Recipe: One Bowl Mung Bean Meal Recipes from The Kitchn | The ...

It happens every year at this time and you know it. Whatever your normal ? and hopefully healthy ? eating pattern is, you lose it.

Normally I have a very balanced diet, which not only means it's balanced nutritionally, but it's balanced emotionally: I manage to try everything I want while rarely over-indulging. Then the holidays hit and gatherings fill up the calendar. On one hand I can't complain; I've managed to make a career out of encouraging people to cook and eat together, and it doesn't happen more than at the end of each calendar year. However, these gatherings rarely showcase light, healthy foods. Don't get me wrong: I like a good boozy cup of eggnog and a slice of roast beef as much as the next guy, but everybody needs a break.

Take Tuesday night for example: I went into a dinner party situation wanting to eat light and not drink alcohol. Two blinks of the eye later I found a margarita in one hand and a goat cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped date in the other. Pretty soon there were pork loin sandwiches and chile rellenos. There was simply no escape.

All you can do is plan to eat differently when possible. This is a time, more than ever, to retreat to the one-bowl vegetarian meal. Lately, that's meant it's all about mung beans at my house. Sometimes the servings are small, just enough to tide me over.

I'm offering this recipe, like I do with many of my recipes, simply to guide you. Of course, if you are missing any of the ingredients like apples or avocados, replace them with something else: some leftover stir-fried greens, a chopped up boiled egg, sky's the limit. This is a good opportunity to clear the decks and the formula couldn't be easier.

In terms of the sprouted mung beans, they are usually easy to find at any large health food store or Whole Foods. I like them because they don't really require much cooking, and they feel so nourishing. If you can only find regular mung beans, don't fret. Simply cook the beans according to the package's instructions then drain and toss with the other salad ingredients.

The point here is to give your system a break and of course there's no one recipe for this practice. Just allow your system to breathe, and take refuge in a bowl of clean food. We have a whole month of holiday eating ahead, so pace yourself. Have a bowl of mung beans, then brace yourself for the next onslaught of holiday cheer.

One Bowl Mung Bean Meal

Serves 4

1 cup sprouted mung beans
3 cups water or broth
4 chopped green onions, white and pale green parts only
2 ribs celery, trimmed and sliced cross-wise into c-shapes
1 apple, diced
1 ripe avocado, sliced
1/3 cup chopped almonds
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons loosely packed chopped Italian parsley
2 tablespoon lemon juice
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Bring the water to boil in a medium saucepan. Add the mung beans and gently boil for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Cover and let stand for at least 4 minutes and up to 8 minutes, depending on the desired texture. Drain.

Mix the mung beans with the green onions, celery, apple, avocado, almonds, olive oil, parsley, lemon juice and salt and pepper. Toss well. Divide between two bowls and serve.

Related: More Uses for Mung Beans

(images: Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan)

Source: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-one-bowl-mung-bean-mealrecipes-from-the-kitchn-180912

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Palestinians certain to win recognition as a state UN vote

UNITED NATIONS (AP) ? The Palestinians are certain to win U.N. recognition as a state Thursday but success could exact a high price: Israel and the United States warn it could delay hopes of achieving an independent Palestinian state through peace talks with Israel.

As the General Assembly gathered to vote Wednesday afternoon, the vote was certain to succeed, with most of the 193 member states sympathetic to the Palestinians. Several key countries, including France, recently announced they would support the move to elevate the Palestinians from the status of U.N. observer to nonmember observer state.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, mounted an aggressive campaign to head off the General Assembly vote. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly declared Thursday that the Palestinians would have to back down from long-held positions if they ever hope to gain independence.

In a last-ditch move Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns made a personal appeal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promising that President Barack Obama would re-engage as a mediator in 2013 if Abbas abandoned the effort to seek statehood. The Palestinian leader refused, said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

The initiative will not immediately bring about independence, and a country's vote in favor of the status change does not automatically imply its individual recognition of a Palestine state, something that must be done bilaterally. Nevertheless, the Palestinians view it as a historic step in their quest for global recognition, and thousands of Palestinians from rival factions celebrated in the streets of the West Bank ahead of Thursday's vote.

In a statement Thursday, Abbas appealed to all nations to vote in favor of the Palestinians "as an investment in peace."

"We remain committed to the two-state solution and our hand remains extended in peace," Abbas said in a statement read by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki after the start of the General Assembly session. Abbas is expected to address the assembly in the afternoon.

The Palestinians say they need U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967, to be able to resume negotiations with Israel. They say global recognition of the 1967 lines as the borders of Palestine is meant to salvage a peace deal, not sabotage it, as Israel claims.

The non-member observer state status could also open the way for possible war crimes charges against the Jewish state at the International Criminal Court.

Netanyahu warned the Palestinians Thursday that they would not win their hoped-for state until they recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland, declare an end to their conflict with the Jewish state and agree to security arrangements that protect Israel.

"The resolution in the U.N. today won't change anything on the ground," Netanyahu declared. "It won't advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, but rather, put it further off."

While Israel argues that Abbas is trying to dictate the outcome of border talks by going to the U.N., the recognition request presented to the world body in fact calls for a quick resumption of negotiations on all core issues of the conflict, including borders.

Netanyahu's predecessors accepted the 1967 lines as a basis for border talks. Netanyahu has rejected the idea, while pressing ahead with Jewish settlement building on war-won land, giving Abbas little incentive to negotiate.

For Abbas, the U.N. bid is crucial if he wants to maintain his leadership and relevance, especially following the recent conflict between his Hamas rivals in Gaza and Israel. The conflict saw the Islamic militant group claim victory and raise its standing in the Arab world, while Abbas' Fatah movement was sidelined and marginalized.

In a departure from previous opposition, the Hamas militant group, which rules the Gaza Strip, said it wouldn't interfere with the U.N. bid, and its supporters joined some of the celebrations Thursday.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, some in a crowd of several thousand raised green Hamas flags, while in the city of Ramallah, senior figures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two militant groups normally opposed to Abbas, addressed the crowd.

"It's the right step in the right direction," Nasser al-Shaer, a former deputy prime minister from Hamas, said of the U.N. bid.

The Palestinians chose the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" for the vote. Before it takes place, there will be a morning of speeches by supporters focusing on the rights of the Palestinians. Abbas is scheduled to speak at that meeting, and again in the afternoon when he will present the case for Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Wednesday that the U.N. vote will not fulfill the goal of independent Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side in peace, which the U.S. strongly supports because that requires direct negotiations.

"We need an environment conducive to that," she told reporters in Washington. "And we've urged both parties to refrain from actions that might in any way make a return to meaningful negotiations that focus on getting to a resolution more difficult."

The U.S. Congress has threatened financial sanctions if the Palestinians improve their status at the United Nations.

Ahead of the vote, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch filed an amendment to a defense bill Wednesday that would eliminate funding for the United Nations if the General Assembly changes Palestine's status.

