Source: http://www.wnd.com/2012/06/chinese-have-pervasive-access-to-80-of-worlds-telecoms/
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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Vacation Rentals ? A Superior Option
Vacation rentals offer a plethora of advantages to the average family: one house for everyone, full-sized kitchen and dining facilities, multiple family rooms with countless entertainment options, even an outdoor pool or hot tub, and many other amenities which are superior to even the highest-rated hotels. Besides the amenities, vacation homes are typically easier on your budget. When you?re looking into accommodations for your next vacation, check out the vacation home offered in the area.
Luxurious Privacy in a Home away from Home:
A house offers the privacy of home with the luxury of a vacation setting. Some management companies even provide daily maid service, so you?ll feel like you?re staying at a private hotel! Besides multiple bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, and family rooms, you?ll often find private pools, spas, patios, decks, fireplaces, home theatres, and beach access included. Wouldn?t it be nice to relax in your own pool instead of avoiding the crowds at a hotel pool? Or enjoy access to a Wii or PlayStation gaming system without having to pack your own? And wouldn?t you love to avoid eating out for every meal since you can cook for your family in a full-sized kitchen? Or, if you?d like to avoid both cooking and restaurants, some rentals even offer in-home chef service. You?ll be amazed at the many amenities offer with these incredible vacation options!
If young children are included in your vacation party, a private house is an ideal choice. You don?t have to worry about them running around an upstairs hotel room disturbing those below, and they can work off their energy outside in the pool, at the playground, or in a game room playing air hockey, ping pong, or another game.
Finding Your Perfect Vacation Home:
The Internet affords many opportunities to find vacation home rentals in just about any popular vacation spot. If you?re looking for a mountain cabin with a beautiful view, a beach-side condo with private access to the beach, or a house that?s close to winter activities like skiing or sledding, you can find a management company online to view the services they provide as well as pictures of the various places they have available. You?ll also find the many amenities, nearby attractions, and contact information.
You?ll definitely want to do your research before taking the first place you find. Have a family meeting to discuss the necessities that everyone expects from this home. Your teenagers may want to be sure there is a gaming system that?s compatible with their favorite games. Your young children will probably benefit from either a play area at the house or a playground located nearby. Are you planning on participating in local activities? You may want to find a place that?s near the ski slopes or that has beach access. If you?re traveling to a major city, explore the options for transportation. Often, vacation rentals can be located near the local bus route, so you can avoid using your car and fighting downtown traffic in an unfamiliar city. Discuss the vacation together, so everyone can have an enjoyable and relaxing time!
Orange Beach rentals make the perfect getaway for your family. Learn more about the advantages and visit: http://www.brett-robinson.com.
Source: http://www.articlesrx.com/vacation-rentals-a-superior-option/8381
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Friday, June 29, 2012
Japan university holds peace conference with Taliban
An official from the Taliban has made a rare trip to Japan as part of a peace conference organised by the Doshisha University in Kyoto.
Representatives from the Afghan government are also at the forum, which the elite education institution hopes will help put the war-torn country on the road to peace.
Din Muhammad, who sits on the Taliban's political council, is appearing alongside President Hamid Karzai's internal security adviser Masoom Stanekzai and other Afghanis at the talks, AFP reported.
The private university set up the talks and professor of Middle Eastern studies Masanori Naito revealed that the goal was simply to get all parties to open a dialogue.
"We brought opposing parties together to debate paths toward peace," he said to the news agency.
The need for a resolution is all the more pressing, with Nato forces planning to hand over power to local authorities in 2013 before a full withdrawal in 2014.
Written by Graham McPherson 
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Tips For Making Your Home-based Business ... - CareCrunch Answers
Starting your house industry is a liberating issue. You will be your own manager and in command of your personal fate. Sadly individuals positives can even be huge downsides also. When you find yourself your own personal supervisor all the good results and failure rests little by little for you. Here?s some suggestions to try to keep yourself in the success column.
Your home business ought to have a niche. Locate a market place of clients or businesses that might be thinking about your product to make speak to after that. You might be surprised at how many men and women will be receptive to your provide. Free of charge samples are an excellent way to break the an ice pack with potential customers.
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There are several approaches to create a home-based business productive nevertheless it all starts with managing ones time. Simply because you might be at home you can easily spend your time carrying out low organization related things. Even so the much more you can stay away from wasting time the greater off of their enterprise is going to be.
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It?s great to possess a thoroughly clean business office for your residence enterprise, but remember that away from eyesight typically indicates from imagination. Have a corkboard or magnet table close to your work desk and set important paperwork or remarks there in order that they?re generally inside your variety of sight, keeping them near the top of your brain.
Until you stay by itself, be considerate from the other folks within your house. Don?t allow your job take control of frequent spots or get into an individual else?s personalized area. Don?t handle your roommates or family like workers. Make your requirements identified, but bear in mind that this space is really a property initially and an workplace secondly.
A great suggestion for your residence company is to be sure that you publish your online site to every one of the related search engine listings. This will be significant since you can not be found if the various search engines are unaware of your reputation. Keep away from any engines that sometimes you haven?t heard about or that look suspicious.
With a little luck you?ve learned some tricks and tips to sense more comfortable regarding your new business. The recommendation offered right here should be used carefully to the enterprise to help you be sure that in the long run, you are delighted to become the perfect individual boss instead of looking you have just stayed inside your cubicle. So, compose a list and have to work onto it at the earliest opportunity.
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Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Nora Ephron, Acclaimed Writer/Director, Dead at 71
Nora Ephron, the acclaimed screenwriter behind such iconic romantic comedies as Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, has passed away. She was 71.
The three-time Academy Award nominee reportedly had been suffering from leukemia, although she kept her illness a secret from the public until today's tragic news.
Ephron was once married to famous Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. She now is survived by her third husband, Goodfellas scribe Nicholas Pileggi, and two sons she shared with Bernstein.
