Miley Cyrus’ next album, Can’t Be Tamed, is set for debut June 22, Hollywood Records announced on Monday.

Can’t Be Tamed is described as “a self-empowering song in which Miley asserts that she has to stay true to herself in relationships, and it is sure to become an anthem among her legions of fans around the world.”

According to MTV News, Miles’ latest LP will come in two versions; a CD, and a combo CD/DVD pack — the DVD will contain never-before-seen footage from Cyrus’ Miley World Tour.

Can’t Be Tamed could be the Disney starlet’s last musical soiree for the forsseeable future. The Last Song starlet recently revealed her plans to take a break from music to concentrate on more serious acting.

“I have a record coming out in June, and that’s going to be the last thing I do in music for a while,” Miley said on The View last month. “I just want to do films, ’cause I like being someone else. My music is kind of like my diary. I’ll always do that … I just feel like the music industry isn’t as positive as I’d like it to be.”

Oil Spill Now Covering More Than 1,800 Square Miles

Coast Guard officials said Monday afternoon that the oil spill near Louisiana was now covering more than 1,800 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico, and they have been unable to engage a mechanism that could shut off the well thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.

The response team was trying three tacks to address a spill caused by an explosion on an oil rig last week: one that could stop the leaks within hours, one that would take months, and one that would not stop the leaks but would capture the oil and deliver it to the surface while permanent measures were pursued.

On Sunday morning, officials began using remote-controlled vehicles to try to activate the blowout preventer, a 450-ton valve sitting at the wellhead, 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. The blowout preventer can seal off the well to prevent sudden pressure releases that possibly led to the explosion on the rig last Tuesday night.

If successful, engaging the blowout preventer could seal the well Monday or Tuesday.

The flow of oil from the leaks is about 42,000 gallons of oil a day. The authorities said it was still unclear what caused the explosion. Eleven crew members are missing and presumed dead.

BP struggles to cap leak as US oil slick spreads

British oil giant BP used robotic underwater vehicles Sunday to try to cap a leaking well and prevent a growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico from developing into an environmental disaster.

Satellite images showed the slick had spread by 50 percent in a day to cover an area of 600 square miles (1,550 square kilometers), although officials said some 97 percent of the pollution was just a thin veneer on the sea’s surface.

BP has dispatched skimming vessels to mop up the oil leaking from the debris of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which sank on Thursday, still blazing almost two days after a massive explosion that left 11 workers missing presumed dead.

So far winds have been kind and the slick is not threatening the coast — more than 40 miles away — of Louisiana, where it could endanger ecologically fragile wetlands that are a paradise for rare waterfowl.

“In the trajectory analysis we don’t see any impact to any shoreline within the next three days,” Charlie Henry, scientific support coordinator of the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told journalists.

Pressure Is Building on Disputed Wind Farm

Political pressure continues to build on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as he prepares to announce his decision this week on the fate of a proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass.  that has been stalled for nine years. The governors of six East Coast states called on Mr. Salazar last week to approve the project, which is proposed by Cape Wind Associates and would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm.

The governors of six East Coast states called on Mr. Salazar last week to approve the project, which is proposed by Cape Wind Associates and would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm. Turning it down, they said, especially on the grounds that it would harm the view from historic sites, “would establish a precedent that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to site offshore wind projects anywhere along the Eastern Seaboard.”

Their states — Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — all have offshore wind projects in the works. Four of the governors are Democrats and two, in New Jersey and Rhode Island, are Republicans, showing that views of Cape Wind do not break down along political lines.

Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, and Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat whose district includes Cape Cod, said in their own letter to Mr. Salazar last week that the project was fraught with conflicts.

An up-or-down decision, they said, would prompt years of litigation, so they encouraged him to try to forge a consensus among the stakeholders. That approach has proved problematic for several years and could take several more, given the intensity of interests on all sides.

Perhaps the most prominent opponents have been members of the Kennedy family, whose compound in Hyannis Port looks out on the proposed site. Senator Edward M. Kennedy called the project a special-interest giveaway and fought it until just before his death in August.

Senator John Kerry, the state’s other senator and a Democrat, has not publicly taken sides. When Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor, he opposed the project.

The proposed 130-turbine farm would lie in Nantucket Sound about five miles from the nearest shoreline and would cover 24 square miles, about the size of Manhattan. The tip of the highest blade of each turbine would reach 440 feet above the surface of the water.

Mr. Salazar has said that he will announce his decision by Friday.

Bolivia ‘people’s conference’ calls for system change, not climate change

A fundamental critique of capitalism as the source of climate change pervaded the People’s World Conference on Climate Change, from the opening speech of Bolivian President Evo Morales on Tuesday to the final declaration agreed upon Thursday.

On the first day, as 15,000 people from 125 countries gathered for the summit, Morales laid out his view bluntly: “Either capitalism lives or Mother Earth lives.”

“The main cause of climate change is capitalism,” he continued. “As people who inhabit Mother Earth, we have the right to say that the cause is capitalism, to protest limitless growth. … More than 800 million people live on less than $2 per day. Until we change the capitalist system, our measures to address climate change are limited.”

Bolivia’s lead climate negotiator, Angelica Navarro, echoed Morales’ points: “You cannot create a climate market to solve climate change. You have to address the structural causes. These causes are not only to be measured in terms of greenhouse gases. They are trade, finances, and economy.”

The conference ended on Thursday — Earth Day — in Cochabamba’s downtown stadium, with world leaders and delegates presenting a final declaration that broadly outlined a path forward for addressing both the impacts of climate change and the economic and political structures that have brought it about.  That statement will now be taken to the U.N. ahead of the next big international climate conference, COP16, to be held in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of the year.

The Bolivian government laid the groundwork for the declaration with a set of four demands: climate reparations from developed countries to developing countries; an International Climate Justice Tribunal; a Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth; and development and transfer of clean technologies.  The final statement called for creating a multilateral organization to fight climate change and protect climate migrants; ensuring that knowledge related to technology transfer not be privatized; and acknowledging and protecting the rights of indigenous peoples.

The conference sought to avoid the backroom deals and lack of transparency that plagued the U.N. talks in Copenhagen in December. “That is not democracy. That is not the U.N.,” Navarro said of the Copenhagen process. “For months, we were discussing our proposals with other countries. They did not listen. What we want in Bolivia is a true and participatory democracy. If the governments do not come up with a plan for climate change, the people have to lead with a plan.”

The “people’s conference” invited civil society into the process, creating a bottoms-up rather than a top-down approach. Seventeen working groups met over the course of the three days, and dozens of panels and countless informal strategy sessions were held too.  The working groups had varying degrees of success.  Some reached agreements that supporters can organize around and push for at future U.N. climate meetings.

