staggenborgforussenate.org

Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
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Contact: James Maslanik
James.Maslanik@colorado.edu
303-492-8974
University of Colorado at Boulder

A national research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is embarking on a two-year, multi-pronged effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The team will use tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice, which was at 1.67 million square miles during September 2011, more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average sea ice extent for September — an area larger than Texas and California combined. Critical ocean regions north of the Alaskan coast, like the Beaufort Sea and the Canada Basin, have experienced record warming and decreased sea ice extent unprecedented in human memory, said CU-Boulder Research Professor James Maslanik, who is leading the research effort.

The team will be targeting the Beaufort Sea, considered a “marginal ice zone” where old and thick multiyear sea ice has failed to survive during the summer melt season in recent years, said Maslanik of CU-Boulder’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research in CU’s engineering college. Such marginal ice zones are characterized by extensive ice loss and a strong “ice-albedo” feedback.

“Sea ice is lost when the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight in the form of heat in the summers, resulting in potentially thinner sea ice that re-forms the following winter,” Maslanik said. “This positive feedback between heat absorption by the ocean and accelerated melting becomes reinforcing in itself.” Marginal ice zones also are characterized by significant human and marine mammal activity, he said.

There was a record loss of sea ice cover over the Arctic in 2007, he said. “In some areas of the Arctic Ocean the multiyear ice rebounded, but in the Beaufort Sea we did not see that kind of multiyear ice persistence like we used to see,” said Maslanik, who also is a research professor in the aerospace engineering sciences department.

“The biggest question is whether places like the Beaufort Sea and adjacent Canada Basin have passed a ‘tipping point’ and now are essentially sub-Arctic zones where ice disappears each summer,” he said. Such ice loss could be causing fundamental changes in ocean conditions, including earlier annual blooms of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that drive the marine food web.

The vast majority of climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice in recent decades is due to rising temperatures primarily caused by human activities that pump huge amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The new $3 million study led by Maslanik, “The Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes EXperiment,” or MIZOPEX, is being funded by NASA.

The team will undertake extensive airborne surface mapping using a variety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS, comparing the results with data collected by a fleet of satellites from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Japanese space agency. Unlike satellites, small, unmanned aircraft can fly below the clouds, observe the same location continuously for hours and make more precise measurements of sea ice composition and sea surface temperatures. Maslanik and his CU-Boulder team previously used unmanned aircraft to assess ice conditions both in the Arctic and in Antarctica.

The MIZOPEX arsenal also will include floating buoys that measure ocean temperatures. CU-Boulder engineering faculty members Scott Palo and Dale Lawrence and their graduate students are converting miniaturized versions of dropsondes — standard weather reconnaissance devices designed to be dropped from aircraft and capture data as they fall toward Earth — into the buoys that will be deployed by the UAS.

The modified dropsondes, which were developed at CU-Boulder for use in Antarctica, will be combined with CU-designed miniature unmanned aircraft that will land on the ocean near sea ice floes. Such floes are critical to several species of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, walruses and seals.

The buoys and unmanned craft will collect sea surface and subsurface temperatures to about a meter deep, while the overflying unmanned planes and satellites measure temperatures at the surface, Maslanik said. “We want to know if the warming is just at the ocean surface or if there is additional heat getting into the mixed layers of the upper ocean, either from absorbed sunlight or from ocean currents, that could be contributing to sea ice melt.”

The team plans to gather information over 24-hour cycles to determine how the ocean and ice are reacting to atmospheric changes. “Understanding what’s happening in the water is critical to forecasting what will happen to ice in the near term, as well as in the decades to come,” said MIZOPEX team scientist Betsy Weatherhead of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We’ve never had the data before,” Weatherhead said. “With this new instrumentation, we’ll be able to ask questions and test theories about the drivers of ice melt.”

The MIZOPEX effort involves CU-Boulder, NASA, Fort Hays State University in Kansas, Brigham Young University, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, NOAA, the University of Washington and Columbia University. Ball Aerospace Systems Group of Boulder also is collaborating on the project.

Other MIZOPEX project scientists from CU include Brian Argrow, Sandra Castro, Ian Crocker, William Emery, Eric Frew and Mark Tschudi. Argrow directs the CU-headquartered Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, a university-government-industry partnership for the development and application of unmanned vehicle systems.

