JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama met the family of South Africa's ailing anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela on Saturday, offering words of comfort and praising the critically ill retired statesman as one of history's greatest figures.
The faltering health of Mandela, 94, a figure admired globally as a symbol of struggle against injustice and racism, is dominating Obama's two-day visit to South Africa.
But Obama also faced protests by South Africans against U.S. foreign policy, especially American drone strikes.
Police fired stun grenades to disperse several hundred protesters who had gathered outside the Soweto campus of the University of Johannesburg, where Obama addressed an afternoon town hall meeting with students.
The brief confrontation some distance away did not disrupt the event in the heavily protected campus, where Obama gave a speech praising what he called a new "more prosperous, more confident" Africa. He also took questions from students.
On the second leg of a three-nation Africa tour, Obama met Mandela's relatives to deliver a message of support instead of directly visiting the frail former president at the hospital where he has spent the last three weeks.
The half-hour meeting took place at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
Obama said afterwards in a statement he had also spoken by telephone with Mandela's wife Graca Machel, who remained by her husband's side in the hospital in Pretoria.
"I expressed my hope that Madiba draws peace and comfort from the time that he is spending with loved ones, and also expressed my heartfelt support for the entire family as they work through this difficult time," he said, using the clan name Madiba by which Mandela is affectionately known.
Machel said she had conveyed this message to her husband and thanked the Obamas for their "touch of personal warmth".
Obama earlier held talks with South African President Jacob Zuma and the two held a joint news conference in which Zuma said Mandela remained in a "critical but stable condition".
"We hope that very soon he will be out of hospital," Zuma added, without giving further details.
Obama's visit to South Africa had stirred intense speculation that the first African-American president of the United States would look in on the first black president of South Africa in his hospital room.
But Mandela's deterioration in the last week to a critical condition forced the White House to decide against such a visit.
"BOUND BY HISTORY"
Speaking to reporters at Pretoria's Union Buildings, where Mandela was inaugurated in 1994, Obama said the prayers of millions around the world were with the Nobel Peace laureate.
He likened Mandela to the first U.S. president, George Washington, because both had decided to step down at the peak of their power and popularity.
"What an incredible lesson that is," Obama said, calling Mandela "one of the greatest people in history".
Obama said on Thursday he did not "need a photo op" with Mandela, whom he met in 2005 in Washington as a U.S. senator.
Zuma underscored the historical similarities between Mandela and Obama. "The two of you are also bound by history as the first black presidents of your respective countries," Zuma said.
"You both carry the dreams of the millions of people in Africa and the diaspora."
On Sunday, Obama flies to Cape Town, from where he will visit Robben Island, the windswept former penal colony in the frigid waters of the south Atlantic where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in apartheid jails.
Zuma said Mandela had told him before his latest hospitalization that "when I go to sleep I will be very happy because I left South Africa going forward".
Despite the protests of some against Obama, many other South Africans said they were inspired by the U.S. leader's example.
"Obama, like Nelson Mandela, is the first black president in his country ... His success in the U.S. shows that we as Africans can also make it," said Nanzwakazi Zuma, a lecturer in electrical engineering who attended the Soweto event.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal, and Dylan Martinez and Jon Herskovitz in Soweto; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Gareth Jones)
EAST HARTFORD -- Two of the best receivers in the FCIAC and SWC got a chance to play alongside a future UConn quarterback Saturday in the inaugural Military Bowl all-star football game.
St. Joseph's Jake Pelletier and Newtown's Dan Hebert left the game impressed.
Very impressed.
Even better, they helped send Xavier's Tim Boyle to Storrs a winner in their last official high school football game.
Pelletier and Hebert both caught critical passes from Boyle to set up touchdowns as their National Guard team defeated Team Marines 15-14 in front of over 3,000 at Rentschler Field. Boyle, who struggled to connect early, eventually found his groove and rallied National Guard from behind twice.
Boyle tossed a 24-yard touchdown pass to New London's Sam Miranda at the end of the first half to give National Guard an 8-7 lead.
Later, down 14-8, Boyle capped a long drive with a 14-yard touchdown run on a naked bootleg with over three minutes remaining in the third quarter.
That run, coupled with Shelton kicker Ed Groth's extra point, proved to be the winning scores.
Boyle finished 13 of 25 for 131 yards and two interceptions.
"Tim is excellent. I've never seen a quarterback like that before," said Pelletier, who converted two critical third downs on screen passes from Boyle during the eventual game-winning drive. "He was the best quarterback I've ever played with and it was great working with him."
Hebert, meanwhile, set up National Guard's first touchdown with a nifty catch-and-run.
"Some of these guys are going to be great football players," said Hebert, who will play at Central Connecticut State. "And playing with Tim was amazing. He's probably the best quarterback I've ever played with."
This was Hebert's first football game since breaking his arm and missing the final month of Newtown's season.
"It stunk that I had to miss the last few games of our season," he said.
"But coming back to play here was a chance of a lifetime."
New Fairfield's stellar tailback Joe Pacheco also played well, given his shot at redemption.
Pacheco, who was suspended for New Fairfield's Thanksgiving Day game for a violation of team rules, carried the ball 10 times and led Team Marines with 61 yards.
"It felt good. It felt good," he said. "I just wish I touched the ball a little more. Every time I touched the ball I felt like I got something going. I know we had four running backs, but..."
Down 2-0 early after a first-quarter safety, Oxford's Brennen Diaz helped rally Team Marines back with a pair of 1-yard touchdown runs.
The Marines' last, best chance to win the game came when Greenwich's Jesse Adelberg attempted a 32-yard field goal with over five minutes left. It went wide left.
"Before he went to kick he gave me a look and we exchanged a smile," Groth said of Adelberg. "But it's always tough when you miss it in a pressure situation."
Wolcott quarterback Mike Nicol's 62 rushing yards helped waste all but a few ticks of the remaining time on the clock.
Masuk's Bryan Monaco led National Guard's defense with three sacks.
"It was a lot different than playing with Masuk," Monaco said. "It was different, but a good different."
Middletown's Isiah Swain had a pair of interceptions for Team Marines.
Northwest Catholic's Nick Gaynor and Hillhouse's Je'Vaughn Moore made interceptions for Team National Guard.
