Thursday, May 31, 2012

Auto Repair Reviews and Ratings of Top Mechanics

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US remains opposed to military action in Syria

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Shocking as it was, the massacre of more than 100 Syrian villagers is unlikely to galvanize a military assault like last year's campaign in Libya to oust Moammar Gadhafi. The killings, however, did provoke the strongest international condemnation the United States and other nations could muster.

The U.S. joined more than a dozen nations in expelling Syrian diplomats on Tuesday, and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pushed for further, direct action to dislodge Syrian President Bashar Assad. But President Barack Obama's spokesman emphasized more limited options.

"We do not believe that militarization, further militarization of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. "We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage."

The nation's top military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, had appeared to hint at a possible shift in that longstanding U.S. position, saying Monday that despite reservations about military intervention "it may come to a point with Syria," because of the mounting atrocities.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday that those remarks did not mean the United States had backed off its position that military intervention risks doing more harm than good. The Pentagon has not been asked to provide plans for military options in Syria, Little said.

"The focus remains on the diplomatic and economic track," Little said. "But at the end of the day, we in the Department of Defense have a responsibility to look at the full spectrum of options and to make them available if they're requested."

Romney, who is opposing Obama in this year's presidential election, said the massacre argued for strong action, including arming the rebels and pressuring Russia to stop selling arms to Assad forces.

"President Obama's lack of leadership has resulted in a policy of paralysis that has watched Assad slaughter 10,000 individuals," Romney said.

The administration's position reflects deep doubt that any bombing campaign could be accomplished quickly and relatively bloodlessly, as in Libya. The United States would have to be a major participant in any sustained coalition war to remove Assad, something U.S. officials had all but ruled out before the massacre in Houla over the weekend.

The United States is providing "non-lethal" assistance to the Syrian rebels fighting Assad, meaning supplies and help that do not include ammunition or weapons.

"Right now, our focus is on humanitarian aid, non-lethal aid, and I'm not going to speculate as to where the future might take us," Little said.

The administration is also helping other nations who are providing lethal aid determine suitable recipients.

"We and many nations that are ? that consider themselves friends of Syria ? are assessing the opposition as we help ? help them stand themselves up and help them unify," Carney said.

A senior U.S. official said events like this weekend's killings have the potential to provide a major change in an already perilous situation, and that the U.S. would seek to further move other nations toward a political solution due to the broad outrage over the killings and widespread fears that the window for a political solution is narrowing.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the expulsion of the Syrian diplomat doesn't go far enough. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the U.S. should expel other Syrian officials and "expand our overall sanctions against Damascus."

Under pressure from lawmakers to do more, the White House is working to draft the legal framework for potentially wider U.S. engagement, two officials told The Associated Press. The scope of the authority was not clear, and White House officials would not confirm or comment on it.

"This is a political measure. This is a statement of our extreme disapproval and horror at the massacre," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said after Washington informed the top-ranked Syrian diplomat that he had 72 hours to leave the country. "We will obviously continue to look at other ways we can pressure the regime economically, politically, diplomatically, and continue to try to tighten the noose."

Carney also said the U.S. is working with allies to assess further action, but he gave no detail about what those next steps might include.

He threw cold water on efforts by Persian Gulf nations and some Republican critics to begin sending U.S. weaponry to the Syrian rebel forces, although he acknowledged that other nations may go ahead without U.S. help. The United States is worried that weapons would go astray and strengthen an Islamist terrorist movement or feed a possible civil war. Military officials also worry that even with additional arms the rebels would be hopelessly overmatched by Assad's army and the shabiha, the pro-government gunmen believed to be responsible for the Houla carnage.

"The nature and shape of and the membership of the opposition is still something that we and our partners are assessing," Carney said. "That is another consideration that has to be acknowledged when efforts like that are undertaken."

U.N. envoy Kofi Annan called the massacre a "tipping point," and the diplomatic deep freeze was swift.

"This amounts to abandoning all reason, sense, conscience, intelligence and mercy," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday. "This inhuman massacre amounts to trampling all values that make a human being a human being."

