Blog

Jorge Acevedo, a Glendale police volunteer, was shot in the head in 1999 while working as a security guard.

Now, 11 years later, Acevedo went to the hospital to have doctors remove what he thought was one bullet. 

But doctors found a second round.

The first, larger bullet had slowly moved from Acevedo’s skull to the surface and began to erode the skin, so doctors had to remove it. But as they removed it, they discovered a second, smaller one next to it.

“We took one main bullet out, and there was this tiny little one underneath and a couple of little fragments of bone chips, which was grazed by the bullet at the time of injury,” Acevedo’s neurosurgeon, Kyoo Ro, told the News-Press.

Shallow-resting bullets can migrate to the surface of the skull, he said, because the metal is ragged and can be rubbed when a person lies on a pillow.

Acevedo’s April 1 surgery was relatively minor, requiring a small incision and a day’s worth of bed rest at Glendale Memorial Hospital before he was released.

Read the full story here.

— Veronica Rocha, News-Press

Jorge Acevedo lies in a hospital bed after having two bullets removed from the surface of his skull. Credit: Jorge Acevedo via News-Press

Fitch has downgraded Greek debt to triple-B-minus from triple-B-plus.

With Greek spreads blowing in and out this weekend, the general sentiment is that endgame comes now.

Some kind of official request (and granting) of support has to come by the end of the weekend.

Stay glued to your computer, folks!

Join the conversation about this story »

iPhone OS 4 has been announced. Among other things, we is now clear that Apple considers the iPhone/iPad domain theirs alone. They reserve the right to eliminate any apps that pose any strategic or competitive threat. This was pretty clear after Apple banned Google Voice, but there was still a bit of wiggle room. Not any more.

Only antitrust action is going to change that, and Apple is not yet dominant enough in  mobile to worry about antitrust. Maybe in a few years.

For now, it’s Apple’s way or the highway. On the less dim side, I was impressed by what they’ve added to their way. OS 4 is a good upgrade.

Given what they announced, here’s the current state of my personal wish list compared to OS 3. X means never – I’m dropping those items.

My two biggest “wishes” have been granted and there’s a decent chance Apple will fix the two big bugs I experience routinely.

Maybe we’ll see the cable sync API, but at this point wireless sync would be fine too. We won’t see Google apps on the iPhone, but Apple did do a location sharing API – so half points there.

Apple also added several other nice features – but they weren’t on my wish list.

Now it’s all about how Apple makes up for the Google services they’ve blocked. That will be tough, though Google’s declining competence does lessen the sting.

See also

• My current iPhone wish list – as of OS 3.1 (Oct 2009)
• iPhone 3.0 – how many of my wishes were granted (Mar 2009)
• iPhone- my demands (Aug 2007): These were mercifully met

While editing a reply to Kiran’s tweet, I accidentally backspaced right into his Twitter handle. Twitterrific for iPad smartly noticed this and offered to restore the @reply. Nice!

The findings of a new government report indicate that the FDA is unable to keep up with food facility inspections, placing Americans at risk of food poisoning. 

The food inspection report (pdf), issued by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this month, found that the number of food processing plants and other facilities inspected by FDA is declining. The report also found that more than half of all food facilities currently in operation have gone five years or more without an inspection.

“Our report found significant weaknesses in FDA’s domestic inspections program,” the OIG report states. “We found that there was a significant decline in the number of food facility inspections as well as a decline in the number of violations identified by FDA inspectors. Further, when violations were identified, FDA did not routinely take swift and effective action to ensure that these violations were remedied.”

The report says that the findings indicate that more needs to be done to protect the public from food poisoning contamination and that FDA needs to be provided with better tools to prevent food poisoning outbreaks.

Specifically, the OIG report found that between 2004 and 2008, FDA inspected an average of 24 percent of food facilities. The report also found that the number of facilities inspected per year declined during that time period, even as the total number of food processing plants under FDA’s jurisdiction increased. The OIG said, of the 51,229 food facilities subject to FDA inspection, 56% were not inspected at all between 2004 and 2008, and 14% were only inspected once during that time period. Only 30% were inspected at least twice.