A demonstrator protests with a poster against espionage programs in Hanover, Germany, 29 June 2013. A coalition for action consisting of representatives from politcs, unions and Blockupy and Anonymous activists protests against NSA espionage PRISM as well as the surveillance practices of British Secret Service GCHQ. Photo by: Peter Steffen/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
A demonstrator protests with a poster against espionage programs in Hanover, Germany, 29 June 2013. A coalition for action consisting of representatives from politcs, unions and Blockupy and Anonymous activists protests against NSA espionage PRISM as well as the surveillance practices of British Secret Service GCHQ. Photo by: Peter Steffen/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration faced a breakdown in confidence Sunday from key foreign allies who threatened investigations and sanctions against the U.S. over secret surveillance programs that reportedly installed covert listening devices in European Union offices.
U.S. intelligence officials said they will directly discuss with EU officials the new allegations, reported in Sunday's editions of the German news weekly Der Spiegel. But the former head of the CIA and National Security Agency urged the White House to make the spy programs more transparent to calm public fears about the American government's snooping.
It was the latest backlash in a nearly monthlong global debate over the reach of U.S. surveillance that aims to prevent terror attacks. The two programs, both run by the NSA, pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day. They have raised sharp concerns about whether they violate public privacy rights at home and abroad.
Several European officials ? including in Germany, Italy, France, Luxembourg and the EU government itself ? said the new revelations could scuttle ongoing negotiations on a trans-Atlantic trade treaty that, ultimately, seeks to create jobs and boost commerce by billions annually in what would be the world's largest free trade area.
"Partners do not spy on each other," said EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding. "We cannot negotiate over a big trans-Atlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators. The American authorities should eliminate any such doubt swiftly."
European Parliament President Martin Schulz said he was "deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices." And Luxembourg Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Jean Asselborn said he had no reason to doubt the Der Spiegel report and rejected the notion that security concerns trump the broad U.S. surveillance authorities.
"We have to re-establish immediately confidence on the highest level of the European Union and the United States," Asselborn told The Associated Press.
According to Der Spiegel, the NSA planted bugs in the EU's diplomatic offices in Washington and infiltrated the building's computer network. Similar measures were taken at the EU's mission to the United Nations in New York, the magazine said. It also reported that the NSA used secure facilities at NATO headquarters in Brussels to dial into telephone maintenance systems that would have allowed it to intercept senior officials' calls and Internet traffic at a key EU office nearby.
The Spiegel report cited classified U.S. documents taken by NSA leaker and former contractor Edward Snowden that the magazine said it had partly seen. It did not publish the alleged NSA documents it cited nor say how it obtained access to them. But one of the report's authors is Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who interviewed Snowden while he was holed up in Hong Kong.
Britain's The Guardian newspaper also published an article Sunday alleging NSA surveillance of the EU offices, citing classified documents provided by Snowden. The Guardian said one document lists 38 NSA "targets," including embassies and missions of U.S. allies like France, Italy, Greece, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey.
In Washington, a statement from the national intelligence director's office said U.S. officials planned to respond to the concerns with their EU counterparts and through diplomatic channels with specific nations.
However, "as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations," the statement concluded. It did not provide further details.
NSA Director Keith Alexander last week said the government stopped gathering U.S. citizens' Internet data in 2011. But the NSA programs that sweep up foreigners' data through U.S. servers to pin down potential threats to Americans from abroad continue.
Speaking on CBS' "Face the Nation," former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden downplayed the European outrage over the programs, saying they "should look first and find out what their own governments are doing." But Hayden said the Obama administration should try to head off public criticism by being more open about the top-secret programs so "people know exactly what it is we are doing in this balance between privacy and security."
"The more they know, the more comfortable they will feel," Hayden said. "Frankly, I think we ought to be doing a bit more to explain what it is we're doing, why, and the very tight safeguards under which we're operating."
Hayden also defended a secretive U.S. court that weighs whether to allow the government to seize Internet and phone records from private companies. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is made up of federal judges but does not consider objections from defense attorneys in considering the government's request for records.
Last year, the government asked the court to approve 1,789 applications to spy on foreign intelligence targets, according to a Justice Department notice to Congress dated April 30. The court approved all but one ? and that was withdrawn by the government.
Critics have derided the court as a rubber-stamp approval for the government, sparking an unusual response last week in The Washington Post by its former chief judge. In a statement to the newspaper, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly refuted a draft NSA inspector general's report that suggested the court collaborated with the executive branch instead of maintaining judicial independence. Kollar-Kotelly was the court's chief judge from 2002 to 2006, when some of the surveillance programs were under way.
Some European counties have much stronger privacy laws than does the U.S. In Germany, where criticism of the NSA's surveillance programs has been particularly vocal, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger likened the spying outlined in the Der Spiegel report to "methods used by enemies during the Cold War." German federal prosecutors are examining whether the reported U.S. electronic surveillance programs broke German laws.
Green Party leaders in the European Parliament called for an immediate investigation into the claims and called for existing U.S.-EU agreements on the exchange of bank transfer and passenger record information to be canceled. Both programs have been labeled as unwarranted infringements of citizens' privacy by left-wing and libertarian lawmakers in Europe.
The dispute also has jeopardized diplomatic relations between the U.S. and some of it its most unreliable allies, including China, Russia and Ecuador.
Snowden, who tuned 30 last week, revealed himself as the document leaker in June interviews in Hong Kong, but fled to Russia before China's government could turn him over to U.S. officials. Snowden is now believed to be holed up in a transit zone in Moscow's international airport, where Russian officials say they have no authority to catch him since he technically has not crossed immigration borders.
It's also believed Snowden is seeking political asylum from Ecuador. But Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa signaled in an AP interview Sunday that it's unlikely Snowden will end up there. Correa portrayed Russia as entirely the masters of Snowden's fate, and the Kremlin said it will take public opinion and the views of human rights activists into account when considering his case. That could lay the groundwork for Snowden to seek asylum in Russia.
Outgoing National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said U.S. and Russian law enforcement officials are discussing how to deal with Snowden, who is wanted on espionage charges. "The sooner that this can be resolved, the better," Donilon said in an interview on CNN.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has a different take on what to do with Snowden. "I think it's pretty good that he's stuck in the Moscow airport," Pelosi, D-Calif., said on NBC's "Meet the Press." ''That's ok with me. He can stay there, that's fine."
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Jordans reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers Raf Casert in Brussels, Greg Keller in Paris, Frances D'Emilio in Rome, Jovana Gec in Zagreb, Croatia, Lynn Berry in Moscow and Michael Weissenstein in Portoviejo, Ecuador, contributed to this report.
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Lara Jakes and Frank Jordans can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/larajakesAP and http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter
June 28, 2013 ? A team of scientists at USC has verified that quantum effects are indeed at play in the first commercial quantum optimization processor.