One of the most powerful and respected women in Hollywood, Ephron's final project turned out to be Julie and Julia, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination.
Our thoughts go out to her friends and loved ones.
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Rewriting quantum chips with a beam of light
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
The promise of ultrafast quantum computing has moved a step closer to reality with a technique to create rewritable computer chips using a beam of light. Researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY) and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) used light to control the spin of an atom's nucleus in order to encode information.
The technique could pave the way for quantum computing, a long-sought leap forward toward computers with processing speeds many times faster than today's. The group will publish their results on June 26 in Nature Communications.
Current electronic devices are approaching the upper limits in processing speed, and they rely on etching a pattern into a semiconductor to create a chip or integrated circuit. These patterns of interconnections serve as highways to shuttle information around the circuit, but there is a drawback.
"Once the chip is printed, it can only be used one way," explained Dr. Jeffrey Reimer, UCB professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the study co-author.
The team ? including CCNY Professor of Physics Carlos Meriles and PhD graduate students Jonathan King of UCB and Yunpu Li of CCNY? saw a remedy for these problems in the emerging sciences of spintronics and quantum computing.
They have developed a technique to use laser light to pattern the alignment of "spin" within atoms so that the pattern can be rewritten on the fly. Such a technique may one day lead to rewritable spintronic circuits.
Digital electronics and conventional computing rely on translating electrical charges into the zeros and ones of binary code. A "spintronics" computer, on the other hand, would use the quantum property of electron spin, which enables the electron to store any number between zero and one.
Imagine this as if the electron were a "yin-yang" symbol in which the proportions of the dark and light areas?representing values from zero to one?could vary at will. This would mean that multiple computations could be done simultaneously, which would amp up processing power.
Attempts at using electrons for quantum computing have been plagued, however, by the fact that electron spins switch back and forth rapidly. Thus, they make very unstable vehicles to hold information. To suppress the random switching back and forth of electrons, the UCB and CCNY researchers used laser light to produce long-lasting nuclear spin "magnets" that can pull, push, or stabilize the spins of the electrons.
They did this by illuminating a sample of gallium arsenide ? the same semiconductor used in cell phone chips ? with a pattern of light, much as lithography etches a physical pattern onto a traditional integrated circuit. The illuminated pattern aligned the spins of all the atomic nuclei, and, thus, their electrons, at once, creating a spintronic circuit.
"What you could have is a chip you can erase and rewrite on the fly with just the use of a light beam," said Professor Meriles. Changing the pattern of light altered the layout of the circuit instantly.
"If you can actually rewrite with a beam of light and alter this pattern, you can make the circuit morph to adapt to different requirements," he added. "Imagine what you can make a system like that do for you!"
###
City College of New York: http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu
Thanks to City College of New York for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Tuesday, June 26, 2012
White House on upcoming health care ruling: We?re ready for anything
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Saturday, June 23, 2012
E-book price fixing trial set for 2013: Apple, Macmillan and Penguin prepare for courtroom brawl
The Justice Department meant business when it accused Apple and five other publishers of price-rigging e-books, and are officially taking Cupertino and two publishers to court. In a hearing on Friday, Judge Denise Cote set a bench trial for June 3, 2012, putting Apple, Macmillan and Penguin Group on the defense. The government's allegations focus largely on agency pricing, which sees booksellers taking a 30 percent cut of each sale in lieu of buying the books at wholesale and setting their own prices. Apple and Macmillan have already denied the Justice Department's claims, of course -- but that wasn't on the stand, was it?
E-book price fixing trial set for 2013: Apple, Macmillan and Penguin prepare for courtroom brawl originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Voyager 1 Bids Farewell to the Solar System
The Voyager 1 spacecraft will soon have a new territory to explore?interstellar space. Voyager chief scientist Ed Stone discusses whether the spacecraft will have a bumpy exit from the solar system, and the chances Voyager's golden record may someday be intercepted by an advanced space-faring civilization.
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Friday, June 22, 2012
'Brave' Expected To Rule Weekend Box Office
Experts predict animated film will hit #1 just as all 12 previous Pixar films have done.
By Ryan J. Downey
A scene from "Brave"
Photo:
By most accounts, "Brave" is expected to hit a box-office bull's-eye this weekend.
Industry watchers have predicted the latest from Disney/Pixar will continue the studio's tradition of claiming the top spot. All 12 previous Pixar films hit #1 in wide release. The 3-D animated story of a free-spirited Scottish princess possessed of major bow-and-arrow prowess is set to debut in an estimated 4,000 locations. "The goodwill people feel for Pixar gets it to $62 million this weekend, even in the face of middling reviews," IMDb's Keith Simanton told MTV News.
Jeff Bock, box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations, and HitFix.com co-founder/ editor in chief Gregory Ellwood predicted an opening in the $60 million range for "Brave" as well, although NextMovie.com editor Kevin Polowy put the movie's bow closer to $50 million. The Los Angeles Times estimated the movie's opening as high as $65 million.
Critics have been mostly kind to "Brave" thus far but have withheld the type of loving adoration reserved for the "Toy Story" movies. The consensus is that the movie is good, but not great in the way fans of the brand have come to expect. " 'Brave' Is No 'Incredibles' — but See the Latest Pixar Flick Anyway ...," was the headline for E! Online's review, which went on to say the movie "may not boast the pitch-perfect storytelling of 'Ratatouille' " but "it has belly laughs aplenty."
Nevertheless, a $60 million opening would be very strong. "That's similar to what 'Cars 2' and 'WALL-E' debuted with, which is nothing to sneeze at," Ellwood noted.
"Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" managed to hang on to the top spot against new movies from Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler (which both flopped) last weekend and could pose somewhat of a problem for Pixar. " 'Madagascar 3' is fast on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie in the series, has tremendous word-of-mouth and benefits from being a better-known and trusted brand than 'Brave,' despite the Pixar connection," Polowy pointed out.
