Friday, 28 June 2013

Suicide blast near church in Damascus kills 4

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) ? A suicide attacker blew himself up near one of the main churches of the Syrian capital Thursday, killing at least four people, state-run TV said.

The blast struck in the vicinity of the Greek Orthodox Virgin Mary Church in the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Bab Sharqi in Damascus' Old City, the broadcast said, although it was not clear if the church was the attacker's target. Several also were wounded in the explosion, the TV said, without giving further details.

A government official told The Associated Press that the suicide attacker was wearing an explosive belt and blew himself up near the church. Both the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, and state TV said at least four people were killed. State-run news agency SANA said the blast also wounded eight people.

An AP reporter who visited the area saw that the explosion occurred about 50 meters (yards) from the church and damaged several shops. An antiques shop suffered the worst damage, its windows shattered and objects strewn about.

"I heard an explosion then glass started flying and the place was full of dust," said Abdo Muqri, the owner of the shop who suffered injuries in his right arm and forehead. "I was watching television inside. Had I been near the door I would have been dead."

State-owned Al-Ikhbariya TV aired footage of the area showing a dead man a few meters from the shop. It also showed what appeared to be human flesh on a nearby tree.

About three hours after the blast occurred, two shells struck the area. A wounded man and a woman were seen being rushed away from the area, famous for its narrow streets and old buildings.

Rebels have fired mortars at central Damascus in the past.

Bab Sharqi and the nearby Bab Touma, two main areas of the city's famed old quarter, were famous for their restaurants and cafes that used to be packed until late at night.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. Damascus has been hit by a wave of suicide attacks that have killed and wounded scores of people.

Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen TV, which has reporters in Damascus, said the target of the attack appeared to be a nearby post of the National Defense Forces, a paramilitary force fighting against rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad.

Residents in the area said they did not know what the target of the blast was, with some saying the attacker may have blown himself up prematurely. Pro-government gunmen were seen roaming the streets after the blast.

Churches have been targeted in the past, mostly in the central city of Homs and Syria's largest city of Aleppo in the north. In April, two bishops were kidnapped in northern Syria. They are still missing.

Syria's conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war. Nearly 93,000 people have been killed in the fighting so far, according to the United Nations.

Christians are one of the largest religious minorities in the country, composing about 10 percent of Syria's population of 23 million people. They have tried to stay on the sidelines of the conflict, although the opposition's increasingly outspoken Islamism has prompted many to lean toward the regime.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suicide-blast-near-church-damascus-kills-4-125922030.html

jfk airport faith hill metro north taco bell taco bell Breezy Point Seaside Heights

Obama: U.S. Should Lead Assault on Climate Change

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, I'm Ira Flatow. President Obama announced a plan this week calling on the environmental protection agency to regulate how much carbon power plants are allowed to emit. He had tried and failed to get Congress to act on climate change from the very first days of his presidency. This week in a speech at Georgetown University, he announced it was time to take matters into his own hands.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock. It demands our attention now. And this my plan to meet them, a plan to cut carbon pollution, a plan to protect our country from the impacts of climate change and a plan to lead the world in a coordinated assault on a changing climate.

(APPLAUSE)

FLATOW: Is it really possible for the U.S., long considered a foot-dragger on international climate negotiations to become a world leader on climate change. And how far can the president go without the help of Congress? Can his plan even put a dent in our emissions? What do you think? We're taking a poll on our website. Are you satisfied with what you heard in President Obama's plan? You can go to sciencefriday.com/climate, sciencefriday.com/climate, to let us know.

In the meantime, we're going to talk to David Roberts. He is senior staff writer covering energy and climate for Grist.org in Seattle. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Mr. Roberts.

DAVID ROBERTS: Hi Ira, thanks for having me.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Can you give us a - what are the main basic points of President Obama's plan that he outlined?

ROBERTS: Well, you mentioned the upcoming EPA regulations on power plants, but actually that's only one of probably two dozen individual provisions in the plan. It's sort of a - it's Bill Clintonesque in that it is kind of laundry list of small-bore actions that they're grouped in three categories.

One is cutting carbon pollution. One is adaptation, as they call it, which means preparing for the effects of climate change. And the third is international engagement on this issue. And under each of those headings there are four or five pieces.

FLATOW: Can he do this without the cooperation of Congress?

ROBERTS: Yes, well, this is - well, I think the way to look at this plan is it's sort of a canvas of what's possible using the executive branch only. I think he has tried and tried with Congress, and it has become very clear that Republicans in Congress are totally unwilling to acknowledge the problem, much less do anything about it. So I think in that sense the document is remarkable in that it is really a thorough, a thorough sort of scan of the executive branch, how it engages with carbon and climate and tweaks in almost every part of it.

So everything in the - nothing in the plan requires congressional action. So yes, theoretically it's all possible.

FLATOW: But there are no numbers in the plan.

ROBERTS: Well, there are numbers here and there. The big number is, you know, remember in the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, I think it was, Obama promised to meet this short-term target, which is 17 percent carbon reductions from 2005 levels by 2020. And this is what the administration says it's trying to do with this plan.

And, you know, lots of the effects of some of this stuff are very hard to predict. But they are saying that they are going to get to that 17 percent number, or at least really close to it. So that's the big number. And there are some more. There are individual numbers throughout the plan. But it is - a lot of it is very sort of bureaucratic stuff.

There's a lot of working groups. There's a lot of pulling people together, disseminating best practices. And it's just hard to sort of - it's hard to predict numerically what's going to come out of that.

FLATOW: And all that stuff takes a lot of time, the comment periods, as you say, the meetings with utilities, refinements of the proposals. The president, does he have any real hope of seeing any of these regulations actually having gone into effect before he leaves office?

