Baghdad market bombs kill 14, wound more than 100

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Two bombs exploded in an open-air market in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 14 people in the latest round of spiraling violence six months after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq.

More than 160 people have died this month in attacks mostly attributed to Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaida. They are targeting security forces and Shiite civilians in an attempt to weaken Iraq's fragile government, which is mired in deadlock and struggling to provide security and even basic services like electricity.

Friday's explosions, timed within minutes of each other, came at midmorning in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Husseiniyah in northeast Baghdad. No one claimed responsibility.

Mohammed Hussein al-Jizani said he was haggling with customers in his shoe store next to the market when he heard a loud blast and ran outside.

"Three minutes later, there was a second explosion as people and policemen were rushing to the site of the first bomb," al-Jizani said. "The evil insurgents chose the best time to attack, because the market is usually busy on Fridays with young people gathering to sell and buy birds."

The blasts killed at least 14 people and wounded 106, a medical official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The death toll for the month of June is the second highest so far in 2012, rivaled only by January, when 198 Iraqis were killed in a series of blasts widely seen as al-Qaida's attempts to shock the country immediately after the last American troops withdrew in December.

The absence of international forces combined with the government divisions and weak Iraqi security have emboldened the militants, said Stephanie Sanok, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly worked at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on governance issues.

"The insurgents are now more complacent in the knowledge that international forces are not going to come riding back in," she said.

Also Friday, a bomb exploded in a car parked near the entrance of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in the city of Samarra, 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing one pilgrim and wounding 13 other people, officials said.

The shrine was the site of a huge explosion in February 2006 that sheared off its golden dome and ignited fierce sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shiites across Iraq.

Officials and experts fear the surge in violence may signal Iraq's potential descent into a failed state, despite its oil wealth, billions of dollars in foreign aid and years of security assistance from U.S. troops. While violence is nowhere as widespread as it was just five years ago, when multiple sectarian killings threatened to push the country into civil war, deadly bombings and shootings still happen nearly every day.

The political crisis that has gripped Iraq since the day after U.S. troops left in December has also heightened sectarian tensions and potentially fueled some of the attacks.

"Insurgents are taking advantage of these fissures in order to influence not only the government but also public opinion of where the power actually lies within Iraq," Sanook said.

In the latest political standoff, parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, leader of the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political coalition, criticized the Shiite-led government for tearing down blast walls protecting the legislature. Al-Nujaifi said he would not send parliament employees back to work until the walls were put back up. That could happen as soon as Saturday.

Al-Nujaifi also said there were enough votes in parliament to oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, from power ? even though Iraq's president, a Kurd, has predicted the effort would fall short. Al-Maliki's critics accuse him of sidelining his political opponents and refusing to share authority.

Baghdad operations command spokesman Col. Dhia al-Wakil said Friday that recent attacks shouldn't be taken as a sign of security forces' failure.

"During the past days, the insurgents have mainly attacked soft targets such as pilgrims and markets because they cannot confront the Iraqi security forces," he said.

However, another police official acknowledged that most of Iraqi police and army members are not qualified to deal with the security challenges and they lack training and equipment. He spoke under condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to reporters.

"Once again, innocent people are paying the price for the incompetence of our security forces," shoe seller al-Jizani lamented.

___

Associated Press writer Kay Johnson contributed to this report.

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Super-Earth Exoplanets Could Be Better for Life

60-Second Space60-Second Space | Space

Dimitar Sasselov, director of Harvard's Origins of Life Initiative, explains how rocky exoplanets larger than Earth could have greater potential for life than Earth did. Steve Mirsky reports

More 60-Second Space

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Earth is the only planet we know of that harbors life. But could some exoplanets be even better for life?

?It just happened that in our own solar system, the Earth is the largest rocky planet.? Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov directs the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative and wrote the new book The Life of Super-Earths.

?Now we know that planets which are rocky but bigger than the Earth are plentiful, they?re around other stars in big numbers. And we certainly know that if you?re smaller than the Earth a lot of things go wrong. Your climate is less stable, your atmosphere can go away, like Mars, plate tectonic activity and chemical enrichment goes away as well.

