Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/3sjMR7_5IHo/
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
BumpWatch: Halle Berry?s Purple Haze
Halle Berry shows off her baby belly at the premiere her latest movie, The Call, held Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Know Which Countertops Are More Susceptible to Stains (and How to Clean Them)
We've highlighted one great solution for cleaning a stone countertop before. However, a commenter at TipNut points out that before you go mixing solutions, you should know which type of stone you have. Not all minerals are created equal:
The only (and I mean ONLY) stones that might be sensitive to acids like vinegar or citrus would be calcium-based stones (limestone, travertine, and many marbles).
For kitchen countertops, granite is the surface leader by a long shot over other types of stone. Few granites contain much (if any) calcium and are NOT affected by vinegar or any normal household acids. For those who are still unsure, they can always test any "alternative" cleaners (or even straight vinegar) in an inconspicuous location before using it everywhere.
Check out the source for several solutions that can be used for a variety of spills. More than anything, though, the best way to clean stains is to prevent them entirely. The longer fluids sit on your precious marble, the more it will set.
How To Clean & Remove Stains From Marble & Granite | TipNut
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Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Taxpayers to continue investing at Brookley Aeroplex ahead of ...
MOBILE, Alabama ? The cost of asphalt to pave over newly constructed roads, conduit for fiber optics, lights, trees and flowers might not be the most talked about things during today's groundbreaking for Airbus, but it could affect the typical Mobile taxpayer the most.
It hits them directly in the wallet.
After today's 10 a.m. ceremony at the future Airbus manufacturing site is over and the shovels are collected, public officials will get to work in getting Brookley Aeroplex upgraded for its new $600 million occupant.
"You'll see an active site," Mobile Mayor Sam Jones said. "You'll see a lot of things shaping out and the contracts bid out and we'll see a lot of people working at a construction site."
Tax-funded road projects will be the big focus in the coming months as city workers will be on an aggressive time table to kick start engineering and construction work.
Chief among those is the reconstruction of Broad Street from Interstate 10 to Michigan Avenue. The $2.5 million construction project is paid for by both the state and the city with $493,010 coming out of tax money from local gasoline sales.
Larry Wettermark, the city's attorney, said the nearly one-mile Broad Street work is a "very significant" infrastructure project that needs to be completed in a timely fashion because it's the street leading to Airbus' front door. It's also where heavy equipment will travel, such as wing sections hauled into Mobile.
Other, more minor, road work projects will be underway within Brookley. They are also tax-funded, approved by voters during the November 2012 Pay-As-You-Go program.
The City Council, in December, unanimously approved a contract with John G. Walton Construction Inc. to resurface a host of streets within Brookley. Resurfacing includes portions of Perimeter Drive, Michigan Avenue and 15th, Madea, Nowlin and O'Donoughue streets.
All told, the public will be paying for about $12 million in upgrades to roadwork related to Airbus' arrival.
The money isn't just for paving asphalt or digging up roads and reconstructing them. Engineering costs and utility relocation expenses are also included in that final tab. Along Broad Street, the council endorsed a $105,000 engineering agreement with Geotechnical Engineering-Testing Inc. for soil and concrete examinations.
In December, $85,000 was doled out in a geotechnical contract with Southern Earth Sciences Inc. for work at Airbus Way and Aerospace Drive ? the main entrance into the future plant.
Roadwork aside, the taxpayer will likely be on the hook for some of the wireless communication and cellular phone technology for Airbus.
The exact amount of that investment is unknown.
Wettermark said public officials could be looking at investing in the conduit for fiber optics at Brookley. The conduit would have to be installed while roadwork goes on, since installation needs to take place while roads are dug up.
In recent weeks, though, there have been conflicting reports as to what extent the fiber optics installation requires.
The airport authority -- which is developing a comprehensive technology plan that will include, among other things, fiber optics -- is unsure on the exact technological needs at Brookley. The airport's director, Bill Sisson, said last month that Brookley needs to be wired for future uses; an official with a leading local telecommunications company said there is enough fiber optics at Brookley to support Airbus.
Mobile County Commissioner Jerry Carl said he's been assured by a private engineer that there is a strong enough system at Brookley, and questioned how much tax money might be needed for upgrades.
"I'm questioning why we need more fiber optics out there when it's in the ground," Carl said.
Other expenses which have yet to be assessed or assigned include beautification of the site ? the landscaping at the Airbus plant ? as well as the addition of lighting.
There are also questions about future incentives, which are tax-funded lures for companies to build within a community and bring jobs.
Airbus already has been promised $158.5 million in state and local incentives. Included in those amounts are the roadway improvements and site preparation work.
Suppliers also are getting incentives to locate, and city officials are hoping more come to Mobile.
