Rosa Parks statue set to be unveiled at Capitol

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Rosa Parks is famous for her 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in Alabama to a white man, but there's plenty about the rest of her experiences that she deliberately withheld from her family.

While Parks and her husband, Raymond, were childless, her brother, the late Sylvester McCauley, had 13 children. They decided Parks' nieces and nephews didn't need to know the horrible details surrounding her civil rights activism, said Rhea McCauley, Parks' niece.

"They didn't talk about the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws," said McCauley, 61, of Orlando, Fla. "They didn't talk about that stuff to us kids. Everyone wanted to forget about it and sweep it under the rug."

Parks' descendants now have a chance to be first-hand witnesses as their late matriarch makes more history, this time becoming the first black woman to be honored with a full-length statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. The statue of Parks joins a bust of another black woman, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, which sits in the Capitol Visitors Center.

President Barack Obama, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner are among the dignitaries taking part in the unveiling Wednesday. McCauley said more than 50 of Parks' relatives traveled to Washington for the ceremony.

In a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in segregated Montgomery, Ala. She was arrested, touching off a bus boycott that stretched over a year.

Jeanne Theoharis, author of the new biography "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," said Parks was very much a full-fledged civil rights activist, yet her contributions have not been treated like those of other movement leaders, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Rosa Parks is typically honored as a woman of courage, but that honor focuses on the one act she made on the bus on Dec. 5, 1955," said Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College-City University of New York.

"That courage, that night was the product of decades of political work before that and continued ... decades after" in Detroit, she said.

Parks died Oct. 24, 2005, at age 92. The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor on Feb. 4, which would have been her 100th birthday.

Parks was raised by her mother and grandparents who taught her that part of being respected was to demand respect, said Theoharis, who spent six years researching and writing the Parks biography.

She was an educated woman who recalled seeing her grandfather sitting on the porch steps with a gun during the height of white violence against blacks in post-World War I Alabama.

After she married Raymond Parks, she joined him in his work in trying to help nine young black men, ages 12 to 19, who were accused of raping two white women in 1931. The nine were later convicted by an all-white jury in Scottsboro, Ala., part of a long legal odyssey for the so-called Scottsboro Boys.

In the 1940s, Parks joined the NAACP and was elected secretary of its Montgomery, Ala., branch, working with civil rights activist Edgar Nixon to fight barriers to voting for blacks and investigate sexual violence against women, Theoharis said.

Just five months before refusing to give up her seat, Parks attended Highlander Folk School, which trained community organizers on issues of poverty but had begun turning its attention to civil rights.

After the bus boycott, Parks and her husband lost their jobs and were threatened. They left for Detroit, where Parks was an activist against the war in Vietnam and worked on poverty, housing and racial justice issues, Theoharis said.

Theoharis said that while she considers the 9-foot-statue of Parks in the Capitol an "incredible honor" for Parks, "I worry about putting this history in the past when the actual Rosa Parks was working on and calling on us to continue to work on racial injustice."

Parks has been honored previously in Washington with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999, both during the Clinton administration.

But McCauley said the Statuary Hall honor is different.

"The medal you could take it, put it on a mantel," McCauley said. "But her being in the hall itself is permanent and children will be able to tour the (Capitol) and look up and see my aunt's face."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rosa-parks-statue-set-unveiled-capitol-085442523--politics.html

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Gas price spikes don't leave lasting damage

John W. Schoen , NBC News ? ? ? 2 hrs.

The recent run-up in gasoline prices has some economists ? including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke ? worried about the impact on consumer spending and the economy.

It?s a perennial concern. When gas prices spike, as they have done in the past few weeks, the extra money you pay at the pump forces you to cut spending on other things. That takes a bite out of overall consumer spending, which fuels roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy. Slower spending means slower growth.

But the longer-term impact is not as great as some forecasters would have you believe. Here?s why:

Why is Chairman Bernanke soworried?

He?s concerned mostly because the economy isn?t growing as fast as it should be this far into an economic recovery. For reasons that most economists believe are temporary, the U.S. gross domestic product ground to a screeching halt in the last three months of last year. Bernanke and his Fed policy colleagues have been doing everything they can to get the economy moving ahead. But unemployment remains stubbornly high and near-zero interest rates don?t seem to be working.

In his Congressional testimony Tuesday on the state of the economy, Bernanke worried out loud that one reason for the slow growth is that higher gasoline prices ?are hitting family budgets.?

So how hard do budgets get hit by higher gas prices?

In the short term, gas price spikes can have an bigger impact than they should, largely because gasoline is one of the few commodity prices consumers track so closely. (Quick: how much does a loaf of bread cost at your local grocery store?)

An opinion poll conducted last week by the National Association of Convenience Stores found that 44 percent of consumers said that gas prices have a "great impact" in how they feel about the economy, up from the 38 percent who felt that way in January.

See? Bernanke?s right.

In the short-run, yes, a gas price spike can slow the economy ? a little. But over the long run, the impact is not all that great. To see why, we?re going to have to do a little math.

American drivers burn through about 350 million gallons of gasoline a day this time of year, at a cost of a little over $400 billion a year. Pump prices bottomed in December (as they usually do every year) at $3.32 a gallon and then shot up by 53 cents to an average of $3.85 a gallon nationwide, according to the latest Department of Energy figures. (We're using the data for all formulas, all grades.) This year, that seasonal rise has come earlier, and quicker, than usual.

If that increase held through the rest of the year, the hit to spending would be about a half percent of GDP. With an economy that?s only growing about 2 percent a year, that?s a fairly big number.

