Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/299734282?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, April 19, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Italy's 5-Star is growing threat to F-35 purchase
By Steve Scherer
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's 5-Star Movement, led by comic Beppe Grillo, wants to scrap the country's planned purchase of 90 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets and use the savings to help boost the struggling economy, a lawmaker told Reuters on Tuesday.
Italy has been unable to seat a government since the February national election that left no single force with a working majority in parliament, but 5-Star wants to form parliamentary committees so laws can be made without one.
"We plan on presenting soon a motion in parliament to totally abandon the F-35 program," Alessandro Di Battista, a 5-Star deputy in the lower house, told Reuters.
Eliminating the purchase of the fighter jets would save Italy a total of an estimated 10 billion euros ($13 billion)but it would leave the Air Force and the country's new aircraft carrier with an outdated fighter fleet.
Even though support for the purchase of the fighter, built by Lockheed Martin Corp of the United States is dwindling, any decision to drop or curtail the procurement is not likely to be taken before a government is formed.
The troubled F-35 is seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over early cost estimates, and orders for the super technological new jet have been cut during an economic crisis that has shrunk defense budgets worldwide.
Last year, Italy cut its F-35 order to 90 warplanes from the 131 it had agreed to buy more than a decade ago, a move it said would save 5 billion euros. The package also includes maintenance work for Italy's state controlled defense technology group Finmeccanica.
The 5-Star Movement does not have enough votes in parliament to shoot down the jet purchases on its own, but political momentum against the Joint Strike Fighter is building.
The Left Ecology Liberty (SEL) party has already presented a motion to parliament against the fighter-jet purchase, and the Democratic Party (PD) has said it is in favor of further reductions.
"Even in Washington they know the F-35 is a fighter that cannot fight, but in Italy we're still trying to buy it," Nichi Vendola, head of SEL, told Reuters, referring to the technical problems that have dogged the jet.
Vendola said the money saved should be used to improve schools, the nation's aqueducts and to increasing public day-care programs for children.
The PD has already said the F-35 purchases should be "rethought," Lapo Pistelli, the party's top foreign affairs advisor, told Reuters. "But this is a decision that must be taken by a government with full powers."
AFGHANISTAN
On Wednesday, the 5-Star Movement will ask parliament to back the immediate withdrawal of Italian troops serving under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Afghanistan, Di Battista also said.
"It's an unacceptable, shameful war," he said.
Currently, Italy's more than 4,000 troops are to be drawn down by 25 percent this year, with the rest coming home by the end of next year, and it costs Italy about 750 million euros per year.
Parliament must approve continued funding for the mission later this year.
Though the 5-Star does not want Italy to withdrawal from NATO, Di Battista said: "Any historic agreement can be discussed. If something is unjust, then we need to rethink it."
($1 = 0.7658 euros)
(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italys-5-star-growing-threat-f-35-purchase-164804569--finance.html
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A step toward optical transistors?
Apr. 9, 2013 ? As demand for computing and communication capacity surges, the global communication infrastructure struggles to keep pace, since the light signals transmitted through fiber-optic lines must still be processed electronically, creating a bottleneck in telecommunications networks.
While the idea of developing an optical transistor to get around this problem is alluring to scientists and engineers, it has also remained an elusive vision, despite years of experiments with various approaches. Now, McGill University researchers have taken a significant, early step toward this goal by showing a new way to control light in the semiconductor nanocrystals known as "quantum dots."
In results published online recently in the journal Nano Letters, PhD candidate Jonathan Saari, Prof. Patanjali (Pat) Kambhampati and colleagues in McGill's Department of Chemistry show that all-optical modulation and basic Boolean logic functionality -- key steps in the processing and generation of signals -- can be achieved by using laser-pulse inputs to manipulate the quantum mechanical state of a semiconductor nanocrystal.
"Our findings show that these nanocrystals can form a completely new platform for optical logic," says Saari. "We're still at the nascent stages, but this could mark a significant step toward optical transistors."
Quantum dots already are used in applications ranging from photovoltaics, to light-emitting diodes and lasers, to biological imaging. The Kambhampati group's latest findings point toward an important new area of potential impact, based on the ability of these nanocrystals to modulate light in an optical gating scheme.
"These results demonstrate the proof of the concept," Kambhampati says. "Now we are working to extend these results to integrated devices, and to generate more complex gates in hopes of making a true optical transistor."
The findings build on a 2009 paper by Kambhampati's research group in Physical Review Letters. That work revealed previously unobserved light-amplification properties unique to quantum dots, which are nanometer-sized spheroids with size-dependent optical properties, such as absorption and photoluminescence.