The U.N.'s human rights office said Tuesday that most of the 108 victims in the town of Houla were shot at close range, including 34 women and 49 children, and entire families gunned down in their own homes. The expulsion of diplomats was a sign of "absolute disgust" with Assad's rule, the Obama administration said.

The United States will keep up pressure at the United Nations Security Council, and individually with allies and partners, Nuland said.

A lobbying effort with Syrian ally Russia is part of that effort. Russia has blocked U.S. efforts to impose a U.N. arms embargo or international travel ban for senior Syrian officials.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Pauline Jelinek, Kimberly Dozier and Matthew Lee in Washington and Chris Torchia in Istanbul contributed to this report.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Raise Your Business through Professional Seo Services

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African refugees in Israel get a cold shoulder and worse

TEL AVIV ? The first Molotov cocktail ignited a backyard fence, just a couple of feet from where three Eritrean refugees were sleeping outdoors on makeshift beds of wood planks atop old TV sets. One man burned his arm trying to extinguish the flames with a blanket.

Moments later, a second firebomb was tossed through an open air vent into the adjacent apartment, where another family of African asylum-seekers was sleeping. It exploded in the shower without causing injury.

The post-midnight attacks last month by unknown assailants continued across Tel Aviv's dilapidated Shapira neighborhood, striking another refugee house and a kindergarten catering to African children.

"We're just looking for some peace in our life," said Berhun Gergrehra, 60, a former Eritrean soldier who fled poverty and repression there two years ago, arriving in Israel after walking through Sudan and Egypt with his teenage son and daughter. "But everyone here just hates us. Why?"

Israel is a nation founded by refugees, mostly Jews escaping persecution in Europe and the Middle East. It grew and prospered thanks to additional immigration from Russia, Ethiopia and other nations.

But now Israel's identity as a refuge is being challenged by an influx of tens of thousands of Africans, who also see the country as a haven from oppression in their native lands. Since 2006, more than 60,000 Africans ? mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, including the latter's Darfur region ? have poured over the border from Egypt's Sinai desert, taking advantage of Israel's proximity as one of the nearest modern democracies accessible to African refugees.

But unlike past waves of Jewish immigrants, the flood of Africans is triggering an ugly and sometimes violent backlash in Israel. Refugee activists say some government leaders are fostering the intolerance and anger toward Africans, who are accused of committing crimes, stealing jobs from Israelis and potentially undermining the Jewish character of the country.

At a Tel Aviv rally last week, hundreds of Israelis gathered to protest the presence of African refugees. Right-wing lawmaker Miri Regev called Sudanese arrivals a "cancer" on Israel and urged immigration officials to deport all African "infiltrators."

Soon after, angry mobs rioted through the neighborhood, smashing store windows and attacking a car carrying Africans, police said. Seventeen rioters, mostly minors, were arrested.

It was the latest in a string of attacks, disturbances and incidents of harassment in the last month, after three Eritrean migrants were arrested in connection with the rape of an Israeli woman.

Amid a national uproar over the rape, Interior Minster Eli Yishai called most African immigrants "criminals" and vowed to either deport or jail them. He said on Israel Radio that a firm response was the only way to discourage more refugees from entering the country. "Once they're in jail, they won't want to come over here anymore," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the sentiment, saying the presence of African migrants in Israel "is extremely serious and threatens Israel's social fabric and national security."

Most of the African refugees walk into Israel via the Sinai desert, paying Bedouin smugglers thousands of dollars to deliver them from Egypt. In response, the Israeli government has begun construction of a massive fence along the border and an 8,000-bed detention facility in the southern Negev desert to hold those who get through. Both are expected to be completed this year.

After a brief detention at a military facility, most African refugees are released without government assistance and are given short-term visas that prohibit them from working. Many end up homeless in the resort city of Eilat or in the poor areas of cities like Tel Aviv, where they sleep in parks and seek jobs as construction workers or dishwashers, for which they are paid under the table. Children are allowed to attend school, but their parents receive no health insurance or other social benefits.

Interior Ministry officials say they are doing their best to deal with the influx, their goal being to provide basic protection without offering so much that it will encourage more arrivals.

"There's a pull factor," said Daniel Solomon, a legal advisor for the ministry. "If the government gives them a sense of permanence, millions more in Africa might come."