ROBERTS: Sure, a lot of it he can do quickly, and a lot of it, I should note, a lot of it is already underway. I mean, a lot of this plan that he released is sort of look at this thing we're already doing. So some of this stuff is already underway. In terms of the big piece you highlighted, which is the EPA power plant regulations, alongside the plan he issued a memo, a presidential memorandum to the EPA, which laid out a timeline for these regulations.

And if EPA meets that timeline, then there will be final proposals on these regulations issued before he leaves office. Of course that's a big if because these things are difficult, and EPA has missed deadlines before, but it's worth saying that a presidential memo specifically laying out a timeline is much more powerful and hard to get around than the sort of fuzzier deadlines of the past. So there's some chance.

FLATOW: That's a pretty bold prediction to say that this country, which does not have a reputation for being number one at any of the climate control meetings, to say it's going to become number one now or the leader.

ROBERTS: Well, on the international piece, it's interesting, there's sort of two schools of thought. One is to continue pursuing this UNFCCC process, which brings all the countries of the world together and tries to create one grand, binding document to bind them all. And the Obama administration has more or less given up on that process. That's what people say they're dragging their feet on.

And I think it's true that they don't find that process fruitful. What they're turning to instead is sort of focusing on the big emitters and doing these sort of bilateral or multilateral deals on specific issues. So it's more a stepwise, you know, pieces here rather than trying to go for the big brass ring.

FLATOW: The president also made some remarks about the Keystone Pipeline, which is not true that they were not in his prepared statements that were released?

ROBERTS: Well, it's interesting, I was on a call with senior administration officials the day before the plan. They were previewing the plan and the speech, and there was nothing said about Keystone. As a matter of fact, they were asked about Keystone, and they said specifically no, he won't say anything about that.

So clearly, whatever it was was added late in the game, which is really interesting to imagine why because what he said on Keystone was so sort of ambiguous that everybody's kind of reading their own interpretation into it. So it's puzzling to me what the political logic was for bringing that up since it mostly just serves to distract from the other stuff.

FLATOW: What did he say basically, that he...

ROBERTS: Well, he said that if building the Keystone pipeline would increase net carbon emissions, then it's not in our national interest. And that's going to be a key part of his decision. But of course the whole argument about Keystone all along has been whether it will in fact increase emissions because, you know, Keystone supporters say if you don't build that pipeline, they're just going to dig up the oil and ship it off some other direction, and it's going to get burned anyway, and net, net, there will be the same amount of carbon emissions.

So, you know, saying that's going to be part of his determination doesn't really add anything to the discussion and his - sort of this gnomic quality to the way he said it has everybody in the - everybody in the energy world is now saying oh, he agreed with me, he's going to do my thing. So that was a puzzling episode, I thought.

FLATOW: The president has beaten a drum over the years of his administration about the need to develop new green technologies that will create green jobs that will put people back to work that will boost the economy. Will these proposed regulations act to stimulate any of those ideas?

ROBERTS: Yes, yes, I would say yes they will and not just the EPA regulations, but there's a lot more in there where he's pumping money into research, pumping money into adaptation measures. One big piece is the federal government itself is aiming to get 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

And so that's going to - so all this, you know, there's this whole network of businesses that provide the federal government with stuff, and setting that target is going to spur all those businesses to innovate and develop new ways of providing the government with that energy. So even that piece alone, if he had announced that piece in isolation, that would be a big deal.

And that's true of a lot of the pieces of the plan. The individual pieces are actually quite significant, but they're sort of blurred together in this one big document.

FLATOW: As someone who covers energy and climate change, was there anything left out that you expected to hear?

ROBERTS: There was a big piece left out, although I expected it to be left out, and I just actually wrote about a post about this today. The big missing piece is coal in the Pacific Northwest, which is, you know, the Powder River Basin up in Wyoming and Montana is a huge coal field, and it's on public land. So the public is leasing that coal to private companies, who are now proposing to ship it over to the West Coast and export it to China.

And that whole process, digging it up, shipping it and then burning it in China, is going to be a huge net addition to greenhouse gases, and an inspector general report just found that the whole coal leasing program is corrupt. They're not getting market rates. They're not doing competitive bidding. I mean, the whole situation up there is a mess, and it's a big piece of the carbon puzzle, too. And I think that Obama really needs to turn his attention in that direction.

FLATOW: Now we were just out in Seattle with the program, and the mayor of Seattle was on this show. And again, and he was talking about how they were trying to block that shippage of coal that might go through Seattle and the whole Pacific Northwest.

ROBERTS: It's a huge fight up in the Pacific Northwest right now, in Oregon, in Washington, in all these little towns. They're going to have literally dozens and dozens of coal trains a day coming through these little towns, which are known for being sort of bucolic tourist destinations.

So - and the whole thing that activists are trying to do and that the mayor of Seattle is trying to do and that the governors of Washington and Oregon are trying to do is kind of nationalize this thing to get a big - to get an overall assessment of the project. And the Army Corps of Engineers, just a few days ago, refused to do a comprehensive assessment.

And in my view, that's Obama's Army Corps of Engineers, and if he wanted to, he could go down there and kick them in the rump and tell them to get on it. So that's what I think was left out of the speech.

FLATOW: He is the commander in chief. So what will tell us, as an observer, what signs might we look for to see if this is progressing, how it's progressing?

ROBERTS: The big thing is whether EPA meets the schedule that he laid out in his memo. And the first piece of that would be in September. They're suppose to re-propose regulations for a new power plant. So it'll be good to keep eyes on the EPA. But the interesting thing about this, because it's not legislation, because it's not going through Congress, a lot of this stuff just goes on behind public view.

It's just sort of bureaucratic stuff that goes on within federal agencies, and so it's a lot - in a sense it's very difficult for the public to know it's happening, which has its good and bad aspects. I mean, I think in one sense Obama wanted this plan to kind of come and go in the news cycle and not to be a big focus and not to draw a lot of attention because everything he's doing he can do just fine without the public being involved or knowing and without Congress knowing or being involved. It's just kind of puttering along behind the scenes.

