Kerry: Urgent progress is needed on Mideast peace

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry is beginning a new round of Middle East peace diplomacy, arriving Wednesday in Jordan, his base for talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Kerry is to travel from Amman to Jerusalem on Thursday for dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has a lunch scheduled on Friday in Amman with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

At a news conference earlier in the day in Kuwait, Kerry expressed hope that two sides could make progress but denied press reports that any three-way meetings with both Netanyahu and Abbas were expected.

Kerry said he's set no specific deadline for making concrete progress in talks between Israel and the Palestinians that he's continuing this week, but that long before September there needs to be some kind of progress shown.

U.N. General Assembly, which reconvenes in September, voted overwhelmingly in November to upgrade the Palestinians from U.N. observer to non-voting member state. The Palestinians have said that if attempts at reaching an accord between the two sides fail, that they'd pursue a strategy of international recognition on their own, which would make finding peace in the decades-long conflict more elusive.

Kerry spoke during a news conference with Kuwait's emir, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah. It is Kerry's fifth visit to the region since becoming secretary of state earlier this year.

"The time is getting near where we need to make some judgments. Last time, I was here, I said it's time for leaders to make some hard decisions," Kerry said. "That stands. It is time. Why is it urgent? It's urgent because time is the enemy of a peace process."

"I don't want to trap myself or any of the principals in this with arbitrary ? or somewhat ad hoc time limits," Kerry said.

But he added: "Long before September we need to be showing some kind of progress in some way. ...That's why I'm here for this visit and I hope it can be productive."

Kerry has been shuttling between the Israelis and the Palestinians in search of a formula to restart talks. So far, there have been no signs of a breakthrough.

Abbas is being propelled toward a stark choice that could come as soon as next week, define his legacy and set the course for his people in their conflict with Israel. Abbas' aides fear he's being pushed by the U.S. into dropping his conditions for negotiating with Netanyahu

Israeli settlements lies at the heart of the heart of the nearly five-year impasse in Mideast peace efforts. The Palestinians say they will not negotiate while Israel continues to construct settlements in territory they seek for a future state. Netanyahu says the fate of the settlements should be resolved in negotiations, and talks should resume immediately without any preconditions. The Palestinians claim the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future state.

"We come at this carefully. We have been working towards, hopefully an understanding that allows everybody to move forward, notwithstanding the difficulties that people face in the politics of their own countries," he said. "Why am I confident that something can be down? Because I believe peace is understood by them ? both of them ? to be urgent."

On Syria, Kerry acknowledged that getting a transitional government set up in Syria would be a "hard lift."

But he painted a dire picture of the alternative to convening an international conference to reach a political resolution to the two-year civil war.

"The people of Syria are suffering ... the prospect a long, continued war, which is very possible, means not only will many, many people die, many more homes will be destroyed, cities be destroyed. Not only will you have more atrocities, more violations of human rights, even some small evidence here and there of some ethnic cleansing.

"Not only will you have all that, but you may ultimately have complete destruction of the state of Syria so that the army and the institutions will fall apart and you will have a complete sectarian breakdown and that becomes far more dangerous for all of the region because it will empower extremists as well as create ongoing sectarian strife" in the region.

He reiterated his called for Iran and the Hezbollah fighters, which are bolstering Assad's forces, to leave Syria ? a move he said would make it easier for a political resolution to be reached.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-urgent-progress-needed-mideast-peace-130625075.html

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Devo drummer Alan Myers dies of brain cancer

In this 1978 photo taken by Janet Macoska and released by Devo, Inc., the band Devo, from left, Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, kneeling, Jerry Casale, Bob Casale and Alan Myers pose for a photo. Devo spokesman Michael Pilmer confirmed Wednesday, June 26, 2013, that drummer Alan Myers died Monday, June 24, after a battle with brain cancer in Los Angeles. He was 58. (AP Photo/Devo Inc., Janet Macoska) MANDATORY CREDIT

Alan Myers, the former longtime drummer for the band Devo, best known for "Whip It," has died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 58.