?The Earth is great. But if you?re a little bit bigger than the Earth, all those things are the same or even better?more active, more chemistry, more stability?and nothing is worse. That you have a little bit higher G? That?s not a big deal, especially for the microbes.?

?Steve Mirsky?

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

[Look for the full interview with Dimitar Sasselov on an upcoming edition of the Scientific American Science Talk podcast.]


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Major Assistive Technology Impact ? Both Assistive Technology ...

Mandates reasonable accommodation and the small community of federally funded employment and higher education requires two assistive technology devices and services included in the plans of the State and personalized rehabilitation plans written for each client ; Section 508 mandates equal access to electronic office equipment for all federal employees; defines rehabilitation engineering as engineering rehabilitation and assistive technologies and services, rehabilitation technology mandates main advantage of being included in PRRI Recognizes the right of every child to free and appropriate education; includes notion that disabled children should be educated with their peers; extends reasonable accommodation, the least restrictive environment, and devices assistive technology and services at the age of 3-21 education; mandates individualized education plan for each child, to include consideration of assistive technology; also includes mandated services for children from birth to 2 and the expanded focus on technologies for educational assistance for the first legislation to specifically address the expansion of assistive technology and services; mandates consumer-driven technology services to assistance, capacity building, advocacy, and system evolution; statewide supports grants to develop and administer a system of alternative financing assistive technology Provides grants to states for Advice developmental disabilities, the university-affiliated programs and the protection and advocacy for people with developmental disabilities, provides training and technical assistance to improve access to assistive technology for people with intellectual disabilities prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, state government and local public places, commercial facilities, transportation and telecommunications, all of which affect the application of technologies assistance, use of technology impacts requirement that Title II entities must communicate effectively with people who have hearing, vision, speech or disability assistance, telephone and television access for people with hearing impairments and speech

Related posts:

  1. Illinois Assistive Technology Project ? When.Walking.Fails
  2. Delaware Assistive Technology Initiative ? When.Walking.Fails
  3. Exercises Suggested Reading: Major United Stated Federal Legislation
  4. Nevada Assistive Technology Collaborative ? When.Walking.Fails
  5. Temple University ? When.Walking.Fails

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News Summary: Commodities fall across the board

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Learn The Nuances Of Real Estate Marketing By Simply Following The

Buying a residence or house is a whirlwind experience. In relation to selling that exact same home, it?s a whole new ballgame. Instantly the tables are turned. You need a whole new list of regulations to perform by, and that is what this information will offer you.

When promoting your residence it?s smart to not home when a broker is exhibiting your own home to possible buyers. Every time a home owner is residence, a buyer might seem like an thief and feel less cozy hunting in your home. Should you can?t depart, keep taken care of and don?t offer any details except if normally questioned.

Try offering your property having an open up property. You should start by appealing your buddies and neighbours. These individuals have a friend which might be considering located in that location. Prove to them the ideal aspects of your own home and let them know the cost you are requesting it.

When staging a little bedroom, some advice to produce your room look greater is always to not utilize a brain-table or feet-table. Alternatively, suspend an intriguing looking glass about the wall structure above the bed. Likewise use a bedspread that has vertical lines. This will provide the false impression more area, making your potential buyers much more interested in your room.

You must consider any other area you will probably have and include a second toilet to your home when you just have one. Many property customers look at a number of bathrooms being a necessity, and they will probably get your home for those who have several bathrooms.

Though it may be commendable to try and take care of real estate marketplace by yourself, you may encounter a lot of problems when attemping to achieve this. Networking is vital to achievement in nearly anything, and real estate market is no various. You should attempt to connect to other real estate property traders. They can provide you assistance and guidelines to help you with your own ventures.

To have the most fascination and greatest value for your own home, stay away from out-of-date offering parables like, ?You should only list your property early in the year?. If your home is able to sell in the winter months and competition in the budget range is restricted, there is no reason at all to support it much longer.

Just like the starting on this report stated, promoting a house has to be a mindful method. Make certain you do the very best you are able to to produce the process flow. Should you do the correct point in your corner, then one and only thing remaining to worry about will probably be everybody else carrying out their own.

