A young mother sets sail from Ireland to meet her husband in Canada; prospectors hope to strike gold in the frozen Yukon; a slave poisons his master and escapes with the master's wife. In 14 historically-inspired stories, the author of Room presents wanderers, immigrants and other boundary-crossers.
New Yorker film critic David Denby considers the future of America's troubled movie industry. He explores film as both an art and a business, tackling topics from the "fandom" phenomenon and the work of critics James Agee and Pauline Kael to the global marketplace's increasing demands for spectacle and digitalization.
Combat Outpost Keating, a U.S. camp in a particularly dangerous location in Afghanistan, was the site of a deadly Taliban attack in 2009. Jake Tapper investigates this bloody battle, examining its causes, consequences and preventability; after the attack, a Pentagon investigation concluded that there was no reason for Outpost Keating to have been there in the first place.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of America: What Went Wrong? present an indictment of the challenges facing the middle class. They criticize government priorities, arguing that the middle class has been systematically impoverished, and call for fundamental changes to support American prosperity.
A now-sober alcoholic documents his 18-month effort to run marathons in the cities where he lived during his self-destructive days. Reflecting on the redemptive benefits of running, he shares his own journey and learns the stories of fellow addicts who pursued similar dreams.
News and Reviews
*Some of the language in the summaries above has been provided by publishers.
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FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2012, file photo a television photographer interviews the next door neighbor of terror suspect Jamshid Muhtorov, a refugee from Uzbekistan, in Aurora, Colo., on the day of his arrest at Chicago's O'Hare airport. For the first time the Justice Department says it intends to use information gained from one of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance programs against an accused terrorist, Muhtorov, setting the stage for an expected Supreme Court test. Muhtorov was accused in 2012 of providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek terrorist organization that, authorities say, was engaging NATO coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2012, file photo a television photographer interviews the next door neighbor of terror suspect Jamshid Muhtorov, a refugee from Uzbekistan, in Aurora, Colo., on the day of his arrest at Chicago's O'Hare airport. For the first time the Justice Department says it intends to use information gained from one of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance programs against an accused terrorist, Muhtorov, setting the stage for an expected Supreme Court test. Muhtorov was accused in 2012 of providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek terrorist organization that, authorities say, was engaging NATO coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department says for the first time that it intends to use information gained from one of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance programs against an accused terrorist, setting the stage for a likely Supreme Court test of the Obama administration's approach to national security.
The high court so far has turned aside challenges to the law on government surveillance on the grounds that people who bring such lawsuits have no evidence they are being targeted.
Jamshid Muhtorov was accused in 2012 of providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, an Uzbek terrorist organization that, authorities say, was engaging NATO coalition and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
According to court papers in the case, the FBI investigated Muhtorov after his communications with an overseas website administrator for the IJU.
In a court filing Friday, the government said it intends to offer into evidence in Muhtorov's case "information obtained or derived from acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978."
Last February, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that a group of American lawyers, journalists and organizations could not sue to challenge the 2008 expansion of the law. The court those who sued could not show that the government would monitor their communications along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets.
Last month, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had ruled with the majority in the earlier 5-4 decision, said the courts ultimately would have to determine the legality of the NSA surveillance program.
In the majority opinion last February, Justice Samuel Alito suggested a way for a challenge to be heard. He said if the government intends to use information from such surveillance in court, it must provide advance notice. In his argument before the court's decision, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had made similar comments to the justices on behalf of the administration.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon declined comment Saturday on the new development beyond the court filing.
The program at issue in the Muhtorov case is commonly called "702," a reference to the numbered section of the surveillance law on Internet communication.
In the Muhtorov case, after his contact with the IJU's website administrator, the FBI went to court and obtained email from two accounts that Muhtorov used, according to the court papers.
The FBI also went to court to obtain communications originating from Muhtorov's phone lines. In one call, Muhtorov told an associate that the Islamic Jihad Union said it needed support, an FBI agent said in an affidavit filed in the case. The associate warned Muhtorov to be careful about talking about a founder of group, the affidavit stated.
The FBI also said Muhtorov communicated with a contact in the group by email using code words, telling a contact that he was "ready for any task, even with the risk of dying."
Muhtorov, a refugee from Uzbekistan, resettled in Aurora, Colo., in 2007 with the help of the United Nations and the U.S. government. He was arrested Jan. 21, 2012, in Chicago with about $2,800 in cash, two shrink-wrapped iPhones and an iPad as well as a GPS device.
In March 2012, Muhtorov's attorney, federal public defender Brian Leedy, said at a court hearing that Muhtorov denied the allegations and had been headed to the Uzbekistan region to visit family, including a sister who remains imprisoned in that country.
The IJU first conducted attacks in 2004, targeting a bazaar and police, and killing 47 people, according to court papers in the case. The organization subsequently carried out suicide bombings of the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the Uzbekistani prosecutor general's office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the court papers stated.
