Official Vatican text of pope's speech

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Following is the official English language translation provided by the Vatican of Pope Francis' Easter Sunday message, delivered in Italian from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.

___

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, Happy Easter! Happy Easter!

What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons.

Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious! The mercy of God always triumphs!

We too, like the women who were Jesus' disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom. The love God can do this!

This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell - to the abyss of separation from God - this same merciful love has flooded with light the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life, but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our humanity, opening us to a future of hope.

This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness. Because God is life, life alone, and we are his glory: the living man (cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).

Dear brothers and sisters, Christ died and rose once for all, and for everyone, but the power of the Resurrection, this passover from slavery to evil to the freedom of goodness, must be accomplished in every age, in our concrete existence, in our everyday lives. How many deserts, even today, do human beings need to cross! Above all, the desert within, when we have no love for God or neighbour, when we fail to realize that we are guardians of all that the Creator has given us and continues to give us. God's mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can restore life to dry bones (cf. Ez 37:1-14).

So this is the invitation which I address to everyone: Let us accept the grace of Christ's Resurrection! Let us be renewed by God's mercy, let us be loved by Jesus, let us enable the power of his love to transform our lives too; and let us become agents of this mercy, channels through which God can water the earth, protect all creation and make justice and peace flourish.

And so we ask the risen Jesus, who turns death into life, to change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace. Yes, Christ is our peace, and through him we implore peace for all the world.

Peace for the Middle East, and particularly between Israelis and Palestinians, who struggle to find the road of agreement, that they may willingly and courageously resume negotiations to end a conflict that has lasted all too long. Peace in Iraq, that every act of violence may end, and above all for dear Syria, for its people torn by conflict and for the many refugees who await help and comfort. How much blood has been shed! And how much suffering must there still be before a political solution to the crisis will be found?

Peace for Africa, still the scene of violent conflicts. In Mali, may unity and stability be restored; in Nigeria, where attacks sadly continue, gravely threatening the lives of many innocent people, and where great numbers of persons, including children, are held hostage by terrorist groups. Peace in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in the Central African Republic, where many have been forced to leave their homes and continue to live in fear.

Peace in Asia, above all on the Korean peninsula: may disagreements be overcome and a renewed spirit of reconciliation grow.

Peace in the whole world, still divided by greed looking for easy gain, wounded by the selfishness which threatens human life and the family, selfishness that continues in human trafficking, the most extensive form of slavery in this twenty-first century; human trafficking is the most extensive form of slavery in this twenty-first century! Peace to the whole world, torn apart by violence linked to drug trafficking and by the iniquitous exploitation of natural resources! Peace to this our Earth! Made the risen Jesus bring comfort to the victims of natural disasters and make us responsible guardians of creation.

Dear brothers and sisters, to all of you who are listening to me, from Rome and from all over of the world, I address the invitation of the Psalm: "Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever. Let Israel say: 'His steadfast love endures for ever'" (Ps 117:1-2).

Greeting

Dear Brothers and Sisters, to you who have come from all over the world to this Square at the heart of Christianity, and to you linked by modern technology, I repeat my greeting: Happy Easter!

Bear in your families and in your countries the message of joy, hope and peace which every year, on this day, is powerfully renewed.

May the risen Lord, the conqueror of sin and death, be a support to you all, especially to the weakest and neediest. Thank you for your presence and for the witness of your faith. A thought and a special thank-you for the beautiful flowers, which come from the Netherlands. To all of you I affectionately say again: may the risen Christ guide all of you and the whole of humanity on the paths of justice, love and peace.

__

Copyright Vatican Publishing House

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/official-vatican-text-popes-speech-135245923.html

doppler radar colorado rockies moonshine news channel 4 radar weather morosini death jacoby ellsbury

Tape Your Friends' Wi-Fi Password to their Router for Easy Tech Support

While I think it's safe to assume that the average Lifehacker reader knows their Wi-Fi password off the top of their head, the same can probably not be said for most of our friends and family members.

When you visit with someone a little less tech-savvy, make a point to find their Wi-Fi password and write it on a piece of masking tape. Just stick the tape to the back or the bottom of their router, and they'll always have it nearby if they need to share if with a house guest or service technician. This will also come in handy if you're trying to remotely diagnose their connection issues over the phone.

Of course, if this is your own router we're talking about, it's much cooler to use a QR code for easy password sharing.

A Quick and Easy Wi-Fi Password Reminder Solution | Apartment Therapy

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/AHhsIe0kOMQ/tape-your-friends-wi+fi-password-to-their-router-for-easy-tech-support

easter recipes live free or die hard carlos pena amanda bynes arrested f 18 jet crash in virginia beach john tortorella

Womenpriests Movement Grows Despite Censure

By Megan O'Neil
Religion News Service

(RNS) If heading a religious community is a lonely job for any woman, a Catholic Womenpriest might be the loneliest of all.

Yet the ordination of Catholic women within the Womenpriests movement, which flaunts Roman Catholic Church law forbidding the practice, continues to grow, as members demand greater inclusion of women in the institutional church.

The most recent ordination was on Feb. 9, in Toledo, Ohio, and five more are scheduled for 2013.

"I really believe that this is the time when we need to stand up for women's rights in the church," said Jeannette Love, 68, who helps lead the Catholic Church of the Beatitudes, a Womenpriests community in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Sure, it is easy for us to go to a Protestant church, but then we don't become change agents in our own community."

Beatitudes is one of nearly four dozen Catholic communities in the United States led by women ordained in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. Its ranks now include more than 100 deacons, priests, and bishops in the U.S. and abroad.

The original members -- known as the Danube Seven -- were ordained in Europe in 2002 by Argentine Bishop Romulo Antonio Braschi, a progressive who broke with the Vatican in the 1970s. That ordination forms Womenpriests' claim for legitimacy.

Subsequently, the Womenpriests have ordained each other. In 2008, church officials threatened excommunication on any woman seeking ordination, and any clergy member who assists her.

In a 2010 poll by The New York Times and CBS, however, 59 percent of American Catholics favor the ordination of women.

Support for women's ordination as deacons is even stronger. One rung below priests in the church hierarchy, deacons can perform some functions, such as baptism.

