About 250,000 Washington customers without power

AAA??Jan. 20, 2012?9:05 AM ET
About 250,000 Washington customers without power
JONATHAN J. COOPERJONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press
MANUEL VALDESMANUEL VALDES, Associated Press??

King County Deputy Joe Abreu at left helps Potelco workers, Joe Lewis, center and Travis Barrett clear a downed tree coated with ice Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 in Seattle. An ice storm followed heavy snow in western Washington, bringing down trees that killed one person and knocked out power for about 100,000 homes while sending cars and trucks spinning out of control. (AP Photo/The Seattle Times, Steve Ringman) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; SEATTLEPI.COM OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

King County Deputy Joe Abreu at left helps Potelco workers, Joe Lewis, center and Travis Barrett clear a downed tree coated with ice Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 in Seattle. An ice storm followed heavy snow in western Washington, bringing down trees that killed one person and knocked out power for about 100,000 homes while sending cars and trucks spinning out of control. (AP Photo/The Seattle Times, Steve Ringman) MAGS OUT; NO SALES; SEATTLEPI.COM OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

A Delta Air Lines plane is sprayed with de-icing fluid prior to take-off at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in Seattle. On the heels of heavy snow that fell Wednesday, the Western Washington region was hit with an ice storm Thursday that closed runways at the airport and stranded hundreds of travelers as flights were delayed or cancelled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A Southwest Airlines plane sits covered in a a thick layer of ice while parked at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in Seattle. On the heels of heavy snow that fell Wednesday, the Western Washington region was hit with an ice storm Thursday that closed runways at the airport and stranded hundreds of travelers as flights were delayed or canceled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A United Air Lines plane lands on at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on a recently re-opened runway, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, in Seattle. On the heels of heavy snow that fell Wednesday, the Western Washington region was hit with an ice storm Thursday that closed runways at the airport and stranded hundreds of travelers as flights were delayed or canceled. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Port Orchard Marina resident Mitch Glover builds a snow igloo in front of the A Dock gate in Port Orchard, Wash. on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Meegan M. Reid)

SEATTLE (AP) ? About 250,000 electric customers around Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia are without power because of a winter storm that coated much of Washington state in ice and swelled Oregon rivers, killing three people.

Most are customers of Puget Sound Energy, which says it could take into the weekend or later to get the power back on for everyone.

The National Weather Service says warming temperatures Friday should melt snow and ice in Western Washington lowlands as the forecast promises the usual rain into next week.

Forecasters say the melting snow could cause urban and small stream flooding and fill the Skokomish and Chehalis rivers above flood stage by Saturday evening. More rain is forecast early next week that could make flooding more of an issue.

Associated PressNews Topics: Weather, Storms, Floods, General news, Accidents and disasters, WNBA basketball, Professional basketball, Basketball, Sports, Women's basketball, Women's sports

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-20-Northwest%20Storm/id-d79cd9c3b90c48339b3d69789cf35e77

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Calling all Developers: Want to create the next generation of the Android Central App?

Exciting times are ahead, folks. We're starting to work on the next generation of the Android Central App to complement this little website here and our Google Currents Edition, and we're going to open it up to the developer community at large.

If you've got the chops to keep up with the best and fastest growing Android community around and help present our stories, forums, galleries and more to millions of readers a month -- plus more than 123,000 on Twitter, 45,000 on Facebook and 26,000 on Google+ -- now's your chance.

If you're a serious developer and interested in working on the next generation of the Android Central App, drop us a line here, and we'll go into detail on requirements and, of course, compensation. Look forward to hearing from you!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/uJ6XCGyvgJ0/story01.htm

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Aid groups: Late drought response in Africa cost tens of thousands of lives

Aid groups warned that a drought was coming to the Horn of Africa in 2011, and say now that a late response by donor nations unnecessarily cost thousands of lives.?

Scientists and aid organizations gave the world plenty of time to prepare, but a late response by the world?s donor nations cost 50,000 to 100,000 lives during last year?s drought in the Horn of Africa region.

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That is the message of a joint report by Oxfam International, Save the Children and other charities, released today, during the global meetings at Davos, Switzerland, and at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Now, with a new drought looming in the West African nations of Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Chad, the joint report, ?The Dangerous Delay,? is calling for an overhaul of the world?s aid delivery system to avoid more preventable deaths from starvation.

