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Thursday, March 14, 2013
Algorithms for Rent: The Price Is Right
If you've been in the market for almost anything recently, you've probably noticed price fluctuations. You place a bicycle on your Amazon wish list at one price, only to see it shoot up a hundred dollars more a few days later, then drop to a hundred less a week or so after that. Everything from airplane tickets to apartment rentals seems subject to dramatic price changes from one day to the next.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Japan marks second anniversary of triple disaster
TOKYO (AP) ? Monday's two-year anniversary of Japan's devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe is highlighting the country's continuing struggle to clean up radiation, rebuild lost communities and determine new energy and economic strategies.
More than 300,000 people remain displaced and virtually no rebuilding has begun along the battered northeastern coast, where the tsunami swept away entire communities.
Memorial services were to be held Monday in Tokyo and in barren towns along the northeastern coast to mark the moment, at 2:46 p.m., when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake ? the strongest recorded in Japan's history ? struck off the coast, unleashing a massive tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people.
In the ravaged small fishing town of Miyako, sirens wailed as residents trundled to higher ground in a disaster drill. In some areas, searches for the 2,676 people still missing in the disaster continued, as workers poked through sand and debris along the coastline.
A thin blanket of snow covered the ground in Kesennuma, where houses and fisheries once stood. Survivors live in temporary housing farther inland on higher ground, while others have decided to move away altogether. On Monday morning, fishermen, who are trying to get the vital industry back on its feet, lined up rows of tuna and other fish for auction.
"It's scary (living here) when there is an earthquake. It's scary, but I don't plan to go anywhere else. I want to give my own very best, somehow, toward reconstruction of the city," said 75-year-old Kenichi Oi, who had to refurbish his home, just a few hundred meters (yards) from the sea, but on higher ground, after the tsunami flooded its first floor.
Throughout the disaster zone, the tens of thousands of survivors living in temporary housing are impatient to get resettled, a process that could take up to a decade, officials say.
"What I really want is to once again have a 'my home,'" said Migaku Suzuki, a 69-year-old farm worker in Rikuzentakata, who lost the house he had just finished building in the disaster. Suzuki also lost a son in the tsunami, which obliterated much of the city.
Farther south, in Fukushima prefecture, some 160,000 evacuees are uncertain if they will ever be able to return to abandoned homes around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where three reactors melted down and spewed radiation into the surrounding soil and water after the tsunami knocked out the plant's vital cooling system.
"I don't trust the government on anything related to health anymore," said Masaaki Watanabe, 42, who fled the nearby town of Minami Soma and doesn't plan to return because the radiation in the ground is too high.
In Kawauchi, one of many towns with varying degrees of access restrictions due to radiation, village chief Yuko Endo is pinning his hopes on the success of a long decontamination process that may or may not enable hundreds of residents to return home.
Much of the area is off-limits, though some restrictions gradually are being lifted as workers remove debris and wipe down roofs by hand.
Many residents might give up on returning if they are kept waiting too long, he said.
"If I were told to wait for two more years, I might explode," said Endo, who is determined to revive his town of mostly empty houses and overgrown fields. "After spending a huge amount of money, with the vegetable patches all cleaned up and ready for farming, we may end up with nobody willing to return."
Evacuees are torn. They are anxious to return home but worried about the potential, still uncertain risks from exposure to the radiation from the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.
While there have been no clear cases of cancer linked to radiation from the plant, the upheaval in people's lives, uncertainty about the future and long-term health concerns, especially for children, have taken an immense psychological toll on thousands of residents.
A group of 800 people planned to file a lawsuit Monday in Fukushima against the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates the Fukushima plant. It demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades.
A change of government late last year has raised hopes that authorities might move quicker with the cleanup and reconstruction.
Since taking office in late December, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made a point of frequently visiting the disaster zone, promising faster action, and plans to raise the long-term reconstruction budget to 25 trillion yen ($262 billion) from 19 trillion yen (about $200 billion).
Hopes for a significant improvement may be misplaced, said Hiroshi Suzuki, chairman of the Fukushima Prefectural Reconstruction Committee.
"There have been no major changes by the new government in response to the nuclear accident, though the budget has been increased," he said. "If the reconstruction budget continues to serve as a tool for expanding public works spending, then I believe local societies and economist will be undermined."