Before the recent leak of U.S. documents showing widespread government surveillance, dozens of consumer suits were filed against the government and telecommunications companies over obtaining customer data without warrants. Nearly all the cases were tossed out when Congress in 2008 granted the telecommunication companies retroactive immunity from legal challenges.
Stroke prevention surgery less effective than meds, lifestyle change
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
26-Oct-2013
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Contact: Michael C. Purdy purdym@wustl.edu 314-286-0122 Washington University School of Medicine
The final results of a stroke prevention study in patients with narrowed brain arteries confirm earlier findings: Medication plus lifestyle changes are safer and more effective at preventing stroke than a surgical technique called stenting.
Enrollment in the trial was halted two years ago when it became apparent that stenting was associated with a higher risk of early strokes and death.
"Surgical interventions often have increased risk of complications early on, so we continued to follow the patients to see if the long-term effects of surgery were beneficial," said lead author Colin Derdeyn, MD, professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and director of its Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "That did not turn out to be the case."
The study, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the Medical University of South Carolina, Emory University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, appears Oct. 26 in The Lancet. The same day, the researchers will present their findings at joint meetings of the 6th International Conference on Intracranial Atherosclerosis and the 6th annual meeting of the Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology in Houston.
Each year in the United States, about 800,000 people have a stroke. Physicians think about 10 percent of those strokes result from a narrowed artery inside the brain. For decades, doctors have treated these patients with medications that help to prevent clots by thinning the blood and with drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
Recent advances in surgical techniques and tools have allowed physicians to improve blood flow in narrowed brain arteries by adapting procedures used to open clogged arteries in the heart.
To assess the effectiveness of the new treatments, the SAMMPRIS (Stenting and Aggressive Medical Management for Preventing Recurrent Stroke in Intracranial Stenosis) trial, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), enrolled 451 patients at high risk of having a repeated stroke. All participants had a brain artery with at least a 70 percent narrowing that had already caused a stroke or a transient ischemic event (often referred to as a mini stroke).
Participants were divided into two groups. In one group, each participant had a metal stent surgically inserted into the narrowed brain artery to open it up. Each also received strong medications to reduce clot formation and lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Participants in the second group received the same medications but did not receive stent implants. Both groups were contacted regularly by lifestyle modification coaches, who encouraged participants to exercise more, stop smoking, improve their diet and lose weight.
For the final analysis, the scientists followed the patients for at least two years after treatment. Some patients were followed for as long as four years.
"We were expecting that at some point the incidence of new strokes in those who had surgery would drop below that of those who did not, but that didn't happen," said Derdeyn, who was the neurointerventional principal investigator of the study. "This proves that medical therapy is better than surgery for these patients."
In August 2012, the early results of SAMMPRIS led the FDA to alter the criteria for using the "wingspan" stent tested in the trial.
"The new guidelines include restricting use of this stent to patients with at least a 70 percent blockage who already have had two previous strokes while on aggressive medical management," said Marc Chimowitz, MBChB, professor of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina and neurological principal investigator of the study.
This small subset of high-risk stroke patients was not specifically assessed in the SAMMPRIS trial. But Chimowitz noted that the study did compare stenting with medical therapy in several other subsets and did not identify any that benefited more from stenting than medical therapy.
###
This research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U01 N5058728), and Clinical and Translational Science Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Medical University of South Carolina (UL1RR029882), the University of Florida (UL1RR029889), the University of Cincinnati (UL1RR029890) and the University of California, San Francisco (UL1RR024131).
Stryker Neurovascular (formerly Boston Scientific Neurovascular) provided study devices and supplemental funding for aspects of the study.
Derdeyn, CP, Chimowitz MI, et al.Aggressive medical therapy with or without stenting in high-risk patients with intracranial artery stenosis: final results of a randomized trial. The Lancet, Oct. 26, 2013.
Funding from Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
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Stroke prevention surgery less effective than meds, lifestyle change
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
26-Oct-2013
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Contact: Michael C. Purdy purdym@wustl.edu 314-286-0122 Washington University School of Medicine
The final results of a stroke prevention study in patients with narrowed brain arteries confirm earlier findings: Medication plus lifestyle changes are safer and more effective at preventing stroke than a surgical technique called stenting.
Enrollment in the trial was halted two years ago when it became apparent that stenting was associated with a higher risk of early strokes and death.
"Surgical interventions often have increased risk of complications early on, so we continued to follow the patients to see if the long-term effects of surgery were beneficial," said lead author Colin Derdeyn, MD, professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and director of its Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "That did not turn out to be the case."
The study, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the Medical University of South Carolina, Emory University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, appears Oct. 26 in The Lancet. The same day, the researchers will present their findings at joint meetings of the 6th International Conference on Intracranial Atherosclerosis and the 6th annual meeting of the Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology in Houston.
