SANTA CRUZ, Calif. ? Two police detectives were shot and killed while investigating a sexual assault complaint, and a suspect was also fatally shot after a brief chase, authorities said.
The veteran officers, one male and one female, were shot around 3:30 p.m. as they went to a suspect's home to follow up on the case. Their deaths were confirmed by Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak.
A suspect was shot and killed a short time later while authorities were pursuing the gunman, the sheriff's office said.
After the officers were shot, nearby residents received an automatic police call warning them to stay locked inside. About half an hour later, more than a dozen semi-automatic shots echoed down the streets in a brief barrage of gunfire that killed the suspect.
Police Chief Kevin Vogel said Sgt. Loren Butch Baker, a 28-year veteran, and Detective Elizabeth Butler, a 10-year veteran, were shot and killed.
"There aren't words to describe this horrific tragedy," he said. "This is the darkest day in the history of the Santa Cruz police department."
The suspect who was killed in the shooting was identified as 35-year-old Jeremy Goulet, who was arrested Friday after a co-worker at a Santa Cruz coffee shop alleged he went to her house and made inappropriate sexual advances. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that he was fired the next day.
To investigate the complaint, the detectives went to the house where Goulet was living and an altercation ensued, leading to the officers being fired upon, authorities said.
The detectives called for backup and neighbors also summoned police. Responding officers located Goulet a short time later. The sheriff's office said he was killed in the gunfire that followed.
After the shootings, police went door-to-door in the neighborhood, searching homes, garages, even closets to determine whether there might be additional suspects.
Police, sheriff's deputies and FBI agents filled intersections, some with guns drawn, in what is ordinarily a quiet, residential neighborhood in the community about 60 miles south of San Francisco.
A store clerk a few buildings away from the shooting said the barrage of gunfire was "terrifying."
"We ducked. We have big desks so under the desks we went," said the clerk, who spoke on condition of anonymity and asked that her store not be identified because she feared for her safety.
Two schools were locked down during the shooting. The students were later evacuated by bus to the County Government Center about half a mile away.
As darkness fell, helicopters and light aircraft patrolled above the neighborhood, which is about a mile from downtown Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The campus of University of California, Santa Cruz, is about five miles away.
The city's mayor, Hilary Bryant, said in a statement that the city was shocked over the shootings.
"Tonight we are heartbroken at the loss of two of our finest police officers who were killed in the line of duty, protecting the community we love," the statement said. "This is an exceptionally shocking and sad day for Santa Cruz and our Police Department."
Goulet worked as a barista at a coffee shop in the Santa Cruz harbor. He was convicted in Portland, Ore., in May 2008 of peeping at a 22-year-old woman who was showering in her condominium and of carrying concealed weapon, according to a Portland newspaper, The Oregonian. He was put on probation but, after a dispute with his probation officer, was sentenced to two years in jail.
The violence comes amid a recent spate of assaults in the city, which community leaders had planned to address in a downtown rally scheduled for Tuesday. That, along with a city council meeting, was canceled after teary-eyed city leaders learned of the deaths.
Those shootings include the killing of a 32-year-old martial arts instructor who was shot outside a popular downtown bar and restaurant; the robbery of a UC Santa Cruz student who was shot in the head; a 21-year-old woman who was raped and beaten on the UC Santa Cruz campus; and a couple who fought off two men during a home invasion.
___
Associated Press writer John S. Marshall in San Francisco contributed to this report.
FaceTime is a great tool for video chatting but can also use a lot of data. If you've got a limited data plan, you can quickly blow through it if you're using FaceTime too much over the cellular network. If you're worried about receiving calls and eating through your data plan faster than you'd like, you can disable FaceTime over cellular so you'll only receive FaceTime calls when connected to WiFi.
Here's how.
Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad.
Tap on FaceTime.
Scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see an option for Use Cellular Data. Tap the slider to turn it to Off.
That's it. You now won't receive FaceTime calls if you aren't on a WiFi network. You can enable this feature again at any time but just turning the option to On again.
A security firm found it could bypass Google's two-step login verification process, reset a user's master password and gain full control of the account "simply by capturing a user's application-specific password."
Application-specific passwords are passwords generated by Google that you can opt to use instead of your master password. They are long and awkward, and the whole point of them is that they aren't really something you'd ever remember or even store anywhere. The trouble was, users were led to think they could only be used once, but Duo Security said, in a report, that they could in fact be used anywhere ? and without a second point of authentication. The trick for the hacker was to obtain the application-specific password, and that's really hard.
Duo shared its findings with Google, and as of Feb. 21, "Google engineers pushed a fix to close this loophole," the security firm said.
A Google spokesperson told NBC News Tuesday it is "not aware of any related abuse of accounts that use 2-step verification, and we increased the security for these accounts last week by increasing the authentication requirement for sensitive account actions."
In other words, while there may have been a vulnerability, Google isn't aware of anyone taking advantage of it, and the recent update likely put an end to the threat.
Furthermore, the threat, outlined by Duo, "required gaining access to an application-specific password (ASP), which was unlikely because ASPs are complex strings of characters that are not designed to be written down or memorized," said Google's spokesperson. "Without a separate vulnerability to obtain an ASP" ? that is, without someone already having hacked your account to look up these weird passwords ? "these accounts remained protected."
A two-step, or two-factor, verification login basically calls for two different proofs of your identity. Usually the first is a password; the second is a temporary code that's sent to your phone or generated by an app or software.
Google has been using two-step verification since 2010. Yahoo started using it in 2011, and so did Facebook, which refers to it as "login approvals." (You can read more about Google's two-step, or two-factor, verification process here.)
"If an attacker can trick a user into running some malware, that malware might be able to find and extract an ASP somewhere on that user?s system," Duo Security's report said.
Google's fix "helps this situation significantly," said Duo. "Though a compromised ASP could still inflict significant harm on a user, that user should ultimately retain control over his account (and the ability to revoke the ASP at the first sign something has gone wrong)." The ASP alone might help a hacker gain access to your Gmail on a device, for instance, but he or she would still need your master password to mess with your account settings.