Church law forbidding female priests is nuanced, said the Rev. James Heft, head of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California. It is based, in part, on "fittingness."

"It is more appropriate for a man to play the role of Hamlet than a woman," Heft said. "You could say that the argument is that. If the re-enactment of the Last Supper presided by Jesus is a good analogy to the Mass, than it is more appropriate that a man preside."

There is historical evidence that women played an important role in ministry in the early church, but there is no proof they were ordained, Heft said.

"The present pope, before he became pope, offered his opinion that he thought it was an infallible teaching," said Heft. "Strictly speaking, this could change."

The Womenpriests movement represents one strain in a decades-old push for the ordination of women by some Catholics. Most of those ordained have advanced degrees in religious studies or theology, and years of experience in ministry, including stints as members of Catholic religious orders.

The movement attracts Catholics who have broken with the Vatican on issues beyond women's ordination, including homosexuality, birth control and married priests. Most are of retirement age, although there are some young families.

"What impressed me most was its aggressive inclusiveness," said Mike Crowley, 66, a member of the Mary Magdalene Apostle Catholic Community in San Diego. "Not just (with) women; they aggressively include all the people that the church is doing its best to drive out -- young divorced people, gays and lesbians."

Jane Via, a retired prosecutor who heads Mary Magdalene, acknowledged that Womenpriests have done little to trigger dialogue at the institutional level.

After being ordained a deacon in 2004 and a priest in 2006, she lost access to most clergy friends. They are too angry or too scared to maintain the relationship, Via said. Her congregation, like other Womenpriests communities, rents space in a Protestant church.

"It is a huge justice issue," Via said. "It is not just about getting women ordained in the Catholic Church, it is about changing the Catholic Church so that gender equality pervades it."

Members of the Womenpriests movement said they are hopeful that the election of Pope Francis will mean a renewal of pastoral church leadership.

"We look forward to the birth of a new era that promotes the inclusion of the voices of women, the poor and all others marginalized by society," the organization said in a statement on its website.

In Santa Barbara, the Catholic Church of the Beatitudes is small -- regular Mass attendance tops at about 35 people -- but steady, Love said.

"Our saying is we are here and we are not going away," Love said. "My hope and dream is that we will continue to grow, not only in numbers, but in depth."

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/2013/03/30/womenpriests-movement-grows-despite-censure_n_2985804.html

fisker karma super tuesday states shepard fairey is snooki pregnant snooki pregnant gbc hedy lamarr

PFT: Seahawks trading Flynn appears 'imminent'

Getty Images

Steelers safety Troy Polamalu says that if the NFL is going to keep passing rules designed to protect the players, the players should get a vote in those rules.

?There?s rule changes every year,? Polamalu said in an interview on SportsCenter. ?I do wish, however, that the NFL did have a voice from the players? side, whether it?s our players? union president, or team captains, or our executive committee on the players? side. Because we?re the guys that realize the risk, we?re the guys on the field.?

Polamalu made his statements within the context of a discussion of the new rule against delivering forcible blows with the top of the helmet outside the tackle box ? a rule change that the Competition Committee did, in fact, ask for player input on before presenting the change to the owners, who approved it by a vote of 31-1. Polamalu said that while he?ll learn to live with the rule, he worries that the game is changing too much.

?We?re professional athletes, so we can adjust, but we grow up understanding instinctively how to play the game of football, and it?s really hard to say, ?OK, eventually I?m not going to be able to use my head, or wrap with my arms? or whatever it may be,? Polamalu said. ?I think you can only do so much to the game before you really start to change the essence of our sport. Our sport is not made for anybody to be able to play it, especially at the NFL level, so there?s obviously some risk that we all take knowingly.?

In Polamalu?s view, there?s a point at which rules designed to make the game safer in reality just make the game softer.

?Football is a very physical sport, and a lot of what separates the good from the great [is] the ability to receive contact, to give contact, to overcome the mental block of injury when you have contact,? Polamalu said. ?I understand that they want the sport to be safer but eventually you?re going to start to take away from the essence of this game and it?s not really going to be the football that we all love and have a passion for.?

And so Polamalu joins the list of players who respond to the rules designed to protect them by saying they don?t want to be protected.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/29/report-trade-for-flynn-appears-imminent/related/

lupe fiasco jason wu jason wu Mavericks Surf Stonewall Inaugural Ball julio jones

Three dozen indicted in Atlanta cheating scandal

ATLANTA (AP) ? Juwanna Guffie was sitting in her fifth-grade classroom taking a standardized test when, authorities say, the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help.

"I don't want your answers, I want to take my own test," Juwanna told her teacher, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

On Friday, Juwanna ? now 14 ? watched as Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools' ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.

Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.

During a news conference Friday, Howard highlighted the case of Juwanna and another student, saying they demonstrated "the plight of many children" in the Atlanta school system.

Their stories were among many that investigators heard in hundreds of interviews with school administrators, staff, parents and students during a 21-month-long investigation.

According to Howard, Juwanna said that when she declined her teacher's offer, the teacher responded that she was just trying to help her students. Her class ended up getting some of the highest scores in the school and won a trophy for their work. Juwanna felt guilty but didn't tell anyone about her class' cheating because she was afraid of retaliation and feared her teacher would lose her job.

She eventually told her sister and later told the district attorney's investigators. Still confident in her ability to take a test on her own, Juwanna got the highest reading score on a standardized test this year.

The other student cited by Howard was a third-grader who failed a benchmark exam and received the worst score in her reading class in 2006. The girl was held back, yet when she took a separate assessment test not long afterward, she passed with flying colors.

Howard said the girl's mother, Justina Collins, knew something was wrong, but was told by school officials that the child simply was a good test-taker. The girl is now in ninth grade, reading at a fifth-grade level.

"I have a 15-year-old now who is behind in achieving her goal of becoming what she wants to be when she graduates. It's been hard trying to help her catch up," Collins said at the news conference.

The allegations date back to 2005. In addition to Hall, 34 other former school system employees were indicted. Four were high-level administrators, six were principals, two were assistant principals, six were testing coordinators and 14 were teachers. A school improvement specialist and a school secretary were also indicted.

Howard didn't directly answer a question about whether prosecutors believe Hall led the conspiracy.