But that math doesn?t account of the savings consumers enjoy when gas prices fall. For the past three years, prices have bounced in a range between about $2.75 and $4.00 a gallon. The three-year average has been $3.43 a gallon. If you use that price as a starting point, the recent increase ? even if sustained for a full year ? would only knock about two-tenths of a percent from GDP.

Those numbers don?t look right. I?m paying a lot more than that at the pump, and it?s taking a big bite out of my paycheck.

Again, these are averages. For some people, the impact is much more severe. California drivers are paying $4.20 a gallon on average. If you live 30 miles from the nearest grocery store, you?re going to feel the impact of every extra penny a lot more than someone who commutes to work by subway.

Lower-income households feel the impact much more than those further up the income ladder. On average, roughly 5.5 percent of American household budgets go to pay for gasoline. But gasoline bills eat up a bigger portion of the weekly budget for those in the bottom quintile that for those at the top.

But gas prices hurt more than other price increases because I can?t cut back on driving.I have to get to work. What am I supposed to do?

You?re right. For most Americans, especially outside of major cities, gas price spikes are extremely painful because it?s very difficult to cut back in the short run. But over time, drivers can ? and do ? respond.

The long-term rise in gasoline prices over the past decade ? and the pain of sudden spikes ? is one of the biggest reasons that the consumption of gasoline has been falling since August 2007. Americans have been burning through about four percent less gasoline every year since then - even as the number of cars and trucks on the road continues to increase. Thanks to improvements in engine technology, higher-mileage government mandates and strong consumer demand for fuel-efficient cars and trucks, that trend is expected to continue.

Demand for those higher-mileage vehicles has, in turn, spurred a surge in consumer spending on new cars, a category has been an important source of strength for the U.S. recovery. That improvement in the overall mileage of the U.S. fleet has, in turn, helped offset the impact of gas price spikes.

Since bottoming in the first quarter of 2010, new car sales have zoomed ahead ? up nearly 60 percent to $103 billion in the final three months of 2012. About two-thirds of that money went to domestic car makers. Light truck sales have jumped 40 percent, to more than $140 billion for the latest quarter.

The boom in sales is coming partly because drivers deferred buying during the recession. But they?re also snapping up new models with better gas mileage that will continue to reduce consumption ? and blunt the economic impact of future gas price spikes.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/gas-price-spikes-dont-leave-lasting-economic-damage-1C8564099

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Apple Patents Situational Awareness And Location Information Sharing For Mobile Devices

Apple was issued a couple of interesting new patents today (spotted by AppleInsider), including one that could make an iPhone aware of changes in a user's situation, and alter phone settings accordingly. That would make for a mobile phone that might be able to automatically switch to silent mode when in a movie theatre, for instance, or which could wake from sleep upon being pulled out of a pocket.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JV4dQztEc3k/

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Legal professional privilege and employment law ? Hardwicke ...

?In R (on the application of Prudential Plc and another) v Special Commissioner of Income Tax and another [2013] UKSC 1 a majority of the Supreme Court held that legal advice privilege does not extend to protect legal advice given by professionals who are not lawyers and that it is for Parliament, not the courts, to decide whether and how the privilege should be extended.?

Full story

Hardwicke Chambers, 19th February 2013

Source: www.hardwicke.co.uk

Source: http://www.innertemplelibrary.com/2013/02/legal-professional-privilege-and-employment-law-hardwicke-chambers/

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US new-home sales jump to highest in 4? years

WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. new-home sales jumped in January from the previous month to the highest level since July 2008, a sign that the housing recovery is accelerating.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that new-home sales rose nearly 16 percent in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 437,000. The percentage increase was the largest in nearly 20 years. And December's sales were revised higher to 378,000 from 369,000.

Steady job creation and near-record-low mortgage rates are spurring more Americans to buy houses. Sales of previously occupied homes rose to the highest level in five years last year.

At the same time, the number of previously occupied homes for sale is at a 13-year low. That shortage creates more demand for new homes. Builders began construction on the most houses and apartments in four years last year.

The supply of new homes for sale was unchanged last month at 150,000. That's barely above August's total of 143,000 ? the smallest supply of new homes on records dating back to 1963.

At the current sales pace, it would take just 4.1 months to exhaust the number of new homes for sale, the lowest in eight years. Low inventories should encourage more construction.

Though new homes represent less than 20 percent of the housing sales market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to data from the National Association of Homebuilders.

The increase in home building has helped boost construction hiring. The industry has gained 98,000 jobs since September, the best stretch since the spring of 2006.

Still, the increases in new-home sales are coming from depressed levels. Sales plummeted to a record low in 2011. And sales are still well below the 700,000 annual level that economists consider healthy.

The biggest gain in new-home sales was in the West, where they soared 45.3 percent. The supply of previously occupied homes in that region has fallen sharply. Sales jumped 27.6 percent in the Northeast, 11.1 percent in the Midwest but only 3.2 percent in the South.

A separate report Tuesday showed that home prices accelerated in December. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 6.8 percent in December compared with the same month a year earlier. That's up from November's 5.5 percent gain over the previous November.

Rising home prices can fuel the housing recovery by encouraging people to buy before prices increase further. They can also bring more sellers off the sidelines.

Higher home values also make homeowners feel wealthier, building confidence and encouraging more spending. And banks are more likely to provide mortgage loans if they are confident that home prices are rising.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-26-US-New-Home-Sales/id-85da3b94e1b84b13832fbab25d4a8654

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Janet Jackson says she married Al Mana last year

NEW YORK (AP) ? Janet Jackson knows how to keep a secret: The singer has been married since last year.

A representative for Jackson confirmed Monday that the musician and Wissam Al Mana wed last year.

