner with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

On Saturday morning, he boarded a helicopter to fly back to Amman to meet again with Abbas, this time at the Palestinian president's residence there. Later Saturday, he was to return to Jerusalem to meet with Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and Isaac Molho, a Netanyahu envoy.

Kerry is scheduled to leave Jerusalem on Sunday to head to Brunei for a Southeast Asia security conference.

There is deep skepticism that Kerry can get the two sides to agree on a two-state solution, something that has eluded presidents and diplomats for years. But the flurry of meetings has heightened expectations that the two sides can be convinced to at least restart talks, which broke down in 2008.

So far, there have been no public signs that the two sides are narrowing their differences.

In the past, Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.

Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions for talks.

Abbas made significant progress with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, in talks in 2007 and 2008, but believes there is little point in negotiating with the current Israeli leader.

Netanyahu has adopted much tougher starting positions than Olmert, refusing to recognize Israel's pre-1967 frontier as a baseline for border talks and saying east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital, is off the table. Abbas and his aides suspect Netanyahu wants to resume talks for the sake of negotiating and creating a diplomatic shield for Israel, not in order to reach an agreement.

Abbas, in turn, has much to lose domestically if he drops his demands that Netanyahu either freeze settlement building or recognize the 1967 frontier as a starting point before talks can resume. Netanyahu has rejected both demands. A majority of Palestinians, disappointed after 20 years of fruitless negotiations with Israel, opposes a return to talks on Netanyahu's terms.

___

Associated Press writer Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-meeting-palestinian-president-091203813.html

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Status of the states on same-sex marriage

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The Supreme Court issued a pair of decisions this week with major consequences for efforts to legalize or bar same-sex marriage. One ruling opened the way for California to become the 13th state to allow gay marriage; the other struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and directed the government to recognize legally married same-sex couples.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/status-states-same-sex-marriage-215635329.html

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Microsoft Rolls Out DirectX 11.2 But It?s A Windows 8.1 Exclusive

There will indeed be another version of the DirectX application programming language (API), though Windows 7 users won't be invited to the party. Neither will Windows 8 users, for the matter. Microsoft confirmed that DirectX 11.2 will be exclusive to Windows 8.1 and its Xbox One console, or at least that's the way it appears. Some sites are reporting that DX11.2 could also end up on other next generation consoles.

Regardless of it ends up, the headlining feature of DX11.2 is a new Direct3D feature called Tiled Resources, which exposes a limited virtual graphics memory model to apps. This prevents loose mapping between logical resource data and physical memory, and also allows the creation of large logical resources that utilize small amounts of physical memory. That's the technical description. Put another way, this will allow a game to store textures in both system RAM and graphics RAM. In real-world scenarios, this will come in handy for things like mapping out terrain in games and coding the user interface in apps.

According to Microsoft, Tiled Resources will allow developers to build games with unprecedented amounts of detail. In addition, Windows 8.1 Preview includes a new set of APIs for DirectX apps to present frames with lower latency, allowing for faster response time by the UI, Microsoft says.

Though it's an incremental update, there are some major goodies in DX11.2, which makes it even more interesting that Microsoft's limiting the API to Windows 8.1 on the PC side.

Source: http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/thread/522933.aspx

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94% Stories We Tell

All Critics (86) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (81) | Rotten (5)

Everyone has a different story. I found myself holding my breath listening to them talk. The story twists like a thriller.

Stories We Tell is not just very moving; it is an exploration of truth and fiction that will stay with you long after repeated viewings.

Part of the movie's pleasure is how comfortable the "storytellers" are with their director; you get a sense of a complicated but tight-knit family, going along with Sarah's project because they love her.

Never sentimental, never cold and never completely sure of anything, Polley comes across as a woman caught in wonder.

After you see it, you'll be practically exploding with questions - and with awe.

Polley approaches every character with compassion, intent upon blessing them, and serving the audience with useful questions about how we seek the truth.

Polley is working in the tradition of Orson Welles, but her trickery can be exasperating; it also neutralises many of the emotional revelations.

With Away From Her and Take This Waltz, actress-turned-filmmaker Polley has proved herself as an unusually gifted director, but this inventive, moving documentary reveals even more artistic ambition.

What saves it is our realisation that it isn't just a documentary.

A bittersweet and compelling autobiographical family portrait.