The research for the Nano Letters article was supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds de recherche du Qu?bec -- Nature et technologies.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McGill University, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
- Jonathan I. Saari, Michael M. Krause, Brenna R. Walsh, Patanjali Kambhampati. Terahertz Bandwidth All-Optical Modulation and Logic Using Multiexcitons in Semiconductor Nanocrystals. Nano Letters, 2013; 13 (2): 722 DOI: 10.1021/nl3044053
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/q10akz403JQ/130409124746.htm
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Is baseball's diversity really in decline?
Today is the day that the annual report from?Richard Lapchick?s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central?Florida comes out. ?He?s been doing this for years, and it always gets highlighted in the media, with headlines about how the number of U.S.-born black players in baseball is declining. ?Which, yes, it is. ?But Lapchick?s report is also normally treated wholly uncritically, with his?conclusions?being?parroted?instead of reported, and it really grinds my gears.
It bugs me on a broad level, in that ? as I?ve mentioned in this space several times ? it looks at the trees but not the forest, noting that while, yes, there are fewer U.S.-born black players in baseball now than there used to, the overall diversity of baseball is up as the game becomes increasingly internationalized.
But it bugs me in a much sharper sense in that I believe the numbers Lapchick puts out are misleading.
They are misleading in that, while his current count of U.S.-born blacks in baseball seems right ? he has it at 8.5% ? the numbers he and others typically cite for the height of black representation in the game are usually off. He has cited as high as 27% of all players being black, and this number is often repeated as gospel, like it is in today?s USA Today story about it.
Thing is: these are apples and oranges measurements. ?Back in the 70s when that 27% number came out, those numbers represented counts of all black players ? or people who had sufficiently-black skin to be called ?black? according to the view of those doing the counting. This included Latino players like Rico Carty, who happened to be born in the Dominican Republic. Today Carty ? or, say, Aroldis Chapman or any other non-U.S.-born black player ? wouldn?t be included in Lapchick?s count. Which makes sense because he?s counting only U.S.-born blacks. But he and his media surrogates freely cite the old numbers which did include Latino blacks back in the day.
Friend of mine and frequent HBT commenter Mark Armour is doing some research on this for the Society of American Baseball Research. I?ve not seen the research, but Tyler Kepner notes it in the New York Times today. Armour estimates that the actual height of U.S.-born blacks in the game came in the 1980s and peaked at 19%. See the update below for some of Mark?s additional comments on this.
No, that research does not mean that all things are wonderful. There clearly are fewer U.S.-born black players in baseball today than there were in decades past. But it?s not quite a crisis on the order of magnitude that Lapchick and others portray. And given that they?re not being particularly discerning with their numbers you have to wonder if either sloppiness or agenda-setting is taking precedence over science here.
And that?s my problem with it. Not the underlying idea ? I want there to be more blacks in the game; heck, I want EVERYONE to play baseball and anything that can be done to promote it should be ? but on the manner in which the problem is portrayed. A manner which seems more calculated to draw attention to the?Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports than it does to the underlying issue.
UPDATE: ?Mark Armour chimed in in the comments:
I am not exactly sure where the 27% number came from. My theory had been that the old data was from some newpaper story that counted all dark-skinned players as black, while the new data only counted US black players. However, several years ago this was explored further by the Wall Street Journal, and they determined that the old data is just ? bad science. Really bad science.
The real drop in African-Americans (from 17-19% in the 1975-95 period) to half that today is significant enough without the bad data. Baseball is MORE diverse, of course, than every before.
By the way, MLB is very cooperative in the Lapchick study. In fact, they provide all of the data on opening day rosters to Lapchick every year. The writers that imply this is some sort of bigotry on the part of MLB are nuts. It is very clear that MLB is spending lots of time and money on this problem.
This is the WSJ story from 2008.
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Margaret Thatcher: 'This is no time to go wobbly' and other memorable quotes
A Monitor reporter who briefly overlapped with Margaret Thatcher when he was Paris correspondent recounts her outsized presence at European gatherings.
President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher speak to reporters at the White House in Washington, June 1982. Thatcher had enjoyed a remarkably close bond with President Reagan, once describing him as 'the second most important man' in her life.
AP/File
EnlargeMargaret Thatcher is being remembered as the prime minister who remade Britain's economy, the ?Iron Lady? who stood up to communism and who fought and won a war in the distant South Atlantic.
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But to this reporter (who briefly overlapped with Mrs. Thatcher as the Monitor?s Paris correspondent from 1989 to 1994), she is remembered as the British leader who could be counted on for a good quote.