###

For more information on MIZOPEX visit http://ccar.colorado.edu/mizopex/index.html.
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles visit http://recuv.colorado.edu/.

Contact:
James Maslanik, 303-492-8974
James.Maslanik@colorado.edu
Betsy Weatherhead, 303-497-6653
Betsy.Weatherhead@noaa.gov
Jim Scott, CU media relations, 303-492-3114
Jim.Scott@colorado.edu

---

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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.

Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: James Maslanik
James.Maslanik@colorado.edu
303-492-8974
University of Colorado at Boulder

A national research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is embarking on a two-year, multi-pronged effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The team will use tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice, which was at 1.67 million square miles during September 2011, more than 1 million square miles below the 1979-2000 monthly average sea ice extent for September — an area larger than Texas and California combined. Critical ocean regions north of the Alaskan coast, like the Beaufort Sea and the Canada Basin, have experienced record warming and decreased sea ice extent unprecedented in human memory, said CU-Boulder Research Professor James Maslanik, who is leading the research effort.

The team will be targeting the Beaufort Sea, considered a “marginal ice zone” where old and thick multiyear sea ice has failed to survive during the summer melt season in recent years, said Maslanik of CU-Boulder’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research in CU’s engineering college. Such marginal ice zones are characterized by extensive ice loss and a strong “ice-albedo” feedback.

“Sea ice is lost when the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight in the form of heat in the summers, resulting in potentially thinner sea ice that re-forms the following winter,” Maslanik said. “This positive feedback between heat absorption by the ocean and accelerated melting becomes reinforcing in itself.” Marginal ice zones also are characterized by significant human and marine mammal activity, he said.

There was a record loss of sea ice cover over the Arctic in 2007, he said. “In some areas of the Arctic Ocean the multiyear ice rebounded, but in the Beaufort Sea we did not see that kind of multiyear ice persistence like we used to see,” said Maslanik, who also is a research professor in the aerospace engineering sciences department.

“The biggest question is whether places like the Beaufort Sea and adjacent Canada Basin have passed a ‘tipping point’ and now are essentially sub-Arctic zones where ice disappears each summer,” he said. Such ice loss could be causing fundamental changes in ocean conditions, including earlier annual blooms of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that drive the marine food web.

The vast majority of climate scientists believe shrinking Arctic sea ice in recent decades is due to rising temperatures primarily caused by human activities that pump huge amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The new $3 million study led by Maslanik, “The Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes EXperiment,” or MIZOPEX, is being funded by NASA.

The team will undertake extensive airborne surface mapping using a variety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS, comparing the results with data collected by a fleet of satellites from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Japanese space agency. Unlike satellites, small, unmanned aircraft can fly below the clouds, observe the same location continuously for hours and make more precise measurements of sea ice composition and sea surface temperatures. Maslanik and his CU-Boulder team previously used unmanned aircraft to assess ice conditions both in the Arctic and in Antarctica.

The MIZOPEX arsenal also will include floating buoys that measure ocean temperatures. CU-Boulder engineering faculty members Scott Palo and Dale Lawrence and their graduate students are converting miniaturized versions of dropsondes — standard weather reconnaissance devices designed to be dropped from aircraft and capture data as they fall toward Earth — into the buoys that will be deployed by the UAS.

The modified dropsondes, which were developed at CU-Boulder for use in Antarctica, will be combined with CU-designed miniature unmanned aircraft that will land on the ocean near sea ice floes. Such floes are critical to several species of Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, walruses and seals.

The buoys and unmanned craft will collect sea surface and subsurface temperatures to about a meter deep, while the overflying unmanned planes and satellites measure temperatures at the surface, Maslanik said. “We want to know if the warming is just at the ocean surface or if there is additional heat getting into the mixed layers of the upper ocean, either from absorbed sunlight or from ocean currents, that could be contributing to sea ice melt.”