"What we're saying is, is that without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree that it took place. Because as we know, this took place in 58 of the Atlanta Public Schools. And it would not have taken place if her actions had not made that possible," the prosecutor said.

Richard Deane, an attorney for Hall, told The New York Times that Hall continues to deny the charges and expects to be vindicated. Deane said the defense was making arrangements for bond.

"We note that as far as has been disclosed, despite the thousands of interviews that were reportedly done by the governor's investigators and others, not a single person reported that Dr. Hall participated in or directed them to cheat on the C.R.C.T.," he said later in a statement provided to the Times.

The tests were the key measure the state used to determine whether it met the federal No Child Left Behind law. Schools with good test scores get extra federal dollars to spend in the classroom or on teacher bonuses.

It wasn't immediately clear how much bonus money Hall received. Howard did not say and the amount wasn't mentioned in the indictment.

"Those results were caused by cheating. ... And the money that she received, we are alleging that money was ill-gotten," Howard said.

A 2011 state investigation found cheating by nearly 180 educators in 44 Atlanta schools. Educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in, investigators said. Teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation, creating a culture of "fear and intimidation," the investigation found.

State schools Superintendent John Barge said last year he believed the state's new accountability system would remove the pressure to cheat on standardized tests because it won't be the sole way the state determines student growth. The pressure was part of what some educators in the system blamed for their cheating.

A former top official in the New York City school system who later headed the Newark, N.J. system for three years, Hall served as Atlanta's superintendent for more than a decade, which is rare for an urban schools chief. She was named Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 and credited with raising student test scores and graduation rates, particularly among the district's poor and minority students. But the award quickly lost its luster as her district became mired in the scandal.

In a video message to schools staff before she retired in the summer of 2011, Hall warned that the state investigation launched by former Gov. Sonny Perdue would likely reveal "alarming" behavior.

"It's become increasingly clear that a segment of our staff chose to violate the trust that was placed in them," Hall said. "There is simply no excuse for unethical behavior and no room in this district for unethical conduct. I am confident that aggressive, swift action will be taken against anyone who believed so little in our students and in our system of support that they turned to dishonesty as the only option."

The cheating came to light after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.

Most of the 178 educators named in the special investigators' report in 2011 resigned, retired, did not have their contracts renewed or appealed their dismissals and lost. Twenty-one educators have been reinstated and three await hearings to appeal their dismissals, said Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Stephen Alford.

APS Superintendent Erroll Davis said the district, which has about 50,000 students, is now focused on nurturing an ethical environment, providing quality education and supporting the employees who were not implicated.

"I know that our children will succeed when the adults around them work hard, work together, and do so with integrity," he said in a statement.

The Georgia Professional Standards Commission is responsible for licensing teachers and has been going through the complaints against teachers, said commission executive secretary Kelly Henson. Of the 159 cases the commission has reviewed, 44 resulted in license revocations, 100 got two-year suspensions and nine were suspended for less than two years, Henson said. No action was taken against six of the educators.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/3-dozen-indicted-atlanta-cheating-scandal-214241949.html

dodgeball 2012 pro bowl postsecret ufc on fox 2 supercross christina aguilera etta james funeral sundance film festival

Researchers engineer plant cell walls to boost sugar yields for biofuels

Mar. 29, 2013 ? When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it's generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material on Earth. For thousands of years it has been used as animal feed, and for the past two centuries has been a staple of the paper industry. This abundant resource, however, could also supply the sugars needed to produce advanced biofuels that can supplement or replace fossil fuels, providing several key technical challenges are met.

One of these challenges is finding ways to more cost-effectively extract those sugars. Major steps towards achieving this breakthrough are being taken by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).

"Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels," says Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for JBEI's Feedstocks Division. "Working with the model plant, Arabidopsis, as a demonstration tool, we have genetically manipulated secondary cell walls to reduce the production of lignin while increasing the yield of fuel sugars."

JBEI is a scientific partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) whose mission is to advance the development of next generation biofuels that can provide the nation with clean, green and renewable transportation energy that will create jobs and boost the economy. Loque and his research group have focused on reducing the natural recalcitrance of plant cell walls to give up their sugars. Unlike the simple starch-based sugars in corn and other grains, the complex polysaccharide sugars in plant cell walls are locked within a robust aromatic polymer called lignin. Setting these sugars free from their lignin cage has required the use of expensive and environmentally harsh chemicals at high temperatures, a process that helps drive production costs of advance biofuels prohibitively high.

"By embedding polysaccharide polymers and reducing their extractability and accessibility to hydrolytic enzymes, lignin is the major contributor to cell wall recalcitrance," Loque says. "Unfortunately, most efforts to reduce lignin content during plant development have resulted in severe biomass yield reduction and a loss of integrity in vessels, a key tissue responsible for water and nutrient distribution from roots to the above-ground organs."

Lignin has also long posed problems for pulping and animal feed. To overcome the lignin problem, Loque and his colleagues rewired the regulation of lignin biosynthesis and created an artificial positive feedback loop (APFL) to enhance secondary cell wall biosynthesis in specific tissue. The idea was to reduce cell wall recalcitrance and boost polysaccharide content without impacting plant development.

"When we applied our APFL to Arabidopsis plants engineered so that lignin biosynthesis is disconnected from the fiber secondary cell wall regulatory network, we maintained the integrity of the vessels and were able to produce healthy plants with reduced lignin and enhanced polysaccharide deposition in the cell walls," Loque says. "After various pretreatments, these engineered plants exhibited improved sugar releases from enzymatic hydrolysis as compared to wild type plants. In other words we accumulated the good stuff -- polysaccharides -- without spoiling it with lignin."

Loque and his colleagues believe that the APFL strategy they used to enhance polysaccharide deposition in the fibers of their Arabidopsis plants could be rapidly implemented into other vascular plant species as well. This could increase cell wall content to the benefit of the pulping industry and forage production as well as for bioenergy applications. It could also be used to increase the strength of cereal straws, reducing crop lodging and seed losses. Since regulatory networks and other components of secondary cell wall biosynthesis have been highly conserved by evolution, the researchers feel their lignin rewiring strategy should also be readily transferrable to other plant species. They are currently developing new and even better versions of these strategies.

