CA-NEWS Summary

Bomb outside Sunni mosque kills six in Iraqi capital

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed a Sunni cleric and five worshippers when they left a mosque in Bagdhad after Friday prayers, police and medics said, as regional sectarian violence threatens to return Iraq to all-out conflict. Iraq has become increasingly volatile as the civil war in neighboring Syria strains volatile relations between Sunnis and Shi'ites. April saw the most killings since 2008, but was below the height of sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07.

Government support dips as Spaniards tire of crisis, corruption

MADRID (Reuters) - Public support for Spain's ruling center-right party has slipped following a high-level corruption scandal and ongoing recession, and Spaniards remain pessimistic about the political and economic outlook, a poll showed on Friday. Half of Spaniards consider the political situation to be "very bad" and ranked corruption as Spain's number two problem behind unemployment, according to a survey by the state-owned Sociological Investigations Centre (CIS), carried out in April.

U.S. military plane crashes in southern Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK (Reuters) - A U.S. military refueling plane on its way to Afghanistan exploded in mid air and crashed in Kyrgyzstan on Friday when its cargo of fuel ignited, the Central Asian country's Emergencies Ministry said. The aircraft took off from the U.S. military transit center at Kyrgyzstan's international Manas airport, which U.S. forces maintain for operations in Afghanistan, with around 70 metric tons of fuel on board, a local ministry official said.

U.S. names veteran diplomat Dobbins as new envoy to Afghanistan/Pakistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has appointed veteran U.S. diplomat James Dobbins as Washington's new special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said on Friday. Dobbins, head of international security and defense at the RAND National Defense Research Institute and a former senior U.S. diplomat, will replace Marc Grossman as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Gunmen in standoff with Libyan army at Tripoli protest

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The Libyan army was deployed to Tripoli's main square on Friday to guard a pro-government rally and became involved in an uneasy standoff with anti-government gunmen. The pro-government protesters were rallying against groups of gunmen who have taken control of two ministries in the capital.

Venezuela's Maduro says Colombia's Uribe plotting to kill him

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday said Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe was plotting to kill him, adding to a deluge of accusations by the former bus driver in recent months. "Uribe is behind a plot to kill me," Maduro said in a televised speech. "Uribe is a killer. I have enough evidence of who is conspiring, and there are sectors of the Venezuelan right that are involved."

Egyptian billionaire Sawiris returns home to warm welcome

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris returned home on Friday, ending a self-imposed exile that began after the election of President Mohamed Mursi last year, and was warmly welcomed by a government grappling with an economic crisis. Sawiris, one of Egypt's most prominent Coptic Christians and a critic of Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood, was greeted at Cairo airport by an envoy of the Islamist president who presented him with flowers.

Somalia's security forces hamstrung by corruption, infiltrators

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's security forces need rebuilding to cement gains made by foreign troops against Islamist militants, but how to pay and arm recruits, tackle corruption and prevent rebels infiltrating their ranks remain hurdles for the cash-strapped government. Proving the dire state of the Somali forces, when Islamist gunmen attacked a court in Mogadishu in April, police said they couldn't tell who was friend or foe, while members of the force say a $100-a-month salary is not enough to inspire loyalty.

Cuba says will consider U.N. and Red Cross visits

GENEVA (Reuters) - Cuba said on Friday it would consider letting in U.N. human rights investigators to examine allegations of torture and repression and allowing Red Cross officials access its prisons after a gap of nearly 25 years. Dissidents say security forces round up opponents of the Communist country for short-term detention and some are mistreated. Cuban officials deny allegations of arbitrary detention or torture.

Anti-EU party shakes British PM's Conservatives in local vote

LONDON (Reuters) - The anti-European Union UK Independence Party made sweeping gains in local elections, siphoning support from British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives in a vote that exposed a threat to his re-election chances in 2015. UKIP, in results released on Friday, secured almost one in every four votes cast on Thursday in council elections in mostly English rural areas that have traditionally been Conservative strongholds, rattling all Britain's three main parties as voters switched to the populist group.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-news-summary-001725784.html

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Bodies of 2 US crew found at Kyrgyzstan crash site

A Kyrgyz policeman investigates a U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft wreckage as a local citizen speaks to The Associated Press photographer on a field near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kms) west of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Friday, May 3, 2013. The emergencies ministry in Kyrgyzstan says a US military plane has crashed in the country. Kyrgyzstan hosts a US base that is used for troops transiting into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

