Category: News

A federal judge has rejected a motion to have the several Mentor ObTape vaginal sling lawsuits dismissed, clearing the way for a consolidated trial of three “bellwether” cases to begin on June 1. 

The Mentor ObTape trial was originally scheduled to begin in February, but the start was delayed while the court considered, and ultimately agreed to, the plaintiffs’ request that three of the lawsuits be tried at the same time.

All of the cases involves similar allegations that problems with the Mentor ObTape sling, which is used to treat female stress urinary incontinence, resulted in complications such as vaginal extrusions, urinary tract erosion, severe pain and infection. Some women have required multiple surgeries to remove the sling and have been left with permanent and debilitating injuries.

Mentor Corp. distributed approximately 16,271 ObTape slings between 2003 and 2006, when it was removed from the market. Also known as a bladder hammock, the sling is used to provide support for the vaginal wall, reinforcing the muscles that control the flow of urine. According to the complaints, a defective design of the Mentor ObTape can block oxygen and nutrients, increasing the risk that women may suffer severe and debilitating injuries following bladder surgery.

In December 2008, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized the federal Mentor ObTape litigation in the Middle District of Georgia, before U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land. The lawsuits were made part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) for pretrial proceedings, and three cases originally filed in Georgia were selected for early trial to gauge how juries are likely to respond to evidence that will be presented throughout the litigation.

According to court documents filed by Mentor in January, seeking to have the initial cases dismissed, approximately 348 lawsuits over the ObTape vaginal sling have been filed by women who have experienced problems.

In a scheduling order issued April 13, Judge Land indicated that Mentor Corp.’s motion for summary judgment will be denied and the three cases will be consolidated for trial beginning on June 1.

Filed under: Technology, Hyundai, Kia

The Hyundai–Kia train and its full head of steam don’t look likely to give out any time soon. To wit, the company has been adding style to its price and fuel frugality, and technology isn’t being left out. The Sonata Hybrid is on its way for next year and will boast better mileage than the 35-mpg Elantra Blue, and now the company has announced it will be engineering stop/start ability into much of the H-K model line in America over the next two years.

We won’t see those cars until “the next product cycle” in 2012, but when we do, the projections are that it will yield three percent better fuel economy. True, that might only take the Sonata Hybrid up to 38/40 mpg, but who knows how much a gallon of gas will cost by then – we’re sure every little bit will count. CO2 reduction should be equally improved.

[Source: Automotive News – Sub. Req’d]

Report: Hyundai to introduce stop-start tech in two years originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

by David Gumpert

Small-scale food producers and farmers have been vocal about their concerns that the Senate will pass highly burdensome food-safety legislation.

Equally worried, but much less vocal, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It frets over major gains by its arch-rival, the U.S. food and Drug Administration, over local food producers and small farms. USDA is so worried it has even had its Senate allies include language that “prohibited the FDA from ‘impeding, minimizing, or affecting’ USDA authority on meat, poultry, and eggs,” according to Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety.

The legislation, if it passes as expected (and is signed into law, as President Obama has already vowed to do), will represent a major coup for FDA, and in the process, a loss in influence for USDA. The bill wouldn’t so much take power from USDA as give FDA new power, and
in the process providing FDA a leg up on its rival.

USDA had for more than a decade pinned its hopes on gaining the upper hand in food safety through the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), but when that bombed earlier this year, FDA had a clear opportunity, which it has expertly exploited through the pending legislation.

The FDA’s growing authority over the American food system will likely include the power to quarantine large sections of the country if it decides there’s a food safety emergency and to randomly inspect virtually all food producers, including roadside stands, and monitor and approve their preparation of detailed, and costly, hazard-control plans. Moreover, the legislation gives the FDA a new foothold among farmers via the authority establish safety standards (about use of compost, application of fertilizers, etc.) under the euphemistically titled United Nations program, “Good Agricultural Practices”.

With power, of course, comes money—in this case, lots more money, for inspectors to carry out all those random inspections of thousands of tiny food producers.
“We are seeking better controls at the point of production,” crowed FDA’s commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, in a February speech about food safety. One main “point of (food) production”—the farm—has of course been USDA’s turf.

