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Go ahead and read all 238 pages of the Paterno family report, if you're so inclined. People who believe Joe Paterno's statue should still be standing in Happy Valley probably will, and feel pretty good about it at the end.
The summary weighs in at just four pages and does its job of giving Paterno a posthumous cleansing, too. Turns out he was a trusting sort who knew nothing about anything — and no one else did, either.
Or just read this headline and save yourself a lot of time: Critique of the Freeh Report: The Rush to Injustice Regarding Joe Paterno.
Pretty much sums it up, though widow Sue will go on Katie Couric's show Monday to make sure everyone understands. A year after his death, the campaign to resuscitate Joe Paterno's name is under way with a hefty document that savages the Freeh report implicating Paterno as a silent enabler of Jerry Sandusky as "rank speculation, innuendo and rhetoric."
Was there any other way this was going to turn out? Months in the making and paid for by the Paterno family, this is as much a public relations campaign as it is an answer to accusations against him.
You have a former FBI director; we'll top you with a former attorney general. You say JoePa knew things and conspired to keep them silent, we'll say there was no conspiracy at all.
At times the defense of Paterno is almost laughable, such as this from former FBI profiler Jim Clemente: "Paterno, like everyone else who knew Sandusky, simply fell victim to effective 'grooming,'" Clemente wrote.
Utter hogwash. Paterno himself would have probably said the same thing if he was as honest with himself as the family contends he was with others.
There are no excuses for not following up on Mike McQueary description of the sickening things he saw in the locker room showers of the Lasch Football Building. No way of getting around the fact Sandusky was allowed to hang around the locker room for years after that, molesting who knows how many other young boys.
And no special dispensation for any of it simply because Paterno was a coaching legend who ran not only a football program, but a university and a town.
Not that you can blame the family for trying. The legacy that Paterno so carefully built up over 46 years as head football coach at Penn State was left in tatters by the scandal, and they're trying desperately to restore his good name.
What they don't understand is that Joe Paterno is not the real victim here. What he lost in the final months of his life surely pains the family, but it was the cult of Paterno itself that created the atmosphere that allowed a monster like Sandusky to roam freely.
The young boys who were sexually abused by Sandusky are the true victims. They're the ones who pay every day of their lives, while trying their best to erase terrible scars that just won't go away.
Sadly, no one can write a report giving them back the innocence Sandusky stole while Paterno reigned supreme at State College.
If you believe the Paterno family report — and it is an impressive, though flawed document — former FBI director Louis Freeh acted as "judge, jury and executioner" when he was hired by Penn State to deliver the definitive report on the involvement of the university and its officers in the Sandusky scandal. Freeh concluded last July that four of the most powerful people at Penn State — including Paterno — failed to protect children from Sandusky for more than a decade as part of an effort to protect the university and its reputation.
"That bell can never be unrung, but the many associated errors can be corrected," the Paterno report states.
Just what those errors are is a bit unclear, though former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh took particular offense in his portion of the report claims by Freeh that Paterno did not have empathy for the safety of children. Not only did Paterno like children, Thornburgh wrote, but made sure to participate in a Penn State dance marathon charity for children with cancer and was a supporter of the Special Olympics.
So Paterno wasn't some kind of monster after all. Glad we could get that cleared up.
The bottom line is the Freeh report wasn't perfect. It jumped to some conclusions, and took some liberties that would not hold up in court.
That's what prosecutors do, but it's important to note that Penn State both accepted the report and has implemented changes recommended in it. The NCAA waited just 10 days after its release to impose landmark sanctions on Penn State that include $60 million in fines and a four-year postseason ban on football.
Nothing in the Paterno report is going to change that. If Freeh was the prosecutor, Thornburgh and others are the defense attorneys, trying their best to declare Paterno innocent in the court of public opinion.
But the bottom line of the Freeh report was accurate. There was a core of top university officials that knew things and didn't act.
And there were children who paid for it. Young boys who paid dearly because the people in charge didn't stop Sandusky when they could.
The Paternos may find it hard to swallow because they can't reconcile it to the man they knew, the man who over the years became a near deity in State College. And certainly some people will agree with them that Paterno was the scapegoat for a scandal, an old man railroaded and unceremoniously dumped by the very university he loved and served so ably on the football field.
Unfortunately for them, the statue that once stood outside the football stadium is not coming back.
And neither is Paterno's reputation.
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg


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As someone with high self-confidence, you feel quite comfortable interacting with other people. Indeed, you find the company of others very stimulating and enjoy meeting new people. Your relaxed demeanor in groups makes people around you comfortable too. Perhaps because you feel comfortable talking about yourself, others tend to enjoy being around you and perceive you as socially competent. The confidence that helps you feel comfortable talking to people also spills into your own personal beliefs about yourself. Although you have several strengths, it's likely that you also acknowledge and accept your weaknesses. But unlike some people, you take full responsibility for your actions—you rarely regret things you've done in the past and are not embarrassed easily. Perhaps the defining feature that sets you apart from most people is the exceptionally high standards that you set for yourself. Your competence in social gatherings as well as at work should provide ample evidence for this. With these characteristics, it's very likely that people come to you for advice and generally think of you as someone with leader-like qualities.
Family Orientation
As someone who is oriented to familial matters, you value the company of family-members and domestic life. If you have children already, you enjoy spending time with them very much and work hard to be a good parent. If you don't have children, you very much desire having children in the future. And your preference for cooking and entertaining guests at home will likely ease the transition into parenthood. You take pride in maintaining and cultivating a healthy family and work hard to achieve this. This natural tendency is easily illustrated by your preference for doing things around the house as opposed to going out to clubs and restaurants. What really sets you apart from people that are low in family orientation is that you know how to manage your frustrations and work well on your own. This means that you are well-equipped to manage a family without letting all the work that is involved wear you down. However, as someone with strong family values, all the work that is involved in maintaining a tidy home and well-stocked kitchen might occasionally make it difficult for you to finish everything that you need to do.
The self-control personality dimension captures the way in which a person regulates and directs him or herself. Being moderate in self-control can be both good and bad. People may be compelled to follow their intuitions and give in to their temptations, and your degree of self-control means that this may happen occasionally. This can be good in situations where focus and control are very important. However, on certain occasions being able to give in to one's temptations can be fun and even healthy (as long as it's in moderation). As someone who exerts a moderate amount of control of your actions, you may find that you exert too much stress on yourself sometimes. For example, you may be inclined to take more responsibility on projects, which may not always be necessary. This might be because you have a slight tendency to focus on the details and feel as though others may not be able to do as good of a job noticing such details as yourself. You might find it difficult to let others do certain jobs, and as a result, increase your own workload and stress level. Having moderate self-control is generally a good thing. Although you have good control over your impulses, you also take notice of your emotions and sometimes take them into account while making decisions. This can be good when making important decisions because you acknowledge that your underlying feelings may be trying to tell you something important.
As someone moderate in openness, you have an appreciation for art and nature, but are also down to earth and realistic. On the one hand, it's likely that you are fond of music and art, and on the other hand, enjoy and appreciate things that have a clear point and some sort of practical utility. Additionally, you have a certain degree of awareness of your own emotions; that is, you tend to notice when you're feeling a particular way and take those feelings into account when making decisions. You tend to think in both abstract ways—in terms of metaphors—and logically. Therefore, in your work and free time, you enjoy activities that get your "creative juices" flowing, but are also able to keep your mind on the primary objective of the task at hand. Your tendency to be both open-minded, yet realistic is generally quite advantageous. For instance, when there are no clear rules about how to approach a particular problem, your openness makes it easy for you to identify new ways to solve problems that might not be very obvious to people that are not as open as you are. However, because you are also realistic-minded, you are able follow-rules quite easily. This combination makes it easy for you to excel in your work because you are able to "think outside the box" while still being able to keep your eyes on "the big picture."
Easygoingness refers to one's ability to relax. Based on your score, you appear to "take things as they come" and enjoy having a good time. However, being high in easygoingness also has the potential to produce stress in a number of ways. For example, you may find it difficult to complete tasks thoroughly and efficiently. In this way, being high in easygoingness cannot only make your life difficult, but also the lives of the people around you. Another potential problem with being too high in easygoingness is that it can provide you with gratification in the short-term, but in the long-term provide undesirable consequences. High easygoingness, even when not seriously destructive, may also diminish your effectiveness at work, for example. You may find it aversive and difficult to put in all the effort that may sometimes be needed to effectively accomplish certain tasks. For this reason, your colleagues might view you as forgetful and unfocused. How does your personality affect your love life? With your high degree of self-confidence, it's no surprise that you get along well with most people. Indeed, it's self-confidence that allows people to feel comfortable interacting with others without feeling insecure and vulnerable. For this reason, you shouldn't have much difficulty in romance, at least not initially. Your social skills will likely help relieve any anxiety your romantic partners might have on those first few dates. However, over time, the high standards that you have for yourself could potentially frustrate your partner. Given how much you value family life, you probably get along best with people who share your values and beliefs. In fact, it's likely that you maintain close connections with members of your immediate and distant family. For this reason, you would probably be most satisfied in a romantic relationship with someone who also values domestic life. Being in a relationship with someone who enjoys going out to parties and staying-up late at night might be fun, at least initially; yet it's likely that you will find this tiring over time. Thus, it might be easier and more satisfying for you to develop a long-lasting relationship with a person who also enjoys spending time at home and desires starting a family. On first dates, perhaps you might suggest to your partner that the two of you spend a quiet night having dinner at one of your respective homes instead of going out to a restaurant or club. You may find it difficult to get along well with people that are too uptight or too impulsive. For this reason, you would probably be most satisfied in a romantic relationship with someone who also has a good degree of self-control. Being in a relationship with someone who has too much might be frustrating because that person might find it difficult to relax; whereas being in a relationship with someone who does not have enough self-control could be frustrating because that person may not always take your thoughts and feelings into account when making decisions. Thus, it might be easiest and most satisfying for you to develop a long-lasting relationship with a person who is equally capable of regulating his/her urges, but who also knows how to relax from time to time. Your openness probably makes it easy for you to respect and appreciate people that are different from you. However, you may become frustrated with people that are too unconventional or traditional. Therefore, you may be happiest in serious relationships with people that share both your open-mindedness and realistic nature.