Amid a sea of mild, if sometimes dull, European leaders, Thatcher stood out for always speaking her mind.
At the end of various summits of the European Council, reporters fretted over which of the many simultaneously scheduled press conferences with this president or that prime minister to attend. But there was no such deliberating over Thatcher. She always got the big auditorium while other leaders had to settle for diminutive side rooms.
Part of Mrs. Thatcher?s draw was her reputation. This woman among men, who always carried her handbag with her to the press conference stage, was remembered for telling Europe in 1984, ?I want my money back!? (Her actual quote, as she insisted that Britain deserved a refund of its contribution to the European budget, was, ?We are simply asking to have our own money back.?)
But she never disappointed. One of her more memorable quotes came in 1990 (although not at a council summit): ?No. No. No,? she declared in response to Frenchman Jacques Delors, then president of the European Commission, and his prediction that European institutions would become the seats of democracy in Europe.
Thatcher had enjoyed a remarkably close bond with President Reagan, once describing him as ?the second most important man? in her life. But by the time George H.W. Bush arrived at the White House in 1989, things were different for the Anglo-American relationship. Thatcher was under attack at home, even from within her own party, and a crumbling Iron Curtain had President Bush focusing more of his attention on West Germany.
Eager to manage the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in an orderly and stabilizing manner, Bush would use a trip to Europe to underscore the importance his administration would give to US-Germany relations. And so in Brussels, Europe?s capital, Bush would leave Thatcher ?cooling her heels? (to quote from an earlier dispatch), as he met with the European Commission president first.
It was not an order of importance that Thatcher was accustomed to from a US leader.
Thatcher would be out of office before Bush, but she would not go before supplying one last juicy quote. As Bush mulled over what to do in response to Saddam Hussein?s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 ? to repel the Iraqi leader militarily or not ? Thatcher would tell Bush in an aside at an Aspen Institute conference, ?Remember George, this is no time to go wobbly.?
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Cuban ballet defectors make moves in Miami
By David Adams
MIAMI (Reuters) - Six dancers who defected last month from the National Ballet of Cuba, one of the country's proudest and most prestigious institutions, auditioned at a Miami ballet group on Thursday.
"They are so talented and we are thrilled to see them," said Pedro Pablo Pena, founder of the Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami, a nonprofit dance organization.
After an intense two-hour workout, the dancers explained that they were looking to advance their careers outside communist-led Cuba, where dancers enjoy privileged lives but earn modest salaries of $10 to $30 a month plus bonuses for foreign tours.
"Our goal is to train hard to achieve our dream of dancing and helping our families economically in Cuba," said Annie Ruiz Diaz, 24, who began dancing in Cuba at age 6 and had been with the National Ballet for almost seven years.
The defectors are staying with friends and relatives in Miami until they can find work.
"We expect to put on some events with them for the community here, but I don't have the budget to employ them full-time, unfortunately," said Pena, the host of the audition.
"But they are talented and I imagine they will find spaces in companies here in the United States," said Pena, a former dancer who came to Miami from Cuba in 1980.
The National Ballet of Cuba confirmed on Wednesday that seven members of the group had abandoned the company while touring in Mexico last month.
The dancers said they made their way to the U.S. border, where they were allowed entry under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants special immigration privileges to Cuban exiles as well as financial benefits to help them get on their feet.
One of the dancers stayed behind in Mexico with friends, they said.
CUBA CRITICIZES U.S. LAW
There was no mention of the defections in the state-run media in Cuba, which has seen periodic defections of artists and athletes since Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959.
Speaking at an event in Washington, the chief of the Cuba Interests Section, Jose Cabanas, blamed the defections on the Cuban Adjustment Act because he said it makes it easy for any Cuban to enter the United States.
"The press is going after the defections - but the real questions are related to those pieces of legislation that create those situations that are nice for the cameras and the microphones," he said.
The dancers - five men and two women between the ages of 20 and 24 - quit the company at the end of a nine-day tour performing "Giselle" in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
After a night of emotional farewells with fellow dancers, they said they left their hotel before dawn on March 25 and headed by bus and car to the U.S. border.
"There were a lot of tears. We loved dancing for the company and we have a lot of friends," said Arianni Martin, a 20-year-old soloist who had been with the company for two years and was earning $10 a month.
She said she was paid $225 for the Yucatan tour.
The Cuban national ballet, known for its classical style and for producing world-class dancers, regularly makes international tours.
