Obama shifts focus to jobs, eases building permit process

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday will seek to turn the spotlight from controversies threatening to swamp his agenda to the economic issues by announcing he will make it easier to get federal building projects off the ground.

The president travels to Baltimore, where he is due to say that he has signed a presidential memorandum streamlining the review and permitting of federal infrastructure projects.

In making the announcement while posing in front of heavy dredging equipment at a factory, Obama will have a chance to remind the public that he wants to spend $50 billion on repairing the nation's aging roads, bridges and ports. Later, he will visit an elementary school where he will stump for his goal of providing universal pre-schooling for the nation's children, which he views as a vital stepping stone to a better-educated, better-trained U.S. work force.

The president hopes his focus on jobs and education will change the subject from a trio of storms that have beleaguered his administration in recent days and that some believe could overrun his second term agenda.

In the past week, he has been forced to go on the defensive about his administration's handling of the attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny, and the Justice Department's seizure of phone logs of reporters and editors of the Associated Press in connection with an investigation of leaks of classified information.

After responding tentatively at first, the president took more active steps beginning Wednesday with the ouster of the acting IRS commissioner and announcement of support for legislation making it easier for reporters to protect their sources. He has called the IRS' actions inexcusable and pledged to find out who was responsible and hold them accountable.

On Thursday, the president and his staff stepped up efforts to get ahead of critics. The chief executive called for stepped up spending on embassy security, while saying he had no apologies about efforts to protect classified material. He and his surrogates belittled the furor over Benghazi as nothing more than a politically motivated campaign orchestrated by congressional Republicans to discredit him.

Obama's trip to Baltimore to talk about his agenda is a good idea and a productive change of scene for him, said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who specialized in damage control for the Clinton White House.

"It gets you out of the bunker," Lehane said.

Shining a light on issues of jobs and growth also lets Obama note positive economic developments such as improving housing and labor markets and a fast-declining budget deficit - pocketbook issues that may have more resonance with the public than inside-the-Beltway political battles.

Still, congressional Republicans will seek to keep the focus on what they say are unanswered questions about all three controversies. IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who was pushed out on Wednesday, testifies before the House tax-writing committee on Friday.

(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-shifts-focus-jobs-eases-building-permit-process-101033758.html

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Slew of new investigations leads to Germany's arrest of alleged Auschwitz guard

Hans Lipschis was taken into custody Monday for what German authorities said was 'compelling evidence' of his work as a guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp.?

By Ryan Lenora Brown,?Correspondent / May 7, 2013

An undated image shows the main gate of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland, which was liberated by the Russians in January 1945. Hans Lipschis, who is 93, was taken into custody Monday after police announced they had 'compelling evidence' that he was complicitous in the mass murder that took place at the camp, the BBC reports.

AP/File

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German authorities have arrested a man who they say was a longtime guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, reopening old questions around how the country should deal with its last living participants in the Holocaust.

Skip to next paragraph Ryan Lenora Brown

Correspondent

Ryan Brown edits the Africa Monitor blog and contributes to the national and international news desks of the Monitor. She is a former Fulbright fellow to South Africa and holds a degree in history from Duke University.?

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Hans Lipschis, who is 93, was taken into custody Monday after police announced they had ?compelling evidence? that he was complicitous in the mass murder that took place at the camp, the BBC reports.

The arrest is the first to emerge from new investigations by Germany into 50 former Auschwitz guards.

"The arrest of Lipschis is a welcome first step in what we hope will be a large number of successful legal measures taken by the German judicial authorities against death camp personnel and those who served in the Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing units]," said Efraim Zuroff, Israeli?head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is known for tracking Nazi war criminals, in a statement to Reuters.

The new cases are propelled by a new legal precedent set during the trial of John Demjanjuk, a Nazi guard convicted in 2011 of serving as an accessory to murder despite the fact that no evidence existed of a particular crime or victim.

In that case, a court ruled that in such cases it was unnecessary to provide a specific list of criminal acts ? the generalities of the work were enough to call the defendant guilty.

As the Monitor reported at the time, the case provided a boon for Germans who would like to see a larger number of former Nazis prosecuted for their crimes.?

Germany is perhaps unique in that its legal system does not provide a statute of limitation for murder, stemming from a ruling in the 1960s made explicitly to help German prosecutors bring Nazi war criminals to account?.

Critics say that while memories are long here, and Germans have done much to own up to their country's past, legally speaking, Germany has not shown the same determination in prosecuting Nazi war criminals.