So, you know, it's going to take some good reporting, I think, and journalism to really dig down into the bowels of the bureaucracy and make sure that this stuff is actually happening.

FLATOW: All right, David Roberts, we'll be in touch with you to see what's happening. Thank you very much for joining us.

ROBERTS: Thank you.

FLATOW: David Roberts is senior writer covering energy and climate change for the Grist.org in Seattle. We asked you to poll on our website. Are you satisfied with what you heard in the president's plan? So far 50 percent said - 54 percent said no, that was the top. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. Don't go away.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/06/28/196594972/obama-u-s-should-lead-assault-on-climate-change?ft=1&f=1007

lebron james NASA asteroid cruise ship Asteroid 2012 DA14 Reeva Steenkamp rubio

Thursday, 27 June 2013

PayPal looks to conquer space (payments)

FILE - This Jan. 19, 2011 file photo shows the eBay/PayPal offices in San Jose, Calif. PayPal, which is eBay Inc.?s payments business, says it is launching an initiative called PayPal Galactic with the help of the nonprofit SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the Space Tourism Society, an industry group focused on space travel. Its goal, PayPal says, is to work out how commerce will work in space. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

FILE - This Jan. 19, 2011 file photo shows the eBay/PayPal offices in San Jose, Calif. PayPal, which is eBay Inc.?s payments business, says it is launching an initiative called PayPal Galactic with the help of the nonprofit SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the Space Tourism Society, an industry group focused on space travel. Its goal, PayPal says, is to work out how commerce will work in space. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

(AP) ? PayPal wants to explore space ? or at least begin to figure out how payments and commerce will work beyond Earth's realm once space travel and tourism take off.

PayPal, which is eBay Inc.'s payments business, says it is launching an initiative called PayPal Galactic with the help of the nonprofit SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the Space Tourism Society, an industry group focused on space travel. Its goal, PayPal says, is to work out how commerce will work in space.

Questions to be answered include how commerce will be regulated and what currency will be used. PayPal's president, David Marcus, said the company is very serious about the idea. He says that while space tourism was once the stuff of science fiction, it's now becoming a reality.

"There are lots of important questions that the industry needs to answer," he said. There are regulatory and technical issues, along with safety and even what cross-border trade will look like when there are not a lot of borders.

"We feel that it's important for us to start the conversation and find answers," Marcus added. "We don't have that much time."

PayPal is no stranger to outer space. One of its founders, Elon Musk, heads the privately held space company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX. And James Doohan, best known for his role as "Scotty" on "Star Trek," was PayPal's first official spokesman when it launched in 1999.

PayPal said it plans to hold an event announcing the venture at the SETI Institute in Mountain View on Thursday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-06-27-PayPal-Space/id-d3f5b6c08d4b4f8a83d5e8e6c510ef61

google play Christmas Story after christmas sales case mccoy case mccoy UFC 155 Jack Klugman

Light-Bot Teaches Computer Science With A Cute Little Robot And Some Symbol-Based Programming

screen5Light Bot has been around for a few years - it began as a Flash game in 2008 - but this never version has been rebuilt for iOS and Android and offers an easy way for kids to learn concepts like loops, if-then statements, and the like without typing or coding.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/A0LoyX42ebQ/

brady quinn bloom box obama sweet home chicago accenture match play george washington carver king cake fun.

Every Smart Appliance Should Be as Brilliant as This Smoke Detector

Every Smart Appliance Should Be as Brilliant as This Smoke Detector

It's easy to scoff at the idea of smart appliances when you're faced with an onslaught of everyday devices with bewilderingly superflous Internet-y capabilities crammed in for little other reason than to pad the feature list. It doesn't have to be that way though. Take the Canary, for instance, a smart smoke alarm. It's quite possibly one of the smartest smart appliances out there.

Read more...

    


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/CvW4TsbkKWU/every-smart-appliance-should-be-as-brilliant-as-this-sm-597966224

Jodi Arias Jane Wicker Snowden Nik Wallenda Doc Rivers Under the Dome Naked and Afraid

Flyers ?Hooked on Hockey? - The Good In Sports

The Philadelphia Flyers kicked off another exciting summer Tuesday of ?Hooked on Hockey? for youths in the Philadelphia area. Full details are below.

Philadelphia Flyers, NHL(Via the Philadelphia Flyers) ? Philadelphia, PA (June 25, 2013)???In the ongoing effort to grow the?sport of hockey, members of the Flyers organization will lead 26 ?Hooked on Hockey??clinics for over 3,000 youths throughout the Philadelphia region during the summer months. Participants will take part in hockey drills including stick handling, passing and shooting while learning that they can have fun as they stay active.

Ambassador of Flyers Hockey Bob ?The Hound? Kelly will host and interact with youth participants at each Hooked on Hockey clinic?this summer. The Flyers alumnus played with the Philadelphia Flyers?for 10 years and helped the team win two consecutive Stanley Cup?championships in 1974 and 1975. He continues to be a part of the Flyers community today.

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary this summer, ?Hooked on Hockey? is a part of the Flyers community?effort to provide children with opportunities to learn the fundamentals of hockey, teamwork and the importance of being active.?Since its inception in 2004, the clinic has seen almost 30,000 participants and continues to gain popularity in the community, while also receiving repeat appearance requests.?The Flyers community relations team also hosts the Flyers School?Assembly program throughout the school year, which visits approximately 90 schools and reaches over 30,000 students annually.

Each participant in the Hooked on Hockey program will receive a?Flyers activity book and a Flyers Mylec street hockey stick, encouraging each?child to stay ?Hooked on Hockey?.

Fans are invited to the Official Flyers NHL Draft Headquarters at XFINITY Live! Philadelphia on Sunday, June 30 and participate in the free ?Hooked on Hockey? clinic for children under the age of 14. For event details visit?PhiladelphiaFlyers.com.

