A fire breaks out in the main high-rise building of Moscow State University, causing minor damage. DURATION:?4:20
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Obama administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody a senior Taliban official suspected of major human rights abuses as part of a long-shot bid to improve the prospects of a peace deal in Afghanistan, Reuters has learned.
The potential hand-over of Mohammed Fazl, a 'high-risk detainee' held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison since early 2002, has set off alarms on Capitol Hill and among some U.S. intelligence officials.
As a senior commander of the Taliban army, Fazl is alleged to be responsible for the killing of thousands of Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite Muslims between 1998 and 2001.
According to U.S. military documents made public by WikiLeaks, he was also on the scene of a November 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American who died in combat in the Afghan war. There is no evidence, however, that Fazl played any direct role in Spann's death.
Senior U.S. officials have said their 10-month-long effort to set up substantive negotiations between the weak government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban has reached a make-or-break moment. Reuters reported earlier this month that they are proposing an exchange of "confidence-building measures," including the transfer of five detainees from Guantanamo and the establishment of a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.
Now Reuters has learned from U.S. government sources the identity of one of the five detainees in question.
The detainees, the officials emphasized, would not be set free, but remain in some sort of further custody. It is unclear precisely what conditions they would be held under.
In response to inquiries by Reuters, a senior administration official said that the release of Fazl and four other Taliban members had been requested by the Afghan government and Taliban representatives as far back as 2005.
The debate surrounding the White House's consideration of high-profile prisoners such as Fazl illustrates the delicate course it must tread both at home and abroad as it seeks to move the nascent peace process ahead.
One U.S. intelligence official said there had been intense bipartisan opposition in Congress to the proposed transfer.
"I can tell you that the hair on the back of my neck went up when they walked in with this a month ago, and there's been very, very strong letters fired off to the administration," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The senior administration official confirmed that the White House has received letters from lawmakers on the issue. "We will not characterize classified Congressional correspondence, but what is clear is the President's order to us to continue to discuss these important matters with Congress," the official said.
Even supporters of a controversial deal with the Taliban - a fundamentalist group that refers to Americans as infidels and which is still killing U.S., NATO and Afghan soldiers on the battlefield - say the odds of striking an accord are slim.
Critics of Obama's peace initiative remain deeply skeptical of the Taliban's willingness to negotiate, given that the West's intent to pull out most troops after 2014 could give insurgents a chance to reclaim lost territory or push the weak Kabul government toward collapse.
The politically charged nature of the initiative was on display this month when the Karzai government angrily recalled its ambassador from Doha and complained Kabul was being cut out of U.S.-led efforts to establish a Taliban office in Qatar.
U.S. officials appear to have smoothed things over with Karzai since then. Karzai's High Peace Council is signaling it would accept a liaison office for the Taliban office in Qatar - but also warning foreign powers that they cannot keep the Afghan government on the margins.
The detainee transfer may be even more politically explosive for the White House. In discussing the proposal, U.S. officials have stressed the move would be a 'national decision' made in consultation with the U.S. Congress.
Obama is expected to soon sign into law a defense authorization bill whose provisions would broaden the military's power over terrorist detainees and require the Pentagon to certify in most cases that certain security conditions will be met before Guantanamo prisoners can be sent home.
The mere idea of such a transfer is already raising hackles on Capitol Hill, where one key senator last week cautioned the administration against negotiating with "terrorists."
Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said such detainees would "likely continue to pose a threat to the United States" even once they were transferred.
POTENTIAL MAELSTROM
In February, the Afghan High Peace Council named a half-dozen it wanted released as a goodwill gesture. The list included Fazl; senior Taliban military commander Noorullah Noori; former deputy intelligence minister Abdul Haq Wasiq; and Khairullah Khairkhwa, a former interior minister.
All but Khairkhwa were sent to Guantanamo on January 11, 2002, according to the military documents, meaning they were among the first prisoners sent there.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and White House official, said Fazl was alleged to have been involved in 'very ugly' violence against Shi'ites, including members of the Hazara ethnic minority, beginning in the late 1990s, and the deaths of Iranian diplomats and journalists at the Iranian consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.
Michael Semple, a former UN official with more than two decades of experience in Afghanistan, said Fazl commanded thousands of Taliban soldiers at a time when its army carried out massacres of Shi'ites. "If you're head of an army that carries out a massacre, even if you're not actually there, you are implicated by virtue of command and control responsibility," he said.
He added: "However it does not serve the interests of justice selectively to hold Taliban to account, while so many other figures accused of past crimes are happily reintegrated in Kabul."
Some U.S. military documents - select documents have been released, others were leaked - indicate that Fazl denied being a senior Taliban official and says he only commanded 50 or 60 men. But the overall picture of his role is unclear from the documents which have become public.
