South Africa: Mandela convalesces at home

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africa's presidency says it has no updates on the condition of former leader Nelson Mandela, who is convalescing at home after a hospital stay and is reported to be doing better.

The South African Press Association quotes presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj as saying Saturday that he has no new information on 94-year-old Mandela, who was released from a hospital on Wednesday. The former president, who spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, was admitted Dec. 8 and received treatment for a lung infection.

He also had a procedure to remove gallstones.

Maharaj previously said doctors have noted progress in Mandela's condition but will continue to treat him at his home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton.

Source: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/world/article/South-Africa-Mandela-convalesces-at-home-4153893.php

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Netflix CEO gets pay bump after 2012 cut

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' pay will double to $4 million next year, after he took a pay cut due to management missteps this year.

Hastings' annual salary will rise to $2 million in 2013 and he will get $2 million in stock options, according to a securities filing Friday.

That's up from a salary of $500,000 and $1.5 million in stock options for 2012.

Hastings' total pay for 2012 was down 43 percent from $3.5 million in 2011, when some controversial decisions, including a steep price hike on subscriptions, sent the stock spiraling. It fell from a high above $300 to a low below $70 per share.

This year, shares are up 29 percent, closing Friday at $89.33. Recovering from the missteps, the company expects to add around 5 million U.S. subscribers, to between 26.4 million and 27.1 million by the end of the year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-12-28-Netflix-Executive%20Compensation/id-c0cc0ff0e9db4cdab2689833c88c8ccf

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foamposites2013: Link Popularity Algorithms - Know What is Behind ...

Links rule the Internet lebron 9 shoes . Links bring traffic, links bring popularity, links bring high ranking, and most importantly -- links bring money.

Everyday webmasters, promoters and marketers send out tons of emails asking for links, hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals make their living by link building cheap foamposites. But what is behind all this hype Why in the last five years links became such important factor for the success of an online business Everyone knows or at least has heard of PageRank -- the most widely used Link Popularity Algorithm.

PageRank has proven itself as a powerful measure to identify important resources in the Web and since 1998 it is the backbone of the most successful search engine -- Google cheap foamposites.com.

Instead of traditional information retrieval technique, page content analysis, which was used by the majority of search engines in the late 1990s, PageRank takes the advantage of the interlinked nature of the Web lebron shoes for sale. It was discovered that hypertext link could serve the same purpose as citations in the academic world.

The more people cite your document the more important it becomes. The same is true for web pages. The effectiveness of the new approach turned out to be beyond expectations, and shortly afterwards Google has transformed itself from a modest university research project into the biggest search engine and a multi-billion corporation. The advent of links as a ranking factor has killed the traditional SEO. Page content optimization importance has sunk tremendously while new strategies of website promotion have been brought into the limelight. Link exchange, reciprocal links, link directories, link farms, three-way linking -- all these approaches came into use to answer the search engines shifting to the link ranking algorithms. Sometimes people use these techniques without a clear understanding of what is behind them. Sites get penalized; people waste their time and money -- all because of insufficient knowledge. What is a link popularity algorithm What algorithms are in use Which factors are important and what are their weights It is impossible to create an effective link building strategy without knowing the answers to these questions. To understand the logic of link analysis algorithms, you have to make yourself familiar with the topic. A great number of research papers on information retrieval are available in the Internet but it would take too much of your time to find and identify which of them are important and relevant.

Source: http://foamposites2013.blogspot.com/2012/12/link-popularity-algorithms-know-what-is.html

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Source: http://petermuellir3.posterous.com/foamposites2013-link-popularity-algorithms-kn

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Obama's controversial EPA administrator Jackson announces resignation

WASHINGTON (AP) ? EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Obama administration's chief environmental watchdog, is stepping down after a nearly four years marked by high-profile brawls over global warming pollution, the Keystone XL oil pipeline, new controls on coal-fired plants and several other hot-button issues that affect the nation's economy and people's health.

Jackson constantly found herself caught between administration pledges to solve thorny environmental problems and steady resistance from Republicans and industrial groups who complained that the agency's rules destroyed jobs and made it harder for American companies to compete internationally.

