Category: News

Adam Wheeler was admitted to Harvard University and became a student in 2007 after he falsely claimed he had earned a perfect academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover and had studied for a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

23-year-old Adam Wheeler from Milton, Delaware also plagiarized his resume by saying he won the Winthrop Sargent Prize for English, and the Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly work.

He has been accused of snagging $45,000 in financial aid, grants and scholarships. Wheeler spent the night in a Massachusetts jail and is now charged with more than 20 counts, including identity fraud, larceny and forgery.

According to authorities, Harvard started to look into Wheeler’s background after he sought the school’s endorsement for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships. Prosecutors said a professor reviewed his application and noticed similarities between Wheeler’s writing and that of a colleague.

Authorities also said that before attending Harvard University, Adam Wheeler was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine from 2005 to 2007, but was suspended for academic dishonesty.

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While we’ve been covering the ongoing back and forth about proposed new internet censorship rules in Australia we didn’t quite realize that Australia already has internet censorship rules in place. Michael Scott points us to the news of Electronic Frontiers Australia (sort of an EFF for Australia, but with no official relationship between the two) challenging an attempt by Australian officials to censor a blog post EFA put together to highlight Australian censorship:

In May 2009, EFA published this blog post discussing the current censorship regime in the context of the new filtering system soon to be introduced. As part of that discussion, we included a link to a page on American website abortiontv.com that we discovered was on ACMA’s blacklist. Abortion being a sensitive political issue, we felt it illustrated the dangers of internet censorship in general and a secret blacklist in particular. Furthermore, since discussion site Whirlpool had received a notice instructing them to delete the link, we thought it highlighted the serious way in which internet content in Australia is already regulated.

Shortly thereafter, EFA’s web host at the time, Sublime IP, received a “Link Deletion Notice” of their own, for the link contained in the EFA post hosted on their servers. They contacted us, and given the fines involved, EFA complied. (The post in question is still redacted.)

EFA helped its ISP, Sublime, challenge the deletion notice on two counts: (1) that it was a violation of the supposed freedom of political communication, especially since it was a discussion about the “political effects of censorship policy,” and (2) that officials should have sent the notice to EFA directly, rather than its ISP (in fact, EFA had asked for a notice to be sent directly to it, rather than Sublime, so that it could take on the case directly… and officials refused).

Unfortunately, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) rejected both challenges, twisting itself into a bit of pretzel logic to explain why this wasn’t a violation of freedom for political communication. Basically, the tribunal claimed that EFA could have hidden the link behind a special “restricted access system” that would block that content for those under 18 (in theory, of course, but not in practice). And, since you have to be 18 to vote, the tribunal reasoned, if such a age verification wall had been in place, the content would not have been blocked from those of voting age… and thus there was no violation of political communication. Yes, that’s quite twisted logic, but if you’re defending internet censorship, sooner or later your logic is going to get twisted into knots…

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When I am making a layer cake, I usually put the bottom layer on the cake plate that I intend to serve it on, then start layering frosting and more cake right from there. It is a hassle to move layer cakes as they tend to be delicate and heavy. Usually this works out very well, especially when I am going to be serving a cake at home. Other times, however, I am taking a cake out to a party or event and I need to put it in a cake carrier – meaning that I usually assemble it in the cake carrier and leave it there to serve it. No one has every complained about this, but I recently picked up a Norpro Cake Lifter to help me improve my presentation.

The cake lifter is a giant, very sturdy, metal spatula that is big enough to lift up a 9-inch layer cake with ease and move it anywhere you need to put it. One of the best features of the tool is that it has a finely beveled edge that lets it slip easily underneath the cake without disturbing the top layers. Of course, I still wouldn’t recommend traveling long distances (like down a flight of stairs) with a cake balanced on this, but for short trips it works great and looks quit a bit nicer than just leaving the cake in its carrier. You can also use it to pull pizzas and breads out of the oven, if they’re too hot to handle easily on their own.

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According to the latest reports, it appears that the orders for the 2011 Bmw 5-Series are already exceeding the firm’s sales target. The new 5-Series made its debut in March and it appears that it is the key for Bmw to improve its sales in 2010 to more than 1.3 million cars.

For those who don’t know, Bmw already toppled Mercedes-Benz as the largest luxury-car maker in 2005 and has increased its sales by 27 percent since 2000. “There are still numerous risks that might prolong a complete recovery,” Reithofer said today. With Greece’s financial problems and the European Union’s efforts to stabilize the euro, “we see that the crisis is not over yet,” he said.

