Slatest
Intel has refused to comment, but inside sources leaked that the tech giant is planning to start a $2 billion investment fund that would support only U.S.-based companies. “A person familiar with the situation said Intel, which has a unit that places investments in many technology companies, is approaching venture-capital firms about the idea of allocating a portion of their funds toward U.S. companies,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “The plan would not require raising additional capital, this person said. How venture capital firms are reacting to the idea was not immediately clear.” The plan could be announced Tuesday when Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive officer, is scheduled to give a speech at the Brookings Institution. The speech is expected to focus on “the need to create a culture of investment in the United States” and the need for a stronger focus on education.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Not a good day in Afghanistan. Near the Helmand province capital of Lashkar Gah a bomb strapped to a bicycle that went off near a bus terminal claimed at least eight lives as the independent Web site icasualties.org announced that the number of U.S. troops to die in the country climbed above 1,000. “The tally appeared to miss at least one U.S. fatality, and two ISAF deaths announced on Monday, bringing the total number of foreign soldiers to die in the war since 2001 to 1,661 according to an AFP count,” AFP reported on Tuesday morning. “So far this year 58 foreign soldiers have died in the war, with ISAF spokesman Sergeant Jeff Loftin confirming the Mushtarak toll at 13.”
Source: AFP
The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 10 to 9.7 percent in January, but a Gallup poll released Tuesday shows that nearly one out of every five members of the country’s workforce is underemployed. That’s about 30 million Americans who are without jobs or unable to find full-time work. “Underemployed people spent 36 percent less on household purchases than their fully employed neighbors in January, while six out of 10 were not hopeful about their chances of finding adequate work in the coming month, the poll said,” Reuters reported. “The poll comes at a time when voter anger over the slow economic recovery is running high and President Barack Obama’s hopes of boosting employment through government programs have been frustrated by partisan rancor in Congress.” The poll, which has only a one percentage point margin of error, also found that underemployed Americans have a more favorable view of the president than those with full-time work.
Source: Reuters
Print media and newspapers in particular might be hurting — blame the Internet, blame the economic recession, blame something else, but the fact remains that advertising revenues are down and the traditional model won’t work for the distant future — but that isn’t stopping the Los Angeles Times from going forward with a tradition that it has upheld since 1980. Every year, a group of editors from the newspaper chooses what it thinks are the best books in various categories from the previous year and awards the author of each with $1,000. This year, the paper will choose ten winners in these categories: Biography, Current Interest, Fiction, First Fiction, Graphic Novel, History, Mystery/Thriller, Science & Technology, Poetry and Young Adult Literature. Some of the nominees include the New York Times‘ Nicholas D. Kristof’s Half the Sky; Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned; and Dave Cullen’s Columbine. For the full list, visit this page.
Source: The Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Approximately 93 million Americans, or one-third of the country’s population, are without a broadband connection at home. After conducting a survey, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concluded that affordability — the monthly fee, the installation fee and the cost of a computer — was the number one barrier to overcome in getting those Americans connected. “‘We need to tackle the challenge of connecting 93 million Americans to our broadband future,’ [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski] said in a statement,” CNET reported. “‘In the 21st century, a digital divide is an opportunity divide. To bolster American competitiveness abroad and create the jobs of the future here at home, we need to make sure that all Americans have the skills and means to fully participate in the digital economy.’” Genachowski will go into more detail in a speech at the Brookings Institute on Tuesday. The Commission has been asked by Congress to develop a plan for connecting all Americans to high-speed broadband; the full strategy will be presented on March 17. Other barriers that were keeping some Americans from joining a broadband network included digital literacy and relevance: 19 percent of those surveyed said they don’t see a need for the connection.
Source: CNET
For two years, Indian policemen have been fighting Maoist rebels in Jharkhand, an eastern state in India, but mosquitoes and the malaria that they carry have killed more security forces than the rebels have, the state police association told the BBC. “We are fighting malaria as we are fighting the Maoist rebels,” Jharkhand police association president Akhileshwar Pandey told the BBC. “The mosquitoes are deadlier than the Maoists since we are more vulnerable to their attacks.” Officials claim that anti-malarial medicines and lotions have been distributed, but more than 100 policemen have died of malaria over the past two years, with more than 15 perishing in the last four months alone. The fight has gone on for 20 years, claiming more than 6,000 lives as Maoist rebels fight for communist rule in a large section of eastern India.
Source: BBC
The military commander of al Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing — what U.S. intelligence officials have called the most sophisticated and active splinter section of the group outside of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — threatened attacks on U.S. soil in an article posted to a Web site frequently used by Islamist militants. “Today, you have attacked us in the middle of our household, so wait for what will befall you in the middle of yours,” the military commander, Qasim al-Raymi wrote. “We will blow up the earth from beneath your feet.” Previously, the Yemeni government had said it killed al-Raymi. Elsewhere in the article, Reuters reported, al-Raymi wrote that U.S. involvement in Yemen only served to strengthen al Qaeda’s popularity with locals. “Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved more than doubling U.S. funding to train and equip Yemeni security forces to combat al Qaeda,” Reuters reported.
Source: Reuters
Giant George, a Great Dane from Tucson, Arizona, has been honored with two Guinness World Records: Tallest Living Dog and Tallest Dog Ever. Standing 43 inches tall from paw to shoulder, Giant George tips the scales at 245 pounds. His owner, David Nasser, says that Giant George goes through 110 pounds of food every month and sleeps on his own queen-sized bed. Photographs of George, 4, have been making the rounds online for some time now, but one of the most searched phrases, according to Google, is “Giant George hoax.” People, it seems, simply didn’t believe a dog of such proportions could exist and that someone had Photoshopped the images. Before bestowing the titles, though, the Guinness World Records organization sent an official to Tucson to confirm Giant George’s height. “On a recent plane trip for a media appearance in Chicago, George was given a row of three seats to himself,” the BBC reported. “And his presence on the plane certainly caused a commotion, says Mr. Nasser, with many passengers coming up to take photographs.”