The forest working group rejected the U.N. REDD program (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), arguing that by using market mechanisms to offset carbon emissions, it allows companies to speculate and get around actual carbon reductions.

The working group on climate refugees drafted a statement that was included in the final declaration, calling for protections for the hundreds of millions of people expected to be displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and dwindling water supplies. In his opening address on Tuesday, Morales had called for borders to be opened to climate refugees.

The conference also provided a boost to the climate-justice movement, giving advocates an opportunity to network, organize, and share stories about local and regional environmental and indigenous struggles.

But there was also dissent at the conference. Various organizations and an unofficial 18th working group focused on the discrepancy between Morales’ rhetoric on behalf of Mother Earth and his policy of resource extraction, emphasizing the environmental degradation brought about by mining and oil and gas drilling. Revenues from natural gas help to keep Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, afloat. Eduardo Gudynas has referred to this policy as the “new extractivism” of Latin America.

Oscar Olivera, who was active in organizing the “water wars” against privatization in Bolivia 10 years ago, argued that there are currently two kinds of movements: those on the inside of the government and those on the outside. He said, “Social movements in Bolivia are fragmented not because of ideological reasons but because of cooptation by the government. One of the characteristics of this government is that there is not room left for autonomous spaces, for grassroots organizing. Until 2004, the people of society in Bolivia were very strong and organizing horizontally. The issue of land distribution is not solved. Despite the rhetoric, oil and gas have not been nationalized.”

Still, most conference attendees rallied together around the main anti-capitalist message: to solve climate change, we must stop the push for unlimited growth that capitalism is based on.  This is well summed-up by a slogan that got attention in Copenhagen and even more traction in Bolivia: “System change, not climate change

Green Monster

The gas guzzlers at the Pentagon are under orders to get ecofriendly. The impact could be huge.  The U.S. military isn’t exactly underworked, what with salvaging Afghanistan, helping out Haiti, fighting off pirates, and getting out of Iraq. But now, it has been handed a new mission: leading the campaign to cut back on foreign oil, in the interests of both national security and saving the planet. The Defense Department certainly has the money, the technology, the intellectual capital, and the pull in the marketplace to make or break the environmental movement. And when it puts its top minds on a problem, there’s a long track record of world-changing breakthroughs (the Internet, for one). But will the Pentagon really make the move to go green when there’s so much else on its plate?

Decades ago, the Defense Department was a world leader in developing new sources of energy. In 1961, the Navy commissioned the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Three years later, the sea service began looking into tapping the geothermal energy around its China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station in California. But it took 29 years for China Lake’s geothermal plant to reach full power. A few Pentagon-backed alternative-power efforts have been more successful: a massive solar array at Nellis Air Force Base and a sizable wind farm at Guantánamo Bay, for instance. Until recently, however, those projects were the exception, not the rule. Energy efficiency has often taken a back seat to other tactical or strategic considerations.

A new crop of green-minded Pentagon leaders has begun ambitious projects to change that. The military R&D arm that paved the way for the Internet is now focusing on algal feedstock for biofuel and next-generation solar panels. One of the world’s largest solar-power projects is planned for the Army’s main training center, at Fort Irwin, Calif. Billions in stimulus money were spent to green military facilities. Then again, we’re talking about transforming an organization that currently consumes a million barrels of petroleum every three days.

The Defense Department in recent years has warned over and over about the dangers of climate change and the risks in relying on unstable petro-regimes. The problem is that where the military uses the most oil — in fuels that power combat hardware — it also faces the steepest obstacles to technical and institutional reform.

The Pentagon recently set ambitious targets to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by a third in 10 years. However, that figure exempts the military’s bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the jets, ships, and ground vehicles that swallow up 75 percent of the military’s fuel supply. A single B-52 bomber, for instance, burns 3,500 gallons of fuel per flight hour. Efforts to green military vehicles have largely flopped. In 2004, the Army abandoned its hybrid Humvee project, supposedly because the electric powertrain wasn’t reliable enough. (It rebooted part of the project last year.) In 2006, the Air Force flew just a single B-52 test mission using a synthetic fuel blend developed more than six decades earlier, in Nazi Germany.

China debates whether human activity or nature is to blame for drought

An unusually long dry season, along with deforestation, pollution and dam-building, leaves farmers struggling. In some areas, people cannot even wash their hair regularly.

The images are heart-rending, farmers kneeling over the cracked earth that looks to be straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie, the dust swirling in the wind.

But what underlies China’s worst drought in nearly a century is a matter of great debate. Is it Mother Nature or human failure?

Beyond the official explanation of “abnormal weather,” Chinese environmentalists are pointing to deforestation, pollution, dams, overbuilding and other man-made factors. Scientists are searching for clues about why rain hasn’t come in some parts of the country.

At its worst, the drought has left parched more than 16 million acres of farmland in more than four provinces, threatening the livelihood of more than 50 million farmers, according to government statistics. Up to 20 million people have been left without drinking water.

The Chinese army and paramilitary have been deployed in some hard-hit areas to deliver water, while residents of some mountainous villages inaccessible by motor vehicle have had to hike hours downhill and climb up again lugging plastic jugs of water in bamboo backpacks.

An unusually long dry season — which has stretched from September to the present — is at least part of the problem, but the underlying reasons are less clear. Some Chinese scientists believe that abnormally cold, wet weather in the north of the country is also linked to the drought in the southwest.

“The Earth is reacting to climate change,” said Kuang Yaoqiu, a professor with the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, who predicted the drought last year. “China’s mainstream meteorologists haven’t accepted these theories. It will take time.”

In Chinese government circles, many people still subscribe to Mao Tse-tung’s famous dictum that ‘’man should conquer nature,” but that’s proving difficult to accomplish.

The drought-related losses are both economic and highly personal. For all the tea in China, this year’s crop is expected to be a fraction of what it was in previous years because of drought conditions in Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, home to much of the tea production.

Approps panel to discuss Obama’s rail request

Senate appropriators this week will discuss President Obama’s fiscal 2011 funding request for the federal rail program.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee will meet Thursday to quiz Transportation Department and Amtrak officials over the president’s proposed budget, which allots $1 billion for high-speed rail, $1.6 billion for Amtrak and roughly $300 million for the Federal Railroad Administration’s safety and oversight programs.

The Amtrak request is roughly in line with the $1.56 billion lawmakers gave to the government-owned passenger rail corporation in fiscal 2010. The high-speed rail request is less than half of the $2.5 billion lawmakers appropriated in 2010 but is the same amount Obama asked for in last year’s budget.

Senate appropriators had originally planned to provide $1.2 billion for high-speed rail in the fiscal 2010 budget but that number grew to $2.5 billion during negotiations with the House, which had proposed to spend $4 billion.