Each year in the United States, about 800,000 people have a stroke. Physicians think about 10 percent of those strokes result from a narrowed artery inside the brain. For decades, doctors have treated these patients with medications that help to prevent clots by thinning the blood and with drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
Recent advances in surgical techniques and tools have allowed physicians to improve blood flow in narrowed brain arteries by adapting procedures used to open clogged arteries in the heart.
To assess the effectiveness of the new treatments, the SAMMPRIS (Stenting and Aggressive Medical Management for Preventing Recurrent Stroke in Intracranial Stenosis) trial, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), enrolled 451 patients at high risk of having a repeated stroke. All participants had a brain artery with at least a 70 percent narrowing that had already caused a stroke or a transient ischemic event (often referred to as a mini stroke).
Participants were divided into two groups. In one group, each participant had a metal stent surgically inserted into the narrowed brain artery to open it up. Each also received strong medications to reduce clot formation and lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Participants in the second group received the same medications but did not receive stent implants. Both groups were contacted regularly by lifestyle modification coaches, who encouraged participants to exercise more, stop smoking, improve their diet and lose weight.
For the final analysis, the scientists followed the patients for at least two years after treatment. Some patients were followed for as long as four years.
"We were expecting that at some point the incidence of new strokes in those who had surgery would drop below that of those who did not, but that didn't happen," said Derdeyn, who was the neurointerventional principal investigator of the study. "This proves that medical therapy is better than surgery for these patients."
In August 2012, the early results of SAMMPRIS led the FDA to alter the criteria for using the "wingspan" stent tested in the trial.
"The new guidelines include restricting use of this stent to patients with at least a 70 percent blockage who already have had two previous strokes while on aggressive medical management," said Marc Chimowitz, MBChB, professor of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina and neurological principal investigator of the study.
This small subset of high-risk stroke patients was not specifically assessed in the SAMMPRIS trial. But Chimowitz noted that the study did compare stenting with medical therapy in several other subsets and did not identify any that benefited more from stenting than medical therapy.
###
This research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U01 N5058728), and Clinical and Translational Science Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Medical University of South Carolina (UL1RR029882), the University of Florida (UL1RR029889), the University of Cincinnati (UL1RR029890) and the University of California, San Francisco (UL1RR024131).
Stryker Neurovascular (formerly Boston Scientific Neurovascular) provided study devices and supplemental funding for aspects of the study.
Derdeyn, CP, Chimowitz MI, et al.Aggressive medical therapy with or without stenting in high-risk patients with intracranial artery stenosis: final results of a randomized trial. The Lancet, Oct. 26, 2013.
Funding from Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
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Share
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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.
In less than two weeks, Rousimar Palhares has become a divisive figure in world of MMA. He was cut and banned by the UFC for holding a submission too long on Mike Pierce at UFC Fight Night 29 in Brazil on Oct. 9, which prompted plenty -- including the Nogueira brothers, who train with him -- to come to his defense.
Others, like UFC president Dana White, have made it clear that there is no room for repeat offenders. Palhares was suspended back in 2010 for 90 days for holding a similar lock on Tomasz Drwal at UFC 111, and has had other issues with sportsmanship in jiu-jitsu competitions.
On Monday, "Toquinho" spoke publicly for the first time since the fight on The MMA Hour, and made it clear that he didn’t think he was in violation of the rules until he watched the fight later on.
"I did not want to hurt him," Palhares said through his manager/interpreter, Alex Davis. "In the heat of the fight, I didn’t feel him tap. Afterwards, when I watched the fight, I’d realized that I’d held on too long. But I really didn’t mean to hurt him, you know? He’s a fighter like I am, and I know that he does this for a living, and I’d never want to hurt him."
Though Palhares did apologize to Pierce and Dana White later on, particularly when it was brought up that Pierce had a sprained MCL and torn ankle tendons, he also tried to explain his defiance on holding submissions beyond the threshold of what’s right. He made it clear he was sorry for the result, but as for the action itself, he segued into reasons and justifications.
"I think it has a lot to do with my style," he said. "I’m really aggressive when I go after the submissions, and there’s been times also when I’ve not held on and people have gotten out of it, and I end up losing the fight. So, it’s kind of the way I fight, but I’ve been getting better, and working a lot on this. But it’s just the way I fight, it’s my style.
White has said that Palhares wouldn’t be welcomed back to the UFC, a closed door proposition that the 33-year old Palhares hopes was also made in the heat of the moment.
"I don’t know, I think time will tell," he said about the possibility of one day returning. "I’m going to continue fighting, and I’ll do my best. I want to be the best in the world, and the UFC is where the best in the world are. And time will tell. I will keep on doing it and getting better and let’s see what happens."