Simanton, on the other hand, said "Brave" doesn't have much to worry about from last weekend's #1 movie. " 'Madagascar' benefited from having no competition for kids' money during its run, but it's winding down now. It likely makes $16 to $17M this weekend, but that won't directly harm 'Brave.' "
Bock predicted $17 million for "Madagascar 3" as well, which will make for an excellent three-week total for a kid-franchise threequel. Simanton placed much of the movie's success on its streamlined sense of purpose. "[It] went the same route as 'Ice Age 3,' almost dispensing with the need to continue to tell the story and heading instead to an almost purely comedic offering. The accountants would say that going for the laughs is good for the revenue stream. A parallel that I find interesting is 'Kung Fu Panda 2.' It opened better than 'Ice Age 3' with a higher per-theater average. However, it quickly suffered from its reviews and bad word-of-mouth. Things really changed when they hit the international stage: ['Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs'] made more internationally than 'Panda 2' made in total."
Where the third "Madagascar" movie goes straight for the laughs, the first-ever Pixar movie to feature a female protagonist at the center of the story is filled with action, swordplay, hulking bears and themes of tradition, honor and independence. "Pixar films aren't just family films, they reach out to every demographic, so having a film that is a bit more mature shouldn't affect business much," Bock said. "Female heroines have been hot, with 'Twilight,' 'The Hunger Games' and 'Snow White and the Huntsman.' It's just a surprise it's taken forward-thinking Pixar 12 films to give females a shot at headlining glory."
At times, "Brave" is much darker in tone than any previous Pixar movie. "It is much scarier than the standard Pixar offering and that will affect it," Simanton said, adding that he found the film to be better than "Cars 2" but not as good as "Wall-E." "Its comedic bits lack the Pixar touch. They're loud and clumsy and not very much in character," he said. As a result of all of these factors, he concluded, " 'Brave' won't likely have the same legs as other Pixar films in the coming weeks."
Whereas Pixar and the "Madagascar" franchise are well-known brands, the other big studio picture this weekend will likely suffer from a lack of awareness. Based on the book of the same name, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" is a mixture of action and horror that re-imagines the Civil War president as a stake-wielding badass.
" 'Lincoln' is looking at $20 million for the weekend," Ellwood predicted. "Considering the early buzz, that's face saving for 20th Century Fox."
"I think Fox would be fortunate if 'Abe' opened with $20+ million," agreed Bock. "Mash-ups are typically a difficult sell, and historical/horror has never had a hit that I'm aware of. This is probably the riskiest endeavor of the summer, and the fact that it looks more like a video game than a movie certainly doesn't help its cause."
"Director Timur Bekmambetov has gone up against Pixar before, when 2008's 'Wanted' opened against 'Wall-E' and held its own, grossing $50 million," Bock added. "But honestly, that had more to do with Angelina Jolie than anything else. With a cast of relative unknowns, 'Lincoln' may find itself without much public support."
Opening in more than 3,000 locations, "Lincoln" will need to match the $24 million collected by "Zombieland" in order to be considered a success, according to Simanton. "I'm putting it at $19 million, but it may be closer to $17 million," he said.
If "Lincoln" isn't a success, it could spell more trouble for "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," which has already had a rough road going from the page to the screen. Even with Lionsgate behind the film and Natalie Portman attached as producer, the project has already been through three directors since it was first announced.
"If 'Abe' outright bombs this weekend, ['Pride'] may just be dead," Bock said. "Even the undead know that's not a good thing. With an estimated budget of $70 million, 'Abe' isn't that big of risk for Fox, but they need more than just fanboys to convert the masses. Odds are this is headed more towards pennies than $5 bills, though, as this is the strangest-looking film to open since 'Howard the Duck.' And we know how that ended."
Simanton likened "Lincoln" to one of last week's bombs. "It falls into that nether realm occupied by 'Rock of Ages.' Guys were supposed to go to it but didn't. Those exit poll demographics will harm 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' if they don't skew towards the coveted 18-35 male."
Whether or not "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" does decent business this weekend shouldn't have any long-term effects for Steve Carell and his post-"Office" career. "It's a low-budget indie he shot that is being released semi-wide," Ellwood noted. "If it was a big studio release, it would be much more important."
"It's not a big studio film and isn't being presented as one in the marketing or [as] a film Carell is supposed to carry," agreed Simanton.
"Steve Carell is already a bona fide movie star. 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' solidified that," Bock added. " 'The Office' certainly helped bring him to the forefront, but he's so popular now, he can afford to take some risks. 'Seeking a Friend' probably won't be a huge hit, but it will definitely have its fans."
"If the guy survived the mega-budgeted bomb 'Evan Almighty,' he can survive anything," Polowy said.
Woody Allen's "To Rome With Love" will open in even fewer theaters than Carell's picture. Last year, Allen had his biggest success to date ($56.8 million domestically) with Sony Pictures Classic's "Midnight in Paris," which boasts a 93 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. This weekend's follow-up sat at 53 percent at press time.
"Woody Allen had the biggest gross of his career with 'Paris,' but as is the case with 'The Woodman,' for every amazing film he unspools, there are two or three misfires," Bock said."That's the risk you take making a movie every year as he has done. Nobody can churn out quality every time."
" 'Rome''s reviews have been unkind and that typically does handicap an Allen film," Simanton said. " 'Midnight''s immediate predecessor, 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' — which isn't all that bad, in my opinion — barely made $3.2 million domestically in its entire run."
Ellwood predicted that "Rome" will perform "closer to a traditional Allen movie" than "Paris," with somewhere between $5 million to $10 million domestically.
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
Related VideosThursday, June 21, 2012
Bizarre alien planets get cozy with each other
A duo of planets some 1,200 light years from earth have been spotted passing within 1.2 million miles of each other, closer than any other known pair of planets, a new study has found.?