Richard Kammen is an Indiana lawyer who has nominally represented Fazl; the detainee did not want an attorney.
"Based upon the public information with which I'm familiar, it would appear his role in things back in 2001 has been significantly exaggerated by the government," Kammen said.
According to the documents, Fazl and Noori surrendered to Abdul Rashid Dostum, now Afghanistan's army chief of staff but at the time a powerful warlord battling against the Taliban, in northern Afghanistan in November 2001.
While the men were being held at the historic Qala-i-Jani fortress in Mazar-i-Sharif, Taliban prisoners revolted against their captors from the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban coalition.
"Dostum brought (Fazl and Noori) to the bunker to ask the prisoners to surrender; detainee and (Noori) refused," the detainee assessment from a 2008 document read.
Spann, a one-time Marine captain who was sent to Afghanistan as a CIA operative in the fall of 2001, was trying to locate al Qaeda operatives at the Mazar fortress among a large group of Taliban soldiers who had surrendered, according to the CIA and media reports at the time. When the Taliban prisoners began to riot - many of them were apparently armed - Spann was surrounded and killed. After a bloody, multi-day battle his body was later found booby-trapped.
Even a loose association between Fazl and Spann's death - despite the fact there is nothing to suggest he was directly involved - is likely to increase the temperature of the debate in Washington.
What could be problematic for some Afghans is Fazl's identification with the killing of civilians in central and northern Afghanistan.
"The composition and timing of any release has got to pay attention to Northern Alliance concerns," Semple said.
Buy-in from supporters of that alliance - and from those wary of a resurgent Taliban - will be key in making a peace deal stick, if one can be had.
Despite the congressional concerns that released Taliban will return to the battlefield, Semple said it was unlikely even prisoners like Fazl - who truly was a significant military figure for the Taliban - would alter that equation.
"These people are not going to make a real contribution to the Taliban war effort even if they are able to go over to Quetta and rejoin the fight. It's not risky in battlefield terms; it's only risky in U.S. political terms."
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Patrick Worsnip and Jane Sutton; editing by Claudia Parsons)
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Melody Barnes is leaving as White House chief domestic policy adviser at a time when President Barack Obama's administration is getting little notice for its work on the home front to fix the struggling economy.
Barnes, who will be gone by Tuesday, is quick to point out that there have been many domestic achievements, even though the public is dissatisfied.
"I completely understand what the American public is feeling," she said in an interview in her tidy West Wing office. "Real people are hurting in a significant way. ... At the same time, I'm proud of the things we've been able to accomplish over the last few years."
Her office is wrestling with multiple thorny issues now just as it was when Barnes started as Obama's domestic policy team director in 2009.
Back then, the economy plunged into free-fall and the country was in its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Jobs were being lost at a rate of about 750,000 a month ? a number Barnes still finds so staggering she said she has to double-check it every time she says it.
Homes were being foreclosed, unemployment was skyrocketing and reaching double the national average in the black community. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, an outbreak of H1N1flu virus became a pandemic, and a tsunami that hit Japan crippled a nuclear plant near Tokyo, to name some of the highlights.
Even her chance to play golf with the president, the first time a woman joined him, was a response to what was a public image crisis for Obama. The president was getting flak for playing basketball with men and fostering complaints about a boys' club in the White House.
Just before Christmas, the president and Congress wrangled over a two-month extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Obama won a victory when the proposal won bipartisan support in the Senate and finally was accepted by House Republicans under extreme pressure.
Barnes, a Richmond, Va., native with a career in government and private sector work, is bowing out of the political arena as Obama struggles with low approval ratings on his handling of the economy.
A majority of Americans do not think the president deserves a second term, according to the most recent Associated Press-GfK poll. But at the same time, the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. The president's overall approval rating stands at 44 percent, the lowest of his term in AP-GfK surveys.
His strong stance against House Republicans in the payroll tax standoff has caused an uptick in approval ratings in subsequent polls.
Barnes expects the list of legislative victories that she and others pulled off amid the hemorrhaging economy will become more clear in the coming year as the dark clouds of the economy disperse.
She tops that list with the early work to stabilize the economy, 21 months of consistent job growth and the president's long-term investments in education overhaul, an area that became her specialty.
"Our work on education reform, it'll be part of this president's legacy," she said.
Barnes said that with a fraction of what the federal government spends annually on education, about $100 billion, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the administration tapped into an education reform movement taking place at the grass roots among governors and local communities frustrated with the prescriptive, one-size-fits-all mandates of No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's education cornerstone.