The report follows on the heels of a number of high-profile food illness outbreaks over the last several years, including a number of E. coli ground beef outbreaks, salmonella food poisoning outbreaks, and the massive 2007 peanut butter recall. The report also comes as multi-product recalls are still being issued over vegetable protein salmonella contamination and pepper salmonella contamination.

It also comes as the U.S. congress weighs the FDA Food Modernization Act, a bill that would significantly strengthen the FDA’s food inspection and regulatory powers. Senator Tom Harkin, Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the report confirmed lawmakers’ fears.

“This is unacceptable in our modern society and an important reminder that we must provide FDA with the needed tools to properly inspect food facilities and effectively react to problems in order to ensure the safety of the food American families eat,” Sen. Harkin said in a press release this week. “Quite simply, picking up food at the grocery store should not be a health risk.”

WASHINGTON–With unconfirmed reports that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is stepping down coming out on Friday, speculation rises on who will be President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee–with Chicago’s Diane Wood one of the contenders. Wood has been a judge of the Chicago based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since 1995 and was in the running for the seat Obama tapped Justice Sonia Sotomayor to fill. A Wood bio is here.

AAA’s latest study on rising vehicle ownership costs reads like a case for would-be green car owners if not flat-out deserting the ol’ personal car, then carefully considering alternatives like car-sharing networks that often cover fuel, maintenance and insurance costs.

Taking into account license and registration fees, depreciation, insurance, finance charges, fuel, maintenance and other costs, AAA found that “owning and operating a typical sedan” climbed to about 56.60 cents per mile, or $8,487 per year, in 2009, based on 15,000 miles of driving in the year and gas priced at $2.60 per gallon. That’s a jump of more than $390 over AAA’s cost estimates in last year’s report.

Part of the cost increase stems from rising fuel prices, and AAA finds operating costs for owners of SUVs — some of the least efficient vehicles on the market — hit 73.90 cents per mile, or $11,085 over the year. For smaller sedans, AAA pegs the average annual cost of ownership at nearly $5,000.

But as AAA Northern California spokesperson Matt Skyrja explains in Thursday’s release, gas prices affect more than how much we pay at the pump. They also influence depreciation rates — over time, the more value that consumers place on fuel efficiency, the less you can expect to get for an old gas guzzler if you decide to sell it in the future. “With the growing appeal of more fuel-efficient vehicles,” Skyrja explains, “small sedans are experiencing less depreciation and holding their value longer. On the flip side, there are notable rises in depreciation costs with categories of less fuel-efficient vehicles.”

According to a report earlier this year from the research firm Frost & Sullivan, car-share networks like Zipcar and City Carshare are poised to see a boom in membership during the next several years. The number of drivers using these networks grew 117 percent between 2007 and 2009 in North America, and by 2016 the firm anticipates membership will reach 4.4 million in North America and 5.5 million in Europe.

Rising costs for owning and operating a personal vehicle can boost the appeal of car-sharing networks that roll the cost of fuel into membership and hourly or daily fees. At the same time car-share providers, could turn into decent-sized customers for automakers while driving a decline in personal vehicle ownership. The car-sharing firms are also some of the most active on terms of “fuel efficient, low emission, low priced, and trendy vehicles.” By Frost’s somewhat optimistic estimates, plug-in vehicles will make up one in every five new vehicle purchases for car-share fleets by 2016.

It’s not just car-share providers (of both the for-profit and non-profit variety) that are developing alternatives to personal vehicle ownership and the all-too-common single-occupant vehicle. A number of startups are working to take advantage of real-time data about location (see this GigaOM Pro report on Location: The Epicenter of Mobile Innovation) and the supply and demand for mobility to help people carpool. Put simply, these services identify and link passengers and drivers with empty seats that are nearby and planning to go in the same direction.

As Ryan Chin, a PhD candidate in the Smart Cities research group at MIT has told us (GigaOM Pro, sub. req’d), emerging models based on offering “mobility on demand” can help bridge what’s known as the “last mile” gap in many public transit systems. The idea is to provide access to, say, an electric car, scooter or bicycle when and where you need it, as well as the option to drop it off near your destination. In some models, companies operate the program in exchange for advertising space, while city governments provide land in exchange for the transportation service and a potential solution for traffic congestion.