While Duo Security's findings are worth noting, the bigger threat for most users is really the fact that we often pick terrible passwords in the first place.
On the bright side, Google said recently that its use of "automated risk analysis" has dramatically reduced the number of compromised Google accounts by 99.7 percent since their peak in 2011.
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By Kailee Bradstreet Wed, Feb 27 2013 6:02 pm | Comments
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WASHINGTON (Feb. 27, 2013) ? SnowSports Industries America (SIA) honored 13 retailers and 15 regional sales reps from the United States and Canada with 2012 SnowSports Retailer of the Year Awards and 2012 SnowSports Rep of the Year Awards for consistently making a significant impact in the snow sports industry. Honorees received awards made out of beetle kill wood representing the beetle issues affecting an unprecedented 50,000 acres of forest in the American West.
The SIA U.S. Retailer of the Year Award is based on a shop?s contributions to the growth of the snow sports industry, their promotional and marketing techniques and their success in the ski, snowboard, tele, cross country and/or snowshoe categories. The award winners are nominated and selected by suppliers and reps in the snow sports industry.
All of the winning shops are listed as ?snow experts? in SIA?s Snow Expert database and can use the program?s marketing materials to signify their expertise to their customers.
The award is an honor for retailers. ?We work as hard as we play, and to be recognized for that by a jury of our peers is so rad,? said Brendan Madigan, owner of Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City, Calif. ?The entire team at Alpenglow takes immense pride in being vested in the community.?
Read more about the 2012 Retailers of the Year in the United States and Canada:
U.S.
Mid-Atlantic Ski Barn | Paramus, NJ
Mountain Milosport | Salt Lake City, UT
New England Summit Ski & Snowboard | Framingham, MA
North Central Pierce Skate & Ski | Bloomington, MN
Pacific Alpenglow Sports | Tahoe City, CA
South Central St. Bernard Sports | Dallas, TX
Southeast Peter Glenn | Miami, FL
Canada
Alberta The Source | Calgary, AB
Atlantic Ballistic Skate & Snow | St. John?s, NL
British Columbia Comor- Go Play Outside | Vancouver, BC
Central Propaganda Shop | Prince Albert, SK
Ontario Sporting Life | Toronto, ON
Quebec Boutique Daniel Lachance | Mont-Tremblant, QC
The SIA U.S. and Canadian SnowSports Regional Rep of the Year recognizes sales reps in the snow sports industry that have successfully fostered relationships with retail storefronts to help move winter sports products. Nominations and winners for this accolade came from snow sports retailers across the industry.
?I?m truly honored to be named Rep of the Year and feel very fortunate to be able to still, after all these years, be involved in an industry that I?m very passionate about,? said Drew Sivers, a Salomon Rep of the Year from Ontario, Canada?
Read more about the 2012 Reps of the Year in the United States and Canada:
?
U.S.
Atlantic Greg Morrison
Eastern Lakes John Kerkhof
Mid-West Tim Parker
Northeast Ivar Dahl
Northern California Clem Smith
Northwest Tobey Crane
Rockies Nick Vigos
South Suzie Parnell
West Jeff Darby
?
Canada
Alberta Ian Hunter
Atlantic Guy Pellerin
British Columbia Jason Wutke
Central Bill Yano
Ontario Drew Sivers
Quebec Nick Rochon
For 24/7 updates on all things SIA, stay connected to the SIA Social Dashboard with feeds from Facebook, SIA?s Latest and Twitter.
Feb. 27, 2013 ? Syphilis is on the rise worldwide and there is an urgent need for reliable and rapid screening, particularly for people who live in areas where access to healthcare is limited. An international research team, led by scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, has demonstrated that rapid and point-of-care tests (POC) for syphilis are as accurate as conventional laboratory tests. The findings, which were published in PLoS ONE, call for a major change in approach to syphilis testing and recommend replacing first line laboratory tests with POC tests globally, especially in resource-limited settings.
"There is a need to embrace rapid and POC tests for syphilis in global settings," argues Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, the study's senior and corresponding author, clinical researcher at the RI-MUHC and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University. "This meta-analysis generates global evidence across all populations for POC tests for syphilis and is the first to use sophisticated analyses to explore the accuracy of POC tests compared to the best reference standards."
Currently, syphilis is screened using conventional laboratory-based tests that can take up to three weeks to deliver results. These tests require chemical agents, trained staff and a continuous supply of electricity, which are not readily available in some parts of the world. Rapid and POC tests can be performed on a simple finger stick sample one patient at a time, and the results communicated to the patient within 20 minutes, saving time and helping doctors order confirmatory tests and rapidly flagging patients who need treatment.
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease caused by the rod-like bacterium Treponema pallidum. It is transmitted between sexual partners through direct contact with a Syphilis sore. It may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. "As well timely screening and treatment in first trimester is extremely important for pregnant women to prevent still births, pre-term births and mother-to-child transmission of syphilis," adds Yalda Jafari, the study's first author and a former master's student of Dr. Pant Pai.
As many as 50 million people worldwide are being treated for syphilis and about 12 million new cases are diagnosed every year. However, approximately 90% of those infected do not know it, and this is the driving force behind the worldwide epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) often refers to syphilis as the "great imitator," because many of its symptoms are similar to other diseases.
"Our study has major worldwide implications for populations living in rural areas with limited access to healthcare," says Dr. Pant Pai. "These tests offer the potential to expedite first line screening in settings where people have no access to a primary care physician or where laboratories take more than a week to deliver results."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McGill University Health Centre, 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:
Yalda Jafari, Rosanna W. Peeling, Sushmita Shivkumar, Christiane Claessens, Lawrence Joseph, Nitika Pant Pai. Are Treponema pallidum Specific Rapid and Point-of-Care Tests for Syphilis Accurate Enough for Screening in Resource Limited Settings? Evidence from a Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e54695 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054695
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
'Gigantic jet' lightning isn't well understood, but could balance out the electrical charge of thunderstorms. One of the biggest ever observed was documented over China, scientists reported this week.
