Pakistani Christian accused of blasphemy in Canada

ISLAMABAD (AP) ? A Christian girl who was accused of burning Islam's holy book in a case that focused international attention on Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws was forced to move to Canada over security concerns, her lawyer said Saturday.

The girl left Pakistan with her parents, three sisters and a brother on March 14, attorney Tahir Naveed Chaudhry said.

A Muslim cleric who lobbied for her release, Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, said she had been facing threats and was moving constantly.

"I am sad that this innocent girl had to leave Pakistan. She had been acquitted by the court, and despite that it was not possible for her to live freely," he said.

Canada's immigration service said privacy concerns prevented them from saying whether she was in the country.

The girl was arrested in August in Islamabad after a Muslim cleric accused her of burning the Quran.

The cleric was later accused of fabricating evidence, and the girl was acquitted.

The case received attention in part because of her young age and questions about her mental abilities. An official medical report at the time put her age at 14 although some of her supporters said she was as young as 11. The medical report also said her mental state did not correspond with her age.

The Associated Press is withholding the girl's name because it does not generally identify underage suspects.

Even though the case against her was thrown out, people accused of blasphemy in Pakistan are often subject to vigilante justice. Mobs have been known to attack and kill people accused of blasphemy, and two prominent politicians who have discussed changes to the blasphemy laws have been killed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-29-Pakistan/id-ac6f94c11e934b4789da423efecaad59

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Reinventing The Games Console Half Way Won't Work - TechCrunch

Editor?s note:?Tadhg Kelly is a veteran game designer, creator of leading game design blog?What Games Are?and creative director of Jawfish Games. You can follow him on Twitter?here.

In some ways you?ve got to feel bad for Microsoft. The company has spent years trying to find ways to expand its Xbox idea. It put together a very interesting camera peripheral that many people bought into, but not too many games. It?s tried, on several occasions, to use the games console as a way to win access into the living room. Yet now it?s at the point of having to roll back many of its big ideas because the market reacted so negatively. The company has run into a hard truth: In the minds of the market ?console? means something specific, and is not inclined to expand its thinking.

In essence what Microsoft wanted to do was similar to what Apple did for phones. Long before iPhones there were many years of terrible feature phones. They had Java games, shambolic web interfaces and data plans that charged per megabyte. They?stuck resolutely to sticky keys and small screens, and at best some of them had styluses that pretended to be able to recognize handwriting.?Apple managed to leapfrog that mess by reinventing how it controlled, how it looked and what it felt like. Mobile phones went from being cellular devices to something else, something with sexy touch-screen effects and whatnot, and that in turn opened the door to many other innovations.

That, in essence, was Microsoft?s big idea with Kinect. If the company could redefine control to be much broader than stuffy old joypads, then that opened the door to lots of other avenues. In a sense it was trying to take ?console? into the realm of ?smartconsole? but it had an unwillingness to really go for that. Like Sony and Sega before it, Microsoft has attempted to achieve its vision by expanding the metaphor of what ?console? is supposed to mean rather than defining a new type of product from the ground up. And the market has yet again said no.

Unlike in the computing space where one machine acts as arbiter and translator of all content toward multiple screens, the living room has never really been able to unify. We have several smaller devices that all plug into one big screen. And often they have duplicate functions.?The games console seems like it should solve that. It should be a point of access for content and functionality, roles already filled by computers but in the living room.?So much more could be brought to the living room?if only the audience would get behind that idea. Throw out all your confusing boxes, it seems to say. Bring back some sanity to your life. One box to rule them all and make your life elegant.

Yet no company can really get there. No one company can strike deals with all cable-box makers to essentially cut them out of a key part of their value chain. Nobody is yet able to convince television manufacturers to get behind one standard control method. And since that means there will always be fragmentation,?players really just want consoles to play games. They view consoles as essentially gaming CD players, and preferably cheap ones at that, and steadfastly refuse to buy into the bigger picture.

Their resistance is with good reason:?Transitioning from cheaper many-box to expensive one-box means giving up a lot. It means forfeiting the chance to play games on other systems. It means disconnecting from a pre-existing media service and converting or dumping a lot of material in the process. (Could you ever see iTunes on your Xbox?) The argument has not yet been made strongly enough to the market that the trade-off is worth doing. While smartphones show that dramatic evolution is possible,?a platform holder like Microsoft needs to go much further than it already has if it?s going to change how gamers think.