Kane-like in its mirrored complexity, flashing in its mischievous irony, the story is a shiny maze which Polley enters knowing exactly where and what her Minotaur is - the secret of her paternal parentage - while spinning for us a thread to follow.

Polley ... smilingly tells us that a story like hers can never truly be tied down, even as she screws every last piece into place.

Polley's cine-tribute is a gripping and absorbing meditation on the unknowability of other lives.

The films greatest achievement is in how deeply mesmerising one woman's story can be, regardless of whether she's famous or not.

Honestly, it's one of the best things you'll see this year.

Polley's fearless personal journey is a huge achievement, a genuine revelation - but the less detail you know beforehand, the better. Go in cold, come out warmed.

Sarah Polley is often referred to in Canada as a 'national treasure'. She's far more than that. She's a treasure to the world - period. And so, finally, is her film.

An absorbing exercise not only in documentary excavation but in narrative construction.

Sarah Polley's exploration of her tangled family history is a complex and thoroughly fascinating inquiry into the nature of truth and memory -- and, inevitably, into Polley herself.

This is simply a gorgeously realised and warmly compiled family album, which lingers with us not because its subjects are so unusual and alien, but because they feel so close to home. What a success.

Sarah Polley's personal "documentary" suffers from one additional emotional beat too many. Otherwise, it's mesmerizing.

Polley interviews her family and acquaintances with remarkable candor and intimacy, perhaps as a method of catharsis, but it never feels like a vanity project or a simple airing of dirty laundry.

The great conceit of Polley's theories of perspective and truth is that she, as director, ultimately controlled everyone's memories because she arranged them on film.

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

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Brussels army of 'slave' trainees escapes EU gaze

By Anders Melin

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When Alex Godson accepted his first unpaid internship in Brussels after receiving a master's degree in international relations from the University of Manchester, he believed a full-time position was just a few months away.

But Godson bounced from one low-paid traineeship to another for three years before finally landing a proper job in May at the European Movement International, a Brussels-based group that lobbies for a federal Europe.

He is just one of the thousands of young graduates who toil on the Brussels treadmill without job security, benefits or sometimes even a salary under the noses of European Union leaders meeting this week to declare war on youth unemployment.

"When you're just rolling from one unpaid traineeship to another, you're not on a path to anywhere," said Godson, who had to rely on his parents for money. "There's always that intern in the office, and you're just the person holding that position at the moment."

EU leaders have pledged to ensure that every young European who is out of work will be offered a proper job, training or an apprenticeship within four months. They will announce more money to back that drive on Friday.

But if they just look around them, they will see plenty of unpaid or underpaid youth slaving away in Europe's engine room.

Often dependent on grants or donations that shrink when the economy turns down, the many non-governmental organizations and think-tanks in Brussels have become increasingly reliant on short-term hires.

Graduates trying to build a CV make a good fit - young, ambitious and willing to put in long hours at very low pay.

LOW PAY, NO PAY

The European Commission offers some 1,400 sought-after five-month traineeships a year with a 1,074 euros monthly salary that is top tier, according to Sophia Kabir, a representative for the networking organization Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.

This so-called "stage", French for work experience, is often the first rung on an EU career ladder. Yet the pay is well below the Belgian minimum wage requirement of 1,500 euros per month. Many other advertised positions offer monthly stipends of a few hundred euros and sometimes nothing at all.

Valentina Mat, with a master's degree in international politics from the University of London, received just eight euros a day in food allowance when she worked for a Brussels-based international development organization for a year.

"Even in the offices of some members of the parliament there are trainees employed who are paid very little or nothing at all," Franz Obermayr, an Austrian member of the European Parliament, complained in a letter to the legislature's president, Martin Schulz.

Traineeships are supposed to provide training, but the line between that and actual employment is often blurred.

Caritas Europa, an umbrella organization for Roman Catholic charities that champions social justice, advertises three-month unpaid advocacy internships for which candidates are required to have a bachelor's or master's degree in law or politics, fluency in English and French, reporting skills, "excellent" IT skills and prior experience working in or with EU institutions - a list arguably fit for a full-time employee.

Peter Verhaege, the group's migration officer, told Reuters that while resources are thin, giving young people experience is "the least we can do."

Not everyone agrees.

"It's modern slavery," Kabir said. "People in my generation are struggling to understand their market value."