The FDA and USDA have long participated in an uneasy alliance overseeing the food supply, with confusing responsibilities (USDA oversees animal slaughtering, FDA oversees dairy production). The loss of influence for USDA that will come via the food safety legislation is merely the latest failure for USDA. A few months ago, it suffered a major setback when farmer ire forced Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack to trash, at least temporarily, its own version of a food safety program—the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The program would have allowed the USDA to oversee the registration of hundreds of thousands of farms, and the RFID-chip tagging of literally billions of animals (including chickens, goats, sheep, cattle, and so forth)—ostensibly to protect America’s meat supply from the ravages of quickly-spreading animal disease.

Why should anyone care about which bureaucratic behemoth comes out on top in this kind of rivalry?

For one very good reason: For all its coddling of Big Ag, the USDA has shown itself to be increasingly supportive of the growing local-food movement in recent years, while the FDA has long been very tough on small food companies, and shows no sign of wanting to encourage the move to locally-grown food.

And while Michael Taylor, the FDA’s food safety czar, talks in speeches about approving of “sustainable” food production, the agency’s actions toward those involved in promoting sustainable agriculture have long been the opposite. Any food company that even begins to suggest its food might provide health benefits becomes a target of the agency’s knee-jerk reaction that it is positioning food as a drug. Back in 2006, the FDA sent warning letters—threats of court action and possible shutdown—to 29 Michigan cherry growers, for citing studies suggesting health benefits in concentrated cherry juice.

In 2008, FDA filed suit against a small seller of herbs, coconut oil and other health foods for allegedly making similar food-as-drug claims. To avoid legal bills that would have bankrupted it, Wilderness Family Naturals signed a consent decree with the FDA that allows the FDA to conduct twice yearly examinations over a three-year period of its labeling and advertising—that the company has to pay for to the turn of $100 an hour.

When the FDA tried to impose the same kind of burden on Organic Pastures Dairy Co., a California producer of unpasteurized milk, as part of a settlement of an FDA suit for, in part, suggesting that raw milk helps alleviate symptoms of asthma (which has been demonstrated in large-scale European studies), the dairy fought back. Just a few weeks ago, a federal judge, Oliver Wanger, castigated the FDA lawyer arguing for the sanctions.

In questioning the FDA’s lawyer, Judge Wanger referred to the inspection provision as a “death penalty” on OPDC. “I simply am not convinced that this draconian, if you will, remedial construct is in any way necessary. I don’t think the public is going to be jeopardized in any way by not having this, what I call the death penalty provision in here. This is taking Organic Pastures out without going to a magistrate and stringing them up and throwing a noose around its neck and hanging it until dead.”

Meanwhile, USDA, long a proponent of Big Ag, has been steadily becoming more and more supportive of locally-grown food and smaller farms. Symbolically, Ag Secretary Vilsack has become a key proponent of the People’s Garden, a vegetable garden that grows outside the department’s huge Washington headquarters building. In dedicating the garden last year, Vilsack said, “It started off as a relatively small project and now it’s expanding rather dramatically and we think we’re going to get a lot of attention over the course of the next couple of years as this spreads.“The agency is also pushing a rule to encourage providers of school lunch programs to young children to use locally-grown food.

It has backed up its trumpeted “Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer” campaign with hard dollars directed toward promoters of locally-grown food. In recent months, it has begun promoting a grant program to encourage farmers markets—$5 million will be awarded this year, and $10 million each in fiscal 2011 and 2012.

“Farmers markets are an integral part of the urban/farm linkage and have continued to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm,” USDA says on its web site.

Certainly USDA, with more than 100,000 employees, can hardly be said to be marginalized. But if recent developments are an indication, the policy emphasis is on giving the federal government ever-greater control over America’s food system, down to the smallest growers and producers, and the FDA, with its iron-fist approach, is the vehicle of choice to exert that control. Hard to believe, but in this good-cop-bad-cop routine, USDA is the good cop.

Related Links:

USDA downplays own scientist’s research on ill effects of Monsanto herbicide

Ask Umbra on food dehydrators, cage-free and free-range poultry, and e-readers

USDA research chief concerned about ‘safety of organic food’

Thierry Legault is a French amateur astronomer… and if ever the word “amateur” were misleading, it’s here. Thierry is an incredibly accomplished astronomer; his pictures have graced my blog many times in the past. Like when he caught the Shuttle and Hubble silhouetted against the Sun, or this lighthearted picture of someone painting the Sun, or the Shuttle and the space station transiting the Sun.