"We now know that we can significantly re-engineer plant cell walls as long as we maintain the integrity of vessels and other key tissues," Loque says.

A paper describing this research in detail has been published in Plant Biotechnology Journal. The paper is titled "Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants." Loque is the corresponding author. Co-authors are Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer and Henrik Scheller.

This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Fan Yang, Prajakta Mitra, Ling Zhang, Lina Prak, Yves Verhertbruggen, Jin-Sun Kim, Lan Sun, Kejian Zheng, Kexuan Tang, Manfred Auer, Henrik V. Scheller, Dominique Loqu. Engineering secondary cell wall deposition in plants. Plant Biotechnology Journal, 2013; 11 (3): 325 DOI: 10.1111/pbi.12016

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/top_news/top_environment/~3/VnUOT6b1alA/130329161247.htm

brady quinn brady quinn bloom box obama sweet home chicago accenture match play george washington carver king cake

HIV Test Urged for 7K Dental Patients

The Tulsa Health Department is warning 7,000 patients of a local dentist's office that they could have contracted HIV, hepatitis B or hepatitis C from poor sterilization practices.

Dr. Wayne Harrington, an oral surgeon with a practice in Tulsa, Okla., is being investigated by the state dental board, the state bureau of narcotics and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency because one of his patients recently tested positive for hepatitis C and HIV without known risk factors other than receiving dental treatment.

Upon hearing of the infected patient, the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry conducted a surprise inspection of Harrington's practice on March 18, allegedly finding numerous problems, including regular use of a rusty set of instruments on patients with known infections, and the practice of pouring bleach on wounds until they "turned white."

Calls to Harrington's office were directed to an operator, who told ABC News the clinic no longer took voicemails. The operator said patients were being referred to another clinic, but did not disclose the clinic's name.

Susan Rogers, executive director of Oklahoma's Board of Dentistry, called the incident a "perfect storm." On top of his many violations in sanitary practice, the dentist was a Medicaid provider, which means he had a high proportion of patients with HIV or hepatitis, she said.

Harrington and his staff told investigators that he treated a "high population of known infectious disease carrier patients," according to a complaint filed by the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry.

Chilling Details Emerge on Newtown School Shooter Adam Lanza Watch Video Secrets of the Teenage Mind: What Parents Should Know Watch Video

He allegedly allowed unlicensed dental assistants to administer medication, according to the complaint. These assistants were left to decide which medications to administer, and how much was appropriate.

Drug cabinets were unlocked and unsupervised during the day, and Harrington did not keep an inventory log of drugs, some of which were controlled substances. One drug vial expired in 1993.

"During the inspections, Dr. Harrington referred to his staff regarding all sterilization and drug procedures in his office," the complaint read. "He advised, 'They take care of that. I don't.'"

Harrington allegedly re-used needles, contaminating drugs with potentially harmful bacteria and trace amounts of other drugs, according to the complaint. Although patient-specific drug records indicated that they were using morphine in 2012, no morphine had been ordered since 2009.

The instruments for infected patients was given an extra dip in bleach in addition to normal cleaning methods, but they had red-brown rust spots, indicating that they were "porous and cannot be properly sterilized," according to the complaint.

The Tulsa Health Department said Harrington's patients will receive letters by mail notifying them of the risk and steps to obtain free-of-charge testing.

While 7,000 patients may have been exposed, Joseph Perz, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it's "extremely rare" to see dental transmission of HIV and hepatitis B or C. In July 2012, 8,000 Coloradans were notified that their dentist had reused needles, potentially exposing them to the blood-borne viruses. But not a single case was identified, according to the CDC.

Dental transmission is not impossible, however. Perz cited a dental fair three years ago in which hepatitis B was transmitted between patients.

In July 2012, more than 1,800 veterans who received dental care at a St. Louis VA Medical Center were warned that improper cleaning of dental tools may have exposed them to HIV and hepatitis.

The Tulsa Health Department has set up a hotline at (918) 595-4500 for people with questions.

ABC News' Dr. Richard Besser and Katie Moisse contributed to this story.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/rogue-dentist-exposed-7000-patients-hiv-hepatitis/story?id=18834611

easter recipes live free or die hard carlos pena amanda bynes arrested f 18 jet crash in virginia beach john tortorella

Pat Riley to Danny Ainge: Shut up

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Miami Heat President Pat Riley has added another chapter to his rivalry with the Boston Celtics.

After LeBron James complained about calls and Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge chided him for it, Riley lashed back Friday night.

Riley's response: "Danny Ainge needs to shut the (expletive) up and manage his own team."

This saga started Wednesday after Miami's 27-game winning streak ended in Chicago. James told reporters that night that he does not believe some of the hard fouls he takes are "basketball plays." A day later, Ainge told Boston radio station WEEI that "it's almost embarrassing that LeBron would complain about officiating."

Riley was clearly irked, calling Ainge "the biggest whiner going when he was a player."

The Heat and Celtics play April 12 in Miami.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pat-riley-danny-ainge-shut-010424469--spt.html

2013 NCAA Bracket leprechaun ufc Chris Cline New Pope Jeff Gordon Test Drive Tamar Braxton

Surging student-loan debt is crushing the system

Scott Cohn , CNBC ? ? ? 4 hrs.

Student-loan defaults surged in the first three months of 2013, while efforts to collect bad loans are faltering, according to credit analysts and government audits. It is the latest twist in a college debt crisis that is hanging over recent graduates and dragging on the broader economy.

Credit-rating firm Equifax said $3.5 billion in government and private student loans went bad in the first three months of 2013, the most since the company began keeping track. The U.S. Department of Education said 6.8 million federal student loan borrowers are now in default, representing $85 billion in debt. And the department's systems for collecting the bad loans are struggling to keep up.

The Department's Office of Inspector General found in December that more than $1.1 billion in defaulted student loans were stuck in a sort of computer limbo.

Read More: Study: Student Loan Balances Are Up, and So Are Delinquencies

"The Department is not pursuing collection remedies and borrowers are unable to take steps to remove their loans from default status," wrote Assistant Inspector General for Audit Patrick Howard in the Dec. 13 report, which blames a system installed in 2011 by Xerox that is supposed to transfer defaulted loan accounts from servicing companies to private collection agencies. Those collection firms have considerable power, including the ability to garnish up to 15 percent of a borrower's wages. But none of that can happen until the accounts are transferred.