Congress has yet to approve revisions to No Child Left Behind, states are using up the stimulus money, and Obama's Race to the Top grant program faces spending cuts. But Barnes said Obama has given a boost to education law changes that now allow such things as connecting student performance and teacher evaluations.
Barnes, chief counsel to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama also deserves credit for passage of a health care overhaul, legislation that she had worked on for eight years with Kennedy. The Massachusetts senator spent his career trying to restructure health care.
There's also the auto industry bailout, expansion of Pell grants to help fund college education, the end of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and work to advance civil rights, she said.
"When you are worried about day to day, it's hard to step back and to take all those other things in," Barnes said. "Although at the same time, I'm literally in the grocery store and people come up to me and say, 'Hey, you work for the president. You keep on doing what you are doing.' "
Married a few months into the president's first year, Barnes plans to spend more time with family. She is considering offers in the private sector but hasn't disclosed what those are.
___
Online:
White House Domestic Policy Council: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/dpc
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PLAYER NEWS
by Robert Davis
?|?27.12.2011
Asiam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and his wife, Faha, visited Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, this week.
The newly-weds were received at the largest hospital, specialising in cancer treatment in Pakistan, by twin Afghani girls, who both suffer from cancer. The two of them share same type of cancer.
"Tennis has blessed me so much this year," said Qureshi, who serves as a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) goodwill ambassador for flood relief.
"Making the Barclay's ATP World Tour Finals opened my eyes and gave me hope to work even harder for next year. I felt that if I can give some hope to others who suffer from life's challenges they too might fight harder as well.
"The lessons I have learnt from tennis I would like to give back to those in need of hope and inspiration."
Source: http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2011/12/Features/Qureshi-Visits-Lahore-Hospital.aspx
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There's not many things worse than when your new imported tech toy is hobbled by teething issues. Just over a week since its launch and Sony's great portable hope has been gifted its second firmware update. Version 1.51 can be grabbed through your PC, PS3 or the Vita itself and promises to fix issues with "game progress" -- mentioning launch title Dynasty Warriors: Next in particular. However, gamers have already figured out that playing through the title offline side-steps the software hiccups that this patch hopes to remedy. Early adopters can hit up the system update option to ensure their machines remain in peak condition or hit up the source for the PC link.
[Thanks Adam]
PS Vita gets second firmware update, nixes software bugs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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When University of Colorado student Reid Pletcher crossed the finish line first in the men`s 20K classical at the NCAA Skiing Championships in Stowe, Vt., last week, it was the second time that day that a Buff raced those skis to a win.
Earlier, Eliska Hajkova won a sprint to finish first in the women`s 15K classical on the same skis. She didn`t know it until she greeted him at the finish line of his race.
"When we hugged each other, I was like, 'Did you have good skis?'" Hajkova said. "And he said, 'I have your skis!'"
(Actually, they`re team skis. "We were thinking, when we retire them, we`ll have them both sign them and put them on the wall," said Bruce Cranmer, head Nordic coach for the team.)
Hajkova and Pletcher are the 82nd and 83rd skiers to win individual NCAA titles for the ski team -- a legacy that goes back to 1959, when alpine skier Dave Butts brought home two championships for the school. It won four individual titles the next year, a feat students repeated in 1963, 2006 and 2008.
The CU ski team thus leads the nation in total individual NCAA champions; University of Denver follows, with 79.
"We`ve got a good group that push each other in training," Cranmer said. "Our focus has always been to try to win, and certainly some of this goes towards recruiting -- I basically go after the best I can find."
'Psychologically stronger`
Hajkova was almost a runner, not a skier. Her father, who ran hurdles, pressured her to race as a runner at a young age, but it stressed her out. One day at a race, when she heard the pistol, she turned and ran the other way.
"In the period I didn`t race, I was a Girl Scout, and it was just girls all the time; it was boring," Hajkova said with a laugh. "And my mom helped me find a sport that was girls and boys together, and the only thing was cross-country skiing."
Fortunately, Hajkova lived in Jablonec nad Nisou, one of the best places for Nordic skiing in the Czech Republic.
Now, she`s "one of the more fierce, hard-core competitors out there," Pletcher said.
In her classical race at the collegiate nationals, in pouring rain ("When I kicked, I felt the water between my toes in my boots," she said), she knew that it was a race of tactics -- especially against her frequent rival from Utah, Maria Graefnings.
"I wanted to be psychologically stronger," Hajkova said.
Graefnings attacked three times, she said, but she waited for the final hill and the sprint finish. And won.
Cranmer said it was a finish he`d waited all season to see.
The sprinters, at distance
Hajkova and Pletcher had shared skis before last week -- they swapped at the U.S. nationals, too. There, Hajkova was lined up at the start of that race with no skis, making jokes about running rather than skiing, waiting for Pletcher to finish.