This is Jackson's second secret marriage. She secretly married Rene Elizondo Jr. in 1991. They separated in 1999.

The 46-year-old Jackson first tied the knot when she was 18 to singer James DeBarge, which lasted three months in 1984.

In a joint statement to Entertainment Tonight, Jackson and Al Mana said their wedding was a "quiet, private and beautiful ceremony."

The couple also said they would like privacy and "are allowed this time for celebration and joy."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/janet-jackson-says-she-married-al-mana-last-222315656.html

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Protest votes increase uncertainty in Italy election

ROME (Reuters) - Italians voted for a second and final day in a general election on Monday with a surge in protest votes increasing the risk of an unstable outcome that could undermine Europe's efforts to end its three-year debt crisis.

Opinion polls give the centre-left coalition led by former Industry Minister Pier Luigi Bersani a narrow lead but the race has been thrown wide open by the prospect of protest votes against austerity and corporate and political scandals.

"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old Rome lawyer who said he had voted for the 5-Star Movement, an anti-establishment protest group set to make a huge impact at its first general election.

"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited," he said.

Most of the voters interviewed outside polling stations by Reuters on Sunday and Monday expected the next government would quickly collapse, thwarting efforts to end an economic crisis.

"I'm very pessimistic, I don't think that whoever wins will last long or be able to solve the problems of this country," said Cristiano Reale, a 43 year-old salesman in Palermo, Sicily. He said he would vote for the far left Civil Revolution group.

A bitter campaign, fought largely over economic issues, has been closely watched by financial markets, nervous about the return of the kind of debt crisis that took the whole euro zone close to disaster and brought technocrat prime minister Mario Monti to office in 2011.

Italy is the third largest economy in the 17-member bloc and the prospect of political stalemate could cause dangerous market instability.

ANTI-EURO FORCES

"There are similarities between the Italian elections and last year's ones in Greece, in that pro-euro parties are losing ground in favor of populist forces," said Mizuho chief economist Riccardo Barbieri.

"An angry and confused public opinion does not see the benefits of fiscal austerity and does not trust established political parties."

Voting ends at 3 p.m. (1400 GMT), with the first exit polls due shortly afterwards. Projections based on the vote count will be issued through the afternoon and the final result should be known late on Monday or early Tuesday.

An extremely close Senate race is expected in several battleground regions and this could delay the final result.

Italian markets were sanguine on Monday morning, with both stocks and bonds showing little change.

Many analysts believe that whatever the result, the next government will be forced to stick to Italy's fiscal commitments because of the fear of a sudden spike in borrowing costs if markets take fright.

The election result is likely to be the most fragmented in decades, with the old left-right division disrupted by the rise of 5-Star, led by fiery Genoese comic Beppe Grillo, and by Monti's decision to run at the head of a centrist bloc.

"It will be a vote of protest, maybe of revolt," said Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest newspaper, on Monday.

It noted that for the first time the winning coalition is unlikely to get more than a third of the votes, making it harder to govern and likely opening weeks of complicated negotiations.

It is unclear how Grillo's rise will influence the result, with some pollsters saying it increases the chances of a clear win for the centre-left, led by Bersani's Democratic Party (PD), because 5-Star is taking votes mainly from Berlusconi.

After the first day of voting on Sunday, about 54 percent of voters had cast their ballots, a sharp fall on the level of 62.5 percent seen at the same stage in the last election in 2008.

If the trend continues on Monday it will confirm the disillusion of voters with a discredited political class.

Bad weather, including heavy snow in some areas, is also thought to have hampered the turnout in Italy's first post-war election to be held in winter.

This could favor the centre-left, whose voters tend to be more committed than those on the right, which has strong support among older people.

"Given the lower turnout, people are betting on a victory of the centre-left," said a Milan trader.

CALL TO ARMS

The 5-Star Movement, backed by a frustrated younger generation increasingly shut out of full-time jobs, could challenge former premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party as Italy's second largest political force.

"Come on, it isn't over yet," was Monday's front page headline in Il Giornale daily, owned by Berlusconi's brother, a call to arms to get out the vote.

The 76-year-old Berlusconi, has pledged sweeping tax cuts and echoed Grillo's attacks on Monti, Germany and the euro in an extraordinary media blitz that has halved the lead of the centre-left since the start of the year.

Support for Monti's centrist coalition meanwhile has faded after he led a lackluster campaign and he appears set to trail well behind the main parties.

Monti helped save Italy from a mounting debt crisis when he replaced a discredited Berlusconi in November 2011, but with the economy in its longest recession for 20 years analysts fear an electoral stalemate could delay vital moves to stimulate growth.

"I voted for the PD because a PD win is the only way to have a stable government and we need stability or we will end up like Greece," said Viola Rossi, an 80 year-old pensioner from Rome.

After drawing hundreds of thousands of supporters to its final campaign rally on Friday, Grillo has said he fears voting fraud to try to block a massive breakthrough, telling his supporters to wet the lead in the pencils they use to vote to prevent the crosses being rubbed out.

Whatever government emerges will inherit an economy that has been stagnant for much of the past two decades and problems ranging from record youth unemployment to a dysfunctional justice system and a bloated public sector.

If Bersani wins, it is far from clear that he will be able to control both houses of parliament and form a stable government capable of lasting a full five-year term.

Italy's electoral laws guarantee a strong majority in the lower house to the party or coalition that wins the biggest share of the overall national vote.

However the Senate, elected on a region-by-region basis, is more complicated and the result could turn on a handful of regions where results are too close to call, including Lombardy in the rich industrial north and the southern island of Sicily.