An artist's conception shows the newfound alien planet Kepler-36c as it might look from the surface of Kepler-36b.
David Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
EnlargeIt is science fiction made fact: Astronomers have discovered two alien planets around the same star whose orbits come so close together that each rises in the night sky of its sister world like an exotic full moon.
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The newfound planets are 1,200 light-years from Earth and an unprecedented find, researchers said. They differ greatly in size and composition but come within just 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) of each other, closer than any other pair of planets known, according to a new study.
One of the newly discovered?alien planets, called Kepler-36b, appears to be a rocky "super-Earth" 4.5 times as massive as our planet. The other, Kepler-36c, is a gaseous, Neptune-size world about eight times as massive as Earth. The two planets meet up every 97 days in a conjunction that would make each dramatically visible in the other's sky.
?These two worlds are having close encounters,? said co-lead author Josh Carter, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a statement.
At their closest approach, the two planets are separated by five times the distance between the Earth and the moon. How such different bodies ended up in such similar orbits may be tough for current theories of?planet formation?and migration to explain, researchers said.
"This is unprecedented," co-lead author Eric Agol, of the University of Washington, told SPACE.com via email. "They are as different in density as Earth and Saturn (the highest and lowest density planets in our solar system), yet they are 30 times closer than any pair of planets in our solar system." [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
Strange neighbors
The two known planets in the Kepler-36 system ? which is located in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan) ? were detected by NASA's?Kepler Space Telescope.
Kepler is staring continuously at more than 150,000 stars, watching for telltale brightness dips caused when planets cross in front of the stars from the telescope's perspective. Since its March 2009 launch, Kepler has flagged more than 2,300 potential alien planets; while only a small fraction have been confirmed to date, mission scientists think more than 80 percent of them will end up being the real deal.
Kepler-36c, which is about 3.7 times wider than Earth, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial atmosphere filled with lots of hydrogen and helium, researchers said.
Kepler-36b, on the other hand, is a?super-Earth?just 1.5 times wider than our planet. Iron likely constitutes about 30 percent of its mass, water around 15 percent and atmospheric hydrogen and helium less than 1 percent, researchers said.
Though they're very different in size and makeup, the two planets travel on surprisingly similar paths around their host star. Kepler-36c orbits once every 16 days, at an average distance of 12 million miles (19 million km). Kepler-36b orbits each 14 days and sits about 11 million miles (18 million km) from the star.
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US 'encouraged' by Europe's plan to stem crisis
LOS CABOS, Mexico (AP) ? Seeking to sooth global economic fears, U.S. officials said they were encouraged that European leaders appeared ready to undertake a more forceful response to the continent's crippling debt crisis while still focusing on much-needed growth.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking Tuesday at the close of the Group of 20 summit, said Europe was nearing key decisions aimed at stabilizing the eurozone. Those steps, he said, include a stronger framework to strengthen the continent's financial system and helping countries like Spain and Italy borrow at sustainable interest rates.
"We're encouraged by what we heard from the European leaders today and by the broad focus around the world we're seeing to the need to strengthen economic growth," Geithner said.
Geithner spoke following President Barack Obama's private meeting Tuesday with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the European Union. The continent's leaders were to outline the specifics of their plans during a summit in Brussels next week, a meeting Geithner called "critical."
A senior U.S. official said Europe would offer a "more forceful response" than they have contemplated to date during the Brussels summit. The Obama official said the European strategy will be based around building more viable financial institutions over time but also economic growth measures in the short term, a step Obama has been urging for some time.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to characterize private talks without trumping the formal comments of leaders.
While Obama, as leader of the giant but struggling U.S. economy, is central to the Europe talks, it is the continent's leaders, led by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who carry both the power and responsibility to stabilize a eurozone reeling from debt, banking and political problems.
Obama immersed himself in the economic talks Tuesday before meeting separately with Chinese President Hu Jintao and holding a news conference. He was to be back in Washington by the early hours of Wednesday, where a fierce re-election campaign and a slumping U.S. jobs market await him.
The leaders gathered on the Mexican coast seemed intent on sending the right signals to jittery markets and unhappy electorates. Merkel told reporters Tuesday that the European leaders present made a unified statement that they were willing to tackle their problems.
Still, European leaders were showing flashes that they have heard enough about their troubles, particularly from Americans.
"The eurozone has a serious problem, but it is certainly not the only imbalance in the world economy," Italian Prime Minster Mario Monti said Tuesday. He said the United States' own problems were mentioned in G-20 talks "by almost everybody, including President Obama."
Central to the G-20 debate is how nations can boost jobs and consumer demand without sinking deeper into debt. Obama has implored governments to spend and grow, not just cut.
Obama sent some upbeat signals during the summit amid a sense of global relief that Greece, based on new elections, would not renege on its bailout terms and ditch the euro currency.
Europe's ability to turn around its fortunes fast will have direct bearing on whether Obama wins a second term. The bigger the drag from abroad, the harder the job growth in the United States.
Obama said all countries must "make sure that we're contributing so that the economy grows, the situation stabilizes, confidence returns to the markets."
Although the foreign gatherings allow Obama to show off statesmanship, every day spent away from the U.S. and a direct focus on jobs in America quietly gives headaches to his campaign aides. While Obama was in Mexico, his Republican competitor, Mitt Romney, was campaigning in the American heartland, trying to pull Michigan from Obama's column.
__
Associated Press writer Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.
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The Brave New World (of Health Insurance Exchanges) | The Health ...
New York Times reporter Abby Goodnough?s piece last week about the health insurance exchange in Massachusetts is instructive?especially since other states are trying to set up their own versions of these shopping bazaars where the uninsured can buy coverage if the health reform law eventually takes effect. For the last three years we have been suggesting there?s an untold story in the Bay State about how the law is working, so we were glad to see Goodnough?s reporting and offer a tip of the hat.