Several commenters have lamented that Microsoft?s recent reversal on DRM is caused by players being short-sighted, putting immediate value (used games) ahead of long-term potential gains (digital connectedness). To me this reflects a key dissonance.?It?s rare that the market gets educated, and instead much more common that it gets fixated on an idea of what a product category is. It hears ?PC? and it thinks ?powerful desktop computer.? It hears ?console? and it thinks ?shiny games deck.? It sees one sort of trying to act like the other and resists. No no, it says. The device is supposed to be like this.

Even though every PC, smartphone and tablet in the world has a front-facing camera, for example, the market finds something weird about consoles doing likewise because that doesn?t seem to add much to what it believes??shiny games deck? is supposed to be. Even though Nintendo has a great idea for how second screen gaming could work, the market fundamentally regards it askance. A shiny games deck is supposed to be about joypads and such. The tribe only understands ?console? as one thing and is only really interested in features that bolster that vision. All else is viewed with suspicion.

There?s some kind of smart-TV idea trying to be born at Microsoft, an interesting technology which seems just out of reach. There?s something to its Minority-Report-esque idea of swiping, swishing and talking to your television. There?s some notion in the middle of that with tablets and interactions and second screens.?But to get there needs a deep reinvention, and the road toward it does not lead through changing everyone?s minds about the meaning of ?console.? Instead it needs to be a new product, even a whole new category, and its adoption has to go slow.

Rather than adapting a product into something that is complicated, confusing and suspicious, the right approach would be to create something new. One example would be a Kinect standard that could be licensed to television makers and integrated into sets. A standalone camera, irrespective of gaming, that perhaps makes all sorts of remote control tasks easier. And not called ?Xbox? at all. Not called ?console? either.?Or, if the vision mandates that gaming still be involved, a gaming deck that gets beyond the joypad.

Much as the iPhone managed to sell itself by walking away from keypads, arguably the gaming machine that moves beyond ?console? as a product category needs to move beyond the joypad. This is very hard to do. Nintendo almost managed it with Wii before running out of steam and then trying to create a joypad/tablet combo that few people really like.?Kinect tried too, but gestural games are somewhat limited in their scope. Perhaps through SmartGlass or some haptic variant of that in combination with Kinect, Microsoft could get us all into the idea of a new product category like ?smartconsole.?

Or maybe the reason that this product struggles to come to life is simply that there is no place for it. There isn?t anything fundamentally wrong with the games console as a device.?If you like to shoot stuff, jump on platforms, race, and play sports or roleplaying games, the console form factor that we have right now does that. All of the sector?s problems are about how it runs as a business rather than a form factor (which is why microconsoles are a big deal, as they primarily innovate on the business).?Much like the computer or the car, the form factor for doing all those things has not significantly changed in 30 years ? and there?s precious little need for them to.

Blaming the market is all well and good, but there?s no reason for it to change its idea about what a games console is.?And that?s a hard truth. That?s the sort of truth that makes games executives depressed. That?s the kind of truth that, after years of working on grand visions game makers often realize (and become bitter about) that they have to lower themselves back down into the muck. Rather than change the fundamentals the market consistently tells game makers to lean in. Make it bigger. Make it better. Make it play well. Make it feel right. Make it cool. Make it, you know, a great game. That?s all the gaming market cares about, and as yet no one?s made a compelling case for it to think differently.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/23/reinventing-the-console/

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Eat Away Your Carbon Footprint With This Eco-Friendly Edible Spoon

The idea of an edible utensil isn't exactly new, but nothing's been quite as convenient (and non-sticky) as Triangle Tree's brilliant if not entirely appetizing-appearing Eco-Spoon. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/H6G_RJ5KnkQ/eat-away-your-carbon-footprint-with-this-eco+friendly-edible-spoon

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Kebede wins London Marathon amid tight security

LONDON (AP) ? Tsegaye Kebede claimed a second London Marathon title on Sunday, cheered through the streets by thousands of spectators reassured by enhanced security at the first major race since the twin bombings at the Boston event.

A race that started with tributes to the Boston victims with a moment of silence ended with a thrilling conclusion under clear blue skies.