The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics plays a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits.
This means that the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor -- something that scientists had hoped for but have needed extensive testing to verify.
The quantum processor was purchased from Canadian manufacturer D-Wave nearly two years ago by Lockheed Martin and housed at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute (ISI). As the first of its kind, the task for scientists putting it through its paces was to determine whether the quantum computer was operating as hoped.
"Using a specific test problem involving eight qubits we have verified that the D-Wave processor performs optimization calculations (that is, finds lowest energy solutions) using a procedure that is consistent with quantum annealing and is inconsistent with the predictions of classical annealing," said Daniel Lidar, scientific director of the Quantum Computing Center and one of the researchers on the team, who holds joint appointments with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Quantum annealing is a method of solving optimization problems using quantum mechanics -- at a large enough scale, potentially much faster than a traditional processor can.
Research institutions throughout the world build and use quantum processors, but most only have a few quantum bits, or "qubits."
Qubits have the capability of encoding the two digits of one and zero at the same time -- as opposed to traditional bits, which can encode distinctly either a one or a zero. This property, called "superposition," along with the ability of quantum states to "tunnel" through energy barriers, are hoped to play a role in helping future generations of the D-Wave processor to ultimately perform optimization calculations much faster than traditional processors.
With 108 functional qubits, the D-Wave processor at USC inspired hopes for a significant advance in the field of quantum computing when it was installed in October 2011 -- provided it worked as a quantum information processor. Quantum processors can fall victim to a phenomenon called "decoherence," which stifles their ability to behave in a quantum fashion.
The USC team's research shows that the chip, in fact, performed largely as hoped, demonstrating the potential for quantum optimization on a larger-than-ever scale.
"Our work seems to show that, from a purely physical point of view, quantum effects play a functional role in information processing in the D-Wave processor," said Sergio Boixo, first author of the research paper, who conducted the research while he was a computer scientist at ISI and research assistant professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
Boixo and Lidar collaborated with Tameem Albash, postdoctoral research associate in physics at USC Dornsife; Federico M. Spedalieri, computer scientist at ISI; and Nicholas Chancellor, a recent physics graduate at USC Dornsife. Their findings will be published in Nature Communications on June 28.
The news comes just two months after the Quantum Computing Center's original D-Wave processor -- known commercially as the "Rainier" chip -- was upgraded to a new 512-qubit "Vesuvius" chip. The Quantum Computing Center, which includes a magnetically shielded box that is kept frigid (near absolute zero) to protect the computer against decoherence, was designed to be upgradable to keep up with the latest developments in the field.
The new Vesuvius chip at USC is currently the only one in operation outside of D-Wave. A second such chip, owned by Google and housed at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, is expected to become operational later this year.
Next, the USC team will take the Vesuvius chip for a test drive, putting it through the same paces as the Rainier chip.
This research was supported by the Lockheed Martin Corporation; U.S. Army Research Office grant number W911NF-12-1-0523; National Science Foundation grant number CHM-1037992, ARO Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative grant W911NF-11-1-026.
In this Thursday, June 27, 2013, photo, Anthony Nappier of Los Angeles practices singing ?I Believe? from ?The Book of Mormon? in New York City, ahead of the National High School Musical Theater Awards on Monday, July 1. Nappier is one of 62 students from across the nation competing for the contest?s top prizes and scholarship money. (AP Photo/Mark Kennedy)
In this Thursday, June 27, 2013, photo, Anthony Nappier of Los Angeles practices singing ?I Believe? from ?The Book of Mormon? in New York City, ahead of the National High School Musical Theater Awards on Monday, July 1. Nappier is one of 62 students from across the nation competing for the contest?s top prizes and scholarship money. (AP Photo/Mark Kennedy)
NEW YORK (AP) ? In a steaming, stuffy classroom downtown, it was time for some talented youngsters to face the music.
Half a dozen high school students from across the country were being critiqued on their singing and performance skills by a coach helping them prepare for the National High School Musical Theater Awards on Monday night.
One student from California was warned to perform "I Believe" from "The Book of Mormon" without an ounce of smirk. A teen from Utah was advised not to overthink a Stephen Sondheim lyric. And when a Colorado student wanted advice on whether she was better off singing a serious song from "Aida" or a funny one from "Cinderella," she was asked to sing both. The funny one came out on top.
"That's the one," said the coach, Tony Award-nominee Liz Callaway, whose Broadway credits include "Miss Saigon" and "Baby." The student, Nicole Seefried, seemed convinced ? and relieved. "It is," she said, happily.
The teens were among 62 hoping to be crowned top actor and top actress at this year's contest. Now in its fifth year, the National High School Musical Theater Awards will be held Monday at the Minskoff Theatre, the long-term home of "The Lion King."
The 62 teens who made it to New York ? 31 girls and 31 boys ? get a five-day theatrical boot camp at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, complete with scrambling to learn an opening and closing group number, intense advice on their solo songs, plus a field trip to watch "Annie" on Broadway and dinner at famed theater-district hangout Sardi's. It's not all glamorous, though. Hours are spent in plain classrooms on plastic chairs, with battered pianos and bottles of water.
"It's an experience that's going to stay with them for the rest of their lives," said Van Kaplan, president of the awards organization and the show's director.
Both top winners will receive a scholarship award, capping a monthslong winnowing process that began with 50,000 students from 1,000 schools. This year's contestants come from 20 states: Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Texas, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Florida and Kansas.
On Monday night, all 62 will perform snippets of the songs that they sung at regional competitions as part of several large medleys, and then six finalists ? three boys and three girls ? will be plucked to sing solos. The winners will be picked from the last six.
Kyle Selig, 20, of Long Beach, Calif., won the best actor award in 2010 and is now a student at Carnegie Mellon University. He returned to help out this year and managed to cram in a few auditions to Broadway shows, including "The Book of Mormon."
"It was a validation of what I should be doing," he said of his win.
In addition to Callaway, the tutors included theater pros Leslie Odom Jr., Michael McElroy and Telly Leung. The judges on Monday will include Tony-winning director Scott Ellis, Tony nominee Montego Glover and casting professional Bernie Telsey. The hosts will be Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana, who co-star in "Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella."
Nicknamed the Jimmy Awards after theater owner James Nederlander, whose company is a co-sponsor of the ceremony, the awards spotlight a high level of talent and maturity for children ages 14 to 18. Performances can range from "Bye Bye Birdie" to "Legally Blonde" to "Sweeney Todd."