Come to think of it, he seems to have a fetish with the Sun. But that’s good, because he’s done it again: he’s captured a record-breaking picture of the newest new Moon!

It’s very hard to see, so I bracketed it with those red lines. Thierry caught the Moon when it was as absolutely close to the Sun as it could get at the time, so in fact this is the youngest Moon it could possibly be!

So what does that mean?

Hopefully this terrible diagram I slapped together may help. Picture yourself on the Earth (that should be easy) marked by the E in the drawing. Once a day it appears that the Sun (yellow circle) circles the Earth (black path). The Moon (crescent symbol) circles the Earth once per month — well, it rises and sets every night, but relative to the Sun the Moon moves slowly across the sky. The Moon’s distance to the Sun changes so that at sunset every night, the Moon is in a noticeably different part of the sky than it was the night before.

New Moon is when the Moon and Sun are as close together as they can be, and it happens once per month or so. But since the Moon’s orbit is tilted, it doesn’t always pass directly in front of the Sun (creating a solar eclipse); it misses by a bit. But still, the Moon is so close to the Sun in the sky that we’re basically seeing the half of the Moon that’s unlit (the lit half is facing away from us, toward the Sun). When it’s offset a bit from the Sun, only the barest, slimmest bit of it is lit that we can see, producing an extremely emaciated crescent.

When you go outside and first notice the crescent Moon with your eye, it’s usually been a day or two since it passed its closest point to the Sun. The crescent is thicker, making it easier to see, and it’s farther from the Sun than at the exact moment of New Moon, reducing the glare. The closer the Moon is to the Sun, the thinner the crescent and the brighter the sky, making it doubly harder to catch. In Thierry’s case, he caught it when it was only 4.6 degrees from the Sun — only about 9 times the diameter of the Moon itself!

That’s why astronomers prize seeing the thinnest possible crescent; it’s a contest, like anglers catching the biggest fish or bird watchers seeing a rare species. It shows that the person involved has used a lot of skill and experience… and clearly Thierry has those!

This picture shows just how difficult Theirry’s setup had to be. Look how close to the Sun he was shooting! The screen blocks a lot of the glare from the sky, and the circular hole lets the ’scope see the Moon while cutting back on glare a little more. To reduce the sky brightness further he used an infrared filter; the sky doesn’t emit as much infrared light, so it appears a little bit darker, while the Moon does reflect IR (from the Sun), making it easier to spot. He used a filter that let through light at a wavelength at 0.85 microns, just a hair outside what the human eye is sensitive to.

Of course, he couldn’t see the Moon with his eye. So he aligned the telescope with the stars the night before to get it properly tracking the sky, and then used a computer program to aim the telescope at the position of the Moon. And obviously, it worked!

This was an amazing feat. And the only way to beat it is to catch the Moon at exactly that closest solar approach when the distance is actually smaller (or, if you like, closer to the point where the two paths of objects intersects on the sky). That’ll make this observation even harder… but I suspect Thierry’s already planning his next attempt.

Content: Puzzle Chronicles
Price: 800 Microsoft Points
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions except Japan and Korea
Dash Text: (ONLINE INTERACTIONS NOT RATED BY THE ESRB) Enter the dark and savage lands of the Ashurin Empire as you battle to avenge the atrocities the Empire brought upon your tribesmen. On your heroic quest to topple the Empire you will fight fierce beasts and battle hardened warriors in this new Puzzle RPG hybrid game. Featuring an active puzzle combat mechanic, deep story, and robust character development Puzzle Chronicles will bring you into the next era of Puzzle RPGs. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

 

Add the free Puzzle Chronicles demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

Content: AFTER BURNER CLIMAX
Price: 800 Microsoft Points
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions
Dash Text: Take to the skies and experience blazing speeds in the world’s fastest fighter jets! There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

 

Add the free AFTER BURNER CLIMAX demo to your Xbox 360 download queue

A Hamman divulgou as primeiras imagens de seu mais novo trabalho, o Hamann Z4 E89 tuning. Utilizando como base a BMW Z4 sDrive35i, a preparadora germânica buscou maximizar o seu desempenho buscando alternativas para melhorar a potencia de seu motor e seu comportamento dinâmico, assim como um upgrade em seu visual.