Goodnough gets into the subject with a success story: the tale of Peter Kim, who lost his employer-sponsored health insurance in 2005 when he opted for a career as an independent consultant. He found that shopping for insurance in the open market was a complicated affair, and that most plans were too expensive. He eventually chose coverage for catastrophic illness.
Then he discovered his state?s health insurance exchange, called the Connector. After just an hour of research, he found a plan with a monthly premium of only $1,086, a better deal than the coverage he previously had. And ideally, that?s how exchanges should work, Goodnough said.
The trouble, she reports, is that so far the Connector has not drawn enough full-paying customers like Peter Kim.
As Goodnough notes, the exchanges have drawn little journalistic scrutiny so far, despite their key place in health reform. (And, we note, despite the fact that they grew out of initiatives backed by former Massachusetts governor and current presidential candidate Mitt Romney.)
If the Supreme Court upholds President Obama?s federal health care law in a decision expected this month, proponents say that exchanges will be a crucial tool for extending insurance to most Americans. Debate over the law has centered on the individual mandate, the lightning-rod provision that requires most Americans to have health insurance by 2014.
But once the court decides whether the law is constitutional, the focus could shift to exchanges.
Goodnough makes three major points that journalists should keep in mind and be prepared to investigate should they do similar stories.
1. For the exchanges to work properly, there needs to be lots of customers like Kim who pay the full price for their coverage, in order to help offset the cost of providing subsidies to those who can?t afford the premiums. The Massachusetts Connector has attracted only half the available pool of full-paying customers in the individual market. Instead, 82 percent of Massachusetts residents in the exchange qualify for state or federal subsidies, and pay only a modest premium or none at all. That, Goodnough notes, ?is precisely what many opponents of exchanges fear, that instead of a free marketplace they will become something resembling an extensive public welfare program.?
Small businesses, which could pay the full premiums the exchange needs, have been slow to sign up their workers for insurance through the Connector, largely because the costs of coverage are too high. About 1,700 small businesses insure only 4,230 people so far?what the Times called ?only a minute fraction of that market.?
2. Customers who do pay full price in the exchange are buying the low-cost bronze plans that offer less coverage in return for a lower price. In fact, 52 percent are choosing these policies?up from 42 percent in 2009, when I went to Massachusetts to check on how well the state?s law was working. The problem: these plans have high deductibles, the Times reported?as much as $4,000 per family, and maximum out-of-pocket costs ?meaning that people who get sick often end up paying a lot.?
?We are growing increasingly concerned about high-deductible plans that seem like a short-term solution to folks,? explained Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, the director of the advocacy group, Health Care For All, a big supporter of the Massachusetts law. ?We spend a tremendous amount of time helping people understand what risk they?re taking,? Whitcomb Slemmer said. But his kind of coverage is fast becoming part of the brave new world of health insurance, and will continue whether or not the Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act.
3. In insurance, every action seems to generate an equal and opposite reaction, and Goodnough identified an important one. To attract low-cost insurers to the subsidized program?in order to reduce the cost of the subsidies?the state has limited the choice for people who pay no premiums to the two lowest-cost carriers, rewarding those companies by sending a lot of new customers to them.
The insurers in turn have responded by restricting which doctors and hospitals policyholders can choose. Those limitations are controversial, Goodnough reported. She quotes Glen Shor, the Connector?s director, defending these arrangements as ?the kind of cost-saving innovation that exchanges are well-positioned to bring about by promoting competition in the market.?
It seems to me the press needs to explore this assertion, as well as the warning from Nancy Turnbull, an associate dean at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the architects of the Massachusetts reform law. Said Turnbull: ?For the exchange to continue to be a big purchaser and have market clout, we?re going to need to be successful at adding more small employers and potentially other populations.?
So far, Goodnough reports, about ?15 states and the District of Columbia have established exchanges, with California and Maryland among the furthest in their planning.? Other states are watching and waiting. More good reporting on the pluses and minuses of these mechanisms seems like a useful idea.
Trudy Lieberman, a journalist for more than 40 years, had a long career at Consumer Reports specializing in insurance, health care, health care financing and long-term care. She contributes to the Columbia Journalism Review where this post first appeared.
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House Democrats overtake Republicans in May fundraising
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Antitoxin strategy may help target other pathogens
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) ? Researchers have unveiled a novel strategy for neutralizing unwanted molecules and clearing them from the body.
The strategy employs chains of binding agents, like "beads on a string," which target two sites on one or more pathogenic molecules to neutralize their activity and promote their clearance by the body's immune system. The low-cost, easy-to-replicate tool has demonstrated applications against several different toxins, from those found in contaminated food to those used in bioterrorism, and may also prove effective in targeting other types of pathogens.
The research team, based at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, demonstrated the method's efficacy in preventing the symptoms of botulism, a rare but deadly disease caused by Clostridium botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), considered one of the most dangerous bioterror threat agents. The findings were presented earlier this year in PLoS ONE.
"Currently, antitoxins are difficult to produce and have a short shelf life, making them very expensive. This new approach provides a low-cost way to develop highly effective antitoxins," said senior author Charles B. Shoemaker, PhD, professor of biomedical sciences at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.
"This method has the potential to target a number of pathogens -- not only toxins such as BoNT, but viruses or inflammatory cytokines. It is an important platform through which to address other significant diseases," says co-author Saul Tzipori, BVSc., DSc, PhD, professor of biomedical sciences and director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Cummings School.
Shoemaker and team had earlier found that pools of small 'tagged' binding agents were highly effective in targeting toxins, neutralizing their function, and flagging them for removal via the body's immune system in the presence of an anti-tag monoclonal antibody.