The GOP chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, said last year that Jackson would need her own parking spot at the Capitol because he planned to bring her in so frequently for questioning. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for her firing, a stance that had little downside during the GOP primary.

Jackson, 50, the agency's first black administrator and a chemical engineer, did not point to any particular reason for her departure. Historically, Cabinet members looking to move on will leave at the beginning of a president's second term.

"I will leave the EPA confident the ship is sailing in the right direction, and ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference," she said in a statement. Jackson will leave sometime after President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address, typically in late January.

In a separate statement, Obama said Jackson has been "an important part of my team." He thanked her for serving and praised her "unwavering commitment" to the public's health.

"Under her leadership, the EPA has taken sensible and important steps to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, including implementing the first national standard for harmful mercury pollution, taking important action to combat climate change under the Clean Air Act and playing a key role in establishing historic fuel economy standards that will save the average American family thousands of dollars at the pump, while also slashing carbon pollution," he said.

Environmental activist groups and other supporters lauded Jackson for the changes she was able to make, but industry representatives said some may have come at an economic cost. Groups also noted that she leaves a large, unfinished agenda.

"There has been no fiercer champion of our health and our environment than Lisa Jackson, and every American is better off today than when she took office nearly four years ago," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. But she noted that Jackson's successor will inherit an unfinished agenda, including the need to issue new health protections against carbon pollution from existing power plants.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on clean air, called Jackson's tenure a "breath of fresh air" and credited her for setting historic fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and for finalizing clean air standards.

But Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said Jackson presided over some of the most expensive environmental rules in EPA history.

"Agency rules have been used as blunt attempts to marginalize coal and other solid fossil fuels and to make motor fuels more costly at the expense of industrial jobs, energy security, and economic recovery," Segal said. "The record of the agency over the same period in overestimating benefits to major rules has not assisted the public in determining whether these rules have been worth it."

Other environmental groups, however, praised Jackson's clean air efforts.

"Notwithstanding the difficult economic and political challenges EPA faced, her agency was directly responsible for saving the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and improving the health of millions throughout the country," said S. William Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. "She will be sorely missed."

Larry Schweiger, head of the National Wildlife Federation, cited her climate change work and efforts to reduce carbon pollution.

Environmental groups had high expectations for the Obama administration after eight years of President George W. Bush, a Texas oilman who rebuffed agency scientists and refused act on climate change. Jackson came into office promising a more active EPA.

But she soon learned that changes would not occur as quickly as she had hoped. Jackson watched as a Democratic-led effort to reduce global warming emissions passed the House in 2009 but was then abandoned by the Senate as economic concerns became the priority. The concept behind the bill, referred to as cap-and-trade, would have established a system where power companies bought and sold pollution rights.

"That's a revolutionary message for our country," Jackson said at a Paris conference shortly after accepting the job.

Jackson experienced another big setback last year when the administration scrubbed a clean-air regulation aimed at reducing health-threatening smog. Republican lawmakers had been hammering the president over the proposed rule, accusing him of making it harder for companies to create jobs.

She also vowed to better control toxic coal ash after a massive spill in Tennessee, but that regulation has yet to be finalized more than four years after the spill.

Jackson had some victories, too. During her tenure, the administration finalized a new rule doubling fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. The requirements will be phased in over 13 years and eventually require all new vehicles to average 54.5 mpg, up from 28.6 mpg at the end of last year.

She shepherded another rule that forces power plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time. Previously, the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants had been allowed to run without addressing their full environmental and public health costs.

Jackson also helped persuade the administration to table the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought carbon-heavy tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas.

House Republicans dedicated much of their time this past election year trying to rein in the EPA. They passed a bill seeking to thwart regulation of the coal industry and quash the stricter fuel efficiency standards. In the end, though, the bill made no headway in the Senate. It served mostly as election-year fodder that appeared to have little impact on the presidential race.