A Xerox spokesman declined to comment, referring inquiries to the Department of Education.

"While we regret this delay, we are taking active steps to work with the vendor to resolve the problem," Department of Education spokesman Chris Greene said in an e-mail. He denied that borrowers who have cleared up their defaults are not being removed from defaulted status, but acknowledged "a small percentage" of bad loans have been caught up in the problem.

He said some $600 million of the affected loans will be transferred "in the coming weeks."

Read More:How the Student Loan Crisis Drags Down Home Prices

But government auditors say some damage is already done. The Inspector General's office says the collection problem led to a "material weakness" in the department's financial controls last fiscal year ? an issue Education Secretary Arne Duncan has vowed to address. Nonetheless, spokesman Chris Greene says the numbers came out right in the end.

"Taxpayers and borrowers can rely on the integrity and accuracy of our financial reporting," Greene said.

Critics say the collection issues are a sign of a much larger problem.

"I take personal responsibility for the situation beginning, but personal responsibility does not mean you spend the rest of your life financially compromised," said Jason Paskowitz, a financial analyst from Tenafly, N.J.

Read More: Student-Loan Delinquencies Now Surpass Credit Cards

Paskowitz is 46 years old, but still owes more than $39,000 on loans he took out to finance his college education at Binghamton University in New York in the 1980s.

He borrowed only about $20,000. But after Paskowitz fell ill during his first year of law school in 1989 and dropped out, his loans went into default. Interest and fees began piling up, so even though records show he has paid roughly $26,000, he still owes nearly twice his original principal ? 25 years after graduation.

He says he was hounded for years by collection agents ? "they called me every name in the book" ? and in 2008 was hit with an "administrative garnishment" seizing nine percent of his debt. He says the collection agencies did not give him the full range of options available to him under the law.

"Their primary motivation is just to get as much as they can as quickly as they can," he said.

Persis Yu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston says keeping borrowers on the hook or not providing them with information can be in the collection firms' best interests.

"Their incentives aren't necessarily aligned with protecting borrowers' interests," she said.

Read More: Lenders Mobilize to Help College Kids Manage Student Loans

The Department recently attempted to address those concerns by lowering some of the commissions it pays the collection firms. Converting a defaulted loan to a "rehabilitation loan" ? which rolls outstanding loan balances and fees into a new loan that removes the borrower from default ? now pays the collection firm as little as eleven percent of the outstanding loan balance, compared to as much as 15 percent previously. But the option is still far more lucrative than a disability discharge, which wipes out the loan entirely and pays the collection firm a few hundred dollars in administrative fees.

"The Higher Education Act is a very complicated statute," Yu said, "and debt collectors aren't necessarily in the best position to explain options to borrowers."

But spokesman Chris Greene says the Department of Education is keeping tabs on the collection firms and looking out for borrowers' interests?including a new "one-stop" portal for complaints about the firms at https://www.myeddebt.com.

"Our entire approach to default collections is structured to encourage full repayment while ensuring borrowers understand both the consequences of their failure to repay and the options available to help them get out of default."

? 2013 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a1bd1ac/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Csurging0Estudent0Eloan0Edebt0Ecrushing0Esystem0E1C9132387/story01.htm

Human Rights Campaign amanda knox pga tour bioshock infinite smokey robinson smokey robinson kellie pickler

iCloud gets kicked in the Core Data sync -- totally had it coming

iCloud -- specifically the iCloud frameworks for syncing Core Data databases -- has been getting kicked around lately, and by almost all accounts, deservedly so. Back in November developers like Instacast's Vemedio and Steve Streza of Informal Protocol posted about their problems with it and its opacity, and Paul Haddad expressed similar concerns during the second episode of Debug. More so even than Siri and Game Center server issues, it felt like proof positive that Apple faced significant challenges in a future where online services were as important as native software.

As much as iOS 7 and iCloud are more important for Apple than next-generation hardware, iCloud is arguably more important than iOS 7 because, for Apple, it's an even bigger challenge.

Since then, more developers have come forward to share their frustrations with Core Data sync. In a post intended to reassure users of NetNewsWire about the app's future in a post-Google Reader world, Daniel Pasco of BlackPixel wrote:

As far as sync is concerned, we knew we would likely need an alternative to Google Reader as early as last year. At the time, the option that seemed to make the most sense was to embrace iCloud and Core Data as the new sync solution of choice. We spent a considerable amount of time on this effort, but iCloud and Core Data syncing had issues that we simply could not resolve.

What seems to make the ongoing issues so vexing for developers is that iCloud was introduced with iOS 5 back in 2011, and while iOS 6 in 2012 was an improvement, it wasn't anywhere nearly improvement enough.

Ellis Hamburger of The Verge did a brilliant job summing up much of the reaction and reasoning, calling iCloud Core Data sync a broken promise:

Many veteran developers have learned their lesson and given up on iCloud?s Core Data syncing entirely. "Ultimately, when we looked at iCloud + Core Data for [our app], it was a total no-go as nothing would have worked," said one best-selling iPhone and Mac developer. "Some issues with iCloud Core Data are theoretically unsolvable (stemming from the fact that you?ve put an object model on top of a distributed data store) and others are just plain bugs in the implementation," he said.

One of the reasons for this is, just like with Game Center APIs, Apple has very little skin in the Core Data sync game. They're not making massive use of it, so they're not the first ones hitting pain points and problems. Their developers are, and that's a terrible, terrible thing for everyone.

Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web also pointed out that Apple conflating several distinct services all under the iCloud banner further compounds the problem developers face:

Recent criticism of Apple?s iCloud has exposed just how fractured the brand actually is behind the scenes. Developers are having problems with some of the technologies bundled together under the name and it?s causing some confusion. The truth of the matter is that there are really two iClouds, which couldn?t be more different.

Users who get their mail, contacts, or calendars synched without issue just don't understand what developers are complaining about because, for them, iCloud works, it just doesn't work in that developer's app. That leaves some users thinking developers are actually incompetent or lying.

Glassboard developer Brent Simmons, on Inessential, added that that's the risk of depending on systems you can't control:

How comfortable are you with outsourcing half your app to another company? The answer should be: not at all comfortable.