But Israeli officials appeared to back away from threats of drastic measures if the Palestinians get U.N. approval, with officials suggesting the government would take steps only if the Palestinians use their new status to act against Israel.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev affirmed that Israel is willing to resume talks without preconditions.

U.N. diplomats said they will be listening closely to Abbas' speech to the General Assembly on Thursday afternoon before the vote to see if he makes an offer of fresh negotiations with no strings, which could lead to new talks. The Palestinians have been demanding a freeze on Israeli settlements as a precondition.

As a sign of the importance Israel attaches to the vote, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman flew to New York and was scheduled to meet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before the vote.

Unlike the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the General Assembly and the resolution to raise the Palestinian status from an observer to a nonmember observer state only requires a majority vote for approval. To date, 132 countries ? over two-thirds of the U.N. member states ? have recognized the state of Palestine.

The Palestinians have been courting Western nations, especially the Europeans, seen as critical to enhancing their international standing. A number have announced they will vote "yes" including France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. Those opposed or abstaining include the U.S., Israel, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia.

The Palestinians turned to the General Assembly after the United States announced it would veto their bid last fall for full U.N. membership until there is a peace deal with Israel.

Following last year's move by the Palestinians to join the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, the U.S. withheld funds from the organization, which amount to 22 percent of its budget. The U.S. also withheld money from the Palestinians.

_____

Associated Press writers Amy Teibel in Jerusalem and Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this story.

.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-certain-win-recognition-state-052920823.html

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Exeter College Choir to perform Elgar and Durufle

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Source: http://www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/news/item?gid=1350398681

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New device hides, on cue, from infrared cameras

ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) ? Now you see it, now you don't. A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.

Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide (VO2) on top of a sheet of sapphire, the device reacts to temperature changes by reflecting dramatically more or less infrared light.

Announced November 26 in the journal Applied Physics Letters, and featured on its cover, this perfect absorber is ultrathin, tunable, and exceptionally well suited for use in a range of infrared optical devices.

Perfect absorbers have been created many times before, but not with such versatile properties. In a Fabry-P?rot cavity, for instance, two mirrors sandwich an absorbing material, and light simply reflects light back and forth until it's mostly all gone. Other devices incorporate surfaces with nanoscale metallic patterns that trap and eventually absorb the light.

"Our structure uses a highly unusual approach, with better results," says principal investigator Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS. "We exploit a kind of naturally disordered metamaterial, along with thin-film interference effects, to achieve one of the highest absorption rates we've ever seen. Yet our perfect absorber is structurally simpler than anything tried before, which is important for many device applications."

With collaborators at Harvard and at the University of California, San Diego, Capasso's research group took advantage of surprising properties in both of the materials they used.

Vanadium dioxide is normally an insulating material, meaning that it does not conduct electricity well. Take it from room temperature up to about 68 degrees Celsius, however, and it undergoes a dramatic transition. The crystal quickly rearranges itself as the temperature approaches a critical value. Metallic islands appear as specks, scattered throughout the material, with more and more appearing until it has become uniformly metallic.

"Right near this insulator-to-metal transition, you have a very interesting mixed medium, made up of both insulating and metallic phases," says coauthor Shriram Ramanathan, Associate Professor of Materials Science at SEAS, who synthesized the thin film. "It's a very complex and rich microstructure in terms of its electronic properties, and it has very unusual optical properties."

Those properties, when manipulated correctly, happen to be ideal for infrared absorption.

Meanwhile, the underlying sapphire substrate has a secret of its own. Usually transparent, its crystal structure actually makes it opaque and reflective, like a metal, to a narrow subset of infrared wavelengths.

The result is a combination of materials that internally reflects and devours incident infrared light.

"Both of these materials have lots of optical losses, and we've demonstrated that when light reflects between lossy materials, instead of transparent or highly reflective ones, you get strange interface reflections," explains lead author Mikhail Kats, a graduate student at SEAS. "When you combine all of those resulting waves, you can coax them to destructively interfere and completely cancel out. The net effect is that a film one hundred times thinner than the wavelength of the incident light can create perfect absorption."

The challenge for Capasso, Ramanathan, Kats, and their colleagues was not only to understand this behavior, but also to learn how to fabricate pure enough samples of the vanadium dioxide.

"Vanadium oxide can exist in many oxidation states, and only if you have VO2 does it go through a metal-insulator transition close to room temperature," Ramanathan explains. "We have developed several techniques in our lab to allow exquisite compositional and structural control, almost at the atomic scale, to grow such complex films. The resulting phase purity allows us to see these remarkable properties, which otherwise would be very difficult to observe."

Because the device can be easily switched between its absorbent and non-absorbent states, the possible applications are quite wide ranging and include bolometers (thermal imaging devices) with tunable absorption, spectroscopy devices, tunable filters, thermal emitters, radiation detectors, and equipment for energy harvesting.

"An ideal bolometer design needs to absorb all of the infrared light that falls on it, turning it to heat, and correspondingly its resistance should change a lot per degree change in temperature," notes Kats. "In principle, our new perfect absorber could be used to make incredibly sensitive thermal cameras."

Harvard's Office of Technology Development has filed patent applications on the novel invention and is actively pursuing licensing and commercialization opportunities.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Mikhail A. Kats et al. Ultra-thin perfect absorber employing a tunable phase change material. Appl. Phys. Lett., 101, 221101 (2012) DOI: 10.1063/1.4767646

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/IawzGdLOKRQ/121126131340.htm

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Dusty Wright: Thankful For Tasty New Rock Music!

Happy Thanksgiving. It's been a terrific month for mining new music. I caught an advance screening of Led Zeppelin's new concert movie at MoMA (and their press conference), discovered what may be my favorite album of the year, and found inspiring young musicians sharing their chops and muses with the world. With the holidays around the corner, here are some early suggestions for music very much worth sharing with friends, lovers, bosses, and family.?

"You're So Great / It's All Right, Ma" Wendy James?You're So Great?E.P. (Cobraside)

If Brit-born/NYC-based Ms. James's claim-to-fame-band?Transvision?Vamp was a tad too sugar-pop coated for your New Yawk punk?rawk?palette, not to worry. Thanks to guitarist James Williamson (Iggy?Pop Stooge) and drummer James?Sclavunos?(Nick Cave alumnus), she's found some downtown 'tude. The A-side is a fun retro Ramones-style punk ditty, but it's the flip-side?Grinderman-grind Dylan cover where it all comes together. For Zimmerman purists, this is sacred ground, but they pull it off. Love to hear a LP of covers with this trio's?mojo?on overdrive.