The number of programs sending students grows each year ? it started with 16 and now stands at 31 ? and Kaplan says interest has been fueled by TV shows like "Glee" and "Smash."
The competition has also apparently reversed the trend away from arts funding for many regions. "Where usually arts programs are the very first things that get cut, we're seeing school districts invest in the arts because of programs like this," Kaplan says.
The Jimmy Awards had a profound effect on Stephen Mark, 21, of Norwich, Conn. He was a junior intent on studying computer science in college when he became the competition's first male winner in 2009.
The victory convinced him and his family that he should follow his heart into the performing arts. He is now studying musical theater at New York University. "It actually completely changed my life," he says.
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Online:
http://www.nhsmta.com
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Mark Kennedy can be reached at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
DENVER (Reuters) - A Colorado judge ruled on Thursday that accused theater gunman James Holmes will tethered to the courtroom floor by a cable for security reasons during his murder trial, but denied a defense request to sequester the jury.
Holmes is charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder stemming from a shooting rampage last July that killed 12 moviegoers during a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" at a suburban Denver cinema.
Fifty-eight other people in the audience were wounded by gunfire and a dozen others suffered other injuries in the ensuing pandemonium.
Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty against Holmes, 25, if he is convicted.
The California native and former University of Colorado graduate student of neuroscience has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Holmes' public defenders have argued that allowing jurors to see their client handcuffed and shackled, as he has been in all of his court appearances so far, would unfairly prejudice them against the accused gunman.
Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. agreed, but said Holmes poses a security risk and that public safety requires that he be restrained during the proceedings.
Holmes will wear a harness under his street clothes with a cable bolting him to the courtroom floor, the judge said.
The cable will be visible to jurors, Samour said, but should be indistinguishable from computer cords emanating from the defense table.
In a separate ruling, the judge denied a defense motion requesting that jurors be sequestered during the trial, which is scheduled to start in February 2014 and is expected to last for about four months.
Jury sequestration is "an extremely rare procedure," the judge said, noting that it would be expensive and impractical to keep jurors sealed off from the outside world for the duration of the trial.
Defense lawyers can renew the request later if issues arise that warrant another look, Samour said.
We've got two big updates to kick off Apps Worth Downloading today, and they're both great for summer travel. Google Search is up first, bringing the information of the Internet to you in quick, easy searches, and which has been updated with new features from Google Offers and more. RoadNinja is our second updated app, and its ability to tell you what's coming in the next exit on the highway (and where you might stop for food, restrooms or great deals) has been improved with a newly strengthened search algorithm. Finally, we've got SlamBots to while away the hours in the car, an arcade title in which you jump up the screen and then come slamming back down on the heads of your enemies.
What?s it about? Search the Internet with a number of quick, easy options with Google's dedicated Search app.
What?s cool? Finding information from the Internet when you're out and about can be frustrating, which is what makes Google Search so handy. The app makes searching for the exact information you need as easy as possible, offering the ability to use text-based or voice-based searches and personalizing your results based on your location. Google has just updated the app to be even more powerful, throwing in a link between Search and Google Offers to help you quickly find places use coupons and save money. You can also activate music from your library or the Google Play Store with voice commands, sync up with your Google connected TV for help in show-related search results, and more.
Who?s it for? This is a must-have app. If you never need information while you're out, Google Search is invaluable.
What?s it like? Apps like Evi and Iris are also great at finding information with little work from the user.
What?s it about? Travel app RoadNinja clues you in on what's coming down the road to help with bathroom breaks, food stops and more.
What?s cool? Road trips are great ? until the inevitable moment when you're on the highway and in unfamiliar territory, wishing you'd downed one fewer latte before setting out. RoadNinja helps make trips better, though, by providing tons of information about where you are and what's coming in the next exit. You can use the app to find food stops and gas, and maybe most importantly, public restrooms. The app also does cool things like let you compare gas prices nearby and find local promotions as you pass, to help you determine where to stop. The latest update to RoadNinja introduces a new layout to the app, and adds a new, stronger search algorithm to make results even more reliable and useful.
Who?s it for? If you're traveling on the road in America, RoadNinja is an app you'll want with you.
What?s it like? Check out YP Local Search & Gas Prices and Tripit for additional trip-planning and road info.
What?s it about? It's all about smashing stuff in arcade title SlamBots, in which players pilot a spiky-bottomed vehicle and crush robots.
What?s cool? SlamBots is like a vertical scrolling title, but without the scrolling. Players bounce around platforms, moving vertically in different arenas, but the goal is to get up above enemies and drop on them by touching the screen to ?slam.? Moving around the screen is done with tilt controls, making SlamBots a fast-action arcade title that'll have you carefully tilting to avoid obstacles and bring serious pain against enemies. You'll also grab power-ups along the way to strengthen your slambot and rack up higher scores.
Who?s it for? Fans of quick, fun points-based arcade games should check out SlamBots.
What?s it like? Velocispider is another great title with similarities in looks and mechanics, and Hyper Jump will scratch the itch to jump ever higher.
During the week of the NFL?s Rookie Symposium, where life lessons are taught to the incoming class of rookies, there hasn?t been a shortage of conversation.
But the conversation keeps coming back to one guy, Aaron Hernandez.
Troy Vincent, the NFL?s senior vice president of player engagement, said it?s a topic that?s impossible to avoid.
?You know, there?s this pink elephant in the room .?.?. the Hernandez situation,? Vincent told players, via Rick Maese of the Washington Post. ?The media has every right to ask you a question about that situation. And you have every right not to engage in that conversation. It is what it is. ?
As part of the opening session for NFC rookies Wednesday night, a group of second-year players were on hand to tell the new guys about the transition. But the topic of Hernandez was never far away.
?A lot of people are afraid of the words, ?Oh man, you different,??? Colts tight end Dwayne Allen said. ?You damn right I?m different. You damn right I?m different. I got a lot more money in my pocket, and a lot more sense. That?s the way you got to go about it.
?If you just turn on your TV to ESPN, this is a brotherhood. This is a brotherhood. One of our brothers in trouble right now. It really hurts me, man. But one of our brothers is in trouble right now because he didn?t want to be different. You got to make a choice right now. .?.?.
?You?re not the same dude you was when you grew up. You different now. That doesn?t mean you can?t hang out with your boys, do things you used to do with your boys. You still do those, but you got to be smart about it, smart about your decisions, man.?
At that point the room of rookies fell silent.
With the Hernandez situation unfolding in front of them ? along with former Browns linebacker Ausar Walcott being arrested for attempted murder and Cowboys defensive tackle Josh Brent going back to jail for failing drug tests while awaiting trial for killing a teammate in a drunk driving crash ??the league doesn?t need many words.