Critics call the government's treatment coldhearted and say the recent tone is fueling hatred, racism and xenophobia. In Eilat over the last month, there's been an increase in reports of Africans being pelted with rocks or doused with white paint.

Aid groups that have come to the defense of refugees say they, too, are coming under attack, receiving anonymous death threats.

"It's a frightening situation," said Orit Rubin, social coordinator at Assaf, a Tel Aviv-based organization that assists asylum seekers. Rather than calming tension, she said, government leaders are demonizing refugees, perhaps in an attempt to deflect attention from what she said is the government's failure to cope with the influx.

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Tuareg, Islamist rebels in deadlock over unity bid

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

THERAPIES4ALL BLOG: Coffee: Good or Bad?

Is coffee good or bad? You may be surprised regarding the conflicting evidence. Some people assume that good-tasting food or drink is bad, and coffee just tastes so good. Well, there are a lot of conflicting opinions about this, but let us start with the benefits.?

A lot of experts used to say that coffee is harmful because it could cause heart disease and cancer. However, it seems that most of those studies were focused on relationships between people?s habits and their overall health. In such studies, it?s hard to know which effects come from coffee and which just show up by coincidence. Heavy coffee drinking sometimes goes hand in hand with unhealthy habits, like smoking and a less active lifestyle.

Yet, the thought is, coffee beans are seeds and like all seeds, they are filled with potent biologically compounds which protect the plant?s next generation. It is full of antioxidants and other phytonutrients with numerous health benefits.?

Caffeine is probably the most well-known compound in coffee. It can make you feel more awake and alert, which is why most people drink coffee in the first place. But too much of it can be harmful. Caffeine causes the most common problem reported by coffee drinkers: insomnia or trouble sleeping. Caffeine could also blunt your appetite and could cause headaches, dizziness, nervousness and irritability.

If you think you are sensitive to the effects of caffeine, the trick is to simply drink less of it. If you have trouble falling asleep at night, make sure to avoid it later in the day. Caffeine is mildly addictive, so you might get headaches, drowsiness, irritability, nausea and other symptoms if you suddenly cut back. You can avoid these effects, though, by gradually reducing your caffeine intake.

There?s some evidence that high amounts of caffeine during pregnancy may cause problems with the pregnancy. This is why doctors recommend that pregnant women cut back on coffee and other caffeinated beverages.

Another drawback of coffee is that it may interfere with calcium absorption. Calcium is an important nutrient for growing and maintaining strong bones. This is why you have to make sure you get enough calcium in your diet to help reverse this effect.

At one time, many doctors worried that coffee might cause cancer. That?s largely because caffeine damages DNA in the laboratory, and DNA damage is linked to cancer. However, that doesn?t mean that coffee causes cancer in people. Coffee also has high levels of compounds, called antioxidants that protect DNA. Some evidence even suggests that coffee may help reduce the risk of liver cancer.

Some doctors thought coffee might cause heart attacks or strokes, because caffeine can raise blood pressure. But a cup of coffee won?t lead to a dramatic increase in blood pressure for regular coffee drinkers. In long-term studies, higher levels of caffeine have not led to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Some types of coffee can cause cardiovascular problems for another reason, however. Coffee can contain compounds that lead to a rise in LDL cholesterol. That?s the ?bad? kind of cholesterol that?s been linked to cardiovascular disease.

A lot depends on the way in which coffee is brewed. When coffee is brewed with a paper filter, it removes a lot of the components that lead to higher LDL. So it?s a good idea to drink filtered coffee to avoid this problem.

Coffee may even have some positive effects. Some studies have linked coffee intake with a lower risk of developing Parkinson?s disease. When looking at Parkinson?s disease patients, they may be up to 4-8 times less likely to have been heavy coffee drinkers. However, studies in this area have been limited. Some studies suggest coffee may have other positive effects on the mind. Researchers are now looking into the potential effects of caffeine on memory and Alzheimer?s disease.

Perhaps the strongest research showing a health benefit from coffee relates to Type 2 diabetes. In a 2002 study, it was reported that people drinking 7 or more cups per day had a 50% lower risk of Type 2 diabetes than those drinking 2 or less cups. About 20 studies have now looked into the effect in various populations. Coffee has been proven by some studies to be associated with a lower risk for type 2 diabetes.