According to the?Simon Wiesenthal Center?in?Jerusalem, the 90,000 indictments brought against accused Nazi criminals between 1949 and 1985 in Germany brought only 7,000 convictions. "Just because the people were not [Heinrich] Himmler doesn't mean they should not be brought to justice," said?Efraim Zuroff, the center's chief Nazi hunter.

Mr. Demjanjuk?s case, however, also opened old questions into the culpability of mid-level guards in the Nazi system, who have frequently argued they were merely following orders during their work at the death camps.

As for Mr. Lipschis, prosecutors say they believe he served as a guard at Auschwitz, the largest and most notorious of the Third Reich?s extermination camps, between 1941 and 1945. Lipschis admits that he worked at the camp, but says he was only a cook.

Lipschis was born in 1919 in what is now Lithuania. In 1956, he moved to Chicago, but was expelled from the United States in 1983 for concealing his Nazi past.

He is currently fourth on the list of ?Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals? published by the Simon Weisenthal Center.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/JWzpcSktrAk/Slew-of-new-investigations-leads-to-Germany-s-arrest-of-alleged-Auschwitz-guard

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Family drama adds intrigue to Ill. governor's race (The Arizona Republic)

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Tiny water creepy crawlies from South Korea and the Russian Far East

Public release date: 15-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Vladimir Pe?i?
vladopesic@gmail.com
382-672-36351
Pensoft Publishers

Water mites of the family Torrenticolidae are tiny, heavily sclerotized and crawling water creatures presently known from all continents except Antarctica. More than 400 species are described so far but this is expected to be only a minor pars of their diversity, especially in the tropical areas where the family is most species abundant. Until recently only one species was known from South Korea, and five from the Russian Far East. A recent study, published in the open access journal Zookeys, adds up to the diversity in this regions with 2 new to science species and 5 described from South Korea for the first time.

The two new species Torrenticola kimichungi and Monatractides abei, have been described from South Korea and the Russian Far East as a part of the project aimed at uncovering Korean invertebrate diversity, and led by the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR). The species have been named to commemorate the contributions of two scientist Drs Il-Hoi Kim and Kyung-Sook Chung and Dr Hiroshi Abe for their extensive studies in the area of water mites.

"Water mites are a diverse and widespread but still neglected group of freshwater fauna. In natural streams, species diversity of water mites is generally rather high and may reach, or occasionally even exceed, 50 species at single collecting site, often most of these are torrenticolid mites. Torrenticolid mites avoid habitats with silty substrata and intermittent flow, and their study can give valuable information on the ecological characteristics of the areas with an unstable surface water regime", says the lead author Vladimir Pei?, Department of Biology, University of Montenegro.

###

Original Source:

Pei? V, Semenchenko KA, Lee W (2013) Torrenticolid water mites from Korea and the Russian Far East. ZooKeys 299: 21, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.299.5272

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 15-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Vladimir Pe?i?
vladopesic@gmail.com
382-672-36351
Pensoft Publishers

Water mites of the family Torrenticolidae are tiny, heavily sclerotized and crawling water creatures presently known from all continents except Antarctica. More than 400 species are described so far but this is expected to be only a minor pars of their diversity, especially in the tropical areas where the family is most species abundant. Until recently only one species was known from South Korea, and five from the Russian Far East. A recent study, published in the open access journal Zookeys, adds up to the diversity in this regions with 2 new to science species and 5 described from South Korea for the first time.

The two new species Torrenticola kimichungi and Monatractides abei, have been described from South Korea and the Russian Far East as a part of the project aimed at uncovering Korean invertebrate diversity, and led by the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR). The species have been named to commemorate the contributions of two scientist Drs Il-Hoi Kim and Kyung-Sook Chung and Dr Hiroshi Abe for their extensive studies in the area of water mites.

"Water mites are a diverse and widespread but still neglected group of freshwater fauna. In natural streams, species diversity of water mites is generally rather high and may reach, or occasionally even exceed, 50 species at single collecting site, often most of these are torrenticolid mites. Torrenticolid mites avoid habitats with silty substrata and intermittent flow, and their study can give valuable information on the ecological characteristics of the areas with an unstable surface water regime", says the lead author Vladimir Pei?, Department of Biology, University of Montenegro.