They have examples, hopefully too many of them for the point to be missed.
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal (AP) ? Soon after being released from his 27-year incarceration in South Africa, apartheid icon Nelson Mandela made a pilgrimage to this small island off the Senegalese coast.
He came to pay homage to a salmon-colored house which locals claim was used to hold slaves before herding them onto ships bound for America. When the curator showed him a hole underneath the staircase used to punish disobedient slaves, who were left to die in the crawlspace, Mandela himself climbed in.
He re-emerged, his face wet with tears, says Eloi Coly, the museum's chief conservator, who recalled the impact the experience had on Mandela, just hours before showing the building to President Barack Obama, who visited the structure on Thursday. For Coly, Mandela's emotional response underscores the role that this building, known as the House of Slaves, has had on crystalizing the stain that slavery left on humanity.
The hole is one of the features Coly planned to show Obama. The other is the door facing the open water, the so-called Door of No Return through which the shackled men, women and children left Africa, inching across a plank to the hull of a waiting ship. Like with previous tour groups, the curator planned to ask Obama to stand before the open door and contemplate the view, the slaves' last glimpse of Africa, he claims.
The problem though is that historians say the door faced the ocean so that the inhabitants of the house could chuck their garbage into the water, the preferred means of waste disposal in preindustrial Senegal. No slaves ever boarded a ship through it, they say, because no vessel could have sailed through the rocky shoal that surrounds that edge of the island.
And while the house may have housed slaves, they were likely those belonging to the family who lived there, rather than slaves intended for the trans-Atlantic passage, according to numerous publications as well as three historians of the slave trade interviewed by The Associated Press.
Even though historians have debunked the memorial, calling it a local invention, and despite reams of scholarly articles, treatises and books discussing its dubious historical role, the pink building has become the de facto emblem of slavery. It's the place where world leaders go to acknowledge this dark chapter and in addition to Obama, the museum has hosted former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush and Pope John Paul II. Its guestbook is bursting with the emotional messages from African-Americans who made their own pilgrimage here in an effort to make peace with their ancestors' roots.
"There are literally no historians who believe the Slave House is what they're claiming it to be, or that believe Goree was statistically significant in terms of the slave trade," says historian Ralph Austen, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago who is the author of several articles on the issue. "The debate for us is how loudly should we denounce it?"
From 1501 to 1866, an estimated 12 million slaves from Africa were sent to North America, according to a database created by scholars using shipping records and plantation registers. Of these, only 33,000 came from Goree Island, an insignificant portion of the overall total, the database shows.
Yet the plaques which grace the stone walls of the Slave House speak of the "millions" of slaves that passed through its halls.
In the 1990s, Philip Curtin, an emeritus professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of two dozen books on the Atlantic slave trade, became one of the first scholars to question the authenticity of the Slave House. In a discussion on an online forum for historians, he said he believed the "hoax" was perpetrated by the charismatic Joseph Ndiaye, who preceded Coly as the museum's curator, and who ushered generations of visitors through the house, recounting the alleged horrors perpetrated there with theatrical pomp. Ndiaye initially claimed that 20 million had passed through the house, upping it to 40 million by the time Curtin visited in 1992, four times the total figure of slaves exported from Africa overall.
"A lot of people have been taken in by the Goree scam," Curtin wrote. "Though Goree is a picturesque place, it was marginal to the slave trade."
The debate over the house's place in history has become emotionally charged and politically treacherous in Senegal, due to the high-profile role the museum plays in attracting tourists to the island, including celebrity visitors like Obama.
On the day before the president's planned tour, Coly, who was Ndiaye's assistant up until the curator's death in 2009, fielded calls from journalists, proudly retelling the anecdote regarding Mandela's emotional visit. In a glassed-in cabinet, he keeps the yellowing picture of Mandela, his expression drawn, even dark, after visiting the house. Next to it are portraits of Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, their faces pained as they are shown part of the exhibit. And there are framed certificates from UNESCO, which to the dismay of historians added Goree to its list of World Heritage Sites, claiming on its website that "from the 15th to the 19th century, it was the largest slave-trading center on the African coast." Austen and other historians say the listing was political, pointing out that Goree was added in the 1970s, when UNESCO was led by Amadou Mahtar Mbow, a Senegalese national.
Coly, the curator, reacted violently to the suggestion that the house's history may be trumped up, saying those who question it are akin to Holocaust deniers. "There are people who deny that there were concentration camps," he said. "What it shows is a lack of respect for blacks, for the memory of our people."
Ana Lucia Araujo, a history professor at Howard University whose work deals with the history and memory of the Atlantic slave trade, said that historians have never been able to confirm the claims made by the museum's curator. The very real need for a place where slavery can be remembered, she says, has overridden the objections of scholars.
"We have a number of tourists from the United States that go to Goree, because we have no place here to commemorate the Atlantic slave trade," she said. "But that does not make the site a real historical site. It's a site of memory. But it's not a real place from where real people left in the numbers they say."
The irony is that there are real places throughout Africa's Atlantic Coast from where tens of thousands, even millions, of slaves left. Unlike postcard-ready Goree Island, which still has its aging 17th and 18th century architecture, there isn't much to see at the slave depots that played a critical role. "One of them is the port of Luanda in Angola, where the real majority of Africans left ? nobody goes there," she said. "If there was an Auschwitz in Africa it was not on Goree. It was in Luanda."
While much of the criticism has come from historians abroad, Senegal's scholars are among the critics, even though they have faced a harsh backlash at home. Among them is a quiet man who, until recently, ran a museum on the other end of the island, about a 15-minute walk from the Slave House.
Abdoulaye Camara, the former curator of the Goree Island Historical Museum, answers the question about the Slave House by asking visitors to head to Exhibition Room No. 1, adorned with historical maps of Goree Island. One of them is from 1775, just before the Slave House was built. "Look at this map and draw your own conclusion," he says.
The map shows that at the time, the edge of the island on which the Slave House was built was surrounded not just by a natural barrier of rocks, which appear as a scribbled band, but also by a rampart, which would have blocked all access for a ship trying to approach the Door of No Return.
"If you contest the Slave House, they start throwing rocks at you. It's not a question of negating our history. ... But we need to understand that this is a symbol. It's not based on fact," he said.
That point was likely lost on Obama, who arrived Thursday with his wife and daughter. He peered out of the Door of No Return. Alone for a brief moment inside the doorway, he stared out across the water, as the waves crashing on the very rocks that would have prevented a ship from docking could be heard.