De acordo com a Hamman, seu motor 6 cilindros de 3.0 litros com 302 cavalos originais ganhou o reforço de mais 54 cv e agora disponibiliza 356 cv de potencia. Esse resultado foi alcançado através da reprogramação da central e injeção do modelo. Além disso, seu sistema de velocidade máxima limitada foi destravado permitindo-o atingir a velocidade máxima de 285 km/h.

A suspensão do BMW Z4 tuning também foi retrabalhada para garantir uma melhor estabilidade, através de novas molas que rebaixaram o sistema em 30 mm. Em conjunto com essa mudança, foram adicionados um jogo de rodas de aro 20 e “tala” de 8,5 calçadas com pneus 235/30ZR20 nas rodas dianteiras e rodas de aro 20 e “tala” 10 com os pneus 295/25ZR20 no eixo traseiro.

Em seu exterior, o cupê Hamann Z4 E89 tuning recebeu um esportivo bodykit contendo saias laterais, aerofólio traseiro e spoiler dianteiro, além de contar com duas saídas duplas das ponteiras de escapamento e de luzes diurnas em Leds em seu para-choque dianteiro. Como opção, ainda existe a possibilidade de personalizar o seu interior com acabamentos de alumínio e revestimentos em couro.

Hamann Z4 E89 tuning

Fonte: WorldCarsFans

It’s been a long time coming but the long awaited Gamifone has been announced for a T-Mobile release. Garmin was one of the first members of the OHA, promised to produce an Android handset, seemed like it would never come to fruition. This may be the first announcement of great Android devices for T-Mobile.

As expected the Garmifone will be loaded with a bunch of navigation orientated applications. One of the main features will be Garmin Voice Studio; this app allows customers to record custom voice directions from family and friends. This handset features a 3MP camera and 3.5 HVGA touch screen. Included will be a car dock. Unfortunately, this will be an Android 1.6 device, since its being released later in the year, 2.1 may be loaded on to the handset. I can’t wait to see how this stacks up to Google Maps.

[via themarketnews]

Each spring, hundreds of pilgrims from across the country and around the world, descend upon the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to experience and celebrate the remarkable views in what is known as the Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage.

In 1951, the year of the first annual pilgrimage, visitors atop Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, could have seen rich green hillsides and a view that stretched for a 100 miles.

Today’s pilgrims can see wooden skeletons jutting out of a landscape that can only be viewed up to about 20 miles.

The Great Smoky Mountains are changing, and not for the better.

That’s because they are under attack by a myriad of forces chipping away at the national treasure’s ethereal beauty.

“The Smokies are one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world and are being negatively impacted by invasive, exotic plants and animals, global warming, pollution and acid rain, just to name a few,” explained Gene Wofford, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology and one of the pilgrimage’s leaders.

Hemlock trees are being destroyed by the hemlock woolly adelgids. Beech trees are being lost to beech bark disease. Dogwood anthracnose is decimating the dogwoods. Pine bark beetles are eating away the mountain pine. And the balsam woolly adelgid is slowly, but surely, killing Fraser firs. More than destroying the view, these predators are rendering birds, insects and other animals homeless.

Air pollution damages trees’ fighting chance for survival by weakening them and making them vulnerable to attack. It is also to blame for limiting the scenic views of the mountains.

Scientists trace the air pollution to small particles produced mostly by the burning of coal. Because the particles reflect and scatter light, visitors see a whitish haze rather than views of distant mountains. The National Park Service is involved in a number of projects aimed at improving air quality. Through these efforts, the park service has been able to identify types and sources of air pollution impacting the Smokies and use this information to help inform legislators and promote initiatives to improve air quality.

However, increasing demand for electricity in the East and Midwest continues to threaten air quality. Coal-burning power plants are major polluters, and a rise in electricity demand has sparked proposals for more of these plants. Park scientists say the primary way to improve the views of the Smokies is for people to conserve energy.