The team plans to gather information over 24-hour cycles to determine how the ocean and ice are reacting to atmospheric changes. “Understanding what’s happening in the water is critical to forecasting what will happen to ice in the near term, as well as in the decades to come,” said MIZOPEX team scientist Betsy Weatherhead of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We’ve never had the data before,” Weatherhead said. “With this new instrumentation, we’ll be able to ask questions and test theories about the drivers of ice melt.”

The MIZOPEX effort involves CU-Boulder, NASA, Fort Hays State University in Kansas, Brigham Young University, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, NOAA, the University of Washington and Columbia University. Ball Aerospace Systems Group of Boulder also is collaborating on the project.

Other MIZOPEX project scientists from CU include Brian Argrow, Sandra Castro, Ian Crocker, William Emery, Eric Frew and Mark Tschudi. Argrow directs the CU-headquartered Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles, a university-government-industry partnership for the development and application of unmanned vehicle systems.

###

For more information on MIZOPEX visit http://ccar.colorado.edu/mizopex/index.html.
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles visit http://recuv.colorado.edu/.

Contact:
James Maslanik, 303-492-8974
James.Maslanik@colorado.edu
Betsy Weatherhead, 303-497-6653
Betsy.Weatherhead@noaa.gov
Jim Scott, CU media relations, 303-492-3114
Jim.Scott@colorado.edu

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uoca-ctt012512.php

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CHICAGO ? The Illinois attorney general filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing Standard & Poor’s of misleading investors by assigning its highest ratings to risky mortgage-backed investments during the years leading up to the crash of the housing market.

The lawsuit from Lisa Madigan’s office alleges the agency compromised its independence by issuing high ratings for unworthy or risky investments as part of a strategy to boost revenue and market share. The lawsuit cites internal emails and conversations, including an instant messenger exchange in April 2007 in which an employee tells another that an investment “could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

“Publically, S&P took every opportunity to proclaim their analyses and ratings as independent, objective and free from its desire for revenue,” Madigan said. “Yet privately, S&P abandoned its principles and instead used every trick possible to give deals high ratings in order to retain clients and generate revenue.”

Madigan’s lawsuit singled out mortgage-backed securities, saying Standard & Poor’s misrepresented the risks by giving the investments its highest rating of AAA.

A spokesman for Standard and Poor’s rejected the claims.

“The case is without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” said David Wargin.

A spokeswoman for Madigan, Robyn Ziegler, said the attorney general began investigating Standard & Poor’s in early 2010. The probe is continuing, but Madigan determined that it had progressed enough to file the suit, Ziegler said. Madigan previously had been involved in discriminatory-lending lawsuits against Bank of America subsidiary Countrywide Financial Corp. and Wells Fargo.

The financial products singled out in the Standard & Poor’s lawsuit involve the bundling of a pool of mortgages that are then sold as securities. They are backed by residential mortgages, including the subprime mortgages that have been blamed for much of the economic turmoil set off by the housing crash in 2007 and 2008.

Madigan’s lawsuit said the S&P ignored the risks of those securities in giving them ratings that were favorable to the agency’s investment bank clients and its own profits.

The performance of those investments had a significant impact on institutional investors in Illinois, including pension funds and 401(k) managers, the lawsuit said.

“The mortgage-backed securities that helped our market soar ? and ultimately crash ? could not have been purchased by most investors without S&P’s seal of approval,” Madigan said.

The lawsuit also cites testimony before Congress by a former managing director of the ratings agency who said “profits were running the show.”

Madigan has also targeted mortgage lenders she accuses of having preyed on home owners.

Her office filed suit against Bank of America subsidiary Countrywide Financial Corp. in 2010. In that suit, Madigan accused Countrywide of consistently selling African-American and Hispanic borrowers riskier loans at a higher cost than it sold to white borrowers with similar credit ratings.

In December, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement of $335 million with Bank of America that stemmed from that lawsuit.

Madigan is pursuing a similar lawsuit against Wells Fargo, which she also accuses of discriminatory lending.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personalfinance/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_bi_ge/us_standard___poor_s_lawsuit_illinois

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25 January 2012 Last updated at 06:23 ET

Frenetic star-forming activity in the early Universe is linked to the most massive galaxies in today’s cosmos, new research suggests.

This “starbursting” activity when the Universe was just a few billion years old appears to have been clamped off by the growth of supermassive black holes.