"Tell Me (What's On Your Mind)" Allah-Las?Allah-Las?(Innovative Leisure)

Produced and released by Nick?Waterhouse, whose R&B-fueled debut Time's All Gone?is one of my favorite albums of year. He has dipped this L.A.-based band into a giant vat of Nuggets-era garage?psychedelia, and that's a good thing.?Pedrum?Siadatian's ringing mid-'60s?Murph Squire 12-string guitar is soaked in enough Fender reverb to melt your face. And singer Miles Michaud's snarl sounds like early Jagger, especially on this single.?As easy to swallow as your favorite tab of acid.?

"When My Train Pulls In" Gary Clark,?Jr.?Blak?&?Blu?(Warner)

A super fine axe-slinger who has plenty of R&B swag in his tunes and much-deserved Hendrix/Stevie Ray Vaughn comparisons. While I don't love the production sheen on this new CD, it's live where he really swings. (I caught him at the Central Park Summerstage in August.) Gary, dude, lose some of that modern radio-friendly compression veneer ("The Life") and hire Nick?Waterhouse?to produce your next album. Or, dare I say, the L.A.-based Eddie Kramer! This track rises above some of the aforementioned slickness and hits you in the gut; his intro git-lick?like an inverted "Oh Well" (Peter Green/Fleetwood Mac) and two meaty solos that will leave you salivating for more.

First Aid Kit The Lion's Roar (Wichita?Recordings)

Admittedly, I'm late to this extraordinary effort, as it was released last January, but no worries as it was re-released with a fetching new folk-rock/Americana single "Wolf." Clear and strong vocals from Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara S?derberg and their father?Benkt on bass. Undeniable magic throughout -- lyrically and melodically. You'll love their homage to Gram Parsons and his first lady of country rock on the gorgeous "Emmylou." For fans of Fleet Foxes, Civil War, et al. Another potential contender for my top ten year's end list.

Led Zeppelin Celebration Day?(Atlantic CD/DVD)

This concert was recorded during Atlantic Records founder?Ahmet?Ertegun's tribute on December 10, 2007 at London?s O2 Arena with a reunited Led Zeppelin with John Bonham's son Jason behind the kit. (20 million fans applied for an 18,000 seat lottery!) As the show unfolds vocalist Jimmy Page, guitarist Robert Plant, and bassist John Paul Jones expand and connect with their audience like a superb vintage wine opening up, albeit 27 years after their last performance. Plant no longer can hit those high notes of his youth, but his vocal delivery is superb, And Page? His playing is a master class of classic rock riff dexterity, legendary riffs that he created. And Mr. Jones and Bonham keep it anchored in one giant heavy pocket. Moreover, they explore the bluesy?side of their heavy metal thunder and in doing so connect with their rich catalog in very intoxicating fashion. Now our children can bear witness to?LZ's enduring legacy. (I was lucky enough to ingest their majesty in '74 in Cleveland.) To be released on vinyl in December, too.

"San Francisco" The Mowgli's?Love's Not Dead E.P. (Island)

Damn fine sing-along about the City in the Bay. Retro without sounding forced, exuberant and exhilarating.?Like Arcade Fire on a?SoCal Laurel Canyon folk-rock trip out. Single of the month, people! Check out 'em out live:

"Doom and Gloom" The Rolling Stones GRRR! (UME)

Hard to believe that the "World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band" is celebrating its Golden Jubilee (50 years). Recorded for a new three-CD career retrospective, this post-apocalypse rocker is clearly the boys' best single since...well, the '70s. No needless modern production filler, just taut and sinewy Ronnie and Keef?guitars, bass, walloping Watts drums, and snarling Mick Jagger vocals.?

Papa Grows Funk?Needle in the Groove?(Funky?Krewe?Records)

Witnessed this funky gumbo NOLA outfit blow up the stage and audience as an opener for Little Feat in the late Summer in NYC. So very hard to pick just one track?cuz top to bottom it's the perfect Saturday night?par-tay?record, a tasty, easily digested mash-up of the Meters meets?Funkadelic. No lie.

Soundgarden King Animal (Universal Republic)

And while we're reminiscing...?Soundgarden?remains my favorite American grunge rock band. (Sorry Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Queens of the Stone Age fans.) Yes, Chris Cornell has soldiered on as a solo artist and drummer Matt Cameron has been moonlighting with Pearl Jam, but they both wisely reunited with guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Ben Shepherd?after an 18-year layoff. Older, wiser, but still with plenty to offer -- killer guitar riffs and many heavy, memorable tunes. Contender for my favorite hard rock album of the year.

Hot Rats Frank Zappa?(Zappa Records)

When Mr. Zappa roamed the Earth, rock music was king. Hopefully with his entire catalog getting sonic overhauls, a new generation will come to appreciate his compositional genius. (It was no accident that Zubin?Mehta, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, invited him to compose a new work that he debuted at UCLA in 1970!) While he used humor -- sometimes a tad too frat boy -- in his clever album, song titles, and lyrical word play to convey his messages, it's his music that stands the test of time. Hot Rats remains one of the most beloved releases in his discography. A heady, primarily instrumental, hybrid of jazz and rock (remember jazz-rock?), and a Captain Beefheart?collaboration entitled "Willie The Pimp" to give it a little extra zing.

peace, Dusty

This article originally appeared at CultureCatch.com.

?

Follow Dusty Wright on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DustyWright

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dusty-wright/new-music-recommendations_b_2167083.html

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Re: FTM 2 for MAC Sync Problems - Family Tree Maker software ...

I have the current version of FTM Mac 2. Tonight my file on my computer unlinked all children from their parents, sort of. If you go to a child, you will see the parents, but when you click on the parents, no children appear in the screen below even though the child still appears on the main screen pedigree chart.

I have used Family Tree Maker off and on for several years in both Windows and Mac and have always had various problems with the program corrupting files but this is a new one.

I'm very disappointed to see how horrible Family Tree Maker support still is after all these years and wish there were an alternative.

Source: http://boards.ancestry.co.uk/topics.software.famtreemaker/8397.1.2.2.1.1.2.1.1.1.2.1.1.1/mb.ashx

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Internet Marketing Search Engine Optimization SEM SEO service ...

Do not waste your time with scams and misinformation. This article is full of useful tips you should use to design a network marketing campaign.

Your investment dollars should be geared toward developing new clients. The ultimate goal in any MLM business is to sell more stuff, which requires finding new customers. When all of your marketing and sales efforts stay within your circle of friends and family, you are confining the upper limits of your potential income. Drawing in clients from the outside of your circle can open up many doors and other possibilities.

Multilevel Marketing

Continually bring new prospects to your website. While this can be the hardest part of network marketing, it can spell you success or failure. Once someone visits your web page, he or she can get some idea of what you are marketing, and it will assist this person in making a decision.

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Try out the products to get a good feel for the features and benefits. You should know how these items are beneficial to customers before you attempt to sell them. This will help you to build credibility, as your clients will see that you enjoy what you are selling. When you are using the products, you will also have a firsthand knowledge of all of the features.