subset: commoncrawl


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The 2012 presidential election was supposed to be about the economy, and even with President Obama's historic decision to make it known Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, that is still likely to be true.
But the president's decision to announce in an ABC News interview that he personally backs gay marriage could mean that at least one social issue may take a more prominent role in the election-year spotlight.
The decision carries risks for the president. Anyone doubting that clearly need look no further than the overwhelming support Tuesday in North Carolina for a gay marriage ban to be added to the state's constitution. That amendment was approved 61 percent to 39 percent.
The president and his re-election team are clearly gambling, however, that his now-open support for same-sex marriage will attract more voters than it repels, and allow him to make the choice between himself and Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, even sharper.
Romney opposes gay marriage. Indeed, he has said he supports a federal constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.
By taking a public stand on the contentious issue, Obama may do for Romney what the former Massachusetts governor has had trouble doing for himself — that is, energizing the Republican base, especially evangelical Christians, to rally behind the likely GOP nominee.
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, made that very point in an interview:
"What everyone said was not going to be an issue in this election is now an issue. The president has made it an issue. This provides a very clear contrast between him and Mitt Romney. I think [Romney] may have been handed the key to support from social conservatives. Obama just turned up the heat and intensity."
Risking African-American Support
Another potential peril for Obama is that he alienates some of his heretofore most faithful supporters — African-Americans. Of all the groups represented in his political base, blacks are among the most churchgoing and hostile to the idea of gay marriage.
According to an October 2011 Pew Research poll, 62 percent of black Protestants oppose same-sex marriage.
But African-Americans have backed Obama to a lopsided degree — 96 percent support on Election Day 2008 with little if any drop-off since.
That could give the president and his re-election team less reason to be anxious about the effect of his support for gay marriage.
Like African-Americans, Latino voters also have a high church-attendance rate and many have similar antipathy to gay marriage. But their much stronger support for Obama over Romney could offset the fallout from the president's move.
The Upside
While there are downsides to Obama's decision to go public with his support for gay marriage, there also was an upside.
Obama's campaign has sought ways to recapture the excitement of 2008, especially with younger voters, LGBT voters and liberals disappointed by the gap between his campaign promises of four years ago and what he's actually been able to accomplish.
A recent Gallup poll indicated that just about as many Americans favor gay marriage (50 percent) as oppose it (48 percent). But get inside those percentages, and you see some important demographic differences.
Younger voters especially are much more supportive of same-sex marriage than older voters. According to Gallup, voters aged 18 to 34 favor the legalization of gay marriage 66 percent to 33 percent.
Unfortunately, those younger voters tend to turn up to vote on Election Day at significantly lower rates than their older counterparts. Obama's support for same-sex marriage could help boost that young-voter turnout.
Independent voters favor gay marriage 57 percent to 40 percent, the same as college graduates. Moderates favor it by 20 percentage points — 58 percent to 38 percent.
His new public stance on gay marriage certainly could remind many of those voters of what they saw in Obama four years ago, motivating many of them to come out and vote for him instead of sitting it out in November.
Justin Ruben, executive director of the liberal group MoveOn.org said:
"This is a historic day. The president's support for marriage equality is great news that's likely to energize progressive activists across the country."
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates legal equality for LGBT people, said in an interview:
"I'm thrilled, excited. It's a historic moment. I think that the president spoke from his heart, from a place of common humanity."His words ... give hope to LGBT Americans that, as he has always said, he sees them as a part of the American fabric."The leadership of the president, the words of the president, his coming out in support of an issue as important as marriage equality, and around which many are still struggling, still on a journey, will help those people."
Asked what difference he thought the president's decision would make on Election Day, Solmonese said:
"I think at the end of the day, this election will continue to be about the economy and about economic struggles we all face. As all contests like this, it will also be a question of character. What the president demonstrated today is that he is a person of deep conviction. We still have to win the fight for marriage equality."
One certainty is that Obama defused an issue that might have caused a ruckus at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Congressional Democrats and most of the party's delegates support same-sex marriage, and some politics watchers were suggesting there could be a high-profile effort to get a strong gay marriage plank in the party's platform. If the president had maintained his public opposition, he would have appeared to be out of step with his party on an important issue. That's never a good thing for a party leader facing what many think will be a close election.
Given that there is already some talk of punishing North Carolina for the constitutional ban on gay marriage, Obama didn't need the additional headache of being berated on his gay-marriage stance.
The Republican Response
Republicans were quick to try to convert what some saw as a virtue — the president's willingness to finally take a clear stand on one of the most controversial social issues of the day, what Solmonese called "character" — into a vice.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus characterized the president's move as a crass act of political opportunism, and Romney's position as principled:
"While President Obama has played politics on this issue, the Republican Party and our presumptive nominee Mitt Romney have been clear. We support maintaining marriage between one man and one woman and would oppose any attempts to change that."
It's true that Romney has long opposed gay marriage and civil unions. But when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1994 and later for governor, he tried to square the circle by leaving the impression that he was otherwise a strong defender of equal rights for LGBT Americans.
The same criticism that was made against Obama — that his stance of being for gay equality but against same-sex marriage — could just as easily be made against Romney, since it's hard to understand how one can be both for equal rights for gays and against gay marriage.
In any event, by removing that contradiction from his position on the issue, Obama now is free to attack Romney for his inconsistency.
Perkins, at the Family Research Council, said that, in his opinion, the advantage would go to Romney and social conservatives. He told us:
"Ten of the 16 battleground states have marriage amendments. The only thing that stands between the votes these people made and same-sex marriage is the Defense of Marriage Act," he said. "They're going to have to vote for someone who wants to overturn the work these people did on marriage."
Perkins added that he thought the president's action could affect his grip on the African-American vote, noting that in Tuesday's vote on an anti-gay marriage amendment in North Carolina, majority black precincts voted overwhelmingly in favor of the amendment.
Perkins also pointed to the 2004 presidential election, when President George W. Bush won the swing state of Ohio with the help of voters who turned out to vote for a ballot initiative promoted by Republicans that would ban same-sex marriage.
The number of conservatives voting that year in Ohio increased from 2000, and Bush made inroads with African-American voters, Perkins said. He added that black voters supported the Ohio anti-gay marriage initiative by 61 percent to 39 percent.
Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.


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In addition to hosting our annual NASCAR event race weekend, Pocono Raceway proudly hosts over 200 additional events throughout the year at our facility. This calendar highlights all of those various events that will take place here in 2024. Additional 2024 events will be added soon and as they are confirmed.
Please Note: Specific events may be private, require a membership, and may not be open to spectators. Please click on the individual event to find out more details. If spectators are permitted tickets would be likely be sold directly through the event organizer and not Pocono Raceway.
To view our 2024 NASCAR Weekend Schedule please click here.
All times and events are subject to change without notice.
To expand each event for more info, simply click the the (+) symbol in the upper right corner of that specific event.
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Dr. Diana, both a doctor (therapeutic optometrist), and a recovered POTS and ME/CFS patient, offers help and hope for POTS, Dysautonomia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Lyme, vascular abnormalities, Fibromyalgia, and Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Diana is now working full time at POTS Care.
Registered: 11 years, 9 months ago
Website: http://mitochondrialdepletionsyndrome.blogspot.com/
Topics Started: 1
Replies Created: 5
Forum Role: Participant
This website was created to inform, educate and brainstorm with fellow patients and doctors. The content should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Readers are encouraged to confirm all information with other sources and their physicians. The creator of this site will not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary, or other damages arising from the use of this website.
Twitter: @prettyill
"Dr. Diana will always hold a very special place in my heart for her selfless devotion to helping everyone, not just the Ehlers-Danlos community. I hate to think what my life would be without her insight and guidance."
-- Chris Gross


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AP: talented artist and now, bombing suspect's wife
April 23, 2013
NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) — Katherine Russell was a talented artist, good student who grew up Christian, the daughter of a suburban doctor.
Then she went off to college in Boston.