And organizers of the pilgrimage hope that, along with fond memories and beautiful pictures, participants take with them the lesson that their daily decisions, such as turning on the lights or leaving the car running, directly affect the health of the Smokies.

“People who come to the Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage see the impacts and learn about the causes,” said Ed Clebsch, a professor in UT Knoxville’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology and one of the pilgrimage’s leaders. “When they go home, will what they saw here today affect what they do tomorrow? I don’t know but I sure hope so.”

Since the pilgrimage’s inception, UT has been instrumental in organizing the event which is a five-day celebration with 115 leaders and more than 150 programs, featuring natural history walks, motorcades, photographic tours, art classes and indoor seminars. In fact, all the leaders have ties to UT.

In addition to educating the public about the threats to the Smokies, the university is also helping battle one of its predators, the hemlock woolly beetle. Technicians at UT’s Agricultural Campus are incubating tiny beetles that live to eat the hemlock woolly beetle. Park scientists are hopeful this tactic can save the park’s hemlock trees.

Registration for this year’s pilgrimage, which will be April 21 through 25, is now open at http://www.springwildflowerpilgrimage.org.

Along with outdoor programs and tours, the W.L. Mills Conference Center — the event’s registration site in Gatlinburg– will feature art exhibitions, merchants and related activities. Tickets are $75 per person for two or more days. Single-day tickets are available for $40. Student tickets are $10 and must be verified with a student ID.

The Wildflower Pilgrimage is a joint venture of the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, the City of Gatlinburg Department of Tourism, the Friends of the Smoky Mountains National Park, the Gatlinburg Garden Club, the Great Smoky Mountains Association, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society.

For more information, call (865) 436-7318, Ext. 222, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. or visit http://www.springwildflowerpilgrimage.org. Lodging information is also available on the site.

 

The Garminfone has taken a long journey to hit a US carrier and now, finally, it’s getting official. T-Mobile just announced that the Garminfone will be available later this Spring, and this "Garminfone" is a dead ringer for the Garmin-Asus nuvifone A50 we saw back at MWC. It only rocks Android 1.6 with a 600MHz processor, 3.5-inch display, 3-megapixel camera and your usual slew of connectivity options. So yeah, this Garminfone is happening. The question remains whether anyone would want a mid-level device that prioritizes GPS before everything else. For some reason, we’re thinking no. [Garmin via engadget]

DS in the west owners can look forward to Chibiterasu spreading some stylish cuteness on their handhelds next year. Capcom has confirmed the DS title Okamiden for a North American and European launch no later than 2011.

UPDATE: Read Austin Beutner’s letter to DWP workers at OurLA.org.

It wouldn’t be make believe if anyone in their right mind still believed in Antonio.

He couldn’t even get more than one round of applause from his hand-picked audience of contributors at his State of the City speech, and that was for the one thing that has gone right under his watch, the reduction in violent crime.

The budget plan he outlined Tuesday night is nothing but a work of fiction by a mayor so desperate to save himself he is willing to destroy his city — a compilation of wishful thinking on revenue projections and fantasies of income from fire sales of assets.

It is loaded with one-time savings and revenues that even if they materialize will only help get through the coming year’s $484 million deficit while leaving the 2011-12 deficit of $775 million and the following year’s $1 billion deficit untouched.

He must be stopped before he harms us all.

Some people learn from their mistakes, not Antonio. He got us into this mess doing exactly what he is proposing to do again: Chasing numbers downhill and using smoke and mirrors to avoid reality.

He’s probably the only man in America who still believes the Obama economic miracle will lift the city’s ship back to normal. There isn’t going to be any economic miracle. Normal isn’t coming back. Fundamental economic changes are occurring.

We can no longer use City Hall as a jobs and social welfare program, as a bottomless pit of wealth for sweetheart contracts with unions, contractors and consultants and to subsidize developers whose projects make the quality of our lives and our neighborhoods worse.

Surely, De Facto Mayor Austin Beutner understands this as well as anybody. He made his fortune buying up distressed companies on the cheap, scaling costs to revenue, focusing on the core business and then selling them for spectacular profits.