When he spoke to reporters waiting for him outside, he said visiting the site was a "very powerful moment," which has allowed him to "fully appreciate the magnitude of the slave trade."
___
Associated Press writer Julie Pace contributed to this report from Goree Island, Senegal.
June 26, 2013 ? Lemurs from species that hang out in big tribes are more likely to steal food behind your back instead of in front of your face.
This behavior suggests that primates who live in larger social groups tend to have more "social intelligence," a new study shows. The results appear June 27 in PLOS ONE.
A Duke University experiment tested whether living in larger social networks directly relates to higher social abilities in animals. Working with six different species of lemurs living at the Duke Lemur Center, a team of undergraduate researchers tested 60 individuals to see if they would be more likely to steal a piece of food if a human wasn't watching them.
In one test, a pair of human testers sat with two plates of food. One person faced the plate and the lemur entering the room, the other had his or her back turned. In a second, testers sat in profile, facing toward or away from the plate. In a third, they wore a black band either over their eyes or over their mouths and both faced the plates and lemurs.
As the lemurs jumped onto the table where the plates were and decided which bit of food to grab, the ones from large social groups, like the ringtailed lemur (Lemur catta), were evidently more sensitive to social cues that a person might be watching, said Evan MacLean, a research scientist in the Department Of Evolutionary Anthropology who led the research team. Lemurs from small-group species, like the mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz), were less sensitive to the humans' orientation.
Few of the lemurs apparently understood the significance of a blindfold.
The work is the first to test the relationship between group size and social intelligence across multiple species. The findings support the "social intelligence hypothesis," which suggests that living in large social networks drove the evolution of complex social cognition in primates, including humans, MacLean said.
Behavioral experiments are critical to test the idea because assumptions about intelligence based solely on brain size may not hold up, he said. Indeed, this study found that some lemur species had evolved more social smarts without increasing the size of their brains.
Breaking habits before they startPublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Turning off cells in a habit-associated brain region prevents rats from learning to run a maze on autopilot
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Our daily routines can become so ingrained that we perform them automatically, such as taking the same route to work every day. Some behaviors, such as smoking or biting your fingernails, become so habitual that we can't stop even if we want to.
Although breaking habits can be hard, MIT neuroscientists have now shown that they can prevent them from taking root in the first place, in rats learning to run a maze to earn a reward. The researchers first demonstrated that activity in two distinct brain regions is necessary in order for habits to crystallize. Then, they were able to block habits from forming by interfering with activity in one of the brain regions the infralimbic (IL) cortex, which is located in the prefrontal cortex.
The MIT researchers, led by Institute Professor Ann Graybiel, used a technique called optogenetics to block activity in the IL cortex. This allowed them to control cells of the IL cortex using light. When the cells were turned off during every maze training run, the rats still learned to run the maze correctly, but when the reward was made to taste bad, they stopped, showing that a habit had not formed. If it had, they would keep going back by habit.
"It's usually so difficult to break a habit," Graybiel says. "It's also difficult to have a habit not form when you get a reward for what you're doing. But with this manipulation, it's absolutely easy. You just turn the light on, and bingo."
Graybiel, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of a paper describing the findings in the June 27 issue of the journal Neuron. Kyle Smith, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, is the paper's lead author.
Patterns of habitual behavior
Previous studies of how habits are formed and controlled have implicated the IL cortex as well as the striatum, a part of the brain related to addiction and repetitive behavioral problems, as well as normal functions such as decision-making, planning and response to reward. It is believed that the motor patterns needed to execute a habitual behavior are stored in the striatum and its circuits.
Recent studies from Graybiel's lab have shown that disrupting activity in the IL cortex can block the expression of habits that have already been learned and stored in the striatum. Last year, Smith and Graybiel found that the IL cortex appears to decide which of two previously learned habits will be expressed.
"We have evidence that these two areas are important for habits, but they're not connected at all, and no one has much of an idea of what the cells are doing as a habit is formed, as the habit is lost, and as a new habit takes over," Smith says.
To investigate that, Smith recorded activity in cells of the IL cortex as rats learned to run a maze. He found activity patterns very similar to those that appear in the striatum during habit formation. Several years ago, Graybiel found that a distinctive "task-bracketing" pattern develops when habits are formed. This means that the cells are very active when the animal begins its run through the maze, are quiet during the run, and then fire up again when the task is finished.
This kind of pattern "chunks" habits into a large unit that the brain can simply turn on when the habitual behavior is triggered, without having to think about each individual action that goes into the habitual behavior.
The researchers found that this pattern took longer to appear in the IL cortex than in the striatum, and it was also less permanent. Unlike the pattern in the striatum, which remains stored even when a habit is broken, the IL cortex pattern appears and disappears as habits are formed and broken. This was the clue that the IL cortex, not the striatum, was tracking the development of the habit.
Multiple layers of control
The researchers' ability to optogenetically block the formation of new habits suggests that the IL cortex not only exerts real-time control over habits and compulsions, but is also needed for habits to form in the first place.
"The previous idea was that the habits were stored in the sensorimotor system and this cortical area was just selecting the habit to be expressed. Now we think it's a more fundamental contribution to habits, that the IL cortex is more actively making this happen," Smith says.
This arrangement offers multiple layers of control over habitual behavior, which could be advantageous in reining in automatic behavior, Graybiel says. It is also possible that the IL cortex is contributing specific pieces of the habitual behavior, in addition to exerting control over whether it occurs, according to the researchers. They are now trying to determine whether the IL cortex and the striatum are communicating with and influencing each other, or simply acting in parallel.
The study suggests a new way to look for abnormal activity that might cause disorders of repetitive behavior, Smith says. Now that the researchers have identified the neural signature of a normal habit, they can look for signs of habitual behavior that is learned too quickly or becomes too rigid. Finding such a signature could allow scientists to develop new ways to treat disorders of repetitive behavior by using deep brain stimulation, which uses electronic impulses delivered by a pacemaker to suppress abnormal brain activity.
###
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research, the Stanley H. and Sheila G. Sydney Fund and funding from R. Pourian and Julia Madadi.
Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
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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.
Breaking habits before they startPublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Turning off cells in a habit-associated brain region prevents rats from learning to run a maze on autopilot
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Our daily routines can become so ingrained that we perform them automatically, such as taking the same route to work every day. Some behaviors, such as smoking or biting your fingernails, become so habitual that we can't stop even if we want to.