These types of solutions can help slash greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector and reduce reliance on personal vehicles — while cutting the costs that go along with vehicle ownership. And as Chin commented, “There’s a lot of difficulty convincing automotive companies to adopt this model…that means there’s a big, huge opportunity for other players to come in.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr user taberandrew

Justice John Paul Stevens confirmed today that he will retire this summer from the Supreme Court, reports The Associated Press.

The timing of the announcement is welcome news to President Obama and Democrats who risk losing seats in Congress in November’s elections. The vacancy is unlikely to change the court’s ideological makeup, since the president is expected choose a left-leaning replacement for the longtime liberal Justice.

Rob Keithan is the Director of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations’ Washington Office for Advocacy.
This post first appeared at Inspired Faith, Effective Action and is republished with permission.

As far as we know, the Sexuality Education Advocacy Training (SEAT) is the only national, multigenerational interfaith advocacy training focused on supporting comprehensive sexuality education. It started in 2006 as a partnership between the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and Advocates for Youth. Currently the United Church of Christ, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice are also cosponsors. The great news is that SEAT is paying off! Here are some highlights:

First, many of the Congressional Offices visited by 2010 participants remembered SEAT visits from previous years — and had positive things to say about them. This recognition is incredibly important, because even if they don’t agree with our position, they know who we are, and that we’re strong advocates for what we believe. Thanks to our SEAT lobby visits -and there were over 60 this year alone – not a single one of those offices can say that they “never hear from religious people who support comprehensive sexuality education.”

Second, one office reported that their boss – a member of the House –
decided to become a REAL Act cosponsor as a direct result of last
year’s SEAT lobby visit. Even better, I just heard – literally as I
was writing this blog – that another Representative decided to
cosponsor as a result of this year’s visit!

Third, more than one lobby team reported that, as they were sitting an
office lobby waiting for their visit, calls were coming from folks back
home participating in the Sex Ed Call-in Day! This combination of
in-person and grassroots action is exactly what we hope for, so many,
many thanks to everyone who made a call!

We usually stop at three in stories like this, but one more point is
necessary. For SEAT to be properly called a success, it must also help
participants spread the word outside of Washington, DC. Hence this
final highlight:

Fourth, during an expected (and quite long) layover in Denver, a SEAT
team from the Seattle area shared their stories and passion with other
passengers in the waiting area! Amy talked to a young mother of three
who had never heard of comprehensive sexuality education but liked it
so much that she immediately started tweeting about it. Sierra,
Carolyn, and Sam struck up conversations with nearby passengers and
informed them of the whole experience, including – get this – giving
out the handouts from their packets! Nice work y’all!

At this point, we’re hoping to have a 7th annual SEAT next year. Look for an announcement in the fall!

Photo: A small group on the steps of the Religious Action of Reform Judaism during an exercise on storytelling/messaging

Speaking to the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress last night, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went back to his academic roots. The longtime Princeton economic historian, who specializes in the study of the Great Depression, cited the “passivity” of policymakers during the 1930s as central to letting bank runs become a nationwide economic failure.

[P]olicymakers must respond forcefully, creatively, and decisively to severe financial crises. Early in the Depression, policymakers’ responses ran the gamut from passivity to timidity. They were insufficiently willing to challenge the orthodoxies of their day….A key turning point, in the United States, came with Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to bold experimentation after his inauguration in 1933. Some of his experiments failed or were counterproductive, but [some decisions] helped arrest the descent of the U.S. financial system and set off a strong, albeit incomplete, recovery.

He argues that this crisis could have been as bad as the last one, were it not for advances in monetary policymaking. The statement reads not just as an appreciation of Roosevelt’s eventual decision to leave behind the gold standard, but as a counter today’s criticism of Bernanke’s more activist Fed. Senators such as Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) have hit Bernanke with withering criticism for failing to prevent the crisis before it occurred and to act until after the markets started seizing, being too generous in bailing out faltering banks, and then stretching the Federal Reserve’s mandate and policy operations far, far beyond their historical and possibly statutory limits.

But in this speech, Bernanke reinforces the point that — regardless of what he did not do before the markets went south — he acted with necessary strength and “creativity” once the crisis hit:

[O]ur traditional tools, developed in an earlier era, were of little use in addressing panic in the shadow banking system or in the money market mutual fund industry. So, we engaged in what I call “blue sky thinking” — generating many ideas. Most were discarded, but, crucially, some led to the development of new ways for the Federal Reserve to fulfill the traditional stabilization function of central banks.