[via autonews – sub. required]

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots

New England groundfish sectors, a kind of a catch share management system, are entering their third week of operation. It’s far too early to pass judgment, but here’s what we’re watching for: 1) The ability of individual fishermen to maximize their profits and minimize their costs, and 2) The total 2010 harvest of groundfish compared to annual catch limits (ACLs). An article from SeafoodNews.com that we cited last week discussed these two measures, but was criticized for comparing the first week of landings versus last year’s harvest. However, since fishermen fishing under sectors no longer have any time constraints to their harvests, weekly landings are not a meaningful measure of success or failure.

Read the full post »

Carpe Diem highlights how credit card delinquencies are falling nicely, down four months in a row.

“With fewer consumers late on their bills, the outlook for credit losses over the summer may be improving,” says Reuters.

Moreover, credit card debt fell to a 45-month low, as shown by Carpe Diem’s graphic the right.

Overall, as we’ve highlighted before, U.S. households reduced their total debt (inclusive of everything, mortgages, credit cards, etc) by $239 billion in 2009. Yes much of this is due to people defaulting on their obligations, but much needed financial adjustments are being made in the U.S., even if painfully.

Moreover, given the latest credit card data shown above, we’re confident that the overall deleveraging trend of 2009 is continuing in 2010 even though the larger, total household debt number isn’t out yet from the Federal Reserve.

Despite an economic recovery post-crisis, hard times are still driving Americans to reduce their financial leverage. The new American consumer will likely be more conservative than we’ve been used to over the last decade, even as the economy gets better. Which is a good thing in the long-term given how extreme things got.

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Texas School Board members are meeting in Austin this week for what’s sure to be a showdown over the curriculum for social studies textbooks.

Conservative board members have moved to reverse what some see as liberal bias in the classroom and in textbooks. Critics charge the interim changes whitewash American history and downplay the role of African-Americans, Latinos and women.

Why should you care?

Texas is such a huge purchaser of textbooks that often other states will buy books that were originally created for Texas standards. Those standards are revised for each subject about every 10 years.

At issue this week is the social studies standards for children in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

Originally a committee of teachers and community members came up with revisions to the curriculum. Those revisions went through what’s called a “first reading” in January. A block of eight conservative board members found fault with the preliminary revisions and made changes.

More revisions were made during the “second reading” last March. Then, Texas board members voted 10-5 to adopt changes in line with social conservative views. Some liberal board members stormed out of the meeting after they felt their concerns weren’t being addressed.

Now it’s down to the final vote this week.

Board members are meeting beginning Tuesday at 1pm CST, but they won’t pick up the social studies curriculum till Wednesday at 9am CST.

That’s when the public will be able to talk directly to board members about the draft revisions that came out of the March meetings.

So far, 206 people have signed up to speak. Each will have three minutes to make their views known.

The Texas Board of Education has already been receiving calls and emails from the public about the revisions for the past month.

You can see a summary of the first three weeks of  public opinion to the board. click here

The issue is complex.

Conservatives on the board say the curriculum they received in January and March was way out of whack. Now liberal board members are saying the standards have ticked to far to the other side.

**FOX News will have gavel to gavel coverage of the meetings.  Check back for updates. **

San Francisco-based Pattern Energy Group has secured more than $800 million in equity funding and could use some of that cash to fund acquisitions of wind projects, both operating or under development. Of the $800 million, about $400 million come from investment funds controlled by New York-based  private equity firm Riverstone Holdings.

Pattern is a developer in a hurry. Launched a little more than year ago and backed from the start by Riverstone, it has, in that short time, accumulated a 400-megawatt wind power portfolio. A couple of months ago Pattern acquired the 283-megawatt Gulf Wind project, an operating wind power plant in Texas, from Babcock & Brown. For that deal it secured debt-financing from a bank syndicate that included Mizuho Corporate Bank, Banco Espirito Santo, Bayerische Landesbank, Commerzbank, HSH Nordbank and ING Capital.

A Pattern press release says that over the past nine months it has completed investments in wind energy projects exceeding $1 billion.

“By successfully raising significant equity financing, Pattern Energy is now well capitalized for our growth plans, providing us with the ability to invest in future projects in development, construction and operations, while also giving us the flexibility to accelerate our growth through attractive acquisition opportunities,” Pattern Energy’s CEO Mike Garland said in a prepared statement.

In North America Pattern Energy oversees a 522.4 megawatts project pipeline. The company is currently constructing the 138 megawatts St. Joseph Windfarm in southern Manitoba. In Northern California it is developing the 101.2 megawatts Hatchet Ridge wind farm.