An international team gathered hints of the mysterious “dark matter” in early galaxies to confirm the link.

The findings appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Being able to see objects at great distances in the cosmos allows astronomers to look into the past, at light that departed when the Universe was young.

Continue reading the main story

Dark energy and dark matter mysteries

• Gravity acting across vast distances does not seem to explain what astronomers see
• Galaxies, for example, should fly apart; some other mass must be there holding them together
• Astrophysicists have thus postulated “dark matter” – invisible to us but clearly acting on galactic scales
• At the greatest distances, the Universe’s expansion is accelerating
• Thus we have also “dark energy” which acts to drive the expansion, in opposition to gravity
• The current theory holds that 73% of the Universe is dark energy, 23% is dark matter, and just 4% the kind of matter we know well

Using the 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope in Chile, an international team led by Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth College studied the way distant galaxies from the early Universe grouped together.

Galaxies are understood to be surrounded by “haloes” of a mysterious material called dark matter, which clearly exerts a force but has never been detected. The team’s experiments measured the effects of this gravitational force on the galaxy clusters.

With these measured dark matter haloes, and the help of a computer model that describes how the galaxies and their haloes should evolve, the team showed that the frenetic “starbursting” galaxies develop into the enormous elliptical galaxies we see more nearby.

“This is the first time that we’ve been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day,” said Dr Hickox.

However, these bouts of star formation appear to only last about 100 million years, seeming to come to an abrupt halt.

The team’s new work adds weight to the idea that the starburst feeds material into the supermassive black holes at their centres.

These in turn emit powerful blasts of energy as they consume the stars, blowing away the very clouds of gas that could otherwise have coalesced into even more stars.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-16702962

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Drchrono, a startup that simplifies the professional lives of doctors by bringing electronic health records and much more to the iPad, has raised $2.8 million in funding led by Yuri Milner, with Google’s Matt Cutts and other investors participating. The startup had previously raised $1.3 million in seed funding from Milner, General Catalyst, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Gmail creator and FriendFeed cofounder Paul Buchheit, Cutts, and the Start Fund. Y Combinator-backed drchrono streamlines the professional lives of doctors and medical professionals by bringing electronic health records and much more to the iPad. The free iPad app allows doctors to schedule patient appointments, dictate notes via audio, take pictures, write prescriptions and send them to pharmacies, enable reminders, take clinical notes, access lab results, and input electronic health records.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LNHt00i1Qx0/

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Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Ben Norman
Scholarlynews@wiley.com
44-124-377-0375
Wiley-Blackwell

Males at greater than twice the risk of language delay than females

New research by Australian scientists reveals that males who are exposed to high levels of testosterone before birth are twice as likely to experience delays in language development compared to females. The research, published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, focused on umbilical cord blood to explore the presence of testosterone when the language-related regions of a fetus’ brain are undergoing a critical period of growth.

“An estimated 12% of toddlers experience significant delays in their language development,” said lead author Professor Andrew Whitehouse from the University of Western Australia. “While language development varies between individuals, males tend to develop later and at a slower rate than females.”

The team believed this may be due to prenatal exposure to sex-steroids such as testosterone. Male fetuses are known to have 10 times the circulating levels of testosterone compared to females. The team proposed that higher levels of exposure to prenatal testosterone may increase the likelihood of language development delays.

Professor Whitehouse’s team measured levels of testosterone in the umbilical cord blood of 767 newborns before examining their language ability at 1, 2 and 3-years of age.

The results showed male infants with high levels of testosterone in cord blood were between two-and-three times more likely to experience language delay. However, the opposite effect was found in female infants, where high-levels of testosterone in cord blood were associated with a decreased risk of language delay.

Previous smaller studies have explored the link between testosterone levels in amniotic fluid and language development. However, this is the first large population-based study to explore the relationship between umbilical cord blood and language delay in the first three years of life.

“Language delay is one of the most common reasons children are taken to a Paediatrician,” concluded Professor Whitehouse. “Now these findings can help us to understand the biological mechanisms that may underpin language delay, as well as language development more generally.”

###

---

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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.