In the newly published in vivo study, the researchers have advanced this approach by linking two BoNT-binding agents together and including two copies of the tag. The binding agents are small, stable proteins derived genetically from unusual antibodies produced by toxin-immune alpacas. The resulting molecule, called a 'double-tagged heterodimer,' binds to two separate sites on the toxin. Binding of this single heterodimeric agent much more effectively neutralizes the toxin than the unlinked monomer binding agents used in the prior research. In addition, attaching two tags to each of the two linked agents leads to toxin decoration by up to four anti-tag monoclonal antibodies, which promotes rapid toxin clearance from the blood, the researchers found.
The double-tagged heterodimer antitoxin agent strategy was shown to be efficacious against two types of BoNT in the PLoS ONE report. The antitoxin agents were administered at the time of exposure, or shortly after. Treated mice did not show any symptoms of botulism -- including the lethal paralysis which characterizes the disease, even when exposed to high toxin doses. Thus, the benefits of complex antitoxins were equaled or bettered by administration of two easy-to-produce agents; a heterodimer binding agent and an anti-tag monoclonal antibody.
According to Shoemaker, a major advantage of this approach is that, unlike treatments that only neutralize toxins, this treatment both neutralizes toxins and ensures their rapid clearance from the body. "Agents that only neutralize their pathogenic target will eventually dissociate which will allow the pathogen to continue doing damage if it is not eliminated," he said.
The group has now successfully taken the research further by building longer strings of binding agents that target multiple toxins with a single molecule -- for example, the two types of Shiga toxins that are produced by some E. coli found in contaminated foods or the two toxins produced by hospital-acquired C. difficile infections.
The work was funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Intramural Research Program of the NIAID.
Additional authors on the paper are co-first authors Jean Mukherjee and Jacqueline M. Tremblay; and Kwasi Ofori, Karen Baldwin, Xiochuan Feng, all in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, and Daniela Bedenice of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Cummings School. Clinton E. Leysath, of the NIAID, and Robert P. Webb, Patrick M. Wright, and Leonard A. Smith, all of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, also contributed.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Tufts University, via Newswise.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Jean Mukherjee, Jacqueline M. Tremblay, Clinton E. Leysath, Kwasi Ofori, Karen Baldwin, Xiaochuan Feng, Daniela Bedenice, Robert P. Webb, Patrick M. Wright, Leonard A. Smith, Saul Tzipori, Charles B. Shoemaker. A Novel Strategy for Development of Recombinant Antitoxin Therapeutics Tested in a Mouse Botulism Model. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (1): e29941 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029941
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Calls: Zimmerman told wife to buy bulletproof vest
FILE - This file booking photo provided by the Seminole County Sheriff's Office shows George Zimmerman. Statements Zimmerman made to detectives after he fatally shot Trayvon Martin can be released to the public, a judge ruled Wednesday, June 13, 2012. But Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester said that the identities of witnesses who observed the fatal confrontation in February between the former neighborhood watch leader and the 17-year-old Martin can stay private, provided the witnesses haven't been identified previously. (AP Photo/Seminole County Sheriff's Office, File)
FILE - This file booking photo provided by the Seminole County Sheriff's Office shows George Zimmerman. Statements Zimmerman made to detectives after he fatally shot Trayvon Martin can be released to the public, a judge ruled Wednesday, June 13, 2012. But Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester said that the identities of witnesses who observed the fatal confrontation in February between the former neighborhood watch leader and the 17-year-old Martin can stay private, provided the witnesses haven't been identified previously. (AP Photo/Seminole County Sheriff's Office, File)
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) ? The former neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin told his wife to buy bulletproof vests for them and for his attorney, according to jailhouse calls released Monday.
"As uncomfortable as it is, I want you wearing one," George Zimmerman told his wife. Zimmerman was wearing a bulletproof vest when he left jail after posting bond. His attorney, Mark O'Mara, has reported receiving threats.
The calls, released by prosecutors, also detail how Zimmerman instructed his wife to transfer money from bank accounts and could play a crucial role in his second bond hearing next week.
Zimmerman was released on $150,000 bond in April, several days after the calls took place. At his bond hearing, his wife, Shellie, testified that she didn't know how much money had been raised from a website created for his legal defense. She also testified that they had limited funds because she was in school full time and Zimmerman wasn't working.
Prosecutors say the calls show George and Shellie Zimmerman knew that roughly $135,000 had been raised by the site.
Shellie Zimmerman was arrested last week on a charge of making a false statement. George Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty, claiming self-defense during the confrontation with the 17-year-old teen in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. The case sparked protests across the country when George Zimmerman wasn't arrested at first and led to nationwide debate over race and self-defense laws.
In one call, Zimmerman tells his wife and sister how to change a computer password at a credit union so they can move funds around.
In another call, Shellie Zimmerman said that money raised from the website was also being used to pay off bills. The couple also talked about how they would whisk Zimmerman away from the Seminole County Jail once he was released in April, and discussed using a rental car to drive to a hotel parking garage. There, they would change into another rental car to throw off anybody who tried to follow him.
Shellie Zimmerman told her husband that the website had crashed because of supporters leaving words of support, as well as donations.
"Wow, that is awesome," Zimmerman said. "Those people need to start vocalizing themselves."
Prosecutors originally had planned to release 151 of Zimmerman's jailhouse calls, but O'Mara objected. A hearing over their release is set at the same time as Zimmerman's bond hearing next week.
"It is our contention that the calls are not only irrelevant to the charges against Mr. Zimmerman, but they could jeopardize friends and family of Mr. Zimmerman who are unrelated to the case," O'Mara said on a website for Zimmerman's legal defense.
___
Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
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All Gen Gamers Podcast: Episode 97 | Gamester 81
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Day one of E3 2012 has started. Jason, MetalJesus, and John discuss games, press conferences, and news coming out of the convention so far. Of course we also fit in Rock Talk and Gaming Piece Theater to round things out this week.