Source: BBC
An extensive report released last week from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is just now starting to be digested and broken into soundbites fit for the news. The first bit of news to come out: 79 percent of Americans believe in miracles. “The belief apparently spans generations, as the study found that young Americans are just as likely to believe in miracles as older Americans,” ABC News reported. “Believers in miracles often explain good outcomes to catastrophic events as divine intervention. Several survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, for example, said they believe a miracle saved their lives.” ABC News is calling for readers to participate on their Web site, asking “Do you believe in miracles” David Knowles, a contributor to True/Slant noted that the report also found that “18-29-year-olds of today are far less religious than their parents and grandparents were at the same age.” Read the full, 29-page report on the Pew Forum site here.
Source: ABC News
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) claimed another victory Monday night when the Senate pushed forward a $15 billion jobs bill with a 62-30 vote. Scott Brown, the Republican from Massachusetts who won Ted Kennedy’s old seat in last month’s election and killed the 60-seat Democratic supermajority in the Senate, voted in favor of the bill. Final passage could come as early as Wednesday. “The Monday vote allows debate to proceed on the package, which has a range of tax credits and highway funds aimed at creating jobs,” Politico reported. “Winning passage of even a scaled-back jobs bill is critical for Democrats, who want to show they’re tackling unemployment, which stands at 9.7 percent.” Scott Brown wasn’t the only Republican to vote in favor of the jobs bill: George Voinovich of Ohio, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Kit Bond of Missouri joined him. “‘I hope this is a beginning of a new day here in the Senate,’ Reid said immediately after the vote,” according to Politico. Reid, obviously, was referring to what can be considered a very bipartisan vote in a Congress that has, over the past year, almost always voted along party lines.
Source: Politico
Last month’s earthquake in Haiti devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000. A story in today’s Washington Postnotes that, with more than 25 cities of one million-plus occupants built directly on fault lines that shake every 250 years on average, we can expect disasters on a similar scale every decade or so. Some of those cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City, Tehran, Istanbul, Tokyo, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Cairo, Manila, Lima, Osaka, Bogota, Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi. “In 1800, there was just one city with more than a million people — Beijing. Now there are 381 urban areas with at least 1 million inhabitants. Urbanization crossed a threshold last year when, for the first time, more people lived in city settings than rural ones,” the Washington Post reported. “About 403 million people live in cities that face significant seismic hazard, according to a recent study by seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.”
Source: The Washington Post
A Pennsylvania man was sentenced to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay a $120,000 fine after it was revealed that he sold phony signed books to more than 400 people over the course of six years. Forrest Smith would obtain documents that included the actual signatures of famous authors (some living, some dead), have ink-based stamps made from them, and then buy up first-edition books to stamp with the fake signatures. The scheme was uncovered when a book collector realized someone was buying first-edition books which quickly turned up for sale again, but as signed first editions – even though some of the authors were dead. It was fraud, yes, but Good’s Ann Trubeck said she found “something old-world and charming about this crime,” especially given that “it seems unlikely that the tradition of authors signing books for readers will continue in an e-book future.”
Source: Boing Boing
Americans may be screaming themselves hoarse with complaints about a broken political system and Washington gridlock (except for Tom Coburn, he kind of likes it). But that doesn’t mean they think dishonest politicians are a new problem. According to a newly-released CNN-Opinion Corporation poll, 74 percent of Americans believe George Washington, the president who couldn’t tell a lie, lied to the American people while he was in office. And Honest Abe? Seven out of 10 Americans are pretty sure he was fibbing from the White House, too. CNN Polling Director Keating Holland attributes the poll results to the fact that “Americans are always a little cyncial about people seeking office,” as well as a recognition that “the president sometimes has to keep things from the public.” But he believes that, regardless of the precise reasons for people’s responses, the poll indicates that “Americans think that our government has been broken for many, many years.” All of them, as a matter of fact.
Source: CNN
Here’s to interfaith cooperation: Less than two weeks after the Fiqh Council of North America issued a fatwa against the use of full-body airport-security scanners by Muslims, the head of the Catholic church decried the use of the machines, which he says violate “human dignity.” Over the weekend, Pope Benedict XVI met with airport workers at the Vatican and told them that “the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity.” He said concerns about terrorism don’t outweigh the need to treat individuals with dignity: “Even in this situation, one must never forget that respecting the primacy of the human person and attention to his or her needs does not make the service less efficient nor penalize economic management.”
Source: The Telegraph
British researchers believed they’ve found a cure for peanut allergies, which every year kill more people than terrorism and force others to live in constant fear of peanut products. Doctors at a Cambridge hospital conducted a trial on 23 children, 21 of whom were essentially cured of the previously life-threatening allergy. They did it by administering a tiny but constantly-increasing dose of peanut flour to the children every day. They started with an amount that was equivalent to 1/400 of a peanut, and gradually increased the dosage until the kids could safely eat five nuts. Some can eat more than 30. That’s not enough tolerance to start gobbling up PB&Js, but it’s enough that the children can live their lives without trying to avoid all peanut oils. “The families say that it’s changed their lives,” the doctor in charge of he study said. He believes the technique will be applicable to many different types of food allergies, not just nuts. He and his colleagues are so enthusiastic about their discovery that they’ve scheduled a trial for 100 more children and are developing a long-term treatment plan that will be available within three years. In the meatime, the BBC reminds you that doctors don’t want families “attempting their own trials at home.”
Source: The Daily Mail