Many politicians and analysts believe Bersani and Monti will end up in an alliance after the vote, despite a number of spiky exchanges during the campaign and Monti's insistence that he will not join forces with Bersani's leftist allies.

As well as the national election, voters are also casting their ballots to elect new regional administrations in Lombardy, Lazio and Molise.

(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei, Steve Scherer and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome, Lisa Jucca in Milan and Wladimiro Pantaleone in Palermo; Editing by Barry Moody and Anna Willard)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/protest-votes-add-uncertainty-close-italy-election-070325879.html

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Pixar's 'Brave' wins Oscar for best animated film

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Pixar's Scottish adventure "Brave" has won the Academy Award for best animated feature film.

The win extends Pixar's domination of the category, marking its seventh win since the award was first handed out in 2002. "Brave," Pixar's first film with a female protagonist, didn't garner the kind of critical or popular support that movies like "WALL-E" and "Up" did.

But "Brave" still managed to win over Walt Disney's arcade game fantasy "Wreck-It Ralph," which many expected to take the award. Either way was a victory for Disney, which bought Pixar in 2006.

The other nominees Sunday night were Tim Burton's Mary Shelley homage "Frankenweenie," the stop-motion ghost story "ParaNorman," and the stop-motion sea voyage "The Pirates! Band of Misfits."

The 85th Academy Awards are airing live from the Dolby Theatre.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-02-24-Oscars-Animated%20Film/id-a699882357f34f0c8f49de0c1d1e7cef

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Ex-surgeon general C. Everett Koop dies

C. Everett Koop, who raised the profile of the surgeon general by riveting America's attention on the then-emerging disease known as AIDS and by railing against smoking, died Monday in New Hampshire. He was 96.

An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth institute, Susan Wills, said he died in Hanover, where he had a home. She didn't disclose the cause of his death.

Koop wielded the previously low-profile post of surgeon general as a bully pulpit for seven years during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

An evangelical Christian, he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.

He carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States ? his goal had been to do so by 2000. A former pipe smoker, he said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

Koop's impact was great, although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy. He described himself as "the health conscience of the country."

"My only influence was through moral suasion," Koop said just before leaving office in 1989.

By then, his Amish-style silver beard and white braided uniform were instantly recognizable.

Out of office, he switched to business suits and bow ties but continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.

"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.

In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco is not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."

Although Koop eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, his nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians.

Critics said Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.

Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."

But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.

In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.

He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever done.

Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how the HIV virus was transmitted.

He became a hero to AIDS activists, who chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances but booed other administration officials.

Koop further angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.

Koop maintained his personal opposition to abortion, however. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.

Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.

At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day, but Reagan would not interfere.

Koop, worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, opened an institute at Dartmouth to teach medical students basic values and ethics.

He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.

Koop was born in New York's borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.

He attended Dartmouth College, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.

Koop was by far the best-known surgeon general, and decades after he left the job he was still a recognized personality, colleagues recalled.

"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."

Dr. Joseph O'Donnell, an oncologist and professor at the Geisel School of Medicine, where the Koop Institute is located, said he shared Koop's desire to focus on disease prevention.

"When he decided he was going to come here I felt like I died and went to heaven," said Donnell, who is the senior scholar at the institute. "He was my hero, and we worked a lot together."

Koop received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it.

In 1938, Koop married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children ? Allen, Norman, David and Elizabeth. David, their youngest son, was killed in a mountain-climbing accident when he was 20.

Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.

Koop was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and he also served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.

Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients ? ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.

"It used to be said in World War II that there were no atheists in foxholes," he wrote in 1973. "I have found there are very few atheists among the parents of dying children.

"This is a time when religious faith can see a family through trying circumstances."

___

Ring reported from Montpelier, Vt. Cass reported from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/c-everett-koop-ex-surgeon-general-dies-nh-215926071.html

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Sky Sports News Feature on Wheelchair RL http://www.screenr.com/u4c7

More Screencasts

by Ferrise

All Done :)

11:01 pm Jan 31st

Help needed re question and answer format.

3:13 am Jan 31st

installing the drivers.

7:07 pm Jan 28th

for mum, how to install drivers

5:33 pm Jan 28th

Update on SPSSC Progress as at Friday 25th Jan (3 weeks gone)

11:47 pm Jan 25th

All screencasts by Ferrise

Source: http://www.screenr.com/u4c7

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Police: Report of gunman at MIT is unfounded

BOSTON (AP) ? Police in Massachusetts say a call reporting a gunman on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus was unfounded and that there is no threat to public safety.

Police said Saturday that officers searched for a man reported to be carrying a long rifle and wearing body armor and found nothing. A spokeswoman for the university says the school also called off a campus-wide lockdown.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-report-gunman-mit-unfounded-153446026.html

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NEW ERA x NFL?Acme Packers?59Fifty Fitted Baseball Cap

This NEW ERA 59Fifty fitted basebal cap is a page from The Green Bay Packers history. Today the idea of corperate logos on NFL jerseys could spark a riot. During the Packe'rs early days, the team sported a compltely different name, colors and logo . In 1921 The Acme Packing Company was instrumental in helping the owner Curly Lambeau obtan a franchise in the??American Professional Football Association (soon to be the NFL). The team's corporate sponsor's name rocked the front of the team's jersey. The Acme Packing Company pulled out after two seasons.?Lambeau secured outside financing from local Green Bay businesses. The team was reborn, as the Green Bay Packers. This piece of vintage girdiron is available now online at authorized New Era retailers, like?www.footaction.com

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Source: http://www.strictlyfitteds.com/content/2013/02/new-era-x-nflacme-packers-59fifty-fitted-baseball-cap-0

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GameSpot Random Encounter : NBA Jam

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Source: http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=196668

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Sandra Fluke embraces transgender soldiers in the military, HHS mandate 'accommo...