By Elizabeth Howell,?Our Amazing Planet / February 26, 2013
A 'gigantic jet' captured above a storm in North Carolina in 2009. One of the biggest of these 'gigantic jet' lightning bursts was recorded over China in 2010, scientists report this week.
Steven Cummer / LiveScience.com
Enlarge
A rare glimpse of a "gigantic jet" ? a huge and mysterious burst of lightning that connects a thunderstorm with the upper atmosphere ? was made over China in 2010 and was recently described by scientists.
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The gigantic jet took place in eastern China on Aug. 12, 2010 ? the farthest a ground-based one has ever been observed from the equator, according to the research team.
Previous jets were mainly seen in tropical or subtropical regions, but this one took place around 35 degrees latitude, about the same as the southern part of Tennessee in the United States.
"This is the first report from mainland China," lead researcher Jing Yang, an atmospheric scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told OurAmazingPlanet. The results were recently published in the Chinese Science Bulletin.
Researchers got a good look at the storm using a variety of tools, including Doppler radar data and weather pictures in the infrared band of radiation.
The gigantic jet peaked at about 55 miles (89 kilometers) above the ground, far above the cloudtops that were measured with Doppler radar at an altitude of 11 miles (17 km).?
Yang added that her team had possibly seen another gigantic jet in the same area during a different thunderstorm, but said they needed to recheck the data to confirm.
"It's not as clear as this one if it is a gigantic jet or not," she said.
It wasn't until the last century that electrical activity above thunderclouds was scientifically proven, although rumors based on undocumented observations circulated long before that time.
These electrical discharges can take several forms, such as sprites (orange-red flashes) and blue jets, which appear as blue cones.
The first confirmed gigantic jet was reported in 2001, after American researchers saw a blue jet reaching 44 miles (70 km) above the clouds at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This was nearly double the 26-mile (42 km) limit for jets that was previously observed.
Two years later, researchers described shapes such as "tree jets" and "carrot jets" that they spotted during a 2002 thunderstorm over the South China Sea near the Philippines.
While scientists are still trying to understand how these gigantic jets work, they believe the jets balance out the electrical charge during thunderstorms by discharging the ionosphere ? a part of the upper atmosphere filled with charged particles.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook?and Google+.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Saddleback Leather has released the iPad Mini case?(affiliate links). ?It has a hand strap on the inside cover for holding your iPad in a one-hand grip. ? The cover also folds back to make a stand. ? It is made from the same fine leather and industrial heavy-gauge marine-grade thread as their other products. ? [...]
Some people over age 75 appear to be struggling more with debt.
By Allison Linn, TODAY
The golden years are supposed to be a time when you can live off the wealth you?ve accumulated over a lifetime, not feel like you have to take on more debt to make ends meet.
But a new batch of research shows that Americans ages 75 and over appear to have grown more burdened by debt in recent years, and experts say a likely culprit is medical expenses.
A new analysis of government data, released earlier this month by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, found that between 2007 and 2010 people who are 75 and older were more likely to have debt, and their average debt levels increased significantly.
That?s in stark contrast to other older Americans in their 50s and 60s, who generally saw debt levels stabilize during that period.
In general, the good news is that people ages 75 and older are much less likely to have debt, and generally carry far less debt, than other older Americans. But Craig Copeland, a senior research associate with EBRI and the report?s author, said it was still troubling to see that the trend for that group was toward increasing, rather than decreasing, debt burdens.
?It really looked like something wasn?t going well for them,? Copeland said.
He suspects that many Americans who are 75 and older have few options but to take on debt when a big unexpected expense arises, because many are living on fixed retirement incomes and don?t work. That means they can?t, say, work a few extra hours or take on a second job if they need to pay for something.
That unexpected expense may be health-related. Although most older Americans are covered by Medicare, Copeland noted that many are still on the hook for co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.
That means a person with a limited income can have their finances thrown into disarray by one unexpected event, such as a broken hip that requires significant co-pays or the sudden need for a very expensive prescription that isn?t fully covered.
?In a lot of cases it seems to be that health care is a particularly vexing issue,? he said.
The percentage of people 75 and above who had debt grew from 31.2 percent in 2007, the year the nation went into recession, to 38.5 percent in 2010, a year after the recession officially ended, according to the EBRI?s analysis of Census data. The average amount of debt for those with debt also more than doubled, from $13,665 in 2007 to $27,409 in 2010.
The debt loads were far greater for people in their 50s and 60s, but the trend lines were far less troubling. The percentage of people ages 55 to 64 who held debt fell from 81.7 percent to 77.6 percent. For people ages 65 to 74, the percentage holding debt held steady at about 65 percent.
The average debt for 55- to 64-year-old debtholders fell from $112,075 in 2007 to $107,060 in 2010. For people ages 65 to 74, average debt fell from $72,922 in 2007 to $70,875 in 2010.
It makes sense for younger people to have more debt because they are still paying off big expenses, like houses, and they also are more likely to be bringing home a paycheck. By the time you reach your mid-70s, many would expect to have paid off the house and retired from regular work.
For people 75 and older, Copeland said his research showed that both median credit card and housing debt increased for those who had those types of debt.
Lucia Dunn, an economist at The Ohio State University, said her more recent research also has shown that older Americans have been taking on more credit card debt in recent years. She also suspects that unexpected medical expenses are a key problem for that group.
But in general, she said the really troubling finding she?s seeing is that younger Americans appear to be taking on more debt than previous generations, and paying it off at slower rates.
That could mean that today?s young people have even bigger problems than their parents and grandparents when they reach age 75 and older.
?The elderly are taking it in (but) not as fast as the younger ones,? she said. ?The really young cohorts are really digging a hole for themselves.?