Just like services are the future for Apple, they're the future for a lot of developers. More important than hardware, arguably more important than software when that is already a core competency, iCloud is what Apple has to nail. Rather than getting kicked around, iCloud has to kick ass.

Update: Rich Siegel of Bare Bones software has weighed in with some interesting technical details on the different ways iCloud works... and doesn't work. It's not possible to pull a single quote out of his piece, so go read the whole thing on his Mistitled blog.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/VXIwsj-NWeU/story01.htm

arnold palmer augusta national blake griffin pau gasol marlins park marbury v. madison 2013 lincoln mkz

Ashley Judd not running for Senate (cbsnews)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/295078042?client_source=feed&format=rss

ohio state vs kansas daniel von bargen the beach blood diamond 8 bit google maps kids choice awards 2012 micah true

Amazon plans to buy social network for book fans

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it plans to acquire the book recommendation website, Goodreads.

In buying Goodreads, Amazon gets a community of bibliophiles primed to buy and recommend books - one of its key areas of business.

"Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world," Russ Grandinetti, Amazon vice president, Kindle Content, said in a release.

Based in San Francisco, Goodreads is a social network site that lets bookworms catalog and review books. Co-founded by Otis Chandler, whose family once published the Los Angeles Times, Goodreads has more than 16 million members, who have generated more than 23 million reviews.

"We're looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally," Chandler, who also serves as CEO of Goodreads, said in a statement.

Terms of the deal, expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/amazon-plans-buy-social-network-book-fans-211924969--finance.html

2012 pro bowl postsecret ufc on fox 2 supercross christina aguilera etta james funeral sundance film festival the flintstones

Saturn is like an antiques shop, Cassini suggests; Moons and rings date back to solar system's birth

Mar. 27, 2013 ? A new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests that Saturn's moons and rings are gently worn vintage goods from around the time of our solar system's birth.

Though they are tinted on the surface from recent "pollution," these bodies date back more than 4 billion years. They are from around the time that the planetary bodies in our neighborhood began to form out of the protoplanetary nebula, the cloud of material still orbiting the sun after its ignition as a star. The paper, led by Gianrico Filacchione, a Cassini participating scientist at Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, has just been published online by The Astrophysical Journal.

"Studying the Saturnian system helps us understand the chemical and physical evolution of our entire solar system," said Filacchione. "We know now that understanding this evolution requires not just studying a single moon or ring, but piecing together the relationships intertwining these bodies."

Data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) have revealed how water ice and also colors -- which are the signs of non-water and organic materials --are distributed throughout the Saturnian system. The spectrometer's data in the visible part of the light spectrum show that coloring on the rings and moons generally is only skin-deep.

Using its infrared range, VIMS also detected abundant water ice -- too much to have been deposited by comets or other recent means. So the authors deduce that the water ices must have formed around the time of the birth of the solar system, because Saturn orbits the sun beyond the so-called "snow line." Out beyond the snow line, in the outer solar system where Saturn resides, the environment is conducive to preserving water ice, like a deep freezer. Inside the solar system's "snow line," the environment is much closer to the sun's warm glow, and ices and other volatiles dissipate more easily.

The colored patina on the ring particles and moons roughly corresponds to their location in the Saturn system. For Saturn's inner ring particles and moons, water-ice spray from the geyser moon Enceladus has a whitewashing effect.

Farther out, the scientists found that the surfaces of Saturn's moons generally were redder the farther they orbited from Saturn. Phoebe, one of Saturn's outer moons and an object thought to originate in the far-off Kuiper Belt, seems to be shedding reddish dust that eventually rouges the surface of nearby moons, such as Hyperion and Iapetus.

A rain of meteoroids from outside the system appears to have turned some parts of the main ring system -- notably the part of the main rings known as the B ring -- a subtle reddish hue. Scientists think the reddish color could be oxidized iron -- rust -- or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which could be progenitors of more complex organic molecules.

One of the big surprises from this research was the similar reddish coloring of the potato-shaped moon Prometheus and nearby ring particles. Other moons in the area were more whitish.

"The similar reddish tint suggests that Prometheus is constructed from material in Saturn's rings," said co-author Bonnie Buratti, a VIMS team member based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Scientists had been wondering whether ring particles could have stuck together to form moons -- since the dominant theory was that the rings basically came from satellites being broken up. The coloring gives us some solid proof that it can work the other way around, too."

"Observing the rings and moons with Cassini gives us an amazing bird's-eye view of the intricate processes at work in the Saturn system, and perhaps in the evolution of planetary systems as well," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, based at JPL. "What an object looks like and how it evolves depends a lot on location, location, location."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. G. Filacchione, F. Capaccioni, R. N. Clark, P. D. Nicholson, D. P. Cruikshank, J. N. Cuzzi, J. I. Lunine, R. H. Brown, P. Cerroni, F. Tosi, M. Ciarniello, B. J. Buratti, M. M. Hedman, E. Flamini. The radial distribution of water ice and chromophores across Saturn's system. Astrophysical Journal, 2013; (accepted) [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/top_news/top_science/~3/r2bvS0rQl3A/130327170155.htm

chaka khan taylor swift safe and sound delilah nevis 2012 sports illustrated swimsuit same day flower delivery valentines day cards

Popularity helps buffer Apple from Chinese state-media attacks

By Melanie Lee

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese Internet users are crying foul over the perceived unfair treatment doled out to Apple Inc by state-run media which has actively criticized the smartphone maker for the past two weeks over its warranty policy.

Apple and Volkswagen AG were singled out on March 15 by state-run China Central Television in its annual corporate malpractice expose. CCTV accused Apple of having discriminatory after-sales service in China compared to the rest of the world.

CCTV's flagship evening news program upped the war of words on Wednesday, citing the national quality watchdog as saying Apple would be punished it did not alter its policy on only offering one-year warranties for MacBook Air computers.

"Apple must change its policy, or the administrative law enforcement authorities will severely deal with (them) in accordance with the relevant laws and rules," it cited an unidentified official with the quality watchdog as saying.

Other state-run outlets have also run articles and editorials criticizing Apple. On Wednesday, the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, ran an editorial attacking Apple for being filled with "unparalleled arrogance".