?The humanitarian community needs to come together and raise its voice louder so governments and donors know the gravity?of?crises such as the one in the?Horn?of?Africa,? said Carolyn Miles, President and CEO?of?Save the Children in a statement. ?By the time the world sees starving children on TV, it?s too?late. Tens?of?thousands?of?deaths could have been prevented had aid groups and governments received funding earlier to scale up programs.??

Aid groups estimate that 50,000 to 100,000 people died of hunger between April and August 2011, more than half of them children. Even today, the UN warns that as many as 750,000 Somalis could die in the ongoing food crisis in Somalia.

What makes the deaths in the Horn of Africa so galling for many activists is the fact that the world had advance warning. Unlike the famine in the Horn of Africa in 1984, which caused an estimated 1 million deaths in Ethiopia alone, aid organizations had received alerts from a massive computerized system called the Famine Early Warning System, which is comprised of ground sensors, satellite imagery, and field observations. FEWS-Net and other systems alerted aid groups as early as August 2010 that drought conditions were worsening, but slow funding from international donors meant that aid groups could not mount a full-scale response until July 2011, when the drought was in full force.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/OqWZ6Sw4N6c/Aid-groups-Late-drought-response-in-Africa-cost-tens-of-thousands-of-lives

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Apple announces iBooks 2, iBooks Author

By Rosa Golijan

Apple

"Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been since the very beginning."

With those words,?Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller kicked off the company's invitation-only education event on Thursday, according to?Technologizer's Henry McCracken. At this event,?Apple introduced the newly interactive iBooks 2, a first wave of $14.99 school textbooks from the top educational publishers and a new tool for educators to make their own textbook.?

After his opening remarks, Schiller went on to explain that Apple is "proud to help students learn" and that it has noticed that iPads are finding their way into classrooms.

"It's not a big surprise that students get excited to learn on the iPad ? it was No. 1 on teen's wish lists this holiday," Schiller said, quoted by The Verge's rapid-fire liveblog. Between the 20,000 education apps on the iPad and the sheer volume of content in the iBookstore, it's certainly understandable that there are over 1.5 million iPads being used in education.

But Apple wants to make things even easier and better ??by taking two actions.

The first, says Schiller, is reinventing the textbook.?Textbooks, he explains, aren't the most ideal learning tool. They can be cumbersome, they get dogeared, they suffer from wear, they're not interactive, and they're certainly not easily searchable.?

The iPad, on the other hand, is pretty darn portable, durable, and searchable.

So the natural step to take?? raise your hand if you didn't see this coming?? is to put textbooks onto the iPad.?Apple intends to do this with the brand new iBooks 2.

iBooks 2 ??the second generation of Apple's popular app ??will bring movies, multitouch gestures, links, lightning-fast searches, photo galleries, visual Q&A sections,?3-D models and other interactive elements to textbooks.?iBooks 2 will be available for download today (and it will be free).

Apple

Now we've established that the snazzy new interactive textbooks will be used in iBooks (and downloadable through the iBookstore), but where will they come from? How are they made?

Easily, says Schiller. A free Mac app for authoring books will be made available. The app will be named?? all too obviously?? iBooks Author.??iBooks Author offers templates, drag-and-drop controls, auto-formatting and allows for custom elements.?The Verge describes it as looking like "Keynote mixed with Pages"

This clever tool aside, Apple's got plenty of partners lined up as well ??so that it can offer textbooks priced at $14.99 or less.?In fact, it's got three major textbook publishers ??Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt???on its side.?"These companies make 90% of the textbooks available," says Schiller.

But all of this isn't enough ??Apple wants to do more for education. Which brings us to the second part of Apple's presentation: A?new iTunes U.?This new version of iTunesU will feel very familiar to those who have used iBooks, says?Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services.?It "lets teachers do everything on their iPad," he added.

The new app will?offer customizable topics, have room for things such as office hours, allow teachers to post messages or list assignments, and make lectures streamable or downloadable.

The new iTunesU app will be free and?not be limited to universities ??K-12 schools will be able to use it as well.

Related stories:

Want more tech news, silly puns or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts, or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/19/10189773-apple-announces-ibooks-2-ibooks-author

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SEC Inspector General Kotz leaving agency (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? David Kotz, the tough internal watchdog at the Securities and Exchange Commission, is leaving the agency at the end of January to join a private investigative service.