With a black ribbon pinned to his chest, Kebede chased down Emmanuel Mutai in the closing stages, and overtook the tiring Kenyan to cross the line first in front of Buckingham Palace.

Kebede clocked 2 hours, 6 minutes and 15 seconds to emulate his 2010 triumph in London, while compatriot Ayele Abshero was third.

The victory in the British capital came after Kebede was denied a shot at glory here at the Olympics last year after being overlooked by Ethiopian selectors.

The women's race saw Olympic silver medalist Priscah Jeptoo go one better in the annual London race.

The Kenyan cruised over the line in 2:20:15 seconds, the fastest time this year, ahead of compatriot Edna Kiplagat, while Yukiko Akaba of Japan was third.

"Today I'm very, very happy, I couldn't believe I could be the winner," Jeptoo told the BBC. "It is a very tough race because everybody who comes here is really prepared."

It was a miserable day for Olympic champion Tiki Gelana, who finished 16th after seeing her hopes thwarted by a collision about a third of the way in.

The Ethiopian collided with Canadian wheelchair racer Josh Cassidy as she went to get a drink.

"Every year we come to overtake the women, there's 10 chairs going at 20 mph and the poor women are scrambling to find their feet," said Cassidy, who finished 20th. "I have a brand new $2,000 pair of wheels that are damaged, who's going to pay for them? Things have to change."

It was the one blot on a day marked by the defiance of athletes and spectators in the bright London sunshine in a difficult week for the athletics community.

The specter of the bombings near to the Boston Marathon finish line, which killed three people and injured more than 180, loomed in London.

And it was apt that Tatyana McFadden, who won the wheelchair race in Boston just before the explosions, shrugged off security concerns in London to win her second title in a week.

London organizers pledged to donate 2 pounds ($3) for every finisher to The One Fund Boston set up to raise money for the bomb victims.

Before a minute's silence at the start of the marathon, event commentator Geoff Wightman urged athletes to "remember our friends and colleagues for whom a day of joy turned into a day of sadness."

Prince Harry mingled with the crowds and said he had never thought about canceling his visit following the bombings.

"It's fantastic, typically British," he said. "People are saying they haven't seen crowds like this for eight years around the route. It's remarkable to see."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kebede-wins-london-marathon-amid-tight-security-112244397--spt.html

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3 Places to Know to Understand the Boston Bombing

Chechnya

The two brothers identified as the Boston marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokhar, are ethnic Chechens who probably lived in nearby areas in Central Asia before immigrating legally to the United States. Because the region is known as a breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorists?Chechens have been connected with terrorist attacks in Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa?this connection will be a focal point of the investigation into their motives, if indeed the brothers are confirmed as the Boston bombers.

The brutal Russian suppression of Chechnya in 1995 and 2000 did two things: radicalize a generation of Chechans and spread hundreds of thousands of refugees across the globe. It would appear that these two were among the young diaspora from that conflict. Would the brothers have taken their grievances with them, or were they radicalized here in the United States? It's impossible to know, but it's probably a mix of both. The connectedness of the globe has ensured that anyone with interest can hear a terrorist message, become involved, research bomb making, and learn evasion tactics. You don't need to travel overseas to get terrorist training.

The brothers have been in the United States for many years, including their most formative ones. Dzhokhar, 19-year-old resident of Cambridge, Mass., immigrated legally to the United States as a child. He was on the high school wrestling team; one classmate told a local NESS station, "We didn't think he was anywhere near capable of anything like this?He wasn't a loner or anything." His older brother Tamerlan was 26 and may have had more direct experience with the refugee experience; fewer people are rushing forward to describe him and he has fewer public records.

It's easy to suppose that the older brother was not as well adjusted, and may have led his younger sibling into a radical path. That is all guesswork for now, but the reason this theory is easy to swallow is that it's familiar. Many terrorists are motivated by family ties, and cells routinely recruit family members because they are trustworthy and reliable.

Boston

The homeland security debate will be reinvigorated, and much of the talk will center on Boston. One area of interest is the use of video cameras, and this event showcases the uses and limits of current video technology. In short, camera are great for solving crimes but, as currently used, inefficient at preventing them. The pro-camera side will argue for even more cameras, possibly imbued with algorithms that employ facial recognition, or can alert law enforcement to anomalies like a backpack that has not moved for a while. In fact, the ACLU says, the camera network in Boston was installed with such upgrades.