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Testifying for the company in a federal trial, Lamar McKay, the former president of BP America, concedes that a well blowout was identified as a hazard before the 2010 Gulf oil spill.
Capsicum Pure is a large market. I feel pressured sometimes to use my Capsicum Pure more often than I want to. Perhaps I should try to keep far, far, away from it anyway. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this anytime soon. It feeling could turn around the Capsicum Pure business. I am superb with Caps...
?Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop? is one of the most compelling photographic exhibits to hit D.C. in years. It aims to encapsulate more than 150 years of photographs that were deliberately engineered to advance a goal: to improve technical limitations of the medium, for instance, or to convince the viewer of political perspectives, express an artistic vision, or simply to have fun.
Some early efforts at manipulation look clumsy to the modern eye, but then again, early viewers were often unsophisticated about how images are constructed; consider an oval-shaped image (middle) in which the artist combined the cropped heads of dozens of prominent citizens in 1850s Scotland. Today, it?s an obvious pastiche, but the piece prompted one viewer at the time to ask when and how the photographer managed to get everyone to pose at the same time.
Still, as inelegant as some of these manipulations were, others prove strikingly persuasive, even eerily modern, such as a colorized 1880s image of an old-fashioned French clock (bottom). In this exhibit, pictorialist efforts?like Edward Steichen?s lovely, color-saturated moonrise over a woodland pond (top)?age better than a surprisingly bland selection of 1920s and 1930s avant-garde works. The selection of kitschy novelty photographs, a mainstay for decades, is a mixed bag, with some patently ridiculous but others unexpectedly authentic-looking, such as a ?man in a bottle? and a decapitated subject holding his own head.
A series of Soviet-era images in which comrades of Stalin disappear with each photographic iteration is chilling (as well as a terrific example of forensic photo history); the same technique of erasure is put to more creditable use in the works of Kathy Grove, who carefully excises women from classic photographs as a feminist statement. The exhibit?s captions are usually informative but are sometimes hard to read due to their background; unfortunately, the exhibit pares down the number of images from its prior run at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Mystifyingly, it also ignores the post-Photoshop era almost entirely.)
On the upside, though, the catalogue is superb, with a panoply of additional images and commentary. Ultimately, what viewers of this varied and thoughtful exhibit take home is the realization of how special photography is. Because no other artistic medium carries such a promise of factual accuracy, manipulation is never more powerful?or produces a deeper kick to the gut?as when it involves a photograph.
Through May 5 at the National Gallery of Art, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW.
Pity the poor would-be restaurateur in the city of Boston. Up to a cool quarter-million for a liquor license, cranky neighborhood associations, hellish parking and valet costs, competition from deep-pocketed national chains: who needs it? Chris Parsons, chef/owner of Winchester's bygone, well-regarded Parsons Table, had considered expanding to Boston last year. Presumably, he ran the numbers and concluded Milton was a better bet, opting to open his new Steel & Rye there. Not that the cavernous space he chose is easy to fill: it's a big old car-barn with room for 150, including 20 at the long bar, with a nicely raw, industrial feel from concrete floors, blond wood, leather, and a lot of Machine Age factory fixtures and exposed infrastructure. The noise level can boom, though a front dining area a few steps down is quieter. The bar represents another welcome instantiation of the craft-cocktail movement, with old-timey classics like a Manhattan made with any of a dozen American straight ryes (Rittenhouse is the default, $10), Antica Formula sweet vermouth, bitters, and a quality cocktail cherry. The nine draft beers ($4?$8) favor New England microbrews; another 18 bottles and cans run from familiar American macros ($4) to more flavorful imports ($6?$10). The modest by-the-glass wines run from $8 to $13; a handful of bottles crack the $100 mark, but most whites run from $30 to $50, reds from $40 to $80.
The menu combines Parsons's two prior concepts (the farm-to-table Americana of Parsons Table and the seafood focus of its predecessor, Catch) and adds a gastropub accent, with many ingredients cured, confited, pickled, and smoked in-house. The small-plate "snacks" section includes ham salad ($5), a friendlier name for ham-based coarse p?t? topped with aspic, salty and delicious spread on pumpernickel with mustard. Pickled quail eggs ($3) colored magenta with beets are pretty but less successful, a tad rubbery. "Today's cheese" ($4) features T?te de Moine, a Swiss pressed raw cow's-milk cheese, scraped tissue-thin with a girolle into gossamer rosettes resembling carnations, its equally delicate flavor contrasted with quince jam on black-pepper bread. Appetizers include delectable Colorado lamb meatballs ($11) sauced in harissa, dotted with yogurt and pignoli; some observers may lament the overuse of lightly cooked eggs to top dishes, but one works beautifully here. Starches ("From the Gristmill") feature an above-average risotto ($15) for a high-volume kitchen: slightly soupy, not overdone, and crammed with sweet Maine shrimp. Mains include a fairly terrific burger ($15) of prime beef topped with aged cheddar, plus sides of kettle chips and a kicky house-made steak sauce (but brioche-bun haters, beware). Country-style veal ($22) is effectively a meatloaf the size of a small football, mild, juicy, and well complemented by white gravy, pearl onions, mushrooms, and shaved fried garlic.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? The Boston Celtics weren't too tired after playing five games in seven days back and forth across time zones.
They had enough left to play overtime to close out a long Western road trip, beating the Utah Jazz 110-107 on Monday night.
Thirty-five-year-old Paul Pierce led Boston with 26 points, including seven straight in the extra session.
"It was huge," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "Whatever that was, it was the best win of the year for me. . To go into overtime and still have enough to win."
It wasn't just the ageless Pierce. Kevin Garnett, three months shy of his 37th birthday, stood strong at the end, refusing to let Rivers sub him out by insisting, "I am good."
Rivers didn't believe that, "but I kept him in and he was terrific."
Garnett had four points in overtime on 2-of-2 shooting, with three rebounds. He finished with 13 points, 10 rebounds, a blocked shot and steal.