Though Bellator has gone on record saying that it is not interested in bringing in "Toquinho," Davis said that there has been interest from other promotions to sign Palhares, yet that right now nothing has been signed or finalized. Palhares had an 8-4 run in the UFC and at one time was nearing contention in the middleweight division, but the asterisks piled up on his name. Not only did he have the incidents for holding submissions too long, but he was popped for elevated testosterone following his 2012 fight with Hector Lombard, which landed him a nine-month suspension.
Asked outright if he regretted how he handled the end of the Pierce fight in his welterweight debut, Palhares said, "No, I wanted to win by submission." When clarified to mean the particular infraction, not the submission itself, he changed his tune.
"Yes, that part I need to apologize to Mike Pierce and to Dana White," he said. "I was so focused on the fight, I didn’t feel it. I only saw that afterwards."
She’s been working hard to promote her new movie “Thor: The Dark World,” and Natalie Portman touched down in Paris, France this morning (October 23).
Joined by her adorable son Aleph Millepied, the “V For Vendetta” actress seemed to be in good spirits as she hopped off a plane and scurried off to gather her things and find her ride.
Ms. Portman premiered “Thor” in London’s Leicester Square earlier this week, telling press that “feminism is misinterpreted” in most movies due to the fact that men write the script.
"I don't think that's necessarily feminist to see women like we see men in movies. Just having a range of different ways women can be - whether it's weak and strong, just being human and being real, and not just being some fantasy of a male writer - is more feminist than 'she knows how to do kung fu.’”
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors brought criminal charges on Friday against a man they said had tried to acquire surface-to-air missiles that he planned to smuggle into Iran in a threat to U.S. national security.
Reza Olangian, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran, was charged with four counts, including trying to acquire and transfer anti-aircraft missiles, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and two conspiracy counts.
The defendant was arrested at an airport in Tallinn, Estonia, on October 10, 2012, and extradited to the United States on March 26, 2013, according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in New York, who announced the charges.
"We are prepared to defend Mr. Olangian against the charges in the indictment," his lawyer Lee Ginsberg said in an email. Olangian remains in federal custody, Ginsberg added.
Prosecutors said Olangian, also known as Raymond Avancian, dealt over several months last year with an undercover official working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who he believed was a weapons and aircraft broker, to arrange for goods to be acquired and illegally sent to the Iranian government.
They said this followed a failed effort by Olangian in 2007 to obtain about 100 missiles for Iran.
Prosecutors said evidence against him included emails and recorded conversations in which he expressed interest in obtaining at least 200 missiles, as well as equipment such as Bell 412 helicopters.
According to the complaint, Olangian intended for the goods to enter Iran by land from Afghanistan or another neighboring country, and in an August 28, 2012, email to the undercover official provided initial payment details.
"I want to be at the exchange location for no MISHAPS," the email said, according to the complaint.
Olangian faces up to life in prison if convicted.
"After having been thwarted in his first attempt, Reza Olangian seized on a second opportunity to help arm the Iranian military with surface-to-air missiles and airline parts in violation of international trade sanctions and other laws," Bharara said in a statement. "Olangian struck out."
The case was assigned to Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The case is U.S. v. Olangian, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, Nos. 12-cr-00798 and 12-mag-02553.
(Editing by Howard Goller; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Best Buy documents leaked to Geek.com show Gear support slated for Galaxy S4, Note 2, S3 and S4 Active by end of year — but return rate could be higher than 30 percent
It's fair to say the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch has had a mixed reception, with early reviews, including our own, complaining of poor support for non-Samsung apps and the fact that the Galaxy Note 3 was the only phone supported at launch. Today newly-leaked documents from a major retailer show that Samsung appears ready to bring Galaxy Gear support to other U.S. handsets before the of the year, while also revealing a potentially troubling return rate for the wearable gadget.
The internal Best Buy documents obtained by Geek.com show that like their international counterparts, U.S. Samsung phones will get Galaxy Gear support with their Android 4.3 updates. They also show tentative launch dates for the Gear-enabling updates on the Galaxy Note 2, S3, S4 and S4 Active across all major carriers. The documents underscore the fact that these dates are subject to change, so don't consider them set in stone just yet. But as it stands, it looks like Samsung wants these devices up-to-date with Android 4.3 and Galaxy Gear support by the year's end, in line with its earlier statements.
Perhaps more intriguing, the leaked material also states:
The Galaxy Gear attachment rate within Best Buy is the highest among all channels; however the overall return rate is trending above 30%
That means Best Buy is selling a lot of Galaxy Gears to Note 3 customers, but almost a third of them are returning the smartwatch. In today's report, Geek.com says Best Buy "have asked that Samsung employees on site help try to figure out why this is." Samsung has yet to release any Galaxy Gear sales figures, but if accurate, a 30 percent return rate at a big-name retailer is far from ideal.