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Disney?s Cars gets a Numbers & Counting app for iPhone and iPad

Are your kids keener on Lightning McQueen than on maths? Well, it?s hardly surprising. But Disney?s new Cars: Numbers & Counting app combines the two.

Released under the company?s Disney Connected Learning banner, this is part racing game and part educational app based around numbers and counting. You may have guessed that from the name?

The app is aimed at 4-6 year-olds, and features locations from Cars including Porto Corsa, Tokyo and Radiator Springs.

?Race your car on the track as fast as you can while steering around obstacles, passing Lightning McQueen?s competitors, and collecting power-ups. Unlock different tracks and race in exciting destinations from the Cars universe,? explains its App Store listing.

?Quick pit stops allow you to become a hi-performance mechanic choosing and counting the correct parts to get the car back on the track fast! Numbers and counting have never been so much fun!?

One neat-sounding feature: ?parent enabled gift unlocks and player achievement notifications? through Disney?s Parent App on Facebook, so you can keep abreast of your child?s progress. Disney stresses that this is optional, and also that your kids won?t encounter any non-Disney advertising or in-app purchases while playing.

Here?s the bad news for us Brits: the app isn?t available here in the UK yet. For now, it appears to be US-only, which is a shame.

Still, if you?re Stateside with one or more young Cars lovers in your household, it looks well worth a spin. Cars: Numbers & Counting costs $3.99 on the App Store, and runs on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Source: http://www.appsplayground.com/apps/2013/02/21/disneys-cars-gets-a-numbers-counting-app-for-iphone-and-ipad/

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Soft Machine co-founder Kevin Ayers dies in France

LONDON (AP) ? Kevin Ayers, an influential singer-songwriter who co-founded the band Soft Machine, has died in France, his record label said Thursday. He was 68.

Ayers was an important figure in the British psychedelic movement spearheaded by the Beatles in the late 1960s. He did not achieve sustained commercial success, but his work is treasured by musicians and many fans.

Jack McLean, assistant to the managing director of Lo-Max Records in London, said Thursday that Ayers' body had been discovered in his bed at his home in the medieval village Montolieu in the south of France.

"We believe he died Feb. 18 of natural causes and was found two days later," McLean said. "He hadn't been ill, but he lived a rock 'n' roll lifestyle and everything that comes with that."

Ayers, who was raised partly in Malaysia, moved to Canterbury on his return to England and formed Soft Machine in 1966 with drummer and singer Robert Wyatt. They took the name from a novel by beat generation author William Burroughs.

The band was part of the "Canterbury scene" ? a group of bands known for a pastoral approach to music that combined elements of jazz, folk and rock music.

Soft Machine and Pink Floyd both enjoyed wide followings for their imaginative and experimental take on psychedelia. They were also known for their free-form, jazz-influenced live improvisations.

Ayers also had a lengthy solo career and made many collaborative records, working with Syd Barrett, Brian Eno, Nico and others. He released "The Unfairground" in 2007, ending a lengthy hiatus with an album that was critically acclaimed.

The record company said Ayers is survived by three daughters and a sister.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/soft-machine-co-founder-kevin-ayers-dies-france-184028567.html

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Improve Your Smartphone Audio For Cheap With SonicMax Pro ...

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

For almost as long as scientists have devised ways to store digital music in ever more efficient ways, other scientists have agonized over how to ?repair? that work. This typically involves trying to replace what the process of acoustic compression has removed ? compression that is necessary for the files to fly around the internet the way they do, stream without lagging, and get stored on your phone.

The most common way to mess around with how a file sound is equalization, which amplifies some frequencies and/or attenuates others. Plenty of apps do that.

However, like Audio Xciter (which also impressed us), SonicMax and SonicMax Pro ? from veteran (1985) sonic engineers BBE Sound ? go beyond equalization or simple ?loudness? controls, by performing complex processing on the music on your iPhone to make your music sound punchier and more ?present.?

The Android version is free, for whatever reason. The iOS crowd will need to cough up a dollar for the regular version, or $2.99 for the Pro version (the one that is free on Android) that we recommend out of the two, if you?re going to bother, because it offers the greatest degree of control.

Before you go any further, some caveats! You must meet some or all of the following requirements:?

• You already have great headphones. Those have a bigger influence on sound quality than any app can. (Or you have subpar headphones, can?t afford nice ones, and want to make them sound better, which this app definitely can.)
• You care about sound quality enough to switch your music playback app.
• You primarily listen to raw music downloads, as opposed to music from Rdio, Rhapsody, Spotify, streaming radio, and so on. This app only works on regular files stored on your phone.
• You believe that the engineers who mastered the album maybe could have done a better job, and/or that compression negatively affects music.
• If you use iTunes Match, you don?t mind going in to Apple?s Music app and making those files download to your phone.
• You make all of your playlists in iTunes (you can?t make playlists within this app).

Do those sound familiar? Yes? Then let?s proceed.

After testing SonicMax Pro, we can verify that it makes music sound more present. It also sounds louder, with thicker bass, depending on where you set the knobs, based on technology BBE has long used to make live acts sound better. If you like to tweak sound and are bored of mere bass and treble, you will find plenty of fun, effective ways to make your jams sound more present, although obviously, audio purists should steer clear of apps like this in favor of high-resolution files and expensive headphones.