The Celtics also got a big game from Avery Bradley, who scored a season-high 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting.
Pierce had a chance to win it in regulation, but his 19-footer at the buzzer rimmed out.
Alec Burks' reverse layup pulled Utah to 108-105 with 37 seconds left in overtime. Garnett's banked 3-pointer with 13 seconds left came after the shot clock expired, giving the Jazz another chance.
Paul Millsap was fouled before he could get off a 3, but made two free throws with 4.2 seconds remaining.
Courtney Lee added two free throws at the other end with 1.2 seconds left to bump Boston's lead back to three, and Randy Foye's 26-footer at the buzzer missed everything.
It was another one the Jazz let get away, though Monday's game had huge swings both ways from start to finish.
Overall, the game had 13 lead changes and was tied 17 times.
"We were in position," said Jazz forward Marvin Williams. "We fought back in the fourth quarter to force overtime but Boston just made big plays down the stretch."
Gordon Hayward led Utah with 26 points, Millsap had 16 and Al Jefferson finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds.
The Celtics (30-27) were playing their fifth game in seven days, but didn't seem to care down the stretch.
The Jazz (31-26) led 101-99 in overtime on DeMarre Carroll's 21-footer, but Pierce countered with a 3-pointer, then followed with a pull-up jumper over Carroll and a 15-footer to give the Celtics a 106-101 edge with 1:12 left.
Jefferson hit a 15-footer with 1:05 left to get Utah within 106-103, but Garnett's jumper helped seal it.
"We knew this was probably going to be the toughest game for us physically and mentally," Pierce said. "Talking about a long road trip, coming in to one of the toughest places to play. We felt we could salvage this trip with a win here. So guys did a good job of just being mentally tough, digging in and doing what we had to do to get the win."
The Celtics, who went 2-3 on the trip, also were smart down the stretch, fouling with fouls to give and finding a wide-open Lee on the inbounds pass when the Jazz needed a late steal in overtime. His free throws provided the final margin.
The Jazz trailed by eight entering the fourth but opened on a 13-2 run.
Jefferson's 10-foot turnaround jumper over Brandon Bass tied it at 93 with 2:46 left in regulation.
Pierce hit an 18-footer with Carroll diving at him for a 97-95 Boston lead with 36 seconds remaining in regulation, only to see Burks tie it with a tough layup with 19 seconds left.
"We wanted to win in regulation," Pierce said. "It would have felt better just to get a stop when we needed it. That's what we need to get better at. We didn't do it in Portland. We didn't do it tonight. That's what we need to start focusing on. When we get the lead and we need crucial stops, we have to figure out how to get them."
The game took a 16-point swing in the third, as Boston trailed 58-50 only to counter with a 20-4 run and lead 80-72 entering the fourth.
Pierce ignited the run with a 3-pointer, Bradley hit two more 3s and Lee added a dunk after a steal and another 3-pointer. Pierce capped the run with a jumper over Hayward for a 70-62 Boston lead.
The Celtics hit 6 of 13 3-pointers in the 32-point third quarter, while Utah made just 5 of 16 from the field.
It was the same story as Saturday, when the Jazz fought back early only to see the Los Angeles Clippers go on a 23-4 run and douse any hopes.
A Jazz team that had won three straight and seven of 10 has now dropped two in a row.
While Hayward showed he is recovered from a right shoulder injury despite missing a pair of shots in overtime, the Jazz still need point guard Mo Williams back from a thumb injury.
Monday, Earl Watson started over Jamaal Tinsley, but Burks ended up playing the position during Utah's big second-quarter run.
Pierce said Boston reverted to various defenses to slow the Jazz.
"We did a lot of zone, did a lot of man and tried to force turnovers," Pierce said. "That's what we have to do. A lot of times we had to go to small because they had plenty of size and they rebound well. We just junked up the game a little bit by changing our defense."
It may have been junk, but it was a win nonetheless.
"We have champions," said guard Jason Terry, who made four 3-pointers and finished with 14 points and two assists off the bench for Boston.
"When you have champions that have been through so many tough games as we have, then you know you're in good hands. For us, we hang our hat on executing down the stretch."
NOTES; Jazz F Derrick Favors picked up his third foul with 9:06 left in the second quarter. . Jazz G Foye needed four 3-pointers to tie Mehmet Okur (129, 2006-07) for the franchise single-season record. Foye went 0-5 Saturday but hit his first Monday and finished 2 of 6. . Bradley started 5 of 5 and had 10 points in six minutes for Boston, while Millsap started 4 of 4 for Utah. . The Jazz led 53-48 at halftime.
CARACAS (Reuters) - Most Venezuelans expect President Hugo Chavez to recover from cancer and return to active rule even though he has been in hospital and virtually unseen for two-and-a-half months, a poll showed on Tuesday.
Local pollster Hinterlaces said 60 percent of interviewees believe Chavez will be cured and back to governing, while 14 percent think he will recover but be unable to rule again, and 12 percent view his state as incurable.
Chavez, 58, underwent a fourth operation for cancer in Cuba on December 11. Last week he returned to Venezuela and was whisked to a military hospital in Caracas.
Apart from four photos of him in hospital in Havana, the socialist president has not been seen or heard in public, with even friend and ally Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, unable to enter his room on two hospital visits.
The surprisingly optimistic view of Venezuelans - in contrast to a more pessimistic consensus among diplomats and analysts that Chavez's 14-year rule is probably nearing its end - came in the presentation of two recent surveys by Hinterlaces.
"Far from weakening 'Chavismo,' far from reducing the popular support for President Chavez, his absence and illness have strengthened the bonds of affection and identification with the president's ideals," Hinterlaces head Oscar Schemel said.
Previously released results from the same surveys showed that if Chavez is forced out, his vice president and preferred successor, Nicolas Maduro, is favored to win an election in a possible match-up against opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Hinterlaces gave Maduro 50 percent of potential votes, compared with 36 percent for Capriles.