Image: iStockphoto

Today Watershed restaurant in Decatur announces the appointment of chef Joe Truex as its new chef and operating partner. He replaces Scott Peacock, who left the restaurant in February after 11 years, to pursue a documentary film project and begin working on a memoir. Truex, who has run Repast restaurant with his wife, Mihoko Obunai-Truex, for the past four years, will assume the position June 1.

“I couldn’t ask for a better place to get back to my Southern roots,” says Truex, a Louisiana native. “It’s where I’m at right now in my career and my life.”

While Truex will leave many of the restaurant’s signature dishes — including its iconic Tuesday-night fried chicken — he plans to change the menu more frequently than it did under Peacock’s leadership and to introduce more daily specials that reflect seasonal produce. He will also take a lead role in remaking Watershed’s wine program.

Truex will join co-owners Ross Jones and Emily Saliers as a managing partner. Saliers, who is …

Just after a day that Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA 2010 by Donald Trump and NBC, she already raised a controversy. According to website TMZ.com, the 24-year-old beauty queen won a pole dancing contest. The same page posted pictures of Rima in the stripper competition promoted by Detroit’s radio show, “Mojo in the Morning,” which was organized in Detroit, USA, in 2007.

Fakih was “Stripper 101″ in the competition who won and also received gift certificates, jewelry, adult games and a pole for home. Although she kept her clouts on, she’s bra was filled with dollar bills.

On the other hand, Fakih was accused in several conservative U.S. websites, with being an Islamic fundamentalist because of Lebanese Arab origin.

Fakih, 24, was proclaimed in Las Vegas, Nevada, the new beauty queen at the 59th U.S. edition of this contest once again began to be marked by controversy.

Here you can see Miss USA pole dancing pictures.

<object width=”500″ height=”340″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BB55hn9jbBg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/BB55hn9jbBg&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”500″ height=”340″></embed></object>

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Juan-Carlos Cruz, who hosted The Food Network series Calorie Commando in 2004, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and solicitation of murder in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.

The one-time TV cooking show host may be swapping gourmet dishes for a lifetime supply of grub from the prison commissary if he’s convicted of trying to hire two homeless men to kill his wife Jennifer, an attorney.

The 48-year-old was arrested in his suburban Los Angeles home on Thursday, one week after a homeless man told the Santa Monica Police Department’s homeless liaison officers that Cruz tried to hire people living on the streets of Downtown LA to “strangle” his high school sweetheart. Cops then launched an investigation.

If you design web sites, order this book. Informative, fun, direct, clear, practical. It’s everything you want in this kind of book. This is the first book from A Book Apart (from the Zeldman crew who bring you A List Apart). Ships soon, in June.

They put it perfectly:

The HTML5 spec is 900 pages and hard to read. HTML5 for Web Designers is 85 pages and fun to read. Easy choice.

Yesterday, I cited a blind quote in a McClatchy story from a Defense Department official. It raised doubts that the force levels anticipated for Kandahar’s “rising tide” — 20,350 NATO and Afghan troops by September — are sufficient to protect the population from insurgents. “None of this makes any sense,” read the quote. “If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren’t enough troops (for Kandahar).” McChrystal’s chief spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, disagrees.

“What the anonymous US official quoted has not accounted for are the differences between Central Helmand and Kandahar,” Sholtis wrote to me in an email. “Simply stated, there was nothing but Taliban in places like Marjah; security forces had to be created from scratch, and security imposed from the outside.  That’s not the case in Kandahar City, where existing security forces only need to be augmented and security can be increased from the inside.” To be specific, right now there are about 6900 NATO troops and 5300 Afghan troops inside Kandahar. “Those forces include police in the city itself, where there are outbreaks of terrorist violence,” Sholtis continued, “and army in the districts surrounding it, where the Taliban are conducting a more classic insurgency to try to control the approaches to the city.”

For what it’s worth, counterinsurgency doctrine bears Sholtis out. The Army’s field manual on counterinsurgency, known as FM 3-24, postulates a formula of 25 counterinsurgents per 1000 civilian residents. While a hard-and-fast census for Kandahar isn’t on offer, the figures U.S. planners typically cite for the city’s population hover between 800,000 and 850,000. Let’s use the 850,000 number. FM 3-24’s formula would suggest a counterinsurgent force of 21,250. That’s fewer than 1,000 additional troops to the 20,350 counterinsurgents that McChrystal will have in place by September.