Follow Flyers Community Relations on Twitter at @FlyersCommunity (twitter.com/FlyersCommunity) to learn more about the quest to put sticks in the hands of more than 30,000 children in the Philadelphia area.

Philadelphia Flyers ?Hooked on Hockey? Summer 2013 Schedule

Date Camp/Organization City State Time
? ? ? ? ?
6/25/2013 Fox Chase Recreation Center Philadelphia PA 10-1pm
6/26/2013 Camp High Point Chalfont PA 10-1pm
6/27/2013 Camp Saginaw Oxford PA 10-1pm
6/30/2013 Xfinity Live! (NHL Draft Party) Philadelphia PA 3:30-4:30pm
7/1/2013 Lower Mayfair Recreation Philadelphia PA 1:30-2:30pm
7/2/2013 County of Gloucester Sewell NJ 10- 1pm
7/9/2013 Kiddie Academy of Plumsteadville Plumsteadville PA 10-11am
7/10/2013 Stone Harbor Elem. (Trial on the Isle) Stone Harbor NJ 11 -12pm
7/11/2013 United Sports Downingtown PA 10-11am
7/12/2013 Please Touch Museum Philadelphia PA 11-2pm
7/17/2013 Stafford Twp Recreation Manahawkin NJ 10-1pm
7/19/2013 ACAC Fitness Center West Chester PA 1-4pm
7/23/2013 West Chester Parks and Recreation West Chester PA 10-11am
7/24/2013 Shadyside Park Downingtown PA 10-11am
7/25/2013 Ocean City Recreation Ocean City NJ 10-12pm
7/25/2013 Sea Isle City Recreation Sea Isle City NJ 5 ? 6pm
7/26/2013 Kids Camp of Pennsbury Yardley PA 12:30-3:30pm
7/30/2013 Flourtown Summer Day Camp Flourtown PA 10:30-12:30pm
7/31/2013 Lifeseeds Summer Camp Wyncote PA 10-12pm
8/1/2013 Ardsley Day Care Glenside PA 10am-12pm
8/7/2013 Waretown Recreation Waretown NJ 10am-12pm
8/14/2013 Malvern Day Camp Glen Mills PA 10am-1pm
8/15/2013 Spring Valley YMCA Collegeville PA 1pm-3pm
8/16/2013 Monroe Twp Youth Hockey Williamstown NJ 11-1pm
8/21/2013 East Petersburg Inline Hockey East Petersburg PA 5-6pm
8/28/2013 Neshaminy Kids Club Levittown PA 11-2pm

To reserve a ?Hooked on Hockey? clinic in your area for the 2014 summer months, call 215-952-5763.

For official Philadelphia Flyers information, please visit the official team website,?PhiladelphiaFlyers.com.

Get a jump on securing your Flyers full or partial ticket package today. Flyers season ticket holders receive great benefits, including discounts from box office pricing, access to exclusive team events and more! Reserve your tickets today by visiting?PhiladelphiaFlyers.com?or calling 215-218-PUCK (7825).

Comcast-Spectacor (Comcast-Spectacor.com) is the Philadelphia-based?sports and entertainment company which owns the Philadelphia Flyers?(NHL), the home arena for both the Flyers and the NBA?s Philadelphia?76ers, the Wells Fargo Center, and four Flyers Skate Zone community?ice skating and hockey rinks. In addition, Comcast-Spectacor is also?the principal owner of Global Spectrum, the fastest growing firm in?the public assembly management field with more than 115 facilities?throughout the United States and Canada; Ovations Food Services, a?food and beverage service provider; New Era Tickets, a ticketing and?marketing company for public assembly facilities; Front Row Marketing?Services, a commercial rights sales company; FanOne, a digital fan?marketing company; and Paciolan, the leading provider of venueenablement, ticketing, fundraising and marketing technology solutions.

Source: http://thegoodinsports.com/2013/06/26/flyers-hooked-on-hockey/

john mccain game changer corned beef recipe rpi dst friends with kids pacific standard time

Supreme Court 2013: The Year in Review

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito delivers an address at the American Bankruptcy Institute's 26th annual spring meeting in Washington April 4, 2008. Justice Samuel Alito's ruling in the Baby Veronica case may point the way to the court striking down other American Indian classifications in the law.

Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters

Emily, you present Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl as a Solomonic tussle between the biological father of Baby Veronica and her adoptive parents. Both sides possess strong claims to parental rights, and the only thing to do is think deeply about what is in the best interest of the child, and resolve the case accordingly. That is not how I read the opinion. When a statute is as ambiguous as this one is, and the court breaks down along ideological lines (as the court nearly does?with Scalia and Breyer switching places, as is becoming increasingly common), a good place to start is with the ideological underpinnings of the case. Appearances to the contrary, the case is not about the relative interests of biological parents versus adoptive parents?an issue which has little ideological valence these days. It is about race and racial classifications.

The issue in this case is whether a biological Indian father must have had custody of his child in order to have the right to stop the biological mother from putting the child up for adoption with a non-Indian family. The majority said yes, ruling against the father. Justice Alito argued that if the father did not have custody, then maybe he has not made a significant investment in the child, and thus the adoption may seem to be presumptively in the best interest of the child, despite our usual assumption that children should normally stay with their biological parents.

But the statute in question, The Indian Child Welfare Act, was enacted in 1978 by a Democratic Congress and president to preserve the integrity of Indian tribes. Congress passed the statute specifically to keep intact Indian tribes that were losing members as children were adopted by non-Indian couples. The statute thus grants a special right to Indian parents that non-Indian parents (in many states, including South Carolina, where the events took place) lack. The statute directs courts not to act in the best interests of the child when they conflict with legitimate tribal interests.