As the mayor’s top gun, he has been given direct authority over every city agency that impacts revenue and. in a move that is extra-legal, has crossed the line and handed direct control of the Department of Water and Power as its general manager.

What does that say about the pretense of separation of powers, of citizen commission’s providing oversight on politicians and bureaucrats when as the mayor’s man Beutner is part of the authority that appoints the DWP Board and as general manager he reports to the board he appoints?

Is there a secret memo somewhere in the dungeons of City Hall that says martial law was declared as part of the fiscal emergency and the rule of law suspended?

The City Council must stop this abuse of power by rejecting Beutner’s appointment or at the least force him to resign as deputy mayor for appearances sake, if nothing else.

The same is true of the mayor’s budget. The Council is as much responsible for this crisis as he is and now has one last chance to put an end to these phony money games that are rapidly moving LA down the road to oblivion and bankruptcy and made our city the laughing stock of the world.

“I understand your utility is going bankrupt and your city with it,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Beutner at an exclusive Getty Center event Monday night during a visit presumably to scout around for some bargains in public assets to pick up for 10 cents on the Euro.

David Zahniser in the LA Times all but ignores the budget in his story on the mayor’s speech by focusing on the dizzying pendulum swings in direction and message that Antonio, Controller Wendy Greuel and the Council have engaged in for the last year, from early retirements to 4,000 layoffs to today’s “not to worry, we fixed everything” sound bite.

“When the information is that confusing and that contradictory, the
public doesn’t know what to believe — except to distrust anything
they’re told,” said Westside community leader Mike Eveloff,  president of the Tract 7260 Homeowners Assn.

The mayor’s handlers regard all this as nothing but a public relations exercise in need of a “more consistent message.”

Antonio himself clearly agrees, deflecting all responsibility for the crisis he created by falsely claiming he’s gotten city spending under control during his reign of profligate hiring, wage increases and giveaways of the public’s money.

All that’s wrong is the fault of Wall Street and the global recession and some mysterious force that obscured Southern California’s eternal sunshine.

“Over the last several weeks, we have allowed darkness to cloud our
optimism. I think that you could even say that we have
allowed the strain of the challenges we face to undermine civic unity.”

Unity? He barely got a majority a year ago against Walter Moore and eight others with little money or name recognition despite his own fame and bottomless pit of dirty political money.

Maybe he means how he achieved the impossible and united the citizenry and public employee unions in opposition to his policies and politics and even gotten the business community to suffer a crisis of confidence in his leadership to the point that only the promises made to them by unelected mayor Beutner has kept them in line.

Antonio is right about a couple of things:e thing: This isn’t why he was elected to office and it is going to be “a tough time for everyone” — even him.

“Courtney Love is dead….”

Well, not really. The veteran rocker isn’t actually dead, but she’s decided to kill off her stage name — at least, the “Love” part — in an effort to shake off her damaged reputation, the byproduct of years of destructive living.

From now on the Hole star will only answer to the name “Courtney Michelle” — a derivative of her real name, which is Courtney Michelle Harrison.

“Courtney Love is dead,” the Grunge Goddess told Britain’s NME Magazine this week. “We’ve all decided we don’t like her anymore. We love her when she goes onstage, but I don’t need her in the rest of my life. Courtney Love is a way to oppress me,” she added.

We’re not sure her record label got the memo. Last week, they announced a new Hole summer tour — led by “Courtney Love.”

As soon as we heard the General Motors’ CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. will be heading down to Washington this week, we started wondering whether he would take a plane or drive the Chevrolet Volt. Turns out, Whitacre will fly and will pay for his flight from Kansas City to Washington this afternoon out of his own pocket.

Whitacre is in Kansas City this morning at GM’s Fairfax Assembly plant where he is announcing new investments in the plants in Kansas City and the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant (more details on that later).

Whitacre will then fly to Washington to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Michigan congressional delegation. GM will also release a statement today that it has repaid U.S. and Canadian taxpayers for $5.8 billion in outstanding government loans plus $700 million in interest to the U.S. Treasury and an unspecified amount of interest to the Canadian government.