Kotz, 45, probed everything from the agency's failure to catch convicted Ponzi swindler Bernard Madoff to bungled SEC contracts and even pornography-watching by agency employees.

But the hard-hitting lawyer has also drawn criticism from SEC staff who have complained his tactics have led to a culture of fear at the agency.

In December, Reuters reported that at least two SEC employees had filed formal complaints against Kotz, alleging he bullied witnesses and twisted facts to build a case against them.

Kotz plans to join Gryphon Strategies, a private investigative services firm where he will serve as a managing director in its Washington office. He will focus on conducting corporate fraud investigations and helping whistleblowers seeking to expose fraud, the SEC said.

"I am tremendously proud of the accomplishments of my office and the agency over the past four years," Kotz said in a statement. "The reports we have issued have not only been significant to the agency, Congress and the investing public, but they have also directly resulted in a transformation of many of the divisions and offices of the commission."

Kotz joined the SEC in December 2007 after previously working as the inspector general of the Peace Corps.

His aggressiveness has won him some fans, particularly in Congress. His exhaustive 477-page report on the agency's failure to snare Madoff prodded the SEC to be more assertive in implementing a new database to help track tips from informants.

Most recently, one of Kotz's past investigations helped lead the Justice Department to reach a civil settlement with a former SEC attorney over claims he improperly represented alleged Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford after departing the SEC. [ID:nL1E8CD9DB]

"David Kotz produced strong, conclusive reports, even as critics claimed he was too aggressive," said Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who has been a big supporter of Kotz's work. "An aggressive, independent inspector general is best for the agency in the long run, even if that's uncomfortable for management."

Kotz's successes have recently been shaded by growing concerns about his tactics.

Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman, was one of the first people to publicly lash out against Kotz during congressional testimony last year. He said on Tuesday that Kotz was a "rogue IG" who brought a "reign of terror" to the agency.

"While his departure did not come soon enough to spare many employees from the sting of his improper and harsh criticism, his departure is good news for an agency and its staff that have deserved better since Mr. Kotz's tenure began," said Pitt, who has represented some staffers pro bono in Kotz probes.

Kotz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

COMPLAINTS PILE UP

Kotz's announcement about his departure took many at the SEC by surprise on Tuesday.

In an interview with Reuters in the fall, Kotz had denied having any interest in moving on, saying "I enjoy my current position."

However, a little over a year ago, a headhunter was circulating his resume to top law firms in New York, but there was little interest, legal sources told Reuters late last year.

Criticism of Kotz has grown in the past 12 months.

Two SEC employees filed complaints against Kotz in 2011 with a government council that monitors the work of 73 inspectors general known as the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, or CIGIE.

The two staffers had previously been targets of Kotz's probes and later cleared of any wrongdoing.

One of those employees, SEC veteran enforcement attorney Nancy McGinley, was accused by Kotz of possible insider-trading in shares of companies such as Citigroup and Schlumberger.

The matter was referred for potential prosecution to the U.S. Justice Department and her name appeared in some media reports. The DOJ declined to prosecute, and McGinley said Kotz's aggressive investigation unfairly took a toll on her reputation.

In another complaint, the SEC's acting branch chief of acquisition policy, Linda Baier, made wide-ranging accusations about how she and her colleagues were treated in Kotz's various audits and investigations.

In her own case, she said Kotz retaliated against her after she told him she felt one of his reports did not go far enough in investigating potential misconduct by an employee in her division.

Shortly afterward, she said, he began investigating her behavior and accused her of pre-selecting a certain contractor for a job.

She also alleged that on at least two occasions, Kotz himself may have tried to circumvent competitive bidding rules so he could hire certain candidates to work in his office, including one former Peace Corps employee.

Kotz in prior interviews with Reuters denied all of the allegations made against him by Baier and McGinley.

In addition to the story by Reuters, several recent articles by Bloomberg have also raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest after Kotz did a sit-down interview with a financial adviser who markets a "crash-proof retirement plan" through the Internet and a paid radio show.

The adviser later sold Kotz three tickets to a sold-out football game.

According to Bloomberg, CIGIE was also looking into both of those matters after Kotz self-reported them to the organization.

A spokesman for the independent unit of CIGIE that examines complaints against inspectors general could not immediately be reached for comment about the status of the employees' complaints or the concerns raised by the interview and football tickets.