(Reporting By Anders Melin; Editing by Paul Taylor)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brussels-army-slave-trainees-escapes-eu-gaze-173908636.html

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Polymer coatings a key step toward oral delivery of protein-based drugs

June 27, 2013 ? For protein-based drugs such as insulin to be taken orally rather than injected, bioengineers need to find a way to shuttle them safely through the stomach to the small intestine where they can be absorbed and distributed by the bloodstream. Progress has been slow, but in a new study, researchers report an important technological advance: They show that a "bioadhesive" coating significantly increased the intestinal uptake of polymer nanoparticles in rats and that the nanoparticles were delivered to tissues around the body in a way that could potentially be controlled.

"The results of these studies provide strong support for the use of bioadhesive polymers to enhance nano- and microparticle uptake from the small intestine for oral drug delivery," wrote the researchers in the Journal of Controlled Release, led by corresponding author Edith Mathiowitz, professor of medical science at Brown University.

Mathiowitz, who teaches in Brown's Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biotechnology, has been working for more than a decade to develop bioadhesive coatings that can get nanoparticles to stick to the mucosal lining of the intestine so that they will be taken up into its epithelial cells and transferred into the bloodstream. The idea is that protein-based medicines would be carried in the nanoparticles.

In the new study, which appeared online June 21, Mathiowitz put one of her most promising coatings, a chemical called PBMAD, to the test both on the lab bench and in animal models. Mathiowitz and her colleagues have applied for a patent related to the work, which would be assigned to Brown University.

In prior experiments, Mathiowitz and her group have shown not only that PBMAD has bioadhesive properties, but also that it withstands the acidic environment of the stomach and then dissolves in the higher pH of the small intestine.

Adhere, absorb, arrive

The newly published results focused on the question of how many particles, whether coated with PBMAD or not, would be taken up by the intestine and distributed to tissues. For easier tracking throughout the body, Mathiowitz's team purposely used experimental and control particles made of materials that the body would not break down. Because they were "non-erodible" the particles did not carry any medicine.

The researchers used particles about 500 nanometers in diameter made of two different materials: polystyrene, which adheres pretty well to the intestine's mucosal lining, and another plastic called PMMA, that does not. They coated some of the PMMA particles in PBMAD, to see if the bioadhesive coating could get PMMA particles to stick more reliably to the intestine and then get absorbed.

First the team, including authors Joshua Reineke of Wayne State University and Daniel Cho of Brown, performed basic benchtop tests to see how well each kind of particles adhered. The PBMAD-coated particles proved to have the strongest stickiness to intestinal tissue, binding more than twice as strongly as the uncoated PMMA particles and about 1.5 times as strongly as the polystyrene particles.

The main experiment, however, involved injecting doses of the different particles into the intestines of rats to see whether they would be absorbed and where those that were taken up could be found five hours later. Some rats got a dose of the polystyrene particles, some got the uncoated PMMA and some got the PBMAD-coated PMMA particles.

Measurements showed that the rats absorbed 66.9 percent of the PBMAD-coated particles, 45.8 percent of the polystyrene particles and only 1.9 percent of the uncoated PMMA partcles.

Meanwhile, the different particles had very different distribution profiles around the body. More than 80 percent of the polystyrene particles that were absorbed went to the liver and another 10 percent went to the kidneys. The PMMA particles, coated or not, found their way to a much wider variety of tissues, although in different distributions. For example, the PBMAD-coated particles were much more likely to reach the heart, while the uncoated ones were much more likely to reach the brain.

Pharmaceutical potential

The apparent fact that the differing surface properties of the similarly sized particles had such distinct distributions in the rats' tissues after the same five-hour period suggests that scientists could learn to tune particles to reach specific parts of the body, essentially targeting doses of medicines taken orally, Mathiowitz said.

"The distribution in the body can be somehow controlled with the type of polymer that you use," she said.

For now, she and her group have been working hard to determine the biophysics of how the PBMAD-coated particles are taken up by the intestines. More work also needs to be done, for instance to demonstrate actual delivery of protein-based medicines in sufficient quantity to tissues where they are needed.

But Mathiowitz said the new results give her considerable confidence.

"What this means now is that if I coat bioerodible nanoparticles correctly, I can enhance their uptake," she said. "Bioerodible nanoparticles are what we would ultimately like to use to deliver proteins. The question we address in this paper is how much can we deliver. The numbers we saw make the goal more feasible."