Myers died Monday in Los Angeles, where he lived, Devo spokesman Michael Pilmer said Wednesday.

Myers was the band's drummer from 1976 to 1985 during Devo's heyday. The group was formed in Akron, Ohio, in the early 1970s by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, and introduced themselves to the world in 1977 by making a frenetic version of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction."

Casale told The Associated Press on Wednesday that without Myers, Devo never would have reached the heights it did, calling him the best drummer he has ever played with.

"We were mostly in basements and garages writing songs. It was Alan that brought everything to life," Casale said. "That was the catalyst where everything clicked."

He called Myers "the human metronome."

"People watching him thought we were using a drum machine," Casale said. "Nobody had ever drummed like that."

Casale described meeting and playing with Myers for the first time in 1976. After their first session ended, Casale ? who had been facing away from Myers ? turned around to see the drummer standing on one leg with his eyes closed, practicing the meditative Chinese martial art of Tai Chi.

"I thought, 'Man, this guy really is Devo. He fits right in,'" Casale said, adding that Tai Chi was one of the drummer's greatest passions. "Some bands would be doing drugs and drinking. Alan would find quiet places backstage and do a full session of Tai Chi."

Devo is short for devolution, the idea that man was devolving into its monkey state.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/devo-drummer-alan-myers-dies-brain-cancer-181800119.html

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Was first curveball thrown 2 million years ago?

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012 file photo made with a multiple exposure, Boston Red Sox's Jon Lester pitches in the third inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers in Boston. A new study suggests the ability to throw hard and accurately first appeared in a human ancestor 2 million years ago. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012 file photo made with a multiple exposure, Boston Red Sox's Jon Lester pitches in the third inning of a baseball game against the Texas Rangers in Boston. A new study suggests the ability to throw hard and accurately first appeared in a human ancestor 2 million years ago. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? It's a big year for throwing. The greatest closer in baseball history, Mariano Rivera of the Yankees, is retiring. Aroldis Chapman, the overpowering Cincinnati Reds reliever, continues to fire fastballs beyond 100 mph.

And now some scientists say they've figured out when our human ancestors first started throwing with accuracy and fire power, as only people can: Nearly 2 million years ago.

That's what researchers conclude in a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature. There's plenty of skepticism about their conclusion. But the new paper contends that this throwing ability probably helped our ancient ancestor Homo erectus hunt, allowing him to toss weapons ? probably rocks and sharpened wooden spears.

The human throwing ability is unique. Not even a chimp, our closest living relative and a creature noted for strength, can throw nearly as fast as a 12-year-old Little Leaguer, says lead study author Neil Roach of George Washington University.

To find out how humans developed this ability, Roach and co-authors analyzed the throwing motions of 20 collegiate baseball players. Sometimes the players wore braces to mimic the anatomy of human ancestors, to see how anatomical changes affected throwing ability.

The human secret to throwing, the researchers propose, is that when the arm is cocked, it stores energy by stretching tendons, ligaments and muscles crossing the shoulder. It's like pulling back on a slingshot. Releasing that "elastic energy" makes the arm whip forward to make the throw.

That trick, in turn, was made possible by three anatomical changes in human evolution that affected the waist, shoulders and arms, the researchers concluded. And Homo erectus, which appeared about 2 million years ago, is the first ancient relative to combine those three changes, they said.

But others think the throwing ability must have appeared sometime later in human evolution.

Susan Larson, an anatomist at Stony Brook University in New York who didn't participate in the study, said the paper is the first to claim that elastic energy storage occurs in arms, rather than just in legs. The bouncing gait of a kangaroo is due to that phenomenon, she said, and the human Achilles tendon stores energy to help people walk.

The new analysis offers good evidence that the shoulder is storing elastic energy, even though the shoulder doesn't have the long tendons that do that job in legs, she said. So maybe other tissues can do it too, she said.