A few years later, she had dropped out of school, converted to Islam and was Katherine Tsarnaeva, wife of a man who would become a suspect in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings and a subject of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, two ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia, are accused of planting two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs near the marathon finish line last week, killing three people and injuring more than 200. Tamerlan was killed in a getaway attempt after a gun battle with police. Dzhokhar, who was captured hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard and is hospitalized, was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill.
Authorities have not released a motive, but two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the investigation, told The Associated Press that evidence suggests the brothers were motivated by a radical brand of Islam.
Tsarnaeva, 24, has avoided the public eye since her identity became known Friday. On the rare occasions when she has emerged from her parents' Rhode Island home, she is dressed in the traditional Muslim headscarf, a hijab, and has refused to answer questions.
Those who know her and knew her husband describe her as sweet and dedicated to Islam.
Tsarnaeva grew up with two younger sisters on a quiet cul-de-sac in North Kingstown, a rural, wooded town a 90-minute drive south from the apartment she would eventually share in Cambridge, Mass., with her husband and his family. Her father, Warren Russell, is an emergency doctor whose Facebook profile lists his high school alma mater as the elite New Hampshire boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy and college as Yale. Her mother, Judith Russell, was listed on her Facebook profile as working at a social services agency.
Tsarnaeva attended North Kingstown High School, graduating in 2007. Her yearbook entry lists her plans as college and the Peace Corps. Her art teacher for four years, Amos Trout Paine, remembered her talent in painting and drawing and said she was at the top of her class.
"The reason why I remember her is she was very nice and very smart," Paine said. "She was ready to learn."
She had friends and was well integrated into class, he said, and did not seem to be interested in religion.
"There was none of that with her," he said. "She was neutral."
She went off to Suffolk University, and Paine did not see her again after that. He said he was surprised to hear she had dropped out of school and even more surprised to hear she was married to a man now accused of bombing the marathon.
"From how I know her, she's a really good person," he said.
Suffolk University said Tsarnaeva attended from 2007 to 2010 and majored in communications. Her lawyer Amato DeLuca said she was a student when she met Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a nightclub, introduced by one of her girlfriends. Tsarnaev, who had attended Bunker Hill Community College, was no longer in school, DeLuca said, and was seeing another woman at the time.
"They went out for a while, and then they stopped and then they went out again," DeLuca said.
Tsarnaeva knew nothing about Islam when they met, said her lawyer, adding he didn't know if marriage was a motivating factor in her conversion. The reason was that she is a believer, he said.
"She believes in the tenets of Islam and of the Quran," DeLuca said. "She believes in God."
The couple got married on June 21, 2010, in a ceremony performed by Imam Taalib
Mahdee, of Masjid al Qur'aan, in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, according to their marriage certificate, which lists his profession as a driver.
Mahdee told The Associated Press Tsarnaeva called him saying she and Tsarnaev wanted to get married. Mahdee asked if they had the requisite licenses and she said yes.
Mahdee performed the 15-minute ceremony in the mosque office. Two witnesses were present, but Mahdee does not remember who they were.
"They requested that it was a simple wedding," Mahdee said.
Both seemed happy, he said.
"They seemed like two people who were getting ready to get married," Mahdee said.
Mahdee said he never saw the couple again and that they never attended his mosque.
The couple had a daughter and lived with her in the Tsarnaev family apartment, which was shared over the years with his mother, Zubeidat, and father, Anzor, now divorced, and Dzhokhar, DeLuca said. He said Tsarnaeva rarely saw her brother-in-law there because he was living in the dorms at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev's relatives have said that in recent years he became a devout Muslim and prayed five times a day. DeLuca said the couple attended the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, although the mosque's executive assistant, Nichole Mossalam, said that Tsarnaeva had never been there to her knowledge.
Leaders at the mosque say Tamerlan Tsarnaev did attend and in recent months had outbursts during two sermons that encouraged Muslims to celebrate American institutions such as the Fourth of July and figures including Martin Luther King Jr.
Last year, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia for about six months, while his wife stayed in their Cambridge apartment. His aunt said he spoke with his wife every day using Skype and at times she would instruct him on how to observe religious practices correctly when he lapsed.
Tsarnaeva's lawyer said she had no reason to suspect her husband of anything and was focused on supporting her family, working 70 to 80 hours, seven days a week as a home health care aide. Her husband cared for their daughter when she was away, Deluca said.
But Anne Kilzer, a Belmont, Mass., resident who went with her daughters to the Tsarnaev home to get facials from Tamerlan Tsarnaev's mother, said when she visited the apartment Tsarnaeva was always there with the baby and her mother-in-law.
Kilzer, who had not been to the home since around Labor Day, when the mother told her she was leaving the country, described Tamerlan Tsarnaev as surly and intimidating and painted his wife as cowed and intimidated by him.
"She was a very sweet woman, but I think kind of brainwashed by him," she said.
She said Tsarnaeva seemed lonely and would bring out the baby for her to hold when she visited.
The apartment was so cramped and crowded, Kilzer said, that it would have been difficult for Tsarnaev to hide criminal activity from his wife.
"Maybe she'll provide answers for all of us," she said.
Federal authorities have asked to interview Tsarnaeva, and DeLuca on Sunday told The Associated Press he is discussing with them how to proceed. He said on Tuesday during a brief statement to reporters that his client "is doing everything she can to assist with the investigation," although he would not answer questions about whether she had spoken with federal authorities.
DeLuca would not give the AP details on what his client told him her husband was doing in the days before and after the April 15 bombing but said as far as he knew nothing seemed amiss to her in the days after.
Tsarnaev was home when his wife left for work the last day he was alive, DeLuca said. Police say he was run over by a car driven by his brother as he fled gunfire early Friday morning. His brother was captured later that night, wounded and bloody, in Watertown, 10 miles west of Boston; his lawyer has declined to comment.
DeLuca said she learned of her husband was suspected of being responsible for bombing the Boston Marathon the same way a lot of other people did: on TV.
Her other lawyer, Miriam Weizenbaum, said on Tuesday that reports of her husband and brother-in-law's involvement in the bombings came as a shock to Tsarnaeva and her family and said she deeply mourned the loss of innocent victims.
Tsarnaeva, she said, was trying to come to terms with the events.


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Updated 2016
Start with the North Korea Basics.
North Korea has been cloaked in secrecy for decades, off limits to the rest of the world and obscuring the rest of the world to its citizens. North Korea placed very narrow restrictions on travel and forbid much of the world from joining. Only recently have family of North Korean citizens been allowed into the country for short visits.
North Korea is also opening up slightly to newspapers and TV stations. Recent highly controlled, limited access to the country by the international media has begun to lift the shroud from North Korea, but the country is still one of the most reclusive nations in the developed world.
Traveling to North Korea has been impossible for years for the average traveler, but as the country opens up slowly, the opportunity for travel is beginning to present itself. Travelers have to book tours through a North Korean travel agent and the Korean Friendship Association, and anyone suspected of being a journalist may be denied entry.
American travelers are almost never allowed into the country except as part of special delegations invited by the government.
If you go
Under no circumstances should you say or joke about anything that could be perceived as a threat or criticism of Kim Jong-Il or the country itself. This is extremely important. You'll be in real trouble, although your travel guide will probably take the more extreme punishment as you are somewhat protected by your foreign citizenship.
Read: DMZ: Somewhere on the 38th Parallel


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SBA to Expand Access to Loan Programs
February 25, 2013
SBA to Expand Access to Loan Programs
Fewer regulations will streamline applications and ensure program integrity through enhanced oversight
WASHINGTON – Borrowers and lenders of loans backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration will have greater access to capital and less paperwork as a result of a proposed regulation aimed at streamlining the SBA application process, while also strengthening oversight and the integrity of the agency's loan programs.
"Streamlining and simplifying has been a key focus of our agency over the last few years. The changes are the latest steps to reduce paperwork burden, with our eye on the larger goal of expanding access to capital and giving entrepreneurs and small business owners the financial resources to grow and create jobs," said SBA Administrator Karen Mills. "Specifically, these proposed regulations will provide greater access to capital through our two largest loan programs, while also reducing risk to taxpayer dollars."
The SBA proposes the new measures after extensive consultations with lenders and borrowers to identify the greatest challenges they face and find ways to reduce barriers to making and accessing loans, while still maintaining strict oversight.
Among the proposed changes are:
Eliminating the Personal Resource Test: A borrower will no longer be required to obtain a maximum level of personal finance resources for a 7(a) or 504 loan. This will streamline the loan process by eliminating complicated regulations used to determine the amount of collateral required.
Revising the Rule on Affiliation: Revising this rule will open access to SBA loans to businesses that, under current rules, would not qualify as a small business under SBA's size standards by virtue of their association with other concerns. It also would streamline 504 loan applications and reduce paperwork requirements for 504 and 7(a) loan applications.
Eliminating the Nine-Month Rule for the 504 Loan Program: Eliminating the Nine-Month rule removes a restriction that limits a business to include in its 504 project only expenses incurred nine months prior to submitting the loan application. The new rule would allow inclusion of expenses incurred at any time (e.g., projects put on hold for more than nine months due to a natural disaster).