Another frontier for the delivery of nanoparticles is devising a safe method to make nanoparticles, Mathiowitz said, but, "we have already developed safe and reproducible methods to encapsulate proteins in tiny nanoparticles without compromising their biological activity."

In addition to Reineke, Cho, and Mathiowitz, other authors on the paper are Yu-Ting Liu Dingle, Stacia Furtado, Bryan Laulicht, Danya Lavin, and Peter M. Cheifetz, all of Brown University during the research.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/XPzxGGf6RI8/130627125317.htm

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Rising Star Maika Monroe Joins 'Downton Abbey's' Dan Stevens in 'The Guest' (Exclusive)

By Jeff Sneider

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Up-and-coming actress Maika Monroe has booked the female lead opposite Dan Stevens in "The Guest," a psychological thriller from the filmmaking team behind Lionsgate's upcoming horror movie "You're Next."

Adam Wingard will direct from a script by Simon Barrett, while Keith Calder and Jessica Wu will produce via Snoot Entertainment. Production starts this summer.

Stevens ("Downton Abbey") stars as David, an ex-Marine who returns from a tour of duty a changed man and terrorizes a military family whose eldest son recently died.

Monroe will play Anna, the female lead who is suspicious of David and must protect her younger brother from his cold-blooded wrath.

The 20 year-old actress, who recently starred opposite Zac Efron in "At Any Price," will next be seen as a key character in Jason Reitman's "Labor Day." A former professional kiteboarder, she also appeared briefly in Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring."

A terrifying original horror movie, "You're Next" premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and will finally hit U.S. theaters on August 23 via Lionsgate.

Monroe is repped by WME, Luber Roklin Entertainment and attorney Fred Toczek.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rising-star-maika-monroe-joins-downton-abbeys-dan-235049596.html

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Video: Investing in the Next Big Tech Craze

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Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/52327431/

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NVIDIA Shield delayed until July due to a ?mechanical issue?

NVIDIA Shield Release Date Delayed

NVIDIA?s Android-powered Shield portable gaming console has been delayed until July. The system was originally set to debut on Thursday, however NVIDIA confirmed?on Wednesday that a ?mechanical issue that relates to a third party component? forced the company to delay the device?s launch. The Shield is equipped with a 5-inch 720p display, a quad-core Tegra 4 processor, a 72-core GPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD slot and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The device also includes dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers and A/B/X/Y buttons, and can even stream PC games from a?computer with a GeForce?GTX?GPU. The NVIDIA Shield will be available sometime in July for $299.

[More from BGR: iOS 7 might be more innovative than we think]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nvidia-shield-delayed-until-july-due-mechanical-issue-031543731.html

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Case Study Shows Google+ Sign-Ins Are Working, Increased Snapette Sign-Ups By 16%

One developer feature Google is really stressing these days is Google+ Sign-in, the company’s recently launched authentication tool for third-party sites and mobile apps. While the company will continue to support its standard Google Sign-in tool as well, it’s pushing hard to get users to switch to its new system. The Google+ version has the advantage (or not, depending on your perspective) of being linked directly to Google’s social network and profiles and?can therefore provide sites with easier registration system and more information about their users. A number of large companies have now integrated Google+ Sign-ins, and we are starting to get some data about how things are going. Mind you, these are somewhat self-selected Google partners, but the results are still pretty interesting.?Most companies don’t want to go on the record with their numbers, but Google just published a case study with Snapette that’s pretty much in line what we’ve been hearing, too. Snapette Case Study: 44.2% Use Google+ Sign-ins, Registrations Up 16% The latest numbers come from mobile shopping app Snapette, which launched in 2011, and this marks the first time we’re seeing some of these stats for a service that uses Google+ Sign-in. Just over 44 percent of the service’s users now use Google+ to sign in to their accounts. That’s a bit higher than the 40 percent acceptance rate Google itself cited earlier this year. Snapette also says it’s been seeing an uptick in user registrations since integrating this feature. The company says it saw “an increase in registered users of 16% above average growth” since it started using this tool.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1yyaHcLwrjE/

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Marc Rich, 'King of Oil' pardoned by Clinton, dies at 78

By Alice Baghdjian

LUCERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - Billionaire Marc Rich, who invented modern oil trading and was pardoned by President Bill Clinton over tax evasion, racketeering and busting sanctions with Iran, died on Wednesday in Switzerland aged 78.