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About Gamester81
John "Gamester81" Lester started playing video games at a very young age. His first ever console that he played was a Colecovision, quickly followed by an Atari 2600, and his passion for video games hasn't stopped. In 2008 John decided to start a video game review show on YouTube called Gamester81 by reviewing rare and retro video game systems and games. His show quickly grew in popularity, and he became friends with many other gamers in the YouTube community. He is also one of the hosts of the All Gen Gamers Podcast which is a weekly podcast for for people and video games of all generations. Some of John's other hobbies includes collecting Star Wars memorabilia (YouTube channel Starwarsnut77), playing classic arcade games (YouTube channel Gamester81Arcade), watching sports, and listening to music. John is a big fan of the 80's and 90's and in 2009 started a YouTube channel called NEStalgiaholic where he talks about nostalgic items and memories from his childhood. To see some of John's video's in 3D visit his YouTube channel Gamester81in3D. Favorite Systems: Colecovision, Commodore 64, NES, & SNES. Favorite Games: Donkey Kong Arcade, Atari Star Wars Arcade, Super Mario 3, Final Fantasy II, & Goldeneye 007channel 2 news adrienne bailon yelp stock honda classic news channel 5 nashville weather jason varitek
Monday, June 18, 2012
Divided Greece "risks social explosion"
ATHENS (Reuters) - Pro-bailout party New Democracy may have come first in Sunday's Greek election but the radical left anti-austerity SYRIZA bloc was celebrating like the real winner well into the warm Athens night.
The election exposed a struggling nation deeply divided over whether to implement a harsh austerity package, the price for receiving a total of 240 billion euros in bailout money from the European Union and IMF to save its near-bankrupt economy.
"My biggest fear is of a social explosion," said a senior adviser to the country's likely next prime minister, New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras.
"If there is no change in the policy mix, we're going to have a social explosion even if you bring Jesus Christ to govern this country."
According to official figures with 99.9 percent of the votes counted, Samaras's conservative New Democracy party won just 29.7 percent of the vote, only 2.7 percentage points more than SYRIZA, which almost doubled its support from the previous election held on May 6.
When the votes for Greece's other anti-bailout parties, ranging from the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn to the Marxist-Leninist KKE, are added to SYRIZA's tally, up to 52 percent of Greeks cast ballots against the terms of the international deal.
New Democracy supporters had initially slumped despairing in their seats at the party's plush new headquarters as exit polls showed less than half a percentage point separating them from SYRIZA, only to cheer up as official results showing a better performance trickled in.
Even then, celebrations were muted. "What is there for us to celebrate ?" a member of Samaras's inner circle said. "Our country is in such a deep crisis."
The streets of central Athens are scarred with repeated waves of protests, some hospitals are running short of vital medicines, thousands of businesses have closed, beggars and rough sleepers are multiplying and suicides are rising.
New Democracy's Samaras now faces the awkward task of convincing the centre-left PASOK movement to join a coalition charged with implementing highly unpopular spending cuts and privatizations, while the economy nosedives.
Under the terms of the international bailout, the new government must fire up to 150,000 civil servants, slash spending by 11 billion euros this month, sell off a swathe of state-owned companies, improve tax collection and open closed professions to competition.
Once Greece's ruling party, PASOK's support collapsed to just 12.3 percent in Sunday's vote, giving the two pro-bailout parties just 40 percent of the popular vote, not a strong mandate for austerity.
A PASOK-New Democracy coalition is guaranteed a parliamentary majority thanks to a quirk of Greek electoral law which gives the winning party a bonus of 50 extra seats. But that will not win it the argument on Greece's streets.
The Greek economy is expected to shrink by 5 percent this year after contracting 7 percent last year and unemployment is running at almost 23 percent. Many economists believe that the harsh austerity measures will only make matters worse in the short term.
Ominously, PASOK's first reaction to the results was to say it would support a new Samaras administration but not formally join it, hardly a recipe for stable government in a country which has had two elections in less than two months.
PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos has previously said he would only formally join a coalition if SYRIZA did so as well, something which is politically impossible, given the radical left bloc's unstinting opposition to the austerity measures.
Greek analysts noted that SYRIZA's charismatic 37-year-old leader, former student communist Alexis Tsipras, conceded defeat quickly in a phone call to Samaras, apparently relieved he was free of the pressure to form a government and make compromises.
"From Monday we will continue the fight," Tsipras told cheering supporters in an open-air square outside Athens university. "...the next government after this one will be a left government."
"We will fight to topple these policies," the youthful crowd chanted back as loudspeakers played World War Two Greek Communist resistance songs.
Filippos Nikolopoulos, a sociology professor at Crete University and SYRIZA supporter, said that Tsipras's fans were jubilant because they had won new force and authority by increasing their share of the vote so much on Sunday.
"We want Europe, we want to cooperate," he said. "But we do not want to be subjugated by (German Chancellor) Mrs Merkel."
Stathis Stavropoulos, a newspaper cartoonist famous for his drawings depicting German officials preaching austerity at Greece as Nazi taskmasters, said the new conservative government would have the people of Greece against it from the outset.
"Our dream of European union was very different," he told Reuters. "It was a union of countries and peoples, not a union to serve banks and not a Fourth German Reich."
Using the term for a Nazi regional leader under Hitler's Reich, Stavropoulos added: "Our country is under occupation. How would you feel if they sent a Gauleiter to run your country and tell you what to do ?"
The cartoonist said he had nothing against the German people or other European nations. Indeed, he had never visited Berlin, Paris or London -- but was familiar with Moscow, Beijing and Nicaragua from his Communist activities. "The Soviet Union may have ended but not the dream of democratic communism," he sighed wistfully.
(Editing by Anna Willard)
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Summit lets Obama, Putin size up the competition
SAN JOSE DEL CABO, Mexico (AP) ? President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin need one another, an uncomfortable truth for the superpower leader facing a tough re-election and the newly elected Russian leader who is deeply suspicious of the United States.