Notably, Bernanke also addressed the repurchase agreement market in the news this morning:

In the shadow banking system, loans, instead of being held on the books of banks as was virtually always the case in the 1930s, were packaged together in complex ways and sold to investors. Many of these complex securities were held in off-balance-sheet vehicles financed by short-term funding. When the housing slump shook investors’ faith in the values of the loans underlying the securities, short-term funding dried up quickly, threatening the banks and other financial institutions that explicitly or implicitly stood behind the off-balance-sheet vehicles. This was a new type of run, analogous in many ways to the bank runs of the 1930s, but in a form which was not well anticipated by financial institutions or regulators.

That might read as a bit of financial gobbledygook, but the point is simple: Policymakers now understand the financial crisis as, essentially, an old-fashioned bank run in the under-regulated “shadow” banking system, comprised of financial institutions that are not registered as banks. And how those banks are monitored and regulated is crucial to financial stability now.

Around about a year ago, a law was passed in Mexico that would enforce compulsory registration of personal details to a mobile phone account. The idea behind it was to help fight crime (Batman style) by inhibiting the method of delivering ransom and extortion calls. Telcos were given 12 months to collect the personal details of their subscribers.

Come Saturday, that 12 months will be up, and despite radio and television commercials urging mobile phone users to register their name and address via text message, around 30 million lines are still unregistered. There is a push from telcos to have the deadline extended by a further 12 months, but senators have thus far refused requests to do so.

Naturally, this is bad news for both the users who haven’t registered and the telcos. 30 million disconnected subscribers equates to a lotta lost dollars: an estimated $10 million per day for their largest provider, America Movil. Another major player in the Mexican telco market, Telefonica, plans to maintain services despite the authority’s weekend deadline, stating that telecommunications are of public interest, protected by the constitution.

Do I smell a standoff?

[Via Reuters]

Justice Stevens

It’s retirement Friday, it seems. The AP has a report (no link yet) that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is retiring. This has been rumored for a while.

UPDATE II: Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed this in a letter. Stevens will serve out the current term, giving the President and the Senate until October, basically, to fill out the Court.

More when I have it.

UPDATE: There’s a link now.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the court’s oldest member and leader of its liberal bloc, he is retiring. President Barack Obama now has his second high court opening to fill.

Stevens said Friday he will step down when the court finishes its work for the summer in late June or early July. He said he hopes his successor is confirmed “well in advance of the commencement of the court’s next term.”

His announcement had been hinted at for months. It comes 11 days before his 90th birthday.

Last week, three names were floated as potential replacements: Circuit Court of Appeals judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland, and Solicitor General Elana Kagan.

There’s several things wrong with this. One: painting over the sleek aluminum with plastic? Hideous. Two: $400? Really? That could (almost) buy another iPad. Three: Three weeks? Without your iPad? Ugh. [Colorware] More »

El mes pasado, os traíamos la noticia de que Audi pondrá en la calle una versión para todo público de su versión de carreras del R8, el R8 GT3. Pero el preparador MTM (que ya le ha puesto las manos encima al R8 anteriormente) se adelantó, ya que ha creado su nueva y propia versión de un R8 con más potencia, el GT3-2, un deportivo más purista con solamente tracción trasera.

El modelo de MTM ha sido llevado a 560 caballos y no desentonaría en una pista, además de ser un coche de calle. Y con unos neumáticos de 20 pulgadas, un gigantesco alerón trasero y con un supercargador con un poquitín más de presión, el R8 de MTM podría ser una aproximación a la versión que Audi quiere del modelo.

Sin embargo, y siempre según rumores, la versión de Audi seguiría contando con la tracción integral, algo que si bien no le restaría mérito, no sería tan divertido de conducir como el de MTM con tracción trasera. Hasta ahora, sobre la potenciación de Audi no se sabe casi nada y el único que se ha atrevido a llevar más allá al R8 ha sido MTM, que ofrecerá su GT3-2 por unos 30.000 Euros más agregados al precio del coche.

Vía | Automobile Mag

A program that paid city students if they got higher test scores earned an F, a new study shows.