Another potential benefit from coffee is that it can keep you from drinking less healthy things. Coffee is actually quite a good beverage compared to other beverages. Coffee can also help your social life, if you meet good friends to talk over coffee. Studies have clearly shown that people who have more social relationships have less stress and live longer. Research also suggests they?re less likely to show mental declines as they age.

So go enjoy that cup of coffee. It?s not the guilty pleasure you may have thought.

To sum it all up, here are some tips for coffee drinkers:

  1. Drink coffee that?s been filtered through paper.
  2. Avoid specialty coffee drinks loaded with sugar and fat, which can contribute to weight gain.
  3. Consider adding a little non-fat milk if you?re concerned about bone health.
  4. Don?t drink caffeinated coffee late in the day if you have trouble sleeping.
  5. Avoid caffeinated coffee if you?re pregnant.

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Email Marketing For Your Online Business | Exclusive Blog Design

A good email list is a very efficient way to generate interest about new products and stay in touch with your customers. Read this article to learn how to build a list of emails and what kind of content you should be sending out.

People will sign up for your newsletter if they notice the subscription form. Place a link to your subscription form in your menu, and keep mentioning your newsletter in your weekly updates on your site or in your social network updates. You can get more people to sign up for your newsletter by mentioning a discount you recently gave to the members of your mailing list, followed by a link to sign up to your newsletter to obtain access to more limited offers. You can even place a small subscription box on your homepage where visitors can quickly enter their name and email address.

If you place your subscription form at the bottom of your page or do not place the link in a visible place, your visitors are not going to sign up. Try different locations, and keep track of how many people sign up each time you change the location of your subscription form. Make sure you place a link on the page where customers can place their order as well as in the thank you email you send them afterward. Visitors who order a product are more likely to be interested in getting information about more products.

Placing links or a form on every page of your site is also a good strategy. If you have more than one page indexed in search results, not everyone will see your homepage first. You might also have a lot of backlinks directing visitors to a specific page of your site. Some visitors will decide to sign up only after seeing the form more than once. For instance, a visitor who read your homepage might not decide to sign up for your newsletter until he or she reads a review of your product.

Mention your newsletter on social networks in your updates. Add a link to your signup page in your profile, and mention that members of your mailing list get access to exclusive content and limited offers. If this is already what you are offering to the people who connected with you on social networks, offer different discounts on your mailing list.

The content of your newsletter matters. You can send out links to your most popular articles of the week or of the month, but you also need fresh and exclusive content. Write new articles for your mailing list or advertise a limited offer every time you send out a mass email. Use a mass email software to keep track of how many emails were opened and which links were the most followed. This is a good way to find out what kind of content interests your readers.

Apply these tips and be patient. You should manage to build a good email list if your audience is receptive to this kind of marketing.

Tags: Business, Email, Marketing, Online

Category: Blog

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Brothers sentenced to death in separate states

Rodney Berget lives in a single cell on South Dakota's death row, rarely leaving the tiny room where he awaits execution for bludgeoning a prison guard to death with a pipe during an attempted escape.

For Berget's immediate family, his fate is somewhat familiar. He is the second member of the clan to be sentenced to death. His older brother was convicted in 1987 of killing a man for his car. Roger Berget spent 13 years on Oklahoma's death row until his execution in 2000 at age 39.

The Bergets are not the first pair of siblings to be condemned. Record books reveal at least three cases of brothers who conspired to commit crimes and both got the death penalty. But these two stand out because their crimes were separated by more than 600 miles and 25 years.

"To have it in different states in different crimes is some sort of commentary on the family there," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty trends.

The siblings' journey from the poverty of their South Dakota childhood to stormy, crime-ridden adult lives shows the far-reaching effects of a damaged upbringing ? and the years of havoc wrought by two men who developed what the courts called a wanton disregard for human life.

Rodney Berget is scheduled to die later this year, potentially ending the odyssey that began when the two boys were born into a family that already had four kids.

A former prison principal described Rodney as a "throwaway kid" who never had a chance at a productive life. A lawyer for Roger recalled him as an "ugly duckling" with little family support.