In late 2008, members of Congress embarrassed GM and Chrysler’s CEO for flying top executives to D.C. to ask for bailout money. GM dumped its corporate jets while in bankruptcy but Whitacre sometimes flies on private jets under an agreement negotiated with his former employer, AT&T.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Detroit News

[JURIST] A spokesperson for French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that the president is in favor of a complete public ban on the burqa and other full face veils and will be submitting a bill to parliament in May. According to spokesperson Luc Chatel, Sarkozy wants the ban to be carried out in a way that doesn’t stigmatize individuals for their religious beliefs and practices, but he feels that the veils are oppressive and harm female dignity. In addition to the bill, parliament will also be discussing a separate resolution on May 11, which will discuss ways of limiting the use of full veils. The issue has sparked debate with feminists supporting the ban because it prevents women from being forced into wearing the veils, and others questioning the proposed ban’s constitutionality. France houses the largest Muslim population in the European Union with Muslims comprising about 10 percent of the total French population.
Last month, the French Council of State advised the French government against a complete ban on full Islamic veils because it risks violating the French Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. France already has a partial ban that prevents public officials from wearing veils while operating in their official capacity and also prohibits veils in public schools. Critics of the ban say the law would alienate France’s Muslim minority and violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), of which France is a signatory. Last month, lawmakers in Quebec introduced a bill that would ban women from wearing full face veils from public services, which garnered support from members of the Muslim Canadian Congress who argue that the law would not violate human rights and would promote the ideals of a free and democratic society. Also last month, a Belgian parliamentary committee voted unanimously to completely ban the wearing of full veils in public. If approved, Belgium will be the first European nation to impose a nationwide restriction on traditional face-covering veils.

Earth2Tech has a look at some applications that let iPad users visualise energy usage within their homes – More Energy Management Apps for the iPad.

Visible Energy’s iPad app is a tweak of its iPhone app, which is connected to the Energy UFO product that the company launched at our Green:Net conference in 2009 (Green:Net 2010 will take place on April 29). The Energy UFO product includes smart outlets that can be controlled wirelessly over a home network and the application (as well as the web site) displays energy usage and provides remote control and programming capabilities. Visible Energy says the iPad version will be available “shortly” (the iPhone app can also be used over the iPad).

The iPad could ultimately be disruptive in the home energy market, because if consumers embrace it as a popular “fourth screen” in the home, it could both displace the need for separate energy gadgets, and could also give a boost the home energy management market. The home energy market is a nascent ecosystem that’s made up of: utilities that are trying get their customers to consume less energy, startups building smart energy software and energy dashboards that will manage energy data in the home and help customers consume less, large manufacturers dabbling in connected appliances, and investors looking for ways to make money.

If you’re never heard of the market, it’s because from a consumer perspective it really doesn’t exist yet. According to Texas-based consultants KEMA, 68 percent of Americans haven’t heard of the smart grid, and exuberance in the home energy market “should be tempered to account for the challenge of engaging large numbers of residential customers.”

The early stage is one reason why the iPad could be disruptive. Visible Energy CEO Marco Graziano, told me earlier this month:

I never thought specialized displays were a good idea for monitoring energy consumption. They don’t have any sex appeal and are too expensive anyway as freebies for utilities to give away. We found that interactivity is really a plus when it gets to visualizing energy consumption and to engaging people in energy awareness. In this respect the iPad is a breakthrough.

Visible Energy is the second home energy management iPad app coming to market — Control4 launched a free iPad app during the hullabaloo of the iPad launch weekend. At the time, Glen Mella, the President and COO of Control4 told me in an interview: “We’re excited to embrace the iPad as another way to bring home automation and home energy management to the mainstream.”

I’m sure by now that you’ve all heard the arguments both for and against the new Terms of Service that accompany iPhone v4.0 SDK, so I won’t get into those arguments here.

However, I will let you know of the announcement today that Adobe have now dropped future support for iPhones as a development target for Flash CS5. While users will still be able to set the iPhone as a target in CS5, Adobe will invest nothing more into the feature. It is also likely that Apple will be removing the 100+ Flash CS5 developed applications from the App Store.

It is interesting — though unsurprising — that Adobe have done this.

It’s unsurprising because applications developed for the iPhone using Flash will have a strong chance of being rejected during the App Store screening process. Few developers would want to invest time and money on such a high-risk project, so there is no real business incentive for Adobe to offer the feature anymore.