The two men will use their meeting Monday, the first since Putin returned to Russia's top job, to claim leverage. Much of the rest of the Group of 20 economic meeting will be devoted to the European fiscal crisis and the fate of Greece as a part of the euro zone.
"I expect that it will be a candid discussion, it will get down to business," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said ahead of the lengthy morning meeting between Obama and Putin.
"We'll be able to sustain cooperation in some areas, we'll have differences in other areas, and we'll work to try to bridge those differences."
The G-20 gathering is a natural forum for sideline discussions of the urgent crisis in Syria as well as diplomatic efforts to head off a confrontation with Iran. Russia is a linchpin in world efforts to resolve both crises, and to U.S. goals for the smooth shutdown of the war in Afghanistan. In the longer term, Obama wants Russia's continued cooperation in nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
Obama made a special project of Russia in his first term and arguably needs Moscow's help even more if he wins a second one. He is trying to avoid a distracting public spat with Russia during this election year, as suggested by an overheard remark to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in March. Obama told Medvedev he would have more flexibility to answer Russian complaints about a U.S.-built missile defense shield in Europe after the November election.
Things got off to a rocky start with Putin, when Obama pointedly withheld a customary congratulatory phone call to Putin until days after his May election. Putin appeared to snub Obama by skipping the smaller and weightier Group of Eight meeting that Obama hosted later that month at Camp David, and a planned Oval Office welcome for the new Russian leader.
The rescheduled Obama-Putin meeting comes the same day as Moscow hosts an international negotiating session with Iran. Russia has gone along with U.N. Security Council efforts to tighten some penalties against Iran because of questions about its nuclear weapons ambitions, but has blocked the harshest punishments. Still, the United States needs Russia's participation to lend legitimacy to the argument that Iran faces broad international condemnation. Iran usually paints the dispute over its nuclear program as a confrontation with the U.S. and its ally Israel.
Brutal attacks on anti-government protesters in Syria and the threat of civil war in the Mideast nation pose the most immediate crisis.
Diplomatic hopes have rested on Washington and Moscow agreeing on a transition plan that would end the four-decade Assad family rule. Russia, as Syria's longtime ally and trading partner, is seen as the best broker for a deal that could give Assad political refuge. So far, Moscow has said no.
Pressure increased on Russia over the weekend, when the United Nations suspended its unarmed monitoring mission in Syria out of concern for the monitors' safety. The move was widely interpreted as a challenge to Russia to intervene with Syrian President Bashar Assad to preserve a U.N. role Moscow sees as a brake on any armed foreign intervention.
The United States has refused to arm anti-Assad rebels in part to avoid a proxy fight in which Iran and Russia and others arm one side and the U.S. and Sunni Arab states arm the other. Opposition groups estimate 14,000 people have died in violence that the U.S. fears is sliding into civil war.
Putin's campaign included some of the strongest anti-American rhetoric from Moscow in a decade and he openly accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of inciting protests against him. The Obama administration mostly tried to shrug it off, but Putin's return to the presidency makes it more likely that any help Russia provides in Syria, Iran or other matters will come at a cost.
U.S. strategy has favored flattery that may overstate Russia's influence, especially on Syria, and efforts to highlight areas where U.S. and Russian goals align.
Russia's membership in numerous world bodies and its veto power at the U.N. Security Council give it leverage beyond its economic or military power. Obama holds far greater power and both leaders know it, but Putin can be a spoiler and irritant.
"President Putin clearly is somebody who can articulate where he has differences with the United States, but we can also articulate where we have differences with Russia," Rhodes said. "And I think our assessment is that being candid with one another and clear with one another is in the best interest of the relationship. So because the relationship between the United States and Russia is in our interest, it's in Russia's interest, but also it's in the interest of the world community, because when we can work together on issues, again, it opens up the door to much better progress, whether you're talking about nonproliferation and nuclear security, whether you're talking about resolving regional tensions as in Syrian, or whether you're talking about the global economy."
The White House tried to soften the blow of Clinton's accusation days before the G-20 meeting that Russia was equipping the Syrian government with attack helicopters that could bused against civilians. She later acknowledged they were only helicopters already owned by Syria that had been sent back to Russia for repairs, but Russia was already annoyed.
Russia insists that any arms it supplies to Syria are not being used to quell anti-government dissent that began more than a year ago, and has rebuffed efforts to impose an international arms embargo. Russia and Syria have a longstanding military relationship and Syria hosts Russia's only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea.
White House press secretary Jay Carney brushed aside questions last week about whether the U.S. might yank support for Russia's membership in World Trade Organization if Russia refuses to help on Syria. He underscored that the U.S. supports that core Russian goal, which will be a centerpiece of the talks.
"Putin is in a petulant sort of mood," said Russia scholar Mark N. Katz of George Mason University. "He's got all these grievances about American foreign policy and he's looking for us to satisfy him, and I don't think we're going to do that. No amount of bonhomie or talking nicely is going to fix that."
The Pew Research Center's newly released global public opinion survey gives Putin job approval ratings Obama can only dream of. About 72 percent of Russians have a favorable opinion of Putin, and a majority put more faith in a strong leader than in a democratic form of government. Nearly three-quarters of those polled said Russia deserves greater respect from other countries.
Despite that footing, tens of thousands of protesters thronged Moscow streets this past week in the first mass protest against Putin since he returned to the presidency in May. His tactics in cracking down on political opponents will make it difficult for Obama to play down longstanding U.S. complaints about human rights abuses that infuriate Russian leaders. The Kremlin ordered the detention and interrogation of at least one activist and searches of others' homes last week.
Putin's own return to the presidency was far more certain than Obama's re-election chances. Despite their differences, Putin probably would prefer a second Obama term to a Mitt Romney presidency, Katz said, not least because the Republican challenger has called Russia the chief strategic enemy of the United States.
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