Another lingering problem is that of discrimination against evacuees from Fukushima, Suzuki said: Many fear their children will find it hard to find spouses due to worries over potential long-term harm from radiation.
Watanabe, who used to work for a company maintaining the nuclear plant's lighting systems, said his sons are sometimes shunned or taunted by classmates who say things like, "Don't come near me. You're radioactive."
___
Associated Press writers Malcolm Foster in Tokyo and Emily Wang in Kesennuma, Japan, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japan-marks-2nd-anniversary-triple-disaster-004108597.html
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Egyptian Soccer fans rampage over court verdicts
The sun sets during clashes between Egyptian protesters and riot police in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. Security officials say a protester has died during clashes between police and hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators in central Cairo. The officials say the protester died Saturday on a Nile-side road where clashes have been taking place daily between anti-government protesters and police near two luxury hotels and the U.S. and British embassies. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
The sun sets during clashes between Egyptian protesters and riot police in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. Security officials say a protester has died during clashes between police and hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators in central Cairo. The officials say the protester died Saturday on a Nile-side road where clashes have been taking place daily between anti-government protesters and police near two luxury hotels and the U.S. and British embassies. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Egyptian protester runs with a teargas canister during clashes with riot police in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. Security officials say a protester has died during clashes between police and hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators in central Cairo. The officials say the protester died Saturday on a Nile-side road where clashes have been taking place daily between anti-government protesters and police near two luxury hotels and the U.S. and British embassies. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An injured security official is carried from a police officers club in the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek, after protesters set fires following a court verdict in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. Fans of Cairo?s Al-Ahly club have stormed Egypt?s soccer federation headquarters and a nearby police club, and set them ablaze after a court acquitted seven of nine police official on trial for their alleged part in deadly stadium melee. (AP Photo/Mohammed Asad )
Egyptian soccer fans of the Al-Ahly club celebrate in front of their club in Cairo, Egypt, after an Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against 21 people for their role in a deadly 2012 soccer riot that killed more than 70 people in the city of Port Said, Saturday, March 9, 2013. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
An Egyptian man walks on the grounds of a police officer's club as a fire set by protesters burns in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, March 9, 2013. An Egyptian court on Saturday confirmed the death sentences against 21 people for taking part in a deadly soccer riot but acquitted seven police officials for their alleged role in the violence, touching off furious protests in Cairo that torched the soccer federation headquarters and a nearby police club.(AP Photo/Ahmed Gomaa)
CAIRO (AP) ? Egyptian soccer fans rampaged through the heart of Cairo on Saturday, furious about the acquittal of seven police officers while death sentences against 21 alleged rioters were confirmed in a trial over a stadium melee that left 74 people dead.
The case of the Feb. 1, 2012 stadium riot in the city of Port Said at the northern tip of the Suez Canal has taken on political undertones not just because police faced allegations of negligence in the tragedy but also because the verdicts were announced at a time when Egypt is in the grip of the latest and most serious bout of political turmoil in the two years since Hosni Mubarak's ouster.
Saturday's verdicts also were handed down against the backdrop of an unprecedented wave of strikes by the nation's police force over demands for better working conditions and anger over what many believe are attempts by President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to take control of the police force.
Tensions over the riot ? which began when supporters of Port Said's Al-Masry club set upon fans of Cairo's Al-Ahly club after the final whistle of a league game that the home team won ? have fueled some of the deadliest street violence in months. Police guarding the stadium, meanwhile, faced allegations ranging from not searching people entering the stadium to failing to intervene to stop the bloodshed.
Shortly after the verdict was announced Saturday, angry fans of Cairo's Al-Ahly club who had gathered in the thousands outside the team's headquarters in central Cairo went on a rampage, torching a police club nearby and storming Egypt's soccer federation headquarters before setting it ablaze.
The twin fires sent plumes of thick black smoke billowing out over the Cairo skyline, prompting Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to dispatch two army helicopters to extinguish the fires.
At least five people were injured in the protests over the verdict, a Health Ministry official told the MENA state news agency.
Some demonstrators in Port Said also burnt tires on the city's dock to prevent vessels from coming in and released speedboats into traffic lanes of the Suez Canal in attempts, foiled by the navy, to disrupt shipping in the vital waterway linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.