FRA has traditionally served mostly to regulate rail safety, but the DOT agency has been thrust into a higher-profile role since last year’s stimulus package gave it $8 billion to implement Obama’s high-speed rail plan.

The agency decided to split the stimulus cash mostly between three large-scale projects: a new high-speed line linking Tampa and Orlando, Fla.; a new high-speed line connecting Southern and Northern California; and incremental upgrades to existing lines in the Midwest. But FRA also sprinkled $2 billion among projects in 20 other states.

Republicans and some Democrats have criticized Obama’s decision to spread the cash so widely, arguing the money would have been better invested in only a few major projects that could rival the top speeds of the European and Asian bullet trains many in Congress have lauded.

A number of lawmakers have also complained that the administration overlooked Amtrak’s Acela service in the Northeast Corridor, which links Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. That line received $112 million from the high-speed rail stimulus pot. It is the only line in the United States that is capable of reaching speeds of 110 miles per hour, which is the minimum top-speed required to be deemed “high-speed” by DOT.

The president has said he hopes to spend a total of $5 billion over the next five years on high-speed rail through the appropriations process, with additional cash possibly coming in the next multiyear highway and transit bill.

A $500 billion, multiyear bill drafted by the bipartisan leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would give $50 billion to high-speed projects. But work on that proposal has been stalled as lawmakers search for ways to raise the revenues needed to pay for it.

Powerful ocean currents off Antarctica factor in climate change

Oceanographers said on Sunday they had measured a system of mighty currents off Antarctica that are a newly-discovered factor in the equation of climate change. The system, known as Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), is generated in clockwise movement in four big sea shelves that abut Antarctica – the Weddell Sea, Prydz Bay, Adelie Land and Ross Sea.Extremely cold water sinks to the bottom of these shelves and slides out northwards along the continental shelf.

Extremely cold water sinks to the bottom of these shelves and slides out northwards along the continental shelf.

At the edge of the shelf, some of the water mixes with a well-known ocean movement, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which sweeps around the abyss off Antarctica.

The rest of the AABW, though, makes its way northward through a maze of ridges and gullies, reaching into the southern latitudes of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and into the Atlantic as far north as southern Brazil.

The study, led by Yasushi Fukamachi of Japan’s Hokkaido University, is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Fukamachi’s team used an array of eight seabed sensors, anchored at a depth of 3500 metres for two years over 175 kilometres on the Kerguelen Plateau, east of Antarctica, where current exits from the Prydz Bay shelf.

On average, about eight million cubic metres of water colder than 0.2 degrees Celsius were transported northwards over this narrow section, the researchers found.

That is four times more than the previous record documented in an AABW flow, at the Weddell Sea, on the other side of Antarctica.

Over two years, the Kerguelen monitors recorded the current’s average speed at more than 20 centimetres per second, the highest ever seen for a flow at this depth.

The findings are important because ocean currents are major players in climate change.

They circulate heat, moving warm waters on the surface to the cold ocean floor. After this water is chilled, it is eventually shuttled back by currents to the surface, for warming again.

Currents also help determine the success of oceans as storage of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

Microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton take in CO2 at the surface under the natural process of photosynthesis.

Below are links to news stories of interest from newspapers that came up during a search today.  These links were active at the time of this e-mail, but should you want to save a story, printing it or cutting and pasting the entire article and saving it to your computer is recommended.    

State News

Daily Herald Pension Series  

Springfield’s costly and broken pension promise  Daily Herald Editorial – But here’s a central point that no one should miss: Teachers are not at fault for the crushing shortfall in the state’s pension program.  Teachers, after all, did not promise the pensions. They merely worked in good faith and along the way, contributed a sizable part of their incomes to the retirement fund. 

Pensions for 131 school retirees top $150000 each annually  Chicago Daily Herald – “Unfortunately, we heard all the horror stories of superintendents who bled districts dry with their antics,” said Melba Hanssen, retired principal of Patton Elementary School in Arlington Heights. “For every superintendent there’s a couple of hundred teachers who aren’t getting that.”  

Pension crisis took decades to create, one day to ‘fix’  Chicago Daily Herald – Pat Quinn signed the measure April 14. But the changes, which reduce benefits for new employees hired after Jan. 1, do little to address how the state will …  

Financial problems not unique to the teacher pension fund  The Teachers’ Retirement System accounts for nearly half that debt, mostly because it is the largest pension system, covering public school teachers and administrators outside of Chicago. But even carrying $44.5 billion in unfunded liabilities, the teachers’ pension system is better off financially than some others 

The hidden cost of inflated pensions: Schools forced to pay up  Local schools now scrambling for money collectively paid more than $1.8 million to the

School boards part of pension problem  On Sunday, we detailed how the state legislature failed to fulfill its obligation to fund pensions for teachers and school administrators. That represents a big chunk of a $78 billion pension shortfall that Illinois taxpayers ultimately will need to fund. 

Teachers unions, educators follow rally with more pleas SPRINGFIELD – A day after thousands of Illinois teachers marched in a massive rally in Springfield calling for a tax increase to spare school cuts, education and union leaders trotted back to the Capitol on Thursday to make sure lawmakers got the message. 

Illinois education groups underscore tax hike request
Ottawa Daily Times – “Children are going to be hurting,” Clark said. “There’s still time to fix this problem, and we need the officials with the power to vote to do it.” Ken Swanson, president of the Illinois Education Association, said the proposed cuts will short-change students in the future. “Children only get one chance at a full education through their developmental years,”   

Confront Schoenberg on school funding: Evanston teachers trek to Springfield
Evanston –  ”He is in a position of leadership. He needs to talk to people and use his influence.” Push for tax increase The agenda was to urge support for a tax increase package backed by the Illinois Education Association union and other members of the Responsible Budget Coalition, which organized the rally. “What are you going to do right now, this second, to save our schools?”   

Unit 10 superintendent takes wage freeze
Effingham Daily News – Unit 10 has made a number of cuts for the upcoming fiscal year, including some staff reductions. The cuts have sparked an outcry in the community, including some who feel the Altamont Education Association teachers union should follow Fritchtnitch’s lead and accept a pay freeze for 2010-11.   Fritchtnitch said he wasn’t optimistic the teachers would   

Carterville board OKs teachers’ contract
Marion Daily Republican – The state’s financial woes trickled down to Unit 5 teachers’ salaries with the school board’s approval of a minimal raise for members of the Carterville Education Association in a two-year contract. “The state tends to balance the budget on the backs of people who make it what it is,” CEA president Bruce Childers said.  