The regular version of SonicMax offers only presets for stuff like earbuds/earphones, headphones, speakers, and docks. The Pro version adds dials that let you control aspects of the sound within those presets, as well as creating your own presets. If you?re going to mess with this sort of thing, go all the way ? the $2 version offers a lot more than the $1 version. Of course, if you?re on Android, you don?t need to worry about that (although granted, the Android version doesn?t look as pretty).

?

Related articles

Source: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/02/improve-your-smartphone-audio-for-cheap-with-sonicmax-pro.html

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Kellogg recalls some Special K cereal, citing glass fragments

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kellogg Co said 36,000 packages of its Special K Red Berries cereal could contain dangerous glass fragments and have been pulled from the market, the latest in a series of recalls of its popular brands.

Company spokesman Kris Charles said late on Wednesday that three sizes of the product were involved and had been distributed across the United States to a limited number of retailers. No consumer injuries have been reported, she said.

"The company took this precautionary action due to the possible presence of glass fragments from a single batch of one of the ingredients," Charles said. "This is a very small recall...We took the step out of an abundance of caution."

Charles said the voluntary recall is unrelated to big recalls in recent years that involved other well-known Kellogg cereals, cookies and crackers. The company is still in the process of turning itself around after admitting that it had cut too many jobs in prior years that contributed to manufacturing problems.

The latest recall involves 11.2-ounce retail packages of Kellogg's Special K Red Berries cereal identified by UPC Code 38000 59923 with a "Better if Used by" date stamp of DEC 02 2013 KNC 105 00:13 through DEC 02 2013 KNC 105 02:30.

It also includes 37-ounce club-store packages identified by UPC Code 38000 20940, followed by a "Better if Used by" date of NOV 30 2013 KNB 107 17:31 to NOV 30 2013 KNB 107 20:05.

Kellogg said 22.4-ounce twin-packs were also recalled. They are identified by UPC Code 38000 78356, along with "Better if Used by" time stamps of NOV 30 2013 KNA 105 07:00 to NOV 30 2013 KNA 105 08:51, and NOV 30 2013 KNB 105 15:00 to NOV 30 2013 KNB 105 17:05.

Special K is touted by the company as a low-calorie consumer option.

Kellogg in October recalled 2.8 million boxes of its Mini-Wheats cereal after fragments of flexible metal mesh from a faulty manufacturing part were found inside packages.

In June 2010, the company voluntarily recalled millions of packages of Kellogg's Corn Pops, Honey Smacks, Froot Loops and Apple Jacks cereals due to an off-flavor and odor of the products.

In 2009, it voluntarily recalled certain lots of its Austin and Keebler brands of peanut-butter sandwich crackers and Famous Amos and Keebler cookies due to potential contamination with Salmonella.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson and Martinne Geller; Editing by Matt Driskill)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kellogg-recalls-special-k-cereal-citing-glass-fragments-045353632--finance.html

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Predictable Evolution Trumps Randomness of Mutations

Bacteria such as Escherichia coli can acquire predictable mutations to adapt to a changing environment. Image: Flickr/Microbe World

Although mutations, the driver of evolution, occur at random, a study of the bacterium Escherichia coli reveals that nature often finds the same solution to the same problem again and again.

Over time, random mutations enable organisms to adapt and diversify, often when geographically separated groups of the same species grow better suited to their local environment and less like members of the other group.

But that's not the only way that genetic diversity can arise. Researchers have reported cases of cichlid fish, palm trees and finches adapting to different ecological niches and splitting into different species despite living in the same place. In 2008, evolutionary biologist Michael Doebeli of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver and colleagues reported that E. coli bacteria can also diversify while sharing a test tube.

In that study, they fed easy-to-digest glucose and a harder-to-stomach acetate to homogeneous populations of the bacteria, and let the bacteria chomp away. E. coli can switch between the two foods, but the team found that in each test tube two groups emerged, specialized in consuming either glucose or acetate. What they did not know was which genetic path each group took to achieve its specialization.

Mapping evolution
In the new study, published online today in Public Library of Science Biology, Doebeli and colleague Matthew Herron, also at UBC, went back to the frozen samples from three of their test tubes and sequenced 17 gene samples from various stages of the experiment. The DNA showed that in some cases identical mutations appeared independently in all three test tubes: despite the random nature of mutations, the same changes in the environment favored the same genetic solutions.

Doebeli and Herron also found that some mutations occurred only in a specific order: after one group had become specialized for glucose and the other for acetate, both groups evolved to switch better between meal types. That last mutation would not have been useful until after the emergence of the first, which helped exhaust food supplies faster. That finding is novel, says systems biologist Michael Stumpf of Imperial College London. Although biologists have observed traits appearing in a particular order, until now no one had documented the genetic basis for those changes.

"It's of interest to know how often the genes that change are the same or different," says biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, Illinois. "That tells us how much constraint there is on evolution." Insects often evolve resistance to insecticides through the same common mutations, he notes.

Evolutionary constraint
Coyne adds, however, that it may not be practical to extrapolate very much from an asexually reproducing species such as E. coli to organisms that reproduce sexually.

And Stumpf warns that because bacteria live in such large populations, their evolution in aggregate may be more predictable than that of larger, more dispersed species.

Environments also change faster than most species can evolve, Stumpf says, so he would be interested in future studies that examine how predictable evolution is in changing environments. Doebeli agrees: he has dozens of other frozen lines of bacteria, which evolved in environments of varying complexity, waiting for their genomic snapshots.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 19, 2013.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=044274712aaae419de3b7b9e357b409a

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Playground Sessions Exits Beta To Teach Budding Pianists How To ...

While education startups like Khan Academy and Coursera are democratizing access to primary and secondary-level instruction, there are plenty of other hobbies where face-to-face teaching could be disrupted (or enhanced) by software.