Justice Sotomayor, writing in dissent, is correct that the statute thus favors the father. The crux of the majority opinion is this sentence: The dissent?s interpretation ?would put certain vulnerable children at a great disadvantage solely because an ancestor?even a remote one?was an Indian.? Baby Veronica was only 3/256 Cherokee, a fact that Justice Alito repeats (and Justice Sotomayor scolds him for repeating). The Cherokee use a kind of ?one-drop? rule to maximize their membership and to maximize the rights of their members. Even if Baby Veronica would do best with the adoptive parents, and even if she is not really Indian in a racial sense, she must be sent back to the Indian tribe in order to advance the cause of Indian tribal unity. In Alito?s view, this can?t be the right outcome.

Justice Sotomayor accuses the majority of reading its policy preferences into the statute, and maybe it does. But larger issues are at stake. What sticks in Alito?s craw (or so I conjecture) is that here is Congress using an explicit racial classification to advance the interests of a minority?exactly like affirmative action. And most of the members of the conservative majority believe that the equal protection clause bans such racial preferences. Equal protection is the animating motive of Alito?s opinion.

Rather than say this, Alito says that the dissent?s interpretation ?would raise equal protection concerns,? but they needn?t be addressed because the statute is clear. Why does he pretend that an obviously ambiguous statute is clear? The answer is that there is no precedent for applying the equal protection clause to strike down Indian classifications, which are ubiquitous in the law. Justice Sotomayor makes just this point: ?The majority?s repeated, analytically unnecessary references to the fact that Baby Girl is 3/256 Cherokee by ancestry do nothing to elucidate its intimation that the statute may violate the Equal Protection Clause as applied here.? So the majority has laid the groundwork for a future equal protection challenge to Indian classifications and fortified its position that the equal protection clause bans racial preferences like affirmative action. Interesting that no one noticed.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2013/supreme_court_2013/baby_veronica_indian_adoption_and_the_supreme_court_justice_alito_s_ruling.html

weather nyc national signing day Solomon Islands Mary Leakey Side Effects bob marley weather

Carnival sees fewer bookings, replaces its CEO

NEW YORK (AP) ? Passengers remain hesitant to book cruises, despite deep discounts. But that didn't stop Carnival Corp. from eking out a $41 million second-quarter profit thanks to lower fuel costs and the timing of some administrative expenses.

The Miami-based company also announced Tuesday that Micky Arison, who has been CEO since 1979 and is the son of Carnival co-founder Ted Arison, is being replaced by Arnold W. Donald, who has served on the company's board for the past 12 years. Arison will continue to serve as chairman of the board.

The profit was nearly triple the $14 million the world's largest cruise company earned during same period last year, a quarter which it suffered from steep losses on fuel prices bets known as derivatives.

Earnings totaled of 5 cents per share this quarter, up from 2 cents a share last year at this time. Revenue fell 1.7 percent to $3.48 billion. The financial results fell slightly short of Wall Street's expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $3.56 billion.

Shares of Carnival fell 11 cents to $32.88 in morning trading.

Arison led the company through an aggressive expansion that included the acquisition of several brands, including Holland America, Costa Cruises, Cunard and Seabourn. In 2003, he oversaw a merger between Carnival Corp. and P&O Princess Cruises. Today, Carnival runs cruises under 10 brands.

However, Arison came under fire during Carnival's bad publicity earlier in the year when a string of its cruise ships suffered through mechanical problems and fires. The most dramatic of them was the Carnival Triumph where passengers were stranded at sea for five days as toilets backed up and air conditioners failed. There were media reports of raw sewage seeping through walls and carpets.

Arison, who also owns the Miami Heat basketball team, took some heat of his own for attending a game while the crisis was ongoing.

Donald founded and led Merisant, a company whose products include sweetener brands Equal and Canderel. He also held multiple senior management roles at Monsanto over the course of 20-plus years, including president of the company's consumer and nutrition sector and president of its agricultural sector.

The Triumph nightmare was followed up with problems on three other Carnival ships: The Elation, Dream and Legend ? all which made big headlines.

None of that helped restore confidence in vacationers who are still wary after the January 2012 sinking of the Costa Concordia, also owned by Carnival.

In its earnings release Tuesday, Carnival said that advance bookings for the rest of 2013 are running behind last year's levels, even at lower prices. Bookings on its namesake Carnival line are particularly weak.

Arison said in a statement that Carnival is working to market the "truly exceptional vacation values" that cruises offer through travel agents and other industry partners.

"We believe these initiatives, combined with slower supply growth, will lead to increased yields," he said. "In addition, we remain focused on reducing our fuel dependence. By year end, we will achieve a 23 percent cumulative reduction in fuel consumption since 2005 and expect our research and development efforts in fuel saving technologies to continue to bear fruit."

Those fuel-savings efforts seem to be paying off. In the quarter that ended May 31, the company saw a 14-percent drop in its fuel bill. The company spent $555 million on fuel, down from $645 million during the same quarter last year. Cruise companies, airlines and other large consumers of fuel typically make bets, called derivatives, on the price of oil to hedge again any sudden spikes. Last year, Carnival lost $145 million in the second quarter on such bets. This year, that loss was narrowed to $31 million.

During the second quarter, the company took delivery of Princess Cruises' 3,560-passenger Royal Princess, the first of a new class of ships for Princess. Additionally, Carnival Sunshine entered service in May following a $155 million modernization.

__

Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/carnival-sees-fewer-bookings-replaces-ceo-141836593.html

toys r us kohls target target walmart best buy sears

Huawei Ascend P6 review: a beautiful handset, but performance is lacking

Huawei Ascend P6 review great design but performance is lacking

Well, what do we have here? Okay, let's scrap the faux surprise. The recently confirmed Ascend P6 has landed, and Huawei hopes it will stir interest in the hearts of mobile users. Debuting across Europe, China and Australia in late June / early August with a €449 ($600) price tag, it's asking you to take it seriously, and that's what we'll do.