Rich fled the Holocaust with his parents for America to become the most successful and controversial trader of his time and a fugitive from U.S. justice, enjoying decades of comfortable privacy at his sprawling Villa Rosa on Lake Lucerne.

Belgian-born Rich, whose trading group eventually became the global commodities powerhouse Glencore Xstrata, died in hospital from a stroke, spokesman Christian Koenig said. He is survived by two daughters and six grandchildren. A third daughter died previously of leukemia.

"He will be brought to Israel for burial," Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, said by telephone. Rich will be buried on Thursday at Kibbutz Einat cemetery near Tel Aviv.

Many of the biggest players in oil and metals trading trace their roots back to the swashbuckling Rich, whose triumph in the 1970s was to pioneer a spot market for crude oil, wresting business away from the world's big oil groups.

To his critics he was a white-collar criminal, a serial sanctions breaker, whom they accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, Fidel Castro's Cuba and Augusto Pinochet's Chile.

In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, "The King of Oil," the normally secretive Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Explaining Rich's route to riches in an interview with Reuters in 2010, Ammann said: "He was faster and more aggressive than his competitors. He was able to recognize trends and seize opportunities before other traders. And he went where others feared to tread - geographically and morally."

A U.S. government website once described Rich more simply, as "a white male, 177 centimeters in height ... wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Marshall Service." In 1983, he was on the FBI's 10-most-wanted list indicted for tax evasion, fraud and racketeering. At the time, it was the biggest tax-evasion case in U.S. history.

FLED POSSIBLE LIFE SENTENCE

Rich, who valued trust, loyalty, secrecy and persistence, always insisted he did nothing illegal and among those who lobbied Clinton on his behalf for his pardon were former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.

On learning of the indictment plans, Rich fled to Switzerland to escape the charges, which included exploiting the U.S. embargo against Iran, while it was holding U.S. hostages, to make huge profits on illicit Iranian oil sales.

"Marc Rich is to asset concealment what Babe Ruth was to baseball," said Arthur J. Roth, New York state commissioner of taxation and finance.

He remained under threat of a life sentence in a U.S. jail until Clinton pardoned him during the last chaotic hours of his presidency, a move that provoked moral outrage and bewilderment among some politicians. He never returned to the United States.

Rich's ex-wife, Denise, had donated funds for Clinton's presidential library. The former president later said the donation was not a factor in his decision and he had acted partly in response to a request from Israel. He regretted granting the pardon, calling it "terrible politics."

"It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation," he told Newsweek magazine in 2002.

There was also scrutiny over the role of Eric Holder, now the attorney general and then a deputy attorney general who recommended the pardon.

Rudolph Giuliani, who had worked as a prosecutor on the Rich case before becoming New York Mayor, said in a statement: "Mark Rich committed serious crimes against the United States and then fled the country when he was called to account for his conduct. He should never have been pardoned."

"The fact that Bill Clinton and Eric Holder engineered a pardon for him - without input from me, as the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted him, or Janet Reno, as Attorney General, will forever be a blemish on our justice system," Giuliani said.

'ARTISTRY OF A POOL SHARK'

In one biography, "Metal Men: Marc Rich and the 10-Billion-Dollar Scam," author A. Craig Copetas described Rich as "a beautifully sinister executive who could frame deals with the artistry of a pool shark."

Rich inherited his business acumen from his father, who became a millionaire by setting up an agricultural trading firm after emigrating to the United States.

Born Marcell David Reich in Antwerp on December 18, 1934, Rich started his career at Philipp Brothers, a top global commodities trader after World War Two.

Posted to Madrid in the late 1960s, he found ways to bypass the "Seven Sisters" major oil companies that controlled world oil supplies. Rich was one of the first to loosen their grip, becoming a middle man who bought cargoes of oil from one company to sell to another on a short-term basis, helping give birth to the dynamic market that exists today.

While at Phibro, Rich foresaw the huge price increases imposed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1973, earning big profits for the firm.

Infuriated by his pay and trading strictures, he left in 1974 along with a fellow graduate of the Phibro mailroom, Pincus "Pinky" Green, and set up Marc Rich and Co AG in Switzerland, a firm that would eventually become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

ANGER AND AMBITION

His aim, according to Copetas, was "to grind Philipp Bros. into oblivion," and he poured all his anger and ambition as well as his charm and gracious client demeanor into the new venture.