But Larson, an expert on evolution of the human shoulder, said she does not think Homo erectus could throw like a modern human. She said she believes its shoulders were too narrow and that the orientation of the shoulder joint on the body would make overhand throwing "more or less impossible."

Rick Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution, said he is "not at all convinced" by the paper's argument about when and why throwing appeared.

The authors did not present any data to counter Larson's published work that indicates the erectus shoulder was ill-suited for throwing, he said.

And it is "a stretch" to say that throwing would give erectus an advantage in hunting, Potts said. Large animals have to be pierced in specific spots for a kill, which would seem to require more accuracy than one could expect erectus to achieve from a distance, he said.

Potts noted that the earliest known spears, which date from about 400,000 years ago, were used for thrusting rather than throwing.

___ Online:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

___

Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-06-26-AP-US-SCI-Throwing-Arm/id-62771ba8933b45fe929f716701625103

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SK Telecom launches the world's first LTE-Advanced network, and the Galaxy S4 LTE-A

Just days after an LTE-Advanced variant of Samsung's Galaxy S 4 leaked, Korean carrier SK Telecom has officially announced it's launching the world's first publicly available LTE-Advanced wireless network. The Galaxy S4 LTE-A is also official (in red or blue) as the first device able to take advantage of the new technology for even faster data transmission speeds. According to the press release, SK Telecom plans to have as many as seven LTE-A devices available by the end of the year, all capable of up to 150Mbps. While SK Telecom is using Carrier Aggregation and Coordinated Multi Point technology to improve speeds right now, it will add Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination in 2014 to go even faster. After that, it suggest carrier aggregation will improve to support higher speeds and faster uploads in subsequent years.

To take advantage of the higher speeds, SK Telecom's Btv IPTV service will begin offering 1080p video streaming in early July. That will be accompanied by enhanced multiview baseball broadcasts, more free videos, an HD video shopping service with six channels on one screen in August and the addition of FLAC audio files via its music package. Right now, the company has Seoul covered in LTE-A, and plans to eventually offer it in 84 cities, all at the same price as existing LTE service. Check after the break for the press release with all the details, plus video of a speed test.

Update: We've just come across another juicy tidbit that makes the Galaxy S4 LTE-A all the more worthwhile -- it'll ship with a Snapdragon 800 SoC that contains a 2.3GHz quad-core CPU, plus 32GB of built-in storage and a 2,600mAh battery. It goes without saying that this phone will be speedy on all angles.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung Tomorrow (1), (2)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/25/sk-telecom-lte-advanced-galaxy-s-4/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Filibuster broken, but Texas abortion law fails to pass

Filibuster fails: Wendy Davis spoke for 11 hours in a filibuster but was stopped before the midnight deadline. Still, the Texas abortion law failed to pass when protestors managed to stall a vote.

By Chris Thomlinson and Jim Vertuno,?Associated Press / June 26, 2013

Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) of Fort Worth, waits for a ruling on a rules violation during her filibusters of an abortion bill, Tuesday, June 25, in Austin, Texas. Senator Davis was given a second warning for breaking filibuster rules by receiving help with a back brace from Sen. Rodney Ellis (D) of Houston.

Eric Gay/AP

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Despite barely beating a midnight deadline, hundreds of jeering protesters helped stop Texas lawmakers from passing one of the toughest abortion measures in the country.

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As the protesters raised the noise to deafening levels in the Texas Senate chamber late Tuesday, Republicans scrambled to gather their colleagues at the podium for a stroke-of-midnight vote.

"Get them out!" Sen. Donna Campbell shouted to a security guard, pointing to the thundering crowd in the gallery overhead that had already been screaming for more than 10 minutes.

"Time is running out," Campbell pleaded. "I want them out of here!"

It didn't work. The noise never stopped and despite barely beating the midnight end-of-session deadline with a vote to pass the bill, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said the chaos in the chamber prevented him from formally signing it before the deadline passed, effectively killing it.