But those enhancements would not have prevented the Boston bombing. Big crowds make smart video ineffective, and the brothers were not on a terrorist watch list (that we know of). The use of explosive-sniffing dogs, a more observant police presence, and a hyper-aware population are more obvious improvements.

Another part of the security debate is guns. The pair had access to firearms, killed at least one person with them, and got in a shootout with police. This could cast a national security shadow on the current gun control debate?however, these two would have cleared any gun checks that exist or are proposed. Expect the pro-gun advocates to argue that when terrorists run amok through the streets, carjacking vehicles, holding up convenience stores, and killing people, an armed populace could make soft targets a little harder.

Mumbai

The Boston bombings are reminiscent of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. And that's bad news. The Mumbai attacks involved bombings followed by a shooting spree. The attackers had no exit strategy except a violent death. It was a new way of pulling off terrorist acts, as opposed to hijackings and assassinations.

Terrorist attacks that come in waves are more complex to plan and require pretty steely discipline to execute. A suicide bomber is scary because he can infiltrate anywhere, but after that singe act, their part is over. In an odd way it's an easier attack to pull off, psychologically. A spree terrorist has a more aggressive, damaging outlook. These kinds of attackers will spread the chaos and fear as long and far as possible. The antidote for Mumbai-style attacks are heavily armed, quick reaction teams of police officers. The way to bust a cell before it strikes is a local police intelligence network of informants and surveillance. Neither of these are comfortable for the public in a democracy.

It may be that the Tsarnaev brothers had a poor plan, or none at all, for after the marathon bombing. But security forces must prepare for these organized waves of attacks.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/3-places-to-know-to-understand-the-boston-bombing-15367725?src=rss

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G20 gathers for debate on debt, monetary stimulus

By Jan Strupczewski and Anna Yukhananov

(Reuters) - Finance leaders of the G20 economies gathered on Friday to debate how best to rein in debt levels and the potential dangers from the latest round of aggressive easing of monetary policy from the world's biggest central banks.

They were also poised to demand swifter resolution to setting guidelines for financial benchmarks like the Libor interest rate in the wake of a global rate-rigging scandal.

But a rethinking of the austerity push among the world's biggest economies loomed as the biggest talking point. Advanced economies, particularly in Europe, have undertaken sharp austerity drives in recent years to curb growing debt, but those efforts have at times damaged economies already suffering from capital flight and under-investment from the private sector.

EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that a period of reduced spending and borrowing was necessary to calm markets concerned about out-of-control debt levels, particularly in peripheral European countries. That time has passed, he said.

"Decisive action was taken. Now as we have restored the credibility in the short-term, that gives us the possibility of having a smoother path of fiscal adjustment in the medium-term," he said.

Among the topics finance officials from the G20 were debating was whether or not numerical targets should be set for debt reduction.

The United States and Japan have opposed committing to any targeted level of public debt, but Russia - this year's G20 chair - has hoped to secure an agreement on targets by the time G20 leaders meet in St. Petersburg in September.

Arriving for a second and final day of talks among G20 finance officials, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters on Friday that the discussion was revolving a "general goal" for deficit reduction rather a specific target.

"Colleagues said that if we make strict targets for fiscal consolidation, it reduces the room for maneuver for fiscal policy," he said. "I believe we will find a compromise about the formulation, that it should be a general goal we'll all be striving for, and not a strict parameter. ... All countries will have different ones."

In a 2010 study frequently cited by policymakers, Harvard professors Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart found that on average, economies contract when the debt-to-GDP ratio surpasses 90 percent - a level G20 officials were discussing.

However, the study's results were disputed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who said growth for countries with those ratios was actually 2.2 percent.

The austerity argument has also been undercut by weakness in economies that undertook the most severe measures to cut deficits, including Britain, which is suffering its third recession in the last five years.

SPILLOVER CONCERNS

The unprecedented level of monetary stimulus designed to reinvigorate struggling large economies, including the United States, the euro zone and Japan, has raised concerns about excessive capital flight to developing nations.

In a communique on Thursday, the Group of 24 developing nations, whose ranks include Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico, called on the advanced economies to "take into account the negative spillover effects ... of prolonged unconventional monetary policies including on inflation and the volatility of capital flows and commodity prices."