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Network marketing can be a game where you fight to sign up the most people. Concentrate on how you can help people as you go about your business, instead. Make that the core of your work.

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To have a successful marketing strategy, you must set attainable goals. No matter the kind of networking business you will be working in, having goals is essential. Make them reachable, but don?t sell yourself short. This will help give you motivation when things get monotonous, by reminding you what you?re working for.

You need to be an expert on the products you sell. By being passionate about the product you are marketing, your customers will be more receptive. Customers are more inclined to join a network run by an owner who knows the product well. If you learn about the product enough, you will have an easier time being truthful and genuine when giving reviews to future client.

Deal with MLM as you would with any business. Failure is, unfortunately, a common occurrence. Multi-level marketing requires lots of work; it could even be a full-time job if the right effort is placed. Train yourself by learning as much as you can, and take advantage of any official training offered by your company.

Everyone enjoys talking about themselves at times. Take advantage of this, and give your customers the opportunity to tell you about their lives. Meanwhile, hold back from giving too much information about you. You want to come across as trustworthy, so let your customers feel like they are in control.

Be sure to check with the BBB, Better Business Bureau, prior to investing any money with a multi-level marketing company. Whilst there are a lot of legitimate businesses in the marketplace, there is also a huge number of fraudulent ones. It would not be the best start to your investment to find out you were a victim of fraud before you even got off the ground. Check things out with a company, like the BBB, who has reviews of other companies.

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If you diligently apply the information from those tips, you can effectively build and develop a profitable marketing approach, centered on a high-quality product. With the ideas you have learned, it is possible to be a successful network marketer.

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Protect Yourself with Health Insurance

by polly on November 22, 2012

THIS IS A SPONSORED POST

Being diagnosed with any illness or disease can be downright scary, especially when you don?t have the right medical care to ensure you receive the correct treatment. Before I was diagnosed with cancer aged 24, I was fortunate to have signed up to the health insurance company associated with the company I was working for at the time who have continued to care for me since.

The danger of not protecting yourself with health insurance is that you may not be able to get cover once you are diagnosed with something and even if you are able to get it, it may come at a premium. Companies like Aviva Health can help you longer term so I do recommend you look into this sooner rather than later.

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Source: http://pollynoble.com/2012/11/protect-yourself-with-health-insurance/

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Source: http://happyhomeandfamily.com/flash-giveaway-win-45-amazon-gift-card-open-worldwide/

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Drug Dealing and Legal Stealing - Reason.com

At the Cosmopolitan, a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, "just the right amount of wrong" is the naughty fun you get for $200 a night. At the $57-a-night Motel Caswell in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, just the right amount of wrong is what the federal government says it needs to take the business from the family that has operated it for 57 years.

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That amount, it turns out, is tiny. During a recent trial before a U.S. magistrate judge in Boston, a federal prosecutor cited one heroin overdose and 14 incidents in which guests or visitors were arrested for drug crimes at the motel from 1994 through 2008?a minuscule percentage of the 200,000 or so room rentals during that period?to show the business is a "dangerous property" ripe for seizure.

As Russell Caswell, the motel's 69-year-old owner, explained to the Associated Press, "They are holding me responsible for the actions of a few people who I don't know and I've never met before, people who rent a room." Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of civil forfeiture, where property can be guilty even when its owner is innocent.

Under federal law, property used to "facilitate" a drug crime is subject to forfeiture. In 2000 Congress added a safeguard aimed at preventing exactly the sort of injustice Caswell faces: An owner can stop a forfeiture if he shows, by "a preponderance of the evidence," that he did not know about the illegal activity or that, once he discovered it, he "did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property."?

Caswell, whose father built the motel in 1955, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and the local Motel 6, Fairfield Inn, Walmart, and Home Depot have had similar problems with drug activity. But the government argues that Caswell was "willfully blind" to drug dealing and could have done more to prevent it.?

Caswell, who has been running the motel since 1983, says he has no way of knowing what his customers are doing behind closed doors. He has always cooperated with the police, calling them to report suspicious activity and offering them free rooms for surveillance and sting operations.

In 2009 he got his reward: a forfeiture notice. Police had never suggested additional steps he could take to discourage crime or warned him that the motel?which supports him, his mother, his wife, their son, their daughter-in-law, and their granddaughter?could be at risk.

This cruel surprise was engineered by Vincent Kelley, a forfeiture specialist at the Drug Enforcement Administration who said he read about the Motel Caswell in a news report and found that the property, which the Caswells own free and clear, had an assessed value of $1.3 million. So Kelley approached the Tewksbury Police Department with an "equitable sharing" deal: The feds would seize the property and sell it, and the cops would get up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

Under Massachusetts law, by contrast, police would have received only half the loot, and forfeiture may have been harder. State law says a seized property has to be used not just to "facilitate" a drug crime but "in and for the business of unlawfully manufacturing, dispensing, or distributing controlled substances," which suggests a stronger connection.

The Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm representing the Caswells, argues that the federal "equitable sharing" program helps police evade state laws aimed at preventing forfeiture abuses. A 2011 study reported in the Journal of Criminal Justice found that the stricter a state's forfeiture law, the more likely police are to enlist federal help.

Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, says taking away the Caswells' livelihood and retirement security sends an "important deterrent message" to "others who may turn a blind eye to crime occurring at their place of business." But to anyone troubled by the guilty-until-proven-innocent rules of civil forfeiture, it looks a lot like legalized larceny.

Source: http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/21/drug-dealing-and-legal-stealing

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Rights group: Bahrain fails on reform pledge

Bahraini Justice Minister Sheik Khaled bin Ali Al Khalifa speaks during a press conference about the government efforts on Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) recommendations in Manama, Bahrain, Nov. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

Bahraini Justice Minister Sheik Khaled bin Ali Al Khalifa speaks during a press conference about the government efforts on Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) recommendations in Manama, Bahrain, Nov. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali)

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) ? Bahrain's leaders pushed back against criticism by a leading rights group Wednesday that the Gulf state has failed to follow through with promised political and security reforms in the wake of the kingdom's anti-government uprising.

Authorities cited a series of measures taken since an independent report on the crisis came out last November, including giving more oversight to parliament.

But Amnesty International says any progress has been overshadowed by harsh steps recently in attempts to quell the 21-month-old protests, including a ban on demonstrations and stripping 31 activists of citizenship.

"Bahrain is facing a stark choice between the rule of law or sliding into a downward spiral of repression and instability," Amnesty said in a report, issued on the one-year anniversary of the independent fact-finding inquiry into Bahrain's unrest.

The inquiry, led by Egyptian-born legal scholar Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, called for sweeping overhauls in Bahrain's political system and investigations into alleged abuses by security forces after protests began in February 2011.

So far, more than 55 people have been killed in clashes between Bahraini authorities and Shiite-led protesters demanding a greater political voice in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

Amnesty claims that Bahrain's rulers have made no serious effort to open the political system and have turned to hard-line measures to try to crush and intimidate the Shiite opposition. Last month, Bahrain imposed a blanket ban on political protests and later stripped 31 activists of their citizenship because of alleged protest links.