A Kyrgyz policeman investigates a U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft wreckage as a local citizen speaks to The Associated Press photographer on a field near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kms) west of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Friday, May 3, 2013. The emergencies ministry in Kyrgyzstan says a US military plane has crashed in the country. Kyrgyzstan hosts a US base that is used for troops transiting into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

Smoldering wreckage from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft wreckage is strewn across a field near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kms) west of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Friday, May 3, 2013. The emergencies ministry in Kyrgyzstan says a US military plane has crashed in the country. Kyrgyzstan hosts a US base that is used for troops transiting into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

Map locates Kyrgyzstan crash

Wreckage from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft wreckage is strewn across a field near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kms) west of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Friday, May 3, 2013. The emergencies ministry in Kyrgyzstan says a US military plane has crashed in the country. Kyrgyzstan hosts a US base that is used for troops transiting into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

Kyrgyz people look at the wreckage from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft wreckage is strewn across a field near the village of Chaldovar, about 100 miles (160 kms) west of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Friday, May 3, 2013. The emergencies ministry in Kyrgyzstan says a US military plane has crashed in the country. Kyrgyzstan hosts a US base that is used for troops transiting into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight. (AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin)

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) ? Search teams on Saturday found the bodies of two American crew members near where their military refueling plane crashed in the rugged mountains of Kyrgyzstan, while the third crew member was still missing, the emergencies minister of the Central Asian nation said.

The KC-135 plane crashed Friday afternoon about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the air base that the U.S. operates in Kyrgyzstan to support military operations in Afghanistan.

Officials at the U.S. Transit Center at the Manas base have released no information yet on the cause of the crash and could not immediately be reached on Saturday for any further information.

Emergencies Minister Kubatbek Boronov told The Associated Press that Kyrgyz search teams found the two fragmented bodies Saturday morning and they have not yet been identified. He said the Kyrgyz rescuers were working with U.S. military personnel from Manas to search for the third crewman and the flight recorders.

Dozens of U.S. military personnel scoured the area on Saturday and set up a security cordon around the crash site.

Parts of the plane were scattered across a wide area near the village of Chaldovar. Some pieces, including the tail, came down in a grassy valley bordered by steep mountains, but others landed in spots much more difficult for search teams to reach.

Residents of the rural, sheep-herding region described hearing the plane explode in the air and seeing it break apart as it fell.

"I heard a very loud explosion," Emil Bokochev, a member of the village council, told an AP reporter at the site. "Literally six or seven seconds afterward there was another explosion and the plane broke apart into four or five pieces and at that moment we thought it was going to fall on the village Chaldovar."

The plane was on a refueling mission for Afghanistan war operations at the time of the crash, a U.S. defense official in Washington said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the details of an ongoing investigation.

The U.S. base, which is adjacent to Manas International Airport outside Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, was established in late 2001 to support the international military campaign in Afghanistan. It functions as an interim point for troops going into or out of Afghanistan and as a home for the tanker planes that refuel warplanes in flight.

The Manas base has been the subject of a contentious dispute between the United States and its host nation.

In 2009, the U.S. reached an agreement with the Kyrgyz government to use it in return for $60 million a year. But the lease runs out in June 2014, and the U.S. wants to keep the base longer to aid in the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan is reluctant to extend the lease.

_____

AP writers Dalton Bennett in Chaldovar, Kyrgyzstan, and Robert Burns in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-04-AS-Kyrgyzstan-US-Plane-Crash/id-e8cc185e10a34a2ab7780c9d082ca95f

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Tiptop Speakers Launches On Kickstarter To Take Advantage Of Your Room's Natural Acoustics

Look over to one of the upper corners of the room you?re in. What?s there? If you?re like me, probably nothing. Three Stanford product design majors are building a speaker to take advantage of the wasted space and natural acoustics of the corners of your room. The Tiptop speaker is a small pyramid that can stand alone or fits into a mold made for the upper corners of a room.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/75uvc8yFPRI/

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Commuting Is No Sweat on These Swanky E-Bikes

With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon and what seems an entire generation shunning automobiles, it's no wonder that bike commuting has seen such a resurgence in recent years. But for all the physical and environmental benefits riding imparts, it nevertheless leaves you a hot, sweaty mess. That is, of course, unless you get your bike to do the pedaling for you.

A2B bikes is the American arm of the HERO Eco Group, which has been making electric bikes for Indian and European markets since the turn of the century. The A2B lineup boasts five models with a variety of pedal assist and throttle options to minimize commuting effort. I recently took a ride on four of the models at A2B's showroom in downtown San Francisco.