(Reporting By Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by John Wallace and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120118/bs_nm/us_sec_kotz

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Explosions damage Italy tax agency: Naples police

NAPLES?? Three explosive devices blew up outside the Naples offices of Equitalia, a state agency that collects overdue taxes and fines, breaking windows but injuring no one on Monday night, a police official told Reuters.

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Police said no group had claimed responsibility for the attack on the building on Corso Meridionale near Naples central rail station.

Equitalia, whose offices have been attacked before, is deeply unpopular among many Italians who accuse it of using strong-arm tactics to collect taxes.

Italy's technocrat government says it wants to increase Equitalia's powers as part of a war on tax evasion that robs the exchequer of an estimated 120 billion euros ($152.07 billion) a year.

Separately, members of right wing association Roma Nord said they hung dummies outside Equitalia offices in Rome overnight to protest against the agency's methods, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

Equitalia's Naples offices were hit by a similar explosion in December.

Two letter bombs were also sent to Equitalia's offices in Rome in December. One was intercepted but the other blew off part of a finger of the agency's director general. An anarchist group said it carried out those attacks.

(Reporting By Laura Viggiano and Catherine Hornby; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46017591/ns/world_news-europe/

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Insect-to-Insect Disease Transmission Squeezes U.S. Citrus Crop

Features | Evolution

A fatal bacterial tree disease spread among flies could deal a devastating blow to the citrus industry

By Rose Eveleth ?| January 18, 2012?|

oranges Image: lorda, Flickr

If orange juice is a part of your breakfast, you might be in trouble. A debilitating disease has citrus growers questioning the future of the orange industry in Florida and other parts of the U.S., and new revelations about how it spreads is making prospects look even worse. According to recent research, the insects that transmit the disease don't just spread it from tree to tree?they spread it amongst themselves as well.

In 2006 Florida citrus growers found the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (Las) in their trees. Las causes a disease known as huonglongbing in Asia and citrus greening in the U.S.?and no matter what it is called, it spells big trouble for citrus crops. Infected trees produce bitter, lopsided fruit that often fails to ripen. (Las causes the biggest problem in oranges, but it can infect all citrus plants.) There is no cure, and slowly the whole tree turns yellow and dies. "This is the most important disease affecting citrus production in the world," says Lukasz Stelinski, an entomologist at the University of Florida.

For several years, citrus growers thought that removing infected plants could stop the disease. The ailment is transmitted by a flying insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. It drills into plants leaves and stems, and sucks out food through its strawlike mouth, or proboscis, transmitting the Las bacteria from tree to tree during feeding, similar to the way infections are spread via shared needles among humans. Until now, it was thought that the malady could only be picked up from an infected tree, but Stelinski's recent work, published in PLoS ONE, showed that the insects not only passed the bacteria to new plants, but that they could also pass Las to one another during mating. So psyllids that pick up the bacteria from one plant can transfer it to other psyllids who have never themselves come in contact with an infected tree. Therefore, although a grower can remove infected trees, a neighbor's sickly saplings could serve as another Las source. This is the first time scientists have documented a bacteria being transmitted sexually between insects, Stelinski says.

When citrus greening was first discovered in Florida in 2006, "it was total doom and gloom," says David Hall, and entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many growers left the business, sold their land and gave up. Controlling the psyllid requires using lots of pesticides, which is expensive, toxic and does not solve the problem if infected psyllids are getting in from nearby groves. Removing sick trees was difficult and costly. Everyone thought: "There's no way that the citrus industry as we know it today would exist," Hall says.

The future of citrus production remains unclear, Hall says, but for now, the citrus industry is spending much of its resources and money to find a solution for citrus greening. Each year it commits about $16 million to research aimed at fighting the disease. From genetically engineering citrus trees and psyllids to finding parasites that attack the bugs, "everything that you might dream of that might lead to a solution is being investigated," he notes. Some growers are simply trying to buy time by feeding infected trees extra nutrients to extend their productive lives. Eventually that cost will creep into supermarkets, Hall says. "All of that gets charged back to the consumer."

"I don't think many Americans realize what a threat this disease is posing to citrus production in the U.S.," Stelinski says. If an effective management strategy is not discovered soon, the industry will have a hard time maintaining productive yields and some growers might opt to sell their land. The doom-and-gloom situation Hall described is still a very real possibility, he adds. "I'm not sure you can actually say that isn't going to happen."

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=af446dd1f63822326608d96c84f62919

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