The opposition leader has publicly accused Hinterlaces of pro-government bias, and political polls in Venezuela are notoriously controversial and divergent.
The survey also showed that 60 percent of people view the devaluation of the bolivar currency earlier this month as negative for Venezuela. But the government otherwise scored high marks for its social welfare policies and ability to improve lives.
Accused by the opposition of lying and putting a gloss on Chavez's state, officials are urging Venezuelans to be patient.
"The president has the right to take whatever time he needs to recover ... We have the patience to wait for him, to understand him and to accompany him in his battle for life," Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said on Tuesday.
"We can't succumb to the blackmailing of the right-wing - and its cruelty and inhumanity - which is clamoring for the president to appear, to intervene, to be sworn in right now."
Chavez missed his scheduled January swearing-in for the new, six-year term he won in last year's presidential poll.
(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
There's something magical about the Chromebook Pixel's display. You're so drawn in by its crispness that you want to press your hand against it. And when you finally give in to that urge ... you discover it's a touchscreen.
Woah.
But does that moment ? that instant when you instinctively touch a screen and it reacts the way your smartphone-obsessed brain expects ? merit paying $1,299 for a laptop that doesn't run Windows or OS X and is essentially just a hyper-evolved Web browser?
I could certainly justify the purchase to myself, because I live my life online. The only moments I truly leave my browser on any given day involve 10 or so minutes inside a proprietary Windows-only application I have to use for work. Otherwise the browser is it for me ? I can even edit photos with Photoshop's online service. And that means Chrome OS, the operating system Google put on the Pixel suits me just fine.
I don't mind if my applications reside on the Web and my data lives in the cloud, but that doesn't work for everyone. Some need software that doesn't have a Web version, some are without data connectivity too often, and so on. The Pixel isn't for those folks ? they can stop reading right here.
Those who prefer swimming in the open Web need to know about the Chromebook Pixel though.
Have I mentioned the screen? There's no photo I can offer that could do justice to the Pixel's screen, but if you've tried a newer iPhone, iPad, or an Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display, you'll understand. There are 239 pixels per inch (ppi) on the Pixel's 12.85-inch display ? which works out to about 4.3 million pixels ? so many that your eyes can't easily differentiate the individual glowing dots. (For comparison, bear in mind that the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display offers 227 ppi, the latest iPad has 264 ppi and the iPhone 5 checks in at 326 ppi.)
A Retina display on a laptop makes sense, but do people really also want multi-touch? Apple's late co-founder said no.
"We've thought about this years ago. We've done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn't work," Jobs explained while a mockup of a MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive display appeared on the screen during a press event on Oct. 20, 2010. "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical."
"After a short period of time, you start to fatigue. And after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off." Jobs added. "It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible."
Jobs was right ? I tried using just the touchscreen, no trackpad, and I nearly apologized to my weary limbs ? but Jobs, with all due respect, was also wrong. Using the touchscreen in combination with the trackpad is a fairly pleasant experience. There are moments when touching the screen feels natural. Tapping through photos, scrolling through documents, scrubbing through video, and so on. Once you get acclimated to the fact that your laptop now responds to touch the way a phone or tablet might, you instinctively reach out at certain times. Otherwise, you just stick to the trackpad. It's a great balance.
Mind you, neither the Web nor the browser-based Chrome OS have become finger-friendly overnight. Buttons and links are still itty-bitty. It's a trackpad-and-mouse world and the Pixel just lives in it. I must admit that I have inadvertently scrolled or selected something while simply trying to point out an item on my screen to someone.
Thanks to my habit of alternating between lotions and hand sanitizer, every phone I handle is left with so many smudges on its screen that you'd think it was attacked by a sticky-handed toddler, but, strangely enough, the Pixel's screen seemed to be impervious to smudging during the time I used it.
Like a sneaky gray kitten, the Pixel runs so quietly that you might forget that it's there. And even more importantly: No matter how many tabs or windows are open, the laptop runs smoothly.
The keyboard will feel familiar to those who, like me, are used to Apple's. It is a bit firmer though, in the most satisfying of ways. (And yes, like other Chromebooks, the Pixel's Caps Lock key is replaced by a handy-dandy Search key.)
The Pixel's speakers are surprisingly loud and clear. You wouldn't expect the speakers on a laptop of this size to pack quite so much oomph. The rest of the laptop's body is equally impressive. The Pixel's got an anodized aluminium alloy body and it keeps vents, screws, and speakers as hidden as possible. No distractions ? just a slick, clean exterior hiding a dual-core 1.8GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of solid state storage (64GB if you opt for the LTE-enabled model), a 720p webcam, and all the usual laptop guts.
"If you love the Pixel so much, why don't you just marry it? You could be Rosa Golijan-Pixel," someone out there is shouting at this point. Like I said, buddy, this laptop's certainly not for everyone. Are you able to live in the browser and cloud?
And if you are sold on the Chrome OS, does having a touchscreen with an high pixel-density valuable justify the Pixel's high price? After all, Acer's Chromebook, with its dated hardware and clunky exterior, sells for a budget-minded $199.
Starting at $1,299, the Chromebook Pixel is considerably more of an investment. And you can step up to an LTE-enabled model with 64GB of solid state memory for $1,449. Both models come with one terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage for three years and 12 free GoGo in-flight Internet passes. The LTE-enabled model also comes with a free 100MB of data through Verizon Wireless per month for two years.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
3 Johns Hopkins researchers recognized for medical inventionsPublic release date: 26-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Shawna Williams shawna@jhmi.edu 410-955-8236 Johns Hopkins Medicine
BioMaryland LIFE and Abell Foundation awards confer funds for research translation
Johns Hopkins' John Wong, Ph.D., has won a BioMaryland LIFE Award, and Ronald Berger, M.D., Ph.D., and Hien Nguyen, M.D., were awarded funds from the Abell Foundation, the researchers learned last week. Each of the winners will receive $50,000 to help develop their discoveries for clinical use.