Belvidere School District 100 Plans for Future School Years
Rockford WIFR (CBS) 23 – Belvidere school leaders are considering more long-term options to trim money out of future budgets as leaders wait to see if Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed cuts to education go though. “Regardless of what the state does, we’re also going to be spending time next year in our budget process 

Tax projections hurt Hillsboro schools   HILLSBORO — About three years ago, the Hillsboro School District projected the Deer Run Mine would generate about $1.5 million annually in property tax revenue. Bonds were sold based on that projection to pay for school improvements, including new technology and textbooks, instructional materials and additional personnel.   

Schools making plans for sales tax money that will arrive starting in May
Champaign News – the auditorium at Urbana High School, and improve its athletic fields. It may seem odd that school districts are building new schools when they are also slashing their budgets and laying off teachers. But the sales tax money can be used only for construction, renovation, maintenance and repairs of school buildings, for energy-efficiency work, or for paying off building bond debt.   

Vandals strike at Monmouth schools
Galesburg Register Mail – Vandals broke into Monmouth-Roseville High school and Immaculate Conception school sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning. Damage at both schools was extensive. Computer equipment was destroyed at each school   

School board might reconsider allowing bands to play at political events
The State Journal-Register – The Illinois Education Association, an umbrella organization of teachers unions — including the Springfield Education Association — called the district …   

East St. Louis schools spend $3.1 million on consultants
Belleville News-Democrat –  Consultants are hired to work with students in math, science, reading and language arts. In addition, consultants work with teachers to help them address the needs of struggling students. Plus, “we have a whole technology initiative,” Saunders said.  Mark took issue with how the district is using the money.     

CPS, Teachers Union Try to Stop the Bleeding
Chicago Chicagoist –  ”send a strong message to Springfield.” According to CBS2, numerous people stepped to the podium to detail the “painful impact” that Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to cut $1.3 billion from education funding would have on schools and students. One estimate was that the budget cut would mean 20,000 teachers and school staff members being laid off.   

Political News

Adjourn May 7? Don’t hold your breath
Chicago Daily Southtown – The Illinois General Assembly usually tries to adjourn by the end of May. That hasn’t worked out too well the past few years as partisan bickering, the state’s huge budget problems and the bloody war between former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and House Speaker Michael Madigan forced months-long overtime sessions. The last time the Legislature truly got out early was in 1999, when then-Senate President   

Too much borrowing in Quinn budget plan: watchdog
Chicago Sun Times – Gov. Quinn’s budget plan depends too heavily on borrowing, ignores billions of dollars in unpaid bills and will worsen the state’s precarious fiscal condition next year, a top government watchdog warned. In an analysis released today of Quinn’s latest budget proposal, the Chicago-based Civic Federation expressed its opposition to the governor’s spending plan   

As budget talk continues, Quinn backs off iTunes tax
Bloomington Pantagraph – Just two days after presenting the idea to top lawmakers, Gov. Pat Quinn Thursday abandoned a plan to tax music and video downloads on the Internet. Called an “iTunes tax” by some observers, Quinn Tuesday floated the idea of applying the sales tax to downloads as a way to make as much as $10 million for the state’s struggling budget  

Quinn budget doesn’t add up, Senate Republicans say
Crystal Lake Northwest Herald – There are a lot of moving numbers in Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget. So many that Republicans in the state Senate said they were having a hard time figuring out the total price tag. The Senate Republicans on Thursday released an analysis of Quinn’s proposals that lawmakers said showed $200 million in cuts, not the $2.6 billion the governor’s office  

The Bill Brady Guide to Raising More Questions Than You Answer  NBC Chicago (blog) – But not from Pat Quinn, who’s trying to close a $13 billion budget deficit. “The original Tea Party’s rallying cry was ‘no taxation without representation …   

Brady gives reporters 3 hours to view taxes
Chicago WLS (ABC) 7 – Bill Brady, the Republican nominee for Illinois governor, allowed reporters to see his income taxes Friday. Brady initially refused to release the information, but after Governor Quinn released his taxes information, Brady decided to make his public, but with certain restrictions. The Brady couple’s 2008 and 2009 returns showed they paid no federal income taxes   

Brady offers peek at his tax returns
Chicago Sun Times – it all means a lot of struggle,” Brady said. Brady initially said he would not make his tax returns public because it would hurt his business interests. However, he had a change of heart after Gov. Quinn insinuated the lack of disclosure indicated Brady had something to hide. But Brady only offered reporters a limited view of his tax returns. From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday   

If Brady can’t win in Will County, he’s toast  Southtown Star – Kristen McQueary – ?Pat Quinn’s prisoner release program but didn’t have his facts straight. A circle of Chicago-based reporters grilled Brady at an Illinois Republican Party …   

Scott Lee Cohen Joining Race for Illinois Governor  MyStateline.com – There are currently three other candidates in the race: Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn, Republican Bill Brady and Green Party candidate Rich Whitney.   

Blago calls out Obama
Chicago Sun Times – Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s lawyers asked a federal judge Thursday to force President Obama to testify at Blagojevich’s upcoming trial, as new information surfaced — accidentally — that Obama personally called a mutual supporter to discuss his replacement in the U.S. Senate. On the day before he was elected president, then-Sen. Obama called a union official about the possibility that adviser   

Blago’s blacked out court docs made public
Chicago WLS (ABC) –  A computer glitch allowed some sealed information in court papers in Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial to become public Thursday. The court documents contained numerous blacked out portions. But several media outlets, including ABC7, discovered it was possible to unseal that information, which first appeared on an online blog that tracks TV and newsmakers.   

Feds shuts down bank owned by Giannoulias
Bloomington Pantagraph – Regulators shut down the bank owned by Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ family on Friday, setting up an expected but daunting challenge in his bid to keep President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in Democratic hands. Broadway Bank, which was heavy into real estate loans and lost $75 million last year, had been given until Monday to raise about $85 million in new capital,   

Giannoulias campaign releases ad about failed bank
Decatur WAND (NBC) 17 – Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias (jeh-NOO’-lee-ehs) is trying to recover from the political blow dealt to his campaign by the collapse of his family’s bank. In a TV ad released Monday, Giannoulias says Broadway Bank was financially healthy when he left in 2006 and was elected Illinois state treasurer.   

Troubled bank a potential stain in Senate race
DeKalb Daily Chronicle –  The bank owned by Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ family could fail in just days, forcing him to overcome a notable business stumble as he tries to keep President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in Democratic hands. His Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, is sure to brand him a failed banker at a time when Americans are still fuming over taxpayer bailouts   

Plummer, Simon running for lieutenant governor’s office may be going away
Decatur Herald and Review – With Illinois’ tumultuous election season approaching, there’s one prediction that’s all but certain: The state’s next lieutenant governor is going to be a Southern Illinoisan with Metro East roots. Less certain, but very possible, is that the winner also will be the state’s last lieutenant governor, with legislation pending to eliminate the post.   