Although breaking habits can be hard, MIT neuroscientists have now shown that they can prevent them from taking root in the first place, in rats learning to run a maze to earn a reward. The researchers first demonstrated that activity in two distinct brain regions is necessary in order for habits to crystallize. Then, they were able to block habits from forming by interfering with activity in one of the brain regions the infralimbic (IL) cortex, which is located in the prefrontal cortex.
The MIT researchers, led by Institute Professor Ann Graybiel, used a technique called optogenetics to block activity in the IL cortex. This allowed them to control cells of the IL cortex using light. When the cells were turned off during every maze training run, the rats still learned to run the maze correctly, but when the reward was made to taste bad, they stopped, showing that a habit had not formed. If it had, they would keep going back by habit.
"It's usually so difficult to break a habit," Graybiel says. "It's also difficult to have a habit not form when you get a reward for what you're doing. But with this manipulation, it's absolutely easy. You just turn the light on, and bingo."
Graybiel, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of a paper describing the findings in the June 27 issue of the journal Neuron. Kyle Smith, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, is the paper's lead author.
Patterns of habitual behavior
Previous studies of how habits are formed and controlled have implicated the IL cortex as well as the striatum, a part of the brain related to addiction and repetitive behavioral problems, as well as normal functions such as decision-making, planning and response to reward. It is believed that the motor patterns needed to execute a habitual behavior are stored in the striatum and its circuits.
Recent studies from Graybiel's lab have shown that disrupting activity in the IL cortex can block the expression of habits that have already been learned and stored in the striatum. Last year, Smith and Graybiel found that the IL cortex appears to decide which of two previously learned habits will be expressed.
"We have evidence that these two areas are important for habits, but they're not connected at all, and no one has much of an idea of what the cells are doing as a habit is formed, as the habit is lost, and as a new habit takes over," Smith says.
To investigate that, Smith recorded activity in cells of the IL cortex as rats learned to run a maze. He found activity patterns very similar to those that appear in the striatum during habit formation. Several years ago, Graybiel found that a distinctive "task-bracketing" pattern develops when habits are formed. This means that the cells are very active when the animal begins its run through the maze, are quiet during the run, and then fire up again when the task is finished.
This kind of pattern "chunks" habits into a large unit that the brain can simply turn on when the habitual behavior is triggered, without having to think about each individual action that goes into the habitual behavior.
The researchers found that this pattern took longer to appear in the IL cortex than in the striatum, and it was also less permanent. Unlike the pattern in the striatum, which remains stored even when a habit is broken, the IL cortex pattern appears and disappears as habits are formed and broken. This was the clue that the IL cortex, not the striatum, was tracking the development of the habit.
Multiple layers of control
The researchers' ability to optogenetically block the formation of new habits suggests that the IL cortex not only exerts real-time control over habits and compulsions, but is also needed for habits to form in the first place.
"The previous idea was that the habits were stored in the sensorimotor system and this cortical area was just selecting the habit to be expressed. Now we think it's a more fundamental contribution to habits, that the IL cortex is more actively making this happen," Smith says.
This arrangement offers multiple layers of control over habitual behavior, which could be advantageous in reining in automatic behavior, Graybiel says. It is also possible that the IL cortex is contributing specific pieces of the habitual behavior, in addition to exerting control over whether it occurs, according to the researchers. They are now trying to determine whether the IL cortex and the striatum are communicating with and influencing each other, or simply acting in parallel.
The study suggests a new way to look for abnormal activity that might cause disorders of repetitive behavior, Smith says. Now that the researchers have identified the neural signature of a normal habit, they can look for signs of habitual behavior that is learned too quickly or becomes too rigid. Finding such a signature could allow scientists to develop new ways to treat disorders of repetitive behavior by using deep brain stimulation, which uses electronic impulses delivered by a pacemaker to suppress abnormal brain activity.
###
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research, the Stanley H. and Sheila G. Sydney Fund and funding from R. Pourian and Julia Madadi.
Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
[ | 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.
VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Francis took a key step Wednesday toward reforming the troubled Vatican bank, naming a commission of inquiry to look into its activities amid a new money-laundering probe and continued questions about the very nature of the secretive financial institution.
It was the second time in as many weeks that Francis has intervened to get information out of the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR. On June 15, he filled a key vacancy in the bank's governing structure, tapping a trusted prelate to be his eyes inside the bank.
On Wednesday, he named a commission to investigate the bank's legal structure and activities "to allow for a better harmonization with the universal mission of the Apostolic See," according to the legal document that created it.
Francis named five people to the commission, including two Americans: Monsignor Peter Wells, a top official in the Vatican secretariat of state, and Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor, former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and current president of a pontifical academy.
American cardinals were among the most vocal in demanding a wholesale reform of the Vatican bureaucracy ? and the Vatican bank ? in the meetings running up to the March conclave that elected Francis pope. The demands were raised following revelations in leaked documents last year that told of dysfunction, petty turf wars and allegations of corruption in the Holy See's governance.
Francis, who has made clear he has no patience for corruption and wants a "poor" church, has already named a separate commission of cardinals to advise him on the broader question of reforming the Vatican bureaucracy as a whole.
The bank commission's members have the authority to gather documents, data and information about the bank's legal status and activities, even overriding normal secrecy rules to do so. Members can receive information from anyone in the Vatican bureaucracy as well as people who spontaneously volunteer information, and the commission can refer to outside advisers if necessary, according to the terms.
The bank's administration continues to function as normal, as does the Vatican's new financial watchdog agency which has supervisory control over it.
The commission will report back to Francis ? presumably with both information and recommendations ? and then will be dissolved, the document states. No timeframe was given but the commission is to start working soon.
The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees.
The announcement of the committee came amid a new embarrassment for the Vatican in which prosecutors in the southern city of Salerno have placed a senior Vatican official under investigation for alleged money-laundering.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed Wednesday that Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had been suspended temporarily from his position in one of the Vatican's key finance offices, the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. Scarano has said he did nothing wrong, though in an interview with the local daily, La Citta di Salerno, he acknowledged he received bad advice from his accountant.
Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported over the weekend that Italy's central bank had asked the Vatican's financial watchdog agency for information about Scarano's Vatican bank account as part of the probe. Lombardi said he didn't know if the Vatican had responded to the request.
Such exchanges of financial information are the hallmark of the financial transparency that the Vatican has committed itself to as part of its efforts to join the "white list" of countries in the fight against money-laundering and terrorist financing.
The Vatican in November must submit a progress report to the Council of Europe's Moneyval committee on the steps it has taken to comply with such international financial transparency norms. The Vatican passed Moneyval's key test on its first try last summer but received poor or failing grades for its bank and its financial oversight agency.