Cranmer said Pletcher didn`t have a pair of no-wax skis -- what the conditions called for last Friday in Stowe -- and that he and Hajkova are similar in size and have similar styles. Though they won distance events, both are sprinters.
Pletcher grew up skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, with his family. Despite skiing strong for the past two years at CU, this was his first chance to go to the championships.
"He was one of the top skiers from our region, but because we had so many good skiers -- I mean, he would have been the top skier for a lot of schools," Cranmer said.
"It breaks your heart when you`re not taking the guy ranked No. 4 in the region."
This year, finally there, he got a rocky start.
"The first race didn`t go well; I got 23rd," Pletcher said of his skate race. "So I didn`t know if I could pull it off, but turned it around for the classic race. I felt way better."
Cranmer said Pletcher recovered well.
"He kind of relaxed and thought about the racing," Cranmer said. "And I encouraged him to take care of the details and don`t worry about the big picture, it`ll take care of itself."
It did. In his classical race, he became only the third American to win an NCAA classical championship. But Pletcher talked about wanting to help the team, and wanting to race for Spencer Nelson, a teammate who died in a climbing accident last summer. (The ski team dedicated its season to him.)
"When I`m skiing for a team, I put a lot of pressure on myself because it`s a lot harder letting the team down than it is letting myself down," he said.
"Skiing, it`s a really close-knit community," Pletcher said. "You know everyone, there`s really good people to hang around with.
"And to be honest, it`s one of the most bad-ass sports."
Source: http://www.coloradodaily.com/ci_17632152?source=rss_viewed
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We'll focus on?efforts to help veterans find?jobs and deal with health and family problems. "One of the great blessings in my life has been the exposure I've received to the military?active duty, in the field and veterans,"?says Brian Williams. "They are America?s genuine heroes, and it's a privilege to use our platforms at NBC News to honor all that they have done."
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40153870/vp/45792283#45792283
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Community managers are becoming an increasingly important role for all types of businesses, and we're seeing the role appear everywhere from tech startups to major corporate brands. Most commonly, community managers are responsible for engaging current and potential customers via social media and growing vibrant, enthusiastic communities around their products and services. Some community managers even facilitate conversations in private online forums, work with internal company intranets, and act as customer support.
Community managers?must strike a balance. Externally, community managers are the voices of their brands in social media, serving as?social media strategists, customer service?managers,?content creators, product managers, and evangelists. Internally, they are the voice of their communities at their own companies. Community managers bring the conversations they have with community members to the forefront of marketing, customer service, and product discussions, epitomizing the value and function of a?social business.
Because community manager jobs vary at each company, there is no one magic bullet to make a community management program work. But with more and more community manager jobs showing up every day, here are some tips for new or aspiring community managers or those who think they could benefit from a community management function in their marketing department.
When it comes to social media, it?s very easy to get?caught up in tactics. It?s important to establish and monitor your presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube, but for goodness' sake, you're only human! Prioritize based on what drives the most ROI. Whether that's blogs, tweetups, in-person conferences, or new social media platforms, spend your time where your community spends theirs.
Identify your most engaged community members and top influencers, and leverage their voice by offering them guest blog spots, curating their own content in a news round-up, re-sharing it in some other capacity, or offering them a position as a community moderator in your forum.
Loyal community members are great resources; they are the first people to provide feedback, share your content, refer you to others, and even stick up for you. But make sure to keep an even playing field for new, quieter community members. Each new commenter, forum member, tweeter, and group member matters. Challenge yourself and get a unique perspective by engaging with them, too. It?s your job to build a community, not a clique of power users who make your job easy and build resentment among other members.
Community managers are typically the ones running Twitter and Facebook accounts and will also be the ones responding to complaints. That means you have to learn how to say you're sorry. Not, "I'm sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused." That's total baloney. If your service isn?t working and a community member is angry enough to go ranting about it on Twitter, you've definitely caused an inconvenience.?Speak in first person with genuine emotion like you would to someone in real life.
It?s natural to get frustrated or stressed out on busy days when responding to complaints online or answering a lot of questions.?Breathe. It's just the internet.
Plus, your biggest critics can turn into your biggest fans if you successfully and swiftly resolve their problems. Those that take the time to offer negative feedback will also often take the time to be your advocate.
The 2% rule states, ever so scientifically, that there's always going to be a chunk of naysayers in any group. No matter what you do, these people are just going to be, well, jerks. For an easy example, go take a look at the comments section of a blog or news site. There's always a handful of people that are irrational and not really looking to contribute to productive discussion. You can do your best to turn these negative people, but don't beat yourself up over it and let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.