Obama trip to Quincy aimed at national audience
Springfield State Journal – Why Quincy? Being in the heartland, having a reputation for innovation and a push for green energy could all help explain President Barack Obama’s choice of the west-central Illinois city for a visit this week. Obama has scheduled a “White House to Main Street” trip including stops in Missouri and Iowa, as well as Illinois this week   

Mike Lawrence: Mental health groups need to see the money
Springfield State Journal Register –  Service providers, reeling from state budget cuts and payment delays, fully deserve to ask the same from state government — especially now. In recent weeks, the Quinn administration and lawmakers have pledged to move thousands of persons with mental illness from nursing homes to community settings. That should allow them to receive the intensive counseling   

Statehouse Insider: Maybe it’s time for more budget cut suggestions
Springfield State Journal Register – Guess we’re in for another round of budget cuts by suggestion box. Remember a few weeks ago, when the Quinn administration set up a website where people could send ideas for cutting state spending? It drew thousands and thousands of responses. Gov. PAT Quinn’s chief of staff, JERRY STERME   

What else to tax?
Elgin Courier News – House bill was floated to increase the tax on cigarettes from 98 cents to $1.98 a pack. The bill died in committee; but given the state’s financial woes, the idea is being resurrected in Gov. Pat Quinn’s $500 million proposal for new taxes. The Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco released a poll last week showing 75 percent of Illinois voters supported a $1 tax increase on cigarettes.   

Unions push to remove evaluations from open government law
Alton Telegraph – The FOIA law gained strength and teeth on Jan. 1, and has been under assault since then. State Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, is shepherding HB 5154 through the General Assembly. She said teachers unions and labor groups that represent state workers want to make sure only employees and supervisors can read the results of an employee evaluation. Tim Drea with the Illinois AFL-CIO said   

Putting the ill in Illinois and other things    A few things you won’t read anywhere else:

• The Democratic Illinois U.S. Senate candidate helped manage a failed family bank that loaned money to mobsters.

• The Republican running for Illinois governor didn’t pay any taxes for several years and wants to allow for mass euthanizing of dogs in gas chambers. 

In the Spotlight: State needs tax hike to pay for essentials
Peoria Journal Star – I am a Republican and have never been a supporter of Gov. Pat Quinn, but I must now give him credit for looking at the good of the state rather than his political career by supporting an income tax increase. An increase in the state income tax is the only way to overcome our dilemma. Political candidates seem to think advocating a tax increase is political suicide. They put their political career over common sense and fiscal responsibility. 

Our View: Show some guts, cut state spending
Geneva Kane County Chronicle –  Can we really ask these struggling families to find $500 more to cut from their households budgets? We say, no. The institute proposes its own cuts, $3.5 billion beyond what Quinn has called for. Of course, such cuts would result in thousands of additional layoffs of people in public sector jobs. We don’t like that, but the state has to get its spending in line 

Try vouchers for students in Chicago schools
Bloomington Pantagraph – attending the bottom 10 percent of schools — that would be about 22,000 students in 48 schools. Parents would receive a voucher for the price of tuition or the state “foundation level” for education funding — currently $6,119 — whichever is less. This is money that would otherwise go to the Chicago Public Schools system. The average tuition at private and parochial elementary schools

 

National News

 80 Afghan schoolgirls sick in week; poison feared
Quad Cities WHBF (CBS) 4 – KABUL (AP) – More than 80 schoolgirls have fallen ill in three cases of mass sickness over the past week in northern Afghanistan, raising fears that militants who oppose education for girls are using poison to scare them away from school, authorities said Sunday. The latest case occurred Sunday when 13 girls became sick at school, Kunduz provincial spoke

 Time.com’s Top Stories 

Fixing Detroit: A Laboratory for Saving America’s Cities?

Detroit is in crisis. But it is hardly alone. Here’s how the federal government could help

Ripple Effects After an Offshore Oil Rig Explosion

Oil leakage appears to have been avoided after the April 20 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, blunting potential environmental disaster. But it is worth asking, What if?

Should French Colleges Give Kids Wine Classes?

As binge drinking among French youth increases, a recent government report recommends teaching French kids about the art of wine appreciation — as part of the college curriculum

Death Becomes Him: HBO’s Kevorkian Biopic

You Don’t Know Jack addresses all these obvious issues, with an approach that, while obviously focusing on Kevorkian’s perspective, gives respectful airing to his opponents.

Republican Governors Pay Homage To Guy Fawkes

Now, the Fawkes mythology has come full circle. The Republican Governors Association has embraced the symbolism of Fawkes, launching a rather striking website, RememberNovember.com.

Why Shanghai is Back on Top of the World

Big and brash, what was once the Paris of the East is preparing for the expo and getting ready to welcome the world again

Should Larry King’s Marriage License be Revoked?

Why are people who are so bad at mating for life allowed to keep pairing up?

Is Rwanda’s Hero Becoming Its Oppressor?

An arrest and several quiet defections have many observers fearing that a crackdown against the opposition is in the works

The Promise And Pitfalls of Bioplastic

It’s a greener alternative, but think twice before you throw it away

Just How Dangerous Are Oil Rigs, Anyway?

By any measure, drilling for oil and gas offshore is one of America’s most dangerous professions.

Arizona Gears Up for a Protracted Immigration Fight

Ethnic polarization rises as opponents and supporters of new anti-immigrant legislation are preparing for legal and political battles

Why the GOP’s Graham Put the Kibosh on a Climate Bill

Even the industry-friendly Senate global-warming legislation decried as too weak by many environmentalists now looks unlikely to pass, because of political calculations on both sides of the aisle

Is Greece’s Tragedy In Its Final Act?

After months of market turmoil, Greece’s government succumbed to reality and asked for a $60 billion bailout from its Eurozone compatriots and the International Monetary Fund.

The Secrets of Obama’s Underappreciated Success

The critics on both the left and right will yammer on. But by Election Day, 2010, Obama will have soundly achieved many of his chief campaign promises while running a highly competent, scandal-free government.