The editorial was rapidly shared by thousands of micro bloggers on Sina Corp's Weibo platform, but panned by many users who discredited the newspaper.

"Shameless People's Daily jealously scolding people... A brain-dead product of the Cultural Revolution, old and so disgusting," said one micro blogger.

Other users were upset at the targeting of a foreign firm over a petty issue.

"We ordinary people feel that Apple is good and the government is trash. There's obviously an implemented warranty policy, why must (Apple) be treated differently?" said one user.

Another user asked where the newspaper was when it came to reporting on corrupt on local ministries and poisonous milk.

"Do you wish to transfer our focus? Get the ordinary people to curse and blame useless things? There's toxic air, toxic water and tainted milk...We are not fools!" said another user.

STRONG REPUTATION

The intense push-back from Internet users indicates the strong reputation of Apple in China and shows the waning ability of China's state propaganda apparatus to manage opinion online, analysts say.

"Some users may feel that there is an agenda behind focusing on Apple that has more to do with pointing the finger at a famous international brand than the desire to highlight genuine concerns for consumers," said Torsten Stocker, head of Monitor Deloitte's Greater China consumer and retail practice.

Foreign firms are often taken to task very publicly in China where their businesses and reputations are on the line. Late last year, Yum Brands Inc's said its sales suffered after CCTV ran a report on the use of antibiotics in its KFC chickens.

That story went viral on Weibo, which has over 500 million users, and many Weibo users criticized Yum's handling of the incident. Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China and Beijing faces the constant headache on how to balance censorship while letting its citizens blow off steam.

Apple said in a statement on Saturday that it respected Chinese consumers and that its warranty policies were roughly the same worldwide with specific adjustments to adhere to Chinese law.

"Apple has come out relatively unscathed in this situation because consumers have had largely positive experiences with the brand," said Benjamin Cavender, associate principal analyst at China Market Research in Shanghai.

As for Volkswagen, CCTV said the direct shift gearbox transmission was causing some cars to speed up or slow down during driving.

Last week, Volkswagen, which sells more cars in China than any other foreign firm, said it would recall 384,181 vehicles there to fix the problem.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Ron Popeski)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/popularity-helps-buffer-apple-chinese-state-media-attacks-094328778--finance.html

j.k. rowling axl rose google earnings pat burrell hilary rosen grilled cheese allen west

Imaging methodology reveals nano details not seen before: Understanding nanoparticles at atomic scale in 3-D could improve materials

Mar. 27, 2013 ? A team of scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Northwestern University has produced 3-D images and videos of a tiny platinum nanoparticle at atomic resolution that reveal new details of defects in nanomaterials that have not been seen before.

Prior to this work, scientists only had flat, two-dimensional images with which to view the arrangement of atoms. The new imaging methodology developed at UCLA and Northwestern will enable researchers to learn more about a material and its properties by viewing atoms from different angles and seeing how they are arranged in three dimensions.

The study will be published March 27 by the journal Nature.

The authors describe being able to see how the atoms of a platinum nanoparticle -- only 10 namometers in diameter -- are arranged in three dimensions. They also identify how the atoms are arranged around defects in the platinum nanoparticle.

Similar to how CT scans of the brain and body are done in a hospital, the scientists took images of a platinum nanoparticle from many different directions and then pieced the images together using a new method that improved the quality of the images.

This novel method is a combination of three techniques: scanning transmission electron microscopy, equally sloped tomography (EST) and three-dimensional Fourier filtering. Compared to conventional CT, the combined method produces much higher quality 3-D images and allows the direct visualization of atoms inside the platinum nanoparticle in three dimensions.

"Visualizing the arrangement of atoms in materials has played an important role in the evolution of modern science and technology," said Jianwei (John) Miao, who led the work. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA and a researcher with the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

"Our method allows the 3-D imaging of the local structures in materials at atomic resolution, and it is expected to find application in materials sciences, nanoscience, solid state physics and chemistry," he said.

"It turns out that there are details we can only see when we can look at materials in three dimensions," said co-author Laurence D. Marks, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

"We have had suspicions for a long time that there was more going on than we could see from the flat images we had," Marks said. "This work is the first demonstration that this is true at the atomic scale."

Nanotechnology expert Pulickel M. Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice University complimented the research.

"This is the first instance where the three-dimensional structure of dislocations in nanoparticles has been directly revealed at atomic resolution," Ajayan said. "The elegant work demonstrates the power of electron tomography and leads to possibilities of directly correlating the structure of nanoparticles to properties, all in full 3-D view."

Defects can influence many properties of materials, and a technique for visualizing these structures at atomic resolution could lead to new insights beneficial to researchers in a wide range of fields.

"Much of what we know about how materials work, whether it is a catalyst in an automobile exhaust system or the display on a smartphone, has come from electron microscope images of how the atoms are arranged," Marks said. "This new imaging method will open up the atomic world of nanoparticles."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Chien-Chun Chen, Chun Zhu, Edward R. White, Chin-Yi Chiu, M. C. Scott, B. C. Regan, Laurence D. Marks, Yu Huang, Jianwei Miao. Three-dimensional imaging of dislocations in a nanoparticle at atomic resolution. Nature, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nature12009

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/~3/KCt2vVQ9aYc/130327144122.htm

j crew san francisco 49ers san francisco 49ers stan musial Mega 49ers lance armstrong

Teaching Empathy to Young Kids: Standing in Someone Else's Shoes

Why is instilling empathy in children so important? Studies show that children who are taught to feel and show empathy are more likely to possess stronger social skills and be compassionate and helpful to others.

As a stepmother of eight-year-old triplets, I find numerous opportunities to model empathy and talk to them often about ?standing in someone else?s shoes.? (With triplets who?often share clothing, this can sometimes be taken?quite literally!)?One way I teach?empathy is through caring for our pets when they are ill and talking about how sad I feel for them because they don?t feel well. Another way is being especially quiet on the mornings their father needs to sleep in because he worked late the night before. I explain how we are showing we care for Dad when we help him get the rest he needs. Other times, while watching family movies together, I take the time to express happiness for characters when something positive happens to them.