Shima

The Shima's 500W wheel-hub propulsion system provides a roughly 37 mile range per 5 hour charge of its 36v 13.2ah Lithium-ion battery. That battery slides in and out under the rear deck and can be locked in place when you park. Three levels of pedal assist?economy, standard, and speed racer?provide up to 35 Nm of torque and propels the rider to speeds approaching 30 MPH. It's 7-speed Shimano gear set is relatively short and with the pedal assist at max, I routinely beat traffic off the line and passed other riders with ease. It felt like I was perpetually riding downhill. The Shima retails for $3,800.

All of the models include integrated head and tail lights and are all currently available.

Alva

The Alva is another pedal assist model, designed for comfort where the Shima was built for speed. Its 36v, 13.2ah Lithium-ion battery drives a 450W brushless hub motor to reach speeds of 20 MPH and a range of 20 miles. While the Shima's pedal assist was powerful enough to get off the line without too much trouble, the Alva takes a more on-demand approach. Located just under the bell on the left handlebar, there's a rocker switch that manually engages the motor without requiring you to push off or pedal start. That way you get a little bit of speed going before you start pedaling and eliminates the need to huff and puff through the first two gears. The Alva will set you back a $4,000.

Alva +

The Alva+ takes the features that made the Alva so popular in Europe and recalibrates them for lazy Americans. It offers pedal assist like its predecessor but upgrades the start button into a full-on throttle integrated into the right handlebar so you'll never have to pedal through the low gears. The Alva+ tops out at about 20 MPH under just throttle power but when you start pedalling as well, you can reach about 24 MPH, easily keep pace with city traffic over the bike's 37 mile range. The key fob security system?needed to turn on or adjust the power assist level?is ingenious as the A+ weighs a 66 pounds and challenging to ride without it. They may take your bike, but they won't get more than a few blocks with it. The Alva+ costs $4,000 as well.

Octave

Kyle Langdon, A2B's Business Operations Manager, described the Octave as the Escalade of E-Bikes. The man does not lie, the Octave is downright luxurious?like a Beach Cruiser you don't have to pedal. See, the cranks are set forward on the frame far ahead of the seat, like a Cruiser. This eases the rider into a more upright and comfortable sitting position, almost like a recumbent. Sure, that position makes pushing hard with your legs nearly impossible but it does not matter because you won't actually be doing much pedaling. I rode this bike for a good 20 minutes and pedaled none times?Zero?I just kept grabbing handfuls of throttle instead. The primary battery is located internally and delivers 15-20 MPH and 20 miles of range, though it can be augmented with a secondary battery on the rear deck, which boosts range to a possible 40 miles. It, too, runs $4,000 .

Source: http://gizmodo.com/commuting-is-no-sweat-on-these-swanky-e-bikes-489202445

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Earth permanently deformed by big quakes? Measurements in Chile challenge established theory.

Earth permanently deformed:?New research suggests that large-scale temblors can leave permanent scars on the crust of our planet.

By Mai Ng?c Ch?u,?Contributor / April 29, 2013

A collapsed building lays in ruins after an earthquake in Concepcion, Chile, in March 2010.

Natacha Pisarenko/AP/File

Enlarge

Large earthquakes can deform the earth's crust permanently, a study of major quakes in northern Chile over the past million years suggests.

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This finding challenges a longstanding theory in geology that seeks to explain how energy is spread during earthquakes. First posited in 1910 by Johns Hopkins geologist Harry Fielding Reid after he observed?the displacement of the ground following San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake, the elastic rebound theory holds that rock on either side of a fault slowly deforms over time, until it suddenly snaps back into its original shape, causing the quake. Reid's theory was the first to satisfactorily account for earthquakes, and has ben supported by many GPS measurements, among other evidence.

But a study of major earthquakes in Chile complicates the picture. ?A team led by Cornell University?geologist Richard Allmendinger, who examined temblors of magnitude 7 or greater in Chile's Atacama Desert, found permanent deformations in?the Earth's crust.

"My graduate students and I originally went to northern Chile to study other features," Allmendinger told LiveScience writer?Charles Q. Choi. "While we were there, our Chilean colleague, Professor Gabriel Gonz?lez of the Universidad Cat?lica del Norte, took us to a region where these cracks were particularly well-exposed."

"I still remember feeling blown away ? never seen anything like them in my 40 years as a geologist ? and also perplexed," Allmendinger said. "What were these features and how did they form? Scientists hate leaving things like this unexplained, so it kept bouncing around in my mind."