Answering questions about your product or service through social media or email will probably be a major part of your job.?Be prepared ahead of time.?This is?especially important if you work in a?regulated industry?in which you may need your tweets or Facebook communication to have prior approval.?Go over common questions with your product or support team to make sure you have your answers (including your 140-character ones) accurate. You can also create FAQs and step-by-step guides to link to, which will cut down on hand holding time and repeat questions.
Email may seem old-school compared to sexier tools like social media, but remember, every single social media user has an email address!?Email is?the glue that?makes social media stick, and if you offer helpful content with an?email newsletter or product digest, it can be a great way to keep community members engaged.
Even with the ability to have global, online communities, community building starts at home. Use meetups to connect with your local audience. These events can inspire evangelists who will vouch for you as they get to know you better as a local company, and as they get to know?you?face-to-face. Those people are most certainly connected to a larger, global network through social media. This is where your first network of power users can stem from.
As the face of your brand online, people will inevitably identify you as the community manager for that company. The number of Twitter followers you have may grow, and you may begin to get more Facebook and LinkedIn requests from people you don?t personally know from real life. Even if you put "Tweets are my own"?in your Twitter bio, people see your thoughts aligned with your company.
Be who you are and represent yourself online as someone you are proud of. Have a rant you?really really really?want to post? We've all been there. But remember that we tend to?regret the rants we do post on social media, not the things we don't.
Maintaining a healthy personal and professional balance is tricky, but?take control of your experience on social media and don?t stop enjoying it.?Use Twitter lists, Facebook lists and filters. Own your privacy, your time, your news feed, and your personal network.
Are you a community manager, or have you hired one for your marketing team? What benefits has your company seen since the introduction of the role?
Image credit: khalidalbaih
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NEW YORK ? Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has changed his voter registration in New York state from Republican to unaffiliated.
A spokesman for Trump says the businessman and television host changed his affiliation to preserve his option to seek the presidency in 2012.
Special Counsel Michael Cohen said Friday that Trump could enter the race if Republicans fail to nominate a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama.
He said Trump probably would use his substantial wealth to even the playing field with Obama's re-election campaign.
Cohen said Trump's commitment to hosting TV's "The Apprentice" will keep him from doing anything until May, when the show's season wraps up.
He said Trump filed his voter registration paperwork Thursday.
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Akihito expressed gratitude to all who have worked in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated northeastern Japan and left 20,000 people dead or missing. Those he thanked included military personnel, residents of northeastern Japan, volunteers, workers at a hobbled nuclear plant and overseas contributors to relief efforts.
"Looking back on this year, I must say this has been a truly distressing year, dominated by disasters," he said in a statement from the Imperial Household Agency.
"I feel that the Japanese people have come together as a nation to squarely face the disaster," said Akihito, smiling next to his wife, Empress Michiko, who was dressed in a pale beige dress.
He was accompanied by his two sons and their wives.
Akihito, the son of Hirohito ? who announced Japan's surrender after World War II ? said Japanese people have learned their lesson from history and have vowed never to go to war again. He urged everyone not to forget that lesson of peace, despite the passage of time.
Akihito was hospitalized last month for a fever and an infection, but appeared to be in good health. He said he felt better and thanked people for worrying about his health.
Akihito has three eligible male successors ? his two sons and a grandson.
Japan's emperor, revered as divine during the wartime years, now has a largely ceremonial function as a "symbol of the nation."
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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KINSHASA, Congo ? The president of sub-Saharan Africa's largest nation was sworn in Tuesday for another term, pledging to unify the country after an election that was criticized by international observers.
The country's top opposition candidate, meanwhile, planned his own inauguration in a move that could spark political chaos.
Congo's supreme court last week upheld the victory of President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for more than a decade. However, the second-place finisher Etienne Tshisekedi insisted Sunday he was the country's democratically elected leader and would take his own oath of office later in the week.
The army deployed tanks in the streets of the capital, Kinshasa, ahead of Tuesday's ceremony amid fears of unrest if Tshisekedi ordered his supporters to protest.
Kabila delivered a message of national unity, describing himself as the president of all Congolese and vowing to create more jobs in his next five-year term. While Congo is mineral-rich, it has suffered through decades of dictatorship and civil war.
"I want to reassure here all those whom I did not persuade to vote for me. I invite them to believe in my determination to truly be the guarantor of the Congolese nation in all its diversity," he said.
Voting officials extended the November election by several days after voting materials arrived late in this vast nation with few paved roads. International observers also said voter turnout and Kabila's margin of victory were impossibly high in some districts.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said that the elections were "seriously flawed, lacked transparency and did not measure up to the democratic gains" seen in recent African elections.