The prizes were awarded as part of the annual Joint Meeting of the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science and Technology Development and the University of Maryland, Baltimore Commercial Advisory Board on Feb. 19. The meeting was attended by more than 150 venture capitalists, seasoned biotech entrepreneurs and business development executives from the biopharma industry. Judging committees evaluated presentations from two dozen university researchers before selecting the winners. The aim of the awards is to speed the translation of promising research into commercial application.
First awarded in 2010, the LIFE Prizes are two grants funded by the Maryland Biotechnology Center, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland to help advance research in biotech and biopharma, medical devices, or diagnostics that have great potential for commercial application. Wong will use the funding to develop technology that will aid in the safer delivery of radiation therapy. This year's other winner was the University of Maryland School of Dentistry's Mark Shirtliff.
For the first time this year, the Abell Foundation also donated funds for two prizes to be awarded at the Joint Meeting. Founded 60 years ago in Baltimore, the foundation's mission is to enhance quality of life in the city. Berger's award will help his team develop advanced defibrillation technology based on their discoveries about the effects of high-frequency alternating current on the heart's electrical patterns. Nguyen will use his prize funds to continue the development of FastStitch, a device that can close the muscle layers of the chest and abdomen in a way that allows surgeons more precision and consistency while requiring less time and resources.
Winner biographies:
Ronald D. Berger is a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering and directs the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Training Program in Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. He has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals and holds more than 20 patents in the fields of arrhythmia detection, catheter ablation, defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. His honors include a First Independent Research Support & Transition (FIRST) Award from the National Institutes of Health and a National Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. Berger has co-founded three medical device companies and served on advisory boards for eight others. His academic focus is on arrhythmia device technology, signal processing and technology transfer.
Hien Nguyen is the director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Hernia Center, an assistant professor of surgery in the school of medicine and an associate medical director for the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) in the school of engineering. He specializes in minimally invasive surgery and his surgical practice involves the repair of complex hernias, abdominal wall reconstruction, as well as bariatric surgery. His FastStitch device has won many accolades, including a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, and finished first place in business competitions at the University of Maryland, University of California, Irvine and the ASME Innovation Showcase.
John Wong is director of the Division of Medical Physics and a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences. Wong helps coordinate all technical services and directly manages the physics and dosimetry services of the radiation therapy clinics to ensure the delivery of state-of-the-art methods of radiation treatment. He has over 130 peer-reviewed publications and holds two patents on methods of delivering precisely targeted radiation treatment.
Three of Wong's inventions, the Active Breathing Coordinator, the image-guided small animal radiation research platform (SARRP) and the cone-beam computed tomography on-board medical accelerator, have been successfully commercialized and have become standards of care and research in the radiation therapy community.
Instead of Defibrillator's Painful Jolt, There May Be a Gentler Way to Prevent Sudden Death, According to Hopkins Scientists (Ronald Berger): http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/instead_of_defibrillators_painful_jolt_there_may_be_a_gentler_way_to_prevent_sudden_death_according_to_hopkins_scientists
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
3 Johns Hopkins researchers recognized for medical inventionsPublic release date: 26-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Shawna Williams shawna@jhmi.edu 410-955-8236 Johns Hopkins Medicine
BioMaryland LIFE and Abell Foundation awards confer funds for research translation
Johns Hopkins' John Wong, Ph.D., has won a BioMaryland LIFE Award, and Ronald Berger, M.D., Ph.D., and Hien Nguyen, M.D., were awarded funds from the Abell Foundation, the researchers learned last week. Each of the winners will receive $50,000 to help develop their discoveries for clinical use.
The prizes were awarded as part of the annual Joint Meeting of the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science and Technology Development and the University of Maryland, Baltimore Commercial Advisory Board on Feb. 19. The meeting was attended by more than 150 venture capitalists, seasoned biotech entrepreneurs and business development executives from the biopharma industry. Judging committees evaluated presentations from two dozen university researchers before selecting the winners. The aim of the awards is to speed the translation of promising research into commercial application.
First awarded in 2010, the LIFE Prizes are two grants funded by the Maryland Biotechnology Center, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland to help advance research in biotech and biopharma, medical devices, or diagnostics that have great potential for commercial application. Wong will use the funding to develop technology that will aid in the safer delivery of radiation therapy. This year's other winner was the University of Maryland School of Dentistry's Mark Shirtliff.
For the first time this year, the Abell Foundation also donated funds for two prizes to be awarded at the Joint Meeting. Founded 60 years ago in Baltimore, the foundation's mission is to enhance quality of life in the city. Berger's award will help his team develop advanced defibrillation technology based on their discoveries about the effects of high-frequency alternating current on the heart's electrical patterns. Nguyen will use his prize funds to continue the development of FastStitch, a device that can close the muscle layers of the chest and abdomen in a way that allows surgeons more precision and consistency while requiring less time and resources.
Winner biographies:
Ronald D. Berger is a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering and directs the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Training Program in Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. He has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals and holds more than 20 patents in the fields of arrhythmia detection, catheter ablation, defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. His honors include a First Independent Research Support & Transition (FIRST) Award from the National Institutes of Health and a National Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. Berger has co-founded three medical device companies and served on advisory boards for eight others. His academic focus is on arrhythmia device technology, signal processing and technology transfer.
Hien Nguyen is the director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Hernia Center, an assistant professor of surgery in the school of medicine and an associate medical director for the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design (CBID) in the school of engineering. He specializes in minimally invasive surgery and his surgical practice involves the repair of complex hernias, abdominal wall reconstruction, as well as bariatric surgery. His FastStitch device has won many accolades, including a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, and finished first place in business competitions at the University of Maryland, University of California, Irvine and the ASME Innovation Showcase.