The Bank of Japan is attempting to end decades of stagnation by pumping $1.4 trillion into its economy, some of which is expected to find its way into emerging markets. Local currency funds have pulled in $16.7 billion in the first quarter of 2013 worldwide, the most in more than two years, according to Lipper, a unit of Thomson Reuters.

"There is a call from the G24 members to have clear coordination and better communication between advanced economies and emerging markets ... towards using coordination as a way to mitigate these potential asset appreciation bubbles. The consensus is that this is something that has to be closely monitored," said Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray.

Videgaray has cause for concern.

In the days following the Bank of Japan's announcement, for example, the Mexican peso jumped 2.5 percent against the dollar to its strongest in 20 months. Against the yen, the peso surged over 9 percent.

But delegates to the gathering, including Siluanov, said the BOJ did not face criticism during a dinner meeting on Thursday. "Everyone was understanding about Japan's policies," Siluanov said. "After 15 years of deflation, 15 years of no growth, they need to kickstart" the economy.

Nevertheless, officials held to their previous line that the BOJ program must stick to domestic targets.

Jens Weidmann, president of Germany's Bundesbank central bank, said Japan should not use its monetary policy to manipulate exchange rates and set off a round of competitive devaluations.

The G20 finance ministers and central bankers are due to release their formal communique around midday on Friday. They plan to task the Financial Stability Board, a coordinating body of global financial regulators, with overseeing the reform of financial benchmarks such as Libor, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Thursday.

An early draft of a communique G20 asks the FSB to take on the role after a global interest rate-rigging scandal that involved some of the world's largest banks.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions came out with a report this week saying that financial benchmarks should be based on actual transactions rather than estimates, such as is the case with Libor.

(Additional reporting by Louise Egan, Krista Hughes and Douwe Midema; Writing by David Gaffen; Editing by Dan Burns and Tim Ahmann)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/debt-levels-big-monetary-stimulus-tap-g20-051914375--business.html

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Pink Floyd album cover designer dies at 69

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, TODAY

Storm Thorgerson, the Engish album-cover designer most famous for his iconic work with Pink Floyd, died Thursday after battling cancer, his family announced. He was 69.

Yui Mok / AP file

Storm Thorgerson stands next to his album cover artwork for Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" at a 2008 art exhibit.

"His ending was peaceful and he was surrounded by family and friends," Thorgerson's family said in a statement. "He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003."

Pink Floyd members remembered him on the band's official website. Drummer Nick Mason described Thorgerson as a "scourge of management, record companies and album sleeve printers; champion of bands, music, great ideas and high, sometimes infuriatingly high, standards."

Mason also described Thorgerson as a "tireless worker?right up to the end," saying, "Two days before he passed away, and by then completely exhausted, he was still demanding approval for art work and haranguing his loyal assistants."

Capital Records

He went on to praise the designer as a "dear friend to all of us, our children, our wives (and the exes). Endlessly intellectual and questioning. Breathtakingly late for appointments and meetings, but once there invaluable for his ideas, humour, and friendship."

Pink Floyd lead singer David Gilmour wrote on the band's site that he first met Thorgerson when the two were young teenagers.

"We would gather at Sheep's Green, a spot by the river in Cambridge, and Storm would always be there holding forth, making the most noise, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm," Gilmour wrote. "Nothing has ever really changed. He has been a constant force in my life, both at work and in private, a shoulder to cry on and a great friend. The artworks that he created for Pink Floyd from 1968 to the present day have been an inseparable part of our work. I will miss him."

His work with Pink Floyd, especially the prism reflecting a rainbow that graces the "Dark Side of the Moon" album cover, was Thorgerson's most famous. But he also created album covers for bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Muse.

In 2011, Thorgerson told Rolling Stone that the idea of the prism related to Pink Floyd's traveling light show.

"They hadn?t really celebrated their light show," he told the magazine. "That was one thing. The other thing was the triangle. I think the triangle, which is a symbol of thought and ambition, was very much a subject of Roger (Waters)'s lyrics.?

Thorgerson is survived by?his mother, Vanji, his son Bill, his wife Barbie Antonis and her two children Adam and Georgia.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/19/17827605-pink-floyd-album-cover-designer-dies-at-69?lite

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