In a statement issued Tuesday, organizations including the International Crisis Group, Enough and the Open Society Foundations had urged the government to delay the inauguration, citing a vote that was "marred by widespread irregularities."
Presidential election results showed Kabila with 49 percent and Tshisekedi with 32 percent of the nearly 19 million votes cast. Previously Kabila would have needed 50 percent to have avoided a runoff, but he pushed electoral reforms through parliament that included only one round of voting instead of two.
The November election was only the second democratic vote in Congo's 51-year history, and the first to be organized by the Congolese government rather than by the international community. The country's east is still wracked by violence from a myriad of militias and rebel groups.
Kabila became president after his father's 2001 assassination and later won a landmark 2006 vote that was largely run by the United Nations, which still has some 19,000 peacekeepers here nearly a decade after civil war ended.
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LOS ANGELES ? NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been a fervent photographer, snapping more than 10,000 pictures of the asteroid Vesta since it slipped into orbit around the giant space rock last summer.
The views were taken from a distance away ? until now. On Wednesday, the space agency released new images of the hummocky surface as Dawn circled from an average altitude of 130 miles above the surface ? the closest it'll get.
From this low orbit, scientists can count numerous small impact craters and see textured grooves and outcrops in sharp detail.
"We're totally thrilled with the data we're getting. It seems to get better," said mission deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $466 million mission.
By inching this close to Vesta, Dawn will use other instruments to measure the gravity field and determine its chemical makeup to better understand its origins.
Dawn will spend the next 2 1/2 months at the current altitude before moving higher to take another round of pictures. By that time, the sun will hit Vesta at a different angle and illuminate sections of the northern hemisphere that had been shrouded earlier.
About the length of Arizona with a huge crater at its south pole, Vesta is the second largest body residing in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids are leftovers from the solar system's birth some 4.5 billion years ago and studying these bodies could offer clues about how rocky planets like Earth formed.
Previous spacecraft have visited smaller asteroids before, but this is the first trip to Vesta.
Powered by ion propulsion, Dawn began orbiting Vesta in July after a 1.7 billion-mile cruise. It will depart Vesta next summer and will fly to an even bigger asteroid, Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.
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Online:
Dawn mission: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov
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Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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Philip Rivers threw for one score and reached the 4,000-yard mark for the fourth straight season, Ryan Mathews ran for two scores and hit 1,000 yards rushing, and the San Diego Chargers kept their slim postseason hopes alive with a 34-14 victory against the playoff-bound Baltimore Ravens on Sunday night.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45702813#45702813
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ALMATY (Reuters) ? Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Saturday declared a 20-day state of emergency in a western oil city where at least 11 people have been killed in the deadliest outbreak of violence in the Central Asian state's recent history.
Wounded victims filled hospitals in Zhanaozen and many oil workers stayed at home, fearing for their safety a day after violent clashes between riot police and crowds in a city where thousands of sacked oil workers have been protesting for months.
The head of a local trade union said many wounded civilians and policemen had been brought by car from overflowing hospitals in Zhanaozen, a city of 90,000 around 150 km (95 miles) inland from the Caspian Sea, to the regional centre of Aktau.
"They have all kinds of wounds, from gunshot wounds to stab wounds and blunt traumas," Kenzhegali Suyeov, chairman of the independent Aktau trade union, told Reuters. He said sporadic shooting had been heard in Zhanaozen overnight.
Public protests are rare in Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy and oil producer, where 71-year-old Nazarbayev has overseen more than $120 billion in foreign investment during more than two decades in power.
The clashes marred celebrations across the rest of Kazakhstan to mark the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union and were a shock to a government that has put stability and economic growth over democratic freedoms.
"We will not permit any attempts to disturb the peace and calm in our home, to erase the achievements of our independence," Nazarbayev said in a statement.
"The state will use the full strength of the law to suppress any attempt to disturb the peace and security of our citizens."
A presidential decree declared a state of emergency and curfew in Zhanaozen until January 5. Public protests and strikes are banned while movement around Zhanaozen and access to and from the city will be restricted.
The clashes began when sacked oil workers and sympathetic citizens stormed a stage erected for an Independence Day party on Friday, toppling sound equipment and later setting fire to the city hall and the headquarters of the local oil company.
Prosecutor-General Askhat Daulbayev told a news conference that 11 people had been killed in the clashes. A further 86 people were wounded, including six policemen, he said. Around 70 people have been arrested.
Reports on social networking websites said the death toll was much higher than 10 and that police had opened fire. These reports could not be verified independently. Power, mobile phone connections and internet access was shut down in the city.
European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton said in a statement she hoped for an immediate investigation and a peaceful solution to the problems faced by striking oil workers.
Nazarbayev said policemen had acted within legal bounds.