The City Council, in December, endorsed $70,000 to benefit Labinal Engineering Inc., a subsidiary of Safran Engineering Services of France. The county also gave $24,000 in incentives; the state doled out $12,000.
Labinal will hold an 8:30 a.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new engineering office that will support aerospace and transportation companies in Alabama.
But Wettermark said there is nothing in the works as far as incentives for other suppliers. The city is hosting a suppliers networking event around 4 p.m. today at the Center for the Living Arts.
"Each project stands on its own," he said. "The word supplier can mean almost anything. If you have a company that is coming in to build engines, and we are competing against two to three communities, you bet your bottom dollar that we'd have to compete with other communities by authorizing incentives."
Incentives don't always mean public cash. It can also mean public investment into workplace training, etc.
"I just think we have to continue to aggressively market ourselves," Wettermark said. "We are on the map now. That doesn't mean you do nothing. You have to continue to support your public infrastructure and market yourself. That's really what we need to do."
John Sharp, Press Register
Source: http://blog.al.com/live/2013/04/taxpayers_to_continue_investin.html
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Monday, April 8, 2013
Hagel seeks change on conviction reversals
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is recommending that military commanders be largely stripped of their ability to reverse criminal convictions of service members, a move that comes in response to a congressional uproar over an Air Force officer's decision to overturn a guilty verdict in a sexual assault case, the Pentagon said Monday.
Hagel has asked his staff to draft legislation that would require that cases go through the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, and that senior officers no longer have the authority to set aside guilty findings, except in limited, minor offenses that ordinarily don't warrant a court martial. The commanders, however, would retain their ability to participate in plea bargains and to reduce sentences, but they would have to defend the lesser sentence in writing.
In a written statement Monday, Hagel said that, if enacted by Congress, the changes "would help ensure that our military justice system works fairly, ensures due process and is accountable. These changes would increase the confidence of service members and the public that the military justice system will do justice in every case."
The change requires congressional action, but lawmakers have already begun looking into the matter in response to a furor over a recent Air Force sexual assault case. Hagel said the new recommendations have the full support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service secretaries.
Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, overturned the conviction against Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Wilkerson had been found guilty last Nov. 2 of charges of abusive sexual contact, aggravated sexual assault and three instances of conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman. The incident had involved a civilian employee.
Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal from the service, but after a review of the case Franklin overturned the conviction. His decision triggered outrage among senators and calls for a new look at the military justice system.
"This decision has turned the military on its ear," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., during a hearing last month. She added that Franklin's decision sets the Air Force "all the way back to Tailhook." The 1991 Tailhook scandal rocked the military as Navy pilots were accused of sexually abusing female officers at a Las Vegas convention.
Hagel ordered a review of the issue, but he does not have the sole authority to either change the law or the reverse Franklin's ruling.
On Monday, senior defense officials explained the change, saying that once their review of the matter began it became quickly evident that no one was pushing back against the change. They said that the authority to set aside convictions was more suitable years ago, but the military justice system now has additional checks and balances to assure fairness.
The officials who were involved in the review spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the change publicly.
Senators heralded Hagel's move, with McCaskill calling it a "big win for survivors of sexual assault" in the military. And the House Armed Services Committee promised to give the change serious consideration.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who heads the personnel panel on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she and several colleagues are drafting a bill to address the problem and strengthen accountability in the military justice system.
Anu Bhagwati, executive director of Service Women's Action Network, said that she commended the change to the post-trial decision-making. She added, however, that similar attention must be placed on the authorities of commanders during pre-trial decisions affecting the investigation and prosecution of offenses so that the judicial process more closely mirrors the civilian system.
At the same time, Hagel acknowledged that the Pentagon is still struggling to address the problem of sexual assault in the military. He said he's reviewing other ways to strengthen the department's prevention and response efforts.
Air Force officials have argued that overturning the results of a military court martial and granting clemency is rare ? amounting to roughly 1 1/2 percent of the caseload. In the past five years, senior commanders have overturned 40 guilty verdicts out of the 3,713 courts martial that were tried. Of those, the Air Force said that 327 involved sexual assaults and just five of those convictions were reversed.
Defense officials said that the other military services have reported similar percentages, but their exact numbers were not available.
Under the current law, if an accused service member is found guilty and sentenced, the findings are not final until they are approved or disproved by the convening authority. The convicted service member can request clemency and the general officer ? usually a major general or lieutenant general ? seeks legal advice, reviews the trial record and considers information submitted by the accused.