Elsewhere, Samsung began rolling out the international Galaxy S4's Android 4.3 update in the past week, which includes Galaxy Gear connectivity. The international Galaxy S3, S4, Note 2, S4 Mini, S4 Active, Mega 5.8, Mega 6.3, and S4 Zoom are also set to receive updates with Gear support, with some devices' updates slated for the end of October.
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz will not be facing Quinton “Rampage” Jackson on November 2 after an injury during training. Ortiz was apparently forced off the Bellator 106 card with a reported neck injury according to MMAFighting.
Bellator MMA officials have yet to officially announce the injury but are searching for a replacement at this time. The Ortiz vs. Jackson bout was set to anchor the promotion’s first ever pay-per-view card on November 2 at the Long Beach Arena before Ortiz was forced to bow out.
While the loss of Ortiz is certainly a loss of name recognition, Bellator MMA still has a stacked lineup for the card that will likely see Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler and Eddie Alvarez II elevated to main event status with the late switch.
Bellator 106 Fight Card:
Main Card (PPV)
Rampage Jackson vs. TBA
Lightweight Title Fight: Michael Chandler (c) vs. Eddie Alvarez
Light Heavyweight Interim Title Fight: King Mo Lawal vs. Emanuel Newton
Featherweight Title Fight: Pat Curran (c) vs. Daniel Straus
Heavyweight Final: Cheick Kongo vs. Vinicius “Spartan” Quieroz
Spike TV Preliminary Fights
Fight Master Welterweight Final: Joe Riggs vs. Mike Bronzoulis
Doc Pomus, pictured here in the 1980s, was an obscure, yet prolific songwriter who died in 1991. A.K.A. Doc Pomus is a documentary about his life.
Courtesy of the artist
Doc Pomus, pictured here in the 1980s, was an obscure, yet prolific songwriter who died in 1991. A.K.A. Doc Pomus is a documentary about his life.
Courtesy of the artist
His name would spin around and around on the vinyl, the writer of a thousand songs: Doc Pomus. As the man behind smash records including Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue" and The Drifters' "This Magic Moment," he shaped the early sound of rock 'n' roll.
Pomus died in 1991. His story — one of intriguing reinvention and determination — is told in the new documentary A.K.A. Doc Pomus, which was co-directed by Peter Miller.
Born Jerome Felder, Pomus was a Brooklyn native. At the age of 6, he was diagnosed with polio and lost the use of his legs. Facing a difficult life of disability, Pomus was inspired to lead a life of music.
"When he heard Big Joe Turner's song on the radio, called 'Piney Brown Blues,' it just absolutely transformed him," Miller says in an interview with NPR's Melissa Block. "He realized that the blues is what had the greatest meaning for him, and he turned himself into a blues singer. This handicapped, white Jewish kid found himself singing in African-American blues clubs."
Felder became Doc Pomus in part to keep his new escapades a secret from his mother. In a vintage clip featured in the film, he explains that "Doc" was a nod to blues singer Doctor Clayton, while "Pomus" simply seemed to roll nicely off the tongue.
After recording dozens of blues sides, Doc Pomus created a potential hit called "Heartlessly." The track was picked up by pioneering rock 'n' roll DJ Alan Freed. But as things were starting to heat up for the record, Pomus hit a wall.
"The record company that acquired this recording discovered that Doc was a 30-something-year-old, disabled Jewish guy on crutches," Miller says. "And I think their hopes for him becoming a pop star dimmed, and they didn't release the record. So I think at some point along the way, Doc realized that he had to pursue other ways of getting his music out there."
Pomus turned to writing, kicking off a career as one of the most prolific songsmiths of the 20th century. Miller spoke with Melissa Block about what came next: Pomus' years as a Brill Building hit-maker, his struggles in the age of Bob Dylan and The Beatles (who found success writing their own songs) and his rebirth late in life as a mentor to younger artists. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link.
Brags about "reinventing" or "disrupting" this or that kind of technology are so common these days they might as well be white noise. But Seagate seems to have just developed a new kind of storage system for the cloud that might well be quite disruptive -- if it ever gets implemented by cloud builders.
Seagate calls it the Kinetic Open Storage platform, and it's designed as a way to enable cloud data centers to improve the way they handle storage by having the storage system itself offload as much of the processing related to storage as possible.
Here's how it works in plain English: KOS involves hard drives that use Ethernet as their sole physical interconnect: not Ethernet as in an SATA-attached drive with an Ethernet controller, but Ethernet, period. Instead of using an OS-level filesystem, data is fetched from and stored to the drives using a key/value system serialized with Google's Protocol Buffers mechanism. (The API used for data access is to be open source.) Most everything else you'd associate with cloud data center storage is pared away.