Increasing Accountability of the Certified Development Companies' Board of Directors while Eliminating Requirements for Membership: Refocusing CDC corporate governance requirements will reinforce the importance of board accountability for CDC oversight for the 504 loan program and set in place measures to strengthen oversight in order to maintain program integrity.
For a comprehensive list of the new rules and their benefits, visit www.sba.gov/xxx. You can also visit www.federalregister.gov/xxc for the full text of the proposed rule.
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"Save a Cheese" Photo Contest
02 Aug 2013
Did you know that all over the world, dairy products are disappearing, along with the traditional knowledge, techniques, cultures and landscapes related to their production? The reasons are many: the abandonment of mountain pastures, overly restrictive regulations, long processing times and a market in crisis. Slow Food is gathering threatened products aboard the Ark of Taste because this common heritage of culture and flavors represents a wealth of biodiversity that must be saved. You can help us, and have a chance to win a Slow Food book!
This year, the Ark of Taste docks at Cheese, Slow Food's event dedicated to the world of artisanal and small-scale dairy, held in Bra, Italy from September 20 to 23. Whether or not you're coming, we want you to nominate new "passengers" for the Ark.
Let us know about an endangered cheese or other dairy product from your area using the online nomination form, and include a photo of your nominated product. Don't forget to tell us what makes your product special: It could be the addition of a special herb that grows only in your area, or a unique flavor that develops from being aged in a specific climate, or a special quality thanks to the use of milk from a rare breed. Finally, if you are coming to Cheese, bring a sample of your nomination to the Piazza dell'Arca in Bra, where we will have display cases ready to highlight your contributions!
Creativity is key: We want to see your special cheese set in the landscape it comes from, during its production, being enjoyed by the community, posing with its makers, or however else you'd like to show it to us! Your photo will be featured in an online gallery for all to see, and the best photo will win a book from Slow Food Editore. (If you are coming to Cheese you can collect this from the Slow Food stand, or if you won't be in Bra we will send you a voucher you can use at the Slow Food store online.
Contest rules:
1. Submit a nomination online, along with a photo. If you are bringing a sample to Cheese, make sure to check the box. Images submitted must be your own, and they may be used by Slow Food for educational and communication purposes.
2. The best photo will win a Slow Food book that can be picked up at Cheese, or a voucher that can be used to purchase the book online at the Slow Food store.
3. Bring your cheese to the Piazza dell'Arca in Bra between September 20 and 23, and we'll thank you with a small gift. Don't worry about the quantity, a slice is enough!
For any queries, write to [email protected].
Good luck and see you at Cheese!
Change the world through food
Learn how you can restore ecosystems, communities and your own health with our RegenerAction Toolkit.


text: This graph is a theoretical prediction of the acoustic response of the flute. Roughly speaking, it is a measure of how hard it is to make the flute resonate at any given frequency. The flute will play at most of the minima on this curve, provided that the minimum is deep enough and that the neighbouring minima are not too deep or too close.


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Choices in Green Roofing
When you think of having a "green" roof, there are a number of concepts and materials to consider. First you need to ask yourself about what you are hoping to accomplish. Are you looking for energy savings? Do you want to cut down on your carbon footprint? How far do you want to go and what level of expense do you want to employ? If you are either building or remodeling, here are a few ideas to consider if you would like to have a green roof.
Coated metal roofs
In an interview with Ed Lynch and Mickey Harris of Nescor, a home remodeling company in West Springfield, MA, I learned about what may be the ultimate green option for roofing. The company specializes in metal roofing that is coated in granite to give the appearance of asphalt shingles. "They (the metal roofs) don't wear out. They are guaranteed for the lifetime of the homeowner and the guarantee is transferable," said Lynch. Essentially, once the metal roofing is installed, that's it. "Even if for some reason all or a portion of the roof needed to be replaced, all the materials are one hundred percent recyclable," said Harris. Harris added that it's important to remember that asphalt tiles are a petroleum product that wears out relatively quickly and is a pollutant in landfills.
Another benefit to having a granite coated steel roof is energy savings as the materials "alleviate the heat from the wood in your attic," said Harris. The roofing materials keep heat out and reflect heat, which is a type of roof know as a "cool roof." Lynch said that steel roofs are actually lighter than asphalt and can be placed over up to two layers of traditional asphalt roofing. "That also saves on more asphalt ending up in a landfill," said Lynch. In addition, besides never having to replace your roof again, there is no maintenance required according to Harris. "It's totally maintenance-free forever," he said.
If you live in an area where it snows, the standing seam construction of a steel roof helps prevent heavier snow loads and less snow-related hazards Harris added.
Cool roofs
The use of lighter colored materials in roofing in general is known as cool roofs. Dark roofs absorb the sun's heat and up your cooling costs. "Cool roofs reflect the heat back out into space. Asphalt absorbs the heat and transfers it into your home," said Lynch. For a little more in-depth discussion of cool roofs, Carl Seville offers a good beginner's guide in a recent Networx article. Seville states that according to a Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study it was determined that you can save between 10 and 50 percent on annual cooling costs with a cool roof. However, Seville offers the caveat that it is even more important to have a really well-insulated attic to help keep the heat out.
Wood shingles
Roofers in Boston are quite familar with installing wppd shingles, as they are popular in New England. Lynch said that while wood shakes are a green material and is 100 percent recyclable (they can be turned into wood chips), they wear out in 15 to 20 years maximum, not counting any type of storm damage. "They (wood shingles) are very popular here in New England. But you have to expect that the heat and cold will cause them to expand and contract, which will break them down over time," said Harris.
Clay tiling
Clay roofing tiles are a green material that is best used in regions that are predominantly hot more of the year. Harris said that clay roofing materials can be durable and are recyclable, but are not meant for regions where there are extremes in heat and cold. "They just won't hold up (in that kind of environment)," he said.
Horticultural green roofs
Horticultural green roofs are an idea dating back thousands of years. In general, you have to have a solid base of well-sealed roofing material before soil mixtures and plants can be added. Horticultural green roofs are easiest to create on flat roofs, and require a good deal of upkeep, often professional. Horticultural green roofs can be done on slanted roofs and might be a consideration for a portion of a homeowner's roof.
Soil is layered anywhere from three inches to over two feet depending on what types of plants you would want to grow. Mosses, sedums, and grasses for the lesser amounts of soil and shrubs, hedges, and trees for the larger amounts. Root barriers, and depending on the location, an irrigation system would also need to be installed.
The idea of a horticultural roof is popular in some urban areas to create green space, reduce rooftop reflected heat, reduce pollution, improve storm water runoff, and in some cases, generate crops. The Environmental Protection Agency states on their website that sod roofs, or rooftop gardens are initially more expensive to install, but savings can be seen in energy costs and costs of storm water management. The EPA estimates that costs to install a sod roof run approximately ten to twenty-five dollars per square foot. Annual maintenance is estimated at seventy-five cents to a dollar-fifty per square foot.
Cris Carl writes for Networx.com.
Looking for a Pro? Call us(866) 441-6648


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Published on : Friday, March 21, 2014
Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad ("Malaysia Airports") held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) this morning at the Sama-Sama Hotel KLIA, being the first few amongst public listed companies (with Financial Year Ended 31 December 2013) to hold its AGM early,
which is a testimony of its efficiency and strong track record of corporate governance. The AGM began with Malaysia Airports's Chairman Tan Sri Dato' Sri Dr. Wan Aziz Wan Abdullah expressing Malaysia Airports's deep empathy, hope and prayers for flight MH 370 that went missing. "Our hearts and prayers go to all the passengers and crew on board MH370, as well as to their family members and those affected. We pray and hope that by god's will, the missing aircraft will be found soon and that the passengers and crew are safe. We would like our shareholders to know that we are extending our full cooperation and support to the Government Authorities and Malaysia Airlines during this difficult time. " he said in his opening address.
In line with the Board succession plan, Malaysia Airports welcomed three new Directors on the Board namely Tuan Haji Rosli Abdullah, Datuk Seri Yam Kong Choy, and Datuk Zalekha Hassan; all three being Independent Non-Executive Directors. Malaysia Airports looks forward to their fresh business outlook and contribution towards the future of the Group. At the same time Malaysia Airports gave thanks and gratitude to Datuk Alias Haji Ahmad, Datuk Siti Maslamah Osman and Datuk Syed Faisal Albar for their invaluable services to the Malaysia Airports' Board during their tenure.
Financial Performance Overview
The year 2013 was a very successful year for Malaysia Airports, as it outperformed its financial headline key performance indicator ("KPI") for the financial year ended 31 December 2013 ("FY2013") by achieving an EBITDA of RM827.5 million (without construction revenue and cost), 10.2% higher than its target. This achievement is better than expected as the passenger numbers marked the highest growth in the past twenty years.
Nevertheless, there is a decline in the Profit after tax ("PAT") driven by higher total costs mainly attributed to higher user fee, staff costs, repair and maintenance costs. The total user fee payable to the Government for FY2013 grew by 139.8% to RM237.8 million compared to RM99.2 million recorded in the financial year ended 31 December 2012 ("FY2012"). Previously, the amount of user fee that has been recognised in the income statement represented half of the total user fee payable to the Government of Malaysia, while the other half was to reduce the amount due for the Balance Residual Payment arising from Malaysia Airports' restructuring exercise which was completed in February 2009. Upon the full settlement of the Balance Residual Payment in April 2013, the user fee is now fully recognised in the income statement.