ARMED SECURITY
Thousands of employees of state-controlled oil company KazMunaiGas Exploration Production began a strike in May to demand better pay and conditions. The company sacked 989 workers and says output will fall 8.5 percent short of target this year.
London-listed KazMunaiGas EP said the Interior Ministry was providing armed security at oil production facilities and some workers had failed to show up for the night and morning shifts due to security concerns. A round-the-clock shift by workers on site was maintaining daily output levels, the company said.
KazMunaiGas EP has said 2,500 people were on strike at the height of the dispute. Representatives of the striking workers have put the maximum number at almost 16,000.
"For seven months, those striking workers were standing in the scorching sun, in the rain and wind and snow, and the authorities would not start a dialogue with them," said Bolat Abilov, a leader of the opposition Social-Democratic Party.
Nazarbayev hinted that he did not believe aggrieved workers were behind the violence.
"One shouldn't confuse an oilmens' working dispute with the criminal acts of bandits who aimed to take advantage of the situation," he said. "We will find out where the funding comes from and who is behind this."
Around 100 opposition activists gathered in the commercial capital, Almaty, for a memorial service to commemorate azakhs killed in clashes with Soviet forces in December 1986.
"Yesterday, exactly 25 years later, the same tragedy was repeated," said one of the activists, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva.
Around 20 protesters broke off from the service and attempted to march to the city headquarters of the ruling Nur Otan political party. Riot police detained around half of them.
KazMunaiGas EP's London-traded stock closed down 4.0 percent on Friday, versus a decline of only 0.4 percent in the wider oil and gas sector.
(Additional reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva in Almaty and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels; editing by Angus MacSwan)
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PORT ANGELES, Wash. ? Some debris from the March tsunami in Japan has reached the West Coast.
A floating black mass about the size of a 55-gallon drum was found two weeks ago by a crew cleaning a beach a few miles east of Neah Bay at the northwest tip of Washington, the Peninsula Daily News reported (http://is.gd/9jSz9q) Wednesday.
The float was displayed at a Tuesday night presentation at Peninsula College by Seattle oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham, consultants who produce the "Beachcombers Alert" newsletter.
Tons of debris from Japan will likely begin washing ashore in about a year, from California to southern Alaska, they said. Items that wash up may include portions of houses, boats, ships, furniture, portions of cars and just about anything else that floats, he said.
That could include parts of human bodies, Ebbesmeyer said. Athletic shoes act as floats.
Flotsam in a current travels an average of 7 mph, but it can move as much as 20 mph if it has a large area exposed to the wind, Ebbesmeyer said. The latest float sits well atop the water, has a shallow draft and is lightweight. Similar floats have been found on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Models show currents could pull some Japanese tsunami debris into the Strait of Juan de Fuca as far as Port Townsend.
"All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect," Ebbesmeyer said.
If the debris has any kind of identifiable marking, such as numbers or Japanese writing, it may be traceable, Ebbesmeyer said. Families in Japan are waiting to hear of any items that may have been associated with their loved ones.
Ebbesmeyer is retired from a career that included tracking icebergs, the 1989 Exxon Valdes oil spill and Puget Sound currents that affect sewage outflows. He wrote the 2009 book, "Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How a Man's Obsession with runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science."
Ingram has retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he created computer models of ocean currents.
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Information from: Peninsula Daily News, http://www.peninsuladailynews.com
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home > Management > Study on Automotive Industry Supply Chain Collaboration Network Model Based on Value Net Theory
?Abstract? With the development of economic globalization and information networks, in order to cope with more and more competitive market environment, supply chain management has been widely used in the industry industries and has become one of the mainstreams of industry enterprises operation. Automotive industry is a pillar industry of national economy, which is an important indicator of the level of development of a country in today?s world. At present, there are many problems on the automotive industry enterprise business and supply chain management. This paper believes that the automotive industry supply chain management model should conform to the competition of international markets, change the current management situation and implement collaborative supply chain management. This paper does an in-depth study on the automotive industry supply chain coordination and evaluation system based on the value Net Theory and the collaborative management theory, to try to set up a sustainable development mode of automotive industry: the operation mode of collaborative supply chain based on value net.In the network environment, this paper does research on the development trend of automotive industry supply chain from the chain to mesh and builds the automotive industry supply chain development mode based on the research on automotive industry supply chain, network architecture and analysis of collaborative research. This paper analyses the automotive industry supply chain collaboration inherent motivation and external driving forces and mentions the theories related to the supply chain coordination mechanisms. This paper analyses the nodes of automotive industry supply chain and decomposes the supply chain based on the value net theory, sets up a net-based automotive industry supply chain network collaboration model. This paper puts forward the implementation strategy for the automotive industry coordination supply chain network model, analyses the automotive industry supply chain status quo, sets up performance evaluation system, uses the dynamic multi-class fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method for the evaluation of a comprehensive performance evaluation system, eventually proves collaborative model is feasible both in theory and in operation.Major achievements are:First of all, this paper points out the collaborative management development of the automotive industry in our country based on the analysis of the actual situation of China?s automotive industry supply chain and the theory of supply chain collaboration.Secondly, based on the introduction of the value of networks and supply chain collaboration theory and the automotive industry supply chain actual situation, this paper builds a network model based on value net, to make automotive industry supply chain management meet the need of the infomationization time.Thirdly, this paper puts forward the implementation strategy of automotive industry supply chain coordination: the implementation of collaborative procurement strategies, the implementation of coordinated transportation strategies, the implementation of collaborative strategies inventory.Finally, this paper builds the automotive industry supply chain evaluation system and improves the existing fuzzy evaluation methods, which takes the time parameters into account, constructs an automotive industry supply chain dynamic multi-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, and selects a typical automotive industry supply chain for the empirical research.