Both moves brought criticism from Washington, which has critical strategic ties with Bahrain as host of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. The base is one of the Pentagon's major counterbalances to Iran's expanding military presence in the Persian Gulf.

On Tuesday, a senior U.S. official expressed worries that Bahrain's "society is moving apart" and could offer Iran new footholds in the tiny island nations. There is no direct evidence that Shiite power Iran supports Bahrain's protesters, but the U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies are wary of any chance of Iranian inroads in the region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as part of a background briefing for journalists.

Amnesty said continued arrests and crackdowns by Bahraini authorities have made "a mockery of the reform process."

"Indeed, it has become evident that the authorities in Bahrain do not have the will to take the steps necessary to reform. Protestations to the contrary only underscore the gap between their rhetoric and reality," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's deputy Middle East and North Africa director.

Hours after the Amnesty statement, a court in Bahrain sentenced 23 medical professionals to three-month jail terms on charges that include supporting protesters during the early weeks of the uprising last year. The sentences were suspended in lieu of fines, lawyers said. The cases against five other medics were dropped.

Bahraini authorities, however, blame protesters for stepping up the level of violence, including frequent attacks by homemade firebombs and a series of blasts earlier this month that killed two expatriate workers from India and Bangladesh.

Bahrain's rulers also say they have made serious concessions such as giving more oversight to parliament and investigating claims of abuse by security forces. Shiite leaders say it falls far short of demands for a role in high-level policymaking.

A Bahrain government progress report on the commission's recommendations says "ongoing reforms" are part of efforts to "combat violence and terrorism which has adversely affected the lives, security and wellbeing of citizens and residents."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-11-21-ML-Bahrain/id-8dba661b6d204f4c951fab649fd9d06e

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How personal finance is taught in secondary school ? Early ...

In my microeconomics class, our teacher brought in a guess speaker for a one hour personal finance crash course. He began talking to us about budgeting, and he asked how we felt about it. The general consensus was that a budget was ?lame,? ?restrictive,? or ?pointless.? He then told us to imagine that we were 21, and we needed to make a budget. The class came to a general consensus that this would be a ?frugal? starter budget:

Rent $700
Partying $400
Food $300
Car Loan $200
Incidental $200
Utilities $175
Car insurance $150
Gas $120
Cell Phone $50
Internet $40
Cable $35
Total $2370

Yes, people really thought that spending $400 on bar hopping was frugal. The speaker made a few comments on the budget, and said that unless we wanted to live in a trailer park, we would have to spend $800 on rent. Apparently having a roommate is not a viable option. He also insisted that a car, cell phone, and cable were basic human needs in the 21st century. Apparently cable is a human need, while health insurance is not. Many people in my class commented that this budget seemed really small, and he assured them that once they made more money, they could get a better car and a mortgage, they just needed to make a few ?sacrifices? in the beginning.

Then he talked to us about 401k and IRA. He said that if we just put 10% of our net pay in a 401k or IRA at 5% interest, we would have $1,000,000 by the time we want to retire at 60. Isn't that the same advice given to people that still can't retire at 60. Everyone in the class made wooing sounds.

I said that his model ignores inflation, taxes, and banking fees. He looked at me, laughed, and went on talking about the services that the bank he works for offers. He urged us all to open a saving account with .01% interest and several monthly fees.

I felt a bit angry that the speaker made it seem that retirement can only happen after 40 years of labor, and the fact that the lesson was just a sales pitch to open up a bank account.

Is this how the ERE community remembers their personal finance education, or did your education not involve personal finance?

Source: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/topic.php?id=2994

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Failed explosions explain most peculiar supernovae

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2012) ? Supercomputer simulations have revealed that a type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a class of duds -- one that could nonetheless throw new light on the mysterious nature of dark energy.

Most of the thousands of exploding stars classified as type Ia supernovae look similar, which is why astrophysicists use them as accurate cosmic distance indicators. They have shown that the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of an unknown force now called dark energy; yet approximately 20 type Ia supernovae look peculiar.

"They're all a little bit odd," said George Jordan, a research scientist at the University of Chicago's Flash Center for Computational Science. Comparing odd type Ia supernovae to normal ones may permit astrophysicists to more precisely define the nature of dark energy, he noted.

Jordan and three colleagues, including his chief collaborator on the project, Hagai Perets, assistant professor of physics at Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, have found that the peculiar type Ia supernovae are probably white dwarf stars that failed to detonate. "They ignite an ordinary flame and they burn, but that isn't followed by a triggering of a detonation wave that goes through the star," Jordan said. These findings were based on simulations that consumed approximately two million central processing unit hours on Intrepid, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. Full details of the simulations will appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The triggering of a detonation wave is exactly what happens in normal type Ia supernovae, which incinerate white dwarfs, stars that have shrunk to Earth size after having burned most or all of their nuclear fuel. Most or all white dwarfs occur in binary systems, those that consist of two stars orbiting one another.

Faint, hard to detect

Peculiar type Ia supernovae are anywhere from 10 to 100 times fainter than normal ones, which are brighter and therefore more easily detected. Astrophysicists have estimated that they may account for approximately 15 percent of all type Ia supernovae.

The first in this class of exceptionally dim supernovae was discovered in 2002, noted Robert Fisher, assistant professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, a co-author of the paper. Called SN 2002cx, it is considered the most peculiar type Ia supernova ever observed.

The dimmest of the lot, however, was discovered in 2008. "If the brightness of a standard supernova could be thought of as a single 60-watt light bulb, the brightness of this 2008 supernova would be equivalent to a small fraction of a single candle or a few dozen fireflies," Fisher noted.

Flash Center scientists have been successfully simulating type Ia supernova explosions following the gravitationally confined detonation scenario for years. In this scenario, the white dwarf begins to burn near its center. This ignition point burns outward, floating toward the surface like a bubble. After it breaks the surface, a cascade of hot ash flows around the star and collides with itself on the opposite end, triggering a detonation.

"We took the normal GCD scenario and asked what would happen if we pushed this to the limits and see what happens when it breaks," Jordan said. In the failed detonation scenario, the white dwarf experiences more ignition points that are closer to the core, which fuels more burning than in the detonation scenario.

"The extra burning causes the star to expand more, preventing it from achieving temperatures and pressures high enough to trigger detonation," noted co-author Daniel van Rossum of UChicago's Flash Center.

No incinerated star

Instead of detonating, the white dwarf remains intact, though some of the star's mass burns up and gets ejected from its surface. This failed detonation scenario looks quite similar to the peculiar type Ia explosions. The simulations resulted in phenomena that astronomers now can look for or have already found in their telescopic observations.