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Happy 100th birthday, Alan Turing

E2BN / NEN

A sculpture that shows computer pioneer Alan Turing looking down at the Enigma Machine was created from stacked slate by British artist Stephen Kettle.

By Alan Boyle

The June 23 centennial of Alan Turing's birth is providing an opportunity to look back at the brilliant life and tragic end of a pioneer in computer science ? a Briton who was instrumental in cracking Germany's Enigma code and turning the tide of World War II, but who killed himself after his humiliation by a society that saw homosexuality as a crime.


Turing came up with the concept of a "universal machine" back in 1936, setting the stage for the quest to create artificial intelligence. It's a quest that's as old as Ovid's Metamorphoses and as new as IBM's Watson. His vision of a computer so knowledgeable and adept in the ways of society that humans would think it was human, too, led to the establishment of the "Turing Test" as a classic gauge of machine intelligence. (Some argue that a program called Cleverbot passed the Turing Test last year.)

His greatest contribution came during the war, when he designed an electromechanical device known as the "bombe." With additional refinements, the cabinet-sized machine at Britain's Bletchley Park could decode thousands of intercepted German messages, tipping off the allies about the Nazis' next moves.

The intelligence gleaned by the Bletchley Park team, code-named Ultra, was crucial to the Allied war effort. "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war," British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told King George VI.

Gay hero? Or just plain hero?
The postwar era, however, was a disaster for Turing, who was gay. He got into a messy relationship with a man who helped an accomplice break into Turing's house?? and after Turing reported the burglary, the investigation of the break-in eventually turned into an investigation of the researcher's sexual behavior.

At that time, in 1952, homosexual behavior fell under a criminal category known as gross indecency, and Turing's conviction could have put him in prison. As an alternative, Turing chose chemical castration through hormone injections. His security clearance was revoked, and he was barred from working for the British government. Turing pressed for a change in Britain's laws, but homosexuality remained a criminal offense in Britain until 1967.

That was way too late for Turing. Two years after his conviction, he died in his laboratory after eating a poisoned apple.

In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a posthumous apology to Turing, saying that the computer pioneer "truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war."

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely," Brown said. "We're sorry. You deserved so much better."

A video produced in conjunction with the Science Museum's "Codebreaker" exhibit in London explores the life and work of Alan Turing.

Today, Turing is hailed in some quarters as a tragic gay hero. But during this centennial year, the spotlight is squarely on science rather than sex. Google executive Vinton Cerf, who's considered one of the creators of the Internet, said in a BBC retrospective that he hoped this year's exhibits and observances would "help make Turing a hero and household name beyond the technical community that reveres his memory."

Texts on Turing
Cerf's tribute is one of seven essays on Turing's life and legacy being posted to the BBC's website this week. Wired's British website is also presenting a rich variety of perspectives to celebrate Turing Week. This weekend, luminaries from around the world will gather at the University of Manchester for a Turing centenary conference. Video from the conference is due to be streamed live. It's all part of Alan Turing Year.

To read up on Turing and his times, you can start with Andrew Hodges' 1983 biography, "Alan Turing: The Enigma," which has been reissued in a centenary edition. (In addition to the book, Hodges maintains a biographical website at Turing.org.uk.) There's also a centenary edition of "Alan M. Turing," the biography written in 1959 by Sara Turing, Alan's mother. "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a more recent biography of the great man, written by David Leavitt in 2006.

Charles Petzold's "The Annotated Turing" delves into Alan Turing's groundbreaking 1936 paper, while Princeton University Press is putting out "Alan Turing's Systems of Logic: The Princeton Thesis," a facsimile edition of Turing's Ph.D. thesis. There's also "The Essential Turing," a compilation of the researcher's best-known writings. And if you're looking for something fresh that puts Turing's achievements in a wider context, check out George Dyson's book, "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe."

Any birthday wishes you'd like to pass along for the centennial? Feel free to post them as comments below.

More about the history of computing:


Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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Mitt Romney To Address NAACP Convention In July

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will address the annual NAACP convention on July 11 in Houston, Texas, the organization confirmed on Tuesday.

Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington Bureau and senior vice president for policy and advocacy, told The Huffington Post the NAACP is "delighted" that Romney has accepted its invitation to speak before the group's full body of delegates.

"It is significant for anyone seeking the highest office in the land to share with the African-American community," said Shelton. "What a candidate would take with them to the White House and what their agenda would be is so important for the African-American community to hear, especially in terms of the challenges to our community."

Shelton said the invitation was extended as soon as Romney secured the requisite number of delegates to clinch the GOP nomination last month. The NAACP, the nation's oldest and largest grassroots civil rights organization, typically invites both presidential candidates to speak at its convention each election cycle.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and then-Sen. Barack Obama both addressed the group as presidential candidates in 2008. Shelton could not confirm Obama's participation this year, but he said the White House told him it is processing the invitation, and the NAACP is "hopeful" the president will attend.

George W. Bush spoke at the convention during his 2000 presidential bid, but once elected, he declined five years' worth of invitations before finally addressing the group again in 2006.

Shelton said the NAACP would like to see the candidates discuss the rising unemployment rate, which for African Americans is nearly twice the national average.

But, according to Shelton, chief among the issues they expect Romney to address before the group is health care reform, citing the former Massachusetts governor's assertion that he would repeal the president's health care law if elected.

"Prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, we had 47 million people without health insurance, of which over 30 percent were African American," said Shelton. "We saw the ACA as a big victory to address health insurance disparities in our society. So 'if not this bill, then what?' becomes the challenge [Romney] faces."

A campaign spokesperson confirmed Romney's plans to attend the convention but did not offer further comment.

Related on HuffPost:

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Songkick [Android App Review]

Android Central

Apps that genuinely fit into your life are always the best. There are those that you genuinely cannot function without, and those which fill a void you never knew you had until it was filled. With the release of Songkick today, a void I never realised I had, has now been filled. Filled to the point I just found out that Lostprophets -- who I happen to adore -- are playing in my home town this November. A good end to the day for sure. 

read more

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Pizero Design announces Premium Widgets for iOS, Android: Coming in June

[prMac.com] Lucca, Italy - Pizero Design's new Premium Widgets app for iOS and Android allows users to check time and weather quickly and effectively while featuring eye-catching, changeable skins and HD animations. Thanks to the inclusion of Pizero Design's most appreciated product, themes, users can update the app's look and feel with just a swipe to maintain a useful and easy-to-use interface that is constantly pleasing.

Premium Widgets for iOS includes a high-quality digital clock with three-day weather forecast that is as beautiful as it is functional. With alluring skins and/or special effects on the main widget screen, captivating background HD animations can be seen at full screen with just one touch. Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Premium Widgets for iOS also features choice of weather service, location-aware weather, unlimited cities, and automatic language detection.

Premium Widgets for Android features stunning, high-quality home screen widgets including a forecast widget, a small clock widget, and a choice of premium clocks, all with changeable, attractive design themes. With just a touch, the app enters full screen mode, including a detail page with beautiful HD animations. Other features include choice of weather service, location-aware weather, weather by city name, and automatic language detection.

Premium Widgets is expected to be released for both Android and iOS in approximately mid-June. The iOS version will be available for free, with the possibility to unlock advanced features via in-app purchase; the Android version's price is yet-to-be-determined but, according to Pizero Design's owner Michele Cerreta, will be "absolutely affordable."

The official website will be online soon; in the meantime, users can see a preview video showing the iOS version of Premium Widgets.

Headquartered in Lucca, Italy, Pizero Design was established in 2007 by Michele Cerreta. What began as a hobby eventually grew up to be a leading mobile multimedia company that it is today with over 20 million downloads in 196 countries. One of the first developers to be invited to join the Nokia Ovi Store marketplace as a Premium Publisher in 2009, Pizero Design's Michele Cerreta has been described by local and national newspapers as an "Italian champion" and "mobile guru". Pizero Design released its first iPhone App, Elite Walls, in 2010, and as of last year has over 70 published apps on Nokia Ovi Store, Android Market, iTunes Store and BlackBerry AppWorld. Copyright (C) 2012 Pizero Design. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

###


Contact Information: Pizero Design http://www.pizerodesign.com-->

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