Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/334841242?client_source=feed&format=rss
Similar Articles: hayden panettiere US News college rankings kim zolciak Kendrick Lamar Control food network star
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Good News From the GOP's War on Science: Textbook Publishers Resisting Pressure From Texas Creationists (Little green footballs)
US shutdown end boosts hopes for Antarctic reserve
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A long-awaited deal to create the world's largest marine sanctuary in Antarctica appears to have survived a last-second obstacle — the U.S. government shutdown — and could be approved next week.
The U.S., New Zealand and other countries have sought a sanctuary in the pristine waters of the Ross Sea for the past decade, and there are hopes that previous objectors Russia and Ukraine will agree to a new, smaller proposal when the nations that regulate Antarctic fishing meet next week in Hobart, Australia.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry joined his counterparts from other nations in calling for the sanctuary to proceed.
At the time, the U.S. apparently had suspended travel plans for its delegation, according to Gerry Leape, a senior international policy expert at Pew Charitable Trusts.
David Edginton, a spokesman with the U.S. Embassy in Wellington, said Wednesday he was unable to comment on whether the U.S. delegation will be traveling to Australia.
But on Wednesday night, Congress passed legislation to avert a U.S. debt default and end a government shutdown, closing an epic political drama that threatened to rattle the world economy.
Leape said earlier that the suspension could be lifted on short notice, either if the shutdown ends or if the delegation gets special permission to travel. Under normal circumstances, he said, the delegation would already be in Australia and working its diplomatic channels in pre-meetings.
Jointly proposed by the U.S. and New Zealand, the 1.34 million-square-kilometer (517,000-square-mile) sanctuary would be twice the size of Texas and the world's largest stretch of protected ocean.
Progress on the sanctuary has already been painfully slow. The nations that make decisions about Antarctic fishing — 24 countries plus the European Union — do so only by unanimous agreement. A proposal for a larger sanctuary failed in July when Russia and Ukraine, which have fishing interests in the region, raised objections.
The U.S. and New Zealand revised their plans, reducing the sanctuary's proposed size by 40 percent. Environmental groups including Pew criticized the changes initially but have come to embrace the current proposal.
Next week the Antarctic nations also plan to consider a separate proposal to create a series of smaller marine reserves in East Antarctica. Those areas would come with less stringent protections than those in the Ross Sea proposal.
People involved in the negotiations say Russia remains the key to completing the Ross Sea agreement, with Ukraine likely to follow Moscow's lead.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said Wednesday that Russia was ready to talk.
"I'm aware that there are some plans for dialogue with the Russian delegation, which is an encouraging sign," he said. "We are certainly moving in a better direction than we have been previously."
Members of the Russian delegation didn't respond to emails from The Associated Press.
The head of the U.S. delegation, Evan Bloom, said in an interview last month that the size of the proposed sanctuary was reduced based on the findings of a committee which gives scientific advice to the nations, and that it remained faithful to the original objectives.
"One has to make tactical decisions in negotiations," said Bloom, the director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs. "I still think the proposal is very strong, very robust, very pro-conservation, and viable."
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-10-17-Antarctic%20Sanctuary/id-cebcf875873843959888d0dedb25bfbaSimilar Articles: Supernatural yom kippur Kendra Spears Nexus 7 helen thomas
AP sources: 476,000 Obamacare applications filed
File- Thgis Oct. 17, 2013 file photo shows President Barack Obama speaking in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Administration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of President Obama's signature legislation. However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it's unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
File- Thgis Oct. 17, 2013 file photo shows President Barack Obama speaking in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Administration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of President Obama's signature legislation. However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it's unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Administration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of President Barack Obama's signature legislation.
However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it's unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period.
Obama's advisers say the president has been frustrated by the flawed rollout. During one of his daily health care briefings last week, he told advisers assembled in the Oval Office that the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the website ready to operate as promised.