 What the Confidential Goldman E-mails Tell Us

SEC gathered range of experts for Goldman case
Late into the night, they darted from office to office, carrying thick reams of documents, building the most prominent legal case to grow out of the financial crisis.
(By Zachary A. Goldfarb, The Washington Post)

Democrats target 2008’s new voters
President Obama will declare his stake in the November midterm elections for the first time on Monday as his Democratic Party announces an ambitious strategy to appeal to independent voters in its quest to maintain control of Congress.
(By Philip Rucker, The Washington Post)

For miners, solace and talk of return
BECKLEY, W.VA. — They sat in the second and third rows Sunday, as President Obama called coal miners the embodiment of the American work ethic. A family that has become the face of West Virginia’s grieving by simple, heartbreaking math.
(By David A. Fahrenthold and Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post)

In N.H., voters’ anger moves a centrist to right
NEWPORT, N.H. — Bounced out of Congress in the 2006 Democratic sweep, former congressman Charlie Bass is trying to win back his narrowly divided district in November.
(By Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post)

In Pakistan, CIA refines methods to reduce civilian deaths
The CIA is using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to minimize civilian casualties in its targeted killings of suspected insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to current and former officials in the United States and Pakistan.
(By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, The Washington Post)

In N.H., voters’ anger moves a centrist to right
NEWPORT, N.H. — Bounced out of Congress in the 2006 Democratic sweep, former congressman Charlie Bass is trying to win back his narrowly divided district in November.
(By Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post)

Half a year from the midterms, let the spin begin
With six months remaining before the November midterm elections, partisans in both parties are finding evidence — some of it contradictory — that things are looking up.
(By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post)

Wanted on the court: Sensitivity to ‘ordinary Americans’
The likelihood that health-care legislation and Wall Street reform will ultimately be decided in the Supreme Court underscores the importance of a new justice, with the White House and Democrats arguing that whoever replaces retiring Justice John Stevens will be key in moving the court to uphold …
(By Robert Barnes and Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post)

Democrats target 2008’s new voters
President Obama will declare his stake in the November midterm elections for the first time on Monday as his Democratic Party announces an ambitious strategy to appeal to independent voters in its quest to maintain control of Congress.
(By Philip Rucker, The Washington Post)

Democrats work to salvage climate proposal in Senate
The current predicament of the Senate climate and energy proposal, which was attractive enough to lure the leaders of not only the Christian Coalition but also ConocoPhillips, Exelon and Duke Energy to a now-canceled bill launch Monday, underscores the fragility of its support.
(By Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post) 

Word of the Day for Monday, April 26, 2010

quisling \KWIZ-ling\, noun:

Someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying his or her country; a traitor.

BMW and Audi are two luxury automakers that have always enjoyed taking shots at each other in their advertisements. In its latest offensive, BMW put up a huge billboard directly above the Audi of Hong Kong dealership. The automaker put up a massive advertisement for the new 5-Series titled “Who knew efficiency could be so beautiful.”

The ad almost completely displaces the Audi dealership from view.

We’re looking forward to Audi’s comeback – once they figure out who allowed BMW to throw this massive artwork on their dealership.

Previous BMW/Audi ad wars include:

• Videos: Audi’s ‘Friendly Competition’ and ‘Spell’ ads take a shot at competitors.
• Video: BMW teaches Audi efficiency and dynamics in latest Joy commercial.
• Video: BMW’s Jump for Joy Part 2 commercial takes a shot at Audi.

BMW’s massive 5-Series billboard over Audi of Hong Kong dealership:

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Chris Junker Flickr (via Jalopnik, WCF)

Couple of weeks with the iPad and you think: I need a bag for this thing. But modern gadget accessory design is horrid, all foam and nylon, like an extreme sports dildo. You need leather. You need a map case. More »

In a move that at first seems a little mind-boggling, Motorola has dropped Google location integration for their future phones, instead going with Boston-based Skyhook. Google doesn’t exactly need people jumping ship, but this is purely an internal change; Skyhook will be providing the phone with the data it uses to keep itself location-aware, not replacing Google Maps or its functionality.

It is interesting to note that Skyhook has developed a Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS), which finds your location via the MAC addresses of nearby wireless signals. Through this usage, it reduces the dependency of satellites to provide the user’s location. Gowalla has already taken advantage of it and so have countless other Android apps.

This integration will be available for all developers to use in the future, and looks to roll out for use “later this year” amongst “much of the company’s portfolio of Android devices”. Whether this means current users will be using the old framework or will receive an update remains to be seen.

Skyhook Wireless Announces First Platform Integration Of Location System On Motorola Android-Based Devices
Skyhook provides Motorola’s Android-based devices with enhanced location performance worldwide

BOSTON, MA – April 27, 2010 – Skyhook Wireless, the worldwide leader in location positioning, context and intelligence, today announced that Motorola, Inc. will deploy its Core Location across much of the company’s portfolio of Android-based mobile devices. Skyhook-enabled Motorola smartphones, which will begin shipping later this year, will have the ability to better support a new wave of location-aware applications by leveraging Skyhook’s precise, reliable, and fast-performing location engine.

Location is at the center of an extraordinary explosion of mobile innovation, and is fundamental to many emerging mobile services. Today there are thousands of mobile applications that incorporate location as a part of their user experience. Precise location enables consumers to check-in with friends, find nearby concerts and exhibits, or get directions to the destinations of their choice. For some experiences, such as turn-by-turn navigation or local search, location is the central feature, but increasingly, new types of applications in music, sports, and entertainment are incorporating location to personalize content delivery.

“Motorola is committed to providing rich location services for our customers and developer partners,” said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services product management for Motorola Mobile Devices. “Precise location is central to the mobile experience, and Skyhook’s Core Location will enhance Motorola’s Android-based mobile devices with its innovative location technology.”

Skyhook is the recognized leader in mobile location technology and produces over three hundred million location requests every day over tens of millions of mobile devices. The ground-breaking Core Location uses a combination of Wi-Fi, cellular and GPS readings in order to produce a single, accurate location quickly and in all environments.

“Motorola is creating ground-breaking and innovative mobile devices,” said Ted Morgan, CEO, Skyhook Wireless. “Skyhook is excited to further enhance the location accuracy and availability of these devices.”

About Skyhook Wireless

Skyhook is the worldwide leader in location positioning, context and intelligence. In 2003, Skyhook pioneered the development of the Wi-Fi Positioning System to provide precise and reliable location results in urban areas. Today, Skyhook’s Core Location provides positioning to tens of millions of consumer mobile devices and applications. For more information visit www.skyhookwireless.com.

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Filed under: Government/Legal, Safety, Celebrities

Oprah Winfrey has officially partnered with the Governors Highway Safety Association and handful of other agencies to help put a stop to distracted driving. The famed talk-show host will be heading up a special live show this Friday designed to highlight the dangers of driving and cell phone use. Winfrey will be interviewing the families of victims of distracted driving collisions and government officials. She’ll also be announcing a new awareness campaign called “No Phone Zone” that urges drivers to leave their mobile devices alone when behind the wheel.

The Oprah Winfrey Show will also host viewing rallies all over the country in cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles to help spread the word. Don’t expect this to be the last good deed Winfrey tackles, either. The host will be taking on a number of other issues in an upcoming sponsored public service announcement segment. Check your local listings for details and hop the jump for the press release.

[Source: Governors Highway Safety Association]

Continue reading Oprah teams up with government agencies to promote ‘No Phone Zone Day’

Oprah teams up with government agencies to promote ‘No Phone Zone Day’ originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Newly independent Rhapsody is giving its iPhone app some bragging rights with an update that lets subscribers listen to tracks even when they’re not online. Users will now be able to download their Rhapsody playlists to their phones; by June, Rhapsody says it will add functionality so users can download individual songs and albums as well.