A crucial detail about this setup, Seagate claims, is how it moves many of the issues normally associated with the OS or storage-management layer -- quality of service, migrating data between drives, at-rest encryption, and so on -- to the drives themselves. By getting rid of much of the hardware associated with the traditional storage tier, you make racks denser, use less energy per unit of storage, leverage the existing data-transport fabric in the data center (Ethernet), and have storage "truly ... disaggregated from compute."
Another professed advantage to ditching all of that cruft is an increase in write performance -- up to 400 percent, according to David Chernicoff at ZDNet. Ditto any common file manipulation, such as copying or moving from one drive to another: All of that can be offloaded to the drives themselves.
A break this radical from the way storage traditionally works wouldn't come without a cost, though. Here, the price would be software development, as every piece of software that touches a file system in some way would have to be reworked to use KOS. Even with the KOS tools offered for free -- the drive simulator and developer's tools, and the KOS API itself -- the cost of such reworking would be far from trivial.
One of the reasons why drop-in replacements for existing storage systems are so appealing is because, well, they're drop-in replacements. Many of the problems still faced by cloud storage systems -- particularly write bottlenecks -- are solved either by throwing more hardware at the problem, or at the software level, by more intelligently managing data throughput. Microsoft's new release of Windows Server has intriguing new storage features in this vein, for instance.
Again, tossing out the entire storage layer as we know it is a colossal project. There isn't even a date set for when the hardware itself will be available to testers, let alone vendors or end-users. And the costs of moving to such hardware in the long run can't be ignored -- including the sunk costs of ditching so much existing legacy storage. (There's no word on if existing drives could be retrofit to use this system; I don't think it's likely.)
All this leaves a wide margin of time to see whether or not Seagate's new game-changer really will change any games. But the bare outlines of the idea alone are tantalizing.
No need to wait for Black Friday to get a deal on the best TV, Amazon has the Panasonic ST60 for only $1370. We occasionally see this set end up around this price, but it's always from a far less reputable retailer. This is the television I just bought myself. We give it our strongest possible recommendation, and we don't expect the deal to last too long. [Amazon]
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A grand jury that reviewed evidence in the death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey believed her parents were involved in the crime but didn't say who killed the beauty queen, according to documents released Friday, 14 years after the grand jury made its recommendation.
At the time, the panel recommended that both her parents be charged with child abuse resulting in death and being an accessory to a crime, including murder.
However, the documents allege that both parents intended to delay or prevent the arrest of the person who killed their daughter.
The proposed charges were disclosed for the first time in the documents.
Prosecutors at the time declined to actually file charges against John and Patsy Ramsey, who have since been treated as victims in the case.
The district attorney at the time, Alex Hunter, who presented the evidence to the grand jury, said in 1999: "I and my prosecutorial team believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time."
John Ramsey's attorney, Hal Haddon, issued a letter earlier this week opposing release of the indictments, pointing out that Hunter's successor, former district attorney Mary Lacy, cleared the Ramseys based on new DNA testing in 2008.
He also cited Lacy's apology in a letter to John Ramsey at the time, in which she said "no innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion, especially when public officials have not had sufficient evidence to initiate a trial in a court of law."
Another Ramsey attorney, L. Lin Wood, said the indictments that were released are "nonsensical," he said.
"They reveal nothing about the evidence reviewed by the grand jury and are clearly the result of a confused and compromised process," he said.
Patsy Ramsey died in 2006.
Lurid details of the crime and striking videos of the child in adult makeup and costumes performing in pageants propelled the case into one of the highest profile mysteries in the U.S. in the mid-1990s.
The grand jury met three years after JonBenet's body was found bludgeoned and strangled in the family home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996.
The Ramseys maintained their innocence, offering a $100,000 reward for information about the killer and mounting a newspaper campaign seeking evidence.
Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said the case remains open but is not an active investigation. He predicted the indictment's release wouldn't change anything.
"Given the publicity that's been out there, many people have formed their opinions one way or another," he said.
Former prosecutor and law professor Karen Steinhauser said grand juries sometimes hear evidence that won't be admitted during trial that can form the basis of indictments.
But she added that prosecutors must have a good faith belief that they could prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt before pursuing charges.
"I'm not sure that the release of this indictment is going to change the fact that there has not been able to be a prosecution and probably won't be able to be a prosecution," she said.
David Lane, a defense attorney who was not involved in the case, said the indictments could have been an attempt to force the parents to turn against each other, which he said was unlikely because both were protected by laws that limit testimony of one spouse against another.
"Somebody killed JonBenet Ramsey," Lane said. "It sounds like they were accused of aiding and abetting each other, with the hope someone would crack and break. That didn't happen, and prosecutors may have decided not to go forward."
The Daily Camera reported earlier this year that the grand jury had issued the indictment. The actual documents were released Friday in response to a lawsuit by Daily Camera reporter Charlie Brennan and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett determined the release would not violate grand jury secrecy rules, and transferred the documents to Robert Lowenbach, a retired Weld County judge, for review.