Title: Study on Automotive Industry Supply Chain Collaboration Network Model Based on Value Net TheorySource: http://www.economics-papers.com/?p=75721
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COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa ? Every now and then, Rick Perry seems to stop campaigning for president. That's when he talks about the men and women who have served in uniform ? including himself.
"We've got a lot of heroes: young men and women that we've watched from afar, sometimes up close and personal," the Texas governor said slowly during an otherwise fiery campaign speech to launch a thousand-mile bus tour here Wednesday. "Sometimes, it was your friends and family."
Perry's campaign is looking for a second wind with mere weeks to go until Iowa starts the Republican nominating process with its Jan. 3 caucuses. He is lagging in the polls and is working hard to recapture the fervor of his August entry into the race.
A refocused campaign speech plays up the uniform. Heading into Thursday's debate in Sioux City, look for Perry to highlight his four years flying C-130s in the Air Force.
On Wednesday, Perry reminded Iowans of his military record.
"Growing up in Paint Creek, Texas, I learned some values ? just like those of you that grew up in small towns in Iowa ? hard work, faith, family were really important," he said. "Serving your community, serving your state, serving your country. I'll never be able to give back to this country what it has given to me. Part of my attempt to do that was serving in the United States Air Force."
The crowd interrupted with applause.
"My purpose in life has never been to be the president of the United States," Perry said. "My purpose in life has been to serve my country."
From the beginning, Perry hoped military issues would help him. During a September speech at Liberty University, the nation's largest evangelical school, he encouraged students to honor fallen military members by living a moral life.
"A great many of those who perished were approximately your age. Young men and women whose entire future was in front of them. They sacrificed their dreams to preserve yours," Perry said. "Because of what they gave, I simply ask you to make the most of the freedom that they sacrificed."
During the first days of his campaign, he all but cried when talking about a Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan "so a guy like me can stand up on a soapbox at the Iowa State Fair and talk freely about freedom and liberty and America and that we are an exceptional country and we're going to stay an exceptional country."
Perry's campaign is looking to tap into the pool of veterans ? reliable, older voters who helped Sen. John McCain win the nomination in 2008 ? and families of military members.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is the only other military veteran seeking the presidential nomination. Paul was a flight surgeon in the Air Force and Air Force National Guard in the 1960s; Perry served in the 1970s.
If the GOP nominates anyone but Perry or Paul, it will be the first presidential campaign in 68 years to feature two candidates with no military record. President Barack Obama did not serve in uniform ? a fact Perry once sought to exploit.
"The president had the opportunity to serve his country I'm sure, at some time, and he made the decision that that wasn't what he wanted to do," Perry told a Cedar Rapids crowd back in August.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A man affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group was arrested Tuesday on federal charges for an attack on a website belonging to Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, authorities said.
Kevin Poe, of Connecticut, made his initial appearance Tuesday in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut, and was released on $10,000 bond. An email message left for deputy federal public defender Deirdre Murray was not immediately returned.
Poe was indicted in Los Angeles on two counts: conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. If convicted of both, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Poe and others linked to Anonymous conducted a "denial of service" attack over a five-day period last October against Simmons' computer systems, sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the server and render www.GeneSimmons.com useless.
Poe used a computer program favored by Anonymous that sends extremely large requests over a network in an attempt to overwhelm a target computer, according to the indictment.
Authorities didn't say why Simmons was targeted, but he made comments against copyright infringement at a convention in Cannes, France, days before the cyber attack.
No other arrests have been made.
Representatives for Simmons couldn't immediately comment about Poe's arrest because they weren't aware of it.
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