The mobile market is a fickle place, so it doesn't matter where you are right now; it's all about where you're going. Huawei? Well, it's definitely got its sights set on an upward trajectory. The Ascend P6 is the latest rung on the ladder, intended to elevate the company to mobile greatness. But, with competition stiffer than ever, can it really call a device with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 720p display and 8-megapixel camera a flagship? (For its P-series at least?) Huawei's certainly giving it a try, and it's hoping that beauty, not brawn, will win the day.

Filed under: ,

Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/25/huawei-ascend-p6-review/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

mickelson how to tie a tie sweet potato recipes the sound of music celebration church new york auto show 2012 tulsa

New bird species discovered in Cambodian capital

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-06-26-Cambodia-Bird%20Discovered/id-7e09bdfaca5a460a8686203c46cbb937

Canelo Alvarez red wings luke bryan michele bachmann disneyland Now You See Me chrissy teigen

Video Interview for White House Down: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, and more

White House Down puts our nation's most important house in peril, but thankfully, Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, and Maggie Gyllenhaal are there to save it and the people inside. They reveal what Roland Emmerich is like as a director, how their roles mirror their real lives, and then Grae Channings all over their Tatum.

Click here to watch more video interviews

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927750/news/1927750/

pope joan pope joan strikeforce tate vs rousey strawberry festival the monkees ciaa love actually

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

Will Immigration Break Boehner? (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/314948153?client_source=feed&format=rss

daytona bike week mary kay ash tiny houses maya angelou joan of arc tony robbins bon iver

Author Barbara Ehrenreich Revisits Her 1987 Look at the Future of ...

The January 1987 issue of the legendary (and sadly, now defunct) Omni magazine included predictions from 14 "great minds" about what the world might look like in twenty years. By the year 2007, musician David Byrne believed that computers would do little for future musicians outside of their bookkeeping. Noted rich guy Bill Gates wondered how much stimulation (read: overstimulation) people of the future might be able to handle. And feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich predicted that by the 21st century, ideas about sexual dysfunction and what constitutes a healthy sexual relationship will have changed dramatically.

I sent Ehrenreich an email to ask about her predictions. She responded with a note that the short piece attributed to her in Omni looked like something that was taken from an interview, rather than something she wrote. Either way, it's a fascinating (and rather prescient) look at the future of sex and relationships from the perspective of the 1980s.

Here's what she had to say a quarter century ago:

Sex will continue to be on center stage in the next 20 years. There are good reasons for that. It's only recently that large numbers of people have begun to think of sex as a pleasurable part of their lives, quite apart from some function such as reproduction. For many years we've had birth control, but the realization that sex can be something that is not connected to some other purpose in life is just gaining hold. People are understanding their own particular sexual needs for the first time.

A redefinition of heterosexual sex is occurring in which sex will be less bound to genital interaction. It's no longer just foreplay plus intercourse. The women's sexual revolution declared that women were not getting enough pleasure, and what is evolving is a much more varied kind of encounter that does not have to culminate in penetration and ejaculation by the man.

Our present notions of sexual dysfunction will look archaic in 20 years. It will seem incredible that all of our notions of sexual dysfunction came from a narrow notion of sex centered on intercourse.

We will, of course, continue to move away from a medical model of sexuality, which separates sexual activity into normal patterns over here and the dysfunctions or the illnesses over there. As we develop a broader definition of sexuality, it will appear particularly quaint to talk about dys- functions.

We won't rely on doctors or sexologists to define the problems or provide the answers. The biggest change in sex in the last 20 years has been that ordinary lay-people have begun to write about their experiences and have begun to introduce the subjective element.

In 20 years more people are going to have long periods of time when they are not in a marriage or other long-term sexual relationship. They should have options that do not depend on getting emotionally involved. You just might want to rent an exciting videotape instead of having an affair. I also think the sex-products industry will become important to people in monogamous marriage relationships and help keep those relationships together by an active interest in sexual possibilities.

There are issues that barely have been uncovered or discussed during the recent so-called sexual revolution. Why does our culture limit the idea of what is sexually attractive? Why do we limit it to people who are young and pretty in a conventional way? How do we begin to change that so that the possibility of being a sexually assertive person is open to all of us who fall outside the bounds of conventional attractiveness? American culture is already showing that its members are not ready to be asexual when they're fifty.

Twenty years ago I really believed that by this time we would be a much more egalitarian society. I really believed that by 1987 we wouldn't have about 20 percent of our own citizens in a state of poverty. In 20 years we have gone backward.

In response to how accurate she thinks her prediction was, Ehrenreich said, "I think was more or less right. Look at gay marriage!"

And aside from some minor nitpicking about the technology behind the "rent an exciting videotape" part, it does seem like she got a lot right. The most notable absentee is internet porn, and who could've predicted that before the world wide web even existed?

Source: http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/author-barbara-ehrenreich-revisits-her-1987-look-at-the-552097723

aretha franklin Beyonce Pregnant Riot Fest Granbury Tx Jaden Smith eminem eminem

Thanks To iOS 7?s Game Pad Support, Flipside Controller Case Gets A Second Shot

Photo Apr 01, 2 46 34 PMThe Flipside was a Kickstarter project I covered last December, which aimed to create a Bluetooth video game controller case that charged via solar power and used low-power Bluetooth 4.0. At the time, it had a very ambitious funding goal, and was hurt by the lack of official support for game pads in iOS. Now, it's back on Indiegogo, with wind under its sails thanks to Apple's inclusion of a universal game controller SDK in the upcoming iOS 7.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YMSGOK7dwT0/

nfl news tebow jets romney etch a sketch jeb bush sherry arnold snooty fox el debarge

Video Killed The Instagram Star

instavidInstagram, an app best known for photo-sharing, added video last week, as it sought to defend against the advance of Twitter?s fast-growing video-sharing app Vine. It gave users a new way to share what is happening around them. But while it was an ambitious new feature for the company to add, the end result has been that Instagram has sacrificed the user experience for those consuming content.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EJTW9iUyFl8/

Marc Maron amanda knox Carolyn Moos Danny Brown The Following amy schumer amy schumer

Syrian rebels renew fight for Aleppo

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian rebels battled President Bashar al-Assad's forces in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, seeking to reverse gains made by loyalist forces in the commercial hub over the last two months, activists said.