A spokesman for the Suez Canal Authority said shipping was not affected and 41 vessels transited the waterway on Saturday.
General unrest also continued elsewhere in the Egyptian capital, which has seen unrelenting demonstrations and clashes between security forces and an opposition that accuses Morsi of trying to monopolize power in the hands of his Islamist allies.
Two protesters also were killed and 19 injured in clashes elsewhere in the capital that appeared unrelated to the soccer violence, national ambulance service chief Mohammed Sultan said. The fighting occurred near two luxury hotels and the U.S. and British embassies.
The court's decision upheld the death sentences issued in late January against 21 people, most of them Port Said fans. The original verdict touched off violent riots in Port Said that left some 40 people dead, most shot by police.
On Saturday, the court announced its verdict for the other 52 defendants in the case, sentencing 45 of them to prison, including two senior police officers who got 15 years terms each. The two were charged with gross negligence and failure to stop the killings.
Twenty-eight people were acquitted, including seven police officials.
Defense lawyers claimed the case has been flawed from the start with prosecutors collecting evidence in an "unorthodox" fashion and overlooking key aspects of the tragedy such as the fact the floodlights were turned off during the attack on the Al-Ahly fans and the nearest exit gate was locked.
Many of the 74 victims died of suffocation or blows to the head.
Morsi's aides denounced Saturday's violence and sought to dismiss the notion of a country in chaos.
Ayman Ali, a senior presidential aide, called on the media not to provide a "political cover" to the violence sweeping the country and dismissed as exaggerated claims that the country's police force was in disarray.
Another presidential aide, Bakinam el-Sharqawy, lamented that the focus on protests and violence created an image of instability in Egypt that kept foreign investors away.
In anticipation of more violence, authorities beefed up security near the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police force, with riot police deploying in the streets around the complex in central Cairo.
The president of the international soccer governing body FIFA appealed for calm.
"I call on football fans in Egypt to remain peaceful. Violence is never a solution and is contrary to the spirit of sport," Sepp Blatter tweeted.
Earlier at the courthouse across town, Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid read out the verdict live on TV, sentencing five defendants to life in prison and nine others to 15 years in jail. Six defendants received 10-year jail terms, two more got five years and a single defendant received a 12-month sentence.
The court's decision on the nine Port Said security officers on trial was among the most highly anticipated ? and potentially explosive ? verdicts. In the end, the judges sentenced the city's former security chief, Maj. Gen. Essam Samak, and a colonel both to 15 years in prison, while the others were acquitted.
Al-Ahly's fans accuse the police of collusion in the killing of their fellow supporters, arguing that they had advance knowledge of plans by supporters of Port Said's Al-Masry to attack them. They also accuse them of standing by as the Al-Masry fans attacked the visiting Al-Ahly supporters.
The court rulings can be appealed before a higher court.
Many residents of Port Said say the trial is unjust and politicized, and soccer fans in the city have felt that authorities were biased in favor of Al-Ahly, Egypt's most powerful club.
In Port Said, a city that for weeks has been in open rebellion against Morsi, the Islamist leader, several hundred people, many of them relatives of the defendants, gathered outside the local security headquarters to vent their anger. They chanted slogans against Morsi's government and the verdicts. Police pulled out of the city on Friday after days of battling protesters in deadly clashes. The army has taken over security in the city, a move that was warmly welcomed by residents.
Some people in a cafe watching the verdict live on TV hit their heads in frustration, while others broke down and wept. Some said they can live with the verdict because an appeal leaves room for hope.
"There's still an appeal process. God willing, our rights will be restored," said Islam Ezzeddin, a local soccer fan. "We are not thugs. I hope to God when there's an appeal, that we feel we live in a country of law and justice."
However, the national railways chief, Hussein Zakaria, ordered trains headed to Port Said to terminate their services at Ismailiya, another Suez Canal city south of Port Said. He said the measure was taken out of fear for the safety of passengers.
Late on Saturday, activists in the city declared the start of a new general strike, with bands of protesters moving around the city pleading with business owners to shutter down.
___
Batrawy reported from Port Said.