Lowenbach said Wednesday that only pages signed by the grand jury foreman would be releasable as official actions of the jury. His order mentioned 18 pages in all — nine relating to each of JonBenet's parents. Four pages — two each relating to the parents — were released Friday.
John Ramsey didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in 2006, the same year a globe-hopping school teacher was arrested in Thailand after falsely claiming to have killed JonBenet. Former District Attorney Mary Lacy cleared the Ramseys in 2008 based on new DNA testing that suggested the killer was a stranger, not a family member.
Lacy did not return a phone call on Friday.
Over the years, some experts have suggested that investigators botched the case so thoroughly that it might never be solved.
Earlier this week, John Ramsey asked officials to release the entire grand jury record if the unprosecuted indictment was made public.
However, Lowenbach said transcripts of grand jury proceedings and evidence presented to it are not considered official action under the law governing criminal court records. He also said releasing such information could hurt other grand juries, whose work is secret.
An attorney representing John Ramsey, L. Lin Wood, has said he's confident that no evidence in the grand jury case implicated the Ramsey family and the public should be able to see that for themselves.
_____
Associated Press writers Steven K. Paulson and Dan Elliott contributed to this report.
Ryan Seacrest will have less time to kill before squashing dreams on the next season of American Idol. Fox announced Friday that the upcoming 13th season (premiering Jan. 15 and 16) of the competition will feature an abbreviated results show -- with eliminations only taking up a half-hour of the Thursday block.
In the hole left at 8:30 p.m., Fox is slotting Surviving Jack for its eight-episode midseason run. The addition of a half-hour comedy to Thursday bodes well for Tuesday's lineup. Though only New Girl, The Mindy Project and freshman Brooklyn Nine-Nine have orders for full seasons, Dads seems likely safe in its current slot -- as Enlisted will still be bowing on Fridays (Jan. 10) and the only other new comedy, Us & Them, recently halted production after only six episodes.
For American Idol, which saw its results show dip as low as a 2.6 rating among adults, consolidating the telecast is a natural progression. ABC's Dancing With the Stars went even further this season, cutting the results hour completely and absorbing it into the performance show. (Fox pulled a similar move in 2012 with So You Think You Can Dance.)
As for the rest of the network's midseason lineup, last year's breakout The Following returns for its sophomore run on Monday, Jan. 20, with a lead-in from the special outing of the Sleepy Hollow finale. The show will continue to air at 9 p.m.
With Glee off the schedule until spring, Thursdays will also be home to new Greg Kinnear vehicle Rake. The drama will get a solid NFL sampling airing after the Jan. 19 NFC Championship Game before seeing its official premiere on Thursday, Jan. 23, at 9 p.m.
Saturday's Animation Domination High-Def will see its second iteration with the premieres of Lucas Bros. Moving Co. and Golan the Insatiable on Jan. 11.
This photo provided by MTV shows the cast of the new series "Wait 'Til Next Year," which will debut exclusively via the MTV mobile application before it appears on air. Fans can watch all 12 episodes a week before the television premiere on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. (AP Photo/MTV)
This photo provided by MTV shows the cast of the new series "Wait 'Til Next Year," which will debut exclusively via the MTV mobile application before it appears on air. Fans can watch all 12 episodes a week before the television premiere on Friday, Nov. 1, 2013, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. (AP Photo/MTV)
NEW YORK (AP) — MTV is releasing a full season of a new series about a luckless high school football team on its mobile application Friday, a week before the first episode is shown on television.
It appears to be a new milestone in the fast-moving world of technology changing traditional television content, much like when Netflix made an entire season of "House of Cards" available at once through the streaming service. MTV made its free app available on iPhones, iPads, iPods and the Xbox 360 in June, and nearly 2 million have been downloaded.
The series, "Wait 'Til Next Year," is a 12-episode docudrama about a high school football team that had lost 43 games in a row and the community surrounding it.
"It will be fun to see if we can get them to come back and watch on television," said Kristin Frank, MTV's executive vice president of connected content.
That's always been a worry among networks about new content delivery forms, since the financial underpinning of the business is still largely dependent on viewers watching programs — and their commercials — on television. But MTV figures that many people who watch the series on the app will become promotional vehicles themselves, spreading the word about it on social networks and encouraging others to watch on TV.
MTV also experimented recently with its "flock to unlock" promotion on Miley Cyrus. The network released "extras" from its "Miley: The Movement" documentary on the app, provided a certain number of viewers tweeted requests. They did and, in effect, the fans who successfully "unlocked" the extra material provided MTV with free online publicity.
During the Cyrus experiment, MTV saw an 82 percent increase week to week in the number of people downloading the app, the network said.
VH1 recently made its new app available. The network aired reruns of last week's popular documentary about the band TLC exclusively on the app for a week before it aired again on television, Frank said. The CMT and Logo networks are also readying apps to be available in the next few months.