###

Original Source:

Pei? V, Semenchenko KA, Lee W (2013) Torrenticolid water mites from Korea and the Russian Far East. ZooKeys 299: 21, doi: 10.3897/zookeys.299.5272

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/pp-twc051513.php

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Beautiful plankton blooms viewed from space

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Beautiful plankton blooms viewed from space
As weather warms up off the coast of France, blooms of plankton have once again begun to form, creating a beautiful, multicolored swirl visible from space.NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites acquired these images of the colorful blooms on April 20 and May 4, according to ?the NASA Earth Observatory. On the later date, a noticeably larger bloom occurred, fueled by nutrient ru...????

Source: NBCnews
Posted on: Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 9:00am
Views: 25

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128255/Beautiful_plankton_blooms_viewed_from_space

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Raising cash for Dems, Obama bemoans partisan jams

NEW YORK (AP) ? Huddling with A-list celebrities and top re-election donors, President Barack Obama bemoaned the partisan forces that have stymied compromise in Washington as he raised campaign cash for Democrats in New York.

At a cozy suppertime fundraiser Monday, Obama said he had hoped his election in 2008 might "break the fever" of partisanship and gridlock that has stood in the way of his agenda. When those hopes proved unfounded, he looked to his re-election, believing a second consecutive victory might deliver the final blow.

"It's not quite broken yet," Obama said to laughter from some of the 60 donors who gathered in the home of film producer Harvey Weinstein, a major donor and bundler for Obama's re-election campaign. "I am persistent, and I am staying at it."

The star-studded fundraiser was the first of three events Obama headlined Monday in New York, making good on his commitment to go all out for Democrats ahead of the 2014 elections. Pop icons Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were among those who nibbled on desserts in a modest living room in Weinstein's West Village brownstone.

Obama said he genuinely believes some congressional Republicans are open to compromise, but they fear the party's conservative base and what talk show host Rush Limbaugh might say about them. At the same time, he pushed back against Democrats who want Obama to react by adopting a more defiant Democratic tone.

"My intentions over the next 3 1/2 years are to govern, because I don't have another race left," Obama said. "If we've got folks on the other side who are prepared to cooperate, that is great and we are ready to go."

But if Republicans show their top priority is winning elections, Obama said, he wants to make sure Democrats can exact consequences come Election Day.

At an evening event in a nearby neighborhood, Obama said he expected an immigration overhaul was possible this year. He reflected on his March trip to Israel, telling a group including prominent Jewish donors there's a deep desire for peace among Israelis and Palestinians, although "the window for opportunity is growing smaller by the day."

The fundraising jaunt comes at a difficult time for Obama, whose administration is facing heated questions over the handling of a deadly assault on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and an admission by the Internal Revenue Service that tea party groups were singled out for scrutiny. Meanwhile, Obama's months-long campaign to forge closer ties with lawmakers from both parties by courting them at dinners, on the phone and at the golf course has yielded dubious results. His second-term efforts to enact new gun control laws and avert automatic spending cuts were both thwarted by bitter disagreements in Congress.

Tickets started at $16,200 for two events benefiting the Democratic National Committee, which is still retiring debt it incurred last year during Obama's re-election.

Obama also appeared at a joint fundraiser for the House and Senate Democratic campaign committees, where he told about 140 donors at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel that the fate of his agenda rests largely on whether Democrats can shore up their Senate majority and reclaim control of the House. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was among the guests at the surf-and-turf dinner, where donors paid $7,500 to attend or $32,400 to chair the event.

Monday's fundraisers are among at least 20 fundraisers that Democratic officials say Obama has committed to headlining ahead of the 2014 elections ? many of them outside Washington.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/raising-cash-dems-obama-bemoans-partisan-jams-225221882.html

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Netflix updates Player on PS3 with faster scanning and streamlined audio management

Look, we're well aware that you're already fantasizing about the PlayStation 4, but how do you think that makes your existing PS3 feel? (Hint: Not awesome.) For those still focused on remaining in the here and now, Netflix has issued an update for its PS3 Player that "is more consistent with the Netflix player on the web as well as [its] mobile and tablet applications." The key feature in this update is the ability to easily manage your audio and subtitle selections; before, you had to hop out of whatever you were watching in order to tweak those elements, but now you can make said changes while the content is still on screen. There have also been improvements made in the "trickplay" mode mode when scanning forward or reverse in play mode -- essentially, these images now load a lot faster, which ought to keep your blood pressure at a safe level. The update is out now for PS3 users, and should be hitting select Smart TVs and Blu-ray Disc players soon.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Netflix

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/13/netflix-ps3-player-update-audio-trickplay/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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