Rhapsody says the update makes it the “first music service to let people enjoy subscription downloads on their iPhone, iPod or iPad.” But as Rhapsody itself admits in a briefing note provided to reporters its advantage will not last long; the company says that MOG and Spotify have a similar feature in their soon-to-launch apps.

Still, it’s the second aggressive in a month for Rhapsody, which has been losing subscribers. In early April, the company unveiled two new subscription plans—Rhapsody Premier and Rhapsody Premier Plus—that removed any additional costs for mobile streaming.

Rhapsody introduced its iPhone app in September. It’s free to download, although to listen users have to be Rhapsody subscribers. (Rhapsody offers a 14-day trial.) So far, Rhapsody says the app has been downloaded 1.5 million times.

Here’s a demo of the update:

Related

• Apple Approves Real’s Rhapsody iPhone App; First Look
• Updated: Spinoff Complete, Rhapsody Sings $10 Cross-Platform Tune

As predicted by me in my post earlier today, a pair (ha!) of magnitude 5+ earthquakes hit off the Sandwich Islands (ha?) today. One happened at 08:46:32 UTC (before I posted, but I didn’t know at the time) and another, slightly stronger, at 17:04:50 UT.

There was a bigger one — magnitude 6.5 — off the coast of Taiwan, but that was much earlier today, actually yesterday evening US time, so I don’t count that one. But who knows? The day’s not over yet.

Yesterday on the Mall in Washington, DC well over one hundred thousand gathered to show their support for clean energy legislation  in the US. Musical artists Sting, John Legend, Passion Pit, The Roots, and others entertained the throngs of activists and environmentally concerned citizens.

(more…)

It was a couple years ago, when China overtook the U.S. as the largest new car market in the world, that it started to become clear to me the U.S. wouldn’t have the same influence in the development of this next generation of automobiles as we did in the first.

As witnessed by the incredible amount of diversity of green car tech at the Beijing Auto Show this year, China has suddenly become the place to watch for emerging car trends — and it’s getting a larger share of the limelight to boot.

(more…)

It was a bad day for Walmart in the courtroom, as a California appeals court granted class-action status to a gender bias lawsuit against the retail giant. That means that over 1 million current and former female employees are now able to join their names to the largest case of its kind in U.S. history.

The plaintiffs in the suit allege that Walmart has made a practice of both paying women employees less money and offering them fewer promotions than their male counterparts. The original suit was filed nine years ago by six female employees.

Giving the case class-action status means that every woman who as worked at for Walmart since 2001 now has the option of being part of the lawsuit.

Said an attorney for the plaintiff:

Wal-Mart tries to project an improved image as a good corporate citizen… But no amount of PR is going to work until it addresses the claims of its female employees.

Walmart has denied any discriminatory policies and had hoped to fight each case individually.

Wal-Mart Workers Can Sue as Group in Gender Bias Case [BusinessWeek]

YouTube’s first foray into streaming live sports was far more successful than expected, blowing away internal projections and generating five times more views during the 2010 Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament than it initially anticipated.

As part of its first international sports deal, YouTube streamed all 60 matches of the 45-day IPL tournament live on a dedicated YouTube channel at youtube.com/ipl, and on the IPL’s website at www.iplt20.com.

YouTube’s internal “stretch goals” for the event were 10 million views over the course of the six-week tournament. But interest in the IPL well exceed those expectations, generating more than 51 million views, including this weekend’s championship match between the Mumbai Indians and the Chennai Super Kings. As a result, YouTube says its coverage of the cricket league ranked as the top sports channel worldwide, surpassing global video views of the NBA, NHL, ESPN and UFC. The IPL channel was also the most-viewed and most-subscribed channel in India during that period.

The distribution agreement called for the IPL matches were live-streamed to more than 200 countries worldwide, excluding the U.S. Even so, the U.S. was second only to India in terms of the number of views generated during the event, mainly from on-demand availability of matches after they were aired live. As a result, YouTube opened the semifinal and final matches up to the U.S. audience for live and on-demand viewing.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Why Viacom’s Fight With YouTube Threatens Web Innovation (subscription required)

The internets are buzzing with the news that Larry Summers told PBS Newshour that breaking up the banks is a bad idea.  It’s not clear to me that the core of his argument is actually wrong–100,000 small banks going hog wild on subprime mortgages would not have been obviously better than 100 big ones.  Indeed, it would have been . . . the savings and loan crisis.  However, when the time came to bail out those behemoths, regulators did not go into a lengthy disquisition on the mystery of capital flows, and asset-price bubbles.  They said the institutions they were bailing out were “Too big to fail” without explaining that the risk wouldn’t necessarily have been any safer for the economy if it had been more evenly throughout the banking system. 

(One can argue that it wouldn’t have happened in the first place–but that’s a problem of regulatory oversight, not institution size per se.  We managed to have a lovely Great Depression using only small banks, and a few other ingredients commonly found in most homes.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean that big banks are better for the economy, as Summers suggest.  But there’s one thing he does hint at, though he doesn’t quite come out and say it:  bigger banks might be better for regulators.  It may not be smart to put all your eggs in one basket . . . but it’s probably a hell of a lot easier for a regulator to watch that basket.   Plus, big banks provide nice lots of cushy jobs for regulators to retire into.  Small banks don’t have quite the same incentives (or payrolls).  This may explain something important about what’s happened in our banking system over the last few decades.

In 15 minutes or so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will call a vote to start debate on Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill. Senate staffers say that the vote will not gain a Republican crossover, and formal debate will not yet begin on the bill. To watch the ongoing debate, see C-Span 2 here.

Everything is connected. And when I say everything, I include you, dear reader, and the tapeworms of Madagascar. They carry a hidden history of our entire species.

I’m sure we’d all prefer that there was no such connection. Tapeworm are not just gross, but they are pretty much the polar opposite of the human existence. They have no brain. They have no eyes. They lack mouths and guts, having turned their body inside out, absorbing food through its surface. Most of their hideously long body is made up of segments, each of which contains its own supply of both eggs and sperm. To reproduce, the tapeworm fertilizes its eggs, either with its own sperm or another tapeworm’s, and then sheds its segments. Once out of the body, those segments can crawl around on the ground on their own.

But, like it or not, tapeworms–or at least the pork tapeworm Taenia solium–has an intimate relationship with us. After all, it can only live in our guts as an adult, where it will dwell for years and grow over 20 feet long. Without us, these tapeworms would simply not exist. From the safety of our guts, they can shed six egg-loaded segments a day, each of which contains 50,000 eggs. If a pig swallows one of these eggs, it hatches in the animal’s instestines, drills its way into the abdominal cavity, and finds a muscle to infect. There it dwells in a barely visible cyst, for years if need be. In order to complete its life cycle, it must get into another human, which it does if a human eats a piece of infected, undercooked pork.