The Harvard-based study led by former city Education Department consultant Roland Fryer examined the program he spearheaded, which poured $6.3 million in private funds into 261 schools in four cities…

Read more here:

Seja um doador de medula óssea… Um doador de esperança!

Hoje, dia 9 de abril, fazem exatos 6 anos que perdi minha neta (a primogênita do meu filho do meio) para o câncer. Letícia tinha apenas 1 ano, 1 mes e 25 dias quando foi internada com suspeita de leucemia,  suspeita essa que veio se concretizar dias depois após  um mielograma. Desde então os dias que se seguiram foram de esperança, agonia e tristeza até o desenlace. O que nos sobrou foram as lembranças e a esperança de um dia se ver cumprir a promessa que Deus nos fez: “E lhes enxugará dos olhos toda lágrima, e a morte já não existirá, já não haverá luto, nem pranto, nem dor, porque as primeiras coisas passaram.” (Apocalipse 21.4) Vivo com essa esperança!

Not a fan of the new BMW 5-Series Gran Turismo or the Acura ZDX? Well, neither are Lexus of Infiniti. The two Japanese brands aren’t ready or looking to venture into big luxury midsize hatchbacks since American buyers famously don’t favor hatchbacks, even in the lower market segments.

Ben Poore, Nissan North America’s vice president of the Infiniti business unit, told AutoObserver that Infiniti isn’t going to take a shot at the new segment anytime soon. Poore said that Infiniti’s research and clinics aren’t showing any evidence of demand for premium hatchbacks.

“What they’re seeing is a much stronger preference (among consumers) for a trunk,” Poore told AutoObserver.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 BMW 550i Gran Turismo.

“It’s a very different styling,” he said. “I’d rather be on (either) the crossover styling or the trunk styling.”

As for Lexus, despite introducing the new CT 200h compact hybrid hatchback, the brand has no plans of taking on BMW’s 5-Series Gran Turismo, according to Dave Nordstrom, Lexus vice president of marketing.

“We have not seen the demand from our customers – but we continue to look at it,” says Nordstrom.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoObserver

A Texas jury has awarded a Houston woman $9 million in a defamation lawsuit against Walmart after she was wrongly arrested and accused of trying to cash fake money orders that were actually real. 

The plaintiff, Nitra Gipson, filed the defamation lawsuit against Walmart after she was jailed for two days when employees at a store in Meyer Park, Texas had her arrested for trying to cash counterfeit Walmart money orders.

The 24 year old student was later released after prosecutors determined that the money orders were real. Gipson had obtained the money orders from selling her car for $4,100 to raise money for college tuition.

Even after her release, Gipson alleged that Walmart continued to defame her by sending a letter stating that she owed the company money, and then threatened to file shoplifting charges against her if she did not compensate the company $200, according to a story in the Houston Chronicle.

Defamation lawsuits involve allegations that a defendant publicly made false statements that caused the plaintiff to be seen in a negative light. Following trial in Harris County, a jury ruled last month that Walmart defamed Gipson by wrongfully accusing her of forgery, counterfeiting, shoplifting and theft, and awarded her $8.2 million in actual damages. It then hit Walmart with another $820,000 in punitive damages.

The new Ferrari 599 GTO has been the company’s worst kept secret. Despite Ferrari’s non-committal stance on their latest supercar, everything from spy shots to artist renderings to option lists have been published on the internet. Not willing to wait for the car’s official introduction at the Beijing Auto Show later this month, Ferrari has released these images of the production car.

Powered by a 6.0 liter V12 derived from the Ferrari Enzo, the 599 GTO produces 661 horsepower and weighs in at 3,295 pounds. It can hit 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph) in 3.35 seconds on it’s way to a top speed of 208 miles per hour. It’s lap time around the Fiorano test track is 1:24, beating the Ferrari Enzo by one full second. That makes the 599 GTO the fastest street legal Ferrari ever produced.

As with all of Ferrari’s legendary GTO cars, production will be limited. In the case of the 599 GTO, only 599 units will be built for worldwide distribution. If the leaked order sheet is correct, pricing will start in the area of $450,000, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Ferrari reserved sales to existing customers only. Still want to have the joy of building your own? Ferrari has a configurator website here; hey, it’s Friday and you really weren’t going to be productive today anyway.