Related: How to Stop Taking Your Childs Behavior Personally

This last?Tuesday night, I was very pleased to see my efforts to model empathy unfold before my eyes. Upon returning home from a busy work day, I walked in to see that our typical not-so-tidy home looked immaculate. All three of my stepchildren ran to give me a warm welcoming hug, while excitedly awaiting my response. I said, ?Wow! The house looks amazing!? to which Haley proudly announced, ?We cleaned it for you!?

Thanking them, I pulled them in closer. It felt so good to come home to a picked up, organized home. I asked their father what had inspired the kids to clean the house. He said, ?Well, on the way home from school, I told them that you were tired from two very busy days at work and would need some relaxation time tonight. Haley came up with the idea to clean the house for you, and they all couldn?t wait to do it when they got home.? He then explained what each of the kids had done to pitch in.?When I?heard about all?their hard work, I was overcome with gratitude.?It was clear that empathy inspired my stepchildren to make my day better.

Do my stepchildren practice empathy all the time? No. After all, it?s a normal part of development for young children to be focused on themselves. It?s not until around the age of 7 that children appear to fully experience empathy for others ? and every child is different.

It is never too early to model, emphasize, and teach children about the importance of empathy. Through repetition of these efforts, empathy will gradually become part of your child?s natural behavior.

Monica has worked with children with emotional disabilities and their families for over 15 years in the home, schools, and mental health settings. She has been with Legacy Publishing Company on the Parental Support Line since 2011. Monica has a Masters in School Counseling. She is an identical twin, a stepmother to triplets, and has two loving dogs.

If you find any comments that are rude or inappropriate, please contact us immediately.

Source: http://www.empoweringparents.com/blog/blended-step-families/teaching-children-how-to-stand-in-someone-elses-shoes/

kowloon walled city ronda rousey vs miesha tate lindsay lohan snl lindsay lohan on snl real housewives of disney awakenings phantom of the opera

A diplomatic star is born as Chinese first lady dazzles on first foreign tour

Thomas Mukoya / Reuters

Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan bid farewell as they board their plane to depart from the Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 25, 2013.

Ivan Sekretarev / AP

Glamorous first lady Peng Liyuan has emerged as a Chinese diplomatic star, charming audiences and cutting a distinct profile from her all-but-invisible predecessors on her debut official trip abroad.

Peng was featured prominently in Chinese media coverage of her husband President Xi Jinping's state visit to Russia, the start of a trip that has also seen stops in Tanzania and South Africa.

Much of the coverage focused on her personal style, with a report on the mass-market sina.com website noting with satisfaction that the black leather clutch she paired with one outfit was made to order by a Chinese firm in the southwestern city of Chengdu, a flattering contrast with prominent Chinese female politicians scorned publicly for appearing decked head to toe in foreign designer brands.

-- The Associated Press

Thomas Mukoya / Reuters

Peng Liyuan looks at a traditional Tanzanian entertainer during the welcoming ceremony upon her arrival in Dar es Salaam on March 24, 2013.

EPA

Peng Liyuan observes a moment of silence during a visit to Gongo la Mboto cemetery, where Chinese workers who died while constructing a railway are buried, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam on March 25, 2013.

Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma shares a joke with Peng Liyuan during an official lunch hosted by Zuma and his wife in Pretoria on March 26, 2013.

Glamorous and stylish, Peng Liyuan, China's First Lady, has been projecting a newly fashionable face of the Communist regime as she accompanies her husband, the new Chinese President Xi Jinping, on a tour of Russia and Africa ? Channel Four's? Lindsey Hilsum reports.

Related:

Sign here, Mr. President: China's Xi completes rise to the top

China's president-in-waiting Xi Jinping returns to Iowa

More news from China on NBC's?Behind the Wall

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/2a025609/l/0Lphotoblog0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C260C17470A850A0Ea0Ediplomatic0Estar0Eis0Eborn0Eas0Echinese0Efirst0Elady0Edazzles0Eon0Efirst0Eforeign0Etour0Dlite/story01.htm

Frys tryptophan BestBuy.com Kohls Black Friday www.walmart.com Macho Camacho Rise of the Guardians

NY Mayor Bloomberg predicts success for expanded gun checks

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg predicted on Sunday that pressure from the American public would eventually force the Congress to expand background checks for gun buyers, even though the measure faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.

As Bloomberg launched a $12 million national advertising campaign aimed at prodding members of the Senate to support expanded background checks, he said the measure's widespread popularity would trump gun-rights groups like the powerful National Rifle Association that oppose it.

"If 90 percent of the public wants something and their representatives vote against that, common sense says they are going to have a price to pay for that," Bloomberg said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

A top NRA executive predicted that the self-made billionaire' s efforts would change few minds. "He can't buy America," NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said on the same program.

Lawmakers are scaling back President Barack Obama's ambitions for sweeping gun control measures, which took on a new urgency after the December 14 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six adults.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid effectively ruled out an assault weapons ban last week, and limits on high-capacity ammunition clips also are likely to fall short.

Gun-control advocates say a system of expanded background checks would be the single most effective way to reduce gun violence across the country. Opinion polls show that more than 90 percent of all American voters and 85 percent of gun owners support it.

While such a measure could pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, it faces long odds in the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold the majority.

"I don't think their bill will pass the Senate and even if it does it won't pass the House," Republican Senator Tom Coburn said on C-SPAN.

The NRA argues that expanding existing background checks to cover the 40 percent of gun sales that are now exempt would only create more hurdles for law abiding citizens and do little to deter criminal purchases. The NRA instead wants the federal government to step up prosecutions under existing gun laws and boost security in schools.

Bloomberg acknowledged that a national ban on assault weapons is less popular with the public and is unlikely to succeed in Congress.

Several states, including New York, have passed assault-weapons bans of their own but others like Colorado, which tightened its gun laws recently, have not restricted the military-style rifles that are popular with gun owners.

"I think the feeling right now around assault weapons, at least in Colorado, is that it's so hard to define what an assault weapon is," Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said on CNN's "State of the Nation."

"There's a lot of questions whether the 10-year federal ban that existed made a difference," Hickenlooper said. "It's a tough sell."

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Toni Clarke. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ny-mayor-bloomberg-predicts-success-expanded-gun-checks-153211364.html

ke$ha earl csco big bend national park leon russell meredith vieira prop 8