It is interesting because it may signal a trend fpr developers to move toward open platforms. Mike Chambers, the Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe, stated today on his blog:
“Personally, I am going to shift all of my mobile focus from iPhone to Android based devices (I am particularly interested in the Android based tablets coming out this year) and not focus on the iPhone stuff as much anymore.”

The real juice, though, came when he added:
“This includes both Flash based, and Objective-C based iPhone development. While I actually enjoy working in Objective-C, I don’t have any current plans to update and / or maintain my existing native iPhone applications.”

This move isn’t because of a preference for developing in Flash (which is welcomed on the Android platform), but rather because Chambers is taking a stand against Apple’s “closed, locked down platform”.

Clearly there would be a bit of bias from an employee of the company that was on the receiving end of the hurt stick, but Chambers is not the first major player to leave the iPhone space because of Apple’s draconian rules: in November last year, Joe Hewitt — the man behind the immensely popular Facebook app for iPhone — left the team developing the application because of Apple’s policies.

Is this a taste of things to come? Who else in the future will defect to the open side?

[image courtesy of Before It’s News]

This is one way to get attention for a very serious but often ignored issue (i.e. vehicle idling) — create a commercial equating it to public urination.

Vehicle idling is responsible for countless emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. It is also completely useless much of the time, people just don’t think or are too lazy to turn off the engine.

It can be a hard issue to address, though. Even if a community decides to outlaw unnecessary idling, it can be tough to enforce. I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia a couple years ago when the city banned completely unnecessary idling of public vehicles. Nonetheless, nearly every time I rode the bus, it would sit idling illegally numerous times.

(more…)

Interim Phase II study results showed than when paired with ribavirin, Locteron demonstrated potency against Hepatitis C similar to pegylated interferon. In addition, Locteron demonstrated 57 percent fewer adverse effects at a more favorable dosing schedule of once every other week.

Biolex Announces Presentation at EASL of Interim Results From EMPOWER Phase 2b Study of Locteron® in Chronic Hepatitis C

Locteron Dosed Once Every Two Weeks Demonstrated a Comparable Reduction in Viral Load Compared to Once-Weekly Standard of Care With 57% Less Flu-Like Adverse Events

PITTSBORO, NC–(Marketwire – April 16, 2010) – Biolex Therapeutics, Inc. announced that interim results from EMPOWER, a prospectively designed analysis of results from two Phase 2b trials of Locteron®, were presented yesterday in a late-breaker session at the 45th Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in Vienna, Austria. Locteron, controlled-release interferon alpha 2b, is designed to improve patient care by providing a more convenient once-every-two week dosing schedule and by reducing the flu-like symptoms associated with pegylated interferons, the current standard of care. In the EMPOWER study, the 480 µg dose of Locteron demonstrated viral kinetics and response rates that were comparable to the PEG-Intron® control while also achieving a 57% reduction in flu-like adverse events.

Continue reading this entire article:
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Biolex-Announces-Presentation-EASL-Interim-Results-From-EMPOWER-Phase-2b-Study-Locteron-1148840.htm

U.S. equity index futures are mixed this morning. S&P 500 futures are down 1 point in pre-opening trade despite a series of favourable first quarter earnings reports released overnight.

The earnings focus this morning is on Apple. The stock gained 6% after reporting blow out first quarter earnings. Scotia Capital raised its rating on the stock from Market Perform to Outperform.

Companies reporting higher than expected first quarter earnings reports included Boeing, AT&T, McDonald’s, Altria, United Technologies, St. Jude Medical and EMC Corp.

Not all reports exceeded consensus estimates. Yahoo and Wells Fargo are trading lower after missing expectations.

The first major North American energy company reported first quarter earnings this morning. Encana significantly exceeded consensus earnings and cash flow estimates. Its stock gained 1% in pre-opening trade. Strength in Encana could spill into other energy stocks this morning.

Goldman Sachs gained 2% following news that the SEC had contradicting evidence prior to launch of its civil law suit against Goldman. 

Don Vialoux, chartered market technician, is the author of a free
daily report on equity markets, sectors, commodities, equities and
Exchange-Traded Funds. For more visit Don Vialoux's Web site