Public release date: 25-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Ben Norman
Scholarlynews@wiley.com
44-124-377-0375
Wiley-Blackwell

Males at greater than twice the risk of language delay than females

New research by Australian scientists reveals that males who are exposed to high levels of testosterone before birth are twice as likely to experience delays in language development compared to females. The research, published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, focused on umbilical cord blood to explore the presence of testosterone when the language-related regions of a fetus’ brain are undergoing a critical period of growth.

“An estimated 12% of toddlers experience significant delays in their language development,” said lead author Professor Andrew Whitehouse from the University of Western Australia. “While language development varies between individuals, males tend to develop later and at a slower rate than females.”

The team believed this may be due to prenatal exposure to sex-steroids such as testosterone. Male fetuses are known to have 10 times the circulating levels of testosterone compared to females. The team proposed that higher levels of exposure to prenatal testosterone may increase the likelihood of language development delays.

Professor Whitehouse’s team measured levels of testosterone in the umbilical cord blood of 767 newborns before examining their language ability at 1, 2 and 3-years of age.

The results showed male infants with high levels of testosterone in cord blood were between two-and-three times more likely to experience language delay. However, the opposite effect was found in female infants, where high-levels of testosterone in cord blood were associated with a decreased risk of language delay.

Previous smaller studies have explored the link between testosterone levels in amniotic fluid and language development. However, this is the first large population-based study to explore the relationship between umbilical cord blood and language delay in the first three years of life.

“Language delay is one of the most common reasons children are taken to a Paediatrician,” concluded Professor Whitehouse. “Now these findings can help us to understand the biological mechanisms that may underpin language delay, as well as language development more generally.”

###

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/w-ptl012312.php

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ESPN2

“Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak admits he hosted the show while drunk during his early days.

By Ree Hines

Veteran game show host Pat Sajak recalls his early days on “Wheel of Fortune” with fondness, but that has nothing to do with the show’s wheeling and dealing.

In fact, Sajak recently revealed that he found the show format snooze-worthy in the 1980s. But the margarita-filled dinner breaks he shared with Vanna White made it all worthwhile.

?We had a different show then,” he explained during an interview on ESPN2′s “Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable.” “You didn?t win money. You won fake money with which you could buy cheesy prizes. The turntable would go ’round and housewives from Teaneck (NJ) would say, ‘Uh, for $100, I’ll have the lamp ?- no, I’ll have ?’ It was the most boring two minutes of television. But because we had all of those prizes, we had endless time between shows. Our dinner breaks would be two hours long.”

And two hours was all it took for Sajak and his on-screen partner to get tipsy at a nearby restaurant before returning to their TV gig.

“They served great margaritas,” he recalled. “So Vanna and I would go across and have two or three or six and then come and do the last shows and have trouble recognizing the alphabet. They’re really good tapes to get a hold of.”

Well, as far as he can remember.

“I had a great time,” Sajak said. “I have no idea if the shows were any good, but no one said anything, so I guess I did OK.”

But that’s all in the past now. Now Sajak, and presumably White, stays strictly sober while the big wheel spins.

“Now if I were to inhale the cork on a bottle of wine, I would probably keel over,” He joked. “I’m getting a little bit older. So we don’t do that. I would be hesitant to have anything to drink now.”

Are you surprised by Sajak’s confession? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

?

More in the Clicker:

Source: http://theclicker.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/26/10242653-pat-sajak-vanna-and-i-hosted-wheel-while-drunk

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Florida’s unpopular Republican Gov. Rick Scott compared criticism of capitalism — in particular, attacks on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital — to Nazi persecution during the Holocaust on Thursday, warning business leaders not to remain silent.

According to the Miami Herald, at a board meeting with a group of Florida’s private business leaders, Scott urged people to speak up, paraphrasing a famous statement on complacency during the Nazi era: “I’ve got a quote in my office,” he said. “First they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t a Jew so I didn’t say anything.”

Romney has recently come under fire for his work with private equity firm Bain Capital.

“We’ve got to defend the freedom of the free market,” Scott said. “If we don’t defend the free market, they’ll pick on somebody. Now they’re picking on Bain Capital, then they’ll pick on somebody else.”

Later, Scott clarified his remarks to reporters, saying that he had used the quote to illustrate how capitalism must always be defended.