None of this is to suggest that FM 3-24’s ratio — a guiding tool for planners, not a magic incantation for success — holds any guarantee of sustainable security for Kandahar. In Marja, clearly McChrystal went far larger in invading the village than FM 3-24 suggested, and the clearing phase, to put it mildly, remains in question after three months. Whether the “rising tide” of security operations lead to deliverable advancements in governance, justice, economic activity and perceptions of insurgent illegitimacy and government legitimacy are the measurements more likely to determine the outcome in Kandahar.

The famous market philosopher Martin Armstrong, who is currently in prison in Ft. Dix New Jersey, has turned his attention to the “Flash Crash” of May 6, which he sees as a profound event.

He describes the event as a waterfall — the opposite of a blowoff bubble top — that presages the start of a profound shift in the world economy.

He calls the “fat finger” or glitch theories nonsense, saying it’s all about Greece, and the global debt crisis.

This is what a market “waterfall” looks like.

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

The pundits got it all wrong, thinking that this is somehow an unusual fat finger error.

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

Waterfalls have been with us through the ages. The collapse of Roman Silver occurred before the collapse fo the Roman empire

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

This is a distinctly different pattern than other major peaks (such as the blowoff peak in Gold or the Nikkei)

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

The WATERFALL is far more devastating

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

The cause of the crisis: Greece.

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

And DEBT!

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

This is not about the world coming to an end, as other doomsayers say.

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

And after capital rushes to America, it will rush out, leaving us in crisis.

Source: Martinarmstrong.org

Read the whole report

At MartinArmstrong.org…

Join the conversation about this story »

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As ultimas especulações sobre a produção de um veiculo apenas com tração dianteira pela Lange Rover estavam certas. Isso porque a companhia anunciou que irá mesmo lançar uma versão dianteira do novo LRX, que também terá a tradicionalíssima tração 4X4, referencia da companhia.

Contudo, a Lange Rover salienta que seguirá forte e firme na especialidade da casa: A tração 4X4. É o que explica o diretor da companhia, Phil Phopam: “A opção 2WD é apenas uma maneira em que nós estamos desenvolvendo a eficiência de nossos veículos, completando a gama Land Rover e expandindo nossa base de clientes”, complementando que: “ Vamos continuar a oferecer” os melhores veículos fora-de-estrada do mundo “para aqueles clientes que querem o sistema 4X4, além de oferecer um alternativa para aqueles que não querem”.

Além disso, a Land Rover disse que seu futuro modelo será o mais limpo já produzido pela companhia, emitindo menos de 130 g/km de CO2. Isso porque, um dos principais pontos do projeto era melhorar a sua eficiência energética, através da redução de seu peso e da perdas de potência ocasionadas no sistema de transmissão.

Fonte: CarScoop

Found under: Android, Movies, Showtimes, Imdb, local,

Here is app for android phones which will give you Movies info Showtimes and IMDb Ratings for movies currently playing in theaters at your current Location.Download Movies and Showtimes

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Read more in mobile format

We’ve shown you the summer cell phone lineup from KDDI (Japan’s No. 2 carrier) yesterday. Today, Japan’s third largest carrier, SoftBank Mobile, showed its own summer lineup during a special press conference, and all of their 13 new models have one thing in common: they all come with Twitter pre-installed.

The buyers of these cell phones will be able to access Twitter either via a pre-installed app or through a pre-installed widget on the homescreen. The background is that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son himself is a huge Twitter fan (he has almost 300,000 followers) and believes Japan is set to become Twitter country. And in fact, by some measures it’s already No. 2.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams, who joined SoftBank’s press conference from San Francisco (via Ustream), said he has high hopes in Japan because it’s such a highly advanced mobile nation and Twitter is easy to use on cell phones (around 37% of active users use Twitter on their phones). The collaboration with SoftBank is a good start: The company boasts 22 million subscribers, and its user base has been growing nicely over the past few years. SoftBank as a whole, one of Asia’s biggest telcos, currently has a market cap of $26 billion.

The widget has been developed by Twitter in the US and will be available starting early next month (another widget that will be pre-installed on the next SoftBank cell phones is made by a third party). SoftBank subscribers with older handsets will be able to download the new Twitter apps and widgets at that point in time, too.