Music could be one of them ? at least at the beginner level. Playground Sessions, a New York-based startup that spun out of a ventures division of creative advertising agency BBH, is launching a new way to teach piano today. It uses a MIDI keyboard, video demonstrations, and software that provides instant feedback on how well you?ve matched every note. This is desktop software that you have to download from Playground Sessions? website, but a proper tablet app is on its way.

I?ve spent more than 20 years playing piano and competing, but I had to learn from a very hardcore Russian piano teacher (who I?m immensely grateful for).

While it would be hard to get to play Chopin?s Revolutionary etude all on your own, Playground Sessions could reach a more beginner-level player who isn?t quite ready to fork over more than $40 or 60 an hour to an individual teacher or who wants to play pop songs, not Bach partitas.

It works, as you might guess, through several ?Bootcamp? tutorials on basic musical concepts like chord progressions, notation and key signatures. These are designed by a New York University music instructor Alex Ness.

Then there?s interactive sheet music and complementary video lessons on how to play specific songs like Katy Perry?s ?Firework,? or David Guetta?s ?Without You.? The pieces are sold in an iTunes-like store for about $5.99 a pop.

?One of the reasons students drop out early is that they don?t really love the sound. They?re not motivated or engaged by the songs they?re playing,? said Chris Vance, who co-founded the company. ?One of the things we wanted to address was giving people more choice and ownership over what they play.?

When a student picks up one of these songs, they can play into a MIDI keyboard and get feedback on how well they?ve picked up a song based on how many notes they?ve played correctly. Playground Sessions also shows them how much they?ve improved compared to the last time they played and where they?re seeing problem areas.

Playground Sessions? membership will go for $9.99 a month with an annual plan or $14.99 per month with a quarterly plan.

Vance signed on Quincy Jones, the famed record producer who worked with Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, along with David Sides, a YouTube star known for his renditions of pop songs, to advise on product direction.

Along with BBH?s invention division ZAG, Vance and other unannounced angels are owners of the company. ZAG put in at least $1 million, Vance said, and then other angels followed on in a September seed round.

Playground Sessions faces several competitors, but the market is quite young. There are tablet-based competitors like?including JoyTunes, which doesn?t require a MIDI keyboard and seems to be more geared for children. Then for the guitar, there is TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Incident, which makes the iPhone powered electric gTar, and Ovelin, which makes the guitar teaching app WildChords.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/19/playground-sessions/

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UP Police Blotter: Beer Can, Stone Hurled at Parked Vehicles and a Missing iPhone at PC Church

University Park, TX

FEBRUARY 12

A 47-year-old Highland Park resident told police that an unknown person used a stone to damage her Mercedes C250 between 6:30 and 10 p.m. on Feb. 9 in the 3700 block of Villanova Drive.

A representative from Tom Thumb reported that an unknown person stole property between 1:40 and 1:44 p.m. on Feb. 12 in the 4000 block of Villanova Drive.

FEBRUARY 13

A 33-year-old Keller resident told police that an unknown person entered the church activity center at Park Cities Baptist Church and took his iPhone 4 and ten dollars between 12:28 and 12:31 a.m. on Feb. 9 in the 3900 block of Northwest Parkway.

A 59-year-old resident reported that an unknown person stole her iPad 2 between 12 a.m. on Jan. 19 and 8 p.m. on Feb. 9 in the 3900 block of Southwestern Boulevard.

FEBRUARY 14

A 42-year-old Mesquite resident told police that an unknown person broke the glass on the door at a CVS store and entered the business to take items between 4:19 and 4:20 a.m. on Feb. 14 in the 6700 block of Preston Road.

A 37-year-old Dallas resident reported that an unknown person struck her Honda Accord XI while she was sitting at a red light and failed to give identifying information between 9 and 9:01 a.m. on Feb. 14 in the 7100 block of Preston Road.

A 77-year-old Dallas resident told police that an unknown person attempted to open up an account without the victim's permission between 12 a.m. on Sept. 13 and 12 a.m. on Feb. 12 in the 4100 block of Stanhope Drive.

A 22-year-old Garland resident reported that an unknown person stole two iPhone 4s' between 1:45 and 2:30 p.m. in the 6700 block of Snider Plaza.

FEBRUARY 15

A 24-year-old Bryan resident told police that an unknown person collided with her Toyota Highlander and left the scene without providing information at 5:27 p.m. on Feb. 15 in the 7000 block of Hursey Street.

FEBRUARY 16

A 45-year-old resident reported that a suspect removed five mirrors from his home while dropping the victim's child off between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 15 in the 3800 block of Southwestern Boulevard.

A 40-year-old Dallas resident told police that an unknown person threw a beer can through the window of her vehicle, damaging property including a laptop computer and a bag, between 7:30 and 11:23 p.m. in the 3400 block of Hanover Street.

FEBRUARY 18

UP Police reported that a juvenile shot another juvenile with an airsoft gun between 10 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 18 in the 3500 block of Granada Avenue.

A 50-year-old resident reported that an unknown person broke the lock to his residence between 8 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 18 in the 3200 block of Rosedale Avenue.

Source: http://parkcities.bubblelife.com/community/parkcities_reporter/library/3569771/key/35609982/UP_Police_Blotter_Beer_Can_Stone_Hurled_at_Parked_Vehicles_and_a_Missing_iPhone_at_PC_Church

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Supreme Court to take up case that could overhaul campaign finance

The Supreme Court Tuesday agreed to hear a case that challenges limits on campaign spending, opening the door to a decision that could upend legal precedent on what individuals can contribute to candidates.