It became a highly successful trading firm and a much feared adversary in energy, metals, minerals, grains and sugar markets.

Thomas Gloor worked for Marc Rich for about seven years, starting out in the finance department straight from university and moving to trade futures and options before growing disillusioned with the firm and leaving in 1986.

"Ethics didn't really matter to them. They would trade anything with anyone ... It was all about just making more and more money," he said.

Rich later sold that company, which became Glencore International AG, and set up the Marc Rich Group. Rich was known for charitable donations through his Doron Foundation to Zurich's Jewish community.

Glencore Xstrata Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said: "He was a friend and one of the great pioneers of the commodities trading industry, founding the company that became Glencore."

As well as his villa on the Swiss lake, Rich maintained houses in Marbella in Spain and in Israel.

Rich described himself as a keen tennis player, skier, alpinist and patron of the arts. Those who knew him said in private Rich was calm and charming with a sense of humor.

In later years, Rich's fortune dwindled after his property portfolio was hit by the Spanish housing crisis.

"I invested a lot of money there and because of the crisis also lost a lot, at least on paper," he told Swiss economic magazine Bilanz. Forbes put his wealth at $2.5 billion.

He also invested with Bernard Madoff, the financier later convicted of operating a huge pyramid scheme. Rich told one magazine that he had had a "strange feeling" about the investment and "got out with everything," although he said he lost some money through "indirect participation".

Rich once told Fortune magazine he was a normal person with an image problem. "I've been portrayed in a horrible way," he said, "as a workaholic, a loner, a money machine. It's not a true picture."

Nevertheless, to his enemies he remained a symbol of the monomaniacal pursuit of vast wealth.

"The smoking gun is greed," said Ken Hill, a U.S. Marshall who hunted Rich around the world for more than a decade. "This is what Marc thrived on - the greed of those who had commodities and were in positions of influence and power."

Those who knew him say Rich never lost his appetite for a deal. He traveled to London earlier this month and had a dinner with several old friends, an old acquaintance told Reuters.

"He was doing well. He told me he was doing a little bit of business. 'I enjoy doing business,' he said."

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Ron Bousso, Caroline Copley, Emma Thomasson, Clara Ferreira-Marques, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Emma Farge, Tom Miles, Josephine Mason and David Sheppard; Writing by Peter Millership; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Peter Graff and Prudence Crowther)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/marc-rich-king-oil-pardoned-clinton-dies-78-210459269.html

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New stock camera app debuts in Google Play edition GS4 and HTC One

Redesigned radial menu makes it easier to see all your options

We've got our our hands on the "Google Play edition" Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, and we've been putting both devices through their paces. For the most part, it's hardware we already know running software we've seen before on the Nexus 4. But there's one subtle change we've noticed that could make it a little easier to control your photographic options on the new Googlified devices.

The camera app that ships on the Google-branded GS4 is later than what's on the Nexus 4 (version 1.1.40012 versus 1.1.40001, if you're keeping track), and the UI has been somewhat redesigned. The big circular menu on the Nexus is replaced with an arch-shaped menu on the Google Editions, making it easier to see all your options without your thumb getting in the way.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/Cz-7MFv3YrU/story01.htm

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Harry Reid calls House Republicans 'crazies'

Jun 25, 2013 5:13pm

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a word for conservative House Republicans.

?Crazies.?

At his weekly press availability, Reid was asked how House Speaker John Boehner will handle immigration reform ? specifically, what Senate Republican leaders voting against it will mean for future action in the GOP-controlled House.

?You?re asking me?? Reid asked. ?The speaker has said, within a period of a little over 24 hours, we?re going to pass an immigration bill. We?re going to have Democratic votes to do it. As soon as his crazies heard that, I guess they talked to him and he ? the next day he came back and he said, ?I will only pass it if I have a majority of the majority.??

Reid was referring to Boehner?s insistence that he will only bring an immigration bill to the floor if a majority of House Republicans support it.

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Source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/harry-reid-calls-house-republicans-crazies/

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High court voids key part of Voting Rights Act

FILE - This June 24, 2013 file photo shows people waiting outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced. The Supreme Court said Tuesday that a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act cannot be enforced until Congress comes up with a new way of determining which states and localities require close federal monitoring of elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - This June 24, 2013 file photo shows people waiting outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced. The Supreme Court said Tuesday that a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act cannot be enforced until Congress comes up with a new way of determining which states and localities require close federal monitoring of elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act cannot be enforced unless Congress comes up with an up-to-date formula for deciding which states and localities still need federal monitoring.