These phenomena include white dwarfs that display unusual compositions, asymmetric surface characteristics and a kick that sends the stars flying off at speeds of hundreds of miles per second. "This was a completely new discovery," Perets said. "No one had ever suggested that white dwarfs could be kicked at such velocities."

Normal type Ia supernovae display a relatively uniform appearance, but the asymmetric characteristics of their peculiar cousins means that the latter will often look much different from one another, depending on their viewing angle from Earth.

The asymmetric explosion also produces the kick, which is possibly powerful enough to release the white dwarf from the gravitational hold of any binary companion it may have had. This can produce a peculiar type of hyper-velocity white dwarf, the fastest of which might even escape the galaxy.

Smaller kicks might leave the binary system intact, but also push the white dwarf into a tight and highly elliptical orbit around its companion. Most white dwarfs orbiting close to their companions display a more circular orbit.

Typical white dwarfs have compositions of carbon and oxygen, yet some of the simulated ones that failed to detonate displayed heavy elements such as calcium, titanium and iron. When the detonation fails to happen, much of the ejected mass falls back onto the surface of the white dwarf, where the heavy elements become synthesized.

"I had never heard of such strange white dwarfs," Perets said. But when he conducted a literature search, he found reports of white dwarfs with properties that an irregular composition could explain. "It is quite rare that a new model brings about so many novel predictions, and potentially solves several distinct, seemingly unrelated puzzles."

Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Israel Science Foundation.

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Journal Reference:

1. George C. Jordan IV, Hagai B. Perets, Robert T. Fisher, and Daniel R. van Rossum. Failed-detonation supernovae: sub-luminous low-velocity IA supernovae and their kicked remnant white dwarfs with iron-rich cores. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2012 [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/4OKWwfewbRk/121119163251.htm

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Novel Spaces: Lessons on Writing from the World's Champion ...

Ryan Avery, the 2012 International Public Speaking Champion, has a lot to say about being a writer and having a professional career. I know, I heard him say it two weeks ago in Hickory, NC. The fact he didn't say a single word about writing is beside the point.

I'm willing to bet some of you had no idea there was such an International Public Speaking Champion. The championship is sponsored by Toastmasters International. Every year up to thirty thousand people in 116 countries enter local Toastmaster competitions with at least some idea of making it to the international bout. Contenders are winnowed out through a series of local, division, district, regional, and national contests until there are only ten. These finalists go head to head at Toastmasters International's annual convention, which in 2012 was held during the second full week of August in Orlando, Florida.

At twenty-five Avery is the youngest person ever to win an International Championship. Not that he's all talk. At twenty-five he is also the Oregon state director of Special Olympics, has degrees in anthropology and journalism, and is beginning graduate work in strategic communication. (I suspect becoming International Public Speaking Champion of 2012 is just one cobblestone in the road he's building.)

This is a YouTube video Ryan Avery made shortly after winning the national championship in which he declares his intention to win the international championship. Watching it is interesting, but you can learn a lot that's relevant to writing just by looking at the still.

First thing you notice is that the video exists. Avery made a firm public commitment to his objective. He told everyone he knew - and a lot more people he didn't know - exactly what he was doing. He didn't bore them with excerpts from, iterations of, or musings about his speech. He just made sure he was accountable to as many people as possible.
The second thing you'll notice is that his wife let him nail six whiteboards to their living room wall. This tells us his personal support team of one believed in his sincerity and determination; whether she thought he could actually pull it off is something she kept to herself.

Writing, serious writing, requires self-discipline and constancy ? it's too easy to goof off or get distracted or do any of a hundred things besides work. Other people in our lives, those close to us, usually don't take our writing seriously until they've spent some weeks or months watching us take it seriously. Avery's wife took his objective seriously because she'd already seen him demonstrate the requisite commitment in his campaign for the national title.

Avery's objective is posted in the center of the whiteboards and over the next several weeks he filled the areas around his goal with things and ideas relevant to that objective. He studied videos of past finalists and read transcripts of their speeches. He studied the structure of the speeches and looked at the subject matter. He learned male contestants wore dark suits. More importantly, he learned that winning speeches had 600-650 words, were delivered in just under seven minutes, and shared a three-step structure; averaging fifteen to twenty 'laugh points' ? moments of humor ? each.

In other words, Avery discovered all he could about his target market, figured out their needs and preferences, and determined what he'd have to do to deliver a product they'd buy. Which is what a professional writer should be doing as a matter of course. Don't send a story to Analog or Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine if you don't read either; submitting a story to a market you haven't researched is a waste of your time and theirs. If you have researched a market you want to break into, say the New Yorker, and discovered you don't write the sort of story they buy, you need to decide whether you want to write their way or set them aside and look for another market.
That last bit was the problem Avery faced. He freely admits he is not good with humor, at least not the kind used in the winning speeches. But changing markets wasn't an option; he would have to learn how to be funny.

Until you start looking for them, you don't realize how many Toastmasters clubs there are in the world, any good-sized town will have one and often more. Avery has a pretty good idea how many are in Oregon. He traveled the state, visiting as many as four Toastmasters clubs a week, trying out variations of his speech in front of as many strangers as he could find. His videoed each outing and asked his listeners to be brutally honest, and listened to what they had to say (he reports many said he'd never be funny). He didn't take everything his many audiences said as gospel ? a lot of them contradicted each other ? but he paid attention and made what adjustments he felt were valid.
Writers often undervalue practice; we want everything we write to sell, to reach as many readers as possible. We like to pretend we don't know we need to write new things, work to develop new skills, even if no one else will ever see our efforts. We need to pay attention to what trusted readers, colleagues, and especially editors say about our work. Don't rewrite ? unless an editor makes it a condition of sale ? but take note of things to think about and watch for in future projects.

I do want you to take seven minutes and look at the YouTube of Ryan Avery's winning speech. Note the structure of the story. Note how he uses all senses ? even the taste of Cheetos ? to give each scene impact. See how he employed imagery his audience ? at a convention in central Florida during the hottest days of sumer ? could identify with, sweating in a hot suit and the jarring sound of a hotel alarm clock. Also note that he recognized the tradition ? not requirement ? of wearing dark suit was a convention that didn't serve the story or his objective; he wore a green suit in order to stand out.

But also note something else, something that's apparent only in two moments toward the end. He told us, listening to him in Hickory, that the hardest line for him to say was "when her curls are grey"; he cried when he wrote it and he almost cries every time he says it. That's the first thing; the second is the last line. Whenever he speaks his wife always sits so they can see each other and he always makes eye contact and says the last line directly to her. We were in a small room in Hickory, and I could see both of them legitimately mist up at his last words. Because despite all his artifice, despite all his carefully calculated pauses and inflections, despite the comic mannerisms he forced himself to master, despite his green suit, what drives Ryan Avery's speech ? what gives his words their power ? is his heart.

Do I really need to explain what that has to do with good writing?