The boys were born after the family moved from their failed farm in rural South Dakota to Aberdeen, a city about 20 miles away. Roger arrived in 1960. Rodney came along two years later.

His farming dreams dashed, patriarch Benford Berget went to work for the state highway department. Rosemary Berget took a night job as a bar manager at the local Holiday Inn.

The loss of the farm and the new city life seemed to strain the family and the couple's marriage. When the family moved to town, "things kind of fell apart," Bonnie Engelhart, the eldest Berget sibling, testified in 1987.

Benford Berget, away on business, was rarely around. When he was home, he drank and become physically abusive, lawyers for the brothers later said.

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By the 1970s, the couple divorced, and Roger and Rodney started getting into trouble. Roger skipped school. Rodney started stealing. Soon, they were taking cars. Both went to prison for the first time as teens.

Roger Berget enjoyed a rare period of freedom in 1982 and met a woman while hitchhiking. The two started a relationship, and the woman gave birth to a child the next year. But Roger didn't get to see his son often because he was soon behind bars again, this time in Oklahoma. And for a far more sinister crime.

Roger and a friend named Michael Smith had decided to steal a random car from outside an Oklahoma City grocery store. The two men spotted 33-year-old Rick Patterson leaving the store on an October night in 1985. After abducting him at gunpoint, they put Patterson in the trunk and concluded he would have to be killed to prevent him from identifying his captors.

They drove the car to a deserted spot outside the city and shot Patterson in the back of the head and neck, blowing away the lower half of his face.

A year later, Berget pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to death on March 12, 1987. An appeals court threw out a death sentence for Smith, who was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Less than three months after Roger was sentenced to death, Rodney Berget, then 25 and serving time for grand theft and escape, joined five other inmates in breaking out of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

The men greased their bodies with lotion, slipped through a hole in an air vent and then cut through window bars in an auto body shop at the prison. Berget was a fugitive for more than a month.

Thirteen years passed before Roger Berget was executed by lethal injection on June 8, 2000. His younger brother was still in prison in South Dakota.

Then in 2002, the younger Berget was released. His sister and her husband threw Rodney his first-ever birthday party when he turned 40.

But the good days were numbered because a year later, he was sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder and kidnapping. He headed back to the South Dakota State Penitentiary ? this time for good.

Then Rodney got to talking with a fellow inmate named Eric Robert about a goal they shared: to escape ? or die trying.

The plan was months in the making. The inmates figured they would corner a solitary guard ? any guard would do ? and beat him with a pipe before covering his face with plastic wrap.

Once the guard was dead, Robert would put on the dead man's uniform and push a box with Berget inside as the prison gates opened for a daily delivery. The two would slip through the walls unnoticed.

On the morning of April 12, 2011, the timing seemed perfect. Ronald "R.J." Johnson was alone in a part of the prison where inmates work on upholstery, signs, custom furniture and other projects. Johnson wasn't supposed to be working that day ? it was his 63rd birthday. But he agreed to come in because of a scheduling change.

After attacking Johnson, Robert and Berget made it outside one gate. But they were stopped by another guard before they could complete their escape through the second gate. Both pleaded guilty.

In a statement to a judge, Rodney acknowledged he deserved to die.

"I knew what I was doing, and I continued to do it," Berget said. "I destroyed a family. I took away a father, a husband, a grandpa."

His execution, scheduled for September, is likely to be delayed to allow the State Supreme Court time to conduct a mandatory review.

Rodney Berget's lawyer, Jeff Larson, has declined to comment on the case outside of court. Rodney did not respond to letters sent to the penitentiary.

The few members of the Berget family who survive are reluctant to talk about how seemingly normal boys turned into petty criminals and then into convicted killers of the rarest kind: brothers sentenced to death.

Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Center, said some families of the condemned remain involved in appeals. But others see no reason to preserve connections.

"There's no light at the end of it," he said. "What happens at the end is execution."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Easy Tips To Maximize Your Article Marketing Success | Le Marketeer

If you use eZinearticles, you should have multiple accounts. You can use multiple accounts if you are always uploading good content. No matter what name you?re writing under, keep using the same keywords.