The increase in operating revenue was attributed to stronger results from the airport operations segment, driven by robust air travel demand especially in the Asia Pacific region. Malaysia Airports recorded a passenger growth of 18.4% in FY2013, outpacing the forecasted passenger growth rate of 7.1% for 2013, with a record number of 79.6 million passengers having passed through Malaysia Airports's 39 airports in Malaysia. Both international and domestic passenger movements recorded strong growth at 16.8% and 19.9% respectively. The total passenger movements in KLIA increased by 19.1%, whereby both KLIA-MTB & LCCT recorded positive growth of 24.6% and 13.2% respectively. All other airports recorded an aggregate growth in total passenger movements of 17.3%.
Total aircraft movements grew by 14.2%, with the domestic sector recording a higher growth of 15.1% compared to the international sector, which recorded a 12.6% growth.
Malaysia Airports remains committed in enhancing shareholder value and hence, we have in place, a dividend payment policy of at least 50% of the Group's profit after tax and minority interest. For FY2013, the Board had announced an interim dividend of 6% amounting to RM73.9 million, of which RM65.3 million was reinvested in Dividend Reinvestment Plan ("DRP") while RM8.6 million was paid in cash on 30 January 2013. A single tier final dividend of at least 5.78 sen was approved today by the shareholders at the AGM. Also passed by Malaysia Airports's shareholders is the resolution for Malaysia Airports to issue new shares with respect to the DRP until the convening of the next AGM.
Sukuk Musharakah Issuance
One of the main highlights of 2013 is Malaysia Airports's successful issuance of RM500.0 million Senior Sukuk Musharakah via a dual tranche offering on 6 September 2013. The issuance was pursuant to its newly established Senior Sukuk Programme which together with its Perpetual Subordinated Sukuk Programme have a combined aggregate nominal value of up to RM2.5 billion (collectively known as the "Programmes"). The Senior Sukuk offering which is based on the Islamic principle of Musharakah, comprises a 3-year, RM250.0 million tranche and a 5-year, RM250.0 million tranche at a yield of 3.85% and 4.15% respectively. The Senior Sukuk proceeds were used to part-finance the development of klia2 which is expected to be operational on 2 May 2014. To date, Malaysia Airports had issued Sukuk amounting to RM3.6 billion to finance the construction of klia2.
The Senior Sukuk and Perpetual Subordinated Sukuk Programmes have been assigned long-term ratings of AAA and AA2 respectively by RAM Rating Services Berhad. It was an achievement for Malaysia Airports, considering the fact that the Perpetual Subordinated Sukuk Programme was the first rated Perpetual Subordinated Sukuk Programme in Malaysia which is in line with Malaysia Airports's commitment to support the Government's ongoing initiatives and efforts in positioning Malaysia as an international Islamic financial centre. The favourable ratings accorded to the Programmes reflect the strong fundamentals of Malaysia Airports and the strategic importance of Malaysia Airports's business operations to the Government of Malaysia in view of its role as the operator for the key gateways to the nation.
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport and LGM Acquisition
MALAYSIA AIRPORTS had also announced on 23 December 2013, that it had exercised its right of first refusal to acquire an additional 40% stake in Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Uluslararasi Havalimani Yatirim Yapim Ve Isletme A.S. ("Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport") and LGM Havalimani Isletmeleri Ticaret Ve Turizm A.S. ("LGM") respectively, for a total consideration of €225.0 million. Malaysia Airports aims to complete the acquisition by the first half of 2014.
With the increase of its stake in the Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport to 60%, Malaysia Airports will be the single-largest shareholder in one of the fastest growing airports in the world. The acquisition is in line with Malaysia Airports's intention to diversify its earnings.
On 3 March 2014 Malaysia Airports had completed a private placement of 124 million new shares via an accelerated book-build exercise raising approximately RM980 million to fund the acquisition. Subsequently on 12 March 2014, the new shares were listed on Bursa Malaysia which marked the successful completion of the private placement exercise.
2014 Industry Outlook
Malaysia Airports will continue to enjoy the benefit from the entry of new airlines and expansion of local carriers which are expected to continue in 2014. Apart from the seven new foreign airlines that have started their operations in 2013, Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia Group are expected to continue contributing strongly to the passenger growth, while Malindo Air is expected to be launching new routes in 2014. Malaysia Airlines' entry into the One World alliance in February 2013 has proven to be a critical catalyst to the increase of KLIA's market outreach as well as its breadth of connectivity across continents and will continue to provide important support for passenger growth in 2014.
The expected seat capacity expansion amongst the airlines coupled with strong tourist arrivals pursuant to the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 bode well for Malaysia Airports's growth momentum. Therefore, Malaysia Airports is confident to record another remarkable passenger growth of 9.7% in 2014. "As far as Malaysia Airports is concerned, we are shifting into a higher gear, our retail arm is ready to tap the opportunities of the forthcoming opening of klia2," Tan Sri Dato' Sri Dr. Wan Aziz commented on the potential revenue growth driven by retail and commercial segment.
klia2 Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT)
With the assurance from the terminal building contractors that the final works at klia2 are on schedule, and the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC) will be obtained in April, klia2 is on track to open on 2 May 2014. Malaysia Airports has started ORAT at the beginning of February and it is progressing well with all the stakeholders. To date 12 trials have been conducted involving a total of 2,818 participants, 3,659 baggage, and 170 flights covering the domestic, international and transfer operations. Public participation involving more than 1000 people has been incorporated from the time the terminal building received the recommendation from the Fire Department on its compliance to the Fire and Safety requirements, on 27 February 2014.
Among the ongoing ORAT activities that have been performed include the mobilisation of the terminal operations and aviation security personnel, hand-over of keys and site possession to Government regulatory agencies and airlines, renovation and fit-out works by retailers, DCA's inspection and flight calibration of Runway 3, Baggage Handling System (BHS) testing and commissioning, BHS reliability and load test during non-operational trial period involving 30,000 bags, airport security sterilisation, fuel hydrant pipeline network system testing and commissioning, fire safety awareness program for all tenants and full ICT integration test.
In regard to the safety aspects of klia2, IKRAM Premier Consulting (IPC), an independent consultant appointed by the Ministry of Transport has found klia2 to be safe, as stated by the Minister of Transport. IPC's evaluation had focused on the safety aspects of the taxiway, apron, runway 3 and the surrounding areas, as well as the terminal building.
Taking Malaysia Airports to The Next Level
Malaysia Airports revealed its new Vision and strategy themes for the next phase of growth and business planning, from 2015 to 2020. It has re-defined its Vision to being 'The Global Leader in Creating Airport Cities' and announced its Strategy Themes in support of the Vision. The Strategy Themes announced are: Delight Our Guests; Build Successful Partnerships; Provide Total Transport and Digital Connectivity; Accelerate and Diversify Non-Aero Base; and Sustain Our Environment and Community. With the new Vision and Strategy Themes in place, Malaysia Airports aspires to be the benchmark and recognised as a reference point internationally, in proactively enabling the sustainable development of attractive services, economy and communities in the vicinity of its airports.
The Managing Director Tan Sri Bashir Ahmad said "In achieving this new Vision, we believe that our people remain our greatest asset. Recognising this we recently embarked on a group-wide journey to rejuvenate and strengthen our corporate culture to be Friendly and Firm, Business Driven and Responsible, and Progressive and Practical. I believe that the Company is destined for greater things in the years to come."
Tan Sri Dato' Sri Dr. Wan Aziz concluded the AGM by thanking all shareholders, customers, airline partners, Government agencies, retailers, joint venture partners, vendors and suppliers for their support all these years. "Without the support of all the stakeholders, we could not have achieved the successes," he remarked.
Source:- Malaysia Airports
Tags: Malaysia Airports Expects Another Successful Year In 2014


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India has lately become infamous for its epidemic sexual violence and discrimination against women. Sexual harassment there is so rampant that it even has a nickname: Eve-teasing.
But mothers may be practicing discrimination, too, in how they treat their daughters in the womb.
Indian mothers were slightly more likely to seek out better prenatal care when carrying a boy than when carrying a girl, economists report in the Journal of Human Resources.
An analysis of more than 30,000 health surveys across India found that women pregnant with boys were 1.8 percent more likely to go to prenatal medical appointments, take iron supplements, deliver the baby in a health care facility (instead of the home) and receive tetanus shots than women pregnant with girls.
The discrepancy rises to 4.6 percent in northern India, where gender discrimination is more prevalent.
The survey didn't ask the women whether they knew the baby's sex before getting the prenatal care. But the study's authors, Prashant Bharadwaj and Leah Lakdawala, say it's common practice for doctors to share that information with parents.
But even disparities this small between how male and female fetuses are treated harm India's women, they tell Shots.
Access to prenatal care is linked to a 27 percent decrease in infant mortality in India. "And there's a whole wealth of evidence that early childhood health influences outcomes later in life — like educational attainment, income, full-time employment," says Bharadwaj, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego.