The Atacama Desert has been rocked by some of the largest earthquakes over the past 100?years, including?a 8.1 Richter earthquake in 1995?and a 7.7 Richter earthquake in 2007.?

In a paper published by the journal Nature Geoscience,?Allmendinger said that up to 10 percent of the horizontal deformations created during the quakes, recorded by GPS data and previously assumed to be recoverable, are permanent. The deformations in the crust of the Atacama Desert measuring millimeters to meters large were generated by between 2,000 and 9,000 earthquakes during the past 800,000 to 1 million years.

The hyperarid Atacama?Desert, Allmendinger said, may be the only place in the?world where such permanent deformation can be preserved and?identified.?

"It is only in a place like the Atacama Desert that these cracks can be observed ? in all other places, surface processes erase them within days or weeks of their formation, but in the Atacama, they are preserved for millions of years," Allmendinger told LiveScience. "We have every reason to believe that our results would be applicable to other areas, but is simply not preserved for study the way that it is in the Atacama Desert."?

Prior to?Allmendinger's research, a study by?the Institute of Geomatics ? Research Centre of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and the Government of Catalonia?showed that the 9.0 magnitude Japan earthquake in 2011 caused a permanent ground deformation in the city of Sendai. The deformation was estimated?1.69 meters.

The 2004 temblor in North Sumatra, Indonesia which left 227,898 people dead or missing, also left permanent marks on the Earth. The 8.7 Richter disaster resulted in permanent displacements covering a vast region around the epicenter?exceeding 40 million square miles, according to one study. ?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/reH2IMr6nAY/Earth-permanently-deformed-by-big-quakes-Measurements-in-Chile-challenge-established-theory

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Lava erupting on sea floor linked to deep-carbon cycle

May 2, 2013 ? Scientists from the Smithsonian and the University of Rhode Island have found unsuspected linkages between the oxidation state of iron in volcanic rocks and variations in the chemistry of the deep Earth. Not only do the trends run counter to predictions from recent decades of study, they belie a role for carbon circulating in the deep Earth.

The team's research was published May 2 in Science Express.

Elizabeth Cottrell, lead author and research geologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Katherine Kelley at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography measured the oxidation state of iron, which is the amount of iron that has a 3+ versus a 2+ electronic charge, in bits of magma that froze to a glass when they hit the freezing waters and crushing pressures of the sea floor. Due to the high precision afforded by the spectroscopic technique they used, the researchers found very subtle variations in the iron-oxidation state that had been overlooked by previous investigations.

The variations correlate with what Cottrell described as the "fingerprints" of the deep Earth rocks that melted to produce the lavas -- but not in the way previous researchers had predicted. The erupted lavas that have lower concentrations of 3+ iron also have higher concentrations of elements such as barium, thorium, rubidium and lanthanum, that concentrate in the lavas, rather than staying in their deep Earth home. More importantly, the oxidation state of iron also correlates with elements that became enriched in lavas long ago, and now, after billions of years, show elevated ratios of radiogenic isotopes. Because radiogenic isotopic ratios cannot be modified during rock melting and eruption, Cottrell called this "a dead ringer for the source of the melt itself."

Carbon is one of the "geochemical goodies" that tends to become enriched in the lava when rocks melt. "Despite is importance to life on this planet, carbon is a really tricky element to get a handle on in melts from the deep Earth," said Cottrell. "That is because carbon also volatilizes and is lost to the ocean waters such that it can't easily be quantified in the lavas themselves. As humans we are very focused on what we see up here on the surface. Most people probably don't recognize that the vast majority of carbon -- the backbone of all life -- is located in the deep Earth, below the surface -- maybe even 90 percent of it."

The rocks that the team analyzed that were reduced also showed a greater influence of having melted in the presence of carbon than those that were oxidized. "And this makes sense because for every atom of carbon present at depth it has to steal oxygen away from iron as it ascends toward the surface," said Cottrell. This is because carbon is not associated with oxygen at depth, it exists on its own, like in the mineral diamond. But by the time carbon erupts in lava, it is surrounded by oxygen. In this way, concludes Cottrell, "carbon provides both a mechanism to reduce the iron and also a reasonable explanation for why these reduced lavas are enriched in ways we might expect from melting a carbon-bearing rock."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Smithsonian, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Elizabeth Cottrell and Katherine A. Kelley. Redox Heterogeneity in Mid-Ocean Ridge Basalts as a Function of Mantle Source. Science, 2 May 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1233299

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/E2Jmssuewuc/130502192215.htm

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Martha Stewart Match.com Profile: Revealed!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/martha-stewart-matchcom-profile-revealed/

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