From the Associated Press:

“I have the quote in my office, and the reason is I have it is, we all have to think about watch(ing) what’s going on out there,” Scott said.

“Look at what’s happening in our society,” he added. “I believe the free market is good for families. And I believe we should defend the free market. When you see somebody being attacked because they believe in the American Dream, we need to go out and say, gosh I would like to live the American Dream. All of us would like to live that American Dream.”

Although his statements would appear to be in support of Romney, who has faced vicious attacks from his rivals about his business record, Scott has made clear he will not be endorsing a GOP presidential candidate ahead of the state’s Jan. 31 primary.

“I think the right thing to do is to have these candidates come and campaign, he said during an appearance on Fox News.

Given his unpopularity in the state, the candidates may be grateful that he’s not aligning himself with any one of them.

Also on HuffPost:

“; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, ‘top’, {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: ‘clear-overlay’}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/rick-scott-romney-bain-capitalism-holocaust_n_1234729.html

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LOS ANGELES — Jean Webb Vaughan Smith, a member of the Reagans’ inner circle who championed volunteerism as national president of the Association of Junior Leagues, died Wednesday in Los Angeles of natural causes, her family said. She was 93.

Smith joined the Junior League in the 1950s, rising to president of the Los Angeles chapter in 1954 and Western regional director in 1956. She served as national president from 1958 to 1960.

Her decades of public service also included government appointments and civic roles, including serving on the boards of the Blue Ribbon, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the United Way, the American Red Cross, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the California Arts Commission.

A seasoned Washington wife, she was close to two Republican administrations. Her first husband, George William Vaughan, was assistant secretary of defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Her second husband, William French Smith, was attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.

Nancy Reagan remembered Jean Smith in a statement Wednesday as “an incredibly kind and caring woman, and a good friend. … When Bill was named attorney general and they moved to Washington, D.C., Jean and I found ourselves reminiscing together on more than one occasion as we shared a little bit of homesickness for California.”

Born in Los Angeles on Aug. 5, 1918, Smith attended Los Angeles and Beverly Hills high schools before entering Stanford University to study Greek and Latin. She met Vaughan at Stanford, graduated in 1940 and married him two years later. After World War II service, they settled in Los Angeles, where he prospered as an auto dealer and she raised their two children.

“When I went to Stanford, you got married, and then you did volunteer work. And I ran that into the ground,” she quipped in a 1984 interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Noting that she “must have always wanted to run things,” she quickly rose through the ranks of the Junior League, eventually overseeing 75,000 members in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

She was married to Vaughan for 21 years, until his death in 1963. She is survived by their children, Bill of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Merry Vaughan Dunn of Ojai, Calif., and five grandchildren.

After Vaughan died, Smith worked briefly in the public affairs office at San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins Hotel, where she met William French Smith. They were married in 1964.

William became Ronald Reagan’s personal lawyer, confidant, business adviser and, in 1981, attorney general. Jean served on the President’s Advisory Commission on White House Fellowships.

They enjoyed the Washington social scene, where Jean drew some unwelcome attention from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

“The ears of Mrs. William French Smith dangle earrings that cost more than a house,” Cohen wrote in a 1982 piece attacking the Reagan administration for being insensitive to the needs of ordinary citizens.

Smith fired back in a letter critical of Cohen. She said her earrings were fakes that cost about $40, just enough to buy “a small doghouse, into which he could fit.”

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/2610629/jean-smith-junior-league-president.html

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DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? Western-style democracy is still a valid model for the world, as long as it draws in all segments of society and takes social equality as a central tenet, a broad range of world leaders said at an Associated Press debate Thursday.

The debate took place as part of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of global power brokers at the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Some participants have said Western democracy in its current form is running out of steam, and that new models are needed as the balance of world power moves from west to east and as the Internet revolutionizes the way people communicate.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said democracy will remain strong as long as everyone has a voice.

“If democracy is the rule of the majority and the majority is poor, then democracy has to be about social inclusion,” he said.

Rachid Ghannouchi, the founder of the political party that won Tunisia’s first free elections last year, spoke of a centuries-old “dream” of democracy in the Arab world that finally has the opportunity to emerge. But he cautioned that huge risks remain.