The president is expected to address the problems on Monday during a health care event at the White House. Cabinet members and other top administration officials will also be traveling around the country in the coming weeks to encourage sign-ups in areas with the highest population of uninsured people.
The first three weeks of sign-ups have been marred by a cascade of computer problems, which the administration says it is working around the clock to correct. The rough rollout has been a glaring embarrassment for Obama, who invested significant time and political capital in getting the law passed during his first term.
The officials said technology experts from inside and outside the government are set to work on the glitches, though they did not say how many workers were being added.
Officials did say staffing has been increased at call centers by about 50 percent. As problems persist on the federally run website, the administration is encouraging more people to sign up for insurance over the phone.
The officials did not want to be cited by name and would not discuss the health insurance rollout unless they were granted anonymity.
Despite the widespread problems, the Obama administration has yet to fully explain what went wrong with the online system consumers were supposed to use to sign up for coverage.
Initially, administration officials blamed a high volume of interest for the frozen screens that many people encountered. Since then, the administration has also acknowledged unspecified problems with software and some elements of the system's design.
Interest in the insurance markets appears to continue to be high. Officials said about 19 million people had visited HealthCare.gov as of Friday night.
People seeking insurance must fill out applications before selecting specific plans. The applications include personal information, including income figures that are used to calculate any subsidies the applicant may qualify for.
More than one person can be included on an application.
Of the 476,000 applications that have been started, just over half have been from the 36 states where the federal government is taking the lead in running the markets. The rest of the applications have come from the 14 states running their own markets, along with Washington, D.C.
The White House says it plans to release the first enrollment totals from both the federal and state-run markets in mid-November.
An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press showed that the administration projected nearly a half-million people would enroll for the insurance markets during the first month.
Officials say they expect enrollments to be heavier toward the end of the six-month sign-up window.
In an ironic twist, the problems with the rollout were overshadowed by Republican efforts to get changes to the health care law in exchange for funding the government. That effort failed and the government reopened last week with the health care law intact.
Stung by that defeat, some Republicans are now calling for the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The White House says it has complete confidence in her.
House Republicans have scheduled a hearing next week to look into the rollout problems. White House allies say they're confident the problems are being addressed.
"There's no question the marketplace website needs some improvement," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the architects of the law. "The administration needs to fix the computer bugs and I'm confident that they're working around the clock to fix the problems."
___
Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-19-Obama-Health%20Care/id-b4f7bdd6e0894d40a34ae6512bf17ea8Related Topics: NASA Gareth Bale Justin Morneau allen iverson Frank Castillo
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Are These Avant-Garde Popsicles the Frozen Treats of the Future?
Whether they're ice pops or flat Paletas, most icy treats aren't much of an adventure. But these faceted vegan delicacies up the ante: They're designed to have a smoother melt and better mouth feel and than anything you've tried before. That's right—highly engineered popsicle mouth feel. Welcome to the future. It's time to savor the flavor.
     |
Tags: nascar Eiza González fox sports paulina gretzky whitney houston
Adrian Peterson -- DNA Test Proved He Was the Dad
Adrian Peterson
DNA Test Proved He Was the Dad
Exclusive
When Adrian Peterson was told that he might be the father of a love child in South Dakota, he suspected it was true ... but he took a DNA test just to be sure, TMZ has learned.Sources very familiar with the situation tell us ... when AP was notified about the situation roughly 2 to 3 months ago, he immediately offered to step up and help out in any way he could.
Adrian didn't suspect he was being targeted in any sort of cash grab -- but we're told that he realized it would be smart to get definitive proof that he was the child's biological dad before he made any big moves.
We're told ... once the test came back positive, AP supercharged his efforts to be a part of the kid's life -- and also offered to help out financially.
As we first reported, Adrian had initially planned to meet the child in the next couple of weeks -- but instead, he rushed to the hospital last week after learning the boy was on life support stemming from injuries allegedly caused by the mother's boyfriend. The boy died shortly after Adrian visited him.