Avoid falling victim to the old adage ?monkey see, monkey do.? Offering a unique outlook or suggestion is the best way to impress your readers. Search engines are always on the lookout for ways to counteract unscrupulous ways of generating content, so you should concentrate on quality, not quantity.

Try to create articles that help people with an issue. When a particular reader finds your article helpful, he or she is likely to remember you and seek out more of your work.

Look into a program that will automatically update to Twitter. This will make your work a lot easier, especially if you are writing a lot of content every day. If you automate social networking processes, it helps to save time.

Knowing that your product or service has worked for another customer makes a potential customer more likely to buy it. Encourage this exchange of experiences by adding a section to your site that includes testimonials about your products.

Remember to add a request that requires action. At the end of your articles, you should tell your readers what you want them to do, and include obvious methods to perform the task, such as adding large buttons. Your potential customers are more likely to act if you have made it easy to see how to do so.

One way to make the articles you write more accessible to your readers is to write as if you were speaking to a friend. Articles composed this way have a warmer, more inviting tone and stand out above their blander competitors. So use a friendlier tone to make your articles more relaxed.

If you forget to open your sharing settings to the public, you can waste a lot of time on Facebook without sharing content. If you don?t set your settings correctly, people might not be able to see or share your content. Make sure people will actually want to share your information.

When brainstorming topics, ask yourself what your readers would be interested in reading. It?s important to read what your visitors write in comments or emails and understand their wants and needs.

When writing, it is important to be aware of the work put out by other authors in your genre. Try to find areas within your niche that have been worn out, and those that have not yet been completely covered. Take these ideas and start to build from them.

Practicing smart article marketing strategies can help you develop a solid customer base and increase your visibility online. Follow the advice contained in this article to help you to become an expert at using article marketing to your advantage.

Marketing is very important for any business. It can make the difference between success and failure. Would you invest thousands on getting your business off the ground, developing your products and services, getting the right staff and infrastructure and let it fail due to lack of marketing?

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Windows Phone Cake Contest: Bake a Cake, Win a Windows Phone

Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is not shy to boast about Windows Phone?s start screen. Microsoft?s Michael Stroh for example described the start screen as ?pretty sweet.? And speaking about things that are pretty sweet, Windows Phone fans shared pics of cakes that present the smartphone?s start screen via Windows Phone?s Facebook page.

And that got the Windows Phone team thinking ? why don?t we turn this into an opportunity to give away some stuff? So the Windows Phone team decided to run a competition that can be resumed in a just a few words: bake a cake that focuses on Windows Phone and you could win a Windows Phone.


The Windows Phone Team announced via its blog and via its Facebook page that if you create a Windows Phone-themed cake, take a pic of the aforementioned cake, then submit the pick on the Cake Contest Facebook page, you have the chance to win cool new Windows Phone (the team did not specify what model Windows phone).

Please note that you must be the one who baked the cake in the image; it doesn?t matter if it is an old image, it only matters that you baked it. You should also note that the all entries for the contest must be received by May 30th. The community will be asked to vote on these entries; the voting ends on June 6th. The three entrants that receive the most votes during this period will be rewarded with a new Windows Phone.

That?s right! Microsoft will give away three Windows Phones as part of the Windows Phone Cake Contest. The three most popular Windows Phone-themed cakes will be rewarded with a Windows Phone.

If you want to find out more about the rules of the Windows Phone Cake Contest, Microsoft posted them on SkyDrive here.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Phone, Facebook, cake, contest


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Monday, May 28, 2012

Golden Gate Bridge marks 75 years since opening against steep odds

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Golden Gate Bridge was a larger than life engineering project undertaken against dangerous odds and it opened 75 years ago on Sunday against vehement protest, at the cost of 11 lives.

One of the most astonishing and admired man-made wonders of the world, gracing millions of postcards, featured in countless films, the bridge was not at first welcomed with open arms.

Ferry operators and environmentalists opposed it, and many engineers doubted such a daring leap over a treacherous Pacific Ocean strait could be built. The military worried a collapsed Golden Gate span could block access to the Bay in war time.

Some San Franciscans even fought against it because they thought a bridge might ruin the view, according to historians.

Kevin Starr, author of "Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Bridge," said 2,000 related court cases were filed over nearly a decade.