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/epa-administrator-jackson-announces-resignation-150922263.html

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Senate leaders in last-ditch fiscal cliff talks

When Mommy is away, Dad and son will play. And if your dad works in the video production business, that playtime gets filmed, turned into a time-lapse video and instantly goes viral. Emio Tomeoni, 30, of Kansas City, Mo., works odd hours and often finds...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-leaders-last-ditch-fiscal-cliff-talks-223201340--finance.html

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2013 might be the year for first 'alien Earth'

The first truly Earthlike alien planet is likely to be spotted next year, an epic discovery that would cause humanity to reassess its place in the universe.

While astronomers have found a number of exoplanets over the last few years that share one or two key traits with our own world ? such as size or inferred surface temperature ? they have yet to bag a bona fide "alien Earth." But that should change in 2013, scientists say.

"I'm very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year," said Abel Mendez, who runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

  1. Space news from NBCNews.com

    1. Cassini orbiter captures Saturn's swirling storms

      Updated 81 minutes ago 12/28/2012 2:06:32 AM +00:00 Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The storms of Saturn ripple through the frame of a black-and-white close-up captured by the Cassini orbiter on Christmas Eve.

    2. 2013 might be the year for first 'alien Earth'
    3. Mars rover spends holidays at 'Grandma's House'
    4. After setbacks, Russia boosts space spending

Planets piling up
Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995. Since they, they've spotted more than 800 worlds beyond our own solar system, and many more candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]

NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope, for example, has flagged more than 2,300 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. Only 100 or so have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists estimate that at least 80 percent will end up being the real deal.

The first exoplanet finds were scorching-hot Jupiter-like worlds that orbit close to their parent? stars, because they were the easiest to detect. But over time, new instruments came online and planet hunters honed their techniques, enabling the discovery of smaller and more distantly orbiting planets ? places more like Earth.

Last December, for instance, Kepler found a planet 2.4 times larger than Earth orbiting in its star's habitable zone ? that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, can exist.

The Kepler team and other research groups have detected several other worlds like that one (which is known as Kepler-22b), bringing the current tally of potentially habitable exoplanets to nine by Mendez' reckoning.

Zeroing in on Earth's twin
None of the worlds in Mendez' Habitable Exoplanets Catalog is small enough to be a true Earth twin. The handful of Earth-size planets spotted to date all orbit too close to their stars to be suitable for life. [Gallery: 9 Potentially Habitable Exoplanets]

But it's only a matter of time before a small, rocky planet is spotted in the habitable zone ? and Mendez isn't the only researcher who thinks that time is coming soon.

"The first planet with a measured size, orbit and incident stellar flux that is suitable for life is likely to be announced in 2013," said Geoff Marcy, a veteran planet hunter at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the Kepler team.

Mendez and Marcy both think this watershed find will be made by Kepler, which spots planets by flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler needs to witness three of these "transits" to detect a planet, so its early discoveries were tilted toward close-orbiting worlds (which transit more frequently). But over time, the telescope has been spotting more and more distantly orbiting planets ? including some in the habitable zone.

An instrument called HARPS (short for High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) is also a top contender, having already spotted a number of potentially habitable worlds. HARPS, which sits on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, allows researchers to detect the tiny gravitational wobbles that orbiting planets induce in their parent stars.

"HARPS should be able to find the most interesting and closer Earth twins," Mendez told Space.com via email, noting that many Kepler planets are too far away to characterize in detail. "A combination of its sensitivity and long-term observations is now paying off."

And there are probably many alien Earths out there to be found in our Milky Way galaxy, researchers say.

"Estimating carefully, there are 200 billion stars that host at least 50 billion planets, if not more," Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, told Space.com via email.

"Assuming that 1:10,000 are similar to the Earth would give us 5,000,000 such planets," added Tuomi, who led teams reporting the discovery of several potentially habitable planet candidates this year, including an exoplanet orbiting the star Tau Ceti just 11.9 light-years from Earth. "So I would say we are talking about at least thousands of such planets."

What it would mean
Whenever the first Earth twin is confirmed, the discovery will likely have a profound effect on humanity.

"We humans will look up into the night sky, much as we gaze across a large ocean," Marcy told Space.com via email. "We will know that the cosmic ocean contains islands and continents by the billions, able to support both primitive life and entire civilizations."