And here are all the “Twitter cell phones” SoftBank showed today, along with the main specs (needless to say, they all have many more features):

Sharp mirumo2 944SH
(3.2-inch full wide VGA touchscreen (480×854 resolution), 3-inch memory sub-display, 8MP camera, digital TV tuner, Wi-Fi, waterproof, Bluetooth, microSDHC card slot)

Sharp AQUOS SHOT 945SH
(3.2-inch full wide VGA display, 12.1MP CCD camera, records video in 720p, digital TV tuner, Wi-Fi, waterproof, Bluetooth, HDMI interface, GSM, two-way stereo microphone)

Panasonic 942P
(3.1-inch full wide VGA touchscreen, 13.2MP CMOS camera with auto focus, digital TV tuner, Wi-Fi, waterproof, Bluetooth, GSM)

Samsung 941SC
(3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen with 100,000:1 contrast ratio and 180 degree viewing angle, 8.1MP camera, digital TV tuner, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM)

Sharp SOLAR HYBRID 842SH
(3-inch QVGA screen (240×400 resolution), lets you make a two-minute call time after 10 minutes of solar charging, waterproof, Bluetooth, microSDHC slot, follows the 936SH from last year)

Sharp 841SH
(3-inch QVGA screen, 0.75-inch OLED mini sub-display, 3.2MP CMOS camera, microSDHC slot, waterproof)

Samsung AQUA STYLE 840SC
(2.8-inch QVGA screen, 3.1MP CMOS camera, digital TV tuner, microSDHC slot, waterproof, GSM)

Panasonic 842P
(3-inch full wide QVGA screen (240×427 resolution), 3.2 CMOS camera, 10mm thin body, digital TV tuner, GSM)

NEC 840N
(2.9-inch full wide QVGA screen, 5.1 CMOS camera, digital TV tuner, microSD slot)

NEC 841N
(3-inch full wide VGA screen, 3.1MP CMOS camera, 13.9mm thin body, digital TV tuner, microSDHC slot)

Sharp 843SH
(3-inch QVGA screen, 3.2MP CMOS camera, extra-easy to use, microSDHC slot, waterproof)

ZTE 840Z
(2.8.inch WQVGA screen, 3.14MP camera, extra-easy to use, microSDHC slot, GSM)

Sharp 945SH G
(based on the 945SH shown above, special Gundam robot version to celebrate the anime’s 30th anniversary, features a number of Gundam-specific contents and comes with a special dock)

by Agence France-Presse

Slideshow by ForestEthics

OTTAWA – Forestry companies announced Tuesday a pact with environmentalists to stop logging huge swathes of Canada’s boreal forest and protect caribou herds in exchange for suspending protests.

Twenty-one members of the Forest Products Association of Canada, who manage two-thirds of Canada’s forests, agreed to suspend new logging on nearly 71 million acres of the boreal forest.

They also will adopt strict new environmentally sensitive forestry practices in an area twice the size of Germany, or 178 million acres, and develop conservation plans for endangered species in this region, including caribou.

Nine environmental groups led by Canopy, ForestEthics, and Greenpeace, for their part, will end a decades-long “Do Not Buy” campaign for wood products from the 620-mile-wide belt across Canada’s north.

“We’re thrilled that this effort has led to the largest commercial forest conservation plan in history, which could not have happened without both sides looking beyond their differences,” said Steve Kallick of the Pew Environment Group.

The 1.3-billion-acre Canadian boreal forest—made up of mostly spruce, fir, pine, birch, poplar, and cottonwood trees—is one of the largest intact ecosystems remaining in the world.

Its valleys, wetlands, lakes, and tundra are home to wolves, bears, and the largest caribou herds in the world, as well as a nesting ground for more than 300 bird species. Its trees and peat moss also store an estimated 200 billion tons of CO2.

“It is one of the last truly vast wilderness spaces that we have left on the planet and we’ve been fighting this environmental fight for many years,”
said Greenpeace’s Richard Brooks, spokesman for participating environmental groups.

“This is our best chance to save woodland caribou, permanently protect vast areas of the boreal forest, and put in place sustainable forestry practices,”
he said. “It really is a truce after many years of fighting each other,” he added.

Included in the pact are forestry giants AbitibiBowater, Canfor, Kruger, West Fraser Timber, and Weyerhaeuser.

“This is a business strategy for us,” Avrim Lazar, president of Forest Products Association of Canada, told reporters. “We know where the future is and the marketplace is going to reward the environmental progressives.”

The deal will not interrupt fiber supplies to mills, worth billions of dollars annually, the two groups told a press conference.

Talks with provincial governments, local communities, and aboriginal groups across Canada are still being held to solicit their backing. Implementation of the agreement is expected to take three years.

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