But Starr said litigation and regulatory scrutiny largely concluded in the 1920s allowed builders to move quickly once bank funding was nailed down in 1932, in an early form of public-private cooperation.

"President Obama talks about shovel-ready projects," Starr said in a phone interview. "This was shovel ready."

The less than two decades between conception and completion means the Golden Gate compares well with the new quake-proof second span of the Bay Bridge a few miles away, he said. That $6.2 billion project is due to be done in 2013, 24 years after a deadly earthquake literally jolted the authorities into action.

Yet building the Golden Gate, at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion in current dollars, was a Herculean task. While the idea took hold in the prosperous 1920s, by the time ground was broken the Depression had left many people desperate for jobs.

"Launched midst a thousand hopes and fears; Damned by a thousand hostile sneers," was how the head engineer for the bridge, Joseph Strauss, described the bridge in a poem he wrote to mark its completion in 1937. He died less than a year later.

Even the bridge's arresting dark orange color was an accident, first used as a primer while designers decided what to paint it. The Navy had argued for black with yellow stripes, to ensure it could be seen in a strait hostile to mariners, with dense fog, heavy winds and strong ocean swells.

In the end, bridge authorities decided they liked the color - known as International Orange - and stuck with it.

FORM AND FUNCTION

Starr speculated that some early opposition from locals may have been due to the original styling, which was likened to an "upside-down rat trap", before it was altered to the sweeping suspension bridge design.

"Its elegance is derived from its structural efficiency," Paul Giroux, from the American Society of Civil Engineers, said at a panel discussion hosted by San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. "It's a perfect blend of form and function."

Construction began in 1933, 14 years after Strauss was first approached. Bank of America archivist David Mendoza said it took a personal appeal from Strauss to Amadeo Giannini, founder of the then-San Francisco-based bank, to secure funding.

"Strauss was worried it might not get built," Mendoza said of that fateful meeting, now commemorated on a plaque.

After opening on May 27, 1937, thousands of people walked, roller-skated and stilt-walked across. Cars came the next day.

Celebrations for the 50th anniversary became infamous for the frightful swaying of the bridge under the weight of 300,000 people. This time round, the bridge will be closed to cars and pedestrians during a fireworks show that will cap a day of festivities along the bay waterfront on Sunday.

Beyond the revelry and Tributes, the bridge's dark side will lurk in the background: An estimated 1,400 people have jumped off the bridge to end their own lives, a grim reality brought to the attention of many people with a 2006 documentary film, "The Bridge," by Eric Steel. The filmmaker secretly captured more than 20 suicides from the bridge.

"Four seconds drop and you're done," Starr said. "A few people have survived, but not many."

The Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District is now studying the costs and feasibility of draping nets along it to catch any jumpers, a twist on the nets deployed during construction, which saved the lives of 22 workers.

Of the 11 men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed after a net failed under stress from a fallen scaffold when the bridge was near completion.

Safety was a serious concern during construction, with hard hats widely used for the first time and workers forced to drink sauerkraut juice if they arrived at work hung over, Starr said.

Living memory is limited. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the last two known surviving builders, Jack Balestreri and Edward Ashoff, died in April, within a week of each other.

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco; editing by Todd Eastham)

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India disappointed with Pakistan?s decision to not ink liberalised visa pact - Indiatalkies.com

New Delhi, May 26: India has expressed disappointment with Pakistan?s decision to not ink the liberalised visa pact during the Home Secretary-level talks held in Islamabad.

?The visa agreement had to go ahead because it was ready in any case. It had been negotiated, finalized and both sides had attached great importance to having this visa agreement signed. So, we have gone there fully prepared to sign it,? said Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai.

India and Pakistan on Friday agreed to enhance cooperation between their investigative agencies on issues of mutual concerns, including the 26/11 attacks during the Home Secretary-level talks.

The two sides, however, failed to ink the much-anticipated liberalised visa regime, merely agreeing to do it an early date after Islamabad insisted on political participation.

At the meeting between Home Secretary R K Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Khwaja Siddique Akbar, the two nations agreed that terrorism poses continuing threat to peace and full normalisation of bilateral relations.