Over the years, many of its dancers have defected and joined other companies abroad, often saying they want to explore contemporary dance forms and build more lucrative careers outside Cuba.
Others have been allowed to leave Cuba on contract to foreign ballet companies. They include Carlos Acosta with the Royal Ballet in London and Jose Manuel Carreno, who retired in 2011 as a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in New York.
"Artistically I felt stagnant and economically I couldn't help my family," said Martin.
Her parents have government jobs - her father drives a delivery truck and her mother looks after the elderly. But Martin said she was not worried about reprisals against her family.
"So many dancers leave, and I think the company understands that's part of the risk of our touring abroad," she said.
ALICIA ALONSO'S BALLET
Cuban ballet legend Alicia Alonso founded the National Ballet of Cuba in 1948 and, at the age of 91, despite being nearly blind, continues as its artistic director.
Cuba provides free training to thousands of young dancers around the country from the age of 9, with the elite graduating to the National Ballet.
The company has struggled financially in recent years and now accepts fee-paying dance students from abroad.
The school's Havana headquarters, located in a colonial-era former palace, is also undergoing expensive repairs after parts of the ceiling collapsed.
The 120-strong company is likely to overcome the loss of seven members, said Octavio Roca, a Cuban-American philosophy teacher and author of the book, "Cuban Ballet."
"It hurts them of course, but they have a great farm system, so much young talent coming up. It's an incredible program," he said.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Franks and Nelson Acosta in Havana and Deborah Charles in Washington; Editing by Kieran Murray and Xavier Briand)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-national-ballet-defectors-miami-seeking-grow-artistically-222453297.html
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Hillary Clinton to headline NY women's conference
NEW YORK (AP) ? There's been plenty of star power already at the Women in the World summit in New York: Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep both were part of the opening night program.
But a different sort of star is sure to get a rapturous reception Friday at the annual two-day conference, which focuses on global women's issues: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It's her second high-profile speech this week, following one at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards in Washington, and it coincides with the announcement Thursday of her new memoir about her years as secretary of state. She's addressed this forum before, but now there's the added excitement of all the speculation: What's next for her?
The main focus of the women's conference, though, is the plight of women across the globe, and Jolie had the most emotional moment Thursday, introducing ? via video from Britain ? Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education.
"Today I'm going to announce the happiest moment of my life," the 15-year-old said in the brief video, wearing a bright red headscarf and at one point shyly covering her face with her hands. She said that thanks to the new "Malala's Fund," which she will administer, a new school in her homeland would be built for 40 girls. "Let us turn the education of 40 girls into 40 million girls," she said.
Malala has garnered huge global attention since she was shot in the head in October by Taliban attackers angered by her activism. She was brought to Britain for treatment and surgery, including skull reconstruction. She's now started attending school there. She recently signed a deal to write her memoir, and she was also shortlisted for Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2012.
Jolie gave a poignant rendition of her story. "Here's what they accomplished," she said of Malala's attackers. "They shot her point blank range in the head ? and made her stronger. The brutal attempt to silence her voice made it stronger."
After Jolie's introduction, Tina Brown, the Newsweek/Daily Beast editor who created the Women in the World summit, now in its fourth year, told the audience that Jolie had just committed $200,000 personally to the fund, which was established by Vital Voices, with a donation from the Women in the World Foundation.
Jolie was not the only Hollywood star on the stage of Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater Thursday. Streep was there to honor another activist, Inez McCormack of Northern Ireland, who died in January of cancer. At the first summit in 2010, Streep had played McCormack in a short play, called "Seven," with McCormack herself watching from the audience. Streep spoke some lines from the play on Thursday evening ? in a flawless Irish accent.
The evening began with a dance performance by Michaela DePrince, who grew up as an orphan in war-torn Sierra Leone, where her father was killed and her mother starved to death, as she explained in an accompanying film. She was adopted by an American family and now dances with the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Barbara Walters moderated a panel on Syria, Charlie Rose interviewed South African political activist Mamphela Ramphele, and Christiane Amanpour led a panel on "The Next Generation of Malalas," featuring two other young women fighting for girls' rights in Pakistan.
Jolie, who is a special envoy for the U.N. refugee agency, told an anecdote about Malala that had the audience smiling. She said the girl's father had shown his daughter, in the hospital, a poll that said she was the sixth most influential person in the world, and that President Barack Obama was seventh. But the girl, according to the story, said she wasn't so happy ? she didn't think human beings should be categorized like that.
"So there's a lot we can learn from this little girl," Jolie said with a grin.
_
Online: http://womenintheworld.org/pages/women-in-the-world-summit-2013
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