John Wong is director of the Division of Medical Physics and a professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences. Wong helps coordinate all technical services and directly manages the physics and dosimetry services of the radiation therapy clinics to ensure the delivery of state-of-the-art methods of radiation treatment. He has over 130 peer-reviewed publications and holds two patents on methods of delivering precisely targeted radiation treatment.
Three of Wong's inventions, the Active Breathing Coordinator, the image-guided small animal radiation research platform (SARRP) and the cone-beam computed tomography on-board medical accelerator, have been successfully commercialized and have become standards of care and research in the radiation therapy community.
Instead of Defibrillator's Painful Jolt, There May Be a Gentler Way to Prevent Sudden Death, According to Hopkins Scientists (Ronald Berger): http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/instead_of_defibrillators_painful_jolt_there_may_be_a_gentler_way_to_prevent_sudden_death_according_to_hopkins_scientists
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
I recently got a letter from a senior in college asking if her cover letters were too focused on herself and not enough on the organizations she was applying to. She showed me a typical letter, which included the following (pieces redacted to protect her privacy):
?As a graduating senior double majoring in __ and __?at __?College, I am interested in pursuing a career focused on __. I believe that my experience researching __, combined with my internship, shows my commitment to social justice and grassroots action to combat __. This drive makes me an ideal candidate for the position of?__.
My excellent communication and writing skills combined with my proficiency in analysis, research, and time management enable me to contribute to the goals of ???.. and importantly, afford me a tremendous opportunity to expand my own personal knowledge and skill set??
I wrote back and told her this:
One problem is that you?re telling, not showing ? ?shows my commitment to social justice? ? ?makes me an ideal candidate?? ? ?enable me to contribute to the goals of??
Let the employer draw those conclusions through the information you show them. Don?t tell them what it means; they decide that stuff.
Have you reviewed the cover letter section of my archives? That might help.
Here?s her response, which made my blood curdle on behalf of college students everywhere who are being poorly advised by their campus career centers, to the point of malpractice:
Thank you so much for your advice. I haven?t gotten a chance to look at your archives yet but I definitely will. I?m just confused about letting future employers draw conclusions. My career center always told me I have to tell the job how good I am and not let them infer anything since they could negatively infer. Was that an over-generalization?
What?!!
Campus career centers are notorious for giving out bad advice, but this is among the worst I?ve ever heard.
Do not tell the employer how good you are; they are going to decide that for themselves, not simply trust your assessment, and it makes candidates look overly cocky when they attempt to assert this kind of thing (and in the case of recent grads, naive ? since most aren?t that good yet, and that?s normal).
Given the incredible amount of terrible advice coming from campus career centers ? from telling students to ?call to schedule an interview? to telling them to overnight their resume to ?get the hiring manager?s attention? to recommending salesy interview answers instead of genuine ones ? it really might be time to close down most of these charlatans.* Students would probably be better off if they were forced to find better sources of advice.
Health inspectors have the power to close restaurants that are endangering their customers. Someone should do the same here.
* And yes, I know there are some good ones. But when they?re such the exception to the rule?
The explosions, which injured scores of market goers, come amid ongoing tensions in India over its recent execution of convicted terrorist Mohammad Afzal Guru.
By Arthur Bright,?Staff writer / February 21, 2013
Fire fighters extinguish a fire at the site of an explosion in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad February 21, 2013. Two bombs placed on bicycles exploded in a crowded market-place in Hyderabad on Thursday, and the federal home minister said at least 11 people were killed and 50 wounded.
Reuters
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A pair of bicycle bombs rocked a crowded marketplace in Hyderabad today, killing at least 11 people and injuring scores more in the southern Indian city of 6.8 million, a major hub for information technology where Microsoft and Google have a large presence.
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Arthur Bright is the Europe Editor at The Christian Science Monitor.? He has worked for the Monitor in various capacities since 2004, including as the Online News Editor and a regular contributor to the Monitor's Terrorism & Security blog.? He is also a licensed Massachusetts attorney.
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Reuters reports that India has gone on high alert after the explosions, which local television stations report may have killed up to 15 people and wounded at least 50.?The last major bomb attack in India was a blast in September of 2011 outside the high court in New Delhi that killed 13 people.
"Both blasts took place within a radius of 150 meters," federal Home (Interior) Minister Sushil Shinde told reporters, adding the explosives were placed on bicycles parked in the crowded marketplace. "Eight people died at one place, three at the other."
The explosions come less than two weeks after India hanged a Kashmiri man for a militant attack on the country's parliament in 2001 that had sparked violent clashes.
Witnesses told Reuters they heard at least two explosions in the Dilsukh Nagar area of Hyderabad just after dusk but there could have been more.
The Hindustan Times reports that Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters that "it was too early to say anything" about whether it was a terrorist attack, but that the government was investigating. But the Times notes that the country had already been on alert for attacks due to the recent execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru, a convict in the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament.
The Monitor reported earlier this month that Mr. Afzal Guru's death sentence, though handed down in 2002, was carried out on Feb. 9 without advance warning, and appears to involve a significant political impetus.
The execution is being seen by analysts as the ruling Congress party?s way of regaining public confidence in the wake of several corruption scandals and protests over the recent Delhi gang-rape. Political commentator Seema Mustafa says the sudden decision to execute Afzal Guru, after years of dilly-dallying, is part of a Congress party effort?to improve its position for the 2014 general elections. ?The Congress in its usual cynical manipulation of the votes is trying to eat into the majority constituency with this action,? she says.
Executions had become more rare up until [that of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist in the 2008 Mumbai attacks] ? the first in India in eight years. Like Kasab's hanging in November, Azfal Guru's?came just ahead of a parliament session. ?I would just say it's extremely tragic if Indian democracy is going to survive on executing someone or the other before every Parliament session,? says lawyer Vrinda Grover. Congress party spokesman?Abhishek Manu Singhvi called such suggestions about the timing "irresponsible and childish."
The execution led to days of protest in Kashmir, where Afzal Guru was from.