Carrying an adult tapeworm around in your gut may be disturbing, but it’s not the worst thing a tapeworm can do to you. Sometimes people get infected with the eggs of pork tapeworms, rather than the cysts. Instead of developing into an adult, the tapeworm treats you like a pig. It invades your muscles, where it makes a cyst. Sometimes the tapeworms can get into people’s brains. These cysts can trigger dangerous reactions from our immune systems, and can sometimes be fatal. This disease, known as cysticercosis, is relatively rare in the United States. Only 221 people died of it between 1990 and 2002. But in other parts of the world, it’s a lot worse, with ten percent or so of the population of many countries showing signs of having had the disease.

Madagascar is one of those countries. In the highlands, over 20% of people have antibodies to cysticercosis. To get a better handle on the epidemiology of the disease, medical researchers at the Pasteur Institute of Madagascar have traveled around the country, gathering tapeworm from different regions. They isolated DNA from 13 of the samples and then compared their genetic sequences to see how they were related to one another, and to tapeworms from other parts of the world.

The family tree of tapeworms they got was strangely ancient and alien. In many cases, the closest relatives of tapeworms on Madagascar are not other tapeworms on Madagascar. The tapeworms that live in the southwest part of the island are closely related to tapeworms hundreds of miles away, in Africa. The tapeworms in other parts of the island are more closely related to tapeworms thousands of miles away, in south Asia.

The scientists then tallied up the mutations in each lineage of tapeworm to figure out how long ago they had split off from a common ancestor. All the T. solium tapeworms the scientists studied descend from a common ancestor that lived about 680,000 years ago. The southwest Madagascar tapeworms and the tapeworms of Africa share a common ancestor that lived 235,000 years ago. All of the Madagascar and Asian tapeworms share a common ancestor that lived about 260,000 years ago. The Madagascar tapeworms and their very closest Asian relatives share an ancestor that lived 85,000 years ago.

So how on Earth did one remote island end up with two such deeply split lineages of tapeworms in their pigs? The answer is like a guided tour thorugh the evolution of our species, rolling right on through the history of civilization.

Along with pork tapeworms, there are two other species of Taenia that live in humans. One, T. asiatica, also cycles between people and pigs, but only in Asia as the name suggests. The other, T. saginata, moves between people and cows. Both of these human tapeworms use domesticated hoofed mammals (known as ungulates) as their intermediate hosts. Pigs and cows were only domesticated within the past 11,000 years or so. The best way to find clues to how these tapeworms colonized us is to compare them to the 39 species of Taenia tapeworms that infect wild animals. Eric Hoberg, a parasitologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his colleagues have found that most Taenia tapeworms form cysts in wild ungulates, such as antelopes, and then become adults in the carnivores that eat their intermediate hosts. The closest relatives of all three human tapeworms live in Africa. Hyenas are the hosts of the closest relatives of pork tapeworms, while lions are the hosts of the closest relative to the other two species, T. saginata and T. asiatica. Hoberg and his colleagues compared the mutations in the DNA of T. saginata and T. asiatica and found that their common ancestor lived somewhere between 780,000 and 1.71 million years ago.

The new results from Madagascar fit in nicely with Hoberg’s results. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors lived in Africa, where they scavenged meat from ungulates. In so doing, it appears, they stepped into the life cycle of Taenia tapeworms. Tapeworms that might have ended up in the gut of a hyena or a lion ended up in the gut of our ancestors instead. Over thousands of years, some populations of these tapeworms adapted to our scavenger ancestors. These were the common ancestors of today’s human tapeworms, whose great antiquity is now recorded in the DNA of living tapeworms.

As hominins expanded their ranges both within Africa and beyond it, they carried their tapeworms along for the ride. As hominins scavenged new game, the tapeworms adapted to new intermediate hosts. Hominins gradually developed the skills and weapons to hunt game, offering still more opportunities for their tapeworms. Neanderthals and other hominins hunted wild boar as well, and it’s likely that we infected them with the ancestors of today’s pork tapeworms.

Starting about 11,000 years ago, humans domesticated pigs many times over, both in East Asia and in the Near East. Now the trip from host to host became riduclously easy for the tapeworms. Instead of waiting for its wild boar host getting speared by a hunter, it could make the journey on the dinner plate. Judging from the deep split in the evolution of pork tapeworms, the parasites must have made two separate shifts from wild boar to domesticated pigs, in both East Asia and the Near East.

The genealogy of the tapeworms also matches up nicely with the human history of Madagascar. People only arrived on the island 2000 years ago. They came from two directions. Bantu farmers sailed from the west from Africa across the Mozambique channel. Asians came from the east, traveling thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean from Indonesia. Malagasy culture emerged from the mingling of these two origins. That culture also includes the livestock that the Bantu and Indonesians brought to the island. And those animals brought parasites with them that had been separated for almost 700,000 years, reaching back to a time when our ancestors had to invent fire or spoken language.

[Image: Chiang Mai University]

»  Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is replacing Google’s location service with Skyhook’s in “much” of its Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android-based phone lineup worldwide. [SAI]

»  Six Japanese mobile companies team up to create its own mobile app platform in March 2012. [Mobile Entertainment]

»  Five reasons iPhone vs. Android isn’t like Mac vs Windows. [O’Reilly Radar]

»  Apple’s iPad is no longer banned in Israel. [eWeek]

»  Some guidelines for using iPhone and Androids for your company. [InfoWorld]

»  Universal Music Group and mobile platform Mozes Connect expand content offerings and services for Spanish-speaking and bilingual music fans. [Release]

That’s how much Microsoft lost in Q3 with its the Online Services Division. (Read: Bing)

From the link:

During Microsoft’s fiscal third quarter, which ended March 31, the Online Services Division, or OSD, reported a 12 percent increase in revenue, which rose to US$566 million on the back of higher advertising revenue. That wasn’t enough to offset a surge in operating expenses during the period. The division’s quarterly loss grew by 73 percent to $713 million, compared to a loss of $411 million during the same period last year.

OSD includes Microsoft’s online advertising business, the Bing search engine, and its various MSN websites.

We kind of heard in the background a few times today that Whirlpool (WHR) had reached a new all-time high today, but we didn’t quite believe it.

But it’s absolutely true. After today’s strong earnings, the company is now above its all-time housing bubble highs again. This is the ultimate V.

From StockCharts.com:

Here’s a longer-term perspective (via Yahoo Finance) that really shows the jaw-dropping V.

Join the conversation about this story »