The fighting, by a variety of insurgent groups, happened as France urged moderate rebels to wrest territory back from radical Islamists whose role in the fight to topple Assad poses a dilemma for Western countries concerned that arms shipments could fall into the hands of people it considers terrorists.

The 11 Western and Arab countries known as the "Friends of Syria" agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to the rebels, channeled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council in a bid to prevent arms getting to Islamist radicals.

But radical forces showed they remained formidable on Sunday when the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham brigade detonated a car bomb at a roadblock at an entrance to Aleppo killing at least 12 loyalist soldiers, according to the opposition Aleppo News Network and other activists in the city.

Aleppo, 35 km (20 miles) south of Turkey, has been contested since July last year, when rebel brigades entered the city and captured about half of it. In recent weeks, Assad has focused his military campaign on recapturing rebel-held areas.

He has also been expanding control of the central province of Homs after capturing a strategic town on the border with Lebanon, and has used heavy bombardment and siege warfare to contain rebels dug in around the capital, according to opposition sources and diplomats monitoring the conflict.

Firas Fuleifel, with the moderate Islamist al-Farouq Brigade, said six rebel fighters were killed in fighting in Aleppo in the last day.

WIN BACK CONTROL

French President Francois Hollande, whose country has been at the forefront of Western efforts to re-organize and back the opposition, said moderate rebels must take territory held by radical Islamists whose involvement in the conflict, he said, gives Bashar al-Assad a pretext for more violence.

"The opposition needs to win back control of these areas ... they have fallen into the hands of extremists," Hollande told a news conference in the Doha a day after the Friends of Syria met in the Qatari capital.

"If it seems that extremist groups are present and tomorrow they could be the beneficiaries of a chaotic situation, it will be Bashar al-Assad who will seize on this pretext to continue the massacre," Hollande said.

In Damascus, the Ahrar al-Sham and the Islamist Tawhid al-Asima brigades detonated a car bomb in an area known as Mezze 86, inhabited by members of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s. Two people were killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Rebels also attacked two security compounds in Damascus, killing at least five people, sources in the capital said.

In regional repercussions of the increasingly sectarian Syrian conflict, four Lebanese soldiers were killed in clashes with followers of a Sunni Islamist cleric who is a critic of the role of Hezbollah - the Shi'ite Lebanese group - in giving military support to Assad.

Sources in the city said the fighting broke out when a follower of Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir was arrested at an army roadblock in Sidon, 40 km (28 miles) south of Beirut.

The clashes were followed by fighting between Hezbollah members based in the mostly Sunni city and Assir's followers in which automatic weapons and shoulder fired rockets were used, the sources said.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut and Yara Bayoumy in Doha; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-rebels-renew-fight-aleppo-104545195.html

Gangnam Style Ryan Lanza Sandy Hook Univision josh hamilton Susan Rice the Who

Why plants are smarter than us

Scientists have found that plants must do complex arithmetic to avoid starvation.?

By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 24, 2013

Droplets of rain water hang on the leaves of a spiderwort plant in the morning sun.

John Nordell / The Christian Science Monitor

Enlarge

Comparing someone?s intellect to that of a potted plant is no longer such an insult.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; // google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Scientists at the John Innes Centre, a British research institute that focuses on plants and microbiology, found that plants must do complex arithmetic to calculate the amount of food needed to get them through the long, dark night.

"This is the first concrete example in a fundamental biological process of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation," said a JIC mathematical modeler,?Martin Howard.

The new research, published in eLife, reports that mechanisms in plants? leaves estimate the size of the plant?s starch store and the length of time before the sun rises and energy again becomes available. In daylight, plants use the sun?s energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars and starches. Based on that information, the plant?s leaves appropriately adjust their rate of starch consumption to avoid starving before the sun comes up, but without being wasteful and harboring too much starch. At the end of the night, the plants project to have used 95 percent of their starch.

The precise calculations account for variations in daylight and accumulated starch stores.

?The calculations are precise so that plants prevent starvation but also make the most efficient use of their food,? said JIC metabolic biologist Alison Smith. ?If the starch store is used too fast, plants will starve and stop growing during the night. If the store is used too slowly, some of it will be wasted.?

Scientists proposed that information about the size of the starch store and nighttime-length is encoded in the concentrations of two kinds of molecules in the plant. The scientists have called those molecules S for starch and T for time. The S molecules stimulate starch consumption, and the T molecules inhibit that consumption, so the rate of starch consumption comes out to the ratio of S molecules to T molecules ? or S/T.

Scientists believe that further study of how plants regulate their starch consumption could give insights into more productive farming techniques.

"The capacity to perform arithmetic calculation is vital for plant growth and productivity," said Smith. "Understanding how plants continue to grow in the dark could help unlock new ways to boost crop yield."

So when faced with a tricky math problem, go ahead: vegetate.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/krA_fR8Jl1k/Why-plants-are-smarter-than-us

Shain Gandee mlb yankees Bb&t Maria Sibylla Merian cory monteith Holly Sonders

Pelosi's defense of NSA surveillance draws boos

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) ? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has disappointed some of her liberal base with her defense of the Obama administration's classified surveillance of U.S. residents' phone and Internet records.

Some of the activists attending the annual Netroots Nation political conference Saturday booed and interrupted the San Francisco Democrat when she commented on the surveillance programs carried out by the National Security Agency and revealed by a former contactor, Edward Snowden, The San Jose Mercury News reports (http://bit.ly/19fB6U4).

The boos came when Pelosi said that Snowden had violated the law and that the government needed to strike a balance between security and privacy.