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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Man ordered to stay away from Alyson Hannigan
FILE - This Dec. 7, 2012 file photo shows actress Alyson Hannigan from the CBS comedy, "How I Met Your Mother," at the March of Dimes Celebration of Babies in Beverly Hills, Calif. A judge has ordered a New Hampshire man to stay away from Alyson Hannigan and refrain from posting about the actress for the next three years. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, file)
FILE - This Dec. 7, 2012 file photo shows actress Alyson Hannigan from the CBS comedy, "How I Met Your Mother," at the March of Dimes Celebration of Babies in Beverly Hills, Calif. A judge has ordered a New Hampshire man to stay away from Alyson Hannigan and refrain from posting about the actress for the next three years. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, file)
FILE - This Dec. 7, 2012 file photo shows actress Alyson Hannigan from the CBS comedy, "How I Met Your Mother," at the March of Dimes Celebration of Babies in Beverly Hills, Calif. A judge has ordered a New Hampshire man to stay away from Alyson Hannigan and refrain from posting about the actress for the next three years. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, file)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A judge has ordered a New Hampshire man to refrain from posting anything online about Alyson Hannigan or to try to meet the actress.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carol Boas Goodson issued a three-year restraining order against John Hobbs after a brief hearing Wednesday.
Hannigan stated in court filings last month that Hobbs has posted a barrage of threatening messages about her and her family online.
The filings state the 43-year-old acknowledged to police that he wanted to meet the 38-year-old star of "How I Met Your Mother" and "American Pie."
Goodson noted that Hobbs agreed to the terms of the restraining order and that Hannigan's husband and two children also should be protected.
The actress did not attend the hearing.
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Wednesday, March 6, 2013
9/11 victims' families enraged over new TSA rules
NEW YORK (AP) -- Some family members of victims killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks said Wednesday that they are outraged by the Transportation Security Administration's decision to let passengers carry pocketknives on planes.
TSA Administrator John Pistole announced Tuesday that airline passengers will be able to carry pocketknives with blades less than 2.36 inches long and less than half an inch wide. Souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment also will be permitted starting next month.
The agency said the policy aligns the U.S. with international standards and allows the TSA to concentrate on more serious safety threats.
Unions representing flight attendants and other airline workers decried the change, and several relatives of people killed when terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, criticized the move as well.
"I'm flabbergasted," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed at the World Trade Center. "I'm really disgusted by this latest news."
Regenhard said she recently had a container of yogurt confiscated by the TSA because it was a gel. "I'm just wondering why a yogurt is more dangerous than a penknife or a golf club," she said.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, said a pocketknife can be just as deadly as a box cutter, like the ones the hijackers used. Box cutters will still be banned under the new rules.
"When you're drawing a blade against someone's neck, they're quite lethal," Burlingame said. "This is bad news."
Burlingame said Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told interrogators that the hijackers each used "a Swiss knife," a brand of pocketknife, to butcher a sheep and a camel as part of their training. The transcript of the 2003 interrogation was part of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Burlingame suspects the TSA decided to allow folding knives because they are hard to spot. She said the agency's employees "have a difficult time seeing these knives on X-ray screening, which lowers their performance testing rates."
Asked to respond, a TSA spokesman reiterated that "the decision to permit these items as carry-on was made as part of TSA's overall risk-based security approach and aligns TSA with international standards."
Several relatives of those who died on United Flight 93, whose passengers tried to wrest control of the plane before it crashed in Shanksville, Pa., questioned the policy change.
"What's the difference between a pocketknife and a box cutter, for crying out loud?" asked David Beamer, whose son Todd led the Flight 93 revolt with the words, "Let's roll." ''I cannot see the upside to this."
Alice Hoagland, whose son Mark Bingham was another leader of the attempt to take back Flight 93, called it "a dreadful mistake to loosen the rules."
"We are increasing the chances of flight attendants and passengers being attacked while in the air," said Hoagland, a retired flight attendant. "This decision was made in order to make the TSA look a little better, to ease up on the standard so they won't have egg on their face."
Hamilton Peterson, who lost his father and stepmother on Fight 93, said, "I have enormous respect for the great work of the TSA; however, I am concerned this may undermine overall counterterrorism vigilance and may well prove to be dangerous to future passengers and crew who will inherit the danger resulting from this decision."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tsa-rules-knives-draw-fire-205216257.html
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