So far, a little more than half of the downloaded apps have been for iPhones, and 31 percent have been for iPads, MTV said. It is expecting to make an app for Android systems soon, a spokesman said Thursday.
MTV figured "Wait 'Til Next Year" would be a good test case for how many people are interested in using the app for new content, since it's a series that's starting without any established stars. Beyond the football team, the series focuses on cheerleaders, fans, parents and others trying to keep up enthusiasm for a program that hasn't won a game in five years.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011, AT 3:07 PM Obama Gets Firsthand Look at a Tornado Damage
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.
TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010, AT 6:19 PM Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long. Tornado Kills at Least Five in Oklahoma. Very long title. Long long long.
A convoy of United Nations vehicles at the Lebanon-Syria Masnaa border crossing on October 1 as a chemical weapons disarmament team awaits entry into the country.
AFP/Getty Images
Norway has turned down a U.S. request to take on the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, saying it lacks the capabilities to carry out the task.
The country's foreign ministry said it had given "serious and thorough consideration" to the U.S. request but that "due to time constraints and external factors, such as capacities, [and] regulatory requirements," it would be unable to fulfill the request.
Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said his country didn't have a port that could take the weapons and that Norway lacks the capacity to treat some of the waste products that would result from disarming the munitions.
Brende, speaking in a webcast, said Washington and Oslo had jointly concluded that "Norway is not the most suitable location for this destruction."
As NPR's Tom Bowman reported on Thursday, the issue of who will destroy the weapons has become a thorny one for the U.S. as it seeks to eliminate the chemical weapons threat in Syria.
Yes, yes, and yes! Y’all know I love when Miley Cyrus hits up a red carpet like she has some sense, and the Wrecking Ball singer attended the 30th annual Fashion Group International Night Of Stars in seriously high fashion. Rocking a stunning emerald Marc Jacobs gown, Miley werked it all over the place. I don’t know what our universe would look like if she continued to dress like this more (and less like this), but I wanna live in that world y’all. Peep the gallery for more! What do you guys think of this look?
MOSCOW (AP) — Jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Friday marks 10 years since his arrest, which has become a key turning point in Russia's recent history.
The jailing of Khodorkovsky was widely seen as a punishment for challenging President Vladimir Putin's power. His arrest and the subsequent dismantling of his Yukos oil company sent a chilling signal to others and allowed Putin to consolidate his power and tighten state control over the nation's energy sector.
Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was arrested Oct. 25, 2003 when masked special forces stormed his plane on the tarmac of a Siberian airport. He was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in prison.
In 2010, Khodorkovsky was handed a second prison term for stealing from his own Yukos oil company — the sentence interpreted by many as an instrument to keep him in jail until Putin won a third presidential term.
Khodorkovsky is set to be released in August 2014, and his partner Platon Lebedev, who was arrested a few months earlier, stands to walk free in May 2014. Their supporters fear, however, that investigators could be preparing yet another set of charges to keep them behind bars.
In May, a top liberal economist fled Russia saying he wanted to escape pressure from a new probe focusing on an independent report that was critical of the 2010 verdict. Investigators claimed that its authors had a conflict of interest because they had previously received money from Khodorkovsky.
Speaking to The Associated Press in New York City earlier this week, Khodorkovsky's son, Pavel Khodorkovsky, said his father tries not to focus on the prospect of being released: "He is not going to think about any possibility of his release and is not going to try and worry himself too much about what's coming next, because, as you can understand, for a person who has spent 10 years in jail, it's nerve-racking to try and always look forward to any particular date because that date has been changed in the past."
At the time of his arrest, Khodorkovsky was estimated to have a fortune of around $15 billion, making him Russia's richest person. During Putin's first term as president, Khodorkovsky challenged his power by funding opposition parties and was also believed to harbor personal political ambitions.
His actions defied an unwritten pact between Putin and top Russian tycoons, under which the government refrained from reviewing privatization deals that made them enormously rich in the years after the Soviet collapse on condition they don't meddle in politics.
While pressure mounted on Khodorkovsky in the months preceding his arrest, it still came as a shock for many, including himself.
Asked in an interview earlier this year what he would have done back then if he knew before his arrest that he would spend the next 10 years in prison, Khodorkovsky answered: "I'm afraid I would have shot myself. For me back then, my experience today would have been quite a shock."
Khodorkovsky's company, Russia's biggest oil firm at the time and a darling of portfolio investors, was sold off in pieces, with its most lucrative assets ending up in the hands of state-owned Rosneft.
Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Vadim Klyuvgant, described his arrest as a family tragedy that also has "broken lives of many people who worked in the company."
"It's obvious that it was the most important goal of his arrest or at least one of the most important goals: to break him, to make him do what they wanted him to do," Klyuvgant told the AP. "But they failed ... His spirit is not broken."
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