A joint statement issued by India and Pakistan after the two-day talks said they agreed to sign a new visa agreement at an early date. (ANI)

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One more place to play Farmville or one more reason to quit Facebook?

One more place to play Farmville or one more reason to quit Facebook?

Perhaps there aren't enough places for you to play Words With Friends or FrontierVille, who are we to judge? Maybe what the world needs right now is playable Angry Birds in your Facebook news feed. Instead of just an invitation to join Cow Clicker, maybe you need to be able to play it straight from the homepage. Well, now you can. And that's all we have to say about that.

One more place to play Farmville or one more reason to quit Facebook? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 May 2012 10:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Justin Bieber wanted for questioning in scuffle

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Biden says end to wars gives US new flexibility (The Arizona Republic)

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Is Chinese herbal medicine safe?

By Leanne Hudson First published: May 27th, 2012

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Critics are calling for better regulation of this centuries-old industry.

You want to avoid colds and flu and you read somewhere that Chinese herbs can help. You buy a remedy online or visit a practitioner. After all, it's a registered, regulated industry, right? Well, sort of. What you might not know is that in April, Australian customs officials seized Chinese medicines that contained potential allergens, toxins and ingredients obtained from protected animal species.

Stringent regulation needed

Apart from in Victoria, there is no government regulatory body for the industry. That will change on July 1, the date the government requires all Chinese medicine practitioners to register and meet minimum standards
of education, training and English. "We welcome national registration," says Judy James, CEO of the Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association (AACMA). "It's been in place in Victoria since 2001, but we've lobbied for 30 years."

There are about 4000 practitioners in Australia. About 1200 are in Victoria, leaving almost 3000 who aren't accredited unless they choose to join an association such as the AACMA, which has its own strict standards. But there is nothing to stop anyone from saying they are a Chinese medicine practitioner. Regulation should stop that, but for some the proposed standards are not high enough.

"There are currently medical boards for 10 health professions," says Dr Steve Hambleton, president of the Australian Medical Association. "They set strict standards for practitioners. For instance, GPs must complete almost 50 hours of continuing professional development (CPD) activities per year." These are approved by the Australian Medical Council. If they don't complete the activities, a practitioner can't re-register, so they can't practise. The Chinese Medicine Board of Australia is proposing 20 hours of CPD per year. "It should be on a par with the other professions," Dr Hambleton says. He believes regulation of the industry will offer some protection to the public, but could give kudos to a therapy that has yet to fully prove itself. He also questions how something with such varying levels of evidence can be regulated. "Good and poor evidence exists," he says. "We have an open mind. Many modern drugs come from herbs. The most effective antimalaria drug ? artemether ? comes from a plant. But we need more scientific evidence." James believes more than 2000 years of continuous use is evidence enough. "There is a body of well-established literature that backs up the use of Chinese medicine, and guides diagnosis and treatment," she says. "Over centuries, it has developed into a complex theoretical framework. It's coherent and internally consistent. Evidence has been gathered over many years of practical and clinical testing in the field, as well as clinical trials."

An evolving form of health care

"It's 2000 years of anecdotes, not strong, scientific evidence," Dr Hambleton says. "Experience is important, but it doesn't beat double-blind, randomised, controlled tests." And what about those toxic ingredients? James says the fact that they were discovered proves current regulations are working. "Those products were not approved for sale in Australia," she says. "The Therapeutic Goods Administration strictly regulates what can be sold. The items seized were manufactured overseas. We can't control them, but we can control what enters our market and that's what happened."

For James, Chinese medicine is a living and evolving form of health care that, if carried out by a qualified practitioner, can be finely tuned to address an individual's health problems. She thinks such individualisation
of treatment is one reason why some research may not do Chinese medicine justice. "It's not one herb fits all," she says. "Double-blind clinical trials work well for single ingredients, but Chinese medicine is about complex combinations of herbs tailored to an individual's needs. If you're in the hands of a qualified practitioner ? which regulation will ensure ? it is a safe form of treatment."

For Dr Hambleton, Chinese medicine is a grey area: "I'd like to see more evidence and I want people to understand what evidence is available. If you're still happy to spend money on Chinese medicine, fine, but you deserve to know what level of evidence backs up the claims."

Read our fact sheets on alternative medicines.

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