Dewhurst denounced the protesters as an "unruly mob." Democrats who urged them on called the outburst democracy in action.

In either point of view, a raucous crowd of chanting, singing, shouting demonstrators effectively took over the Texas Capitol and blocked a bill that abortion rights groups warned would close most abortion clinics in the state.

"They were asking for their voices to be heard," said Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, who spent nearly 11 hours trying to filibuster the bill before the outburst. "The results speak for themselves."

The final outcome took several hours to sort out.

Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.

At 3 a.m., Dewhurst emerged from the meeting still insisting the 19-10 vote was in time, but said, "with all the ruckus and noise going on, I couldn't sign the bill" and declared it dead.

He denounced the more than 400 protesters who staged what they called "a people's filibuster" from 11:45 p.m. to well past midnight. He denied mishandling the debate.

"I didn't lose control (of the chamber). We had an unruly mob," Dewhurst said. He even hinted that Gov. Rick Perry may immediately call another 30-day special session, adding: "It's over. It's been fun. But see you soon."

Many of the protesters had flocked to the normally quiet Capitol to support Davis, who gained national attention and a mention from President Barack Obama's campaign Twitter account. Her Twitter following went from 1,200 in the morning to more than 20,000 by Tuesday night.

"My back hurts. I don't have a lot of words left," Davis said when it was over and she was showered with cheers by activists who stayed at the Capitol to see her. "It shows the determination and spirit of Texas women."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/evm4XPr2xMU/Filibuster-broken-but-Texas-abortion-law-fails-to-pass

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Lotus and Daniel Simon start Motorcycles division - Car Body Design

Lotus Motorcycles is a joint project of Kodewa, renowned concept designer Daniel Simon and the Holzer Group.

The bike will be named Lotus C-01 and ?will reflect a combination of lifestyle, design and high end technology.?

The Lotus C-01 will be a hyper bike with integrated racing technology, will be powered by a 200 hp engine and will make use of advanced materials like carbon, titanium and aerospace quality steel.

Daniel Simon, former designer for Bugatti, is responsible for many iconic concept vehicles in Hollywood film industry ? among these is the ?Lightcycle? in ?Tron: Legacy? and the ?Bubbleship? used by Tom Cruise in the recent ?Oblivion?.

The collaboration between Lotus and the German designer began in 2012, when he created the black and gold livery of the Lotus LMP2 sports cars.

The designer commented: ?With the Lotus C-01, we have only one ambition: to create a unique state-of-the-art machine that carries its brutal forces with elegance and style, a high-tech monster in a tailored suit. The C-01, with all its top notch components and materials, is first and foremost emotional, heartbreaking, at times playfully retro, and always clearly a Lotus. Lotus is a glamorous name with a rich history, and the C-01 celebrates it proudly: the shapes of the marvelous Lotus 49 were a main inspiration, and all color schemes pay homage to iconic Lotus racing liveries, such as the dashing black and gold. The intersection of past and future never fails to fascinate, and so does the unique idea of the C-01.?

The first images of the Lotus C-01 Motorcycle are expected to be revealed in the next few weeks.

Technical Partners

Kodewa has recently built the new sports car Lotus T128 LMP (Le Mans Prototype) and is running the Lotus LMP2 program in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

The team of Kodewa comprises of experts with a lot of knowledge and experience not only in endurance racing but also Formula 1, DTM and lower formulas.

Within the Holzer Group, the Performance GmbH is involved in the development process. The components made of titanium, carbon fibre and aerospace steel will be produced by RPC GmbH, which is also part of Holzer Group and Kodewa. Latest CNC machines linked with CAM workstations ensure highest precision and optimal workflow of the complex procedures. Because of quality inspections before, during and after the production process, a safety-related and faultless production is ensured.

(Source: Lotus)

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Source: http://www.carbodydesign.com/2013/06/lotus-and-daniel-simon-start-motorcycles-division/

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