By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / February 19, 2013

The Supreme Court is seen in Washington in this March 28, 2012, file photo, Three years after its landmark Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court is again taking a look at the legal basis for limits on campaign finance spending.

Charles Dharapak/AP/File

Enlarge

The US Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to take up a case examining whether limits on the total amount an individual can contribute to political candidates and federal campaigns over a two-year period violate the free speech rights of would-be contributors.

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The case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission represents yet another challenge to the nation?s campaign-finance laws in the wake of the Supreme Court?s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

In Citizens United, the court substantially narrowed the justification for imposing limits on political spending during campaign season.

The court eliminated the broader goal of creating a level playing field for all candidates, and instead said that government-imposed spending restrictions could only be justified to prevent actual quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of corruption.

That narrowing of the law opened doors for other potential legal challenges seeking to undermine the broader campaign-finance system. That?s where the McCutcheon case comes in.

The lead plaintiff, Shaun McCutcheon of Alabama, is challenging a part of the campaign-finance law that restricts the total amount he can contribute during a two-year election cycle to $117,000.

The law restricts the amount he can give to each candidate ($2,500), to national party political committees ($30,800), state party political committees ($10,000), and other political committees ($5,000).

But that is only one level of regulation. Congress enacted a second level of campaign finance restrictions by imposing an overall limit ($117,000) on how much money can be spent by a contributor in each of the four restricted areas.

It is that second level of regulation that is being challenged.

Mr. McCutcheon wants to know why, if he is restricted to contributing only a limited amount of money to each candidate and each political committee, he is also restricted in the total amount of money he can spend in support of political causes and candidates.

In addition to McCutcheon, the Republican National Committee is also a plaintiff in the case. The Republican Party argues that it would like to accept larger contributions from McCutcheon and others like him. ?

If Congress?s justification for imposing the contribution limits was to prevent quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of corruption, then the individual contribution limits should satisfy that government interest, McCutcheon?s lawyers argue.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ylIIidvTkQY/Supreme-Court-to-take-up-case-that-could-overhaul-campaign-finance

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Harry Styles on Taylor Swift Split: "I'm Good"

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/02/harry-styles-on-taylor-swift-split-im-good/

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Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss dies at 80

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jerry Buss, who parlayed a $1,000 real estate investment into ownership of the Los Angeles Lakers, winning 10 National Basketball Association championships and making the team one of the most glamorous in American sports, died on Monday at 80, the team said on its official website.

Buss, who matched superstar players with brilliant coaches and savvy executives, had been hospitalized recently for cancer. The official cause of death was kidney failure, said Lakers spokesman John Black.

Buss had been hospitalized much of the past 18 months and had not been to a Lakers game this season.

"We not only have lost our cherished father but a beloved man of our community and a person respected by the world basketball community," a statement released on behalf of the Buss family said.

NBA Commissioner David Stern said the NBA had "lost a visionary owner whose influence on our league is incalculable and will be felt for decades to come."

Buss bought the Lakers in 1979 and under his ownership they became the second most valuable professional basketball team behind the New York Knicks, worth an estimated $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

They won league championships during their "Showtime" era in 1980s and early '90s with teams that feature some of the game's marquee names, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. The team had more dominant years in the late 1990s through 2004 with superstars Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal.

In addition to winning championships with all-star players, the flashy Showtime teams transcended sport. Live music, dancers and a festive atmosphere made the games like a party and celebrities such as Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dyan Cannon and Denzel Washington were regulars.

"The brand of basketball that he brought here with Showtime and the impact that he had on the sport as a whole - those vibrations were felt (by) a kid all the way to Italy at 6 years old before basketball was even global," Bryant, who was raised in Italy, told the Los Angeles Times.

Two of Buss' adult children are executive vice presidents of the franchise - Jeanie Buss manages the business and Jim Buss oversees basketball operations. He had four other children.

HARD WORK AND LUCK

"I've worked hard and been lucky," Buss told the Los Angeles Times. "With the combination of the two, I've accomplished everything I ever set out to do."

Buss brought in two of the NBA's best coaches - Pat Riley and Phil Jackson - and they took the Lakers to NBA titles in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009 and 2010. Buss was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 2010.

Buss also was a high-stakes poker player and finished third in the 1991 World Series of Poker and second in the 2003 World Poker Tour's Freeroll International. He also appeared on NBC's "Poker After Dark."

Gerald Hatten Buss was born in Salt Lake City in 1933 and worked his way through the University of Wyoming, graduating in three years. In 1957, he earned a doctorate in chemistry at age 24 from the University of Southern California, where he briefly taught.

Buss made a fortune after investing $1,000 with a fellow chemist in a small Los Angeles apartment building to provide him added income so he could teach. His holdings grew, leading the way for his founding the successful real estate investment company Mariani-Buss Associates with long-time business associate Frank Mariani.

In 1979, Buss bought the Lakers, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team and the Los Angeles Forum arena in a $67.5 million deal that at the time was the largest transaction in sports history. Buss later sold the Kings.

He bought Pickfair Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1979, paying $5.4 million for the former home of movie legends Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. He sold the home in 1988 for $6.7 million.

James Worthy, a key player during the Showtime era, offered condolences to the Buss family on Twitter.

"Dr. Buss was not only the greatest sports owner, but a true friend and just a really cool guy. Loved him dearly," Worthy said.

Mark Cuban, owner of the rival Dallas Mavericks, tweeted: "Your encouragement and support along with your stories of staying true to yourself had an enormous impact on me."

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Additional reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Bill Trott and Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/los-angeles-lakers-owner-jerry-buss-dies-79-171355505--nba.html

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MacGuineas: Obama, we need honest dialogue on debt (CNN)

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