Source: http://novelspaces.blogspot.com/2012/11/lessons-on-writing-from-worlds-champion.html

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El Pirata, Mayfair - TwelvePointFivePercent

El Pirata, Mayfair

With the exceptions of 'literally' and 'gourmet', I can think of few words more liberally abused than 'tapas'. With the not-unwelcome advent a few years ago of the 'small plates' concept came an entirely unwelcome side-effect, the rebranding of small plates of any cuisine as 'tapas'.?

Thus we have seen 'Italian tapas' (actually cicheti), 'Asian tapas' (at the appallingly-named Tapasia, among others), even Norfolk tapas (for which I have at least to give the guys at The Pigs 10/10 for originality). When a while ago I received a press release vaunting a restaurant's new 'Spanish tapas' offering my Tautology Klaxon went off so violently that my ears have only just stopped ringing.

So what an abundant pleasure then to discover El Pirata, a sleek and shiny but entirely unponcey tapas bar in, of all places, Mayfair. Pointed in its direction by a pal who works round the corner, dinner date Joe and I spent an extremely enjoyable couple of hours eating great food, drinking nice wine and finishing off with a couple of not-'alf-bad cocktails.?

Unlike the fancier new-wave tapas joints that have cropped up in recent years, there are no surprises on the menu at El Pirata. All the staples are present and correct - Padron peppers, Iberico ham, croquetas, patatas bravas, champi?ones?al ajillo - along with a few perhaps less familiar but nonetheless resolutely traditional weekly specials. For the indecisive or, if there still are any, the uninitiated, there are a couple of crazy-good-value set menus. Joe and I decided to take the glutton's way and just asked them to keep bringing us food until we either begged them to stop or passed out.

So as we worked our way through a lovely half-bottle of chilled Amontillado 'La Joya' we grazed on bread with good alioli, a plate of extraordinarily silky, sexy Iberico ham, simple chargrilled asparagus and the Russian roulette of tapas, pimientos de Padron (I took the bullet of the hottest of the bunch and the consequent thrilling endorphin rush).

Sherry drained we moved on to a bottle of crisp, grapefruity Inurrieta 'Orchidea' Sauvignon Blanc (El Pirata's wine list, all-Spanish, is tremendous fun and offers something to suit every pocket starting in the very low twenties and peaking at about ?70). With it came calamari, on rice blackened with its heady ink, and sizzling prawns al pil-pil, the olive oil, garlic and chilli marinade seeping deep into the heads, making sucking them irresistible.

We finally gave up on savoury courses only having demolished some pork belly, its slight dryness made up for by cracking crackling, chicken and chorizo skewers - again a little dry, but damn tasty - and gorgeously tender pan-fried medallions of steak with a touch of white wine, served alongside creamy, dauphinoise-y potatoes.

I'm glad that we buckled and ordered afters, because the plate of cheeses, including Manchego and Mahon with that wonderful Spanish quince paste membrillo, was terrific. Better yet was a lemon?br?l?e, combining sorbet and cream fillings under a sugar topping made crunchy - evident in the tell-tale spiral scorch-marks and smoky flavour - with a proper quemador.?

For no better reason than that we could, we ended the meal with palate-cleansingly tart Margaritas; we could have chosen a digestif from the remarkable selection of spirits, liqeurs and brandies, arranged on stepped gold shelves climbing up and down the mirrored back of the bar.

There was a last, pleasant, surprise; I knew that the friend who'd recommended El Pirata to me knew the owners, and as such figured that a couple of dishes might not appear on the bill, but in an act of unexpected generosity not only was no bill at all presented but we were forced - forced! - to accept a glass of Pedro Ximenez before we were allowed to leave. Altogether though, with sherry, wine, cocktails and tons of tapas, we'd have been looking at about ?45 a head.

Perhaps because of the owners' largesse, or because of the lakes of liquor consumed, or all the fab food we'd had, or as is most likely because of all of the above, we left feeling thoroughly jolly and very favourably disposed towards El Pirata, as seems to be quite widely the case judging by the lively, buzzy crowd packing most of the two floors on our visit.

Literally, gourmet tapas.?What's not to love about that?

El Pirata, 5-6 Down Street, London W1J 7AQ Tel: 020 7491 3810 elpirata.co.uk

Posted by +Hugh Wright

Source: http://www.twelvepointfivepercent.com/2012/11/el-pirata-mayfair.html

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Petraeus biographer regrets damage done by affair

This July 13, 2011, photo made available on the International Security Assistance Force's Flickr website shows the former Commander of International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Gen. Davis Petraeus, left, shaking hands with Paula Broadwell, co-author of "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."As details emerge about Petraeus' extramarital affair with his biographer, Broadwell, including a second woman who allegedly received threatening emails from the author, members of Congress say they want to know exactly when the now ex-CIA director and retired general popped up in the FBI inquiry, whether national security was compromised and why they weren't told sooner. (AP Photo/ISAF)

This July 13, 2011, photo made available on the International Security Assistance Force's Flickr website shows the former Commander of International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Gen. Davis Petraeus, left, shaking hands with Paula Broadwell, co-author of "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."As details emerge about Petraeus' extramarital affair with his biographer, Broadwell, including a second woman who allegedly received threatening emails from the author, members of Congress say they want to know exactly when the now ex-CIA director and retired general popped up in the FBI inquiry, whether national security was compromised and why they weren't told sooner. (AP Photo/ISAF)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Paula Broadwell, whose extramarital affair with CIA chief David Petraeus led to his resignation, is telling friends she is devastated by the fallout.

A person close to Broadwell said Sunday she deeply regrets the damage that's been done to her family and everyone else's, and she is trying to repair that and move forward. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

A group of friends and neighbors welcomed Broadwell, her husband, Scott, and their young sons back to their home in Charlotte, N.C., after Broadwell spent more than a week being hounded by media while staying at her brother's home in Washington. The family friend said she was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from her neighbors.

Broadwell is still being investigated by the FBI over classified documents found on her laptop and in her home, which investigators believe the author gathered while researching her biography of Petraeus in Afghanistan. Investigators say many of the documents are old and may no longer be classified despite their labels, and say Broadwell told them she did not get them from Petraeus.

The FBI stumbled onto their relationship after tracking anonymous emails Broadwell allegedly sent to Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, warning Kelley to stay away from Petraeus and Afghanistan war commander Gen. John Allen.

Kelley served as sort of an unpaid social liaison for Central Command, hosting parties at her and her husband's home, where senior officers would mingle with Tampa's elite. Officials say Kelley kept in near constant contact with Allen, and Petraeus before him, apparently trading on her friendship with the four-star commanders to advance her social status in the military-conscious community of Tampa.

The scandal widened when the Pentagon announced it was looking into that copious correspondence between Kelley and Allen, searching for possible evidence of an inappropriate relationship between the two married people. Allen's nomination to lead the U.S. European Command has been put on hold, pending results of the investigation, though officials now concede only a handful of the emails between Kelley and Allen are of flirtatious or questionable nature.