“The process of elections is not enough to achieve democracy. Democracy needs a very rich civil society,” he said. “Democracy without social justice can be transformed into a mafia.”

U.S. Congressman David Dreier, a Republican from California, said activism such as the Occupy movements needs to be a part of the democratic process.

“We can’t say to people be patient. We need to figure out how to address this,” he said.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, criticized some countries for having democracy at home but failing to condemn other governments that violate basic democratic principles. He singled out Pakistan, which he said never votes at the United Nations, to condemn repression ? “unless of course it’s about Israel.”

But Patriota offered a counter-point, saying going to war to protect democracy is wrong as well.

“There is something profoundly wrong when those who should be setting an example seem to establish a link between military intervention and democracy,” he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-26-Davos%20Forum-Democracy/id-fe40f49ac542474b82c84e7d86f7fa1c

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama’s bid to get millionaires and multinational companies to pay more taxes may play well with many voters but it faces long odds in the deadlocked U.S. Congress.

Obama used his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to press the case for a new minimum 30 percent tax on Americans earning more than $1 million a year and for tougher treatment of corporations that move jobs out of the United States.

At the same time, he called for tax credits to lure jobs back to the United States.

“Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas,” Obama said. “Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.”

Obama, facing a tough re-election campaign, for several years has called for steeper taxes on corporations’ foreign profits and closing what he calls tax loopholes that also benefit multinational companies.

Most of these ideas have stalled for years in Congress – even some Democrats say they can wait for a complete overhaul of the tax code.

A tax lobbyist affiliated with Democrats said real debate over the proposed tax changes would have to wait until after the November 6 presidential and congressional elections.

“They would only likely stand a chance in a broader corporate tax reform debate and I just don’t think that tax reform is in the cards,” the lobbyist said.

Obama and Republicans both say the tax code needs a major rewrite and lawmakers are laying the groundwork for such a reform, but the process is expected to take years. The 35 percent U.S. corporate rate is among the highest in the world and critics say it harms business competitiveness.

Obama is calling for a number of tax policies that could in theory appeal to Republicans, in the name of boosting the flagging economy. For example, he wants to trim tax rates for manufacturers and double a tax deduction for high-tech manufacturing – ideas that might gain some bipartisan backing.

But even that is unlikely in the current environment.

“Tempted as they may be by more tax cuts, anything that smacks of a deal with Obama, or a victory for Obama, especially one that undercuts their theme – however detached from the reality – that Obama is a tax-increaser, will be reflexively resisted by Republicans in both houses,” said Norm Ornstein, a congressional watcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

BUFFETT RULE

Probably the biggest tax change Obama outlined is a revamp of what he has called the Buffett rule, named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, to ensure the wealthy pay what he calls a fair share of taxes. Obama proposed a minimum 30 percent tax on millionaires, and eliminating many tax deductions for them – including for housing, healthcare and childcare.

Buffett’s secretary – famous for her boss’s observation that she pays a higher tax rate than he does – sat in the congressional gallery as a guest of the White House to underscore the point.

A minimum 30 percent tax rate would be about twice the tax rate paid by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the past two years, according to filings he released on Tuesday.

Lower tax rates enacted under former Republican President George W. Bush are set to expire at the end of this year, setting up a fight over extending them in late 2012.

Obama and Democrats want to let the lower rates for the wealthy expire. Obama said given steep budget deficits, Americans face a choice.

“Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else?” Obama asked.

The top individual income tax rate is now 35 percent, but the superwealthy can enjoy lower rates in some cases if they earn most of their income from investments – as does Romney – which are subject to a 15 percent rate.

A version of Obama’s so-called Buffett rule has been promoted by Democrats in Congress as a way to pay for extending the payroll tax cut, but has no chance of passing.

Obama had previously proposed limiting deductions for wealthier Americans to a certain percentage of their income, but he went further in Tuesday’s speech to advocate cutting out certain tax breaks completely for millionaires.

Even before Obama spoke, Republicans were blasting the speech as a campaign event.

“No Bailouts, No Hand-outs, And No Cop-outs,” read one congressional Republican press release.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/pl_nm/us_usa_obama_speech_taxes

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