As she was attempting to argue that Obama's approach to citizen surveillance was an improvement over the policies under President George W. Bush, an activist, identified by the Mercury News as Mac Perkel of Gilroy, stood up and tried loudly to question her, prompting security guards to escort him out of the convention hall.

"Leave him alone!" audience members shouted. Others yelled "Secrets and lies!," ''No secret courts!" and "Protect the First Amendment!," according to the Mercury News.

Perkel told the newspaper that he thinks Pelosi does not fully understand what the NSA is up to.

Several others in the audience walked out in support of Perkel.

"We're listening to our progressive leaders who are supposed to be on our side of the team saying it's OK for us to get targeted" for online surveillance, said Jana Thrift of Eugene, Ore. "It's crazy. I don't know who Nancy Pelosi really is."

Netroots Nation is an organizing and training convention for progressive political leaders. Pelosi was Saturday's keynote speaker at the event, which opened Thursday at the San Jose Convention Center and was scheduled to conclude Sunday.

Her remarks criticizing the Republican majority in the House and encouraging powerful women brought applause, cheers and laughs.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-23-Pelosi-NSA%20Surveillance/id-b75d6d85f6ba4020985e7005a3be3494

colorado rockies moonshine news channel 4 radar weather morosini death jacoby ellsbury jacoby ellsbury

Boost for cars or bust? Ethanol debate heats up

WASHINGTON (AP) ? It's a dilemma for drivers: Do they choose a gasoline that's cheaper and cleaner even if, as opponents say, it could damage older cars and motorcycles?

That's the peril and promise of a high-ethanol blend of gasoline known as E15. The fuel contains 15 percent ethanol, well above the current 10 percent norm sold at most U.S. gas stations.

The higher ethanol blend is currently sold in just fewer than two dozen stations in the Midwest, but could spread to other regions as the Obama administration considers whether to require more ethanol in gasoline.

As a result, there's a feverish lobbying campaign by both oil and ethanol interests that has spread from Congress to the White House and the Supreme Court.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's chief lobbying group, to block sales of E15. The justices left in place a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed challenges by the oil industry group and trade associations representing food producers, restaurants and others.

Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol industry group, hailed the decision as victory for U.S. consumer, who will now have greater choice at the pump.

"Now that the final word has been issued, I hope that oil companies will begin to work with biofuel producers to help bring new blends into the marketplace that allow for consumer choice and savings," Buis said.

The API had argued that E15 was dangerous for older cars.

Putting fuel with up to 15 percent ethanol into older cars and trucks "could leave millions of consumers with broken down cars and high repair bills," said Bob Greco, a senior API official who has met with the White House on ethanol issues.

The ethanol industry counters that there have been no documented cases of engine breakdowns caused by the high-ethanol blend since limited sales of E15 began last year.

"This is another example of oil companies unnecessarily scaring people, and it's just flat-out wrong," said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry group.

The dispute over E15 is the latest flashpoint in a long-standing battle over the Renewable Fuel Standard, approved by Congress in 2005 and amended in 2007. The law requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline each year as a way to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and lower greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a 16.5 billion-gallon production requirement for ethanol and other gasoline alternatives this year, up from 15.2 billion gallons last year. By 2022, the law calls for more than double that amount.

Biofuel advocates and supporters in Congress say the law has helped create more than 400,000 jobs, revitalized rural economies and helped lower foreign oil imports by more than 30 percent while reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

But the oil industry, refiners and some environmental groups say the standard imposes an unnecessary economic burden on consumers. Using automotive fuel that comes from corn also has significant consequences for agriculture, putting upward pressure on food prices, critics say.

"The ever increasing ethanol mandate has become unsustainable, causing a looming crisis for gasoline consumers," said the API's Greco. "We're at the point where refiners are being pressured to put unsafe levels of ethanol in gasoline, which could damage vehicles, harm consumers and wreak havoc on our economy."

Along with the E15 court case, the API and refiners have swarmed Capitol Hill and the White House to try to have the current mandate waived or repealed.

Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents refineries, accused the EPA of putting politics ahead of science.

An EPA official told Congress earlier this month that the agency does not require use of E15, but believes it is safe for cars built since 2001.

"The government is not saying 'go ahead' " and put E15 in all cars, said Christopher Grundler, of the EPA's director of the office of transportation and air quality. "The government is saying this is legal fuel to sell if the market demands it and there are people who wish to sell it."

Ethanol supporters say E15 is cheaper than conventional gasoline and offers similar mileage to E10, the version that is sold in most U.S. stations.

Scott Zaremba, who owns a chain of gas stations in Kansas, scoffs at claims that E15 would damage older cars. "In the real world I've had zero problems" with engine breakdowns, said Zaremba, whose station in Lawrence, Kan., was the first in the nation to offer E15 last year.

But Zaremba said he had to stop selling the fuel this spring after his gasoline supplier, Phillips 66, told him he could no longer sell the E15 fuel from his regular black fuel hoses. The company said the aim was to distinguish E15 from other gasoline with less ethanol, but Zaremba said the real goal was to discourage use of E15. New pumps cost more than $100,000.

The American Automobile Association, for now, sides with the oil industry. The motoring club says the government should halt sales of E15 until additional testing allows ethanol producers and automakers to agree on which vehicles can safely use E15 while ensuring that consumers are adequately informed of risks.

A spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents 12 major car makers, said E15 gas is more corrosive and the EPA approved it before it could be fully tested.

Older cars were "never designed to use E15," spokeswoman Gloria Bergquist said. Use of the fuel over time could create significant engine problems, she said.

The API cites engine problems discovered during a study it commissioned last year, but the Energy Department called the research flawed and said it included engines with known durability issues.

For now, E15 remains a regional anomaly. About 20 stations currently offer the fuel in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

___

Follow Matthew Daly on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewDalyWDC

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-06-24-US-EPA-Ethanol/id-0db7df23319641b8b80b0b0348a128ee

shuttle discovery bonnie raitt internal revenue service intc tupac andrew shaw hologram