The justices said in 5-4 vote that the law Congress most recently renewed in 2006 relies on 40-year-old data that does not reflect racial progress and changes in U.S. society.

The court did not strike down the advance approval requirement of the law that has been used, mainly in the South, to open up polling places to minority voters in the nearly half century since it was first enacted in 1965. But the justices did say lawmakers must update the formula for determining which parts of the country must seek Washington's approval, in advance, for election changes.

Chief Justice John Roberts said for the conservative majority that Congress "may draft another formula based on current conditions."

That task eluded Congress in 2006 when lawmakers overwhelmingly renewed the advance approval requirement with no changes in which states and local jurisdictions were covered, and Congress did nothing in response to a high court ruling in a similar challenge in 2009 in which the justices raised many of the same concerns.

"The coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs," Roberts said.

The decision means that a host of state and local laws that have not received Justice Department approval or have not yet been submitted will be able to take effect. Prominent among those are voter identification laws in Alabama and Mississippi.

Going forward, the outcome alters the calculus of passing election-related legislation in the affected states and local jurisdictions. The threat of an objection from Washington has hung over election-related proposals for nearly a half century. At least until Congress acts, that deterrent now is gone.

That prospect has worried civil rights groups which especially worry that changes on the local level might not get the same scrutiny as the actions of state legislatures.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by her three liberal colleagues, dissented from Tuesday's ruling.

Ginsburg said no one doubts that voting discrimination still exists. "But the court today terminates the remedy that proved to be best suited to block that discrimination," she said in a dissent that she read aloud in the packed courtroom.

Justice Clarence Thomas was part of the majority, but wrote separately to say again that he would have struck down the advance approval requirement itself.

The decision comes five months after President Barack Obama, the nation's first black chief executive, started his second term in the White House, re-elected by a diverse coalition of voters.

The high court is in the midst of a broad re-examination of the ongoing necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded. The justices issued a modest ruling Monday that preserved affirmative action in higher education and will take on cases dealing with anti-discrimination sections of a federal housing law and another affirmative action case from Michigan next term.

The court warned of problems with the voting rights law in a similar case heard in 2009. The justices averted a major constitutional ruling at that time, but Congress did nothing to address the issues the court raised. The law's opponents, sensing its vulnerability, filed several new lawsuits.

The latest decision came in a challenge to the advance approval, or preclearance, requirement, which was brought by Shelby County, Ala., a Birmingham suburb.

The lawsuit acknowledged that the measure's strong medicine was appropriate and necessary to counteract decades of state-sponsored discrimination in voting, despite the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of the vote for black Americans.

But it asked whether there was any end in sight for a provision that intrudes on states' rights to conduct elections, an issue the court's conservative justices also explored at the argument in February. It was considered an emergency response when first enacted in 1965.

The county noted that the 25-year extension approved in 2006 would keep some places under Washington's oversight until 2031 and seemed not to account for changes that include the elimination of racial disparity in voter registration and turnout or the existence of allegations of race-based discrimination in voting in areas of the country that are not subject to the provision.

The Obama administration and civil rights groups said there is a continuing need for it and pointed to the Justice Department's efforts to block voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas last year, as well as a redistricting plan in Texas that a federal court found discriminated against the state's large and growing Hispanic population.

Advance approval was put into the law to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep blacks from voting.

The provision was a huge success because it shifted the legal burden and required governments that were covered to demonstrate that their proposed changes would not discriminate. Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent extension was overwhelmingly approved by a Republican-led Congress and signed by President George W. Bush.

The requirement currently applies to the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also covers certain counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some local jurisdictions in Michigan. Coverage has been triggered by past discrimination not only against blacks, but also against American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaska Natives and Hispanics.

Towns in New Hampshire that had been covered by the law were freed from the advance approval requirement in March. Supporters of the provision pointed to the ability to bail out of the prior approval provision to argue that the law was flexible enough to accommodate change and that the court should leave the Voting Rights Act intact.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced an agreement that would allow Hanover County, Va., to bail out.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-25-US-Supreme-Court-Voting-Rights/id-c466f99d63ce4110aaaccd84904d0cc6

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