The FBI found no reason to further investigate Petraeus, but the CIA is now investigating whether the former director behaved inappropriately, such as possibly using agency resources to further the affair.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-11-19-Generals%20Scandal-Broadwell/id-c124f54a267b49dbabcfcf4e0564e7e2

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Providing California Workers Compensation Insurance

Workmen?s comp?we have all heard the term but what does that mean for me as an employee? When I was recently injured on the job I decided to take the time to look into california workers compensation insurance. The real issue for me was that I needed time off and needed to educate myself on what my coverage was and for how long I was even allowed to take off. Not being able to work was a very scary situation to be in.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2012 at 2:28 am and is filed under Business Updates. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Source: http://www.bwiaorgs.com/business-updates/providing-california-workers-compensation-insurance/

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New Beltway lanes seek to break gridlock in DC

Soon to be opened express lanes are empty, left, as northbound traffic is heavy on Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Va., Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Soon to be opened express lanes are empty, left, as northbound traffic is heavy on Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Va., Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Automobiles drive on Interstate 495 South, the Capital Beltway, left, while soon to be opened express lanes, right, wait for traffic near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

A driver waits to turn onto Route 7, near the Interstate 495, Capital Beltway, interchange at Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

E-Z-Pass readers are affixed over the express lanes on Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Thin, flexible, barriers separate the express lanes, right, from southbound Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, traffic near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. E-Z-Pass readers are affixed over the express lanes on Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway, in Fairfax County, Va., Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. The $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making Express Lanes are set to open Nov. 17. The four Express Lanes, two northbound and two southbound, supplement the existing eight lanes on the Virginia side of the Beltway.(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

McLEAN, Va. (AP) ? In a city filled with iconic landmarks, perhaps nothing better symbolizes how metropolitan Washington operates than the Capital Beltway: the physical embodiment of the gridlock that also grips Washington politics.

For decades, it has been the eight-lane asphalt moat that has divided the self-obsessed, hyperpartisan "Inside the Beltway" mentality from the salt-of-the-earth folks living outside the loop.

Now a $2 billion, 14-mile, decade-in-the-making expansion project will produce an additional divide, creating express lanes that allow drivers who are willing to pay a potentially steep toll to travel swiftly along D.C. metro's notoriously gridlocked roads.

The 495 Express Lanes are set to open Saturday, with four express lanes ? two northbound and two southbound ? supplementing the existing eight lanes on a portion of the Virginia side of the Beltway.

The lanes were built under a deal in which developers paid roughly 80 percent of the project's $2 billion cost, with public funds covering the rest. The companies will recoup the money through tolls. If the toll money exceeds projections, the state will also get a share.

Jenn Aument ? a spokeswoman for Transurban, an Australian toll road developer that led the project ? said the company estimates the average toll will be $3 to $6 during rush hour. Tolls will vary depending on traffic, rising as congestion worsens.

Carpools of three or more can use the lanes for free.

The concept faced resistance from the outset. AAA Mid-Atlantic initially derided the proposal for "Lexus Lanes" that would allow the rich to buy their way out of the congestion to which everyone else would be relegated.

As time went on, though, and it became clear that financing to expand the perpetually clogged Beltway would not be available through traditional means, skeptics such as AAA turned into supporters. The Federal Highway Administration has provided funding for more and more such projects across the country.

When the lanes are formally dedicated Tuesday, a AAA spokesman will ride in the first car to traverse the lanes.

"We first denounced them as Lexus lanes. Now we call them a godsend," said John Townsend, AAA Mid-Atlantic's manager of public and government affairs. "It's an acceptance of reality, and it says a lot about the sad state of transportation funding."

Townsend said he still has concerns that the lanes will be unaffordable for many. The lanes cut through some of the wealthiest areas in the country, and tolls will go as high as necessary to ensure the lanes move freely, so there may be a large number of drivers willing to pay any price to avoid traffic jams.

A similar project that launched last year on Interstate 85 near Atlanta proved controversial, and Georgia officials ended up lowering the maximum toll rates to attract drivers who at first snubbed the toll lanes. Buts usage of the lanes has risen, and the project differs in some significant ways from the Beltway project. Most importantly, the Beltway projects adds new lanes to the highway, while the Georgia project repurposed existing lanes.

John Lynch, the regional program manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation, said everyone will benefit from the added capacity. Projections show that without the new lanes, this section of the Beltway would be in gridlock 12 hours a day 20 years from now. With the Express Lanes ? also known as High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes ? severe congestion is projected to last five hours a day.

The lanes encourage carpooling, and mass-transit providers are adjusting bus routes to use them, he said.

And Aument rejects the notion that the Express Lanes can only be successful if regular lanes are so bad that people feel compelled to pay the tolls. She said there are reasons for drivers to use the Express Lanes other than avoiding traffic. For instance, the Express Lanes provide better access points to Tysons Corner ? a burgeoning commercial hub that is home to corporations including Gannett, Hilton Worldwide and Freddie Mac, not to mention the state's largest shopping mall.

She also said drivers will be drawn to the lanes' reliability: Transurban will pay dedicated crews to quickly clear accidents.

And studies have shown that variable tolls that increase at peak times encourage some drivers to shift to off-peak hours, reducing congestion.

For now, Aument is urging drivers to prepare for new traffic patterns and other changes. Also, just as express train service might not stop at every station, the Express Lanes, in a concession to costs, do not have the full exit interchanges in all directions that are available in the regular lanes.

And the project has no toll booths, so drivers will need an E-Z Pass transponder. A special Flex transponder, which costs $12 a year, allows drivers to claim the free HOV ride when they flip it to carpool mode.

Jeremy Korr, a scholar who did his doctoral dissertation at The University of Maryland on the Beltway, said efforts to reduce gridlock are constrained by how the road was built in the 1960s. Planners underestimated from the very beginning how much traffic the highway would carry and how much land is needed.

When the loop was completed in 1964, news accounts hailed the beltway as a road that would unite the region and improve people's lives.

"That lasted about two months," said Korr, now a social sciences professor at Brandman University in Irvine, Calif.

The phrase "Inside the Beltway" ? which Korr said was popularized as the title of a long-running Washington Post column ? irritates those who live within its confines. Being on one side of the Beltway or the other is not of any special significance to residents, as the area inside the Beltway is home to both wealthy and destitute neighborhoods. And the policies that cause the nation to feel such frustration about the "inside the beltway" mindset are set by politicians who come from across the nation.

Korr said his dissertation research illustrated how intensely people feel about the road. He sent out hundreds of surveys of residents living near the Beltway, "and almost everyone had that kind of personal bond with the road. And it was totally negative. People love to hate the Beltway."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-11-13-Capital%20Beltway%20Expansion/id-2655a9fcd9824a868ed57cb2f85bfc55

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