Our sources say ... Adrian plans to fly back to South Dakota to attend his son's funeral later this week. We're also told he will continue to communicate with the mother in the future.
Get TMZ Breaking News alerts to your inbox
Category: rose byrne Ray Rice
Einstein on the Beach: Opera Review
The Bottom Line
For a work that is now 37 years old, "Einstein on the Beach" remains challenging and utterly modern.
One of the most famous but little-seen American high art totems of the modern era, Einstein on the Beach, alit in Los Angeles for the first time for three performances over the weekend. Presented by L.A. Opera and defined as such by its creators, it is less an opera than an acute sensory occasion, an uninterrupted four-hour-plus cascade of pulsating Philip Glass music, extraordinary stage pictures courtesy of Robert Wilson, arresting movement and choreography by Lucinda Childs, and meanings that percolate, confound, sometimes bubble to the surface and often elude. For a work that is now 37 years old, it remains challenging and utterly modern. And quite something to behold.
Between its debut at the Avignon Festival in 1976 and the present incarnation, Einstein has been mounted just two other times -- in 1984 and 1992 -- and had ever been presented in the United States only in New York City and at Princeton. The 2012-14 tour started in Ann Arbor and made 10 previous stops (including Toronto, Brooklyn and Berkeley in North America) before the Los Angeles engagement. At this point, the only remaining destination is Paris in early January, and, as Wilson and Glass are both in their 70s, there can be little doubt that this will be the last time the venture will be undertaken by its creators.
PHOTOS: THR's Composers Roundtable: 6 Film Music Heavyweights Swap War Stories
What Einstein would be like interpreted by other hands is as puzzling as the most abstract and abstruse interludes in the work itself. Even now, this is a piece in which the spectator is neither encouraged nor expected to find literal or even symbolic meaning in anything in particular; one is advised just to go with it to avoid frustration and the accusation of being too conventionally minded. Why does a big locomotive steam engine come on- and offstage? Why do we spend several minutes watching a large illuminated beam be raised with agonizing slowness from a horizontal to a vertical position? What is the relevance of the two big courtroom scenes? What does Einstein being on the beach have to do with anything? Why is David Cassidy referenced numerous times? Did Clint Eastwood get his idea about the empty chair from the conspicuous one here?
As an Einstein virgin, these and dozens of other odd notions entered and collided within my head while I eventually settled into a state of what I can best gauge as moderate bliss. To a great extent, the mellow mood is created by Glass' score, which runs up and waterfalls down scales in endless repetitions that are nonetheless subtly altered and staggering to consider when being played onstage by violin virtuoso Jennifer Koh (made up with wild hair to resemble old Albert, a fiddle player himself), who concludes her tour de force by sticking out her tongue at the audience.
Glass' relentless arpeggios and propulsive energy creation, I decided in due time, represent the audible correlative to the constant bombardment of atoms, the nature and potential of which Einstein was forever weighing. The furious violin playing is the musical equivalent to Einstein's writing of formulas, while the assertive jazzy sax solo that ultimately erupts out of the mass of churning sound is Einstein's mental breakthrough and the explosion of the nuclear age.
Ultimately, it seems to me that the secret of Einstein, what binds it together and makes it cohere, is the push-and-pull between the ultra-discipline and order of its artistry and the inchoate nature of its subject. Once I embraced the experience on those terms, much of the work seemed clear and the mysteries remained, well, mysteries. And exquisitely rendered ones at that, in a production where not a note, gesture, word, glance, prop, lighting cue or effect was out of place.
Dates: Oct. 11-13
Venue: L.A. Opera
Director: Robert Wilson
Set and lighting designer: Robert Wilson
Music and lyrics: Philip Glass
Choreographer: Lucinda Childs
Conductor: Michael Riesman
250 minutes
Related Topics: survivor apple katy perry Ncaa Football Scores egypt
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)