"Decisions your mother makes early in life can affect whether you make it to age 5 or earn higher wages at age 50," says Lakdawala of Michigan State University.
Of course, women may make decisions about prenatal care unconsciously, especially if they don't know the baby's sex. And it's unclear what exactly could drive this type of gender discrimination. But Bharadwaj thinks it might be connected to social disparities. For instance, if a family knows that a girl is going to earn lower wages, then parents may not want to invest as much in her future.
This idea fits with what the team found in other countries. Women in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh also slightly increased their prenatal care for boys, while those in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Ghana — where sexual discrimination is less of a problem — didn't.
India and China both have populations with many more men than women. To try to reverse the trend, doctors are prohibited from revealing a baby's sex during ultrasound exams. Still, the practice remains common in both countries.
Illicit gender identification is a lucrative business in China. The Global Times recently profiled one Chinese company that was giving women illegal ultrasounds and abortions in the back of vans for about 800 to 1,200 yuan ($128 to $193) and 3,800 yuan ($612), respectively. Another company charged 5,000 yuan ($805) to send blood for a gender test in Hong Kong.
So what about here in the U.S., where knowing the sex of a baby is often a top priority for parents who are expecting?
Even though there's evidence that Americans generally favor sons, a study in 2006 found that parents in the U.S. invest equally in prenatal health care for baby girls and boys. This was true even among first-generation immigrants from China and India.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
And I'm David Greene.
U.S. officials may have been hoping to defuse a diplomatic crisis when they negotiated for a Chinese dissident to be transferred yesterday to a hospital. Trying to ease the tension with China was important because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began high-level talks with Chinese officials today in Beijing. The hopes of U.S. officials may have been dashed. The Chinese human rights activist who spoke of remaining in China is now pleading for the United States to allow him to leave his country.
NPR's Louisa Lim spoke to him.
CHEN GUANGCHENG: (Foreign language spoken)
LOUISA LIM, BYLINE: This is a phone call Chen Guangcheng made to his lawyer Li Jinsong, as U.S. officials drove him to hospital yesterday.
GUANGCHENG: (Foreign language spoken)
LIM: There are many people with me, Chen says, including Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state. Tell my friends to come to the hospital. I want them there to protect my citizen's rights. He's clearly nervous, but excited. He was heading, he hoped, to a new life, with assurances of safety, he believed, underwritten by the U.S.
GUANGCHENG: (Foreign language spoken)
LIM: Just 16 hours later, Chen Guangcheng's tone is totally different. Talking to NPR from his hospital bed early today, he is close to tears. He admits he wouldn't have left the embassy had he realized what was in store.
GUANGCHENG: (Through Translator) There are lots of problems, which means that I want to go to the U.S. as soon as possible for treatment. I hope Clinton can help get passports for me and my family.
LIM: He feels vulnerable, and he fears that his rights are not guaranteed. He began to worry after arriving at hospital, when he says his phone was tampered with, so he couldn't call people and could only receive calls intermittently. The high-profile U.S. escort disappeared, leaving him isolated. He hasn't been allowed to see a single friend.
Earlier, U.S. officials had passed on a Chinese message that his wife would be sent home if he didn't leave the embassy. When he finally met his wife, what she told him alarmed him even more.
GUANGCHENG: (Through Translator) I can't get in touch with my family in my village at all. I don't know what's happened to my mother. There are guards inside the yard, in all the rooms, even on the roof. They've set up lots of cameras in my home, and are preparing electric fences. They told my family they'd take wooden sticks and beat my family to death. So it's very unsafe.
LIM: Chen has already spent 19 months under house arrest, during which time he and his family have been brutally beaten and abused. He's already spent four years in jail, after angering local officials for exposing forced abortions.
Today, he told NPR he was disappointed in the U.S. government. He believes the high-level talks opening today added pressure on him to leave the embassy.
GUANGCHENG: (Through Translator) I feel that the U.S. government is not pressing hard enough on human rights. Their willingness to protect human rights is not strong enough. But I'm not disappointed in the American people. From the point of view of values, the U.S. still respects human rights, but the government sometimes places more weight on other factors.
LIM: Outside the hospital last night, a lawyer friend of his, Jiang Tianyong, was waiting in vain to meet Chen. But he was forbidden access. He doubts whether his friend can be safe in China.
JIANG TIANYONG: (Through Translator) I very much want him to leave China, because he has already done too much. His family has suffered too much.
LIM: Concerns have been raised that the U.S. acted too quickly in accepting Chinese assurances of Chen's safety, especially given the fact that a number of Chen's supporters are now missing, with at least one put under house arrest since last night.
Resulting crisis is damaging for all sides, according to Josh Rosenzweig, an independent human rights researcher in Hong Kong.
JOSH ROSENZWEIG: The only side in the negotiations that seemed to have enough information to make a decision about what they wanted to do was the Chinese government, although I think even they didn't foresee perhaps the way in which this event would change so rapidly and potentially create an even bigger public relations nightmare.
LIM: So the world's two superpowers remain locked into a diplomatic tussle. For now, at least, the immediate future of their ties could rest on the fate of one blind man in a hospital bed.
Louisa Lim, NPR News, Beijing. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text: Environmental law assures that the environment be protected against both public and private actions to take account of costs or harms inflicted on the eco-system. Attorneys handle environmental law are involved in the protection of natural resources, land, and wildlife; regulation of harmful emissions into air and water; and monitoring of commercial and industrial activities for their impact on the environment. Environmental law attorneys also advise businesses on compliance with federal and state environmental laws.


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Touchscreen Filters
From Openmoko
Contents |
In progress: This Work in progress. documents one or more features whose implementation are in progress. |
In this document we describe the algorithms we use to make the touchscreen behave well ( Check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oPKaVno3jQ for an example ). By "well" we mean that we can:
- Get reliable clicks with the stylus and with the finger
- Avoid further filtering in user space. It might be useful in some scenarios, for instance in a based dual boot menu.
- Do linear transformation in kernel-space. X (and other programs) should be able to gather data from /dev/input/eventX. This step is optional and you can use tslib for this task if you prefer to do so.
Openmoko developers and contributors have tried different approaches that have helped improve the touchscreen performance. As a result now we have a touchscreen filtering framework that we are using in Linux 2.6. We describe the current working solution as of January 2009 as it is in the andy-tracking branch of the Openmoko GIT repository.
If you think we can improve something please send us feedback.
We include videos showing how things improve as we add filters. In the videos we use a program that plots the points reported by the driver. The videos are not polished (you might want to turn down volume) but they illustrate our points.
Our hardware
The FreeRunner (GTA02) uses the S3C2442 touchscreen controller, while the Neo1973 (GTA01) uses the S3C2410 one. For both devices we use the same driver.
The driver can be used for other devices:
- HP iPAQ H1940 (H1930, H1935, H1940 and H1945) ( http://www.handhelds.org/projects/h1940.html ).
- Acer N30
We don't use pressure information
The only information we are using from the hardware is the reported X and Y coordinates. We are not using pressure information. We could get the area of the contact to the touchscreen and we could tell between stylus, fingernail or thumb. The area information is reliable but we didn't manage to normalize the results across the screen as they varied widely depending on which corner of the screen is pressed, in a non-linear way.
Why are we doing filtering in kernel space?
This is not new. An early driver for this device does some filtering (corrections, averaging, etc).
In the latest driver we decided to add a generic filtering framework that could be used by more touchscreen drivers. It also helps keeping the driver small, with no averaging in the same file.
We are aware of tslib and we use it with the current stable kernel (2.6.24) but we also think that doing filtering in the kernel is a good idea, and in the latest kernel (2.6.28 - next stable) we are doing it and as a side effect we no longer need to depend on tslib (but we can use it if we need it).
Let's say we would like to deliver a TS event to user space each 10 milliseconds. In the GTA02 with the current configuration the Analog/Digital conversion time of a sample is 0.4697 milliseconds, thus can get 18 samples for each event that we send to user-space. Sending the event (with 18 samples) takes us about 8.45 milliseconds. Sometimes we even decide that the event should not be sent to user-space (because the hardware didn't provide reliable data), and our tests show that it's the right thing to do. In previous versions of the driver light taps would confuse the driver (that would report bad clicks) and this is no longer an issue.
Briefly stated: We think it's better if the driver sends only good data to the applications. If there are multiple distributions for a device (there are quite a few for the GTA02) they can share a tuned in-kernel configuration. We also save a lot of kernel mode/user mode transitions and data transmission allowing us to consider more samples for each reported event.
Raw output
This is the raw output of the s3c2410 driver we are using (source).
In this video:
- We draw a few numbers
- We draw points while trying to keep the stylus still and we get stain because of the variance of the raw output data. We also try to use some pressure, we are not testing light pressure here.