There have long been questions about just what the IOR actually is and does ? questions which the commission presumably will try to iron out for Francis. Vatican officials have long insisted it's not even a bank, since it doesn't perform key banking activities like making loans.
It does however take deposits, transfer money and invest for its clients, performing asset management services that in 2012 helped earn it 86.6 million euros in profit on 7.1 billion euros in total assets under management.
Some cardinals have questioned if the Vatican needs such a financial institution and whether its activities are even in keeping with church teaching.
In 2010, Italian financial police seized 23 million euros from an IOR account and Rome prosecutors placed the IOR's then-president and general director under investigation for alleged violations of Italy's anti-money laundering norms after they conducted a transaction from an IOR account at an Italian bank. The money was eventually unfrozen. The men technically remain under investigation but nearly three years on, haven't been charged.
The Vatican bank's workings have long been shrouded in secrecy. Most famously, it was implicated in a scandal over the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases. Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that remain mysterious.
Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.
___
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
The Sunlight Foundation found that the House of Representatives spent nearly $2 million on coffee and food in 2012??
Most Americans start their day with at least one cup of coffee, maybe paying $2 to $5, but many might be surprised to know they also treat their members of Congress to some joe and a bagel or two, as well.
The Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group advocating for government transparency, crunched the numbers for ABC News and found that the House of Representatives spent nearly $2 million on coffee and food in 2012 for events in and around the Capitol.
"Congress is spending an awful lot of money to entertain their members," said Bill Allison, the foundation's editorial director. "[It's] coffee and doughnuts and then some very nice catering places in Washington, D.C., as well."
The money is part of lawmakers' representational allowances, which can be used to pay for everything from sending mail to constituents to entertaining visitors. The foundation did not know who the visitors were.
Although lawmakers were paring back, Allison said, they hadn't changed certain rules when it came to food and drink.
"Catering companies can get as much business from the House as they have in the past," he said.
The Sunlight Foundation found that expensive catering was truly a bipartisan effort, with leaders hosting their own members. Republican House Speaker John Boehner spent $64,000. Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spent $61,000. and No. 2 Democrat Steny Hoyer spent $52,000.
The biggest spender in the House was No. 3 Republican Kevin McCarthy of California. On his Facebook page, pictures of meetings include fruit, bagels, croissants and coffee.
McCarthy's 2012 grand total - $95,000, with an additional $4,000 being spent on bottled water - was enough to pay the salaries of two mid-level staffers on Capitol Hill.
"That's a couple of jobs for the average American," Allison said.
McCarthy declined an ABC News request for an interview.
When ABC News approached him as he walked down a hallway in the Capitol to ask about the nearly $100,000 spent to cater meetings and dinner, he responded: "You noticed. We cut it out."
Actually, what ABC News noticed were the leftovers from a meeting McCarthy had just attended. A staffer even offered a bagel.
While McCarthy said he was making cuts, his office did not provide any numbers.
Allison said Americans should ask their leaders to buy their own coffee and pastries.
"We are in an age of austerity and sequestration and budget cuts," Allison said. "It seems like if you are looking for places to cut, the entertainment budget would be the first one you would go to."
MIAMI (AP) ? Bunny Yeager was a photographer at a time when men dominated that profession, but the model turned pin-up photographer used that to her advantage when photographing women in the 1950s and '60s.
She was able to make everyday women, from stay-at-home mothers to airline attendants, feel comfortable enough to bare it all. In the mid-1950s, she helped jump-start the career of then-unknown Bettie Page with her photo in Playboy. More than five decades after shooting the well-known stills of Page in a leopard-print bathing suit standing next to a real cheetah, 40 framed prints of her work are now on display in a gallery in Wynwood, Miami's arts district.
"They all wanted to model for me because they knew that I wouldn't take advantage of them," Yeager, now 83, said of her models. "And I wouldn't push them to do nude if they didn't want to do nudes. It wasn't a day when nude photography was prevalent."
Wes Carson, a photography instructor at the Miami International University of Art & Design, said the way women were "surveyed" in Yeager's photographs was distinct from her male counterparts.
"When I look at her work, the women have a different demeanor," he said. "They are more confident. They are in charge of their sexuality, where if you look at someone else's work the women are much more dismissive and demure."
Last year, Yeager, a Pennsylvania native, published the coffee table book "Bunny Yeager's Darkroom" and is working on another book that will include her photos of Page. The German fashion house Bruno Bananai has a new line of swimwear based on the bikinis she designed for her models and she plans to photograph models again in her studio, if requests come in.
Yeager, whose real name is Linnea Eleanor Yeager, was one of the most photographed models in Miami during her early career. Soon after taking a photography course at a local college, Yeager turned the camera on herself as she posed in bathing suits she handmade for her 5-foot-9 frame. Her self-portraits were turned into a book, "How I Photograph Myself," in 1964 and many of those photos ? including Yeager in a red-striped low V-cut bathing suit and a white bikini covered in real daisies she glued on one by one ? adorn the walls of her Miami gallery. The prints range in price from $1,200 to $3,000.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Yeager was one of the top fashion models and photographers, publishing about a dozen books. She shot stills of the Swedish actress Ursula Andress, who was starring in the 1962 James Bond film "Dr. No." The famous shot shows the actress in a white bikini, a knife sheathed at her side.
Yeager continued to work, but over the last decade, several magazines began to struggle or went out of business. Yeager was no longer in demand.
"There was a big portion of time where I hadn't been doing anything," Yeager said of her hiatus. "It wasn't that I was retired, it's just that nobody wanted my photos. I had no requests. No inquiries. Nothing. It was like I didn't even exist."
But in 2010, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh held an exhibition of her work. Now, there is the Miami exhibition.
"I haven't gotten used to it yet," Yeager said of the recent attention. "And I still get that little tingle when I see the photos on the wall."
In her studio, Yeager keeps a stash of photos no one has seen in cabinets. Some she plans to save for her next book. Others will serve as a snapshot of what's yet to come for Yeager and the next generation of female photographers.
"I'm still feeling like a little child and excited over everything new that comes along in my life. I don't know where it will lead to yet, but it sounds good to me."
What?s it about? Search the Internet with a number of quick, easy options with Google's dedicated Search app.
What?s it about? Travel app RoadNinja clues you in on what's coming down the road to help with bathroom breaks, food stops and more.
What?s it about? It's all about smashing stuff in arcade title SlamBots, in which players pilot a spiky-bottomed vehicle and crush robots.
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Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
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