___
Follow Lolita C. Baldor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lbaldor
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Bitcoin And The End Of Money
A commentator on Bloomberg, Princeton student Evan Soltas, writes that Bitcoin is an "existential threat to the modern liberal state," a line that can be read in two ways. One reading of his op-ed suggests we are all in danger and that the inability to tax and track bitcoins will result in a thriving black market and reduced fiscal control that will be disastrous for all of us. Taken another way - and given Soltas' biases, I suspect he's focusing a bit more on the "liberal" part of the title versus the "modern" part - it suggests that the modern nation cannot afford to fritter money away on the welfare of its people because it will no longer be able to tax the rich unfairly, leading to a fiscal nirvana for men and women of a certain breed. Either way, it's a goofy way to look at will remain, for the time being, a blip on the economic radar.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/N-qv95Abjxw/
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New startup looks to kill off patent trolls
By Larry Fine AUGUSTA, Georgia, April 8 (Reuters) - Guan Tianlang answered questions about his readiness to play the Masters at the record-setting age of 14 when he gave two-times champion Ben Crenshaw a putting lesson at the 18th hole at Augusta National on Monday. The 61-year-old Crenshaw, whose career was built on his ability as a putter, mentored the precocious Chinese during their practice round, advising the Asia-Pacific Amateur champion about the notoriously fast, sloping greens of Augusta. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/startup-looks-kill-off-patent-trolls-220917141.html
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Holocaust Day: New film tells story of survival in Ukranian caves
Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II, one has to dig pretty deep to find a unique Holocaust story for the big screen.
So it?s not surprising that one of the latest Holocaust films has its genesis in a 77-mile gypsum cave in Ukraine, one of the longest such caves in the world.
This was home to 38 Jews who survived the Holocaust by living in this cave and another nearby for 511 days, until Russia liberated the area. Their story, discovered by a cave explorer from New York, captured the attention of director Janet Tobias. She was drawn as much by the Jews? tale of survival as the courageous actions of a few locals who helped protect them, thus almost certainly saving their lives.
?I think genocide always seems like a gigantic number ? 800,000 in Rwanda, 6.6 million Jews in Europe,? she says in a phone interview. ?That stops when a woodcutter gives them information, a man in the village who was Ukrainian helps them figure out how to buy grain?. It stops one person at a time in small ways and that is incredibly applicable to the modern world.?
RECOMMENDED: Think you know Europe? Take our geography quiz.
The 83-minute film, ?No Place on Earth,? premiered this weekend in New York, just as Israel is marking Holocaust Day. It is scheduled to open in major cities across the US in coming weeks.
CAVE DISCOVERY
The tale of how 38 people, including a number of young children, survived underground with limited supplies is extraordinary in itself. But the genesis of the film is also remarkable.
It began in 1993 when cave explorer Chris Nicola of New York found buttons, girls shoes, and other modern artifacts in the recesses of the cave. He asked locals repeatedly for information, but got few answers. Communism had only recently ended and Jewish history was simply not discussed under communist rule, he says. In addition, many of those living there were the product of Stalin?s mass resettlement schemes and thus were unfamiliar with local history dating back to World War II.
Finally, after years of visiting the cave annually or even twice a year, he got a lead. A senior Ukrainian caver shoved a letter in his hand as he was boarding the train to head back to the US, telling him that several years ago, at a memorial ceremony for local Jews who had been killed in the Holocaust, he had met three siblings who said their family survived in a cave. But before the Ukrainian caver had been able to get their contact information, they heard the Soviet Union had dissolved and they left earlier than expected.
?When they heard that communism collapsed in Moscow, they remembered what it was like the last time to live without a structured government, and they got outta there, so I lost that lead,? recounts Mr. Nicola.
A KEYWORD CONNECTION
Ultimately, Nicola had the idea to embed keywords on his website that might attract Jews searching for genealogical history of their families, in the hopes that one might be from the family of cave dwellers.
Sure enough, a son-in-law of the survivors emailed Nicola and he arranged to meet the senior patriarch of the family for lunch in West Palm Beach, Fla., several months later. But on the morning of their appointment, the patriarch got wind that Nicola wanted to make a film and backed out.
It took another couple of months of patient waiting, and a letter laying out his objectives, before the interview was secured.
In the end, four survivors shared their stories freely ? appearing first in a book coauthored by Nicola and Peter Lane Taylor and later in Ms. Tobias?s film. They also participated in a filmed visit back to the site of the cave in Ukraine, along with several grandchildren.
The family matriarch, Esther Stermer, had written a memoir in 1975 so that her grandchildren would know what the family had been through. But despite this, most of the survivors had been very quiet about their experiences and generally spoke of it only among themselves ? making it all the more remarkable that they were willing to share their stories with a global audience.
?One thing Janet and Peter and I always kept in mind,? says Nicola, ?is this was never our story but we?re ever indebted to them ? to let us a tell a story that they couldn?t tell themselves.?
RECOMMENDED: Think you know Europe? Take our geography quiz.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/holocaust-day-film-tells-story-survival-ukranian-caves-161031835.html
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