Marcy hopes such a find will prod our species to take its first real steps beyond its native solar system.

"Humanity will close its collective eyes, and set sail for Alpha Centauri," Marcy said, referring to the closest star system to our own, where an Earth-size planet was discovered earlier this year.

"The small steps for humanity will be a giant leap for our species. Sending robotic probes to the nearest stars will constitute the greatest adventure we Homo sapiens have ever attempted," Marcy added. "This massive undertaking will require the cooperation and contribution from all major nations around world. In so doing, we will take our first tentative steps into the cosmic ocean and enhance our shared sense of purpose on this terrestrial shore."

Follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwallor Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebookand Google+

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50307588/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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Syria opposition rebuffs Russian call for talks

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia invited the leader of Syria's opposition on Friday to visit for the first time, but the opposition swiftly dismissed a renewed call by Moscow for talks with President Bashar al-Assad's government to end the 21-month civil war.

With the rebels advancing over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Assad's main international backer, Moscow, will withdraw its protection.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition National Coalition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

But Moscow's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, also invited National Coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib to visit, its first such overture to the head of the body formed last month and since recognized by most Western and Arab states as Syria's legitimate representative.

Spokesman Bunni did not say whether Alkhatib would accept the invitation, saying Moscow's intentions were unclear.

U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad, is due in Moscow for talks on Saturday. Brahimi has been touting a months-old peace plan which calls for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan has long been widely seen as a dead letter, foundering at the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies.

Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it, saying countries were not committed to a deal.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the peace plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Bogdanov said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in a ceremonial role.

"This transitional process must not lead to the ... collapse of state institutions. All Syrians, and those who support them, must cooperate to preserve those institutions and strengthen them," Brahimi said.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

"We will not allow anyone to trade in the blood of the martyrs of Syria and the sacrifices that Syrians have made by having someone propose any proposal that keeps Bashar al-Assad (in office)."

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept the need to adapt its position to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

"I think that not only Moscow - which has so far been holding onto the idea that there were enough resources for Assad to hang on for a long time - is beginning to understand this, but also Damascus."

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

The bombardment may have included areas in Qalamoun from which the army withdrew on Thursday, the observatory said. Its accounts could not be verified.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahira quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

Most of the dead have been civilians. Both sides have committed atrocities, although the United Nations says government forces and their allies have been more culpable.

Footage uploaded to the internet on Friday showed young men beating the bloody corpse of another man with a stick. One reaches down with a knife and gleefully slices off an ear.

Opposition activists said the footage showed government-allied militia members desecrating bodies, but its provenance could not be confirmed.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans and Peter Graff in Beirut and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-opposition-rebuffs-russian-call-talks-124710266.html

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The World's Largest, Smallest, and Strangest Model Trains

Where: Hamburg, Germany

You can't have a list of extreme model railways without mentioning Frederik and Gerrit Braun. The German twin brothers created the granddaddy of them all: Miniatur Wunderland.

The ?ber model built in HO scale?which is the most popular scale of model railway in the world, and works out to 3.5mm to 1-foot?supports 39,000 feet of track, and requires 46 computers to coordinate an ever-growing network of signals and switches. Those lucky enough to make it through 6 miles of model railway heaven (this is more than a day trip) are treated to eight sections based on landmarks from around the world. At the scale models of the American Rockies and the Swiss Matterhorn, visitors can climb stairs to reach the summits (nearly 20 feet high) to view Wunderland from an elevated perspective. A simulated sunset highlights Las Vegas, where 30,000 lights replicate the glow of Sin City. Finally, don't forget to visit Knuffingen International Airport, modeled after Hamburg's own International Airport, the largest model airport of its kind. See planes cleared for simulated takeoffs and landings taxiing down the runway.

And the Brauns aren't done yet. New construction plans, including sections for Italy, Africa, and a potential futuristic landscape, reach into 2020. Wunderland's wow factor is nearly endless.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/gonzo/the-worlds-largest-smallest-and-strangest-model-trains?src=rss

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