- We draw two lines, two curves
- We draw points with the finger
- We use the stylus again to draw face
Note that we paint the points after we have lifted the stylus/finger[3] but keep in mind that the kernel is sending events while we press the screen.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ouBKOETiG8
Generic filters
Generic filters are not useful by themselves, they define an API that that actual filters have to implement. These are the operations that each filter can perform.
struct ts_filter_api { struct ts_filter * (*create)(void *config, int count_coords); void (*destroy)(struct ts_filter *filter); void (*clear)(struct ts_filter *filter); int (*process)(struct ts_filter *filter, int *coords); void (*scale)(struct ts_filter *filter, int *coords); };
clear: We call this operation when we need the filter to be in a clean state. For instance, when we initialize the filter or when we have a pen-up event.
process: This function is called when we need to send a sample to the filter, in our driver this happens when an A/D conversion ends. After that one of three things can happen:
- If the filter needs more samples to be gathered it returns a 0.
- If it is ready to return a sample and there are no filters after itself, it returns 1.
- If it is ready to return a sample and there are filters after itself it will pass the resulting sample to the next filter and it's up to that filter to decide what it returns. If a filter reaches an error it returns -1. In the GTA01/GTA02 this happens when many inputs are discarded because they are not good samples and we decide to give up trying to get good samples.
scale: This function is called for each filter after the filter chain returns 1. It is used to save expensive operations (such as divisions) in those cases when you can get away with doing them with aggregated data.
Group filter
This filter is useful to reject samples that are not reliable. We consider that a sample is not reliable if it deviates form the Majority.
(1) First we collect a set of S samples. (2) We make a copy of the values of each coordinate and process each dimension separately. For each dimension (X,Y):
- Sort the points
- Points that are "close enough" are considered to be in the same set.
- Choose the set with more elements. If more than "threshold" points are in this set we use the first and the last point of the set to define the valid range for this dimension [min, max], otherwise we discard all the points and go to step 1.
- We consider the unsorted S samples and try to feed them to the next filter in the chain in the same order they arrived. If one of the points of each sample is not in the allowed range for its dimension, we discard the sample.
With this filter get rid of most of the noise and we make up for the absence of pressure information. Light pressure means bad data, and the bad data is discarded.
Median averaging filter
In this video we use both the group filter and the median filter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17gempMRhBs
We sort incoming raw samples into an array of MEDIAN_SIZE length, discarding the oldest sample each time once we are full. We then return the sum of the middle three samples for X and Y.
When this filter is cleared (via the clear function) it consumes MEDIAN_SIZE points before the first output takes place. After that it consumes a few samples for each output and this number of samples depends on how fast the pointer is moving. The idea is to discard more samples from the array if the pointer is moving fast.
This strongly rejects brief excursions away from a central point that is sticky in time compared to the excursion duration.
Mean filter
In this video we include all the filters that are in this page. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oPKaVno3jQ
Mean works well if the input data is already good quality, reducing + / - 1 sample jitter when the stylus is still, or moving very slowly, without introducing abrupt transitions or reducing ability to follow larger movements. If you set the threshold higher than the dynamic range of the coordinates, you can just use it as a simple mean average.
This filter has no effect if the samples are changing by more that the threshold set by averaging_threshold in the configuration. However while samples come in that don't go outside this threshold from the last reported sample, Mean replaces the samples with a simple mean of a configurable number of samples (set by bits_filter_length in config, which is 2^n, so 5 there makes 32 sample averaging).
In the current configuration we are using a mean with 4 points. It means that when the filter is cleared we need 4 samples for each output and then we only use 1 sample for each output until the filter is cleared.
Linear calibration filter
Source :
This filter allow us to scale touchscreen values using calibration data. It also exposes the calibration constants using sysfs. By default it does not scale the coordinates.
How things fit together
The following configuration that we are using for the GTA02 lives in the file arch/arm/mach-s3c2440/mach-gta02.c. This configuration is not in the touchscreen driver, and the same driver can be used with different settings in other devices. The filters can also be used in other drivers.
/* touchscreen configuration */ static struct ts_filter_linear_configuration gta02_ts_linear_config = { .constants = {1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1}, /* don't modify coords */ .coord0 = 0, .coord1 = 1, }; static struct ts_filter_group_configuration gta02_ts_group_config = { .extent = 12, .close_enough = 10, .threshold = 6, /* at least half of the points in a group */ .attempts = 10, }; static struct ts_filter_median_configuration gta02_ts_median_config = { .extent = 20, .decimation_below = 3, .decimation_threshold = 8 * 3, .decimation_above = 4, }; static struct ts_filter_mean_configuration gta02_ts_mean_config = { .bits_filter_length = 2, /* 4 points */ }; static struct s3c2410_ts_mach_info gta02_ts_cfg = { .delay = 10000, .presc = 0xff, /* slow as we can go */ .filter_sequence = { [0] = &ts_filter_group_api, [1] = &ts_filter_median_api, [2] = &ts_filter_mean_api, [3] = &ts_filter_linear_api, }, .filter_config = { [0] = >a02_ts_group_config, [1] = >a02_ts_median_config, [2] = >a02_ts_mean_config, [3] = >a02_ts_linear_config, }, };
Let's link the discussions of the filters in mailing lists, tickets or forums.


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Ashley Bennion shares her eventful birth story.
Of course, this post should come with warnings and disclaimers in bold neon: I am not a doctor. Yes, I know the risks associated with a Caesarian section. I do not judge your labour decisions. This is a personal account.
And so on. Because, you know, we judge. Speaking of, can we stop the judgment? Let's. Just. Stop. But perhaps that's best left for another post….
Some context: My first pregnancy and labour were more or less 'normal.' I barely met my doctor, because there really wasn't a need. Labour started, as it often does, with contractions and leakage, and after 27 hours (OK, maybe not so normal) I gave birth vaginally to my beautiful, healthy daughter. She was on the smaller side at 6lbs 12oz, but I had to push for four hours so trust me when I say, she did not feel small to me. TRUST. She had jaundice, holding us new-parents hostage to worry, and chained us to the hospital for four days.
Breastfeeding was excruciating and, because of the jaundice, I had to feed every 1-2 hours around the clock and then pump, too. Every time. For a month. I didn't sleep for five days straight. And my physical recovery was ROUGH. The squirt bottle became my frenemy, as I hated using it, but the alternative was worse. Walking hurt, sitting hurt, laughing hurt, sneezing was terrifying and stairs were a new form of torture. "Will I ever physically heal?" played over and over in my head, almost rhetorically, because the answer was an obvious "snort, unlikely." But after several months—yes, several—I felt more or less back to normal. You know, the NEW post-baby-out-of-curiosity-what-actually-signifies-incontinence normal.
18 months later I got pregnant with my second. A boy this time. And he was off the charts in weight. All of a sudden everything was different. I always met with my doctor. When it came closer to my due date, we were left with some big decisions. Schedule a C-section, or try vaginally? Remember my first delivery? A hard recovery? And she was so wee! In the end my decision was based on doctors' (yes, that's multiple "doctors") recommendations and my old faithful: Better the Devil you know.
Induction was the plan; I'd be monitored closely, and would be taken to surgery in a stress-free manner if it seemed he wasn't going to cooperate. All the doctors knew me as the small 5-foot 4-inch woman carrying a big baby; the anonymity of that first birth experience, gone. At my fourth ultrasound, about three weeks before I delivered, he was weighing in at an already-impressive 9.5lbs.
We packed the car, got our daughter settled and left for the hospital—wasn't this civilized! No contractions. No pain. No puddles of leaking amniotic fluid scattered throughout the hospital.
The induction started smoothly; I progressed, they checked on us regularly, we tried to rest. But then his heart rate started dropping. The nurse would emerge from her secret nurse station, change my position and assess things. Maybe it was his positioning? Then the baby's heart rate would settle and she'd leave again. And this went on and on. We tried not to obsess over every beep and blip on the monitors, over every facial expression she made at those beeps. After a half dozen times or so, the doctor came in. And then another. And another. Until there were about 10 people in the room. I thought my husband might throw up.
"We need to get him out," the lead doctor said to me. "Now."
And then, just like on TV, all hell broke loose. "OR 6!!" They yelled as they ran my gurney down the hall. The lights were so bright and stark compared to my quiet, dark, safe room.
"I'm scared," I whispered pitifully to the lead doctor. "I know," she said. "Don't worry, we've called a pediatric specialist in from Sick Kids."
She had to read the consent forms to me, and held my shaking hand to sign. Everything was happening so fast, my poor husband wasn't even allowed in the operating room.
He thought one of us might die, and he hadn't been given the chance to say goodbye.
They put me on the table."I CAN STILL FEEL MY LEGS!" I screamed, stories of people being awake during surgery flooding my brain. They topped up my drugs. The lights were so bright. They cut, then pulled him out. The force of this vacuum was so shocking I screamed again.
I reacted poorly to the drugs and the adrenaline of the surgery. They had to knock me out, but I started choking on my tongue. For the second time in less than an hour, my husband thought I might die.
And then I came to, and held my son. He was perfect! Healthy and beautiful, and without the battle wounds my daughter had. Breastfeeding was a cinch. He slept well, didn't cry, no jaundice. We left the hospital in two days—so quickly that I had to hit a clinic a few days later to remove my staples. I felt like myself! I could walk! I could sit! I could take the stairs! Good riddance squirt bottle! Of course there was pain, but it was manageable, way more so than when my daughter was born.
In the end, the emergency surgery had lasted half an hour, max. And yes, it was terrifying. Even writing this and remembering it in closer detail has me shaken. Was he going to be OK? Was he even going to survive? For minutes not a single person in that operating room knew. But he did and he's healthy and after the delivery, everything went perfectly. A far cry from the challenges with my first, not to mention the months and months of recovery. Would I opt for a C-section birth again? In a heartbeat.
Oh, and my son? He was 11-pounds.
This article was originally published in April 2014.
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Types of Visual Screening Tests for Infants and Children
In order to evaluate your child's vision, your child's doctor will perform a history and physical, including a complete examination of the eyes. There are also many different types of vision tests that can be used to check your child's ability to see. Some of them can be used at any age, while some of them are used based on your child's age and understanding.
The following are some types of visual screening tests:
Visual screening tests for an infant
The following are some of the ways in which your infant's vision can be tested:
Response to light. An infant will blink in response to a bright light.
Pupil response. Measuring the response of the pupil (the black center part of the eye) by shining a penlight in the eye is one way to test an infant's vision.
Ability to follow a target. The most common vision acuity test in infants is a test to check their ability to look at and follow an object or toy.
Visually evoked response testing. These are tests that stimulate the eyes with either a bright light or special pattern. The infant is connected to a special monitor with attachments on the infant's head. The machine then records electrical activity in the brain as the lights and patterns are shown to infants.
Visual screening tests for an older infant and toddler
Many of the above tests may be performed, in addition to the following:
Cover and uncover test. This test looks for movement and alignment of the eyes that may occur when a child is focusing on an object. One eye is covered with an opaque card while the child stares straight ahead, at which time the examiner observes the uncovered eye.
Visual screening tests for a preschooler
Some of the same tests that are used for the toddler, in addition to the following, may be used, usually around age 3:
Visual acuity tests. Specific tests and charts may be used to measure both near and distant vision. In the preschooler, these charts may consist of pictures or stories instead of letters of the alphabet.
Color testing. This test helps determine color blindness in a child.
Visual screening tests for a school-aged children
In this age group, formal vision tests can be completed with special charts or instruments that aid with testing vision. Both near and far vision can be evaluated.


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This is WEEKEND EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. With just 10 days to go in a tightening race, both campaigns are out in force around the country trying to win over voters. Today, Governor Mitt Romney is in Florida. President Obama is in New Hampshire. We're joined now by Ben LaBolt. He's national press secretary for President Obama's 2012 campaign. He's on the line from Chicago.
Mr. LaBolt. Thanks for being with us.
BEN LABOLT: Good morning, Scott. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Just a few weeks ago, it looked like you were well ahead. Now it's tied. What happened?
LABOLT: Well, you know, we never thought we were 10 points up in states like Iowa and Ohio. What's remarkable is how stable this race has been for the past year and a half - a small, but important feat for the president in key battleground states that will decide the election.
But the results that matter, right now, are the early vote results, states like Iowa and Ohio and Nevada are already voted and the president is winning those states by two-to-one. We've got to keep up that turn out of our supporters and reach the remaining undecided.
SIMON: The - one of the ways in which, according to the polls, the race might be tightening is among women voters. The AP released a poll on Thursday showing that Mr. Romney and the president were tied at 47 percent. Does this indicate...
LABOLT: No.
SIMON: Yes, sir?
LABOLT: We actually think that the gender gap will be maintained on Election Day. Ultimately Governor Romney is somebody who wouldn't stand up for equal pay for women, who said we should get rid of Planned Parenthood, who hasn't stood up for tax fairness, who's comfortable with...
SIMON: Well, I - let - let me - I think those of us who have been listening can probably finish those sentences now, but let me point to you to what the polls say. Does it suggest to you that economic issues are as important to women voters as what you even began to detail as women's health issues?
LABOLT: Well, we thought all along that they would be. Certainly equal pay is an issue that's critical to woman. Mitt Romney refuses to say that he supports it. And ultimately, it's going to come down to that economic choice.
Do you believe that a $5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by the middle-class, will unleash job creation when it hasn't in the past? Or do you believe that we should continue to make investments in areas like education and research and developments that are creating good paying jobs for the middle class?
SIMON: Mitt is...
LABOLT: We were losing at least 800,000 jobs a month when president came into office, and more than 5 million jobs have been created. Mitt Romney wants to cut back in all the areas that have lead to that job creation.
SIMON: Mr. LaBolt, you mentioned the concentration in states with electoral votes that are in the balance. There's a headline, I imagine, you might have seen in the Washington Post today that says polls raise prospect, Obama may win without popular vote. Now, in October 2004, at senatorial debates at the city club of Chicago, Mr. Obama was asked about the electoral college.
SIMON: Now, in a news conference thereafter, State Senator Obama said he'd be in favor of awarding electoral college votes in proportion with the popular vote. So with today's headline in mind that the president may need the electoral vote to win, is this still President Obama's position?
LABOLT: Well, the position of the president is the law that's on the books, and the electoral college elects the next president of the United States. Our campaign effort is built around getting to 270 electoral college votes. That's why we've built such a strong organization on the ground in key states across the country. That's what will get us over the finish line, and obviously we paid the most attention to state polls, not national polls. That's how the election is decided.
But I think once Americans - those undecided Americans - take a look at the choice on the table, at the progress that we've made and the fact that Mitt Romney would return to all the same sorts of economic policies that got us into the crisis, crashed the economy, and devastated the middle class in the first place...
SIMON: Mr. LaBolt, let me - let me follow up with, because you've spent a lot of time pointing out Mitt Romney's past positions. Is this different from the position President Obama took just eight years ago, that people in the electoral college ought to vote for the winner of the popular vote?
LABOLT: The president's position is the law that's on the books, which is the electoral college decides the next president of the United States. The winner will be the winner who wins those battleground states.
But, again, I'm confident that once that economic choice crystallizes for those undecided voters who've been focused on their daily lives and maybe haven't tended to the race right until now, they'll take a look at the fact that we were losing manufacturing jobs before he came to office. Now we've created more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs. These guys plan to create a million more.
SIMON: Mr. - Mr...
LABOLT: When we take a look at the back...
SIMON: And Mr. LaBolt, I'm afraid we've run out of time, but I do thank you for joining us.
LABOLT: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Ben LaBolt, national press secretary for President Obama's 2012 campaign. Tomorrow we've invited a representative of the Romney campaign to speak with my colleague Rachel Martin on Weekend Edition Sunday. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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American, U.S. Airways announce $11 billion merger
DALLAS — American Airlines and U.S. Airways have agreed to merge in an $11 billion deal that would create the world's biggest airline.
The combined carrier will be called American Airlines and be based in Fort Worth, but U.S. Airways CEO Doug Parker will run it.
The merger would reduce the number of major U.S. airlines to four: the new American, United, Delta and Southwest.
The deal is a coup for smaller U.S. Airways Group Inc., which pushed for a merger almost as soon as American parent AMR Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2011.
While Parker runs the company, AMR CEO Tom Horton will serve as chairman until its first shareholder meeting, likely in mid-2014.
The boards of both companies approved the deal Wednesday. The companies announced it early Thursday and expect it to close in the third quarter of this year.
"The combined airline will have the scale, breadth and capabilities to compete more effectively and profitably in the global marketplace," Parker said in a statement. "Our combined network will provide a significantly more attractive offering to customers, ensuring that we are always able to take them where they want to go."
AMR creditors will own 72 percent of the new company, with the remaining 28 percent will going to U.S. Airways shareholders. The creditors' portion includes a 23.6 percent share for American employees and unions, plus a small stake for existing shareholders of American's parent AMR Corp.
The airlines said they expect $1 billion in combined benefits from the merger. They expect the bigger airline to lure corporate travelers away from competitors, contributing to $900 million in additional revenue. They also anticipate cost savings of roughly $150 million.
They also said they expect to spend $1.2 billion on transition costs over the next three years.
Travelers on American and U.S. Airways won't notice immediate changes. It likely will be months before the frequent-flier programs are combined and years before the two airlines are fully integrated.
The companies had negotiated since August, when creditors pushed AMR to conduct merger talks so they could decide which earned them a better return: a merger or an independent American.
The deal would need approval by AMR's bankruptcy judge and antitrust regulators, who have permitted three other big airline mergers to go ahead since 2008.
The rapid consolidation has allowed the surviving airlines to offer bigger route networks that appeal to high-paying business travelers. And it has allowed them to limit the supply of seats, which helps prop up fares and airline profits.
The new American would have more than 900 planes, 3,200 daily flights and about 95,000 employees, not counting regional affiliates. It will be slightly bigger than United Airlines by passenger traffic, not counting regional affiliate airlines.
The new airline will keep all of American's and U.S. Airways' hubs.
The companies said the new board of directors will have 12 members: Three from American, including Horton; four from U.S. Airways, including Parker; and five appointed by American's creditors.
AMR shareholders are poised to get a 3.5 percent stake in the new airline, the companies said. That's unusual because equity holders typically get wiped out in a Chapter 11 proceeding.
The companies said it's too soon to know where the new airline's operations center, reservations, flight training, maintenance and crew bases will be.
Shares of U.S. Airways rose 17 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $14.66 in premarket trading.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.